Search Engine Ranking - The Wikipedia Way

A friend recently asked me 'What's all this crazy nonsense I keep hearing about authority and trust now on all of the IM sites?'? Yes, I've preached it myself. The mantras for 2010 and 2011 have been 'You gotta have authority and you gotta have trust!' Just what is all this noise about?

If you remember from my previous post Your Not Making Any Money Online without Authority, I said that Google is trying to improve their search results continually to judge, rank and read sites just as a human would. They're basically building a form of very static artificial intelligence to be able to pick and choose your content as if you were weeding through looking for a specific result. And this engine is only getting better - to a more dynamic intelligence.

All well and good right? What does that mean to you? You need to sit back and ask yourself how you trust sites and give them authority as a normal activity. For example, how would you judge, say, a wealth building site that had AdSense ads plastered all over it with hundreds of pages that you suspect are just a pile of crappy PLR articles. They're pretty easy to spot - tons of keyword stuffing, no personal writing style, slapped together with one purpose in mind - making money off the poor git who might click an ad.

You're Not Making Any Money Online without Authority

Made you wonder, didn't I?? If you read my post from a couple of days ago you saw that I assigned you to do some research by typing in an example keyword phrase 'How to Make Money Online'. If you did what I asked you, you probably wondered what you should really be looking for that defines their site's success in the search engines. I bet you felt that slight pang of jealousy that your website isn't in that top 10 list (heck, I know I did).

Many of you have probably dropped some real dollars on some ebooks and read a thing or two about search engine optimization to guess that these sites have high quality backlinks from other sites that also rank well in the search engines. And, as we all know TRAFFIC = MONEY - so, everyone's goal is to get traffic. However, (and this is a BIG however) that is not necessarily the answer to getting top rankings in Google or Yahoo (and most recently - Bing). Bada Bing! Read that last line again.

Ok, hold all of your preconceptions about SEO because you're probably submitting articles, adding entries to link directories, creating profiles in social sites, etc. etc. - i.e. - wasting valuable time! There is one secret I'm going to spill - and that is your site's authority!

By authority I mean that the content you've provided in your site or blog has relevant meaning and important to human eyes based on your key topic. Guess what? Google is trying to view your site the same way with human glasses - and, guess what - they're not rose colored.

What you might be thinking is that Google is judging your site based on the number and popularity of sites linking back to you. True, somewhat - but, there are a boatload of PhDs at Google trying to make it read your site like a human - yes, a human. That means reading from top to bottom, left to right, scanning and determining if the content has relevance (remember that term - it is important) and authority to the topic at hand - that is, your web page.

So what does that really mean? If you think about this it is about the perception the search engines have of your content demonstrating that you have the appropriate knowledge of the topic or niche. That is why you'll see sites with a significant amount of detailed content focused on specific keywords ranking high.

Recently, however, I have discovered sites that rank in page 1 of Google that do not have many backlinks, and, those backlinks are not highly ranked. I was literally floored when I found this. Why would these sites get high rank for the search term?

In one example I found a site ranked #4 of 1.4M results that had 6 pages with 717, 755, 519, 211, 373 and 12 words in each page respectively. The pages spoke directly to the main topic (page 1) and associated topics in pages 2-5 with page 6 being a contact page. It had 28 backlinks with all being simple web directories, whois and alexa rank. Pretty simple - but, it was authoritative. It reads well, has the main topic as the page title and subtopics / subheadings with content.

What this demonstrates is that getting ranked high in Google may not be as hard as you think - just as long as you build your pages in a human readable, authoritative manner. Want a great example? Just take a look at how Wikipedia is structured and you'll get a clue on what you need to do (more on this later). There's no telling how long it will take Google to get you to a high position - be patient - you should be able to build niche sites that capitalize on this and make money easier than before.

IM101 Step 5: Focusing on Keywords

One of the very first mistakes I made when building my first marketing site was not paying attention to the main keyword search terms I was trying to focus on. At that time I didn't understand how keyword density worked nor did I get the benefits of keyword rich backlinks to my site.

So, to help you with this I'm going to take a very specific example from Clickbank and build out a low cost, ebook marketing site for you. You're welcome to follow along with the same Clickbank product, or, just find one you're really interested in. My focus for this article is validating the product and getting the keyword search terms in place.

After spending a couple of hours scanning through both Clickbank.com and CBEngine.com I found the product I wanted to market - it's called The Diet Solution Program by Isabel De Los Rios.

My key criteria were a) the product is relatively new on the market, b) it is starting to see some gravity, c) the payout per sale is reasonable (see my last article), and d) it is something I have some knowledge and passion for (my grandmother and mother were both wellness and nutrition fanatics).

One additional thing that I typically do is search Google for product reviews to make sure that the response is positive - I don't want to market something people think is a waste of money. If all looks good I go ahead and purchase the product for my last validation - making sure the final product is something I truly want to promote. From everything I could see, Isabel's Diet Solution Program looks like a great candidate.

Finding Good Affiliate Product Keywords

Next, I spent a couple of hours determining my core keyword phrases that will be the main driver to this site and get it ranked in Google. My favorite free keyword tools are Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Trellian's Keyword Discovery. At a high level these tools give me enough information to build my phrases. (I suggest that you download the Free Ebook SEO Made Easy to learn more).

Generally I like to focus on three to four key terms that give me search exposure on Google in a way that will be in the top ten results for each. Typically, one is the main term and the other two are lower volume search returns.

The first thing you want to do is identify the key terms associate with the product you're promoting - in my example it is The Diet Solution Program which was definitely a keyword challenge due to the shear number of diet and nutrition products on the market today. I had to dig down the keyword list to find just the magic phrase.

Coming next - how I identified the right keywords for my affiliate product.

Tuning Your SEO For the Mythical Google Sandbox

Time to clean out your online garage this fall? If you're like me you haven't spent the time to go back and clean up old site pages, links and broken, worn out HTML. What a surprise it was when I went back to some of my old posts on this site and other sites only to find a batch of bad links that had either expired or moved. Once I noticed that, I then started thinking about re-examining my entire portfolio.

Part of the reason I embarked on this effort was due to an article I read about the mythical Google sandbox, that is, the temporary place where you live in Google's search engine space when building out a new website, blog or community mashup page.

The deeper issue posed by this article was the effect of proper search engine optimization on your site's ability to jump out of Google's sandbox into a higher ranked page. Whether or not the sandbox exists I still believe that the Google algorithm to change my site rank is what happened to the site I mentioned in my last three articles on The Online Money Making Secret You Shouldn't Know. I happened to notice that my search volume jumped last Feb without really knowing why. This was exactly six months from the time I created the site.

Could I be on to something here? Typically, I can get some faster page rank on new sites (about six weeks) for low volume keyword phrases. But maybe things have changed a bit with Google's formulas. Leaving the mythical sandbox might take longer now. Nevertheless, trying to improve your site is critical to your search engine optimization success. You should always revisit your sites, blogs, lenses, etc. to build for the future.

So here are the things you should do in your fall cleanup:

1. Fix all broken links - if the link is gone then remove the hyperlink tags and just underline the link with a broken link annotation.

2. Check your site's HTML and CSS consistency - have you been fiddling with your site layout but forgetting to check if it is completely clean? Did you happen to leave out an end tag?

3. Optimize for SEO - do your pages have titles that are keyword friendly? Are your page titles optimized to remove the site or blog name on every page?

4. Get your critical section headers optimized - be sure all keyword focused pages have H1 tags on the section or paragraph headers. Move any unnecessary H1 tags away from deep within the main flow of the html - in other words, have the title and H1 tags be near the top of your page source.

5. Highlight keyword phrases - be sure to add bold headings around your optimized keywords.

6. Add alt keys to your images - always add descriptive keywords as alt tags to your site images.

The Online Money Making Secret You Shouldn't Know - Part 3

After getting back from a long vacation in the desert Southwest I was startled to find that my high volume search keyword site had shown some significant growth in the last 2 months (if you haven't read Part 1 you can find it here, or Part 2 which can be found here).

If you remember I mentioned that having a site devoted to a keyword phrase that has extremely high monthly search volume can be a great way to make money online and boost your online marketing strategy. After reviewing one of my own sites I thought I might show you what kind of results you may get (DISCLAIMER - your results will vary!).

I initially built my site on August 21st, 2006 with just a couple of pages but focused on three extremely high volume keyword phrases in the entertainment industry that I thought might work well. I really didn't spend much time on it for the first two months or so but then picked up in October by promoting it as much as I could (as noted in Part 2 of these articles).

My AdSense revenue was limited with my first revenue click occurring on November 4th and my November average revenue being $0.60 / day for a total of $17 - not bad considering I only put two hours into it. Now, this is a bit unfair considering the search engines had from Aug. 21st to about Oct. 20th to index my site before I really pushed the search engine optimization. I'm not sure how long the engines would have taken had I started pushing the site sooner.

In December I focused entirely on adding content with about 7 more pages of site articles and information really ignoring backlinks from external directories, forums, blogs, and articles. My AdSense revenue stayed about the same until about Feb. 12th. I'm not sure why (my guess is my search engine rankings went up) but my visits jumped by a factor of about 8x. This didn't really increase the revenue because the clickthrough rates were low.

After reading some of Brad Callen's books (be sure to subscribe to the Agile Marketer Newsletter to get a free SEO ebook from him, or, really become a SEO expert and buy SEO Elite probably the best SEO package available) I decided to modify my ad placements based on his research. By the end of April I was nearing $1 / day on one site with only five hours of total work.

By continually adding content , promoting and reorging the ads I now had a site that was curving upward in daily hits (from about 30 a day in late 2006 to 700 a day by June 2007). Well, to make a long story short here are my results from August:

By Google's Terms of Service I can't show you the clickthrough rates or page impressions. But you can see the daily earnings for just this single site (I've filtered out all my other AdSense earnings).

So, what's the moral of this story? With NOT a lot of work and some patience, diligence and focused high volume keywords you should be able to do the same fairly easily. If your goal is to work from home then this might just be one part of your arsenal to get started. Just be sure to keep the content flowing.

The Power of Press Releases for SEO Page Rank

One of the best and easiest ways to improve your page rank is to create a press release announcing any new ideas, releases, changes or websites. I'm constantly confused as to why people don't use this avenue much more often. As I mentioned in my last email, writing and publishing releases is very easy to do and has huge benefits for search optimization and ranking.

The primary goal of any press release is to announce some type of exciting event for your business. Extending this model to your website, online press releases provide a means to delivering that information to as many news subscribers as possible. What that means to your own business is one-way links back to your site and subsequent increased traffic. The long term benefit is a good jump in both Google and Yahoo's search rankings which directly affects your bottom line - to make money online.

Let's take a look at my latest release. You simply need a catchy title such as 'Dedicated to Successful Internet Marketing, The Agile Marketer Launches New Site'. You will also need a high level description - mine, for example, is 'Internet strategist, Don James, releases his on line success secrets in the newly launched Agile Marketer website.' The rest is three to four simple paragraphs describing what you key announcement will be. Remember, this can be for any type of new or changed business concept from your sites.

So where do you submit press releases? Some of my favorite press release sites are:

PRWeb.com - a great place to submit releases. It has a page rank of 7 and can really boost your own rankings. The cost varies depending on how much exposure you want. You can go as low as free up to $360 per release. Each level gives you greater distribution and visibility. I typically pay $10 per release just for simple link backs.

Free Press Release - this has a page rank of 5 and is either free or $1 per release (with a minimum funding of $5) for Premiere releases.

I-Newswire - another pr site with a page rank of 7 and has both a free submission and $25 optimized submission.

You can basically name your price for the amount of exposure you need. Whatever you do to increase your site's page rank be sure to always consider using press releases.

Get Listed in Search Engines Early

One thing you must constantly remind yourself about is that successful monetization of any site is directly proportional to the amount of traffic you are receiving. Although this concept may seem simplistic to you it is tremendously important.

There are many ways to drive hits back to your site that I won't go into here. but I really want to focus on starting early. Many people don't realize that you don't have to finish your website in order to start the process of submitting it to search engines and directories. Doing this can work against your sensibilities because you want a finished product first.

The key is to fight your own impulse to perfect everything. I know personally that I have worked many hours on a site and finally have it perfected only to wait 2 months to see it start to appear in search engines, directories and articles. If you submit your site early you'll be that much closer to the immediate benefit.

It typically takes 4-8 weeks to get your site noticed, indexed and listed. My advice is that you submit your site to as many search engines as possible once you have your domain and landing page ready. You must have some original content on your page - I recommend at least 4 pages; a landing page, 2 detailed pages and 1 site map. This becomes even easier if you are using a blogging engine. Simply create 4 entries with the first dated blog entry or the sidebar as your site map.

Another good strategy is to use free articles to prepopulate your first pages or blog entries and then change them later. That way the crawlers will 'see' the content and your site will be properly indexed. Don't worry, you can always change this later without too much impact. Just don't wait too long and try to keep the title and subject the same.

The SEO Book

I just discovered a very popular site called The SEO Book that looks to be the Bible of SEO in the marketplace today. The author is Aaron Wall and I've been reading his material most of the day today. I must say he has fantastic material available and his ebook looks like the real deal.

Just browsing through his blog entries and his articles I found quite a few nuggets of information.

On building niche sites:

"A single person can cover only so many topics. The best way to build honest value is to cover a topic better than anyone else is. Add new insights and commentary. Original thoughts that can't be found elsewhere."

On product web sites:

"Many businesses still end up running far less efficiently than they can because they have websites that do not answer common questions. How is your product different than the competition? How much is shipping? How long will it take for me to get my product? Why should I trust you with my credit card details? Each of these pieces of uncertainty act as holes which tax your business:

-by causing people to trust and value your products and services less
-by causing fewer people to respond to your offers
-by requiring more one on one customer interaction when smart site architecture and clear messaging would have worked"

(Note to Aaron - I hope you don't mind me quoting you!)

Just reading through his 'about' section really reveals what kind of guy Aaron is and how his approach will lead you the right direction. I'm always on the lookout for great, honest online experts and mentors. Aaron's work, as far as I can tell should be followed and studied daily.

I'll be writing more about this site in the future - please go check it out!! Also, be sure to read his blog at The SEO Book Blog link.