Google Keyword SEO | Niche Marketing Strategies and Techniques

17 Oct 2008

Google Keyword SEO: "Friendly" Niche Marketing to Dominate Your Competition!

Author: Jim | Filed under: Keyword Research

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