Forecast Fun

Getting quality links to your site from related web resources can be very difficult. It is a time consuming process and requires careful research. There are two ways to build your link popularity; 1 Make your site attractive to webmasters or 2 go out and hunt them down your self.

Getting webmasters to come to you:

Having lots of useful content on your web site such as informative articles, online tools, studies, etc will make another webmasters what to link to your web site knowing that you will not only help their site’s traffic and link popularity, but adding content to their own web site.

Sometimes you may even get webmasters that like your site so much that they will link to your homepage or to certain web pages that they think their visitors will find useful because this adds to the usefulness of their own site by providing useful links.

Keep it clean by avoiding tricks (Blocking access via robots.txt to robots, linking out with JavaScript, etc.) meant to keep your site from transferring Page Rank to other webmaster’s web sites and link to your links page on every page of your site.

Sometimes you will get requests for link exchanges with web sites that are not related to your site’s topic, these sites should be ignored and you should focus on only related web sites.

Hunting link partners down your self:

Type your keyword phrases into a search engine and wait for the results. The web sites you see on the first few web pages of the search engine results should be your main targets and should be looked at. Visit their site to see if you can find the site owners name and email them asking to exchange links, remember to email them at the right email address, don’t email the email address that’s for support.

Type your keywords or phrases into the search engine and see who links to the sites that come up first. After finding a few sites that link to the sites that rank high on your keyword phrases email them and ask if they would be interested in a link exchange. This is great if you can get both the top sites that rank for your keyword phrases and the sites that link to the top sites because not only do you have the top sites linking to you, but also the site sites that made them get there in the first place.

Some webmasters use link exchange programs such as www.linkexchangeit.com, these link exchange program help you find link partners easier because the sites are cauterized into their related topics, so you don’t have to search for them.

Use those rules and you should do just fine! Just remember to take your time and don’t use automated software, instead hand pick the sites that you link to.

What are web site keywords and how do I go about finding keywords that will work for me?

You may have the dandiest web site with eye popping text and graphics, but if you have missing keywords then you are going to be out of business quick.

Web sites revolve around traffic. No traffic = no sales. It’s a simple equation but one that many web site owners are unable to resolve. The good news is that it’s reasonably easy to select your web site keywords and deploy them, and I’m going to show you how.

Web site keywords are the words that people will use to search for your product or service. These are the words that people actually type into a search engine to find your site - so you can see how important they are.

So how do you go about selecting your keywords?

Selecting and finding keywords and phrases most likely to drive targeted traffic is THE single most important exercise that you can undertake when planning your web site deployment. Omitting this step will result in a marketing failure. Choosing good keywords is the basis on which all of your future traffic will flow.

You may have your own ideas about the specific keywords that people will use to find your site, however I can tell you from experience that if you are the business owner or proprietor then you are probably well wide of the mark.

Don’t believe me! Write down the top five keywords or keyword phrases that you think people will use to find your site now! Go and grab a paper and pen and scribble them down. Then compare them to what you are going to end up with at the end of this article.

Firstly ask your customers how they would search for your product!

This is important because these are the real human beings that will search for your product, service or information. Draw up a list of ten of the most popular keywords and keyword phrases that your customers tell you they would use to discover your web site and then put them into a spreadsheet.

2. Expand Your Keywords into a List of Key Phrases

Starting with the obvious keyword build your spreadsheet like this:

3. Got to word tracker.

Sign up for the free trial and enter your one word keyword. In this case “search”. When you press the search button you are returned a list of related terms. The first term is the same as the keyword followed by a list of related terms - search, search engine, etc. Choose your main term “search” and in the right hand pane you will see the associated terms for your keyword.

4. Organise your workload

You can now see that you are beginning to build up a sizeable list of keywords, keyword phrases and search terms. Compare the results of your word tracker research with the results from your customer polling.

The Word tracker results are fact. These are the terms that are actually used in Real searches. Hopefully these should closely match. But they are probably different to the terms that you initially wrote down yourself!

Five keywords is a good workload to start with. If you are a beginner and you attempt more you will likely end up confusing yourself. Five keywords and keyword phrases is a good start.

Take the first keyword and then make a keyword phrase so that it looks like this:

5. Prioritise your terms

There is a huge amount of competition for your primary keyword “search” but much less for the fifth ranked. Your word tracker results will tell you how popular each term is and how many searches are carried out for each keyword phrase.

It’s unreasonable to expect to get top search position for “motorcycle” as the competition is just too intense. However it’s perfectly possible for the last term and if you are serious about search engine traffic then you should be able to achieve good results for all of your other keyword phrases.

List your terms in REVERSE order and go to work. The reason I suggest doing them in reverse is that you should get good results from the less searched for terms and this will give you the encouragement to be more adventurous when you repeat the process for another keyword set.

Another keyword set!

Ah yes, I omitted to tell you that building traffic is a tedious and time consuming pastime, but hey! Someone’s got to do it!

6. Putting your keyword phrases to work

OK, so now you have your keyword phrases you can put them into action. Allocate each keyword phrase to a specific page and build the content around them.

What do I mean by this?

There are “hotspots” on your pages that search engines look for when they are indexing your pages.

These hotspots are the page title, the page description and the page heading. By incorporating your keyword phrase into these hotspots you are telling the search engine what your page is all about. Sprinkle in some eye-popping copy with your keyword phrase repeated once or twice and you are well on your way to receiving copious amounts of search engine traffic.

7. Repeat the dose

As I mentioned above, you need to build on your basic five keyword phrases and build up a stack of “keyword sets” Once you get to five or more keyword sets then you should be well on your way to a successful web site By allocating each keyword phrase to a page you will know that you need five pages for each keyword set. So five keyword sets will give you twenty five pages of search engine content. That’s a good target for a small web site

Summary

Finding keywords is a process that you simply can not afford to leave out of your marketing mix. It’s important that you target the correct keywords and build your content around them to induce good search engine traffic.

If you miss this vital step then all of your marketing efforts will crumble around you.

Start with five keywords and keyword phrases to make a keyword set. Use word tracker to sanitise your own research findings. Allocate each keyword phrase to a page and fill the hotspots. Sprinkle liberally with good, quality content and repeat your keyword phrases within the main body text.

Now go and service that traffic!

About The Author

Tony Cooper is the Internet Marketing Manager at http://www.keywordmarketing.com Building web sites that achieve tangible and accountable results. tony@keywordmarketing.com