Simple SEO for Beginners that Gets Results

We all want our site to be number 1 in Google for various search terms and with all the competition out there it can be incredibly tough. Throw in all the Google updates to their algorithm and it gets even more difficult to rank a website. A top ranking for a highly searched keyword can bring serious amounts of traffic to your website which could lead to advertising revenue our product sales. Let's look at some of the ways we can rank in Google.

Indexing your Website in an Hour!
First off we need to get our site index by the big G. To do so we can go to this site, Bulkping.com, it's a free site that has several online tools. Click on the top link "Fast Index Free Backlinks". Fill out the form with your information and click on submit. This will send your website to many statistic, analytic, and search engine websites creating various backlinks. Typically your site can be indexed in under 2 hours!

Backlinking
Now we need to get backlinks for our site. To get a top ranking in Google we need to give the feeling that our site just launched and went viral. To do this you will need to submit a free press release, you can find several of these sites if you look up free press releases in Google. Write our outsource a good press release and get it submitted.

Start doing social bookmarking to various websites. You can outsource this for cheap on Fiverr for 5 bucks. There are several gigs that offer thousands of social bookmarks. Next you will need to submit to article directories. Write our pay someone to write 5 to 10 articles that you can submit to the top article directories. Not only will this give you free traffic but it will give you high page rank backlinks to your website.
Forum profiles are not as powerful as they once were. It is healthy to mix in a handful of high page rank profiles but don't go over board with them. Google could penalize you for it and slap your site down the search rankings. Forum posts with a link to your site or in your signature are still excellent for backlinking.

Vary Your Anchor Text
It is very important to vary the anchor text that you use. In the past you could spam hundred of backlinks with the same anchor text and rank for that keyword. Google sees this as very suspicious now and it will likely get your site penalized. Try to vary your anchor text to target multiple keywords and even a few that say "click here" so it looks natural to the big G.

Index your Backlinks Fast
To get your links indexed fast go back to Bulkping and click on the top link "RSS Feed Generator", copy your list of links here to have them made into a RSS feed. Then you can go to their other free tool RSS submit online and submit it several directories. After that go to the free ping tool and ping the RSS feed. This method will index your site as fast as two days!

Profit?
Sometimes you can see jumps in the rankings fairly fast but most of the time it takes 30 days to really start seeing results. After 30 days you should see a significant jump in the search engine rankings. If you are still not #1 just rinse and repeat. The more work you put in the higher you will rise in the rankings.

Article Marketing – 3 Simple Steps to Find Targeted Profitable Traffic in Minutes

If you are struggling to find targeted traffic for your blog or website, then this article will help you do the proper research and testing to rake in tons of targeted traffic to your site.  Let’s be honest here, the only way to see success online is getting people to read your blog or website.  How else can you gain readership, followers, and their trust?  By building a following you will be able to make money off your website either by selling products or through advertising.  First we need to determine what to write, then the keywords we need to target, and a headline that pops out.

Article Research

We need to determine what to write about and which keywords to target.  What niche is your website in?  For example it could be dating, gardening, blogging, cars, etc?  Now think of a topic in that niche that can help people.  Making a bulleted list with a how to guide is great for getting attention and traffic to your site.  For example, “5 Tips for Buying a New Car for Thousands Less than Sticker”.  That is a great headline that stands out but also tells the reader that they are going to get the information they need quickly.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is also important.  We can use the free Google keyword tool to look up relevant keywords that have low competition but have decent traffic.  The search volume can be lower than 1000 because we want articles to rank naturally in Google.  Think about this, if you find 5 keywords that have between 200 and 500 searches a month each, then you can write 5 articles targeting these keywords.  Since the competition is so low your articles will rank naturally in Google if you post them to high page rank websites like EzineArticles, Goarticles, or Your-Answers.com.  You must make sure that the keyword fits in your headline.  Then you will be able to get on the first page and start seeing traffic flow to your articles.

Headlines That Grab Attention

Determining a great headline is the hardest part of article marketing.  You need to think of a headline that is interesting and will get a user’s attention.  For example, which of these headlines sound better?  “How to meet women online” or “3 Simple Tips to Meet Hot Women Online”, the second one is clearly the better of the two titles.  If you had the choice to click on one of the two you would surely click on the second.

Now we need to perform split testing.  Split testing is where we test an article with different headlines to determine which ones get monster traffic.  It is best to use an auto approve directory like Goarticles for testing.  Publish your article then wait a couple days and see how many views you get.  If you don’t get many views then delete the article and try again.  Keep doing this till you start getting a bunch of traffic coming to one of your articles.  Once you figure it out then you will be able to rinse and repeat for monster traffic.

What if I told you other authors have already done the work for you?  Well good news, many authors have figured out headlines that grab killer traffic.  How do we find these articles?  We can use a search code in Google to view articles on EzineArticles that have high amounts of views then compare article headlines.  

Here is the code,

Dating site:ezinearticles.com "viewed 2000..199999" "Submitted On: * *, 2011" "Word Count: 500..1000"

This will search all articles in the dating niche and show all the articles published in 2011 that have been viewed over 2000 times.  Begin analyzing the articles and you will begin to figure out how to write similar attention grabbing headlines.  Don’t just copy someone else’s headline; write your own using what you have learned from other authors.

This is a proven method that will bring in traffic.  If you truly want your blog to grow then start writing articles that will bring you monster traffic to your site.  Get the sales and conversions you have been dreaming of.

Your Answers Article Directory Launched

Looking for a high quality article directory to submit your articles to?  Your-Answers.com just launched this week and it completely free to use!  The problem with the majority of article directories out there is they will take any submission regardless of duplicate content or poorly written articles.  Google looks poorly at these sites by giving them low Page Rank and even weaker link juice.  Most these articles hardly even rank for the keyword they are targeting, even with back linking to the articles! Any articles found to be duplicated content, plagiarism, or copyrighted will be removed. Keeping high standards ensures high traffic to articles and better rankings in Google search rankings.

Your-Answers.com only accepts high quality articles to it's directory.  To submit an article it must have perfect spelling, excellent spelling, and at least be 400+ words.  What benefits do you get from Your-Answers?  More exposure as an author, syndication through RSS, and high quality back links to your sites.  Each article is allowed up to two links per article!  RSS is a very powerful tool and allows sites all over the web to reach your content giving you even further exposure.

Your Answers is dedicated to only accepting quality content that answers it's readers questions by expert authors that provide valuable information from various fields.  All articles submitted are reviewed and go through an approval process within 24 hours.  Over 180 categories have been created for various subjects and you can contact support to suggest new categories to be added.

Generating sales!  Submitting quality articles can help boost leads to your website and help generate more sales.  Just try not to make your articles sound too commercial and more informational so it doesn't sound like a sales letter.

A steady stream of traffic to your website for years to come!  Submitting articles to Your Answers will give you a steady stream of users to your website for years.

Increase your credibility and trust with your readers.  By writing high quality content you can build trusting relationships with your readers.  Trust can generate a lot of traffic to your websites and it will only grow from there.  Make your readers crave more content and they will want more from your own website.

Your-Answers.com is the next big high quality expert article directory!  Build high quality links, more traffic, and credibility now.  The more traffic you generate the better you will succeed! Are you going to boost your web exposure?

Updated Ezine Article Spying

After the Google Panda update Ezine Articles made several changes not only to their submission rules but also to their page layouts.  If you read my previous post, Ezine Article Spying, you may have noticed that the code parameters you enter into Google no longer work.  This is directly due to how Ezine Articles labels each article now and it not longer uses the same wording at the bottom of each page.

What has changed?  Well lets look at the old code,
Dating site:ezinearticles.com "This article has been viewed 2000..199999" "Article Submitted On: * *, 2012"

Now compare that to the new code that does give results within Google,

Dating site:ezinearticles.com "viewed 2000..199999" "Submitted On: * *, 2011"

As you can see Ezine Articles has removed "This article has been" and "Article" from each phrase at the bottom of every article.  We can now even search for a specific word count threshold by using this code,

Dating site:ezinearticles.com "viewed 2000..199999" "Submitted On: * *, 2011" "Word Count: 500..1000"

When you enter this code it will only bring up articles that have at least 500 to 1000 words.  This is great for finding higher quality content.

So how can we really use this code to help us?

1. Hot Trends - We can begin doing searches for keywords of broad categories and easily see what recent articles are getting a lot of views.
2. Micro Niche Research - If you are into building micro niche blog sites then this type of research is invaluable.  Look at the article titles, are they ranking well for their keywords?  Could you easily rank for these keywords in Google SERPs?
3. Content is King - Let's be honest, if you're not outsourcing your article writing then you have to be writing it yourself.  We can't all be experts at everything so Ezine Articles can be great for inspiration and finding good content to write in your own words and add your own information too.

Why do all the hard work when others are already doing it for you?  Heck, if you find hot articles you can even setup some Google alerts for the main keywords and see what other people are posting on the web.  You might find some great places to get backlinks too!

Make Money With Clickbank

So you wanna start making money with ClickBank? ClickBank.com is probably the easiest and most used product network on the web. You can sign up and have an account as quickly as today. There are thousands of products that you can resell in just about any niche you can think of.

Clickbank makes it easy to get an affiliate link for a product you would like to sell and they handle all the payments between you and the seller. So no worries about a seller shafting you on your fair share of commission. They send checks or direct deposits out twice a month. I've never had a late payment from ClickBank, they have always delivered!

Avoid Costly Mistakes

One of the big mistakes that beginners make is they try to sell a product with way to much competition. Sure these products may convert well and are very popular, but you are fighting with too many other affiliates for sales. If you are late to the show then you may end up fighting an uphill battle for traffic. I like to look at products that no one is selling, why? There is no competition and the product creator may have done poor job trying to recruit affiliates for their product. We can look at how many people are selling a product by looking at it's gravity. If the gravity is below 3o, then not that many people are selling the product. If it is at zero, then nobody is selling the product.

Testing

If the sales page looks good and I think that it will convert, I will invest a bit of time to see if I can get sales through that product. What you need to do is create a webpage or free blog talking about the article, this will act as your sales funnel to the product's sales page. Here you want to write a 400 to 500 word article discussing the product and how it can solve what ever problem it may be targeting. Put inline links in the article pointing to the product's page then have a call of action at the end of the article that also points back to the product.

Traffic

Now you will need to get traffic to your blog/website to see if you can get this product to convert. I typically have pre-written articles for various niches, if you don't you will need to invest some time writing some articles to submit to article directories.

Places to submit your articles to,

ezinearticles

goarticles

squidoo lense

hubpages

There are many article directories out there, so send to various ones and see if you get any traffic from them. After we have some articles submitted we can wait a few days and look at our clickbank analytics to determine how much traffic, or hops, we are sending to the product. If you send 100 people to the page and none of them convert, I recommend moving on to another product. If you get just a couple of sales then I recommend scaling up the traffic. Mass submit your articles to as many directories as possible to really boost the people you are sending.

The Lion's Den

If you find a product no one is promoting and it does convert well, typically I have found that you can OWN the product's keywords. The exact name of the product and hot keywords that would include review, reviews, scam, best, and etc. These are buyer keywords, they may even be people who have looked at the product in the past but now they are in a buyer mode. This is how you leap frog all the other affiliates.

It is definitively harder to make money with ClickBank with so much competition but we can help simplify it by testing products that no one is pushing. By making money with ClickBank we can create another income stream that is essentially passive income once you have made it profitable. You can set it and forget it while you move on to your next product.

Ezine Article Spying

Short post today but I wanted to show everyone how you can spy on ezinearticles.com and see all the articles with top views. You can either do a general search or be keyword specific. This can help you determine what keywords to target when writing articles for your niche. We want to maximize the amount of traffic we can pull from our articles so we might as well see some of the top producing articles in action.

This is the code that we will be using,

site:ezinearticles.com "This article has been viewed 2000..199999" "Article Submitted On: * *, 2011"

Enter this search string into Google and this will pull up all the articles on ezine that have over 2000 article views. If you want to be more specific by targeting a specific keyword you will need to enter the keyword first then a space, then the search string. Like this,

Dating site:ezinearticles.com "This article has been viewed 2000..199999" "Article Submitted On: * *, 2011"

This will bring up all the top producing articles in the dating niche. We can also modify this search string where you can narrow down the search results by article views. Change the 2000 number to a higher number, say 10000 views or more. This way you will only see articles that have some serious traffic. You can also change the date if you want to expand beyond the current year.

This method of spying can show you which long tail articles to target in your niche plus how you can write eye catching titles that will get visitors to click on your article. We all want as many visitors as possible and this is one of the best ways of boosting the production out of our articles.

Make Money with Article Marketing

Article Marketing is now bigger than it ever was but there have been some significant changes with regards to the Google Panda Update. There are some changes to the methods we use now compared to just a few months ago, prior to these algorithm updates.

Article marketing is typically the beginning point for most marketers who want to gain targeted traffic, but what normally happens is they fail at article marketing because they do not understand the techniques behind it that drive traffic. I want to talk about some of these methods that will turn a ‘Fail’ into a ‘Win’.

There is NO EXCUSE to being able to make a descent passive income from article marketing and I will cover everything in detail that you will need to know to accomplish making an income. Making money online takes hard work like everything else, there is no push button magic secret.

I’m going to detail this out as a step by step action plan that is easy to follow. If you want to see success, follow these steps and I promise you results.

Step 1: Keyword Research

This is what I consider the biggest step in all of article marketing, keyword research. New marketers have a difficult time grasping this concept and can lead quickly to failure and ultimately quitting all together. For this method we will be using keywords known as long tail keywords or keyword phrases.

To give you a picture of how to do the research, let’s find an example. Let’s choose a random niche to target, heck let’s get one that’s even highly competitive, the Weight Loss niche.

I prefer using SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool when doing research. (These are free methods that will get the job done, once you start making money I highly recommend buying Market Samurai, it will change your life.)

You next step is to look for long tail keywords, more than one word, that have at least 10 searches per day and less than 10,000 competing sites. (The competition isn’t always a factor, it really depends on who is ranked #1 already, we’ll talk more on this in a bit.)

I entered in the search box, “Burn Fat”, and this brought up a long list of keywords related to burning fat or weight loss. Scroll down to the bottom of the list, here are some keywords that we should be able to compete for.

Found one! does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat? (This is what we call a long tail keyword) This keyword receives 11 daily search results for Google and 16 Results averaged between the top 3 search engines. If we put this keyword in quotation marks, “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat”, and search with Google, we can see the exact competition, a jaw dropping 6 sites.

There are a few other keywords on this list you should look at after we are done here. I can bet that after writing this post people will be jumping on this long tail keyword and some others in that list.

So with one article we can potentially send 11 people to our site per day, 330 per month. Let’s say your site is selling a product with a commission of $23 and you write 10 articles that have this kind of traffic, that’s 3300 visitors per month potentially. If only %1 percent converted on your product, that’s $759 per month! Not to mention passive income where you are going to set it and forget it.

Step 2: Article Research

This really applies to niches that you are not an expert in. You should have no problem writing articles about topics you’re passionate about. Since I’m not an expert on burning fat I’ll head over to Google and search for “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat?” and check out some of the sites for ideas on what to write about.

I’d also recommend visiting an authority site that is in the niche you are targeting. There might be some good information that will give you ideas for great content.

Step 3: Writing The Article

You don’t have to be great writing to get into marketing, if you can express an idea or plan to someone verbally, why can’t you do it by writing it down?

It’s best to make the article short, 400 to 650 words, it’s crucial after the Google update to maintain a minimum threshold of 400 words for your articles. You want to write a short article that keeps the reader interested, when they come to your article we want them to think, “Oh, this is short, I can read this.” You want to avoid a high bounce rate (where a user immediately leaves a page they just visited), due to the latest panda update this can affect our Google search rankings.

Here’s a great tip for article writing, Bring up a problem -> Write about the pain or difficulty caused by said problem -> Discuss the solution & lifestyle without the problem. This is a powerful article writing method that will draw readers to your site. Offer part of the solution or a great tip in the article leaving the reader hungry for more.

There is 6 basic parts to an article,

Title or Headline

You must put the keyword here. An exact match is best, so “does walking on an empty stomach burn more fat?” or top lists are great for getting attention. For example, Top 10 Fat Burning Tips, where maybe, Fat Burning Tips is your keyword, will be an attention grabber. The keyword optimizes it for the search engines and the couple extra words spice up the headline to grab attention.

Summary

Your keyword doesn’t have to go here but if you are working with a shorter keyword I would recommend it. This is the part of the article that will show up on the search engine as the description of the article. You want to make this as appealing as possible so you get clicks.

First Paragraph

The Keyword must be in the first sentence of your paragraph! Then, once more throughout the paragraph, don’t spam it. Try to keep this interesting and engaging so the reader doesn’t leave immediately.

Body

Insert the keyword again once or twice in this part of the article. This is the beef of the article, so great content here!

Conclusion

This is where we want to skillfully lead the reader to our author’s resource box, where you will want to promote your website.

Resource Box

The majority of article directories will allow you to promote your website (one or two links) in this space. This is where you must put a call to action to get readers to visit your website. If possible you want to have the link to your site setup with anchor text as the keyword you are targeting. This will help optimize your website for SEO and backlinking.

Examples “If you want to burn fat now visit this website now (Link Goes Here)” or “For more tips on burning fat visit this website now (Link Goes Here)”

Most article directories will not allow a direct affiliate link so you need to have your own website that can be linked, then have a short review of your affiliate product on your site; then put your affiliate link in that review. (You can put affiliate links inside your articles at GoArticles.com!)

Step 4: Article Submission

Great job so far! You should now have a high quality article that we can submit to article directories. Ezinearticles.com is still the best article directory, even after the Google panda update, and right now approval times couldn’t be any quicker. Submit the article to Ezinearticles first, and then once it is approved you can submit it to other article directories. Google has put more of a penalty on duplicate content so it wouldn’t hurt to invest in article spinning software at some point for better results.

Other article directories I recommend are Goarticles.com and Associatedcontent.com

Web 2.0 Sites for submission, Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com

Document Sharing Sites are starting to pull some weight with Google, I recommend submitting your articles to Scribd.com as well.

Step 5: Ranking for Search Engine Position

Since we are dealing with low competition keywords it is VERY easy to rank #1 in the search results. You honestly need just a handful of backlinks to rank this high. Sometimes you will have an article that will rank number one naturally, no backlinks, because there is zero competition. I had an article last week do that!

To get these backlinks you will need to social bookmark your articles. There are various pieces of software and services out there that can help automate this process to many different sites at once. If you decide not to do it by hand in the future there are service here in the warriors for hire section or gigs on fiverr.com.

When creating these social bookmarks make sure that you are using the keyword that you are targeting in the article in the anchor text of the link.

If you have created a high quality, killer article, then your article is likely to get picked up and syndicated by other people providing even more backlinks.

Final Step: Profit?

This last step is where you will see results from your hard work. It all comes down to numbers and how hard you worked. Think realistically about how many articles you can write in a day then setup a plan to write that many every day. Let’s say you can write 3 to 4 articles per day for 30 days, that’s 100 to 120 articles in one month. If each article has 10 people click through to your site per day, that’s 10 X 100 = 1000 visitors per day to your website. These are targeted visitors that are coming to your website, viewing your offer. If just %1 of those people convert into sales, that’s 10 people buying your product every day. Occasionally you will write an article that is just a home run, this is a killer article that will bring in a huge traffic every day.

Talk about building a passive income! Once you have this type of traffic built you can set it and forget it. Move on to your next website or project that you want to promote and start writing articles. Rinse -> Repeat -> Profit.

The example I’ve used is a typical but well below average situation for article marketing. You are likely to see much greater results than what I’ve show above. This method will work for any niche; there are always keywords ripe for the taking. If you have trouble finding some keywords start thinking about sub niches and micro niches. Don’t do just plain dog training, try a specific breed for example. That’s all I have for you today!

Good Luck,

-Jay Vance