I researched the keyword 'self help' and it shows little competition and a high search rate. So I created my blog, [http://www.selfhelpdiary.blogspot.com]self-help-a-holic. The blog is a personal journey of me basically reading 100 self help books in 2011 and marking the progress it has in my life, whilst offering reviews of the books. I have submitted relevant keyword rich good quality articles to ezinearticles of which I'm still waiting on approval. (I've tried articlescity, goarticles and a few other major ones before and not really found much benefit from them.) I created relevant social media for it ie facebook page/profile, twitter account, myspace. I joined blogging communites 20sb, blogcatalog, blogexplosing, mybloglog amongst several more. All of which I updated profiles with backlinks to my main blog. I set up posterous to update all my platforms simulatenously to maximise exposure (to my zero friends on all my new accounts.) I created relevant quality content on hubpages and squidoo both of which have no visitors. If people visited the site and decided the content wasn't for them, that I can accept. But I'd like to get some people to at least visit it first. I've watched countless youtube videos on how to get traffic, none of its helping. What else can i do? The only thing I can do more of is integrate myself more into communities and try and promote it more on a post by post basis. Which I think borders on spamming and puts me off other people who do it. Please give me some advice. Anything you think can help, design, seo, content anything at all. Thank you kindly.
Within the actual HTML? meta tags etc? I was under the illusion that google paid little attention to meta tags anymore. Is everything else I have done not part of SEO? please explain. That's pretty much all I have done.
Ok you need what's known as keywords these are words that are relivent to a site and it's content You will need: keywords="keyword1, keyword2, etc" Code (markup): This should be within the header (before you open the HTML tags If you need more help let me know
Thanks Luke, that was one schoolboy error I missed out! Updated with keyword metatags now.. What else can i do?
The Keyword 'self help' is extremely competitive, it only gets 14,000 global Google searches, only 800 local and if you do a search intitle:"self help" Google returns 'About 739,000 results (0.19 seconds) '. This about the most competitive key phrase as they come. It would take you years and an SEO team to start ranking in the higher SERP's. This was your biggest mistake, but don't worry, we've all done it and now its time to turn it around. You should be chasing after a longer tailed keyword that has little competition and a fair number of searches. You should be chasing a handful of key phrases in your niche, not just one. here is a few I found that might help your mental juices: intitle:"best self help books of all time" intitle:"self help books for women" intitle:"top 10 self help books" intitle:"samuel smiles self help" There are a lot more too. How are you finding your keywords, if I may ask?
I'm using the googleadwods keyword tool. I am in the UK though perhaps thats why the results are different? Where are you based? It shows about 15k local hits on that term p/m So when you say targetting? that simply means putting it in the keywords in the html? putting the keywords in content on my pages and in the alt text on links right? Should I forget the term self help? and go for something like top 10 self help books instead? I guess that would still work for me to some degree.
Just as I thought, you are using the keyword tool improperly. It can be tricky because it is set to broad by default and you need [Exact] to be selected. Under 'Match Types' in the left hand column unclick 'Braod' and click '[Exact]' this will give you the exact number of people searching the term 'self help' for the month, the broad will mislead you. So yes, forget about the 'self help' keyword and focus on longer ones. Targeting, do this from now on. When you publish articles from now on, make sure your (newly selected) key phrase is mentioned several times throughout your article, not spammy (technically try not to exceed 5% of the articles words with your key phrase). Insert 2 links in each article to authoritative web sites that relate to your article (Tony Robins, Napoleon Hill, Deepak Chopra, ...you get the point), in the anchor text to those web sites use your keyword phrase. This is a start, more needs to be done. Brush up on your SEO fundamentals by reading this article: http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization And spend more time in the SEO section of DP to pick up tips and tricks.
thx very much! so i'll go with those terms you suggested and just to confirm in the articles I'm putting to outbound links to relevant sites using the keyword I'm targetting. But these are totally external sites that I don't own?
'self help' gives 88,700,000 results on google why d you think it has low competition?as others said above its better to focus on long keywords at least something in the 3-4 words range
Exactly, Google will see the text in those links and count them extra towards your keywords, the fact that you are linking to an authoritative site that is relative to your article content looks VERY organic and adds value to your article. If you want an example, here is an article I wrote about 'What is a hurricane' Notice my links, the anchor text and where they lead to... that should answer your question. Cheers!
I would of just purchased a domain name instead of using a free blog tool to host your blog. That's what you did right?
Perhaps you can try to exchange links with the sites that matchs your niche, target visitors might be more helpful. Not to mention that smiliar website links is good for SEO.
You can always try using Yahoo answers. Drop your website as a source link (if and only if it's relevant to the question you're answering) and bam, you have a traffic-producing link!
You have to check your competition's backlinks with siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com, the top result for "self help" has over 4,000 backlinks, you aren't going to beat that anytime soon, also, wikipedia is on the front page.
I have done this already.. but it hasnt generated more than a handful of visitors to be honest..(although that was on an entirely different project, I think it would work more on this) I've decided as was suggested to just drop the targetting of the term self help and focus on the others
Try creating videos... put a link in your description box linking back to your blog.. if you do create videos use tubemogul its a free video distribution site..
Is that so....? Interesting. So, as long as you make a relevant link, and its not very hidden... that is true, correct?
Google will put you forward when people share your link. If you get them to do that you will appear in the search. Focus on advertising the site as the ultimate source of information and people will see it that way. Focus on growing the site on same principle. Just keywords will not upscale you .