EzSEO Newsletter # 64
by Andy Williams ez SEO
This week:
1. Niche Blueprints Pecking Order
2. Accepting Link Exchange Requests
3. How important is KEI?
4. Question about Articles
5. Link Machine Update
6. How is your site being found?
Hi again
The SEO Detective was due for a return this week, but unfortunately I have had problems with my version of Optilink reverting back to the trial version. I have contacted Leslie about this, and hope to have it fixed by next week. We do have a lot of other stuff today though, including a lot of information on keywords, articles, competition and KEI. We also look at a BAD technique a lot of people use to find keywords to target, and tell then we you the correct way to do it.
1. Niche Blueprints Pecking Order
The long awaited release of the first Niche Blueprint went ahead this week. You were given 48 hours to get the first one for free. That blueprint is no longer available! Over 1500 people downloaded the first blueprint, and I am working through the feedback to make #2 even better.
Since the website has not yet been set up, a lot of people have asked questions about future blueprints, pricing and the like. Here I will try to cover the questions asked, but do email me if you are confused.
There will only be 100 sold for each blueprint, and the price will initially be $50 per blueprint (I am adding some other stuff to the package and at that point, price may go up).
So who gets to buy them? Below is the pecking order in terms of who gets first refusal.
1. Owners of the previous blueprint (if you paid for blueprint #2, you will be given first chance of buying blueprint #3. If you buy blueprint #3, you will be given first refusal of blueprint #4, and so on).
2. SEO WSB customers - this is my way of repaying my loyal customers.
3. Any remaining copies after 1 & 2 above, will then be offered to the Niche Blueprint notification list (you can sign up at:
http://niche-blueprints.com
There are currently 618 people signed up for that.
4. Should there be any left, I will announce them in this newsletter.
5. Remaining blueprints will then be offered on the Niche Blueprint website.
I am intending to release one per month. Marketing principles suggest that if demand is too high (more than 100 people want the blueprint), I should raise the price. However, I wont do. Instead, if time allows, I will release two different ones that month.
2. Accepting Link Exchange Requests
Someone contacts you asking for a link exchange. What do you do? Here are the steps I go through to decide if I should link to them or not. I suggest you follow something similar.
1. Have a look at their site. Is it related to your? If not, don't link to them.
2. Do they have a PR higher than 0 on the homepage? If not, check the date the domain was re.gistered. If it is a new site, you should not discount the link - base your judgement on the look of their site. If it is an old site, don't link to them since the PR 0 may indicate a penalty from Google. Linking to a bad neighbourhood can get you penalised.
3. Check the PR on the links page. If it is ZERO, but their homepage is not, ask yourself why the links page does not have PR. You will only get PR from that page if it has PR. It is always a good check to see if there is a link to the links page on their homepage. This shows the webmaster cares about link partners, and makes them better prospects.
4. How many links are on the links page? Remember that the PR passed to your site is roughly the PR of the links page, divided by the total number of links on the links page. A link page, PR2 with 100 links, would only pass you 0.02 PR points to you. Also remember that internal links to their own site count as much as external links when PR is "distributed". I rarely link to a site where the links page has a lot of internal links on it, and never link to a site where the links page has more than 30 links on it (unless the PR is 6+).
This checklist will actually weed out most of your potential link partners, and when link partners are so hard to come by, you may be tempted to let links through that should not really be considered. I would not be tempted. Instead, why not write some articles and submit them to article submission sites? This is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get links to your site, and they are the best type - non-reciprocal!
My subscriber bonus report (see link in the resource box at the end of this newsletter) about link exchanges will give you some more details.
Also, you could consider using a script like LinkMachine. I have included details elsewhere in this newsletter about my own experiences using this script.
BTW, remember that sites can be penalised at any time in the future. You need to check up on your partners to make sure that they have not been PR0'd by Google. These partners should be removed immediately. Checking link partners is a real chore to do manually, but SEO Elite can do it for you quickly and automatically as part of its amazing toolbox.
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/linkproctor
A great point to remember is this. If you build your links through articles, you don't need to keep tabs on link partners, since they will be one way links into your site.
3. How important is KEI?
In my report Niche within a Niche (on subscriber bonus page), I show you how I found 200 keywords with KEI greater than 10, and less than 1000 competing pages in Google.
In some of my other stuff, I don't really give much emphasis to KEI.
So is KEI important?
Well, to set the record straight, I only mentioned KEI in my Niche report because so many people think it is important - a kind of pre-sell to get people to read my report.
KEI tries to provide a single figure on which to base your selection procedure. It takes into account the supply and demand of a keyword, and is a kind of "profit" indicator. However, look at these two phrases taken from some baby research I did:
"baby names"
"graco used equipment"
Both have a KEI of around 420, so both are officially excellent to target according to KEI.
The first one is searched for around 10,000 times a day at Google, the second one just 9 times a day at Google.
Can they really be equally profitable?
Well, baby names has over 2 million competing pages, whereas the second one has just 2 competing pages.
Which would you prefer to target? For me, I would much prefer to get the 9 visitors a day for a #1 position in Google for the phrase "graco used equipment", than even attempt to get a top ranking for "baby names". There is no way that an ordinary site can get into the top 10, or even top 100 for "baby names". It requires weeks or months of work.
The KEI for both phrases is the same, because competing sites and demand are both figured into the equation, but I would not say they are both equally proiftable (even if you could get #1 for "baby names", how would you make money from it?).
For me, KEI is not as important as a little bit of common sense. I order my phrases by count, and then look at the competition.
A related question was raised by one Niche Blueprint owner. Why do I target high competition phrases for my main pages, if I cant possibly get good rankings for those terms.
Well, the whole point of every page you build is to get traffic. The source of the traffic is less important, as long as it is t.argeted traf.f.ic.
I my niche blueprint sites, I am not expecting the search engines to supply traffic to the high competition "sales" pages. My articles do that.
I am using low competition phrases for articles, which get my site traffic. People reading those articles are "targeted visitors" and therefore quite likely to visit my main pages, thereby supplying them with traffic. No I don't expect search engine traffic, but I do expect traffic.
In summary, I am using articles instead of search engines to supply traffic to my main sales pages.
4. Question about Articles
A good question came from Ron (who runs a site at www.123-wine.com)
"Hello Dr. Andy,
In your last issue - (EzSEO Newsletter # 63) you wrote that you bought 100 articles and added them to your site, and that they make you $500 a month.
I bought articles for one of my "James Mertall" sites - but I only got poor amount of traffic. I think this is because I was careless enough to place them online without checking each one of them for proper optimization.
Pretty dumb, I know. But I'll do better next time.
So my questions are:
1. Do you double check your author's work to see that he was consistent with optimization rules you gave him, before uploading the articles? or maybe it is not so important when talking about a large amonut of articles?
2. Mertall says to write an article for each keyword, starting with the highly searched ones and going down to the less popular ones. Do you agree?
I think you generally say that we should look for low competition words to write articles around.
regards,
Ron"
Ron makes the mistake here that a lot of people are making with their content. It is not so much the lack of checking articles, it is the choosing of keywords that was the problem.
If your articles are going to bring your site traffic, they must be found in the search engines. It is all very well writing an article around a keyword that is being searched for 1000 times a day, but if there is 1 million competing pages for that phrase, you wont rank well, and wont get traffic.
Using low competition phrases for articles pretty much guarantees some traffic. I personally would much prefer to write 10 articles that guarantee me 2 visitors per day each, than 10 articles that would get me 100 visitors a day, but that have so much competition I cant even get into the top 100 (and therefore bring me zero traffic).
So, when choosing keywords for articles, hit the low competition phrases, even if they only get 2 visitors a day. By adding in secondary phrases, you can bump this figure up.
This is similar to something else I said in previous newsletters. Blogs and RSS can get your site visited and indexed more by search engines, but unless your pages rank well for your chosen keywords, it wont bring you much more traffic.
Beginners often make the mistake of thinking that they can come up with some magic formula to rank well for highly competitive phrases just by tweaking keyword density. Well, sorry to tell you this, but their isn't any magic formula to ranking well.
As competition rises for a phrase, you have to put in more effort to rank well.
5. Link Machine Update
A few issues ago I told you about a script that helps build and maintain your links page. I setup the ezSEO directory at:
http://ezseo-directory.com
This directory is now getting one or two submissions a day, without me having to do anything. I don't accept them all (see my criteria above for link partners), but I have to say that this is the easiest way to get incoming links I have found. One of the ways that LinkMachine helps find you link partners is using its database of LinkMachine users. It can match your site to related sites, and swap links almost automatically. Obviously as this script gets more popular (and it will), you will have more potential partners without the effort of searching for them.
LinkMachine also allows you to search for partners in other ways too (and can email them for you), but the thing I love most is how easy it is to maintain the directory. As new link requests come in, I can check their site, and then click accept or reject. A final click on the build links page button, and I am done.
LinkMachine has a 10 day trial version - I highly recommend you take a look at it.
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/linkmachine
The script is very easy to setup if you have a basic knowledge of FTP, and you can assign your own templates and styles. I love it, and I am sure you will too.
Just a word of warning though. LinkMachine makes it very easy to get link partners fast, but DO NOT forget the list of criteria outlined in part 3 of this newsletter. With anything automated, you MUST be careful.
6. How is your site being found?
An email I received this week got me thinking. It is something I hear discussed a lot on various forums, so here is my take on it.
Sharon from www.AnswersForYourHealth.com wrote:
"Hello Andy,
I just recently started receiving your newsletter and I really like it. I fall into the category of people who keep buying new "stuff" when I haven't really done anything with the old stuff.
I have a tip?/question?. I have not seen anything about this in any of my marketing newsletters. I use Host4Profit and when I go in to look at my stats I can look at the top search terms that brought people to my site. That gives me more information on what people are looking for. Sometimes, the phrase they use to find me - well it is not any of my key words. But for site owners looking to publish content, it seems to me that what people are using for search terms would tell them what content to put up on their sites.
I know I am very long winded but that is why I publish a newsletter. lol
Looking forward to your next issue.
Sharon Owen"
A lot of people pay attention to their log files to check what phrases people are using to find them. But are these phrases really that useful? Here is my thought on this:
Keywords in log files are good to tell you how people found your site, but using Wordtracker you can see how people COULD find your site.
Looking through your website logs, you can quickly see what phrases people typed in to find your site. However, the only phrases you will see in the logs are phrases and words that are already found on your site. It wont highlight the hundreds and thousands of words/phrases that are being searched for that are related to your site, but are not physically found on your site.
The solution? Go to Wordtracker and find out what people are searching for. Then use that information to build your site. The Wordtracker Tutorial that you should have for being a subscriber to this newsletter tells you exactly how to do it.
Sharon, like a lot of people are working backwards, with limited success. Don't use your logs to find out how people find you and then write content based on those phrases, use Wordtracker to find out how people could find you, and then add content.
The keywords highlighted in your logs are important, but really only to check how well your pages are ranking for your chosen keywords.
Well, that's it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/archives
Have a great week!
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