SEO Expert

Posts Tagged ‘search rankings’

Ok, the post title seems a little over the board. But it says exactly what I intend to convey in this post – to show you exactly how search engine optimization works without all the frills. With a stripped down case study, you can see how article distributions can benefit your site. It doesn’t have to take long for you to get traffic. Let’s take a look at the website that we are going to examine.

If you have been with us since last year, you would have heard of the new service that I released – the Blog Content Syndication service. This service allows you to post spinnable articles to laser targeted blogs. The keyword that I was going to target was “Blog content syndication“, which describes what the site is about.

Make a search in Google for this keyword phrase: Google search – blog content syndication

You will see a result like this:

My website is ranked in the top spot for my choice of keywords. Further down, in the 5th position, you see an article in Ezinearticles that was published by me. Questions must be swimming through your head now.

Q: What link building methods did you use?

Q: Are you receiving traffic from the search engines?

Q: How long does it take to get there?

Q: What exactly did you do to get to the top spot?

I’ll give you all the answers here. Let’s try to answer one question at a time.

Q: What link building methods did you use?
I only use article marketing to build links to the site. I want this to be a case study, so I didn’t use any other link building method.

Q: Are you receiving traffic from the search engines?

Yes, I’m receiving traffic for these keywords:

* blog syndication

* blog content syndication

* content syndication

* syndicate blog content

* syndicate pricing

* …and a few other keywords.

That is why I say, never discount long tail keywords. These keywords bring me an average of 15 unique visitors a month. That works out to be about  450 visitors each and every month. Big deal you say? It may be a big deal, or it may mean nothing at all. It all depends on how you look at the numbers.

Here is what your mindset should be like.

Try to see each and every click as a human being sitting at the computer. What is he trying to do? Is he trying to search for information? Is he trying to look for some specific products and services? The keywords that bring you the traffic will reveal a lot about the intent behind the search.  That is why long tail is still valuable. How do you guess the intent behind a keyword such as “exercise equipment”? The visitor could be searching for information, or he could be looking to buy. It’s harder to tell. But if you get traffic from keyword phrases such as “exercise equipment wholesale”, it’s easier to guess the intent isn’t it?

In general, you will get more traffic from 2 keyword phrases. But you get more targeted traffic from 3 or 4 keyword phrases. Even with just a trickle of traffic from these keyword phrases, you can still make money. How? By matching the right offer to the right prospect. In other words, you have a much higher chance of converting a visitor that came from a long tail search into a buying customer.

Here is where lots of exciting things can happen.

That first time buyer has the potential to become a repeat buyer. The question is, what do you have to offer your newly acquired customer? The buyer may come to website to buy an ebook about weight training. As the business owner, you should take the time to understand more about the goals of your customers. What is he trying to achieve? Is he trying to lose weight? Or is he trying to build ripping muscles? Once you understand where your customer is going, it’s easy to find the right offers to offer your customers. You can try offering a weight loss diet plan, health supplements, coaching programs, etc. One single visitor, with the potential of spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars with you.

I don’t know about you but to me, it sounds logical (and exciting as well) to pursue targeted keyword searches. You probably won’t get to see thousands of visitors daily, but you are still making sales. This is the reason why you don’t need a lot of traffic to succeed online. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t continue building traffic. When you start seeing results, and conversions are good, find ways and means to scale up your traffic.

For every traffic source that you test, always maintain the same mindset. It’s a human being at the other end, trying to search for something. Do you have what it is that the visitor is searching for? Will he pay money for what you have? If you have done your market research, you already know the answers to these questions.

Q: How long does it take to get there?

About 4 weeks. The lesson here is this: Submit highly targeted and relevant information and you have a much higher chance of ranking quickly, and higher in the search results. Understand that the primary purpose of the search engines is to deliver highly relevant content. If you have more relevant information, products, or services than what is currently available in the search results, you have a very good chance of doing well in the serps.

From the example that I’ve given, it took just 4 weeks to rank in the top spot in Google, out of over 21 million results. And you will be surprised at the effort that I put in to achieve that ranking…which leads me to the next question.

Q: What exactly did you do to get to the top spot?

Let me break this down into a step by step guide for you. You may want to print this out or save this somewhere, just in case you need to refer to it later on.

Step 1: Choose a domain name with my target keyword phrase in it.

Step 2: Include keyword phrase in article title, and meta tags.

Step 3: I wrote 3 articles and submit them to Ezinearticles.

Step 4: I combined 2 of the articles into one 450 word article, and submitted the article using Premium Distribution. The reason why I used premium distribution is because there are more high page rank sites (20+) in the package, which will help boost the search rankings. Note that I did just ONE premium distribution.

Step 5: I wait 4 weeks for the articles to be indexed, and I checked the search results every week or so. In the first week, the site is indexed. In the second week, it rose to page one. In the third week, it rose to second in ranking. By the forth week, it has risen to ranking number 1.

Mission accomplished.

It looks simple, and it sounds too simple to be true. But SEO is that simple! I use this as a stripped down case study so that you can see for yourself, beyond a shadow of a doubt that article marketing really works! But everyday, I still see people posting comments in the forums about not ranking well in the search engines. If they can’t rank in the serps, they are doing it wrong.

Here are some of the main reasons why some sites fail to rank:

* Poor quality content.

The search engine is all about relevancy. It has to be able to determine the context (meaning) of the web page. How do you expect the search bot to do this if the web page is littered with nothing but broken English? The bot is dumb. It is programmed to work in a certain way, and it will behave predictably. In this case, it will dumb the poorly written web page.

* Choosing the wrong keywords to target.

Some keywords are easy to rank. Some are harder to rank. And some are impossible to rank. You need to be able to tell which keywords will or will not rank. You can do this just by looking at the search results. Pick any keyword you want, and make a search in Google. Then let Google tell you whether your keywords are likely to rank or not. Here are the possible scenarios.

a) Easy to rank.

You find web pages that are hardly relevant to your search phrase. This means that there is little or no relevant  content in the database. All you need to do, is to provide better, and more relevant information, and the search engines will lap it up – guaranteed.

b) Harder to rank, but not impossible.

You find lots of competition for the keywords that you are trying to target. For example, you see domain names with the keyword phrase in them. These are probably sites owned by webmasters who know all about SEO. The only way to beat them, is to build more quality inbound links. That means you need more time, effort, and perhaps money to compete in this niche. But don’t be put off just because you see lots of competition. Usually, competition is a good thing – it shows that there is money to be made in the niche. That’s why online marketers are using SEO to drive traffic. If you have a viable business, go full steam ahead and dominate the keywords.

c) Impossible to rank.

These are niches that you are better off steering clear of. They could be insurance industry, banking industry, legal sites, government sites, etc. These keywords are dominated by the big players in town, and they are the authority websites. You can try competing in the same space if you are a legitimate financial institution, bank, school, etc. But if you are just trying to sell some ebooks, use Adsense, or make some dough using CPA, you are likely to reap nothing.

* Not enough inbound links.

These are marketers who distribute just 1 article, sit back, and do nothing. And when they don’t see results, they claim that article marketing doesn’t work. You are likely to face competition with the keywords that you are trying to target. At the end of the day, your SEO efforts will come down to the number of inbound links with your target keywords as the anchor texts. Keep building links! Try to get as many inbound links as you can with your keywords in them.

Whether you rank well or not depends on just 2 things:

1) The number of links with relevant anchor texts.

2) Link juice from high quality websites – i.e. websites with high page rank.

Page rank is just Google’s way to let the world know whether the site is an authoritative site or not. But don’t discount sites with page rank zero. This is because a site may be waiting for the page rank to be updated, or the page rank indicator has been removed. Google remove page rank when it suspects the sites are trying to sell links. But these sites still rank very well in the search results. A page rank zero inbound link with relevant anchor texts is still better than having no links.

But in this case study, since I enjoy the benefits of so many high page rank websites like Ezinearticles, Squidoo, Artipot, Americanchronicle, etc…I just used a Premium distribution, and I got the first position. Whenever possible, try to get high page rank sites to link to you.

I’m working on a new Press Release service that you will you to post news on high page rank sites like EINNews, CNet, Denver Post, Daily Herald, and more…many of these sites have at least page rank 4. Some have page rank 5, or 6. The goal here is to get as many high page rank sites from different regions to link back to your site.

In fact, I’ve already completed the design of the site (check out the sleek dashboard). I’m just working on a few details right now, and the service will be released either before the end of the week, or the start of next week.

So what about the Blog Content Syndication service?

No worries. I’m still working hard on promoting the blogs. Link building has already began for all 30 blogs. Let the links age. And yes, I’m still taking orders if you are interested. Send me an email to see if we can work something out. The next 2 networks to be published are:

* Home improvement network

* Health network

Besides link building, I’m also posting additional content to the blogs (like this post you are reading now) so that the blogs appear more natural.

In the meantime, look out for an email from me with regards to the launch of the press release distribution service.

Hope you have enjoyed this post.

Take care, and have a nice week ahead.

Don’t forget to email me if you have any questions about anything (don’t have to be about business).

Darren Chow