So you're broke and can't take advantage of Adwords or paying for ad's isn't the best option. You need rank. Below is how I start from start to finish with the places I go, the things I do, and how it all works for me. #1. First and foremost is your domain name. As I learned from advanced adwords training in San Jose california, Google gives 50% of the weight ( relevancy ) to the domain name. This works both for SEO & adwords. What this means is 50% of your SEO work is done for you. If my primary or "money" keyword is "Car Accident Lawyer" then I would want to own CarAccidentLawyer.com. #2. My next step is the right kind of website. Most of you already know but for those who don't WordPress is your best solution. It's publishing platform has proven king in the SEO arena for website platforms to use. Now understand you do not need the best theme in the world and actually the lighter the code the better you are. Some things to look for are: Light weight code Semantic code Clean footer No to minimal Java and a secret... three column theme is the best. Google loves 3 column, links on the left and sidebar goodies on the right. Trust Me! #3. Set up with the search engines. Don't worry about submitting to services - it does not matter. What you need is Google webmaster tools, verify tag, analytics, sitemap, etc... completed and follow the same instructions on yahoo and bing. #4. Now that I have a powerful keyword rich domain and the perfect semantic website template it's time for content. This is a very important rule... Stay as relevant as possible and never stray of subject ( the primary keyword or very relevant topics ). My next advice is to post 1-3 times a day for at least 4 weeks from the day you start. You must use very short descriptive titles ( keyword only ) will explain more below. #5. So you've done a lot onsite to this point but we've got much more work to do off site. Guess what? It's more writing... but you can relax a little here. Here are the top 10 article services to use with good PR and guaranteed back links. 1. knol.google.com 1 7 NF! 2. ehow.com 102 7 NF! 3. ezinearticles.com 103 6 4. hubpages.com 182 6 5. squidoo.com 186 7 6. articlesbase.com 293 6 NF! 7. buzzle.com 532 6 8. examiner.com 582 7 NF! 9. suite101.com 621 7 10. associatedcontent.com this is yahoo. I use all these services at least 2 times a week, that means 20 articles a week, you can't believe the results these site produce plus the extra traffic you'll receive which helps with page rank later on. It takes me an entire day twice a week but it's worth it and if you can afford it, hire it out. #6. Back Linking. Never pay for a back links. Trust me, Google's algorithms work off human engagement, the more natural it is, the better you'll climb the serp's. I use the articles above to get guaranteed back links but then I go searching for other blogs. This is time consuming but it can deliver quality back links. I use Google's blog search or regular search and find blogs or websites accepting comments. I don't use robots or proxy servers, or cloaking, or anything unnatural. I use my eyes and ears and read the post or article and get engaged, I join the conversation and ad back to the author. Another trick is to search for high PR sites first, bookmark them, and always go back. Once you have a relationship with a webmaster or author you can back link all day. #7. Page Rank. The best possible way to get page rank quickly, like a PR 3 to 5 in 3 to 5 months is content onsite. I create 5000 pages on the fly using a couple sweet plugins, and descriptions, title, and one keyword with one paragraph and we're off! #8. Plugins to get All in One SEO Bulk Post Creator WP Admin Tree Page View ( makes life better ) Robots Meta, yoasts killer indexing plugin Kstats reloaded add this Google xml sitemaps find and replacer These are the best plugins I recommend for any wordpress blog but especially for SEO.
Great information Jason! This will help a lot of the new SEOers out there All the best. -LeadBoltMatt
You guys are very welcome, I can't wait to get more detailed in part 2. If you guys/gals have any questions please pm me.
Pretty good info. I would add that the articles submitted to the article distribution sites should be well constructed and interesting. Most articles I see being submitted look like they were written in 5 minutes by someone who didn't know what they were talking about. Sure, you may still get the link from the article distribution site itself, but the real value of article marketing is getting other sites to republish your article and link back. If you can get several reputable sites to republish your article, you're doing much better than just a single article directory link. Though, with the recent Google update a lot of the article sites have taken a huge hit and a lot of people are getting nervous about using syndicated articles. It will be interesting to see if article marketing continues to work as a good link building technique. I look forward to part 2.
Nicely put together advice, and I'm going to have a look into it. I like how you stated how bad an idea it is to buy links. However I couldn't help but notice--the two links you have going in your signature are perfect keyword match domains, are 6 and 10 year old domains respectively and have 0 page rank AND aren't even on the map for an exact keyword search--I went through 10 pages in google looking {I knew those are popular keywords so I went back a ways. I found a lot of domains that didn't even match the keywords at all popping up and they didn't}. With all that those two sites seem to have going for them--age, content and exact keyword-domain match--what would you say is the issue? Because I'm sure that they can't be the only two sites like that.
Good point! I have something to show you: Google [ site:www.caraccidentlawyer.com ] (you'll only find one indexed link) then Google it again without the www. (you'll find 60 indexed links withe same exact content on each - duplicate or irrelevant content) The previous owner had know idea what he was doing to the domain name - one reason it was hard to pay so much for the domain name. My firm just purchased those domain less than 10 days ago - the only reason why they're in my signature. Guess what I paid for car accident lawyer? You'll probably sh!t. That's okay, with the age and exact keyword relevancy plus our new WordPress site and the strategy we've got in place, you should find us on the first page within 30 days. Sounds like a long time, especially with an exact match but the legal space is so saturated its like competing against water, with water. But the goal after we rank for our root domain keyword is to tackle all the states, the all the cities within those states. This should take us 10 to 14 months but I can assure you the worth, plus revenue generated from our company model will valuate the domain and site over 7 figures within one year. I hope and pray we make it. Did yo know that attorneys pay $175/per car accident lead. We've generated over 100/leads/month nation wide before (using other domains). Thats Some Serious cheddar. I encourage you to really dive into my domain analytics, look at the competition, the back link strategies, where else they rank, etc... Thanks - ps Part #2 is coming next week