Hey, You're New Here! We love new people.

It would be great seeing you back again, so please subscribe by RSS feed, or get updates by email, before you forget!

I’m not on it, but then I only talk about one search engine, once a week. Though as you can see below, that may change.

You may as well visit them today, I think I stayed up too long.
Here’s a quote:

“One aspect of keeping up an updated Search Engine News site is the constant monitoring of RSS feeds, news stories, group emails, and, of course, blogs. Tonight I was skimming over Aaron Wall’s (a frequent contributor to Search Engine Journal) blog, SEOBook.com.

Aaron recently updated his working list of Search Engine Blogs and I thought it that publishing the list on Search Engine Journal would be a great tribute to Aaron’s hard work, and the hard work of all of the bloggers out there who are spreading the ever-changing news of the search engine industry.”

And here’s the link:
� Search Engine Blogs - The Great List of Search News Bloggers -

Popularity: unranked [?]

convert this post to pdf.

In this mini-cast:

• Why I previously changed the site around to lose my top rankings for “free traffic” - and why I changed my site back to re-cover first page listing for the hard-to-acquire term in both Google and Yahoo.

• A tip you can use with your site to duplicate some of my results - no one is using this. Get the top spot for your desired keyword for yourself using this tip and the one below.

  ( It’s something I’ve said before, but this tells you a little bit more about why you should use it.)

• Why this tip, used correctly with the method in the Google - Blog connection is a sure-fire way to get that first page listing in both Yahoo and Google. Every site I’ve ever seen use this tip correctly has been successful getting ranking for harder terms, including mine.

Popularity: unranked [?]

convert this post to pdf.

Okay, time for the home stretch.

You can forget about the group thing, we’re done with that. We’re all going to do the same steps together.

For this step, you either need to

1- take a free trial of Wordtracker, or

2- go to Nichebot or another Keyword Suggestion Tool.

Once you’ve logged in to your chosen keyword suggestion tool, we’re going to drill down into less competitive terms to focus on. Then I’ll tell you my suggested process for using the tool, and what you’ll need to read to make sure you get in Google, stay in for that term, and then leverage yourself into the best position to take a crack at ranking for harder terms that will get you more traffic.

Okay. Now we discussed earlier why you need to forget about the highest traffic terms for now.

We’re going to go through this process twice, once for your alternate keyword that you picked today, and once for a subset of the keywords you wanted originally.

Type the keyword you picked today into your keyword suggestion tool.

You’ll get a list of related keywords to that term. Select the second or third one down on the list (on the left side if you’re using Digital Point.) Remember, you don’t want the one with the highest traffic yield yet.

Next, you should be able to click on the hyperlinked term and see an even smaller list of terms. Save all these terms in Notepad or some other text utility. Even better, email them to yourself for save keeping.

Now, you’re going to take those keywords and analyze them using Search Guild’s Keyword Difficulty Tool. You need your API tool for this.

Now this takes your API key and uses it to access Google’s database. It then analyzes it with their program to tell you the likelihood of you getting that term.

Analyze each one, and save the result with your keywords.

In that list, you should have some that are ranked as easy or intermediate. Those are the ones you want to target your site towards.

If you don’t get one that is easy or intermediate, go back and put those keywords in the keyword suggestion tool you were looking and find subsets of that group. For example, if you picked “internet marketing” and got the result “practically impossible” from Search Guild, then you want to try the subset term “internet marketing services”, which is ranked as intermediate.

Save the ones that are easy or intermediate for now. Then go back and repeat this process with the term you originally wanted before you started these excercises.

Now you have a list of keywords to use for your site.

So now you can use these keywords and re-target your site. You’ll want to improve your site architecture, correct your meta tags to target one term for each page, get one-way links back to your site that are themed to your topic and optimize all the images on your site.

Sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it?

Well, if you can cut, paste and type, I have a better solution.

Start blogging. And if you’re already blogging and aren’t getting the results you were promised, then have a look at my solution to your problem.

I’ll be back later on today. I’ve been up 36 hours and I’m exhausted….

Popularity: unranked [?]

convert this post to pdf.

Ready? Let’s find you a better keyword. The exercises are slightly different for each group.

Group One Exercises

If you were in group one, the group that had the same theme as the word you want to rank for, go to your browser, load up Google, and search for your site. If you’re coming up with the keyword you wanted on the first page, and you’re happy with the traffic you’re getting from search engines, what are you doing here? Go count your money!

Seriously. If you’re getting the traffic, you have the right product for the market that is searching for that keyword, and you’re making good conversions to sales, then honestly, you don’t need to do this exercise.

If you are getting the traffic but not making sales, go back to the research on your product, and have somone evaluate your site. You’re losing visitors between your product/service and your sales page or site design. They either can’t find what you sell or don’t want it.

If you are making sales but not enough of them, then learn how to increase your conversion rate. It could be as simple as hiring a professional copywriter or doing some research in article directories.

So that takes care of that crowd. If you’re still here because you didn’t show up in Google, then here’s where you’re going wrong.

That’s the wrong term to shoot for. Either it’s too competitive, or not targeted enough.

So here’s what you do.

Take that term and go to Search Guild. Find out what its difficulty ranking is. If it’s harder than intermediate, you’re wasting your time. You want “easy” or “intermediate” as a result. Later on, you should be able to climb into a hard or advanced keyword from there.

You can do the same at Wordtracker, just sort your results by KEI. The higher the Keyword Effectiveness Index is, the easier it will be to get that term. We’ll take that term, as well as your originally desired keyword, and go to step three.

Group Two Exercises

What we need to do with your site is harder, and we don’t have space to go in-depth here. You need to brainstorm better keywords. If you’re having trouble with this, use the keyword research“>OneLook Dictionary Search we discussed on Google Tuesdays.

Start with the keyword you originally wanted, and brainstorm related terms. Take those results and the keyword you wanted at first, and go to Step Three. I’ll be with you there in about twenty minutes.

Popularity: unranked [?]

convert this post to pdf.

Okay, fire up those keyword research“>keyword research Tools and let’s get your site some more traffic!

The first site we’re going to is Spannerworks.com. We’re going to use their Keyword Density Analyzer (Analyser for those in the UK :-D). This will determine what keywords your site is currently optimized for.

Click that link to load it up and enter your link.

Look at the second list of links, the two-word phrases. That, in all likelihood, is what Google or Yahoo THINKS your site is about.

If your site is about that, great. You can move on to the next step.

If not, you need to pick a better keyword. To illustrate why, grab your API key and let’s go to GoRank.com.

Create an account, enter your Google API key (don’t panic if you see some database errors at the top of the page. That’s because your key hasn’t been entered.)

Now use their Keyword Density Analyzer, which allows you to pick a keyword that you believe your site is related to. Pick one and put it in.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Your site, as we saw in the last exercise, is not related to those keyword terms, as far as a search engine is concerned.

So what do you do now? We pick a better keyword for your site. You have a lot more work to do than the people in group one do.

Let’s all, both groups, go to step two. Remember which group you’re in.

Popularity: unranked [?]

convert this post to pdf.

Okay, here’s an overview.

(Make sure you’ve got your Google API Key. You’ll need it for two of these steps. It should have been emailed to you instantly when you applied.)

In Step One, we’re going to see what theme your site gives the impression that it’s about. Then we’re going to compare it to what keyword you want.

In Step Two, we’ll pick a better keyword for your site.

In Step Three, you’ll find out what you have to do to make your site better address the kinds of keywords you want.

Popularity: unranked [?]

convert this post to pdf.