Times are Changing in Internet Marketing
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin
This is more of a rant, and even though I haven’t posted in a long time and I just let the domain “age”, I feel like writing about something that should concern everyone in Internet Marketing.
Whether you like it or not, if you in the Internet Marketing and SEO businesses, times are really changing. Now, you have two options:
- adapt and evolve;
- change your field of activity and get into something a little bit less competitive.
If you rely on Google as an important source of traffic and/or passive income, you need to know that the days of making easy money by spamming its index with spammy links and crappy content are near the end. You need to find new ways of actually producing quality content and do real Marketing on your site. The kind of marketing that attracts valuable links. Sure, tricks will always exist, but a change in mentality is needed if you want to play this game from now on.
I’ve always respected people like Griz who had the courage to speak up and reveal their methods, but I can’t help but wonder: “Was all this really necessary?”. Or this? The fact that people like Griz have a massive influence is undeniable, and the little snowball that he started has turned into a full avalanche. Google noticed it and decided to finally deal with the loophole. The message is clear: start producing quality content or you might find your 100 sites deindexed overnight.
Also, I don’t know if you have noticed, but Google’s algorithm has changed a lot in the last few months. For example, now it’s much easier to trigger a filter if you produce too many links at once. Also, a lot of weight is being put on the overall authority of your domain. If you spend the time and create an authority resource in a field that you actually like and know something about, you might just create a stable online business. And the simple facts are:
- Google doesn’t like small sniper sites created for a specific keyword and monetized with Adsense;
- Building links is much harder nowadays if you don’t know what you are doing;
- Even if you manage to build those links, they might be useless. Google has the financial resources to inspect every existing CMS for ways in which it can be abused and discount those links.
However, not all is grim. You can still make it in Internet Marketing if you follow two simple rules, which are:
- create quality content;
- learn how to market it in order to attract good links.
Yes, there’s a lot more involved into the process, but that summarizes it perfectly. Create a business and treat it accordingly. With the knowledge that you got from people like Griz, you might just make it.
How to Get the Most Data out of Your Keyword Research Efforts
Posted by Cata in Keyword Research on December 6, 2009
Great Barrier Reef - Yes I know, totally unrelated
“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” - Oscar Wilde
First, a basic definition. Keyword research is the effort of finding profitable keywords for your website, and it can be applied either to organic traffic or paid traffic.
Secondly, another basic definition. What is a profitable keyword? The profit potential of a keyword is given by two basic characteristics: how much traffic it gets, and how targeted it is. While the former is an absolute value (keyword x gets on average y searches/month), the latter is relative to your website. A keyword like “buy women’s size 8 shoes” is very targeted, but only if you have a website that sells shoes.
Ever since Google’s keyword tool started giving traffic numbers, it is the king of keyword research tools, helped by the fact that Overture was already dead. Nowadays, everyone and their mothers use Google’s tool, and for a good reason. It has the most relevant data to what is really going on in search, because Google has the biggest market share. Also, it is free.
Additional Tools to Consider
However, when I do my keyword research, I don’t limit myself to Google’s keyword tool because in big verticals you may discover that Google’s keyword tool sometimes omits big niches. Also, I believe that no single keyword tool is perfect. So when it comes to keyword aggregators, I also use Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker and Microsoft’s Adcenter. You won’t believe how many gold nuggets I’ve found using these last 3 tools, also helped by the fact that if they don’t show up in Google’s tool, they have less competition.
Quintura is another good tool that may help you discover new verticals in your market. Also, pay attention to Google’s suggestions that are embedded directly into search, at the bottom of the SERPs. I am talking about that cool “Searches related to: {keyword}” feature that Google has.
How to Analyze the Data
Determining the profit potential of a specific keyword is not an exact science, but there are specific things you can do in order to get a pretty good idea. I analyze the keywords using these 2 queries directly into Google:
Allintitle:keyword
Inanchor:”Keyword”
A low allintitle can mean that the keyword doesn’t have many pages specifically optimized for it, while a low inanchor can mean that you may need only a few backlinks in order to rank well for that keyword. But again, don’t make the mistake of thinking that these numbers are perfect. Sometimes they get skewed, sometimes they can simply give you the wrong impression. For example, a high allintitle doesn’t always necessarily mean that the respective keyword is impossible to dominate, because that big allintitle number can simply come from only a handful of sites that have many duplicate pages. Same thing applies to inanchor, as a high number can mean that one or two sites are getting many sitewide links.
And this is where the SERP analysis for that respective keyword comes into place. Here, you need to look at the authority of the websites that are ranking. At a first glance, finding the exact keyword match in the titles of all the pages from the top 10 may be a bad sign. This usually happens in the overcrowded Clickbank markets, where the affiliates have slapped thousands upon thousands of articles on tons of sites. Authority sites are sometimes tiring to outrank, so that’s why you need to pick your battles carefully.
If you find that the top 10 is filled with semi-related pages on domains that don’t have that much authority, that’s your golden ticket. Of course, everything also depends on the scale of your project and how much you are willing to invest. But in the end, either it’s a large project or just a small niche site, keyword research and the way in which you know how to conduct it is the foundation of your success.
How “Unique” Is Your Content?
Posted by Cata in General SEO on December 6, 2009
“Action is the foundational key to all success.” - Pablo Picasso
Most people when they label a piece of content as being “unique”, usually refer to the fact that the respective bit of text passes Copyscape and is found on a website only. In reality, you should take a more holistic approach towards what unique content really is.
First of all, unique content doesn’t necessarily mean text. What if the visitor is expecting to see a video or an image? I don’t really think that people looking for “winter wallpapers” want to find a site filled with text. When creating a website, you don’t necessarily have to look at it as a collection of articles even though text still is and will be for the foreseeable future the most potent onpage factor and the most delicious food for the Googlebot.
So what are the most important characteristics of unique content?
- content which is relevant to the subject;
- content which is not found elsewhere (yes, indeed);
- content which is conceptually unique for its subject.
The third point is the one that is the most difficult to attain. In this informational age, most of the existing content is just a spin-off of the already existing information. However, when you build your own sites, even if you don’t manage to get that elusive third point right, do not shoot yourself in the foot by not respecting at least the first two points.
By respecting those first two points, you guard your online properties. You never know when your sites need to to pass a manual review. Do you really want to present yourself with poor content that looks like it was written by a 2 year old or it was software generated? Quality content is probably the most important security measure you can take in this regard. Quality content is also what may in the long run help you attain natural citations (especially if you know how to give it a little push).
So here is a good definition for you, in just a few words:
Unique content = content capable of getting natural citations.
Now read that again and think about this: would you naturally link to your own content?
And finally, let’s get to another essential aspect: does your content convert? You must understand that quality content doesn’t necessarily mean poor conversion. As a matter of fact, if you know how to choose your keywords and your target audience, the whole equation becomes:
quality content = high conversions
Of course, you need to consider other aspects like design when increasing the conversion power of your pages, but that’s an entirely different story.
Technique 1: The Small Niche Site and the Reverse Niche Site
Posted by Cata in Internet Marketing Techniques on November 29, 2009
Random beach house to help you motivate
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Small niche sites are always a good way to start your journey in Internet Marketing. They have some advantages that are simply too good to pass up.
1. They are easy to set up;
2. They take little time to develop;
3. They take little time to promote;
4. They are cheap to produce;
5. They can be produced en-masse.
First of all, let’s establish what a small niche site is. In my own personal view, a small niche site is one that has 5-10 pages of content, and this content is very targeted to a specific niche (or keyword phrase).
How do you choose a good keyword for a small niche site?
Debates over choosing the right keywords are almost as old as the Internet itself (when you think about it, it’s actually not that long). Personally, I have a system that comprises of two parts: initial keyword analysis and SERP analysis. How to choose the right keywords will be the subject of a whole new post, since I have my own specific way of doing it.
For the setup, I use Wordpress or plain html. I have several Wordpress themes which were simple to start with. I also modified the codes of the respective themes until I got exactly what I wanted in terms of power of conversion. The basic idea here is to keep it stupid simple for the visitors. Since you won’t have so many of them, you need to make sure they convert in a good percentage. I don’t recommend using the same html or Wordpress theme for all your sites.
If you have a good system in place, the development can only take a few hours, and that’s if you write your own articles. If you outsource the articles, all you need to do is to setup Wordpress, upload the articles and do the onpage SEO. After this, you can get to the important part, which is link building.
My advice is to keep things slow and steady for the first few weeks. I like to regularly deploy what I call a “linking blitz”, maybe once a month. Also, remember this: your link building techniques are your bread and butter, and most types of links are only as good as the number of people who know how to get them (read: the fewer the people that know about them, the better). Make sure you devote enough time for this and for refining your techniques. By doing this, you can avoid spamming sites and you can concentrate on getting relevant links that help you the most, while really networking in the niche. This will yield the best results in the long run. Also, an important thing to remember when building a small niche site is to get your long tail keyword in the URL, the exact keyword if possible. Sacrifice getting a .com and go get an .org or a .net, because this is very important.
But here’s the good part. There’s a lot of debate going on the subject: should you build authority sites or small niche sites? Well, these two types of sites don’t necessarily contradict themselves. As a matter of fact, what you initially start as a small niche site can easily turn into a more powerful authority site on the subject.
Most people when they start a niche site and achieve good rankings, simply stop there. But why stop there, when you can harness the already existing authority in order to target more keywords from the respective niche? For example, let’s say you have a keyword like “hardwood floor installation” (I’m not saying it’s good, it’s just an example). When you have gained enough authority so that you are in top 10 for this keyword (well, preferably top 3), you will also have gained authority to tackle other related keywords from the same niche quite easily, much easier than what it would take you to setup new sites. You would be able to go for keywords like “refinishing hardwood floors”, “engineered hardwood flooring”, etc. And if you are really good, you could even go for “hardwood flooring”.
Don’t think that because you have your initial keyword in the URL, you can’t expand. Who says that? Are you going for heavy branding? It’s not the case of small niche sites. Bear in mind that most of your visitors will not even remember your URL after they leave your site.
So what initially starts as a small project can scale up to be quite the money maker. Of course, you will have your flops, but if you work hard enough, you will also have success. Now go and build yourself an online business!
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