Before I get into this, please understand that I am not an SEO expert. I know what works for me and I hope this article introduces you to things that will help you with your marketing and money making efforts. About 3 years ago, the concept of keyword selection was introduced. Basically, this marketing strategy relates to a couple of things…
- The keyword is long tail with very little competition…
- A properly formatted internal linking strategy….
For a niche marketer, this strategy is perfect. And even for larger websites with thousands of pages, if done correctly, keyword selection can quickly move a page up for whatever you want to rank for.
It’s all about relevancy and harnessing a website’s ability to establish relevancy.
You see, Google and the other search engines are simply trying to figure out what your site is about. It does this in several ways:
- Domain is a clue.. If, for example, you’re trying to rank for organic diets for beginners and your domain happens to be organic diets for beginners, then Google will most likely think your site is (do I even need to say this?)
- The page title– The title tag, aka your page title, is another clue…
- The content of the page– I know it’s obvious, but what you write will give an indication. Semantic keywords and what you expect to be common words based on other websites that are like yours are helpful.
- What links are on your page– If you are linking to similar web pages, then you will have a better idea of what your site is about.
- How search engines got there– This is important. The anchor tag in the link will go a long way in establishing relevancy. Bonus points if the link comes from a similarly themed website.
Ok, now if you can agree that all of the above helps identify your page as relevant to whatever keyword you’re searching for, you’re 3/4 of the way there. Now, we’re going to take you the other 1/4 of the way home…
Internal link structure is very important if you are searching for keywords
Remember how I talked about external links pointing to your site having a profound effect on your ranking? This is because the site “quotes” you as being relevant to whatever you’re talking about.
What the keyword snipers discovered was that what can be done externally (getting one-way backlinks to your site), can also be done internally…
Stay with me here…
SEO Michael Martinez once said that you could rank for just about anything if you could say the same thing differently enough on your site. In other words, if he wanted to rank for something like hubpage SEO, if he had enough pages on hubpage SEO, he would eventually rank for it.
His theory was that if you created 1,000 pages on how to create an irresistible offer, your home page would eventually rank for it. There are problems with this strategy that we’ll discuss shortly, but you have to agree that 1,000 pages on a website targeting a keyword should make that site the most relevant, especially if the keyword is a long-tail variety, right? ?
However, the trick for the niche marketer is not to build 1,000 pages. For one thing, that would take a long time. Instead, a niche marketer can quickly rank for the long-tail keyword simply by stacking pages.
homepage– Optimized for keyword
Page 1– Keyword derivative with link pointing to home page with keyword
Page 2– Keyword derivative with link pointing to home page with keyword
…and so on and so on….
So basically all you’re really doing is pointing most of your internal links to your home page to express to search engines what your website is all about.
Problems with keyword selection
There are some issues that are not really discussed regarding keyword selection. For one thing, you have to be very careful about something known as keyword cannibalization. This is when you have one or two pages on your site competing for the same keyword that will put off search engines.
You don’t want search engines to have to figure out which page on your site is most likely to be the most relevant keyword. You want to be able to control this factor.
Another problem is that sometimes, depending on the niche, relying solely on internal links may not be enough to rank for your keyword. In this case, you have two possibilities:
- Create more pages
- Create more external links from other sites to your site
Personally, it’s easier to build external links and probably more effective.
