Rankings are a Trap. Focus on Traffic.

Definitely a good way to get solid data. I've a site I use for autoposting which I might take the plugin out and start doing the manual posting with some optimized content.

Seems like such a simple concept but it's those easy things you can do to scale things up that I overlook as it just seems to easy to actually work.

Will certainly give it a bash on that site.

Cheers

So, what I think you are saying is just write good content for your site. Answer a need or provide good information. Only be concerned with longtail keywords that relate to the content.

Don't worry about hot keywords with zillions of searches that you might can get to #1 if you killl yourself trying; and don't worry about backlinks.

Or am simplifying too much what you are saying?



Catherine

Writing good content is the absolutely necessity. Just how a restaurant needs to have delicious food.

But only writing good content is called blogging. And bloggers don't make money. :-)

Once you target the longtail search queries that your audience is searching for, and you stick at it long enough, your business really takes off.

I guess you can surmise that you are a proponent that content is king, which it is, and when you have loads of content and a big website then yes you get a lot of traffic, just look at the news sites? Not only do the get a ton of traffic their PR is really high with all the articles linking to the main page giving the home page a pr of 8 or 9.

As the above said you will need a lot of content to actually get traffic. A LOT.

it would take a ridiculous amount of time to write enough quality articles for enough long tail keywords to see a significant amount of traffic.

This is a good long term goal but i think you can be doing other things in the mean time to bring in the money

@high_plains_drifter - I wouldn't say a ridiculous amount. Definitely a lot, but then, time is the only resource we really have. So, you can spend your time building links, you can spend your time creating content. My point is that both are completely valid ways to build up a thriving online business.

Are you suggesting that we write an article for each version of a long tail keyword? For example when searching for the same bit of information some people will use "will X", others use "does X", others use "can X", and still others use different terms. The actual articles will be the same for "will X", "does X", "can X", etc. Because you are using different keywords, you may have a shot at more traffic, but wouldn't Google see it as duplicate content?

Or would you simply spin the content, use it with a different version of the same long tail keyword, and then repeat the spin and different version of keyword process?

Or have I missed the point altogether?

Thanks!

You don't want to write an article for every variation, then you get hit with an overlapping content penalty. You want to create articles that target the underlying concepts.

For example: "does soda remove stains", "can you remove stains with soda", "soda stains" are all essentially the same concept. So you'd only create a single article targeting it. That would be a different article from: "removing odors with bleach".

You definitely don't want to spin the content.

Here's the analogy. Imagine the entire list of keywords in your industry is a blank white wall. Each article you want to write is a blob of paint that you're throwing at the wall, covering a handful of keywords.

Your goal is to cover the entire wall.

@Mike Anthony - I'm assuming that you're creating great content that fills a need. But the point is that you're targeting concepts that people are searching for. But yes, if you stick at it, you can absolutely create an enormous volume of targeted traffic... without much promotion beyond the content itself.

I know you disagree, but I'm saying, that's how I'm getting 100K search visitors a day. And I've done independent tests to confirm it.

Backlinking isn't necessary.

I agree.. this is what I do

If one try to get the quality traffic to the site then naturally it will rank higher. As with the quality traffic one can get the quality content also and also if site has quality content then it will definitely bring the traffic to the site. But the need is to be careful for not more outbound links and be sure that visitor spend more time to your site. So this all will be naturally help to get the the higher rank.

It worked for Wikipedia, it can work for us.

Having a good ranking in Google SERP is good, but it's totally useless if your site has no traffic or with a very low traffic.

@Mike Anthony - I'm saying that focusing on rank misses the point of getting traffic. Webmasters are trying to build rank when we really only want traffic.

Thanks for the suggestion on the links, I've removed them. People can just Google me if they want to find me. Search for "universe"

To some extent it is true that ranking does not matter. It is all about traffic game, particularly targeted and focused traffic.

really help ful thread..thanks for sharing to us..i found it bit difficut to recycle or come with new ideas every time..any more tips or examples as like you explaind above like soda or bleach..thanks

Senior SEO Member lol

@weganblasting - You're off by a factor of 10 for Adsense. I made about $23,000 in Adsense last month. My search traffic was about 1,500 visitors a day in 2008. And then I built up keyword targeted content and now I have about 100,000 search visitors a day. So everything changed in the last 3 years.

Yes, all my backlinks came naturally.

I'm saying you target 1000 visitors from 1000 keywords, not 1000 visitors from 1 keyword. That's it.

@Daniel Wilson - If your total search engine traffic is going up and up, that's very motivating. And you aren't nervous about losing rankings.

@Mike Wilson - Links serve two purposes: rankings and traffic. The purpose of 99% of the linkbuilding work is to help push a specific keyword to rank #1... right? I'm saying that when you build links on a specific keyword, you're gambling that your initial keyword analysis was correct. If you're right... jackpot. If you're wrong... zero. And I'm saying that instead of writing 1 article + 99 links, just put that time and effort into the content on your own website.

Regarding self promotion, like many people here on the forum, I'm exchanging knowledge and wisdom for the opportunity to promote the software I've built. Don't the 642 thanks you've received earn you the right to put a link to your service? You've just been at it longer than me, so you've had a chance to help people out longer.

@Mike Anthony - I understand that it's the established wisdom: build links to increase rank to increase search traffic. I'm saying that there's a perfectly viable alternative.

I did a separate experiment a couple of years ago and created a brand new website with my wife. She built up about 300 keyword-targeted articles focusing on long tail terms, no link building except for joining a blog carnival to get initially indexed. She still doesn't have more than a handful of natural links, but it's earning about $700/month in Adsense, and getting thousands of visitors a day - all through longtail variations.

Haven't you ever heard that 25% of search queries are completely unique? That Google has never seen them before?

The prevailing wisdom is: Google doesn't like link building, but it works

I'm saying, you can build traffic without links for the same overall effort. Not pie-in-the-sky, Field of Dreams content, but very specific content targeting an entire niche. 1000 hours of content building instead of 1000 hours of linkbuilding. $1000 of outsourced content instead of $1000 of linkbuilding services.

P.S. Hah, sure, I'll put my links back in. ;-)

There are many ways to marketing online. As you say, getting yourself out into the places where your audience is looking is a great way to do it. Of course I'm going to build a mailing list, promote on Facebook, join discussion forums, get interviewed on Podcasts, etc.

But that's not why people are building links. They're building links to help boost a specific keyword in the rankings, and that's why we see fake forum profiles, spun content, link wheels, etc. If the entire internet switched to no-follow overnight, much of that link building activity would disappear.

Everything that would remain would be stuff like this. I want a link in the Warrior Forum because I want a person to see my information and click the link. Which is the whole purpose of links in the first place. I would prefer if the WF link was no-follow, personally.

I think the most valuable links take time to get, yes. I think high-quality links take as much time to get as writing a quality article. I'm sure burning up the time here.

So let me ask you a question.

Which would you prefer? 1,000 visitors from 1,000 keywords, or 1,000 visitors from 1 keyword?

I said if no-follow was the only choice.

And I'm saying, I'd always prefer the same traffic from more keywords. And I'm saying it's possible, with an equivalent amount of work.

Anyone can gather 1,000 keywords with Ubersuggest and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. That's not the hard part. Targeting all that content is the hard part, and no tool can make that easier.

Same with your service. Anyone can try to get high PR links the hard way. I'm assuming you offer a service that makes that easier to do.

My point was only that most linkbuilding is to drive a site up in the rankings. That takes time and effort. If linkbuilding didn't push pages up in the rankings, people wouldn't do it.

But links can also give you direct referral traffic, like we're both relying on here. You want people to check out your service, I want people to look at my service. I don't think you're that concerned about the linkjuice. In fact, like me, I'll bet you'd still do it if the link was no-follow.

I'm saying it's a viable alternative. You can blend the process to whatever level you like. Love building links, do that 100%. Hate building links, focus on content.

And you're saying that's impossible. And I'm saying I've done experiments to demonstrate it's possible. I'm saying I've got a huge following of people who have done the same thing, and they're seeing results.

That would be like me saying, "linkbuilding doesn't work". Linkbuilding does work, obviously, and I'd never say it doesn't.

No, neither do I. In fact, all my tool does is act like a fancy spreadsheet to keep track of all your keywords, rankings, internal links. But it'll also track all your backlinks if that's how you roll.

That's not what I'm claiming. I'm saying that by targeting keywords with high quality content, you can bring in longtail search traffic - even without links. The larger your site gets, and the more visitors you get, the more authority you build. As you get more authority, it helps push up your overall traffic because your site extends deeper into more longtail related keywords. And you're protected from fluctuations in any one keyword.

And as you said, in a perfect world, you'd blend the two with high quality content and a little targeted backlinking to push specific keywords up. I personally put 100% of my efforts on the content side, but your results may vary.

@Mike Anthony - Sorry, my post was kind of crappy, so I started re-editing it. And then you responded and quoted a part that I edited out - which wasn't a strong argument to put there in the first place. Sorry about that.

Anyway, I'm happy to provide case studies that come up. I have results of my own experiments, and I'm transparent about my own website, so people can check and see what I've done.

I haven't obscured my methods behind any WSO. So anyone's free to try it out for themselves, and see if they can replicate the results. No tools beyond the Google Keyword Tool are necessary.

Do I have to pay money to know what your methods are?

@Mike Anthony - Here's why I'm suggesting it. I think there are a lot of webmasters out there who want to build SEO traffic, but the accepted way to do that is through linkbuilding - which Google frowns on. The established approach is "build links". If your site drops in the rankings, then you need to "build more links", or "get better links".

So, in order to do SEO, people need to take actions which they worry will get them in trouble with Google - "that's the cost of doing business". And this year's Panda updates have destroyed a lot of businesses, creating even more fear in the marketplace. Webmasters are terrified their businesses are going to get wiped out overnight.

The discovery that I made with my own website is that you can keyword-targeted content to a site, without a link campaign. If you're an authority on a subject, why wouldn't you be the person to gather up all that search traffic too? You'll get 0% of the search traffic from the keywords that you don't target.

Obviously, my site has half a million links, so my assumption (like yours) was that this would only work with sites with huge authority, not for new sites. So I did the experiment with a second site, completely fresh, with no backlinks to see if it's possible for brand new sites. And it's bringing in a lot of traffic as well. The focus on the longtail keywords created the traffic.

So then I shared this with a bunch of people, who, like you, thought I was crazy but were willing to give it a shot. There are enough people trying this now that I feel pretty confident that it can work.

My overall point is this: if you don't feel comfortable going the linkbuilding path, there's another option, completely in line with Google's guidelines and objectives.

You can think I'm crazy and misleading people, but I think the risks are pretty low. At the end of the day, you'll have a great website, filled with valuable content - start backlinking that if you like.

@JK Nyerere - Maybe, I think it's just an idea so far out of the mainstream methods of SEO that the kneejerk reaction is throw it out entirely or question the source. No problem, I'm transparant about who I am.

My opinions about keyword selection are just as controversial. :-) Essentially, I believe that it's impossible to predict, in advance, which keywords are going to be easy to rank for, and which ones will be hard. Once you've got some stats going, you can start to see trends that'll let you optimize better.

I did an article on that too:
https://www.keywordstrategy.org/1102...oose-keywords/

The gist is, can't win, don't try. Target the entire niche.

It's such a high risk strategy though, it's definitely a good model for you who already has a successful site and can afford to take on high risk projects, it's just not sensible for people starting out.

@Mike Anthony - I think it's just the opposite kind of person who this might be attractive to. Who on earth would think that writing 1000 high quality articles is a shortcut? The shortcut is buy 1000 backlinks for $9.99.

I'm talking to the person who wants to focus on their website as a career and keep at it for years and even decades - to make money doing what you love. The more passionate you are about the topic, the better. The more you focus on the quality, the better. Obviously that quality impacts all your relationships and your reputation.

Here's Matt Cutts answering this exact question. Here are the methods of linkbuilding he suggests.

The status quo is to say, "that's not true, it's not possible, massive linkbuilding is the key." And I'm saying, you can do it purely on content.

That's the trap. The focus on rank, not traffic.

@Mike Anthony - I was a "good guy", now I'm "deceptive"?

Again, I provided that info as context, to explain the history of how I did my research. The backlinks I've gotten are a side benefit. That said, like you, I was suspicious about the success - my main site has just too much history and authority - so I performed an experiment to invalidate my findings. I started another site, from scratch without any directories or backlinks.

So, then I had two data points. And now other people people have tried it out and I've seen dozens of datapoints with brand new websites. You'll probably start hearing about them more and more over the coming months.

Google is the ecosystem, we can create sites that fulfill their requirements and allow us to succeed at the same time. We can get away from the cynical "it's all about links" statement.

I think we'd both prefer all webmasters take deeply nuanced view towards their websites and audience; to both value of the content and the relationships they build with other websites.

You can label me naive and misguided, but I think calling me deceptive is uncool.

You know my website, what's yours? What website have succeeded with?

Hello all i read the Thread and it is very knowledgeable for freshers like me. now i put more attention in traffic not in clicks.
Thankyou.

I agree these days it's all about traffic, the trick ofcourse is finding or getting that great content that entices the visitors

Wow can't believe how long this thread became! Definitely with Mike Anthony on this one. I work for an SEO agency and some of the sites we work with have awesome content but no links. Even stuff at the bottom of page 1 gets hardly anything. Do high quality content, and do link building. Its not one of the other.

If you want backlink strategys or traffic creation strategys I have many free methods on my blog below.
Best wishes
vivi62

@marcus88 - I already had about 8000 articles on my site, but they were mostly news oriented. So I'd write an article about some news event, like a new space mission launch, the traffic would spike and then a few days later it would settle down. I was getting a total of about 1,500 search engine visitors a day.

And then I was talking to my daughter and she wanted to know "what was the biggest star in the universe". I researched the article and then posted the result on my site. It spiked like a normal article, but it didn't go back to zero, it just kept generating search engine traffic day after day.

So I figured I'd try and see if I could get lightning to strike twice, and I wrote a second article about "why pluto isn't a planet". Same result. In fact, this is still one of the most popular search referrers for me.

At that point, I doubled down and added hundreds of articles to my site to see what that would do, and the search traffic went up and up. Each article provided an incremental increase in traffic. Now I've probably got 3,000+ articles that I've added over the last 3 years, which relate to what my website is about. Many written by me, but now with lots of additional help from a writing team. And like I said, it's now getting about 100,000 search visitors a day.

I was concerned that this was a strategy that would only work for an authority site like mine - lots of social mentions, half a million links to the domain, RSS subscribers, etc.

So I created a separate site as an experiment, starting from scratch, with my wife as the writer. She picked a niche that she was interested in, and then started writing articles both targeting search queries but also rambling about what she was interested in, our family, etc. Over the course of 3 years she's added about 250 articles to the site and it now ranks for all kinds of search terms, and brings in about 5,000 search visitors a day. The only problem is that she doesn't really want to work on the site; she works in a toy store, and enjoys interacting with human beings - go figure.

Again, we didn't build any links. The site has attracted about 3,000 links naturally from 665 domains, but not from us.

If you already have an authority site and you want to build up the traffic, I'd definitely consider adding keyword targeted content to your site. Don't worry so much about how you're ranking for any one keyword, just build your overall traffic.

I guess I'm saying that it's possible to grow a site doing the things that Google wants you do to.

@Mike Anthony - I understand your position. Good luck with your clients and your sites.

@Yukon - I do have a pretty sophisticated internal link structure. And I chip away at it when I can, setting up more internal links. I think I've got a list of about 8000 keywords that don't even have a single internal link set up, but that's agonizing work to do, so I avoid it. I have it set so the internal links only display on pages which are older than 10 days, so it doesn't annoy my regular readers.

Yeah, I'm in Google news. That's definitely good for traffic, but the visitors are less lucrative than search engine visitors. I've also got a pretty big syndication network - my stories are in MSNBC, Christian Science Monitor, io9, etc.

I agree with alot of what Fraser is saying in this thread, thanks for sharing it. I think the argument for the perspective of content creation is that it doesn't need thousands of targeted backlinks, there is no "anchor", any links are there simply to improve the site quality, the site strength and it's structure.

It's not to say backlinks don't help, but I feel content is just way more important ATM. The time I spent on a website before penguin was approx 90/10 (backlinks/content), now my focus is to change that to 5/95 (backlinks/content).

Only when I have over 1000 pages of decent content I will fire up a backlinking strategy with an aim to provide super high quality and relevant links, possibly a dozen PR6/7 with no anchors, no aim to rank for anything, simply to power up the site and it's internal pages.

I built the site yesterday, focusing on one large niche, with thousands of sub niches, and sub-sub niches, I've decided to scrap all of my other sites and just focus my attention on this one.

The domain has no keyword or anchor text and all of the internal pages are going to be long tails and categorised and tightly grouped together with user friendly tags but with no keywords, I will be posting hundreds of pages of content to this website, neither aiming to rank for any particular keyword, just writing loads of helpful content with LSI, but going after the topics that have more traffic, no competition and better pay.

I'm pretty sure by the time I start to consider backlinking the website, my users will have done it for me...as the sites content is pretty helpful from a user perspective.

The main reason I'm all for this;

You can enjoy a number #1 position in Google with backlinks and a 3 page website, but you're missing out on a great deal more traffic without loads of great content.

By simply saying "I will take over your keyword with backlinks in a blink of an eye" I would probably respond with "well I have 50,000 keywords so good luck mate".

It just more stable, how are Google going to kill you with no keywords? If one of your pages goes down, then who cares you've got 15,999 more..

The site would be so big, much of it's own ranking ability will come from it's own pages.. any attack on the site would be pointless because I don't aim to rank for anything, but it would probably end up ranking for some pretty nice keywords like "universe" because of the huge amount of relevance.

With Social Media taking the main stage....ranking can be taking a back seat....!!!

First off I just want to thank Fraser for saying everything I was trying to say, but he said it way better. I can't believe he had to spend most of his time on this thread defending his methods, the same as I've had to do. I know for a fact this method will work because I've done it on a small scale with 100 page sites. Now these sites did have backlinks that I built myself, but the long tail keywords had no competition so the backlinks had nothing to do with it.

I'm getting the same comments on my threads, "if you build it ,they wont come" how do you know that, you never built a site without backlinks. Either way Fraser is only offering an alternative to the same oh, build backlinks to rank for one keyword.

Somebody said "I can build backlinks and take down one of your pages", who cares he ranks for thousands of keywords.

I would much rather rank for thousands of keywords than battle it out for one keyword, than somebody will probably try to perform negative seo on my site just to beat me.

Your getting advice from somebody that makes thousands of dollars from adsense a month and gets 100,000 visits a day, and you want to argue with him.

My man said if you want to find me look up "universe" I was over here cracking up like damn, who on this forum can say something like that.

Fraser's site and income speaks for itself, you can chose to follow the masses and backlink to a single keyword that may or may not have the search volume the gkt says it does, or you can build a quality website that you can be proud of, not to mention making thousands of dollars a month.

Fraser you have my utmost respect, this thread is a hundred times better than mine, you are the type of marketer I aspire to be, I hope to one day be able to have a great site that people love enough to backlink for me.

Edit: Join the Anti-Marketers Club and you to can have a site that gets thousands of visitors a day and makes thousands of dollars a month.

I wish it worked as well as backlinking, but what exactly could a local plumber do to his website to generate great content? No, he needs great backlinks and good on-page SEO.

It really depends on what your focus is. Building an authority site that requires a ton of content is something entirely different than getting traffic to a local plumber.

Just sayin....and I agree with you.

Thanks for the support nest28.

I think the hostility comes from the natural skepticism everyone should have to anyone saying anything. Especially if they also a way to profit from it. I've got a tool that helps people manage large keyword-based websites, so it's natural to assume that my advice is skewed.

Skepticism is the default position, and the right one. It's up to me to defend my position, especially when it calls so many established "truths" about internet marketing into question.

But I also think that most marketers have an antagonistic relationship with Google - a relationship fostered in part by Google's treatment of marketers. Google is a great big nameless, faceless entity that you just can't reach. When you're spending time working in that ecosystem, and there's no way to reach the people within the organization, you don't really care what impact your actions have on them. And Google employees probably feel the same way too.

There's a badge of honor in being a rebel, doing things that Google doesn't want you to do.

I'll say this, large sites are awesome for testing new keywords in the SERPs.

I've been running test over the last month for new keywords, these keywords have never been on my site (5+ year old, +1K pages), no external backlinks for these keywords.

The only thing these keywords have going for them is keyword relevancy & good on-page SEO, nothing else.

I've had a few new keywords drop into positions 1-4 in Google SERPs while testing.

What I'm doing is fishing for traffic, lol.

I take note of the traffic & ranked SERP position, save that data to a text file, then repeat with a new site wide keyword, rinse, repeat... Couldn't get any easier. I'll go back later & build a category for each of the decent traffic keywords that hit positions 1-4 in the SERPs.

This also shows how tough competition is, If I can't get page #1 with a site wide keyword (1 keyword so far) I know the competition is tough. Save that keyword for later on, more detailed research of the competition.

Right now I have 4 more site wide keywords running on a single site.

BTW, all of these new keywords are two keyword phrases (example: camera phone) & all keywords are obviously in the same niche.

[edit]
No personalized SERPs.

I think there is a lot of room for failure with this method. The key is to build a site that has no limits, instead of building a site on golf, build a sports site that talks about all sports.

Second use your Google analytic's to see how people got to your site and make articles based on that.

I've seen success with this method on all of my old sites, just on a much smaller scale than Fraser.

I would have to see your sites. It might be that you're targeting long tail traffic, but neglecting some other part of the process. But if you've got a method of generating traffic that's sustainable and works for you, awesome.

This method works for me, and it works for many other people. Sometimes it's about the length of time that you stick at it. I always say, "never fear, wait a year". If you haven't been crafting content for at least a year, trying to give people as much value as you can, you're not really committed yet.

This type of method relies on very good site structure and keyword choice. You can create a site around "dog training schools" and find it progressively easier to rank subpages for

dog training schools in Utah
dog training schools in Nebraska
best dog training schools

...even with a minimum of or no (external) backlinking.

Yet, if you try to create some content like "best dog collars" you will find you get nowhere.

Google definitely looks closely at common themes on sites, that much is clear. Thing is, you have to do this intelligently - most SEO WSOs pretty much tell you to do the above, and it just looks spammy, and is probably a big over-optimisation flag nowadays. So you have to be a little more natural and less "ïntentional" about it and you are golden. I wouldn't say you can then rank with NO backlinks, necessarily, but it makes it MUCH easier to rank with the minimum of a few quality backlinks or even a simple social campaign.

I've gone through this thread for the first time and am still slightly confused. I get that you should produce a lot of valuable content and that Google will begin to see you as an authority. But, without any backlinks, wouldn't you just be relegated to "not page 1" on Google?

But, don't you need some type of backlinking to those long-tail pages?

Good points but would this also work for my cleaning service industry? I don't really know what you mean by long tail keywords. Would that mean how people may search carpet cleaners in mission viejo vs carpet cleaning mission viejo?

niche authority site- whod've thunk?
Bet the OP could post "why doesn't the sun's gravity suck in all the planets?" and be number 1 tomorrow.

I use yahoo answers for ideas for post titles, just to get visitors to my site, until I'm able to use Google analytic's information to see how people got to my site at which point I take those keyword phrases found in analytic's and make article out of them.


It's also important to mix things up a bit, write naturally, talk about every subject related to your keywords, answer every question your visitors might have.


This is how I make a site, Take nursing for example.


adult nurse

nurse midwife

Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA)

Registered Nurse (RN)

Travel Nurse

Public Health Nurse (PHN)

Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN)

Now you can make a site based on the above keywords.

Lets find some long tail keywords from Google keyword tool for some of these terms. Lets take travel nurse and see what we can do with that.


travel nurse companies
travel nursing agencies
international travel nursing
lpn travel nursing jobs
international travel nursing jobs

Now let's look at yahoo answers for some extreme long tail phrases with little to no competition.

just type in "travel nurse" ok it has 3826 results, meaning there are a good amount of questions with the phrase travel nurse.

Now look for post/article ideas.

whats the difference in the schooling courses to becoming a nurse anesthetist and a travel nurse?

can you be a travel nurse with an associates in registered nursing?

How to become a travel nurse?

How much does a travel nurse earn compared to an RN?

How much does a new travel nurse make yearly starting off?

Now use Google keyword tool's long tail suggestions mixed with yahoo answers post/article ideas and start to make content, later add your Google analytic's to the mix.

Just find out everything you can about traveling nurses, than repeat the process with the other nursing careers and before you know it, you'll have a very large authority site on nursing.

I would also include information on, salary,classes,courses,books,exams, certifications,degrees,colleges,institutes,equipme nt,questions,tuition fees,school loans etc. All of these things are related to every kind of career not just medical.


My sites normally have a tab for most of the things mention above. Each sub-category should have as much information as possible, just make sure it relates to your specific niche.


So post titles may look something like this:

What school has the best nursing programs for nurse mid wife?

How do I get a student loan in order to become a nurse?

Best online nursing programs

top nurse programs in new york

How to prepare for nursing exams

is getting a job as a nurse difficult

Sorry I'm being lazy, by not further researching nursing, or else I could give better examples.

Whatever exams nurse take in order to get certified, write articles on them, explain how many questions are on the exam, how long is the exam, what books to read to prepare you for the exam etc.

This need to be done no matter what the niche is, find out everything you can and write or buy articles. Sometimes you will make articles in hopes of getting traffic, while other times you will write articles that are just helpful and informative.

@CatherineMay - You should be able to find a lifetime's longtail keywords through the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Put in a seed keyword and it will return with up to 800 keywords. Target those.

I also highly recommend Keyword Researcher. You should be able to generate thousands of keywords quickly related to your business. Then run them back through the Google Adwords Tool to get search volume.

Oh yea make sure the keyword you go after has high exact local search, you don't want to build a authority site on something that get 5,400 a searches a month. So go after something with 30,000 searches ,broad and phrase will automatically be high which means there are a lot people searching for your keyword in question form, or in long string of words.


Don't worry about the competition because your not going after your main keyword, your going after all the long tail keywords nobody else cares about. You get enough long tail traffic and you can make much more than the person who is number for your keyword.


You could also take five keywords that are closely related and incorporate them into one site.


Edit: Fraser sorry I don't mean to hijack your thread, honestly I just like this one better than the ones I started lol.


I'm surprised this thread doesn't have 5 stars and 20 thousand views, there is extremely valuable information here.


Look if you wanted to rank for a keyword with 30,000 searches a month, you would have to do a ton of backlinking, fight other marketers,worry about getting a penalty from all of your backlinking efforts and worry about if somebody may perform negative seo on your site. All that just to be number one for a single keyword sounds crazy to me.


Normally when a keyword has high exact search count, broad and phrase are high, that tells me that there are a ton of long tails I can go after, if you make enough pages/posts you will see more than just 30,000 people come to your site.

Fraser's site is a prime example, while others are focus on being number one with a keyword that get's 30,000 he made a large site that ranks for thousands of keywords resulting a hundred thousand visits a day, instead of 30,000 a month.

search engine ranking is just one of many ways to get traffic, and I think it is the most effective way to generate traffic for any websites.

Well said Fraser. By the way, why not link your sig - I'd like to see some more of your writing.

Will

We actually built an overlapping content report into Keyword Strategy. Once you've built up a big list of keywords, we'll check every keyword against every URL on your project and highlight any that seem to be overlapping.

Nice Idea! I think the site like Wisegeek.com doesn't make less than 100k per month perhaps!

Fraser or anyone else,

I like the approach that you provide and don't like the idea of building links. A question that I have is this. If ranking on the first or second page of Google doesn't matter, how are we going to get the traffic through longtail keywords if people only read the results on the first pages of the search engines?

Also, is it necessary to have the exact search keywords in the title of the article?

Thanks

good bye to backlinks this is my next cause of action, have taken time to read the whole thread and am starting out now