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"Because there's so much competition online, I send my best content in Private to give you a better chance of success. A free expose on the truth about buying marketing products from the Warrior Forum is waiting for you..."
Generally speaking, the more traffic you can get to a website the more money you can make. I like to focus on building search engine traffic to my sites because once you have rankings you can usually sustain them with little effort and the traffic they send is very targeted.
Over the last two years I focused on fairly small industries which I would build minisites for, which received their traffic from search engines, and then monetised them with affiliate offers. These days I’m spending my time focusing on much bigger (and more competitive markets) and having a lot of success.
This isn’t the first time I’ve tackled big markets – I used to have clients in some of the biggest niches out there (casino, mobile phones, etc) – but it’s the first year where I’ve really started to take on these industries for myself. Some success is from sites I purchased which were ranking on the first few pages of Google and I built some great links to get them on the first page. Other success is from sites I built towards the end of 2009 which are now doing very well.
The upside of huge industries is that there’s a lot more money to be made with the downside, of course, being that it’s a lot harder to get rankings.
Ranking Fast: A Unique Keyword Research Strategy
The problem with these huge industries is that you could be waiting over a year to see any results for your hard work in terms of search engine rankings. Because you can make so much money in the large niches there’s a lot more people trying to take a slice of that traffic and many of them are focusing on SEO in order to do so. Health, gambling, forex and gaming industries for example, are very competitive online.
If you’re entering an industry with a brand new site, the last thing you want to do is wait that long for some good search engine traffic. Yet, you want to be building links with the anchor text of the big phrase you’re going for so, in time, they will take effect.
A strategy I use, which I’ve never read online before so you may want to keep this to yourself, is to actually pick two keyphrases which are very similar to work on. One of them should be short and competitive, while the other should be slightly longer and much less competitive.
Some example short and long keyphrases I may pick include:
- Short: mobile phones
- Long: mobile phone recycling
- Short: internet marketing
- Long: internet marketing news
- Short: how to lose weight
- Long: how to lose weight fast
Ideally, your ‘long’ keyphrase is simply a word or two extra on the original keyphrase. The reason I do this is very simple.
Ranking for how to lose weight fast is much easier than how to lose weight because less people are optimising for that term and it will take less links to get on the first page of Google. When you build links for how to lose weight fast you’re not only helping yourself get traffic from search engines quicker, your also building links for the phrase how to lose weight, which is your long-term strategy.
In other words, you want to pick a keyphrase which helps you bring short-term traffic but also helps you get long-term traffic later on. You aren’t going to rank for ‘internet marketing’ within a few months from scratch, but you may rank for a variation on the term fairly easily.
It’s also much more natural to try and optimise for other terms rather than the huge keyphrase right from the get-go.
Utilising the Same Strategy for Your Site Structure
Once you have your main phrases that you’re going to build a site around, you can then do what I do and pick 4-5 more which will make up your main site structure. Generally, these get less search volume and are less competitive than your first two phrases, but are still phrases it would be good to optimise for.
Using cell phones as an example once again, here’s a sample structure:
- Short: mobile phones
- Long: mobile phone recycling
- Phrase 1: recycle nokia mobile phones
- Phrase 2: recycle HTC mobile phones
- Phrase 3: recycle samsung mobile phones
- Phrase 4: recycle motorola mobile phones
Note: Mobile phone recycling refers to trading in your old phone for money to companies who will then resell it for a higher price. This is very popular in the UK. I know a few people making thousands of dollars per month in this niche on autopilot with affiliate offers.
For many sites online, long-tail keyword traffic probably makes up the vast majority of search traffic. As an example, ViperChill gets a few thousand hits per month from terms like ‘viral marketing’ and ‘wordpress seo’, but it also gets thousands of hits per month from all of the longer phrases grouped together such as ‘how to become likeable’.
These long-tail phrases don’t get much traffic individually but combined, based on how much content you have, the figures can quickly become substantial. The phrases in the example above are considered to be long-tail phrases as they contain more words and have a much smaller search volume, but they’re also easier to rank for.
Adding Content to Your Site
As I wrote in my post on How to Dominate Google, search engines generally tend to follow people. If your site is very static, uninteresting and plain then you simply aren’t going to rank in the biggest industries online. Not unless you have a huge link-buying budget and know how to get paid links that still count.
Let’s look at ViperChill as another example here. If the homepage of the site was simply an article that covered a lot of things about viral marketing, do you think I would be able to rank as easily?
In a typical scenario I would have no blog subscribers, no ‘popular posts’ and I would be a total nobody in the space. I would probably struggle to rank this site for anything which gets thousands of searches per month unless there was some amazing service attached to it, it was my brand name, or I was running a blog.
Look at all of the top sites ranking for phrases like internet marketing, car insurance, seo and you’ll find that they aren’t just basic information sites. They usually have some great offering that searchers love and webmasters link to. I actually took a look at the results, rather than offering general analysis and from the first page of Google for the phrase SEO, this is what I get:
- Wikipedia – This one speaks for itself
- SEO.com – brand name
- SEOBook.com – blog
- SEOChat.com – forum
- SEOmoz.org – blog
I get at least a dozen effortless links to ViperChill every week because people talk about me and what I’ve built here. Having other people promote you – and not having to do everything yourself – is crucial to dominating a huge industry online.
Long-tail Automation
To really get a site going I like to add a lot of content to it. I usually build these sites on WordPress (though they look nothing like your typical blog) and pump out around 25 quality articles to start with, then a couple of articles per week from there on out. I outsource this process and while you certainly don’t have to produce that much content, I do find that it helps.
I would then use my site structure phrases from earlier and make those categories of the blog. If I owned www.losingweightonline.com and my main phrase was how to lose weight I might have pages like:
- How to lose weight fast (www.losingweightonline.com/fast/)
- How to lose weight in a week (www.losingweightonline.com/week/)
- How to lose weight quickly (www.losingweightonline/quickly/)
These would become my blog categories. So, at the top of each of these category pages I would have a lot of unique content related to that topic which is both interesting and static. It doesn’t change. What does change is that everytime I publish an article relating to one of these things, I put it under that category and that page instantly has more information. There is no homepage which collects these posts like a normal blog, just categories which display them.
I believe search engines put more importance on pages which are updated frequently with fresh, original content. If you can write content which you can get links to then even better. The point is that you have a solid structure in place and you can update your main pages very easily from the WordPress back-end, or whatever CMS solution that you use.
Building Backlinks
Though I have written a guide which covers 15 ways I build backlinks, I only use a few when it comes to conquering big industries so I thought I would cover them here. By default, the homepage of your site is usually the most important in the eyes of search engines, as that is naturally where most of your links will go.
Many people link to individual articles on ViperChill that they like, but far more people talk about the blog as a whole, so they link to the homepage. It’s generally just a way of the web so expect that your homepage is going to have the most link juice and you should use it to target your most competitive phrase (both long and short versions).
You’ll also need to build links to your internal phrase pages, which make up the structure of your site. For the rest of this section I’ll either refer to the links as being good for building home (homepage) or internal (your longer phrase “category” pages).
Guest Blogging
Undoubtedly my favourite way to build backlinks, guest blogging helps you build some of the most valuable links out there. It’s what allowed me to rank top 10 in Google for the phrase ‘personal development’ and it also allows me to rank internal pages very easily. With guest blogging you can write a bio at the end of your posts so you don’t only get to link to your homepage with your desired anchor text, you can link to a chosen internal page with them too.
If you want to learn more about the practice then read my guide on it over here.
Directory Submissions
By nature, directory links are of a very poor quality. If you submit an order of 500 submissions for $10 to some guy on Digitalpoint then the majority of them go to PR0 pages which have tens if not hundreds of other outbound links on them.
Yet, for some reason, they still work quite well for me. They either help me get a site with a very targeted, uncompetitive phrase to rank quickly, or they help me to get links with the anchor text I need for sites that already have a lot of links, but not with the phrase in them that I’m trying to rank the site for.
Sometimes I’ll also pay $100 or so to BOTW.org which is a human-filtered directory which can give me some great link juice. As soon as I’m cached in this directory I find my rankings to increase almost instantly.
Create a Unique Resource (Networking)
As you can see from my examples in the SEO niche, you really need to create something useful for people to build a lot of natural links which are most likely to help you get those big rankings. It could be a script for webmasters, a blog with amazing content, a guide that nobody else has written or something else of that valuable nature.
Thankfully for people like us who want to build quality sites, Google and other search engines can do a fairly good job at keeping out sites that don’t deserve to rank in big industries. This means that you really are going to have to create something useful and valuable if you want thousands of targeted visitors landing on your site from search engines daily.
What you build really depends on whats out there already. Once you have a niche in mind, look at the top search results and see if there’s anything you think is missing. A gap you can fill. If not, then you’ll probably just have to do something better than anyone else. I never said that ranking highly for these big phrases is easy, but it’s definitely possible.
Once you have this unique resource; you have to get it out there. I use networking as a very broad term which chould include creating connections with bloggers, finding companies who can help you to get your offering out there and utilising other areas of social media to get eyeballs on your creation.
Here is the data from this post as a visual representation:
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Too cool Glen, I find myself copy and pasting every article to all my web guys. This is gold.
Thanks Dan, really glad that you enjoyed it!
Awe-some SEO insights, Glen,
I finally understand how you make your money with your other sites. I like the tip to rank for both short and long keywords, I have never thought of that. Nice !
Question: I want to dominate the word(s) “Spread your Influence”, what would you think is the best strategy to make that keyword “mine” in the searches ?
Thanx in advance !
Cheers Mars
I doubt many people are searching for that term – without checking my tools – so I can’t imagine that it would be difficult.
You’re already number 1 in Google. You could create another page on your site /spread-your-influence/ and probably get an indented listing as well.
Is there a benefit to also having an “indented listing?”
Sure. Less competing sites on the first page = more clicks on you.
I think if you really want to make money focus both on “free info” keywords and “buying” keywords. As Glen said, not sure if your chosen key term is something that people are typing in Google.
Hi Glen,
Excellent and informative post regarding backlinks and seo.
As someone who does not know much about seo, this was really informative and helpful.
“I get at least a dozen effortless links to ViperChill every week because people talk about me and what I’ve built here. Having other people promote you – and not having to do everything yourself – is crucial to dominating a huge industry online.”
I have heard this before also. I think people naturally promote you and backlink to you, when you provide awesome content, like viperchill does!
Kindest,
Nabeel
Hey Nabeel,
Thanks a lot. Creating something unique and remarkable is probably the hardest thing (and getting it out there) but it’s generally what separates the top sites from the rest.
Just in time, Glen. I was just looking for a good SEO tactics. Got lucky
Great post as always, cheers!
Awesome, Martin.
You’re welcome. Thanks for the comment!
Great post Glen. It seems as though many people are ramping up their SEO efforts (including myself), and this is a great top-down view of how to structure a site(s).
Jeremy
Definitely.
Thanks Jeremy.
And it is posts like this that are the reason you get effortless links! This has defintely given me some ideas, and things that I can add to the SEO compaigns for my blog.
Thank you Thomas.
Great to hear!
Glen, as usual, a fantastic post.
I’ve been building similar sites for a while now but never taken on a big niche. I’m inspired to get in it for the long haul.
Thanks man.
Ramsay
You are GROSO (argentina spanish expression)!
Thanks for sharing so usefull tips!
Good luck!
Nico
Really great post Glen,
I have been looking to begin working with mini sites and this article is a timely one.
The tips in this post are also useful for any website in any category that wants to dominate the search engine rankings.
Thanks a lot for the great post,
-Onibalusi
Well worth the wait:) I was beginning to think the golden boy of blogging had stopped laying but this is definitely a golden egg. Thanks:)
Thanks Annabel,
I’ll explain the posting absence in about 13 days. I have some big news
Ooooh errr:) Sounds exciting! Can’t wait to hear it.
Me neither
Glen i understood what u r trying to say but my point is will U make separate site for each main category Like Recycled Mobile Phones , Nokia Mobile Phones , Contract Phones , Smart Phones or u r gonna keep everything in 1 site. If we have diff site for all category than it would be difficult to promote all sites. @ end u will have 20 small sites but No big site. My believe bigger sites work better in long term.
Hi Vaibhav,
No, this is all just for one website.
Fine u will go with 1 site only which will have everything in it.
MAIN : Recycled Mobile Phones , Nokia Mobile Phones , Contract Phones , Smart Phones
Sub: BB Smart Phones, HTC Smart, Samsung and so on under SMART PHONES Category
This was just an example, you can structure it however you want. But yes, it’s all one website.
Main (homepage) would just be two keyphrases. Long-term (short phrase) and short-term (longer phrase).
haha,
This is funny because I started to do this with my sites about 1 week ago. I wasn’t getting enough traffic for my main keyword so I changed it to a very similar keyword with much higher traffic. Now I’m page 2 for old keyword in google and page 3 for new keyword in google. The fight is on
Hey Glen, how’s it going?
If you do the whole 500 directory submissions, is there a risk of building those backlinks too quickly and be punished for it by google?
Cheers!
Patrick
I’m good Patrick, how are you?
Yes and no. On an overview sense, if it really affected your rankings negatively then you could just run your competitors through the tool and overtake them in rankings. Not all of the submissions will be accepted and they certainly won’t all be found at the same time, so I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I haven’t had any issues in 20+ sites I’ve done it on. All with varying age and backlink states.
Everything’s good here, thanks, Glen!
The way you put it makes sense. I thought I was being punished by google, because I ran my site through bookmarking demon (thanks for the tip btw) and started rank quite nicely. When I reached #34, I had about 112 backlinks, then on the next day my links went up to 120 and now I was #42. I followed your WP SEO guide and got the keywords where they should be. I rank around #60 now with over 150 backlinks. So I just thought google has a grudge against me or something
Cheers!
Patrick
Patrick,
Maybe Glen could shed some more light on this, but maybe what you are seeing is due to the Google Dance. I believe Glen is right, creating too many backlinks too quick wont hurt your site because then we could just sabotage our competitors. However, Google does some crazy stuff with rankings and maybe you just got caught up in some Google shuffle type deal.
How long has it been since your site was #34? I’ve read stories of people having their site #5 on Google by doing crazy backlink campaigns, then get dropped for over a month, to only be shot back up to the #1 spot overnight.
If I had to put my finger on it, I would say Google is absolutely insane. No other possibe explanation lol.
Cody,
Thanks for the insight. Had no idea Google was such a crazy nut
I ranked 34 for about 2 weeks and now I’m back at 44. Was ranking first in Yahoo, now 11. If I were a search engine, I’d rank myself first always 
lol
Yes the results fluctuate a lot. You just have to keep doing what works (building quality links).
Hi Glen – I realize I’m a little late to the party here, but I only read this post yesterday. I am glad you mentioned directory submission. Other than Ian Lurie, Shaun at Hobo UK, and yourself, I haven’t see top SEOs well, admit basically, that directory submission DOES work. Our competitors have had lots of success with it, esp. for anchor text, as you mention. I think half the time folks are just trying to put on a good public face for Google by emphasizing quality over quantity. I believe quality links ARE better, but I’ve never seen someone prove in a case study that directory submissions are not worth their while.
It’s building a pyramid, you have to put the foundation of less competitive phrases as a way to build up to and dominate the really big ones. That’s a fascinating thought and I am going to review my own site this week to see if I am taking advantage.
Glen, I miss your posts. hauhauhauHA
I would like to know your opinion about http://www.text-link-ads.com
The reason why I haven’t been posting much will be revealed soon. Sorry I haven’t been around. Big changes (good for this site) are coming soon.
They don’t even rank in Google for their own name, so that should tell you what search engines think of them. They are much smarter ways to buy links (in private).
Glen,
This is fantastic. I never really gave much thought to “long-term” and “short-term” keyword strategies. For me it was always, “pick a keyword, rank for it, and move on,” however competitive or uncompetitive it was. This really is an eye-opening post for me.
Thanks,
Eric
Hey Eric,
Awesome. Glad you got something from the post!
I have been using this keyword trick for quite some time and actually am in the process of writing an article about it; it really does work like magic. An example I use might be to build a review/affiliate site on learning Spanish, then target the phrase “learn spanish” or similar, but then build links containing the hypertext “learn spanish quickly”. I norally get top rankings for the secondary phrase very quickly while the primary phrase kicks in some time later.
One site I built recently is at #2 for the secondary phrase – so is seeing reasonable traffic. However it is #11 for my primary phrase – and moving up all the time – and when it gets to the top 3 I expect to mutiply my current traffic significantly.
Good example Richard; I look forward to your article.
Thanks for the comment!
Hi Glen,
I have a website on learning Chinese. “learn Chinese” would be my primary and long term key phrase. And I have chosen “learn Chinese online” as the secondary phrase.
I have managed to get rank #7 in Google for the secondary phrase. However, it has been few months and I still can’t get my primary phrase “learn Chinese” ranked on the first page of Google search. It is always #40 to #50 for the primary phrase and it is not moving up.
Thanks.
Min Min
Glen, I’m a student of search engine optimization, so I really appreciate the great information you’ve shared here. There’s a lot to digest.
I’m planning on going back through a couple of my blogs and reworking many of the posts using the techniques you outlined here, plus some others I’ve picked up.
That’s great John,
Thanks for the kind words and not a problem. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Hey Glen I just wanted to say thanks for the time and quality that you put into each of your articles. After thinking about it for some time you gave me the push to start a blog last week.
After reading most of your articles on this site I also purchased Cloud Living on Fri. After many enjoyable but intense hours of work I had read the book and made a mini site ranking 14th on google by Sat night (I expect to see number one when I’m done adding backlinks etc). This is the first for both a business and a blog and attribute it to the quality of your work and determination to take action. I’ll let you know how things go.
Hey Glenn – I’m curious – How important do you think it is to have folks commenting on your blog posts when it comes to SEO? I’ve noticed that some of my pages that are getting high rank have the a decent number of blog comments (no where near what you have, but even 5 – 10 comments from readers seem to make a big difference).
I think this comes back to the whole ‘google follows people’ and that the updates to the page + overall increased content are helping these pages rank.
Any thoughts on this?
Hi Dinesh,
I don’t think it’s *that* important, but it can certainly help you get more long-tail traffic due to the amount of words and phrases that they add to your page. The fresh content is also nice.
Hey Glenn – Good to know and good point on the longtail traffic & fresh content. Will keep that in mind.
Hi Glen. Another superb article from you, and again practical tips that everyone can get value from. I like your long tail strategy and will test it myself and see how I go. You’re right on the directory subs too. Maybe no-one talks about it, as they aren’t very sexy, but these kind of links do seem to lay a nice bed for a link building strategy.
Thanks Gareth,
Couldn’t agree more
Hey Glen,
Another super-awesome post man. Spot on. These days i’m working on directory submission, building backlinks and guest posting.
Thanks for sharing this great Post dude. awesome work :).
~Dev
Hi Glenn
Great post! As always I feel like you are inside my brain answering the questions I never even knew to ask!
Asia
Haha – thanks Asia.
Hey Glen, thanks for this post. I’ve recently been driving myself mad doing article marketing and spinning articles. I’ve been searching for a better (ie. less time-consuming) SEO strategy and I think I’ll give this a try in the near future.
Thanks again.
You’re welcome Clayton,
I hope this helps you out!
Another valuable post, Glen! Lately I’ve been wondering about both things you’ve mentioned here: the first being to rank for a long tailed keyphrase that contains your main keyphrase and the second is “structuring” the site.
This is great info and loved reading it over my egg sandwich
I’ll have to re-read this, y’know…
I’m really hungry right now, don’t type things like that
I’m glad you got some value out of the post, Moon!
Another Wonderful Piece Glen.
Well, I am gonna retweet it.
Hi Glen,
For the company blog, what is the suggested URL comany.com/blog or blog.company.com ?
Thanks,
Sharel
I prefer blog.company.com but there is little difference. This should help: http://goo.gl/Qz8X
Glen,
What are your thoughts on relevant backlinks vs non relevant backlinks? I.E., maybe both sites you get the links from have a high PR, but one is relevant to your content while the other is not. I hear both are still valuable due to the high PR, and that the relevance isn’t that importnat. What do you think?
Also, what about buying those high PR link packets from people? I know there are some which have thousands of subscribers, but what about one that isn’t quite so popular yet? For example, I could buy 80 PR 5+ backlinks each month for a low price which doenst have thousands of users already. They are mostly profiles, forum links and blog posts which are high PR do follow. They are not relevant to my site but still of very high PR.
Thanks a TON for this post. I have been reading a lot about backlinks lately and this is exactly what I needed. Thanks!
Hey Glen,
Sorry to bug you, just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget about this comment. I think other people here may have the same questions I do.
Thanks!
Done
Thanks Glen!
Relevant links are far more powerful than irrelevant links. This has been proven time and time again. Quantity is nowhere near as close a value to quality when it comes to links.
The links can help, but they generally aren’t great, even if they do have a high PR.
Hi Glen! The wisdom of an experienced master, shared freely, make your posts a treat to study (& save) – like this one. It was nice to read from your replies to couple of comments that we can expect some good news (in about 13 days). I’m waiting! Thanks.
Glen, I know that’s kind of annoying me help with this, but if you’ll be thankful:
I am Brazilian, and most paid directories are international.
I wonder which directories you use to make something like 100 backlinks, around 15 or 10 dollars. You cited the Digital Point, but found nothing related.
Thanks!
http://forums.digitalpoint.com
Glen – every article you write is fabulous, thank you for that. That graphic at the end was a perfect visualization for me to understand the structure.
I’m wondering if you have one of your small niche sites that you would be willing to share, so I could see one in action. Or, if you prefer to keep your sites private, do you have a standard wordpress template that you use that accomplished the structure?
Thanks TJ,
I only added the graphic at the last minute so I’m glad it helped you. I don’t have anything to show right now, but I’ll be making a few sample sites in the next couple of weeks.
Some sample sites is EXACTLY what I would love to see. Once again, another reason why ViperChill is my favorite website.
Great information. Anybody who follows your guidelines can have success even in competitive niches.
This is some great info…I just bought your ebook a few days ago still reading it. Going to start a blog similar to yours once I get my feet wet in affiliate marketing…a lot has changed since I stopped the simple things I was doing to run my web design business.
Thanks Mike,
I hope you enjoy the guide
Hey Glen,
Great work on the post – very much appreciated that you also threw in a diagram.
Just curious, I assume the blue boxes would represent 1 new article for a total of 15 per category. Have you found this to be the sweet spot or does it vary depending on which niche you’re going after.
To be honest Murlu, they weren’t supposed to be counted as a specific figure. Just to show that it’s good to have a large amount of content generally in these big industries.
As always, good insights.
as that seems very key for me at the moment…
Will read the backlinks article again
ps.. so sad Holland lost… so close! (again..) I had fellow Dutchies crying next to me.. weird moment..
I was in a room, supporting Netherlands, with everyone cheering for Spain
When I received the email updates in my inbox, I immediately jumped over your blog because I knew what valuable information I can get from your blog.
Thank you very much for sharing this great information. Right now, I am currently reading your other post like the links that you suggested above. I will look for more information from you…
Thank you very much Glen. You really are a GENIUS.
This. I just started reading ViperChill a month ago and I have learned more from this site than any other I believe. I used to read some other sites about blogging but now I can’t read them because I feel their content is so generic and not helpful compared to what I get here. As soon as I see an update in my inbox I run over here to read it. I just wish there were a couple more updates this month already =P
Hah,
There have been a few comments regarding my post frequency. All will be revealed soon
Thank you Felix,
I’m no genius though. Just sharing as much as I can.
Thanks for the kind words.
Glen
What great advice here – especially about creating the pages that go along with the long tail keywords so many forget that part and also making that a part of your blogging. It seems so simple but yet when talking to the small biz folks a light seems to go off that this is something top secret.
When searching many do search for a longer phrase and as we want specifics and pages to be displayed that satisfy those specifics – ie the long tail. Your points are so well said and really seem to have resonated with readers. In traditional advertising people seemed to understand that you are talking to a specific group to attract that group to notice, gain awareness, trust and buy but in SEO and social media, maybe because it is still new to many, the targeting seems to get jumbled. This posts really unravels the complexity.
I found this blog as you had retweeted one of mine from James Roughton for which I am grateful for the retweet but more so that I was able to find this blog. Love it. See a lot of familiar faces here which is always welcoming.
@SuzanneVara
Thanks Suzanne,
It’s great to have you as part of the community.
Thanks for sharing this Glen. I was really looking for some good tips regarding back linking and seo, and I was right on time when I saw your post. I agree with you about guest blogging, it can really generate you instant traffic as long as you are targeting the right keyword and quality post as well.
Kind regards,
Gary
I use directories as well to great effect. My service also provides something similar to directories with social bookmarks. Do you think it would be worth outsourcing this as well as directories?
Thanks for the post, it was nice and easy to read and perfect for my level, off now to check the rest of the blog, cheers.
Great detail. The category structure – that’s new (to me) but I like it. What we had been doing was using the long keyword phrases as categories, but the way you recommend doing it make complete and total sense.
Hi Glen – I just found you a few weeks ago, but I’m eagerly reading and learning! Just wondered a little more about the home page… I’ve bought a few domain names for minisites now and I’d thought maybe I’d have a magazine theme with a few posts from each category showing on the home page. Instead it sounds like the home page should be more static and just a place for visitors to pick a category, not really having new content appear there, is that correct? Thanks for all the great information!
Glen-
Do you have any favorite providers on Digitalpoint or are they all pretty good? If you’re not comfortable giving a name, could you let us know how you differentiate between someone good and not?
Thanks. – Jeff
Hey Glen, just showing my support. Great article (but you knew that already). Seriously guy, your stuff has been extremely useful, sometimes more info than I can implement all at once. I’ve gotten a mini-site on page 2 of Google in two weeks (still workin on getting to page 1, but all in due time). And I’ve been seeing a major difference since I’ve switched from “consumer” to “creator” mode. Thanks for the content bro.
Cheers,
You’ve done it again Glen.
I’ve been reading and learning a ton on SEO lately and this post has some great stuff I haven’t seen anywhere else. I love the idea of choosing multiple keywords with the others part of your main phrase. I never thought of creating a short term long tail strategy that supports a long term more competitive keyword strategy. Love it.
Good read Glen, some of the tactics you mentioned I found I’ve used when making my first bigger site (Independent Music Advice). Just looked a couple of days ago and I’m ranked 8th in Google for the term “Independent Music”, a term which has a Strength Of Competition of 99,000 according to micro niche finder (Not a keyword you’d want to try compete with unless you’re willing to put a lot of time in). To be honest, when I first started out with this site I was a bit clueless as to what keywords I should be ranking for (Hence why “Independent Music” only gets around 6000 searches a month despite being so hard to rank for lol). But since then I’ve been incorporating some keywords that’ll bring me traffic with minimum effort (Long tail keywords) and I’m at the stage where I get ranked highly on the first page of google for certain keywords as soon as I put up a post about it.
I’ll be using what I’ve learnt as well as this post when I begin work on my next big site, which is getting worked on very soon.
Thanks a lot.
I’m becoming used to your awesome posts!
What you explain is basically how I work on my backlinks so it’s great to read something that confirms my strategy. I create some of my backlinks on directories for long tail (but high search volume!) keywords and it works for me. I’m on the 1st page of Google, 5th position for now!
I’m gonna try guest blogging soon, a blogger told me I could guest post anytime on her blog, it’s an opportunity!
Thank you!
Glen,
How do you find these $10 directory submissons on Digitalpoint? Do you just randomly pick diffierent ones?
Thanks
Hi Glen,
New reader here, love the site. I have a question about setting up wordpress… if I already have a domain built in another editor but would like to add a blog with categories as you described in this post, not on the domain.
Let’s say I install wordpress on http://blog.mydomain.com – how do I set it up so that I can select a category and that will post to http://www.domain.com/category/ rather than on the blog? Can you point me to a reference for this?
Thanks a lot!
Hi Colin, are you using WordPress.com or WordPress.org? If .com you need to get hosting and install .org. Then you can host your whole site on http://www.yourdomain.com and have http://www.yourdomain.com/blog – http://www.yourdomain.com/category1 – http://www.yourdomain.com/caregory2 etc. Check my site for an an example of how this will come out (Click my name for my site), I’ve used the who category thing in the “advice” section. You can contact me on the contact page of that site if you want any more details of how to do it, I’ve recently written a guide of how to set up a site from start to finish. It’s not published yet (Got a line of posts I’m waiting to publish for that site) but I can share with you some of the key points if you want.
Hi Shaun,
I already have a .com that I built in XSitePro2. I am looking to keep my homepage fairly static and then add a wordpress blog in a directory, so that my blog would be at http://www.domain.com/blog/.
My question is it possible to set-up wordpress as outlined in this article in a director other than my homepage and keep my static content as is?
Basically, my static content is ranking well for the keywords I want; I would like to add in a dynamic page to be able to send out updates to my newsletter subscribers, offer a page that is worth “checking back in on” for new content, and of course to compete for some more competitive phrases.
Does that make sense? Is that possible?
Let me clarify a bit.
I have a homepage that is ranking well for my keyword of choice, then I have about 10 categories- category 1, category 2, which are all keywords I want to rank well for.
I would like to set up wordpress to automatically post new entries to category 1, category 2, etc, and when I post in word press, have the feed lined up on those category pages, and each post serve as a child post within that category.
Do I Just need to export the whole thing over to wordpress or can I keep my xsitepro homepage?
I’m not 100% sure to be honest Colin. I know people have their static site and just use WordPress for their blog section (Linking to it under ‘blog’ in their nav bar) but I’m not sure if it’ll use the same name ( http://www.site.com/blog ). You should defiantly consider moving the whole thing over to WordPress though, it has a lot of features and you can get it looking exactly like a static website. My site used to be on dreamweaver and I managed to transfer it all over and make it look exactly the same but now with added blog features. As long as it’s till under the same domain name you’ve still got your main page ranking well but now you also have your blog.
You’d want to make sure you keep the pages the same names though or at least permanently re-direct them so they’ve still got their rankings too. Sorry I couldn’t answer your main question though.
I see.. thanks anyways. I don’t think the market in question is big enough to risk a big overhaul like that, especially if I lose my rankings in the process.
I’ll probably just keep this site static and build my next project on wordpress.
Great post again Glen that really help me see where I want to take my own niche site marketing and keyword research blogging. Thank you for not only having the knowledge to share but also for having the capacity to do so in such an enjoyable and thought provoking fashion.
Again, Awesome Glen, really look forward to the epicness that has been coming from ViperChill lately.
I like your poinst about long tail keywords indirectly targeting the shorter tail within it, many overlook this fact. I have incoroporated that into my overall strategy but since I am only 3 months young that has not paid dividends as yet. Still, reading your blog is only helping me get there sooner in the long run.
This is a great strategy that I’ve been thinking about lately myself. It’s similar to Matt Carter’s recent post. I think this is sound and I’m going to start putting it into action. Thanks for the tips. btw, I’m following you now in my igoogle.
This is an excellent post and although i don’t agree that this information isn’t elsewhere on the internet i have never seen it all set out in this nice format and all together before. This is an excellent article that i will come back to to help me with SEO.
Glen, are you made of solid gold? Or perhaps dark chocolate?
Hey Glen, this is a great article. I’ve recently started a site similar to this. I’m already ranking well in google from my secondary keyword, and working my way up for my primary keyword that has much more competition.
One thing I want to mention is that WordPress category pages don’t seem to rank very well. I’ve noticed this from experience with my blog. When comparing a blog post with a category page, the blog post always ranks much higher. Do you have any suggestions for getting a category page to rank better?
I think the most important part is the inbound links. I think Google put a lot of weight into number and quality of backlinks. Unfortunately it is not easy to get a good back-links. At least not for me
Glen:
What tool do you use for finding keywords? Google AdWords Keyword Tool?
How old is your is Viper Chill?
Thanks for great article
Great post. I tweaked my categories and it seem to help. Thanks!
Hey Glen,
Great article, I am interested to see how using the short key/long key strategy will work for my website. Just curious, the soon to be released search engine Blekko is getting a lot of press (http://selnd.com/dg4SPt) due to it’s use of slashtags and user related results. Obviously you cannot predict what will happen, but do you have any idea if this will be a big thing? If so, how would you use it to create niche content sites?
Hands down, this is one of the best marketing blogs in the world…
Quick question, how do you typically take something viral? I created an app that shows how fat coffee makes you (http://bit.ly/dlt4hr) I’ve gotten a link from Guy Kawasaki, but it’s not spreading as fast as I had hoped. I’m emailing big fitness and women’s websites/magazines. I think this could be big but am not sure the best way to promote it.
Best,
Raza
Your posts are super awesome bro. This may not be directly related to your tactic, but I want to ask, do you design your own sites? And if so, what has been your references for it? I’m very familiar with all the tactics and all, but when it comes to developing the structure for it – be it a blog or website – the aesthetics dissasatisfies me.
Cool beans…Is there a WP plugin that helps to implement this grandiose site structure?
As always Glen… you are right on
Hey Glen,
I think it was good that you mentioned the start-up time-factor when tackling large industries, as this most likely contributes the most to people becoming disinterested and disheartened with their site not getting results. However it’s these large-scale sites that tend to be monetized better…it’s a catch-22.
Thanks for the post…always good to read your thoughts.
Good stuff Glen, I got a crazy amount of value from this!
I noticed all your long phrases for entering competitive niches contained the root short keyphrase followed by another word eg
# Short: mobile phones
# Long: mobile phone recycling
Would it be more difficult to rank for your short keyphrase in the long-run if you used something like:
# Long: Cheap Mobile Phones
In other words: Does the keyword order matter?
A pretty darn good, straight to the point guide. I like it.
The keyword strategy by adding an extra word or two to your primary keyword was something that I hadn’t thought about doing in such a way, I’m gonna have to give it a try.
Good post!
I really love this post, in particular, the idea of using a short and long tail keyword strategy is inspired. I think i’ve re-read this post about 5 times now
Great insights! Your ideas about the long and short keyword phrases are pretty smart and I’m gonna have to adapt that for my own link-building strategies. Must be fun to get into the really big web industries like that…I’ll get there some day, hopefully!
Hey Glen, realy i found a lot of useful info and I have bookmarked your blog for future interesting news. I’d like to ask to give a little time for my blog about Alawar games – igralawar.com I need your general rating to my blog and your opinion about it. Thanks in advance for your comments concerning my site.
P.S.: I apologize for the chaotic post
Thanks a lot Glen, I’m looking for quality links in my subject and have a lot of plans concerning this site
Hi Glen,
I have read your post second time and found it more interesting. Your posting headlines keen to read post again & again.
i want to learn same
[...] Conquering Big Industries: My Bulletproof SEO Strategy [...]
Wow very interesting, I’ll give it a try.
Hi Glen,
This is magic! Some really excellen tips. We’re in a challenging industry so we’ll definitely be giving this strategy a try.
Thanks
So, now I realize I have SO much more to learn. If only I knew how to do this when I got started a year and a half ago I may be at a better place than I am. I will continue to challenge myself. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Have no words.. its stunning almost. You write very less number of posts but in top all because giving a complete info about any title you choose.
Great research method.
- Robin
Wow very interesting, I’ll give it a try.
Looks like a fascinating post and supporting comments that you have here. I should point out that others have proposed a different angle, particularly in terms of natural health. Has anyone here found more information on the Internet, and would you let me know where?
THis is really good. Guest Posting is a very good SEO Strategy
Glen –
You’ve done an incredible job with this site. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with a site that used to be around called DoshDosh, but this site is one of the few I’ve found that is as in depth and full of amazing info as that was (unfortunately the site went offline a few months ago for some unknown reason). Regardless, I just wanted to thank you for all the time you put in; clearly it is paying off – I love it here.
Hi Glen,
I discovered your blog about a week ago and I am amazed of the quality of your content, and the “updatity” of your strategies is incredible. I read a lot about Internet marketing for several years, and it seems all to be the same. It is not the case with you! So, I read religiously your posts and get to use all interesting stuff (that mean a lot!)
I struggle to get visitors to my new Health & Happiness Magazine and I found your blog making desperate searches in quest of understanding. I see now all mistakes I did…
After reading your post, I wanted to ask you two questions:
- Can you tell us where you outsource your content creation? I would be curious to know more about that subject and the price. Is that in India? (maybe it could be the subject of one of your future great posts?)
- You also said in this post that the strategy of using many low PR directories has worked well for you. I often read about this strategy that it can now harm a website a lot since Google can detect thousands of new links toward a website in a short period of time, saying that they have been bought. Is this strategy may not be dangerous to try and get the website banned by Google? I would be glad to get more information about your experience on this subject.
To finish my long comment, I want to thank you one more time to share all this invaluable information!
Regards,
Anna
Hi there, just became aware of your blog through Google, and found that it’s truly informative. I’m going to watch out for brussels. I will be grateful if you continue this in future. Lots of people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
I’d always want to be update on new content on this website, saved to bookmarks!
Excellent! Your posts always help to make these difficult-to-understand concepts clearer in my mind!
very good article..!
i’ll do it soon.. hope its also work for me
thanx
Nice post Glen,
Question for you though!
In the diagram the homepage has ‘Recycle Mobile Phones’ I take it that’s the title tag?
Would you not put the most important phrase at the beginning such as:
‘Mobile Phones, Recycle mobile Phones’
I kind of find having your target keyword mixed into your secondary keyword takes longer to rank for unless the target keyword is at the beginning such as ‘Mobile Phones Recycled’
My 2 pennys worth.