The SEO Value of Unique Content & Niche Targeting: A Common Sense Guide To Good & Bad Modern SEO
- SEO |
I am truly amazed when I see what happens after a big Google update, such as the recent Panda update. On almost any internet marketing forum, you will find hundreds or even thousands of people who lose search engine rankings whenever one of these updates occurs.
The reason that I am truly amazed is because of the reasons why people are losing search engine rankings from these Google updates. 9 times out of 10, it's because of spammy sites that are either overloaded with affiliate advertising or built out of laziness.
When I say a website is built out of laziness, I am really talking about one of a number of modern, "popular" methods of building websites.
Lazy Website Building Practices
So, why would these same internet marketers develop automated software that is ultimately going to be discovered and penalized by Google?
The answer is simple and it's only one word long: MONEY
Anybody that is interested in internet marketing is interested in money, even if it's just to make enough money to pay your basic bills each month.
However, there are a lot of internet marketers that not only want to make money, but they want to make as much as possible. On top of that, they're willing to do whatever it takes to make that money.
The result of all of this is a bunch of products that appear to do everything for you. It started with products that were actually useful and then grew to become complete website building software that produces full niche websites with a few clicks of a button.
Yes, that sounds wonderful. Yes, it usually even works well for the software developer during testing (for the proof that the software works).
Everything falls apart when hundreds or even thousands of people start using the same piece of software. There are only so many different niches and a finite amount of decent content that can be generated by any automated software.
I call this a common sense guide because everything that I just said it 100% common sense to me. For this reason, I have NEVER purchased a single piece of completely automated software in my entire full-time internet marketing career that has spanned over 15 years now. It really doesn't matter what the software does or whether it worked for the developer - it my eyes, they will all fail eventually.
That's really how I view a Google update. It's Google way of cleaning house to get rid of all of those bad listings that have popped up from the most recent automated software crazes. There are some other types of listings that get cleaned up along with automated websites, but I truly believe those are at the top of the list for Google.
It's actually quite simple to avoid bad SEO practices. If you're doing something to try to alter search engine rankings instead of trying to add value for your website visitors, then it's generally a bad SEO practice too.
Good Modern SEO Practices
Now it is time to get into good, modern SEO practices that actually work and don't require magic to actually use. Just like the bad practices, I consider these good practices to be common sense as well.
Personally, I love "newbie" internet marketers. They have a lot of drive and determination to succeed. Their minds are also not clouded with years of incorrect learning, so it's much easier for them to pick up a new strategy.
I didn't become successful by trying to figure out the easiest way to do something. My success comes from trying to figure out the best way to do something and not let the amount of work stop me from making it a reality.
The real truth about my success when it comes to SEO is that it really happened by accident. I didn't get #1 Google rankings by tricking the search engines. I got #1 and still get #1 Google rankings by building useful websites that are filled with unique content that I have personally written for the website.
The key to good, modern SEO is to develop website content that is STILL going to have good search engine rankings after six months, a year or even more. How do you do this? It's actually quite simple. Just follow my two key steps to great search engine rankings below.
#1 - Quality, Unique Content
Develop your websites for your website visitors. I remember a time when the internet used to get developed in that manner. Then people found tricks to alter search engine rankings, so they started to build websites to capture search engine rankings first and then to attend to the visitors.
The biggest problem with search engine "tricks" is that you're ignoring the most important thing - your website visitors. In addition to that, the search engines figure out the tricks eventually and your site loses it's ranking. When that happens, a site is virtually left dead because nobody uses the site without the search engine rankings (since it's not a quality site that people would actually bookmark or share with their friends).
When you develop your website content for your website visitors, you win on both sides. Yes, someone may come along with some crazy scheme that allows them to beat your site for a while, but you can almost always rest assured that they will get caught and your site will return to it's proper search engine ranking.
Ultimately, Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to weed out the low quality, useless sites. A common misconception is that Google is targeting affiliate sites. I can assure you that this is simply not the case. Google really doesn't care if your website uses affiliate advertising. It's just that too many affiliate marketers have tried to cheat the system that many people think it's affiliate advertising that causes sites to lose their rankings, when it's actually the content of the site and their marketing practices.
So, the next website you build, do it for your visitors and not for the search engines. You certainly want to keep the search engines in mind when you build a site, but you want to make that your second priority.
Think about what someone wants to find when they search for a keyword phrase that you are trying to target. Don't just think they are looking to buy a product, because most people are really searching for some kind of information, help or reviews on a product before they think about buying a product. When you can make that connection with a website visitor and help them find what they were looking to find, you stand a much better chance at referring a sale from that visitor.
You want to write 100% unique website content on every single page that you build. In addition to that, it will even help a lot if you are using unique content for any advertising on your site. Too many affiliate marketers love to copy and paste content about products they are advertising. I have never been a fan of doing this, so perhaps this is why I never have search engine troubles with my affiliate sites.
The real key to good website content is hard work. Take the time to do a bit of research on your topic so you can actually create a useful website. Once you have learned a topic, you can usually write about that topic out of your head, which makes real, unique content generation a breeze. Also take a few minutes to learn about affiliate products that you plan to promote. Instead of copying information that is available for all affiliate to use, put that information into your own words when you create an ad on your own site. This simple act that only takes a few minutes really makes a huge difference.
#2 - Niche SEO Targeting
When I first started building websites, I thought I did a pretty good job making useful and unique content. The only problem was that nobody EVER saw it!
Why did nobody ever see the useful, unique content that I made when I first started building websites? The real problem was that I only had one website in the very beginning. There's nothing wrong with only having one website, except for the fact that I was building content on that website that covered a very wide range of topics.
Besides making useful, unique content, the way you group that content is the other key factor to SEO.
With modern SEO, it's simply not good enough to build a website about a general topic. For example, creating a website about cars would be a really bad idea in today's competitive market. However, creating a website about customizing exhaust systems on 2001+ Ford Mustang models would be a completely different story. Yes, both websites would ultimately be about "cars", but the second website is targeting a specific car niche.
By targeting a specific niche instead of a general topic, your website has focus. Focus is key to SEO, because focus gives you ranking power.
If you build a website about cars in general, think about all of the possible topics that you could write about on that website. There would literally be millions of different topics that could be covered. If you build the niche website that I mentioned above, you would be faced with significantly less possible topics for the website.
The potential number of topics is ultimately what you want to think about before you start ANY new website. Think about whether you could possibly write about every single topic available for that website. If it would impossible to do it by yourself or would require many years worth of work, then you need to narrow your focus to a more specific niche for your website.
Think about it like this. When someone searches for the keyword "cars" on Google, Google knows it's a really general keyword. Because of this, if you were to only focus on the content from a single web page, there would simply be no reliable way to select one single web page as the number one result out of millions of web pages about cars. However, Google doesn't just look at that one web page or even that one keyword term. Google can tell what websites have a ton of information solely dedicated to cars. The sites with more unique content on the topic are most likely to receive the top rankings.
So, the real key is to attack a niche that you can actually cover (realistically). Keep in mind that you may not get a great search engine ranking in that niche until you have covered a lot of the possible topics in that niche. This is what you would call a niche authority site.
Some people only consider huge websites to be authority sites, but you can actually create small authority sites. Small authority sites will be about a very specific topic or maybe even about a specific product. In order to make Google recognize your website as the authority on any given niche, you need to make a bigger footprint on that niche than any other website.
Take a look at the competition for a potential niche target. There are two key things to look at when it comes to niche competition.
Good SEO & Unique Content Checklist
A quick recap on the important points to good SEO practices and writing unique content. If you put forth the effort to build niche websites with at least 20 pages and utilize all of these key strategies, you will find that SEO is really nothing but common sense.
I welcome any questions, comments, suggestions or even complaints that you may have about my common sense guide to modern SEO.
Ryan
The reason that I am truly amazed is because of the reasons why people are losing search engine rankings from these Google updates. 9 times out of 10, it's because of spammy sites that are either overloaded with affiliate advertising or built out of laziness.
When I say a website is built out of laziness, I am really talking about one of a number of modern, "popular" methods of building websites.
Lazy Website Building Practices
- Content Writing From Article Spinning or PLR Articles
- Website Building or Content Writing With Automated Software
- Cheaply Outsourced Article Writing
So, why would these same internet marketers develop automated software that is ultimately going to be discovered and penalized by Google?
The answer is simple and it's only one word long: MONEY
Anybody that is interested in internet marketing is interested in money, even if it's just to make enough money to pay your basic bills each month.
However, there are a lot of internet marketers that not only want to make money, but they want to make as much as possible. On top of that, they're willing to do whatever it takes to make that money.
The result of all of this is a bunch of products that appear to do everything for you. It started with products that were actually useful and then grew to become complete website building software that produces full niche websites with a few clicks of a button.
Yes, that sounds wonderful. Yes, it usually even works well for the software developer during testing (for the proof that the software works).
Everything falls apart when hundreds or even thousands of people start using the same piece of software. There are only so many different niches and a finite amount of decent content that can be generated by any automated software.
I call this a common sense guide because everything that I just said it 100% common sense to me. For this reason, I have NEVER purchased a single piece of completely automated software in my entire full-time internet marketing career that has spanned over 15 years now. It really doesn't matter what the software does or whether it worked for the developer - it my eyes, they will all fail eventually.
That's really how I view a Google update. It's Google way of cleaning house to get rid of all of those bad listings that have popped up from the most recent automated software crazes. There are some other types of listings that get cleaned up along with automated websites, but I truly believe those are at the top of the list for Google.
It's actually quite simple to avoid bad SEO practices. If you're doing something to try to alter search engine rankings instead of trying to add value for your website visitors, then it's generally a bad SEO practice too.
Good Modern SEO Practices
Now it is time to get into good, modern SEO practices that actually work and don't require magic to actually use. Just like the bad practices, I consider these good practices to be common sense as well.
Personally, I love "newbie" internet marketers. They have a lot of drive and determination to succeed. Their minds are also not clouded with years of incorrect learning, so it's much easier for them to pick up a new strategy.
I didn't become successful by trying to figure out the easiest way to do something. My success comes from trying to figure out the best way to do something and not let the amount of work stop me from making it a reality.
The real truth about my success when it comes to SEO is that it really happened by accident. I didn't get #1 Google rankings by tricking the search engines. I got #1 and still get #1 Google rankings by building useful websites that are filled with unique content that I have personally written for the website.
The key to good, modern SEO is to develop website content that is STILL going to have good search engine rankings after six months, a year or even more. How do you do this? It's actually quite simple. Just follow my two key steps to great search engine rankings below.
#1 - Quality, Unique Content
Develop your websites for your website visitors. I remember a time when the internet used to get developed in that manner. Then people found tricks to alter search engine rankings, so they started to build websites to capture search engine rankings first and then to attend to the visitors.
The biggest problem with search engine "tricks" is that you're ignoring the most important thing - your website visitors. In addition to that, the search engines figure out the tricks eventually and your site loses it's ranking. When that happens, a site is virtually left dead because nobody uses the site without the search engine rankings (since it's not a quality site that people would actually bookmark or share with their friends).
When you develop your website content for your website visitors, you win on both sides. Yes, someone may come along with some crazy scheme that allows them to beat your site for a while, but you can almost always rest assured that they will get caught and your site will return to it's proper search engine ranking.
Ultimately, Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to weed out the low quality, useless sites. A common misconception is that Google is targeting affiliate sites. I can assure you that this is simply not the case. Google really doesn't care if your website uses affiliate advertising. It's just that too many affiliate marketers have tried to cheat the system that many people think it's affiliate advertising that causes sites to lose their rankings, when it's actually the content of the site and their marketing practices.
So, the next website you build, do it for your visitors and not for the search engines. You certainly want to keep the search engines in mind when you build a site, but you want to make that your second priority.
Think about what someone wants to find when they search for a keyword phrase that you are trying to target. Don't just think they are looking to buy a product, because most people are really searching for some kind of information, help or reviews on a product before they think about buying a product. When you can make that connection with a website visitor and help them find what they were looking to find, you stand a much better chance at referring a sale from that visitor.
You want to write 100% unique website content on every single page that you build. In addition to that, it will even help a lot if you are using unique content for any advertising on your site. Too many affiliate marketers love to copy and paste content about products they are advertising. I have never been a fan of doing this, so perhaps this is why I never have search engine troubles with my affiliate sites.
The real key to good website content is hard work. Take the time to do a bit of research on your topic so you can actually create a useful website. Once you have learned a topic, you can usually write about that topic out of your head, which makes real, unique content generation a breeze. Also take a few minutes to learn about affiliate products that you plan to promote. Instead of copying information that is available for all affiliate to use, put that information into your own words when you create an ad on your own site. This simple act that only takes a few minutes really makes a huge difference.
#2 - Niche SEO Targeting
When I first started building websites, I thought I did a pretty good job making useful and unique content. The only problem was that nobody EVER saw it!
Why did nobody ever see the useful, unique content that I made when I first started building websites? The real problem was that I only had one website in the very beginning. There's nothing wrong with only having one website, except for the fact that I was building content on that website that covered a very wide range of topics.
Besides making useful, unique content, the way you group that content is the other key factor to SEO.
With modern SEO, it's simply not good enough to build a website about a general topic. For example, creating a website about cars would be a really bad idea in today's competitive market. However, creating a website about customizing exhaust systems on 2001+ Ford Mustang models would be a completely different story. Yes, both websites would ultimately be about "cars", but the second website is targeting a specific car niche.
By targeting a specific niche instead of a general topic, your website has focus. Focus is key to SEO, because focus gives you ranking power.
If you build a website about cars in general, think about all of the possible topics that you could write about on that website. There would literally be millions of different topics that could be covered. If you build the niche website that I mentioned above, you would be faced with significantly less possible topics for the website.
The potential number of topics is ultimately what you want to think about before you start ANY new website. Think about whether you could possibly write about every single topic available for that website. If it would impossible to do it by yourself or would require many years worth of work, then you need to narrow your focus to a more specific niche for your website.
Think about it like this. When someone searches for the keyword "cars" on Google, Google knows it's a really general keyword. Because of this, if you were to only focus on the content from a single web page, there would simply be no reliable way to select one single web page as the number one result out of millions of web pages about cars. However, Google doesn't just look at that one web page or even that one keyword term. Google can tell what websites have a ton of information solely dedicated to cars. The sites with more unique content on the topic are most likely to receive the top rankings.
So, the real key is to attack a niche that you can actually cover (realistically). Keep in mind that you may not get a great search engine ranking in that niche until you have covered a lot of the possible topics in that niche. This is what you would call a niche authority site.
Some people only consider huge websites to be authority sites, but you can actually create small authority sites. Small authority sites will be about a very specific topic or maybe even about a specific product. In order to make Google recognize your website as the authority on any given niche, you need to make a bigger footprint on that niche than any other website.
Take a look at the competition for a potential niche target. There are two key things to look at when it comes to niche competition.
- Allintitle Results - Performing an "allintitle" search on Google can give you a general idea of how many pages on the internet may be competition for a given keyword phrase. If your keyword phrase is "car exhaust system", then perform this search on Google: allintitle:"car exhaust system". Ultimately, you want to see less than 10,000 results from that search or else I would consider the competition to be too heavy. Try narrowing your niche focus even more if the competition is too high. If you can target keyword phrases with less than 1,000 results from that search, then you will have a much easier time achieving top ten Google rankings.
- #1 Result Analysis - Take a closer look at the website with the #1 ranking for your target niche keyword phrase. First visit the site to see if they have dedicated the entire site to that specific niche. If they are 100% dedicated to that niche, then you will probably have to have more content to beat that site for that keyword phrase. If the site is dedicated to a more general topic, then it's often easier. Those sites may be considered an authority for the general topic, but a niche authority site will almost always beat a general authority site. In either situation, try to determine how many pages of content the website has on that specific niche. If you're not willing/capable of beating that number of pages, then you should look for a smaller niche.
Good SEO & Unique Content Checklist
A quick recap on the important points to good SEO practices and writing unique content. If you put forth the effort to build niche websites with at least 20 pages and utilize all of these key strategies, you will find that SEO is really nothing but common sense.
- Don't Take Shortcuts
- Always Write 100% Unique Content
- Build Niche Websites
- Target Each Page To A Specific Topic/Keyword
- Focus On Helping Your Website Visitors
I welcome any questions, comments, suggestions or even complaints that you may have about my common sense guide to modern SEO.
Ryan
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