I launched this blog officially last year and for this past year I’ve just been blogging randomly. I focused on content that I enjoyed writing about. I wanted to spend the time checking out which niche I covered more than anything else. I was however, trying to keep it to IT topics but ended up covering a handful of big events that occurred here in Seychelles (including the Indian Ocean Island Games).
Earlier today I looked at the queries that have been driving traffic to my site, and they include a lot of Seychelles-related keyphrases. Including the Seychelles Carnaval, and surprising enough “Seychelles hotels”.
First Step: Choosing The Right Keywords
This week, I’ve decided to choose my keywords and keyphrases. For the past year or so I’ve simply used “Sabrina Sabino” as my keywords. This is the easiest because it’s my name and it is a 100% match on my domain name (sabrinasabino.com). For this reason, it comes up on the #1 spot on the search engine results pages (SERPs) when someone or if someone ever types “sabrina sabino”. You’ll notice that some people’s official website actually falls below their Facebook or Twitter pages on the SERPs. Targeting the exact keywords used in your domain name should be the first keywords you concentrate on especially if you are on a yourname.com. When you’re done with that, you should then choose more generic keywords specific to your niche.
Today I’ve decided to choose another keyphrase and that will be “Seychelles Blogger”. At the moment, the site that’s coming up on the top spot is “seychellesliving.blogspot.com” which is a PR2 site and created in 2008. In fact, my site doesn’t even come up on the first page at the moment. The first page is full of Seychelles-related blogspot blogs! WTH, Google! But the reason why this is happening is simply because nobody has bothered to target these keywords for their site.
Second Step: Internal SEO
In order for Google to know that my target keyphrase “Seychelles Blogger” is genuinely relevant to my website, I have to use these words and associated words on my blog. A lot of people will tell you to use them on your meta keywords and meta description. That’s a way to do it. However, relevant blog content is also efficient so you don’t have to change your meta description if you don’t want to. Ensure that your site is search engine-friendly so that sites like Google actually gets the message that you’re sending out.
Third Step: External SEO
You might also want to tell other relevant websites about your niche. With the most recent Penguin and Panda updates from Google you really need to be careful with this one. Before the updates, the idea was to use your target keywords as an anchor text on your URLs that existed on other valuable websites. Many people over-optimized their websites using this method so it appears that such sites were penalized. Your objective right now should be to use varying anchor texts, and as backlinks should be placed “naturally”, you will have to somehow hope that other sites link to your site and they use your keywords to link back to your website.
I’m sorry, I’m half asleep so bear with me and my effort to explain.
Fourth Step: Be Smart
Wait…
…type…
…adds to cart…
…checkout…
…clicks ‘buy now’…
…receives Paypal notification…
…receives domain name registration confirmation…
Always, always, always own the .com of your targeted keywords. Reg fee is approximately $10 (premium domain names cost considerably more). But pay for whatever you can afford to, especially if you are serious about your website. Because owning the .com of the generic keywords is PRICELESS.
You can now do one of two things: redirect the .com to your website so that any typed-in traffic will be diverted to your blog, or you can develop a minisite on that domain name and use unique content and valuable information to drive people to your website. This is possibly the best way to do it because it is a secondary website, but you can still sell advertising spots on it and to everyone else including search engines it exists as any other website and not the “supporting act” on your show.
If you want to build a secondary site however, host it on a separate webhost and avoid a link exchange. What you want is your primary site to be promoted on the secondary minisite but you should not promote that site on your primary site.
Fifth Step: Website Promotion for Authority
Forget SEO for a second and concentrate on actual web promotion. Let everyone know that your site is THE authority site for your niche. Keep your promise by ensuring that the contents of your site consists of relevant topics and that their quality is high enough to be resourceful to your visitors.
Voila, you are good to go!
Remember that your site will appear at the top of the SERPs if you are persistent and keep it safe!
The step by step guide to perform the targeting of keywords is a descriptive, as well as, significantly vital information for all those looking forward to target the keywords on the internet.