Think big by targeting small in your SEO

It has been of my own experience, when you ask most companies which main keywords they are going to be targeting for their new flagship startup company, they will tell you that they want to rank for very competitive keywords in an unbelievable time frame. While yes it is true that ranking for mortgage, debt, dating, or banking will bring you a plethora of high quality traffic that will convert into leads and sales, getting those rankings without years of work or lots of money is impossible.

Most search engine optimizers do not realize there is a better solution. All you need to do is to start thinking big by targeting small. It does not matter what niche your company or website is in, every single niche has a more targeted keyword that you can be targeting. You will be able to rank higher for this keyword, in a shorter time frame. When you start ranking for this niche keyword, you will start receiving a representative sample of the traffic you will be seeing for the big keyword you are targeting for the long term. You will be able to build up sales, leads, customer contact information, and most importantly cash while you are slowly building up to your long term keyword goal. It is often easier to rank for the number one spot for five to ten niche keywords with a high volume traffic than it is to rank for one mega keyword as it is often called. For those of you who learn by example, imagine you own an affiliate company that sells supplements. Ranking for for a term like weight loss will result in potentially hundreds of thousands of sales because so many people search for it every day, however the traffic is only semi targeted. Instead of trying to target a term like weight loss, a company that sells bottles containing maqui berry could target a term like weight loss pills, which is a slightly more targeted and less competitive keyword. Depending on the size and competition of the niche, you could keep going smaller and smaller in your niche search. Instead of targeting weight loss pills, you could target a very longtail term like how to lose weight fast. The more longtail and smaller the niche, the faster you will be able to rank. You can then easily rank number one for a niche term which you can then shift the focus to a bigger keyword, ultimately moving closer and closer to ranking for your ultimate keyword in the long term. If its going to take two years to rank for a term like weight loss which will let your company make ten thousand dollars per day… wouldn’t it be smarter to rank for ten niche keywords earning you a thousand dollars a day and then have an entire year of that to rank for your big term and have the benefits of 11 income earning keywords, 10 of which have been earning you money every day for an entire year? I think you are finally now seeing the benefits of targeting small, so go out and search google for your favorite keyword tool and start doing keyword research to find the niches you can rank for in a lot shorter timeframe than trying to stick it out with your main keyword.

The New China Syndrome: USA DOD Uses Google To Foil Hackers?!

The China Syndrome has taken on a whole new meaning. Not a movie with pretty faces, not a nuclear meltdown of molten material ripping through the earth’s core; it’s now the threat of World War Three in the form of a Hacker War, conducted in cyber space, that could happen in the course of a second without anyone knowing anything had occurred.

Believe it or not…in 2001, the White House web site was completely shut down thanks to a hacker war launched by thousands of people in China, then joined by people from other countries including Saudi Arabia, India and Argentina. These hackers turned the Navy website’s home page into the blaring phrase, “I Am Chinese!” Over at the Labor Department the main page screamed, “China Hack”. The National Business Center was dealt the worst blow with the proclamation, “Beat down Imperialism of American! Attack anti-Chinese arrogance!” Imagine how devastating this could all be if these hackers’ English grammar were as accurate as their computer acumen!

So why do Chinese hackers show such disdain towards America? It all started with an American spy plane crashing into a Chinese jet. The American pilot walked away unharmed while the Chinese pilot died, escalating the tension between the two countries. Many believe China is working towards world dominance in the electronics arena and sees the United States as their premier competitor. In the years following this initial Cyber War of the World, China has launched close to 100,000 computer attacks against the US. In 2005 alone, The Pentagon logged more than 79,000 attempted intrusions with a whopping 1300 successes.

Are these invasions orchestrated by the Chinese Government or the general populace of China? The PLA (People’s Liberation Army), is the unified military organization of all land, sea, and air forces of the People’s Republic of China. For years, it is believed that the PLA outsources its hacking efforts to individuals who are the winners of hacking competitions held throughout China. In Sichuan province, one such winner uses the nom de guerre Wicked Rose. He, or she, went on to set up a hacking business that penetrated computers at a defense contractor for the United States aerospace division. Wicked Rose is believed to be employed by The PLA. There’s no definitive proof which allows the Chinese Government to comfortably deny any involvement.

So how has the United States responded to this cyber espionage? Three years after the 2001 incident, the U.S. Government assigned ONE person to investigate.(He knew nothing about intelligence; his only qualification was that he could read and write in Mandarin.) None-the-less, he managed to retrieve names, photos, cell phone numbers, and the software used by the leaders of the hacker assault, after just one day on the job, by typing in the Chinese characters for “hacker” into Google. How Mickey Mouse is that!

The China Syndrome and its new meaning has brought on a new division of terror to our modern world. It can shut down a major corporation, derail a bank, and above all, it could start a New World War that could change the face of this earth. And you could be innocently sleeping when it all happens.

Yes, You Can Stay Ethical in Your SEO

‘Ethical SEO’ is not a typo for a CEO who is acting ethically in business. If you are well-versed in today’s technology, you will know that SEO is short for search engine optimization. When you add the word “ethical” in front of SEO, you are simply explaining a way to optimize your search engine without spammy tactics and other worries. If you use ethical SEO, you have to do the right thing every day in optimizing your content – no shortcuts, no cheating. In other words, use what you can to maximize your chances of getting people to your site and getting them to buy your products or services without guerilla marketing tactics, spamming their email boxes, annoying pop-up ads, ‘keywords’ that lead to a lot of garbage advertising, and the purchase of links.

Sometimes it’s difficult to be ethical, especially when your competitors often are not. Often the temptation to take the easy way out is there. However, it is possible to efficiently and effectively meet the needs of any site using ethical SEO. The good thing about an ethical SEO agency is that they will avoid trickery and always choose to act responsibly in an effort to get optimal results for the Website. In doing that, they will be able to make the site work for you. No matter whether you do your own SEO or hire someone, always choose to be ethical. It really is possible to succeed that way.

On-Site SEO that Works

There is a ton of misinformation on the web about which SEO techniques work and which don’t.  As always, you should read with caution and test for yourself.

The #1 rule for on-site is SEO is relevance.  Make sure that the site or page you are trying to rank is relevant and useful for the visitors that click on your primary keyword.  A clean, straight to the point site will be appreciated by your visitors.  Use custom web design techniques which enhance the subject matter, don’t go over-the-top with flash, moving graphics, or anything distracting.

Start at the top.  The title of your page should feature your primary keywords and tell visitors and search engines what the focus of your page/site is.  Once you have attracted traffic to your site, they should instantly be able to see content which directly addresses the keywords you’ve placed in your title.  Article, video, or post headers should feature the keywords.

You can’t cram a ton of info onto your homepage, so include excepts with links to back pages that expand on the subject matter of the keywords.  According to Web Design Richmond you should keep the focus of the page simple and concise.  Function over form.

You want to make your site as clean and crisp as possible.  Even though most people have fast connections such as cable or satellite internet you don’t want to miss out on vital new consumers that are still kick’n it old school with dial-up.

Finally, make sure your link structure is easy to follow and intutive for finding information on your site.

For most legitimate web sites, the above steps will be all the on-site SEO necessary.  If you have a particularly large site, consider a site map.  For most though, they are unnecessary.  Keep it simple, stay focused, and above all - be useful!

Having Relevancy in your Link Building

When most people argue about link building in the dozens of popular webmaster forums around the internet, the usual fight is about whether it is better to get a handful of quality high pagerank backlinks or thousands of little low pagerank links to get your site to the coveted number one spot in Google. While it is extremely beneficial to have both a good handful of high pagerank links to influence your link popularity and internal pages pagerank, and at the same time, have thousands of lesser quality links to get the best of both worlds, neither argument is correct.

Ultimately, the best kind of link you can get is one that is of decent pagerank but is extremely relevant to your niche. Google’s algorithm is moving more and more towards being relevancy based, because that is how they can filter out spammy websites easier than truthful ones. Imagine owning a website that talks about weight loss but the only backlinks the websites have are from porn or gambling websites. Google knows that these links are not all legitimate, and so since they are not relevant they are not as strong.

Now imagine a small niche weight loss site with dozens of PR1-4 links from highly relevant weight loss blogs. Google knows that the weight loss blogs have good authority and are making content-relevant posts talking about your weight loss site and so these links will be far more beneficial than a single PR6 link from a gambling site.

The diamond in the rough is being able to get the highly authoritative and high pagerank websites that are relevant to your niche, which are the best of both worlds.