Celebrate High Search Engine High Rankings for your Website

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It’s time again to talk about the single most important component on your web site, at least as far as the search engines are concerned.

 

Keyword Relevant Content.

 

I’ve ALWAYS maintained that having lot’s of Relevant Keyword Content on your web site is the single most important factor in achieving high search engine rankings.  And frankly, it’s a tough position to take now a days – especially with all of the little tricks and secrets that other folks claim will rocket you to the first page of any search engine WITHOUT doing any real work.

 

In my experience, there are only a few time-tested and proven techniques that I care to use to optimize our web sites for High Search engine rankings.  (All of the other little creepy tricks simply don’t work, so I don’t waste my time.) And when I say “High” I mean in the first 3 pages.  I’m also partial to Google.  AOL and MSN certainly get their share of searches, but Google remains our biggest traffic generator in the search engine world.  So, we optimize our sites for it, and let the chips fall where they may with the others. 

 

Here’s what we do to optimize our web site for Google.

 

First, you need to identify ALL of the Keywords and Keyword Phrases that Overture and Word Tracker tell you are being used to search for your products.  One cautionary note:  I’ve been told by the CEO of Word Tracker that a MAJOR percentage of their site visitors are only using the FREE TRIAL to do their keyword research.

 

This is a bad move for one reason:  The FREE TRIAL for Word Tracker uses Alta Vista and Alta Vista ONLY.  Now, AV is not a bad search engine, but it only gets about 2% of the worlds searches.  TWO percent.  Now, if you’re like me, you don’t want to base your entire business strategy on a sample that only encompasses 2 percent of the marketplace.  Do yourself a favor, spend the 8 dollars for a single day access and search ALL of the engines on Word Tracker.

 

Think about it – You spend 50$ a month for your Yahoo! Store, $10 for a merchant account, and maybe you spend some money on the pay per click search engines to drive traffic to your site.

 

What if you’ve targeted the WRONG keywords?  What if you’ve based your entire marketing strategy on a sample of only 2% of the entire marketplace?  Don’t throw good money away, friend – spend the $8 and know for sure!

 

Also, when you’re doing your Overture research, keep in mind that Overture gets between 10%-20% of the worlds searches.  So, if you’re tracking your Demand Numbers, you need to consider that if Overture is getting 1,000 searches a month for a particular keyword phrase, Google might get 8,000 searches in that same month for that same phrase…

 

The point is, you need to identify keyword phrases with Overture, and verify keyword phrases with Word Tracker.

 

We also use an incredible little Microsoft Excel Macro called the Market Matrix.

This Macro actually allows you to automatically fetch several different keywords, and their Supply and Demand Information from Overture, Yahoo! SearchWho, Google and Ebay!

 

You can input 25 potential product ideas at a time, then this awesome little software runs out to the Internet and returns a list of supply and demand numbers right into your spreadsheet!

 

You can save the spreadsheet or print it out for immediate analysis, and there is no limit to the number of product or KEYWORD searches that you can gather information for.

 

 

What the heck is a keyword phrase anyway?

 

It’s when a Search Engine is searched with more than one word.  I’ll tell you why this is important – without my usual run-on.

 

“Single Keywords searches are from Shoppers – Keyword Phrase searches are from Buyers”

 

End of Case.

 

 

Once you’ve assembled your now Relevant Keyword phrases. – you need to write content. Your content is your web page copy , your sales message, your product description… It’s what your web site is about.

 

Then, use each one of your keyword phrases 3-5 times for every 100 words you have on that page.  That’s a keyword density that’s working for us right now.  We put 40% of our keywords in the first 25% of our page, 25% in the middle 50% of our page, and then the other 35% in the last 25% of our page.  Lots of keyword phrases at the beginning and the end, and some in the middle -  sort of like an hourglass.

 

If you have an image on that page, its name should be keyword relevant.  Don’t call it “image34.jpg”. 

 

If you have an HTML link on that page, use your keyword phrases in the link text.

 

That’s it for our stores.  Then, we start making more cheap little mini-sites that do nothing but promote them.

 

Here’s how:

 

We have a 200 domain account with Newwebsite.  We purchase a keyword relevant domain from Godaddy.  Then in Microsoft Front Page, we write “Keyword Friendly Content Article Pages” that do nothing but talk about the products in our stores.  The trick is, these KFCAP’s have our keyword phrases sprinkled through-out the page.  Then, they only link to our Yahoo! Stores. 

 

Now, not only do we have more than one page in the search engines for that product, our Yahoo! Stores are also getting “Incomming Link Popularity” because the search engines see that our Cheap Mini-Site is pointing at our Yahoo! Store.  So, the search engine spider reason that our store must be important if another web site is pointing to it…

 

Does it work?

 

Yes – without a doubt.  Let me show you how well:

 

Here’s a small list of keyword phrases that we target for a2armory.  Make no mistake – we TARGET these words.  We’ve used Word Tracker AND Overture to ascertain the Demand that these keywords have in the marketplace.  We didn’t guess – we researched.

 

As it happens, the keywords that rank the highest in the search engines ALSO correspond to our most successful products.  Funny, that.

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Medieval Helmet - 1st Page in Google - Actually #1!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Medieval Tapestry - 1st Page in Google

 

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Medieval Shield - 1st Page in Google

 

 

 

 

SCA Shield - 1st Page in Google  

 

 

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Lord of the Rings Swords - 2nd Page in Google  

 

 

 

 

Blunderbuss - 2nd Page in Google  

 

 

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Medieval Knight Armor - 1st Page in Google  

 

 

 

 

Braveheart Sword - 2nd Page in Google  

 

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Medieval Knight Helmet - 1st Page in Google  

 

 

 

 

Hadhafang (It's the Sword that Arwen used in Lord of the Rings - I'm a Geek)

 2nd Page in Google  

 

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And of course,

How to Build a Yahoo store. - 1st Page in Google  

 

 

 

I'm not bragging - I just want to tell you that Search Engine Optimization WORKS!

 

It’s not a gimmick, unless someone claims that they can do it with no work.  Getting good search engine rankings requires critical thinking and quantitative research.  The best part is, you don’t have to guess what’s going to work!  Word Tracker and Overture will provide you with just about every single bit of data that you need to effectively optimize your web site, Yahoo! Store, Affiliate Site – whatever!  You just have to make a commitment to use them, and more importantly APPLY the data.

 

 

Now, I’m not smart, but I read a lot.  Here’s my list of indispensable search engine resources.  I doubt that I would have a single top 30 position with out them.

 

 

Webmaster Reference – Sean Burns’ "Rankings Revealed" is probably one of the most succinct, relevant and straight to the point search engine books out there.  It’s not too long, it’s cheap, and he updates it many times a year.  There is a short cut to it on my desktop.

 

Planet Ocean – Publishes their book every month.  It has the outstanding benefit of containing all of the keyword density data that search engines are using to rank sites for that particular months publication.  That’s the tip of the iceberg.  It’s pricey, but since I became a member, Audrey and I have realized 30% better search engine rankings. 

 

James Martel’s Affiliate Marketers Handbook – Now, I realize that this is NOT a pure search engine optimization book, but James’ strategy for interweaving links WITHIN your site get super high marks from Audrey. She used it get top 10 positions with some of her affiliate sites, and once she saw how good it worked, she applied it to the Yahoo! Stores.  Guess what?  It works. And it should!  James bases his strategies all around keyword friendly content pages…

 

 

And of course – Michael Campbell’s Nothing But Net – Not only does Michael cover the ins and outs of search engine optimization, this book is where we got all of our ideas for creating Cheap Mini-Sites that point back to our stores.  He calls it a Mini-Net, and basically, using cheap web hosting, you create a bunch of sites that all link to one another, then link to the site where you sell products.  It’s like putting a mess-o billboards out on the Internet all fishing for customers for your products.  It’s also has the side effect of increasing your link popularity.  Nifty!

 

Honestly, those are the only 4 resources that Audrey and I used to get the rankings that you see above. 

 

All right – just so you know, Chris Malta is launching his new web site in the next 3 weeks or so.  We talked on Monday, and I have to say that Audrey and I are totally stoked!  He’s talking about doubling the size of the directory, and adding some fantastic new features to his already awesome web resources.  Keep an eye on this guy!  His company’s web site ranks higher and gets more traffic than 99.2% of all of the web sites on the whole Internet.  He’s doing something incredibly right!  He calls it “Serving Content”.  Wow – what a concept!

 

Take Care!