I slept only 3 hours last night!!! You gotta love SEO!

[zsolt]

Yes, the title is true. I got only three hours of sleep at night because I was quite stressed out thinking about how I should set-up my site's keyword strategy. I find SEO quite difficult to understand and even harder to implement.

I hope you guys can help me out a bit here, otherwise I will just keep being paralysed and not taking even the tiniest action.

So, I've been an amateur astronomer for a very long time and know quite a lot about astronomical telescopes. I would like to move into the "buying a telescope" niche. Regular folks know almost nothing about telescopes, how to choose the right one, where to buy, etc.

So I've been thinking about starting a content site for beginners looking to buy their first telescope, and making money by affiliate marketing.

So, here's what I did:

- I went to the Google Keyword Tool and typed in the root keyword : telescope
- Then I saved all the related keywords and phrases in an excel file, along with their respected search volume.
- Then I went to Google and fed all those keywords into it, so I got a rough estimate on the number of competing websites.
- I checked the highest ranking sites out to get a feel for what's out there.

So, now I have a nice long spreadsheet with keywords, search volumes and number of existing sites.

I noticed an interesting thing:

There are some keyword phrases with tons of search volume and not very many quality competing sites. Looks promising, I thought. However, these phrases just don't make much sense for a human. I mean they are not correct grammatically. They are just two or three words thrown together.

And this is what I can't figure out myself:

How can I rank for these phrases? And should I try to rank for them at all? I mean I can't put those exact phrases into an article or blog post, since they don't make much sence. But if I rephrase them to make them grammatically correct, then they will not be the same phrases anymore, and the new correct phrases have less search volume and much much more competing websites (I know because I checked them in Google).

My SEO knowledge stops here. What should I do? Forget these high volume-low competition phrases and goonly for keywords that make sense to begin with and can be put into an article?

Or should I make a site for search engines only, and just put these phrases into my content even if they sound and look strange?

I saw such a site ranking number one in Google for one of these grammatically incorrect phrases. The owner doesn't seem to bother about real human beings. He just sprinkled the phrase all over his site. Yes, there is some content, a few articles, but the site is crowded with adsense. I mean adsense is all over the place. It's just soo ugly and not user friendly at all.

I am kind of sad that such site can rank number one in Google. So much for the oh-so-sophisticated algorythms.

I plan to use wordpress for my sites and write post about telescopes for beginners. I just don't know how to plan my SEO and keyword strategy.

Please, help me out guys. If you need to know more to give me some advice, just let me know.

Thanks sooo much!

Zsolt
(Hungary)

[dburk]

Hi Zsolt,

Since you are new at this let me point out a few of the most common mistakes made by folks who are just starting out.

When you used the Google AdWords Keyword Tool did you set the match type to Exact? If not then you have the wrong data for your search volume.

When you fed those terms into Google to check your competition did you use any special operators? To get an idea of how many pages are optimized for a keyword you need to use the allintitle: operator. To find how many pages that have anchor text optimized for a keyword use the inanchor: operator with your keyword in quotes.

The most important thing to look at when analyzing your competition is the web page that is in position 10 for your keyword. That is the page you must beat to get onto the first page Google results. If you don't make it to the first page you won't get much traffic and you only need to beat the page at position 10 to get there.

If you are targeting a decent keyword phrase it will have plenty of searches and should in most cases be easy to work into your content in way that looks natural or makes sense, otherwise why would many folks search for it? My guess is that you may have made a mistake on the keyword research and that could be why you are trying to target terms that don't make sense for your content.

[zsolt]

Don,

Thanks so much for replying and clearifing things.

Looks like I did my research the wrong way using the broad match type. After reading your post I set it to Exact and whoala...different results altogether. Those unnatural, strange phrases disappeared. Now it looks more natural, more human. On the other hand, the volumes shrank too.

Wow. What a great tip to check out the website in position 10 for the desired keyword. I haven't thought of that. I always looked at the first results, and got frightened.

I have a few more questions.

First, should I set up small separate sites for each promosing phrases, or should I have just one blog and target the phrases with blog posts?

Also, the more posts I create around a keyword, the better the chances are for one or more of those posts to rank high, right?

I also plan to use an op-in e-mail list for my marketing efforts.

[dotslash]

First, should I set up small separate sites for each promosing phrases, or should I have just one blog and target the phrases with blog posts?

You shouldn't set up seperate sites, promote a single website or blog - as you promote it will gradually be able to rank higher for related terms - if you use individual sites you'll be starting from scratch each time

What I would do is select some high value/competitive phrases to target overall for your site or blog, you should consider these when you buy your domain name and the title of the blog. Then select less competitive phrases to target on individual pages or blog posts. These can bring you quick traffic and help build towards the higher value phrases which will take longer.

This is a long term strategy though - aim for ranking high traffic competitive phrases overall for your site and lower competition long tailed stuff in the short term on each web page or blog post.

That's what I'd do anyway
Neil

[andrewaff]

For correct keyword analysis, I am using Google Sktool, It works for me really. Wordpress is good though for web promotion since you are using that useful WP SEO Plugin to enter metas there.

[$Layla$]

Oh man, three hours of sleep due to stress and all this? I know SEO is worth it because so many have told me so but I've absolutely got to learn how to avoid nights like the one you have had. Please tell me SEO gets better and easier with time?

[jakesellers]

Phrase match is handy for a rough indication of longtail volume and search suggestion combined with appropriate verbs and predicates (buy,learn,review,etc) shows the most likely longtails.

SEO's nothing to lose sleep over. A good solid site in a real niche is likely to get search traffic you didn't expect, I've done several that have missed the mark I was shooting at clean but still made money.

[bigcat1967]

Hey...I got 4 hours last night! Anyway, take your time in learning SEO. I find ppl in a big rush to learn it. Take your time, experiment with it, have a blast with it! You'll learn it, especially if you come to SEO forums like this one.

[mentor4u]

Hello
What i do is as taught by Howie Schartz
I look through google's eyes

I drill down to find long tail keywords that has good search and ppc ads
that means that is a money word. phrase.

I use google's wonder wheel.
it shows the exact words people are typing in
no if's and's or but's.
So i supply what the people are looking for now what i want them to look for.

using this method my last ten articles came out all on the first page most in #1 and#2
sales are coming in. Also this gives google juice to the main site.
Content, lots of content. also i build squidoo lenses, scrib pages. the 3 major search
engines love these.
To set these up take time, but it gets easier. And the rewards, CASH make it worth it
Don

[peter gibson]

What's all this sleep stuff I'm hearing about?

[zsolt]

Thank you, guys!

Yes, learning how to do SEO right takes time.

I have the Stomping The Search Engines 2.0 DVD, but haven't gone trough it yet. It's heavy stuff for me.

Do any of you guys have this DVD? Did it help you improving your SEO?

What turns me down sometimes when I see sites ranking high in Google that little or bad quality content or content that is not tightly related to the topic. And other, really good sites only appear on the second or third page of Google.

I hope I will do better.

[terryd]

I can spend hours on the internet reading and learning, I have to force myself to go to bed sometimes!

Regarding telescopes, funnily enough I was doing keyword research today and telescopes popped in my head and I couldn't find much in that niche to be honest which surprised me because I know there are some expensive telescopes out there. Bare in mind that I was looking for easy meat (low competition phrases) so I could quickly get a ranking in but I couldn't find anything. Hope you have more luck!