Do you write articles that tailor to what you feel are the best “keyword phrases” for your niche? Maybe you are into the school of thought that says smaller niche blogs make more money than broad-based websites. Maybe you are right, and maybe you are wrong. However, there is one time of the year that we can all capitalize off of a train of thought that exists in a majority of users on the internet and around the world. What am I talking about? People that look for things on the internet want the best, the top, the most used and well-regarded products and services available… and the new year is the perfect time to make serious money off of this trend.

One of the best ways to cash in on affiliate marketing trends is to nail those search terms that people are searching for right before making a purchase. Knowing that people nowadays never settle for second best, the start of a new year always presents a great time to cash in on new list… particularly ones that rank “top tens” or “best five” of 2009.

Is It Really That Easy?

In reality… this is actually very easy to accomplish. In fact, a post the I wrote when my blog was a virtual infant, early in 2008, is still getting me referrals to this date. While I was relatively inexperienced at the time I wrote it, and did absolutely no marketing for the keyword phrase, I am still on the top pages for terms like “top online brokers” and “top brokers 2008.” Yes, this post that I wrote on the” best” stock market brokers has gotten me great traffic, and awesome conversions to the service that I recommended as the “number one” online stock market broker, Scottrade.

Unfortunately for me, the service that I recommend (Scottrade) gives no cash for new referrals… instead lending “free trades” to my account. This is fine for me, because I like to trade stocks and they are normally $7 a trade. However, I am going to attempt this list again now that a new year has hit, and hope to target a better paying affiliate program. This is just one example that I have chosen to show you of many… and by devoting some posts in 2009 to making “top tens” or whatever you’d like to write about (with the intention of targetting affiliate offers, of course), you will find yourself in the money before you know it!

How Do I Know What To Write About?

Many internet marketers go into campaigns not exactly knowing what they will be looking for. Instead, you can simply open up an account you have somewhere, for example Commission Junction (one of my favorites, and one of the largest), and search through their offers until you find a particular niche that has some great offers. The thing is, you really only need one or two good offers. Why? Who in there right mind goes and reads an article about the “top ten widgets” and buys something that isn’t #1? That’s right… not too many people!

Step One:
First, we need to search out a niche that we think will be good all year round. For example, let’s try to do a list on online dating. Especially around Valentine’s Day, this seems to be a hot trend that has been picking up steam as we get more and more into the future. Perhaps this is a strong long-term trend that we could be targeting? Instead of thinking “online dating,” let’s give ourselves a better shot and try “online dating for women” in the title of our article. Who knows, you could still hit on Google for “online dating” with this strategy!

Step Two:
Now that we have searched around a bit and found some offers that we like… all we really need to do is to compare what the affiliate programs are offering. Additionally, I usually check out what I am looking at… just to make sure that the company isn’t a “rip off” to anyone reading. You always should aim to stay ethical in everything that you do! I like offers that give a fixed payment rather than a percentage (just a preference)… so let’s use the top offer “MatchMaker.com”.

I’ve checked things out, and this company is reputable as a dating website. So, I would form my list… perhaps name the article in WordPress “The Top Five Online Dating Websites for Women in 2009″ and put MatchMaker.com (with my affiliate link cleverly inserted) as the number one result! This should ring in some top placements from Google with a little luck, and bring in the cash for the new year!

Bottom Line: Don’t let 2009 go to waste… turn it into $2009! You really can capitalize on “best of 2009″ lists by using the method above as I have done successfully in the past. But remember, don’t turn into an article spammer and never recommend a bad product for the referral money. In the long run, stick true to your guns and recommend what you truly feel is the best product… and you will be a wealthier individual!

-Jimvesting

Alright, we’re ready to start demolishing our competitors in the search engine rankings, eh? In part one, we explored our niche, ran some keyword research and got our game plan ready. In part two, we set up an effective landing page to prepare us for search engine rankings. Lesson learned: it’s a lot easier to rank for your targeted phrase if you have a page or post to point things to, rather than your main domain name.

So we have our research, we have our targeted term and we have a page to point traffic to… what’s next? That’s right. Marketing time! I’m a big proponent in what I like to refer to as “friendly” marketing strategies. Essentially, you can get those high Google search engine rankings by getting your targeted term linked. Half of this link juice should come from your friends and bloggers you know, and half should come from “bum marketing” of random articles and posts around the internet. This combination can easily get you that #1 ranking you’ve been dreaming of!

What We Want

Before I get into a few “friendly” marketing techniques, let’s discuss briefly what we want to do. Google’s ranking metric involves a lot more than just content. In order to rank highly in Google searches (which means higher traffic and more money in your pocket), you need to be well received. Google ranks websites by the amount of, and the quality of, links that you have pointing to your blog from other sources. While you could go around grabbing links from other websites pointing to your landing page, you are better off locking in high-quality (high PageRank, etc.) links back to your website.

One more thing, in order to boost your SERPs, we want things linked like this: targeted term. Get it? When you write articles, link your targeted term to your landing page! When you exchange links, link your targeted term to your landing page! When you write up a guest post… guess what?… link your targeted term to your landing page! For me, this would mean I am looking to link my phrase, make money online, back to the landing page I had set up. Now let’s get started!

Friendly Marketing #1: Link Exchanges

As a blog owner, chances are you already have a blogroll set up. A blogroll is where most writers exchange links between other writers they like in their niche. This is a mutual exchange and a great way to increase the amount of traffic back and forth between websites. Typically, these are linked with the name of your website… but most people will be more and willing to change things up for you.

So the first niche marketing strategy to increase your SERPs is to ask anyone who is exchanging links with your blog to change the anchor text to your targeted phrase, and to change the URL destination to your landing page. It shouldn’t be hard to get this accomplished, as everyone you need should be on your own list. Go around and email people the changes, and that’s an instant 10-15 average links back to your website on your targeted phrases. If you are a good blogger, these are probably high-quality links and it can really put you on the right track!

Friendly Marketing #2: Make A Compelling Case Study

What’s one thing that a lot of bloggers want? Free, original and high-quality content for their blogs. If you can provide this to them, chances are they will be more than willing to get you a nice link back to your website. So here’s the concept: you make a list, a case study or anything popular that will look nice and compile it in a .txt or .doc file for download. Essentially, what you plan on doing is offering a free high-quality article to anyone that wants it, and make it available for download. Though the post is excellent original material, you will get your time made worthwhile by including your targeted phrase somewhere in the post and linking it to your landing page.

One example I found of this was on MoneyBites.com. Max prepared a list of Market Leverage contest sponsors since they were running a TON of contests that month. Other bloggers wanted to re-publish the list he made, so they downloaded his file for free and did just that! Since Max hid his hyperlinked anchor text in the “free case study,” he got a free backlink that Google sees as a major plus in rankings.

This is a method that honestly isn’t used a whole lot in the blogging community. If you can make some quality content that will get redistributed around the net (on authority websites preferably), you are going to see your SERPs increase dramatically.

Friendly Marketing #3: Start a Guest Post Campaign

Going with the theme, generating content for other bloggers is never a bad thing… and you will see your stuff posted successfully in a majority of your attempts. Many people like to take the route of guest posting to get this goal accomplished. Essentially, in a guest post you write something general, typically using a list, about the niche you are in. This should be something smart, creative or witty… basically a space filler for another blogger who would rather take a day off.

Guest blogging is really an unwritten rule on the internet. Almost nobody openly requests guest posts, but you should find that by emailing content around and asking, you can get your articles placed on top blogs for free. With every guest post, you’ll be able to, again, slip in your anchor text cleverly linked to the landing page we set up. Don’t want to write these “fluff” posts? Why not hire a freelance writer to do this for you! There are plenty of places to go if this is your cup of tea, and I think that Digital Point forums are a great place to start looking.

Bottom Line: You have the tools to market your blog to the top of the Google search engine results. Remember, to rank high for a specific keyword phrase, we need to partake in targeted marketing techniques like the three “friendly” niche strategies I have laid out here. Next week we will get into “bum” marketing… the other (and just as effective) technique to bump your blog to the top spot on the results page.

-Jimvesting

Welcome back to part two of my Google Keyword SEO project, right here on theNetFool.com. In case you missed it, in week one we talked about setting up the stage for our keyword domination. By exploring the best keyword phrases available, we can learn how to rank higher for more terms… and bring in more traffic through organic hits. After a bit of brainstorming, it’s time to start phase two of the process… so let’s get started!

Understanding The Reasoning

What we want to do here to maximize the chances that Google gives us a top spot on serach results is make a new post/page in WordPress that is dedicated to search engine optimization. But why on Earth would I want to go through the seemingly unnecessary steps of setting up a dedicated page for this, when I could just as easily direct traffic to my homepage? Google worships accuracy.

Accuracy? What the heck is he talking about, right? When you search for a term in Google, they are processing this keyword phrase through every indexed website on the internet to find the best result. Because of this, Google naturally feels that an actual webpage (as opposed to a website) is a far better resource than a generalized website. They give the “page” a lot more juice than the “site.”

The “Link Bait” Landing Page

I am a firm believer that the most effective way to rank well in Google is to direct targeted keyword traffic toward a landing page that you designate on your blog. Following from this, the most effective landing page, in my opinion, is a “link bait” page. What do I mean by this? Basically, we want to write up a page that is relevant to our targeted phrase that will perform well in social media websites.

What is a link bait page? I actually wrote up a killer guide on link bait pages over the summer, so if you do not understand the concept or simply want to sharpen your skills, I suggest that you check it out. To summarize for the purposes of this article, I like to use lists of “top tens” or “top fives” as an easy template to rank well in social media sites.

In addition to a section about the topic that you are targeting, you should feel free to add in a top section to promote your own website, product or blog. For my landing page, I decided to use a horizontal bar on my page to separate a top “promo” section of my actual blog from the bottom “content” section that has my link bait material. This one-two combo punch is a pretty neat way to provide a linkable section while not missing out on potential revenue.

Setting It All Up

Now that we understand what we are doing, let’s set up a winning landing page that will have us ranking higher than anyone else in Google search engines. As you can see, this has already worked for my other blog “Bullish Bankers,” as we have the #2 slot for the popular keyword “investing ideas.” I am fully intending on exploiting this again for the phrase “make money online,” and feel like I can pull it off.

I feel like it is much better to make a “page” in WordPress, than a “page.” Why? More static. In addition, I would go so far as to modify a custom page template just so you can have a wider content area to deal with. Not sure how to do this? WordPress wrote a nice walkthrough for just this purpose. Don’t forget that you can exclude pages from your menu if you don’t want them to appear when you publish with this neat “Exclude Pages” plugin for your blog.

For Jimvesting’s link bait landing page, I have decided to write about how to make money online called, “Ten Fool-Proof Ways to Make Money Online.” Notice how my targeted term is in the title, and how i have added my targeted phrase again to the page description via All-In-One SEO. By having your phrase in the title and page description, you are going to maximize your ability to rank well in Google. Getting back on track, I wrote about the best ways to make money online because it is a subject that i feel places like Digg and StumbleUpon will eat up once I start to promote it on them. Consider social media when you write your link bait post.

On top of writing about a popular and catchy subject, I have attempted to maximize the effectiveness of this landing page by adding an obvious newsletter subscription option to anyone who sees the page. Along with this is a list of reasons why subscribing is a smart thing to do, and I even offer a free eBook to boot! Offering an option to subscribe to the traffic that comes in could not only maintain a high search ranking, but could increase my RSS subscribers as well!

Bottom Line: The landing page could just be the most effective part of your marketing campaign. Understanding how Google looks at pages versus websites is quite important in determining the best way to attack this problem. Over the next few days, we are going to take a look back on our link bait page and find out how to maximize the value behind it to drive our success.

-Jimvesting

Blog traffic has become one of the most desired commodities around, and a well-received website can command increased RSS numbers, higher advertising power and a niche authority that can be leveraged for big gains. Organic traffic comes primarily from three sources: direct traffic, referred traffic and search engine rankings. Understandably, we can’t control the first two very well because they rely heavily on pre-established reputations; therefore, let’s see how we can manipulate our search engine ranking positions for higher traffic to our blog.

But how do you take a blog from zero to hero? How does anyone come up on the first page of Google results anyway? It’s really got little to do with actual power, Google results are driven by linking from other authority websites… so we are going to try to exploit this for all it’s worth and land a front-page placement for our keyword phrase.

Researching Your Keyword Term

The first step in any successful keyword optimization campaign is finding that special keyword term that you think you can dominate. If you haven’t done this before, I would recommend seeking out an easier term to rank as a “trial run” of sorts. Regardless of how much competition you think that you can overcome, the process is the same.

I will be following along in this process with my targeted phrase “make money online.” This phrase is one of the most competitive in my niche, and I have been working up to the task by originally using “ways to make money online” and changing that most recently to “making money online.” I have had relative success without much of any effort, which leads me to believe that I may be able to stay competitive on this ultra-high trafficked term.

A good keyword for your blog has the following:

1. A high number of searches by the public, so you know that people are interested in learning a bit more about it
2. Low competition from other websites so that you have a chance to rank higher

This is not a post about researching keyword terms, but I will recommend a few tips and articles to get you started, and save you time. When I look at keywords, I typically start by opening up a Microsoft excel file to write down and remember all of my ideas. Google’s new Keyword Tool is my new “go to” research strategy. This thing is powerful and can get you relevant terms that show competition clearly. My other favorite is WordTracker’s Free Keyword Suggestion Tool. This one has a Google Trend analysis so you can really get a perspective on competition and ranking power.

Good Articles to Read More About Keyword SEO:

Caroline Middlebrook: Finding Good Keywords For Your Niche
CopyBlogger: Keyword Research Can Help You Make Money
SuiteJ: Using Google Analytics to Find Hidden Gems in Keywords

It is always important to realize that you are not competing against a search engine, you are competing against other websites. Knowing this, you may run across a highly “competitive” keyword, but when you actually search with it, you may feel that the top results can be beaten… and this is all that really matters.

Modifying Your Site’s Title & Description

Before we get into the actual marketing aspect of keyword optimization, you need to make sure that your website is tailor-made to house traffic from your targeted term. What exactly am I referring to? That’s right. The classic Meta tags! Now instead of coding this by hand, I recommend installing a plugin to handle this for you. WordPress is not very “SEO-friendly,” so you will probably have a heck of a time setting all the Meta tags correctly without a great plugin like All-In-One SEO or Platinum SEO.

What we do here is pretty much a no-brainer, we want a title and a description that includes our keywords somewhere inside of it! For example: since I am targeting the phrase “make money online,” the title of my website is now “Make Money Online by Turning TIme Into Cash!”

Let’s continue on with our description: “Jimvesting teaches how to make money online through stock market basics, blogging tips, get paid to take surveys, affiliate marketing tips and more!”

Changing around your Meta title and description (and keywords) is pretty much square one when you set up your blog to benefit from a keyword marketing campaign. It’s easy to do, and should always be done if you are looking to maximize your traffic and search engine ranking positions (SERPs). After all, Google looks to the title FIRST when they rank different sites on each search. I would maintain that it is the most important factor of all.

Starting The Idea Machine

Over the next few days, we are going to be doing some creative marketing techniques to fully capture traffic from search engine terms. Because of this, it’s important to realize that we are going to be writing some bum marketing articles, getting our reciprocal links out on other blogs, making a link bait page, cross-linking through social media and ensuring that we are linked back to in the most effective way possible. There are going to be a lot of ideas floating around, so start brainstorming about how you can capture the most traffic from your targeted term… this can be anything from article ideas to giveaways and incentives in order to encourage reciprocal linking.

Bottom Line: Let’s set things up and get ready to dominate our keywords! You can start the process right now by writing (or paying for) generalized 500 word articles about your niche area. Or, you can start to collect a list of websites where you currently have links or are looking for placements. We’ll get into the specifics soon, but by now you should be in position to succeed!

-Jimvesting