What Noobs Should Know About SEO But Don't Know to Ask
- SEO |
In general, it seems SEO noobs don't ask the right questions and worry about tiny details instead of getting a better grasp of the Big Picture. This post is about the Big Picture.
SEO is really all about numbers. Your first goal is to get as many words on as many pages as possible, and then get as many links to those pages.
How you come up with content and links will be your main objective from now on...
Search engines index words. How many of those words are on your pages?
Search engine count links. How many of those links are to your pages?
And this is your "search engine market share". You need to get lots of words on lots of pages, then lots of links to those pages. Simple, but it isn't easy.
But it isn't just numbers, it's about picking the right words (keywords), getting the right links, and things like making sure your pages and links stay in the search engines.
If your pages, posts, blogs, articles, etc are constantly being dropped from Google, it makes it much harder to gain market share. It's a case of "one step forward, two steps back".
Same with your links. There's a theory called "Link Decay". This means, are your pages losing links at a faster rate than normal? Maybe you had 1000 links last month but only 700 this month? This could be an indication of poor quality, as why would that many other webmasters stop linking to you that quickly?
Basically...We want a lot of words, pages and links, and we want them to 'stick". Your goal is to find the balance between quantity and quality and figure out how to get a lot of pages and links to "stick".
You probably won't get rich from one site and to make serious money, you'll want to have a good number of sites, which means you'll grow and buy more domain names which will need more hosting.
Get a good solid reseller account, not just one with add-on domains. With a reseller account, you can give other folks their own hosting accounts. This means you can trade hosting with others, giving you a wider variety of hosting/IPs cheaply.
No sub domains. During your forum browsing you'll come upon many threads about sub domains. Here's what isn't usually discussed: You can't sell sub domains. A big asset of SEO is being able to build sites, generate some free traffic and income, then sell those sites to someone else. This can be very important, as it is an option to generate cashflow. Do NOT limit your options. Get a reseller account and use domain names, not sub domains.
More sites mean most expenses become a lot less "per capita". For example, if you only have a single site, a service costing $150 a month is pretty expensive. But if you have 50 sites and can use the service on all 50 of your sites, that's only $3 a month per site, making your chances to make a profit much better.
Niche and authority - There's two basic approaches. Authority are bigger sites and should use a wide range of keywords, with the goal being to use as many relevant keywords as possible. Whereas highly-targeted micro-niche sites will focus on a few well researched, choice keywords.
Keywords - Most keyword advice here is for a single micro-niche site, so I won't get into that here.
However, if you're building bigger authority type sites, or plan on growing a network of sites, here's some basic suggestions:
Research 1000's of keywords for topics (keywords) related to your idea. Run them through your favorite research tools, then break them down into these groups.
12-20 Primary keywords - These are the Best of the Best. You want to use these a lot in page titles, domain names, file names, anchor text, etc. These keywords should rank strongly for all three criteria below.
50-100 - Secondary keywords. These are the keywords that rank pretty well in two of our three criteria.
100-250 "Filler" keywords. These include some keywords that are only strong in one of the criteria below, or have other benefits.
For example, you should have a list of "buyer" keywords, such as:
cheap
bargain
discount
for sale
You'll also want to add product names to the list of Filler keywords.
Sprinkle these filler kewords into your content whenever possible...
The three criteria for keywords are:
Competition - The weaker the better
Traffic - The more the better
Value - Anyone making money?
The best keywords are strong in all three and are your Primary Keywords. You want to pound and pound and pound away with these Primary Keywords.
Next, mix in some of your Secondary Keywords and add some Filler Keywords. This will give you a balance of some "easy" keywords with low competition, some high traffic keywords and some money keywords (which likely are very competitive).
Create articles, blog posts, web pages and even entire sites based on these keywords as topics.
Simply, create a list of 3000+ keywords and research them and keep the best 10%. Of the top 10%, break them down into 3 categories: Primary, Secondary and Filler.
Content:
Articles - Write about subjects.
Money Pages - Write about stuff people buy.
For example, if you are going to submit an article, write about "The Health Risks of Being Overweight". However, if you are writing a money page for your own site, write about "How to Save On Natural Supplements to Help You Lose Weight". Think about it, if you have to write about something, write about something people BUY.
Quality is easier to link to. You'll hear of "link bait" which is the concept of having great content in the theory that others will automatically link to it because it's soooooo good. Maybe. Maybe not. But what is for sure is that if you have the 'best" page on a subject possible, you can get away with a lot more when it comes to "aggressive linking".
Use Camouflage Pages and Buffer Sites - A common question for SEO is "how fast should I link"? I personally feel you can be more aggressive that you probably think you can...But if you want to protect yourself, set up "buffer" sites. These are sites other than your main money site that you can build links to. In turn, these buffer sites link to your money sites.
The idea is, if you only want to build 100 links a day, if you have 5 buffer sites, you can also build 100 links a day to each of them, giving you the benefit of 500 more links per day. This is also a good strategy for testing more aggressive techniques.
But remember, the older, more mature and more profitable a site is, the more you want to protect it. Use risk management wisely. Take more risks with newer, less developed sites and be more conservative with your money makers.
Don't put Adsense (or any affiliate links for that matter) on all your sites. Instead, let them get traffic first. A site without any ads can get away with a lot more when linking. Also, the fewer sites you use Adsense on, the less likely you'll get in trouble and lose your account. And it's possible that sites without any affiliate links may rank higher in Google.
A camouflage page is one where you build great content so you can link to it. The goal is to build a lot of link juice to this page, which it will pass on to other pages you own. When someone checks it out, all they see is great content, with your links strategically placed on the page so they are "camouflaged".
Example: You create a page with the 10 funniest Youtube videos about dogs. You now build links to this page. Since you picked 10 great videos, the chances are no one will be upset if you post links to this page, assuming you're posting on relevant sources.
Here's the camouflage: At the bottom of the page you have it designed so it looks like folks have added spammy comments. You can even comment on your own blogs for this to work. And in these comments you link to your other pages, passing all the link juice on to these other pages.
Optimize your camouflage pages by creatively tossing in a few related keywords in your text description of the videos as well as in the "comments".
SEO is really all about numbers. Your first goal is to get as many words on as many pages as possible, and then get as many links to those pages.
How you come up with content and links will be your main objective from now on...
Search engines index words. How many of those words are on your pages?
Search engine count links. How many of those links are to your pages?
And this is your "search engine market share". You need to get lots of words on lots of pages, then lots of links to those pages. Simple, but it isn't easy.
But it isn't just numbers, it's about picking the right words (keywords), getting the right links, and things like making sure your pages and links stay in the search engines.
If your pages, posts, blogs, articles, etc are constantly being dropped from Google, it makes it much harder to gain market share. It's a case of "one step forward, two steps back".
Same with your links. There's a theory called "Link Decay". This means, are your pages losing links at a faster rate than normal? Maybe you had 1000 links last month but only 700 this month? This could be an indication of poor quality, as why would that many other webmasters stop linking to you that quickly?
Basically...We want a lot of words, pages and links, and we want them to 'stick". Your goal is to find the balance between quantity and quality and figure out how to get a lot of pages and links to "stick".
You probably won't get rich from one site and to make serious money, you'll want to have a good number of sites, which means you'll grow and buy more domain names which will need more hosting.
Get a good solid reseller account, not just one with add-on domains. With a reseller account, you can give other folks their own hosting accounts. This means you can trade hosting with others, giving you a wider variety of hosting/IPs cheaply.
No sub domains. During your forum browsing you'll come upon many threads about sub domains. Here's what isn't usually discussed: You can't sell sub domains. A big asset of SEO is being able to build sites, generate some free traffic and income, then sell those sites to someone else. This can be very important, as it is an option to generate cashflow. Do NOT limit your options. Get a reseller account and use domain names, not sub domains.
More sites mean most expenses become a lot less "per capita". For example, if you only have a single site, a service costing $150 a month is pretty expensive. But if you have 50 sites and can use the service on all 50 of your sites, that's only $3 a month per site, making your chances to make a profit much better.
Niche and authority - There's two basic approaches. Authority are bigger sites and should use a wide range of keywords, with the goal being to use as many relevant keywords as possible. Whereas highly-targeted micro-niche sites will focus on a few well researched, choice keywords.
Keywords - Most keyword advice here is for a single micro-niche site, so I won't get into that here.
However, if you're building bigger authority type sites, or plan on growing a network of sites, here's some basic suggestions:
Research 1000's of keywords for topics (keywords) related to your idea. Run them through your favorite research tools, then break them down into these groups.
12-20 Primary keywords - These are the Best of the Best. You want to use these a lot in page titles, domain names, file names, anchor text, etc. These keywords should rank strongly for all three criteria below.
50-100 - Secondary keywords. These are the keywords that rank pretty well in two of our three criteria.
100-250 "Filler" keywords. These include some keywords that are only strong in one of the criteria below, or have other benefits.
For example, you should have a list of "buyer" keywords, such as:
cheap
bargain
discount
for sale
You'll also want to add product names to the list of Filler keywords.
Sprinkle these filler kewords into your content whenever possible...
The three criteria for keywords are:
Competition - The weaker the better
Traffic - The more the better
Value - Anyone making money?
The best keywords are strong in all three and are your Primary Keywords. You want to pound and pound and pound away with these Primary Keywords.
Next, mix in some of your Secondary Keywords and add some Filler Keywords. This will give you a balance of some "easy" keywords with low competition, some high traffic keywords and some money keywords (which likely are very competitive).
Create articles, blog posts, web pages and even entire sites based on these keywords as topics.
Simply, create a list of 3000+ keywords and research them and keep the best 10%. Of the top 10%, break them down into 3 categories: Primary, Secondary and Filler.
Content:
Articles - Write about subjects.
Money Pages - Write about stuff people buy.
For example, if you are going to submit an article, write about "The Health Risks of Being Overweight". However, if you are writing a money page for your own site, write about "How to Save On Natural Supplements to Help You Lose Weight". Think about it, if you have to write about something, write about something people BUY.
Quality is easier to link to. You'll hear of "link bait" which is the concept of having great content in the theory that others will automatically link to it because it's soooooo good. Maybe. Maybe not. But what is for sure is that if you have the 'best" page on a subject possible, you can get away with a lot more when it comes to "aggressive linking".
Use Camouflage Pages and Buffer Sites - A common question for SEO is "how fast should I link"? I personally feel you can be more aggressive that you probably think you can...But if you want to protect yourself, set up "buffer" sites. These are sites other than your main money site that you can build links to. In turn, these buffer sites link to your money sites.
The idea is, if you only want to build 100 links a day, if you have 5 buffer sites, you can also build 100 links a day to each of them, giving you the benefit of 500 more links per day. This is also a good strategy for testing more aggressive techniques.
But remember, the older, more mature and more profitable a site is, the more you want to protect it. Use risk management wisely. Take more risks with newer, less developed sites and be more conservative with your money makers.
Don't put Adsense (or any affiliate links for that matter) on all your sites. Instead, let them get traffic first. A site without any ads can get away with a lot more when linking. Also, the fewer sites you use Adsense on, the less likely you'll get in trouble and lose your account. And it's possible that sites without any affiliate links may rank higher in Google.
A camouflage page is one where you build great content so you can link to it. The goal is to build a lot of link juice to this page, which it will pass on to other pages you own. When someone checks it out, all they see is great content, with your links strategically placed on the page so they are "camouflaged".
Example: You create a page with the 10 funniest Youtube videos about dogs. You now build links to this page. Since you picked 10 great videos, the chances are no one will be upset if you post links to this page, assuming you're posting on relevant sources.
Here's the camouflage: At the bottom of the page you have it designed so it looks like folks have added spammy comments. You can even comment on your own blogs for this to work. And in these comments you link to your other pages, passing all the link juice on to these other pages.
Optimize your camouflage pages by creatively tossing in a few related keywords in your text description of the videos as well as in the "comments".
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