No More BS About SEO, Here's What Really Works!!!

[Daniel McGonagle]

I wrote an article NewYear's Eve About this Topic but they're slow approving articles sometimes, so I'll rewrite some of it here in a more condensed format to give back to WF some more.

The answers to what REALLY works for SEO is right in front of you, staring you in the face.
The answers to what REALLY works for SEO is right in front of you, staring you in the face.
The answers to what REALLY works for SEO is right in front of you, staring you in the face.

You just have to know what to look for...A good microcosm example of this would be a new product launch that is getting a lot of hype like Web Prosperity MLM.

When the launch for any product is about to start you'll see the Diggs and the Stumbles and the MIXX and other types of submissions almost right away, as soon as something is announced on a JV forum or whatever...

Then you see some lenses, EZA articles hubpages popping up, maybe even a .wetpaint.com site or a wordpress.com site....

Then you see the real deal with people making cursory blog posts...

Then you see people grabbing domain names and you'll see them indexed, maybe even with the Hello world post still on their site if it's a blog...

If things heat up and get competitive SEO-wise, you'll see EZA articles linking to Squidoo Lenses ( which works great) or people linking to their free sites (lens, hub, wodpress,com, wetpaint, etc...) from other free sites.

These people are getting ranked quickly merely by utilizing the inherent power of Squidoo, HubPages and wordPress.com... and then they add to it with more entries to make it somewhat fleshed out and robust content-wise...

and that's where most of them stop.


Yeah, they might Stumble and Digg and submit RSS feeds for the free web real estate sites they don't own, but who cares if they're page 1, right?

Well, they usually don't stay #1 for too long when things get really competitive and that's a shame to waste that effort and watch your sites go to page 2.

Anyways, there was a big launch a few months back for a high ticket item, and lots of surge traffic for a few weeks...

Go look at the SERPs for this particular search term...

traffic fusion review - Google Search

You don't see a lens, hub, free wordpress.com site, Digg or Stumble on page 1 or page 2, and you only see a video site vid and a feedagg submission at bottom of page 2.

What do all or most of the sites on page 1 for that search term have in common folks?

SEVEN of them have critical keywords in their domain name.

#1 site is a .org name

One site is mine, and it's only up there because it got a lot of comments (free added content) and a lot of social bookmarks from people. (comments are gone now long story having to do with a DDOS attack)

Forget about silo sites, joomla sites, or linking strategies or automating your bookmarks and links for just a second...

Start from square one when you want to rank well for something, your domain name.

Don't be cute and think of branding when choosing a domain name...

Try not to use the names godaddy and namecheap suggest to you because they often suggest you get free/best/online ... followed by your desired kw.com.

You're better off getting a keywordrich lens or hub or wordpress site sometimes than you are getting bestonlinemakemoneyonline.com for a domain name...

Also, go back to that search term again

traffic fusion review - Google Search

The number #1 for that term prior, during, and after that launch has a .org extension, which many people overlook when conisdering a domain name. Many times the exact terms you want for keywords in your domain name are available in the .org tld...

If you got a good domain name keywords-wise, do yourself a favor and make your on-page SEO resemble that. Do NOT put your freakin' url as the title of site. Put your main keywords you're trying to rank well for in the title of site, maybe even add another sub-keyword to that in title, too.

Example:

keywordresearch.org is site name

KeyWord Research is your main Kw i assume,
so make second Kw something like keyword research guide...

title of site as it appears in SERPs will be Keyword Research - Keyword Research Guide

TIP: If you have an About Me Page, make it an About SiteName Page

keywordresearch.org/about should appear in SERPs as

domain name.com/About Keyword Research - Keyword Research Guide

Something like that... and if you decide to make the "about" page display as your static front page, that basically is a legitimate way of keyword stuffing one page on your site.

Here is an example of this...

Automated Marketing System - About This Site | Automated Marketing Systems

To make a page on a blog display on front as static page, just configure this in Settings-Reading area. This is good for a few jumps up in the SERPS but really has no long term effect and I like having my latest posts displayed...

Back to on-page SEO, when writing a blog post use KWs! at beginning of post and try to squeeze in another keyword at end of page title without losing any readability.

When writing a post or page, use the KWs in beginning middle and end of post if possible. The search engines sometimes pick up the KWs that appear later on in your posts to display in their listings. The text that apears above your url in the SERPS is taken from yout tags used, the category you posted the new content into, and even picks up people comments.

One more thing about SEO titles... sometimes people will skip over the #1 site to go read yours because of the description...

would you rather click on #1 site that says..

Brown Shoes Here, or

Brown Shoes - Top brands extreme discounts


Also, a lot of people use WWSGD plugin, the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin that is good for increasing RSS readership. However, I see that too many times this blurb appears in the SERPs for ranked pages. What you want to do here is edit this blurb to add in a main keyword. Instead of settling for "thank you for visiting my site" which is the typical blurb, edit this blurb and make it say, "thank you for visiting my Keyword Research site".

This is better than a metatag, since it's an extra main KW associated with your site for every new page that gets indexed. The spiders are funny sometimes and won't pick up your KWs in body of article right away, which is why the WWSGD blurb is showing up a lot of times.

Anyways, back to the original point of this post which was to say that the SEO answers you seek are right in front of you, especially if you know where to look or have the SEO For FireFox plugin installed. This plugin allows you to see how many links other sites have pointing to them, and this is a decent indicator of why you might be getting outranked for certain terms by certain sites.

However, you've heard it before that Google loves news content, which is why forums like this one are powerhouses for SEO. So your new EZA article or blog post may appear on page 1 for a day or 2 or 3 then slowly slip away to oblivion because your site has no linkjuice or more links are needed to point towards that article to make it rank better.

The SEO for firefox plugin gives you numbers and sometimes these numbers can be daunting when you see your main competititor is a PR6 with 8k inbound links...

You gotta remember that not all links are created equal,and that getting just a few of the right kinds of links will do you wonders.

Consider what I call my guerilla linking strategy. Find all the topranked sites in your niche or topic and make blog comments to leave backlinks to your site. NoFollow and Dofollow aren't important here when you're commenting on the highest ranked sites whicg get the most traffic and your comments there could bring in more traffic than posting to obscure, unknown dofollow blogs.

Google your search term
Go to each of the top 20 sites

Make a valuable comment wherever you can to be able to leave a link in your comment.

When you make a comment don't use your KW as your "name" since that pretty much guarantees they will delete your comment. Just add value to the conversation to get that link.

Blogs, Lense, hubpages, new stories, diggs, stumbles, propeller, ezine articles... they all allow for comments to be made and links left there.

Oh, and don't always just link back to your main domain name url... Backlink to a relevant article on your site you want them the comment readers to go to. When it comes to attaining a site with good link juice, this is part of the battle, by not being too top heavy with your linking by only linking to your main url, but by pointing links towards your inner pages.

Google sees your link whether or not it is NoFollow or DoFollow, it still sees it and merely credits them differently, so they will see that a site page or post about XYZ widgets had a comment added to it and a link back to an XYZ Widgets guide or something. This will get noticed and works a little bit for better rankings.

I have discovered that on-page SEO is crucial crucial crucial... if you write your title imporoperly with KWs at end of title or even not at all, you won't do as well as if you put the KWs first.

Things change often with SEO and what is currently doing well for SEO.

Right now EZA articles and propeller submissions are doing pretty good, but do you know what kicks butt all the time now?

Warrior forum blog posts... They rock the SEs hard and not many people are using their blogs for faster, better rankings than even EZA could provide.

Look at this search term here:

webprosperity reviews - Google Search

Do you see my WF blog post there on page 1, just like it showed up on the Traffic Fusion Review? (see search above)

Did you also notice the KNOL that is there, still?

Did you notice the #1 site for this term has a .org extension? much in the same wat that a .org site ranked well for the Traffic Fusion Review? (see search above)

Those are 2 things that are working right now, check back in a week or two to see if the KNOL is still there though...

I firmly beleive that people make SEO harder than it really has to be by focussing on the wrong things.

I hope this opens your eyes and makes you a bit more aware that you don't need to re-invent the wheel, just copy what is obviously working for those who rank well now.

Just look around, know what to look for (what kind of sites, KWs used, how many backlinks etc...) and the veil and mystery of SEO shall be rmeoved when you look at things with...

Mind Wide Open.

Thanks,

dan


Another sign of WF's blog posts kicking tail...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&r...ty&btnG=Search

[ElaineBaker]

Thanks for sharing this with us Daniel - I'm going to print it out so I can really digest it.
Thanks again
Elaine

[blackscorpion]

"I firmly beleive that people make SEO harder than it really has to be by focussing on the wrong things.... " Totally agree. The sad thing is they probably already know of everything you just talked about.

[Mark Brian]

While I agree that all of what you said are relevant and true. I hate to point out that your example keywords are very uncompetitive. Nonetheless, the SEO tips are valid and will work. At the end of the day, those site ranking for competitive keywords have the following traits:

- Became authority sites through time
- On page SEO
- Massive and continuous back links from various sources

[Steven Heron]

A detailed post there Daniel.

Successful SEO ultimately boils down to keyword authority, and Google trust. Everything else such as keyword diversity, link popularity, PR of incoming links, relevance etc, amalgamate to those two things.

[M.Bruso]

Great detailed post with slightly different aproach of teaching. Thanks Daniel.

[jamiedolan]

Thanks for the post Dan. Do you use the google keyword research tool to find the most valuable keywords, or have you find a different keyword tool to produce more accurate / better results?

Thanks

[Daniel McGonagle]

Hi, looks like I never came back and replied to this, this is quite an old thread.

While the keywords may be very competitive, the point here is really...what works well during product launches to prop up sites so they remain in the top of the serps, either temporarily or permanently.

Originally Posted by Mark Brian

While I agree that all of what you said are relevant and true. I hate to point out that your example keywords are very uncompetitive. Nonetheless, the SEO tips are valid and will work. At the end of the day, those site ranking for competitive keywords have the following traits:

- Became authority sites through time
- On page SEO
- Massive and continuous back links from various sources

[Daniel McGonagle]

Hi, you''re welcome...

I sometimes use Google's tool to get ideas, then cross reference with other tools, too, and if I am really motivated about doing keyword research, I will use Wordze, which is a tool hardly anyone recommends because it's not widely known about.

For my passion niches I only do KW research for on page site optimization and don't do any further research after that since I try to find out what my niche wants to know about or they will tell me...



I

Originally Posted by jamiedolan

Thanks for the post Dan. Do you use the google keyword research tool to find the most valuable keywords, or have you find a different keyword tool to produce more accurate / better results?

Thanks

[jasonmorgan]

Start from square one when you want to rank well for something, your domain name.

Don't be cute and think of branding when choosing a domain name...

I have to disagree with this.

1. "porn" only three of the top 10 have the "porn" in the domain.
2. "dating", only 5 of the top 10 have "dating" in the domain name
3. "viagra", only 1 of the top 10 haves "viagra" in the domain name
4. "football", only 2 of the top 10 have "football" in the domain name
5. "drivinglessons", 0 or the top 10 have "driving lessongs" in the domain name

domain name is only a piece of the puzzle but not a game changer. when you are dealing with keywords that have true competition the domain name quickly becomes a non-factor when it comes to SE rankings and other elements are far more important.

I'm not saying it's not a bad idea to get an exact match domain name but it's not going to make a huge difference.

the example given of 'traffic fusion review' is a horrible example. almost no competition and nobody is searching for that keyword.

[Solidsnake]

Blogs, Lense, hubpages, new stories, diggs, stumbles, propeller, ezine articles... they all allow for comments to be made and links left there.

Many thanks for this..

[TKO]

This is so yesterday......

If you want to manipulate the Serps and get number #1 spot, get a bogus domain like

www.toomanykeywordsstuffedhere.com

Big deal, why is everyone going crazy about the number #1 spot anyway.

If you're looking to create a buisness and make some decent change, create a brand.

Create something remarkable and you'll have a never ending supply of customers.....

Number 1 in google doesn't guarantee you ****....

[Daniel McGonagle]

I agree that this is so yesterday, actually it is so last year,


Look at post date of this thread and you'll see this post was made almost exactly one year ago and was pretty relevant at that time, most of this stuff is still applicable day though.

Originally Posted by TKO

This is so yesterday......

If you want to manipulate the Serps and get number #1 spot, get a bogus domain like

www.toomanykeywordsstuffedhere.com

Big deal, why is everyone going crazy about the number #1 spot anyway.

If you're looking to create a buisness and make some decent change, create a brand.

Create something remarkable and you'll have a never ending supply of customers.....

Number 1 in google doesn't guarantee you ****....

[hhunt]

Originally Posted by TKO

This is so yesterday......

If you want to manipulate the Serps and get number #1 spot, get a bogus domain like

www.toomanykeywordsstuffedhere.com

Big deal, why is everyone going crazy about the number #1 spot anyway.

If you're looking to create a buisness and make some decent change, create a brand.

Create something remarkable and you'll have a never ending supply of customers.....

Number 1 in google doesn't guarantee you ****....

Forgive me if I get you wrong here. But are you saying it does not matter if one is on the first page or not? Well, if no one finds your site, how do you expect to sell a product and bring in some income?

Of course,#1 in google does not guarantee any sales, but it puts in a position to dominate your niche and places you where you can easily be found.

[Daniel McGonagle]

What he really meant to say is that you don't have to be page 1 inorder to have your sites to be successful, although it surely helps.

The point he missed here though is that this post was more geared towards product launches and how getting multiple page one spots helps during those time sof peak interest, for bursts of traffic.

Since this post is so old I probably won't reply to any questions or comments since I'd rather have this post go into obscurity since it's old news in some areas.

Originally Posted by hhunt

Forgive me if I get you wrong here. But are you saying it does not matter if one is on the first page or not? Well, if no one finds your site, how do you expect to sell a product and bring in some income?

Of course,#1 in google does not guarantee any sales, but it puts in a position to dominate your niche and places you where you can easily be found.

[TheBeatles]

Thanks!

The stuff about the getting the keyword.org is exactly what Google Sniper talks about