Diary on Wealth creation in a Depression

Wikipedia defines Search engine optimization (or SEO for short) as:” the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.”)

Techniques are used to attract people to your site.

I mentioned keywords and meta tags in the last post.  Nothing wrong in using these, provided you don’t overdo it.  It’s a great idea to put keywords in your “URL” ( The web site address: this is found by the  URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, assigned to it ) for example, and in the first few lines of your article or blog post.  And use keywords in your H1 or main Headline tags.  Use them in the Meta tags (An HTML tag placed in the head section of a web page. The tag provides additional information that is not displayed on the page itself ) but don’t stuff them in willy-nilly.  Like I said, stay away from “Black Hat SEO” (for more info on that see my last post on Web positioning

Where to look for keywords in your web positioning strategy

The first place to look for keywords is to explore the marketplace for ideas for “Seed keywords”.  e.g Clickbank.  By going to Clickbank you can look for products there.  Each product serves a market, so it’s a good starting place.  You can also look for current trends in your local magazine rack, or other media channels.  Once you have a generalized phrase you’re interested in, use a tool like Google Keywords tool (which you can Google to find), select the language you want your results displayed in, and click on “Get keyword ideas”.   After that, scroll down to “Additional Keywords to be Considered” and look for phrases with a high enough Search count (over 100000) and that are relevant to your first keyword (which may be a phrase e.g “building a hen house”), and select up to five of these.

Use a good keyword research tool

The next step is to put the phrase or phrases you have just identified in to a proper Keyword research tool that can filter and sort information quickly.  A good tool that I have been recommended on the Year of the Affiliate Web2020 Affiliate marketing forum, and that I recommend,  is Market Samurai. You can filter by clicking on your “Keyword Research” tab to get results on Organic traffic, Adwords traffic, Competition and Commerciality.

A few acronyms for you:

SEOT: is the SEO Traffic and is the number of estimated clicks a website would receive each day for this search phrase, if it were ranked at no.1 on Google’s organic listings;

SEOC: is the SEO Competition, or number of competing pages in Google for a particular keyword phrase.

SEOV: is what the traffic is worth if you would were ranked at position #1 on Google. It’s what you would have to pay in AdWORDS for that amount of traffic for that keyword. Therefore it’s a measure of what that free traffic you get is worth so you can decide if doing SEO for that keyword is worth it.

With this Market Samurai tool you can cut through a lot of unnecessary work in your SEO efforts-and, let me tell you, there’s far too much work as it is!  You will zero in on keywords that have a decent search rate (200+), which equates to an SEOT of 84+; use the PBR (“Phrase to Broad”) tab-which either gives you the broad results that come back on your keyword (e.g “building coops for poultry” might be one, and is obviously not a good match,or you can narrow it down to the exact keyword you want e.g “Building a hen house”); also you will want to put an SEOV of $100 and above, because it is important to be working in a market where people are spending money;and  an SEOC of under 100,000 is advisable, otherwise there will just be too much competition around your keyword.

You’re wanting to find a niche, and then build a site round that niche. Market Samurai will help you optimize your keywords, and the “Year of the Affiliate” e-book will help you on the way to your SEO optimization and web positioning success.

Have a great day!

John Reason,
Brit currently living in New Zealand.
Salesman, teacher, article writer, Internet Marketer.
© 2009
If you liked this blog, subscribe to my RSS here

Click on the image to check out the Year of the affiliate e-book!

RELATED READING:”SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION for DUMMIES”

“Search Engine Optimization for Dummies”

For U.K and European readers Click here

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Web positioning:the quest for Page Ranking

If you’ve been involved in Search Engine Optimization, Web positioning or internet marketing for any length of time you realize the importance of Page Ranking (getting your site pages ranked as high as possible by the Search Engines), in order to get more traffic which in turn creates greater profitability.

“Black Hat” S.E.O

As with any other human endeavour there are the right, acceptable and honest strategies to do something (“White Hat” strategies in the SEO context)-or ,more precisely, strategies that follow Search Engine stipulations and rules; and then those that don’t:the dubious, unethical and downright dishonest ways of getting people to come to your site and have your page rank artificially inflated- these are known as “Black Hat SEO”, for obvious reasons.

Keyword Stuffing

Confusingly, some of the bigger search engines do allow a number of web sites to operate counter to the stated rules. I do not know enough about the subject to comment more, but I have learned that “keyword stuffing” is one of the older black hat tricks-where the “meta tags”, and other tags are crowded with the keyword and synonyms to a ridiculous level. But now this is easily decipherable by search engines looking for “spam” sites. In fact, they look for cyclic activity and posting of content that makes little sense, its only purpose to repeat a number of keywords over and over again.

Duplicate Content And Cloned Pages

Sean Rasmussen in his Internet marketing forum that I joined as a newbie only a few short months ago warns in an article he entitles “Avoid Spamming the Search Engines” :

“Another way for your website to be viewed as spam is to post the same content on more than one page. An occurrence metric used by search engines can find duplicate content pretty quickly. For a true spammer, this is done in order to increase the amount of content with the same keywords and achieve a higher page ranking. For an innocent site owner, this is pure laziness.

Similarly, cloned pages could be seen as a problem. Spammers do this to inundate the net with their keyword-stuffed content. It could also occur if you are trying to get a site online quickly and clone your pages before making adjustments – never a good idea as it could cost you a lot of time in the Google sandbox.”

Link Farms

Another Black hat technique Sean mentions is Paid Links, or paying to get  links to your site.  Getting a lot of inbound and outbound links is one primary way a web page can be selected by the Search Engines for a higher Page Rank, if there are many links.  Black Hat practitioners pay what is called “link farms” to get these links. Wikipedia see here defines these as :”a link farm is any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine (sometimes called spamdexing or spamexing). Other link exchange systems are designed to allow individual websites to selectively exchange links with other relevant websites and are not considered a form of spamdexing.”

Conclusion: write good content and keep keyword density down

He concludes with a piece of advice I will pass on .  He says the way to avoid being censured is to “write quality content and keep keywords to an overall density of less than 3%(italics mine). This is not an exact figure applicable in every circumstance, but it does fit with the amount of keywords you would naturally expect to find in a well-written article.”

Surprise surprise!  When I was interested in submitting manuscripts for books I came to the same conclusion : too much material out there, whether in the Book publishing arena or Internet marketing  is spammy, badly written and /or downright useless.

If you would like to learn more about Affiliate Marketing and Web Positioning and you are an “S.E.O Dummie” like me, I recommend Sean Rasmussen’s “Year of the Affiliate” e-book which you can get simply by clicking below.

John Reason,
Brit currently living in New Zealand.
Salesman, teacher, article writer, Internet Marketer.
© 2009
If you liked this blog, subscribe to my RSS here

Click on the image to check out the Year of the affiliate e-book!

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As I discussed in my last post it was my dentist who was a primary catalyst in getting me involved with affiliate marketing. His fees for his projected course of treatment on both my son and I were somewhere between ludicrous and extraterrestrial. What was worrying was that my dentist, whilst filling my mouth with dental plasticine, found my reactions amusing but never evinced anything other than complete seriousness about the price of his suggested treatment.

My dentist is from India, and despite my jibes, we have actually become friends since his first forays into my mouth uncovered a world of botched, amateur dentistry and unprofessionally-finished fillings by a succession of mediocre British and Kiwi dentists. He has a habit of singing half-in-tune with his soothing background pop music, as he uncovers one job after another requiring great future expense. I am beginning to think he is involved in some kind of Indian hypnotism because the net result is that I walk out in a daze and pay the huge bill that awaits.

But I have been postponing work that needs doing of late, because of the cost. His prognosis however on my son was harder to ignore since he did increasingly look like son-of- Dracula with one half-emerging fang, currently hidden by an upper lip, looking like it wanted to project at 45 degrees from his upper gum! So I am asking myself, as Robert Kiyosaki often advises, “how can I afford to pay for this?” rather than dismissing it as unaffordable. One way, I have concluded, is by implementing Affiliate marketing and SEO strategies.

My problem with Internet marketing up to now has been the mediocre products I have seen and the exorbitant charges that go with them. As a member of the Web2020 Internet marketing forum that Sean Rasmussen has initiated (which you can actually get a free introductory look at), I have found that the costs (so far) are manageable and one gets a LOT of information in return. In comprehensible, non-jargon-filled English too, which helps.

The Year of the Affiliate ebook is for those who need knowledge on the subject of affiliate and internet marketing but don’t want to spend an arm-and-a-leg to get it, and don’t (like me) want to meet a wall of jargon;how to get started;and how to implement the strategies that work. It is well worth getting. As Sean Rasmussen the author says:

Focus your time and efforts on the strategies giving the greatest returns. More than that The Year of the Affiliate and my private member’s forum also reveals other tested and proven strategies virtually guaranteed to give you the best returns on your efforts. This is especially important if you are just starting out and you’ve got information overload.
Avoid common pitfalls and costly mistakes when starting a new money making internet business. The journey ahead is full of potential problems that can literally stop you from succeeding. I’ve already walked through the minefield for you to safely follow my footstep

As he states “owning your own copy of Year of The Affiliate is like having a map to get from Point A to Point B.” I needed the map. The Internet is like a huge minefield, especially if are not computer-savvy, like me. The e-book and the forum will actually walk you through how to set up websites, web positioning and the correct, unspammy way to use free Social media sites like Squidoo to make money. You do not need to have a website, although I have found it is actually important to have a self-hosted website to avoid the pettier Terms and Conditions of other sites which you do have to abide by. You also learn how to avoid being labeled a “Spammer”. There is nothing worse than getting unsolicited viral emails!

With the help of Sean, the team of “Zodiacs” and a friend,I have actually been able to set up four different websites, having had no prior knowledge internet marketing or web design! I am still in the throes of learning, and will keep you posted.

Have a great day!

John Reason,
Brit currently living in New Zealand.
Salesman, teacher, article writer, Internet Marketer.
© 2009
If you liked this blog, subscribe to my RSS here

Click on the image to check out the Year of the affiliate e-book!

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