Posts Tagged ‘search engines’

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Client Knowledge Guru

At ClickBank Exchange 2011, Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz wowed the crowd with his presentation on how SEO opportunities have evolved over the years, and what you need to do now to rank highly in the search engines. His presentation was so popular that we asked him to join ClickBank team members Beau Blackwell and Molly Lane to give his presentation again, with a few extra updates to talk about the latest changes.

If SEO is important to your Internet marketing efforts (which it should be!) you don’t want to miss out on the amazing tips and techniques Rand shares in this video. He shows how there’s much more to SEO these days than just plain site listings, and how you can use the latest advances in new listing types to get more traffic to your sites, increase your credibility, and much more. Check out the video now:

Download the slides from Rand’s presentation here!

Written by: Adam Short, Guest Blogger

Have you ever tried to optimize your website for Google and other search engines, but failed to attain the results you were after?  Most Internet marketers at one point or another find themselves quite frustrated with their lack of search engine success.  Many elect to throw in the towel and pursue other avenues of traffic.  Unfortunately, this is often a mistake.  Most marketers don’t realize that just one simple change to their approach to search engine optimization could revolutionize their results.  So what is that one simple change?  Simple – it’s keywords. Website traffic success depends on the keywords you choose, and most people use the wrong ones, which inevitably leads to disappointment and wasted time.

Fortunately, choosing the right keywords is a relatively simple and straightforward process.  You don’t need to be an SEO guru, and you don’t have to spend a ton of time, money, or effort. In this article I’ll show you how to pick the right keywords to obtain top organic search engine rankings, thereby securing a free flow of highly targeted traffic to your website.

Before we get started with keyword research, let’s answer the question: Why is search engine traffic so desirable for website owners?

Here are a few of the key reasons:

• Search engines are collectively one of the largest traffic sources in the world.
• Search engine traffic is highly targeted traffic.
• Organic search engine traffic is free.

On top of that, organic search engine traffic can be very low maintenance and low stress.  Once you obtain top rankings for your “Moneywords” (we’ll define this term later), your rankings will often stick for months, or even years.  This means you do not need to constantly fret over losing your rankings, thereby enabling you to direct more positive energy towards other aspects of your business.

Furthermore, obtaining top rankings in Google (and other search engines) is a win-win situation for both you and the search engines.  Here’s why:

• Google wants to give people the most relevant search results they can.  Google wins when it can provide quality, relevant search results.
• People who search on Google win when they find web sites that give them the information they’re searching for.
• You win by targeting the right keywords and having your site appear at the top of the organic search results, thus capturing the attention of people who are looking for the very subject or niche you’re marketing.

So ultimately, everyone gets what they want.  What could be better?  With that said, let’s get into the “nitty gritty” of keyword research and how you can use it to drive swarms of free search engine traffic to your website.

First off – what is keyword research exactly?  In a nutshell, keyword research is the foundation of Internet marketing. If you understand what terms or phrases your customers use to find information in search engines, you’ll know how to reach them. You’ll understand exactly which keyword phrases you should focus on so that your marketing efforts reap the most rewards.

I’m sure you’ve heard the famous marketing tenet, “Find out what people want, and then give it to them.”  The problem is, no one really explains how to do that. That’s where keyword research comes in. It enables you to find out what people really want.

By knowing exactly what keywords people are using to search, and by understanding how to target those valuable keyword terms and phrases, you can rank at the top of Google’s organic search results any time you want.

Let’s explore two of the most common approaches to keyword research.  Do a gut check and ask yourself if you fall into one or both of these categories:

1. Targeting the highest search volume keywords in your niche
2. Targeting only long-tail keywords in your niche

While both of these methods are common, neither one is ideal.

Let’s look first at high search volume keywords.  These are usually keywords that are just a few words, such as “Roses Flowers,” or just the term “Roses.”  Sure, it may be a profitable market, but getting ranked for such short keywords can be very difficult.

The number of other sites targeting or competing with you for these keywords is often enormous, so even if you do make it to the top of the organic results for such keywords, someone is always nipping at your heels, trying to knock you off of Google’s first page.

It’s a no-win situation.  You‘ll always be competing for the top spots, always marketing to keep your keywords ranking where people can find you.

Long-tail keyword targeting also has serious drawbacks.  These are words, terms, or long phrases of four, five, or more words within any given keyword phrase. (Such as “pink roses grow best in organic soil”.)

The problem with long-tail keywords is that they get little to no traffic each month. You have to target and maintain high-ranking results for hundreds, if not thousands, of keywords to generate enough traffic to continually sustain a profitable web site.  That’s a lot of work.  Creating content for that many keywords is time consuming and can be very expensive.

That brings us to a superior method for doing keyword research – targeting “Moneywords.”  This approach examines keywords in a more scientific way.  A “Moneyword” is a keyword that has very high search volume (lots of people are searching for the keyword each month) and very low competition in the search engines (very few websites are targeting the keyword).

The benefits of targeting Moneywords are many:

• You’ll achieve multiple first-page ranking in Google’s organic results within weeks, and sometimes even within days.
• You’ll spend minimal effort — especially with our Moneyword Matrix formula and keyword tool.
• Your website ranking will stick to the top of the organic search results like super glue.

All of this results in long-term, automated traffic.

Sound good? Be sure to read Part 2, where I walk you through the exact process of identifying Moneywords and learning to dominate your niche.

About the Author

Adam Short is a successful Internet marketer, speaker, and coach. Through his training, software and coaching platform at Niche Profit Classroom, he helps others start and grow successful and profitable online businesses.

Written by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

This is Part 4 in my “Competitive Niches” series. Be sure to check out Part 1,  Part 2 and Part 3 if you haven’t already!

#4 – An organized link building campaign

It’s been said that 80% of search engine “love” comes from backlinks to your site. That’s not to say that all the on-page SEO you do is not worth doing – it is – but you should remember that without backlinks you won’t stand a chance in a competitive niche.

Link building can be challenging and you might actually feel it’s more ‘link begging’ than link building. While there’s nothing wrong with asking for a link, remember there are lots of other ways you can get a backlink to your site. Here are a few suggestions:

• Article directories such as ezinearticles.com or squidoo.com
• Industry directories that are directly related to your niche
• Forum posts or blog comments (search for CommentLuv blogs that offer dofollow comment links)

The advantage of creating your own backlinks is that you can use the anchor text of your choice, and using the keyword phrase in backlinks to your site is a huge plus for boosting your site’s relevancy for a specific keyword phrase.

Remember to monitor your backlinks with SEO tools like Yahoo! Site Explorer, Google Webmaster tools or Traffic Travis. While not all backlinks are reported, these tools will help you gauge how successful your link building campaigns are.

Stay tuned for Part 5, where I talk about focusing your niche to be even more competitive.

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. You can follow them on Twitter.

Written by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

This is Part 2 of my series “Competitive Niches.” Be sure to check out Part 1 first if you haven’t already.

#2 – An effective SEO strategy

Most website owners say they do SEO, but a lot of them are half-hearted about it. They forget that the O in SEO stands for optimization. When you optimize for something it means you are thorough in covering all your bases to make sure your site is built for ranking, with every screw tightened and every page fine-tuned for search engine love. Just having the keyword in the page title is not enough!

You can review how heavily optimized the top 20 sites are for any given keyword phrase using the SEO Analysis feature in Traffic Travis. It looks at 12 different things a website can do to optimize for a phrase, so you can check if a site is dropping the O out of SEO!

Some particularly important SEO factors to keep in mind:

• Keywords in H1 headings, page titles or page description
• Directory listings in DMOZ or Yahoo!
• Backlinks to your site (including trusted backlinks from .edu and .gov sites)

If any of your competitors are missing one or more of these things, then you’ve just found a significant weakness that can be exploited for your own benefit.

While SEO is sometimes talked about like a way to ‘game’ the search engines, it’s better to think of it as preparing a good CV (or resumé for you Americans). And as we all know, when it comes to getting a job, sometimes half an hour’s extra tweaking can make all the difference.

Stay tuned for Part 3 tomorrow, where I’ll talk about “thinking outside the box” when it comes to your niche.

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. You can follow them on Twitter.

Posted by: Steven Clayton, Guest Blogger

Anyone who pays attention to SEO techniques knows that getting high quality, “do follow,” and diverse backlinks is the key to search engine optimization. The challenge, of course, is where to find places to get powerful backlinks.

Most people build their link building strategies around blog and forum postings. This makes sense and is certainly part of our plans as well. However, it stands to reason that Google also knows that most marketers who are using SEO tactics to rank their sites are doing this, and it makes sense that they will be looking for a much more diverse backlink pattern to award the highest rankings to.

With that in mind, I’m going to share the top 5 non-forum/blog backlink sources that we teach in Commission Blueprint 2.0.

1. Squidoo Lists

Squidoo.com is a great place to get links back to your site. Type the following into a Google search:

“add+to+this+list”+site:squidoo.com

You will be presented with a huge list of Squidoo lenses where you can add your site, with custom anchor text. Many of these have very high PageRank as well!

For extra credit, append +”keyword phrase” onto the end of this query, and you can target your links for relevance. For example, if you were trying to rank a fitness site you could type:

“add+to+this+list”+”fitness”+site:squidoo.com

2. Web 2.0 Profiles

Many Web 2.0 sites that allow you to create profiles and interact with others provide high PageRank, “do follow” links to the website listed in your profile. Some examples include www.linkedin.com, www.flickr.com, www.twibs.com, and www.zoominfo.com.

When creating profiles on these sites (which you could do for every niche you’re in) you’re able to list your website, which becomes a high quality backlink to your site.

3. Article Marketing for Links

Most marketers are familiar with writing articles to get traffic, but we write most of our articles for backlinks. If you’ve put a link to your site within the article (and let’s certainly hope you’re doing that!), every article that gets posted becomes a backlink (or even 2 or 3). The more articles that get posted, the more links you can build.

To get started, you simply have to write the article and submit it to a few article directories. I recommend: www.Ezinearticles.com, www.goarticles.com, and www.articledashboard.com.

There is absolutely no problem or penalty with submitting the same article to all three places (submit to Ezinearticles first, though, as they are the strictest with regard to unique content), and if you are accepted by all three and have 2 links in each article, your article will result in 6 high quality backlinks!

4. Relevant Lists and Resource Directories

There are many websites that function as a resource for people interested in a particular topic. For example, one site may maintain a list of top weight loss sites to visit. A backlink from pages like these can provide high quality, highly relevant backlinks. The relevance of backlinks is being talked about much more by Google lately, and it is assumed that relevance will play a larger role in site ranking in the near future.

The trick is to find these sites quickly and efficiently. We’ve found the following Google search queries to work very well:

“Keyword phrase” + “add url”

“Keyword phrase” + “add site”

“Keyword phrase” +  “add website”

For example, if you’re looking to build backlinks to a fitness-related site, you can search for:

“fitness” + “add url”

Google will return a huge list of sites that will allow you to add your web site, creating a backlink to your site.

One thing to watch out for is that many of the sites you’ll come across will ask for a reciprocal link (i.e., we’ll link to you if you link to us). These should be avoided. It’s worth the effort to sift through these sites to find ones where you can add your link without having to place a reciprocal link on your site, because these links are less valuable for SEO purposes.

Make sure to keep a list or database of all of these great link building sites/resources that you find, so you don’t have to search for them again the next time!

5. Easy EDU Links

I’ve saved my favorite and most unique tip for last. It’s commonly accepted knowledge that .EDU and .GOV backlinks are valued very highly when Google decides on your search rank position. Some people also know the “trick” to finding blogs and forums on .EDU domains, where they can leave useful comments that link back to their sites. If you don’t, here’s a great Google query to find .EDU blogs:

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”you must be logged in”

We’re after something more valuable, though. How about a whole page on an .EDU domain where you can put an article or a whole blog post, as opposed to just a comment? All you need is a willing college student!

At many schools, college students are given web space they can use for anything they like. Of course, this web space is hosted on the .EDU domain. All we need to do is to get this college student to allow us to post our material if they like it. But how do you go about finding these students?

If you really think about it, you can’t possibly be many degrees of separation away from knowing someone who’s in college right now. Think about your circle of friends and family, and branch out from there. For example, even though I’m “older” (I have teenage children… sigh), I still have 3 cousins that are attending college right now. If I expand my reach further, friends of my parents have children in college. I’m also getting to the age where my friends are starting to have kids in college. In short, I can’t throw a rock into my personal network without hitting a college student!

All you have to do is approach these students in your network and ask for their help, or give them something in exchange, for the privilege of putting some content on their site. It’s as simple as that.

I hope these tips help you improve your search engine rankings and make you a more successful Internet Marketer!

About the author

Steven Clayton and his partner Tim Godfrey are the creators of several best-selling Internet Marketing information products, including Commission Blueprint 2.0, Niche Blueprint, and SEM Business Blueprint. You can get more great advice and information on their blog.

Please note: Any opinions or strategies expressed here represent those of the author, and cannot be guaranteed to work by ClickBank.