EzSEO Newsletter # 25
Andy Williams ez SEO
ezseonews.com
Hi,
Hope you are all having a great Easter (don't eat too many eggs!) and spending some quality time with your family and loved ones. Here in Tenerife, Easter is a huge religious experience which you cannot fail to miss if you venture out into some of the towns and villages. However, one interesting thing my wife and I have noticed is that more and more shops and bars are opening over this weekend, A few years back you would have had problems finding even a bar open to have a drink in Puerto de la Cruz. Yesterday we went into a Supermarket - wow! I suppose this is the influence of tourists. Anyway, I should keep on topic. Today I am going to give you a little tip worth thinking about, and then start to discuss my number 1 tip for getting better rankings and creating web sites that will last even when Google decides to change it's algorithm AGAIN! This topic is likely to be spread over the next few newsletters as a mini-course because it really is that important.
Before we get on with it, I just want to mention that this newsletter may go to every two weeks instead of every week - at least for the time being. I recently moved house and have a problem with the local telephone company - they don't have any numbers left - so I cannot get a phone line here. Without a phone line I also don't have an Internet connection (so have to travel to my "office" every day to check/send e-mail). So, if you don't get a newsletter next week, I have not gone AWOL again.
So let's get on...
This week:
1. Wordtracker Tip
2. My #1 tip for great rankings and sites that will last
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1. Wordtracker Tip
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Each year I usually sell Easter eggs and other items from one of my web sites and I thought I would tell you of a great little tip that can help you set up a site for a seasonal topic like this. Wordtracker (and most other keyword research tools) use the searches that were carried out in the last 30 - 60 days to provide you with information about what is being searched for.
Now, suppose you wanted to create a site about Easter and wanted to get it up and running in time for shoppers. You might think that you would need to do your research and create pages in January to hopefully get indexed in March, in time for Easter shopping.
Well, you would be making a huge error. In January, when you are doing your research, Wordtracker would be looking at the searches made in November/December and providing you with information based on that. How many searches for Easter related items would have been searched for in those months? Probably a few, but not many.
OK, so when should you search for keywords when targeting a seasonal topic?
Well, when your potential visitors are searching themselves for that topic - during and shortly after the season.
If you were to check Wordtracker now for Easter, you would find all searches that were made in Late February, March & April. This is when people are actively searching for this topic.
Similarly, take Halloween as an example. If you wanted to get a Halloween site up for the end of October, you would not have much success researching keywords now. You would have to wait until November to find the best keyword phrases to target.
What this all means is this. When targeting a seasonal topic, be prepared to wait until the right time to research your keywords. This business should always be a long term project, so creating a site that wont make you money for almost a year should not be dismissed as a waste of time and resources. Alternatively, you could do your research now for Easter, save your keyword list, and then wait until the end of the year before creating the site in time for next Easter.
If you are serious about your affiliate business, why not make a list of all possible seasonal shopping times, and put a reminder in your diary to do the keyword research once the season is over. Then in the space of the next year, you can build your sites and get them into place for next year.
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2. My #1 tip for great rankings and sites that will last
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I mentioned last week that I thought Google was using new, more efficient filters to penalize sites that don't add value to the Internet. I am not too sure how they are doing it (although I mentioned some of my suspicions last week), but essentially I think that some affiliate sites may well suffer the most. Don't think I am saying that affiliate sites are dead and you cannot make money from affiliate programs anymore - nothing could be further from the truth. However, I do believe that you need to be careful how you build your sites.
Think about one of your sites and ask yourself this question: Would you be proud to show it to a Google representative?
In some cases I could answer yes, but for the majority of my early affiliate sites I would have to pass. To be honest, some of the sites I would be the most embarrassed about showing a Google rep are the ones that have lost most or all of their rankings - coincidence? I think not.
My own sites that have done the best to withstand the Google changes and in fact prosper are the ones I am most proud of, and in my opinion, add value to the Internet.
To add value to the Internet, your site needs to have a unique content or be put together in such a way that people will find your site entertaining, informative or just a great experience.
So what exactly will add value to your site?
I really believe that the best way to get good rankings and keep them, is to add information to your site in the form of articles. I am sure you have heard this before, but how many of you actively add articles to your own sites (or write them and submit them to article sites)? Articles can be a great way to add value to your site and you can get them for free from various article sites on the Internet,
If you have a look at the mini-site I put together to promote Jim Edwards "Turn Words Into Traffic" eBook.
On the homepage, click the Sitemap link at the bottom. At the bottom of the sitemap page there is a link to an Articles "sitemap". Click this link and you will see several links to articles that Jim Edwards has written. He e-mails out these articles periodically and it is a snap to just copy the e-mail and paste it into your web site. That is how easy it is to add articles to your own site - copy and paste (as long as you have permission to do so). You may think that everyone will be copying and pasting the same articles thereby duplicating other web pages on the Internet. However, my own experience does not suggest this. One article that I posted on my site by Jim Edwards went in at #1 on Google for the search term "internet copyright infringement". I am not sure where it is now since I don't have Internet here, but the point is, no-one else had that article indexed in Google - not even Jim Edwards.
Now, think about it. #1 in Google for a great keyword. Lots of targetted visitors. Find an affiliate link to a product about copyright infringement and your are onto a winner. Great content that gets visitors and a product that might just tempt some of your visitors into buying.
Now can you see the value of adding articles? As you have seen, you don't have to write them yourself, but please do think about doing so. If you are not a great writer, then Jim Edwards does a great of showing you how to write articles in his eBook "Turn Words Into Traffic" (see website above for a review). If you decide it is too much trouble, find one of the many article databases on the Internet and start collecting articles for your site.
If you are worried about duplicating content by using articles that are available to other webmasters and you don't want to write your own articles, you could always get a ghost writer to do it for you. Gary Antosh wrote an eBook that I really liked called "How to Create Web Content Fast". In it he tells you how to find ghost writers that could well create your content from as little as $5 an article. Imagine how easy that is. Tell your ghost writer which keywords to target and which secondary keywords to try to get into the article, and let them get on with it. As long as you have researched your keywords properly you will have great content that will attract visitors, make you more money, and Google-proof your web site. That is a Win-Win-Win situation. If you want to read my review of Gary's book, visit How to create website content fast.
In the next few newsletters I will be discussing the power of articles to not only get you better rankings in the search engines, but also to increase your Page Rank, Google-proof your website, and most importantly make you more money.
Please send me comments and feedback as usual....
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