June 2007
Monthly Archive
Wed 27 Jun 2007
Posted by Victor under
13. Summary 1 Comment
If you have made it this far with the niche marketing strategy, then congratulations. There is always more to be learned, but that will happen as this strategy is applied. Wordpress can be a challenge at first, but it mostly comes down to learning how to upload themes and plugins and then activating those plugins, editing your chosen theme, and setting up your blog options. The content is a simple matter of posting with proper keyword optimization. Then start building your backlinks and watch your search engine rankings soar.
Here is a breakdown of the resources recommended at this site:
- niche research - ebay pulse, amazon top sellers.
- keyword research - seo book.
- domain registration - godaddy, aplus, yahoo business, netfirms, ipower. domain suggestion and keyword domain suggestion tool.
- hosting - hostgator, bluehost.
- wordpress - free video tutorial with themes and plugins.
- SEO - traffic blueprint (flash video series)
- site monetization - ebay affiliate program, amazon, adsense, clickbank.
- articles - article writing super secrets, article submitter, instant article wizard.
- directories - directory submitter , see backlinks below.
- backlinks - see article post here.
If you are on dialup and cannot download the wordpress video tutorials, then here is a breakdown of the SEO themes and plugins used. They can be downloaded individually:
- free SEO optimized wordpress themes
- adsense deluxe plugin - put adsense ads on your site and posts
- all-in-one SEO plugin - tailor title, keyword, and description meta tags for each post.
- site map plugin - generate a site map that will help the search engines.
- phpbaylite plugin - display keyword based ebay auctions on your site and posts.
- smart update pinger - specify sites to be pinged on posts, or specify no-ping.
- socialize it plugin - an all-in-one social bookmarking system.
- static front page plugin - makes one post sticky, so it stays on the top of the home page.
- database backup plugin - your wordpress database can be backed up using your cpanel or phpmyadmin (bottom of mysql page), but if you don’t know how to do that, then this plugin gives you a backup option within wordpress. This is for backing up all of your site data, such as posts and user profiles, etc. ( a site backup system).
- wp_amazon plugin - put amazon products ads on your site and posts
- clickbank adbox (not a wordpress plugin) - seperate script you install on your server.
You don’t have to use all of these plugins and you are free to find many others online. The list above is a guideline and list of plugins that are part of this niche marketing strategy. As you develop proficiency with using wordpress for your niche sites, then it is a simple matter to repeat the process. Is there work involved with this strategy? you bet, but it is productive work that will get free targeted traffic to your affiliate products which equals an ongoing income. If you need a more automated method for all of this, then Build A Niche Store may be the answer for you, but be prepared to pay $97 for it.
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Mon 25 Jun 2007
Submitting your site to link directories is another way of getting your site indexed more quickly and building backlinks.
What is a link directory? It is an index of web sites sorted by categories. When submitting your site to these directories, it is important to do it manually, meaning, fill out their forms and click the submit button. It is also important to select a relevant category for your site. The more relevant the links to your site, the better for SEO.
There are software programs that also make this task less tedious. They allow you to still submit manually, but the forms are automatically filled out as you visit each site. You still get to click the submit button. Some directories do not like sites with a lot of ads and affiliate links. They do like quality content. If you are submitting to a free directory, it can also take a few weeks before it is included in their directory, so if you can wait that long, it might be a good idea to put the advertising on your site after doing the link submissions. Good content is the important thing.
Brad Callen has also developed a Directory Submitter program. The gold version submits to over 2200 directories and the free version to 350 directories. This is a good program to start out with. Of course, you can get a list of free directories and actually go to each site manually, but you may go insane before the task is complete.
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Mon 25 Jun 2007
In addition to writing posts and building your site content, it also helps to write original articles and submit them to directories. This puts your content on sites that already have good search engine ranking which will bring targeted traffic to your site for your selected keywords. In time, your own site will get ranked, but submitting articles will help bring traffic to your site sooner. You will also be building one way backlinks to your site from these directories.
Even though setting up and managing Wordpress can be a challenge in the beginning, most people struggle with how to write articles and simply give up. Please don’t give up. Like any skill, it will develop over time and there are many resources to help you along the way. One such resource is offered below. It cannot be given away for free as per the resell license, but there is no minimum price above free, so here is a $47 product for just $7.
Just click the image to open a new window and find out all
benefits available with this resource. It fits in nicely with
the niche marketing strategy on this site, or you could
also use it for article marketing alone without the need to
build a website. Even learn how to get your articles
written for you.
You can be the judge of whether this ebook is worth
$7 or not. There are a lot of products online that are
selling for this price. Some of them are good quality
and some are not. You can probably get by without
it, but if you need any help with articles at all, then
this ebook is a good value.
Submitting articles can be a laborous task. Fortunately, there are free article submitter software programs available. You can find many of them by searching in Google. One of the newest programs by Brad Callen is called Article Submitter. There is a free version and a gold version. The free version allows you to submit your article to 110 directories, whereas the gold version submits to almost 700. The upgrade price is not bad, but it is good to test the free version first.
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Mon 25 Jun 2007
Now that you know your niche keywords and how to monetize your site, it is time to start writing articles and making posts. For best SEO, you should use your keywords as the title of your articles and posts, including keywords distributed throughout the content as well.
Let’s use the example of “weight loss”. If we use our Keyword Suggestion Tool we can narrow our broad term to more specific keywords. If you click on “weight loss program” for example, you will get even more specific terms such as:
- LA weight loss program
- Houston weight loss program
- prism weight loss program
- herbalife weight loss program
- medifast weight loss program
- nutrisystem weight loss program
These are starting to sound more like product names. You can even pick one of the programs above such as ‘medifast’ and look for more keywords related to that. But, once you have the keywords that you feel will be profitable, then you can begin researching and collecting information about the product as well as choosing an affiliate program (if the product is not available with the major sites like ebay or amazon).
A post or article does not need to be long. It can be anywhere from 300-800 words and describe the benefits of a product. How does the product solve a persons problem? That is what the article or post should address. The first paragraph should be an introduction, followed by a few paragraphs that talk about each benefit, and then the final paragraph which is a summary and call to action. You can place your targeted keywords into the article as well and link it to the affiliate product or place contextual ads or auctions within the post. Posts and Pages created in your blog are done from the admin panel, under the “write” menu.
If you are posting an article to a directory, it is a better idea to just have a link in your author bio box pointing to your niche domain and not an affiliate link. Some directory sites such as ezinearticles will not accept articles with affiliate links in them, or if they sound like a blatant sales pitch. Be informative, create curiosity, and get visitors to your site. Let the affiliate product page do the selling. Amazon and ebay are good for that because they are trusted sites with customer feedback.
It is also recommended that the articles you post to article directories have different content than what you post on your site, meaning simply, that you should rewrite your articles so that it is not duplicate content of what you have on your niche site. Otherwise, that could diminish the SEO effectiveness of your site. As an example, you could write posts on your site for each product, but write something more general to post on article directories and have those articles point back to your niche site.
As you make posts with keyword titles, your blog software will ping the blog directories and that will help get your posts and site indexed. You will also be building your site content with valuable information that visitors will see under your categories menu. It is good to make posts periodically to help boost your ranking and keep the search engines coming back.
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Mon 25 Jun 2007
Now that you have a basic idea of how to set up Wordpress and optimize it for SEO (you watched the free videos, right?), you will need to know how to integrate affiliate ads and links to your site and posts. The free wordpress videos also demonstrate how to use the adsense and amazon plugins. On this site, you may have noticed links for adsense, ebay, amazon, and clickbank. There are as many affiliate programs online as there are niche products, but those listed above are the focus here. If you are promoting a specific affiliate product that has its own affiliate program, then they will provide your affiliate link for you and you can integrate it into your pages and posts.
You can join each affiliate program from their main site, but the ebay affiliate program uses Commission Junction (CJ) to manage it’s affiliate program. Just follow their sign up procedure and it will send you to CJ. Once you have joined CJ and included ebay as one of your affiliate programs, refer to the welcome emails for information regarding your ID number that you will need for the phpbay plugin. You can edit plugins from your Wordpress admin panel.
There are a lot of tweaks and setting up to do with Wordpress themes and plugins, but once you know how to do it, it will become automatic and each niche site will be easier to create as you progress.
You can download the free monetization zip file plugins from these links:
- adsense - once installed and activated, allows you to integrate adsense ads into your pages and posts. Another option is to find a wordpress theme that already has adsense integrated into it, like the Connections theme that this site is using (link at page bottom).
- amazon - once installed and activated, allows you to integrate amazon ads into your pages and posts based on keywords you specify. You can also select products to display from a list. (latest copy is for wordpress 2.1+).
- ebay - once installed and activated, allows you to integrate keyword based ebay auctions into your pages and posts. Just specify the keyword and enter 1 through 10 for how many auctions to display. The search engines can also read the auction ad text, so it will help with your site content. There is an instruction text file with this plugin. There is a pro version of phpbay for $39. You can read about it here if interested.
Here is an example of how the ebay plugin will display auctions on your site. With your ebay affiliate code embedded, you can earn a commission if the winning bidder clicked through from your site. I have selected to display 3 auctions with the keyword Apple Ipod. The free plugin allows up to 10 auctions to be display at once.
There is no plugin available for Clickbank ads (that I know of), but for only $7, there is a script you can install on your site that will allow you to create ad blocks for clickbank products and then you can paste the code into your pages and/or posts. You can view the sales page for that here. Not a bad price if you intend to promote Clickbank products.
Once these plugins are set up with your affiliate IDs and you integrate them with your posts, it will begin to generate commissions for you as your site receives targeted visitors. If you get stuck on how to use a plugin, each one has a link to its home page within your Wordpress admin area. Just visit the plugin site and you should be able to get extra support.
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Sun 24 Jun 2007
Posted by Victor under
06. SEO No Comments
Search Engine Optimization or SEO, is an enormous topic in its own right. Entire books and video series are created on this topic alone. Some of the highpoints will be discussed here, but further reading and study is encouraged.
The best resource for quickly understanding the most important aspects of SEO can be found at Traffic Blueprint. These flash videos will not only cover SEO, but how your keyword research comes into play as well. They are not free, but at a one time cost just under $10, it is a “must have” addition to your marketing library.
SEO from a search engines point of view is about collecting all the sites on the internet and trying to match them with the keywords or search phrases that people are looking for. The search engines employ complex algorithms to weed out what is not relevant and to display what is. No one but the search engine staff knows exactly what the algorithms check for.
As web masters, we may think our site deserves a high ranking, but if we are competing with 2 million other websites on the same topic, the site that is older and wiser will likely remain on top. That is why niche selection and keyword research is so important since it helps a person to narrow the field of competition to something more manageable. The more specific or long tail the keywords are, the more likely to find buyers and with less competition.
In the previous step about Wordpress setup, the video tutorial that was recommended includes several themes that are also optimized for SEO. Some of the plugins also support proper SEO as well. Using one of these templates will help streamline your efforts in this area. Using these tools and putting your keywords as post titles and within your posts will go a long way to getting a top 10 ranking in the major search engines.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to submit your site to 1000s of search engines. Once you post an article to your site and Wordpress sends a ping, you will begin to be indexed. As you gain more back links via article submissions, link directories, blog comments, and social bookmarking sites, it will help with getting more site traffic and ultimately with your site ranking. There are some great automated solutions on this site to help with getting high quality backlinks, both free and low cost. Quality content plus backlinks, that is the combo that will propel your website to the top of the search results.
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Sun 24 Jun 2007
Now that you have your niche, keywords, domain name and hosting, it is time to setup your website. You can create a website in many ways, such as editing and uploading a template, using web design software to create a new page, or using an online site builder provided by the web host.
There is another option that also requires some patience in the beginning, but once it is setup, it makes content management, SEO, and page creation a breeze. This option is the Wordpress blog software. It comes with your hosting and can be found by logging into your hosting cpanel and selecting the fantastico icon near the bottom. Fantastico is a program that contains a list of scripts representing anything from forums, calendars, blogs, templates, and much more. Fantastico will automatically install one of these scripts or programs that you select from their menu. For this niche strategy, we are interested in auto installing the latest version of Wordpress. Just choose it from the list and then click on “new installation”. Follow the instructions and Wordpress will be installed on your domain or subdomain and the database and tables will also be automatically created for you.
Once Wordpress is installed, you will be shown your admin panel login. It will look something like yourdomain.com/wp_login.php . It is from your admin panel that you will select themes, activate plugins, set options, write and manage posts/ pages/comments. If you are new to Wordpress, here are a couple of definitions:
- wordpress theme - this is a template that controls how your site looks. It is similar to a web site template. There are hundreds of wordpress themes available for free online. They come with differing graphics and layouts. Some have 2 columns, some 3 columns. Some are more optimized for the search engines than others.
- wordpress plugins - a plugin gives your wordpress website a special ability. For example, the all-in-one-seo plugin allows you to tailor your meta tags. The phpbaylite plugin allows the user to display keyword based ebay auctions in their posts, like what is on the home page of this site. The static front page plugin allows a user to identify a post that stays at the top of the home page instead of the latest post. There are hundreds of plugins available for almost every conceivable purpose.
Any Wordpress theme or plugin that you download to your computer will come in a zip file. You will need to first unzip them to a folder on your computer, then they can be uploaded to your hosting site. All site files go into the public_html folder. Once inside that folder, you can access subfolders.
Wordpress themes are uploaded to the /public_html/wp_content/themes folder.
Wordpress plugins are uploaded to the /public_html/wp_content/plugins folder.
It is highly recommended that you download the Free Blogging With Wordpress Video Tutorial. Being able to see these steps in action will be much more enabling than following a written procedure. Not only do you get the video tutorials, but the file comes with 15 themes and 7 plugins that are crucial to proper Search Engine Optimization and site monetization. The first part of the tutorial can be skipped since it involves manually installing Wordpress. You have used the auto-install feature that is part of the hosting cpanel fantastico program. These videos will also show you how to setup and use the themes and plugins. Once you know how to do these things, setting up new sites will be a snap.
One of the wordpress plugins is for inserting an Amazon product with your affiliate link. The above graphic is just one example of using Wordpress as the keyword to bring up a list of books on that topic. This particular book is a visual guide. Anyway, the plugin, which comes with the free tutorial mentioned above, was not compatible with the latest version of Wordpress, but if you go into the plugin file called wp-amazon.php and change line 32 from
require_once (ABSPATH . ‘/wp-includes/wp-l10n.php’);
to
require_once (ABSPATH . ‘/wp-includes/l10n.php’);
then it will work with the latest Wordpress version 2.2, or you can download the modified plugin here. There are 2 files, so just unzip and upload to your plugin folder. You can also check the main plugin site for the latest updates.
One of the options you will want to set up inside your Wordpress admin panel is the custom permalink. Just click on Options–>Permalinks. Then select custom and in the field enter %postname%. Click on update and what this does is whenever you make a post to your blog, the post title will become part of the URL, ie - yourdomain.com/your-article instead of yourdomain.com/#1 . That way your indexed pages will be more search engine friendly and easier for people to see what the URL leads to.
If you have never uploaded files to a web host before, you can do so from your hosting cpanel file manager. A more efficient method is to use FTP software (FTP - File Transfer Protocol). This type of software connects your computer to your host computer in an easy Windows type interface that allows you to move files and folders from your computer to your web host and vice versa. Here are some links to free FTP programs:
- Sofotex - list of different FTP programs with links
- FTP Commander - free version has enough features for most people.
- The Free Site - more FTP programs to choose from.
You are one step closer to your first niche site, but it is a big step.
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Sat 23 Jun 2007
Now that you have registered your new domain, you need a web host to point it to and a place to build your new site. There are many types of hosting accounts online, from free to the more expensive dedicated servers that big affiliate programs run off of. What we are looking for here is a hosting account that supports cpanel, fantastico, php, mysql, and more. It should allow unlimited domains, virtually unlimited space, massive bandwidth, and offer responsive customer service. Oh, and it should be very affordable. I’m sure there are several that fit the bill and a few that don’t.
Two options will be recommended here. The first is Hostgator. Their baby plan meets all of our criteria and there is no setup or prepay required, just a low $9.95/mo via credit card or paypal. Just click on Learn More under the Shared section to see the different options. The second host is Bluehost. They require a longer term payment, such as 12 months in advance, but it still works out to around $6.95/mo and the options they offer are fantastic. Their customer service is also top notch. You also get a free domain registration with the 12 and 24 month plans.
Once you get your hosting account set up, you will need to get the nameservers from your host (usually in the welcome email). Then log into your domain registrar and update these nameservers. You can view several nameserver tutorials here. Your welcome email will also give your cpanel login information. If you are not familiar with what is available in a cpanel, just view some of these flash cpanel tutorials. The cpanel is a user friendly control panel for managing your hosting account and completing tasks such as creating and accessing email accounts, creating databases, adding domains and subdomains, managing site files, using fantastico to auto install scripts such as Wordpress, and more.
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Sat 23 Jun 2007
Another step in the process of setting up an optimized niche site is choosing the right domain name. The basic idea here is to pick a domain that contains your main keywords, but not so long that it cannot be remembered.
In the previous step, HDTV was used as an example. That is a broad keyword term and can easily be narrowed due to its popularity and high competition. Many of the domain name variations for HDTV have been taken already. We can narrow the search a bit by trying a domain search using the keyword term HDTV LCD. It could take awhile to think up the possible domain names, so we will use a couple of free tools to help us.
The first tool is called Domain Suggestions. If you type in the term HDTV LCD it returns about 20 possible domain names based on the keyword entered and whether those domains are available for registration or not. The second tool is called Keyword Rich Domain Suggestion Tool. This suggestion tool seems to pick domain names based on actual keyword searches done in the search engines and returns more results, whereas, the first tool is more about name variations. Both will give some good ideas for domain names and show if the domain is available.
If you are starting out and don’t have a budget, then it might be okay to pick a more general domain name, such as the site you are reading now. Then instead of registering a new domain for each new niche, simply create keyword based subdomains. As long as the main keywords are still in the URL, the search engines will see that. So if a niche about HDTV is added to this domain, it would have a URL something like hdtv.niche-mkr.com. Most hosting providers treat subdomains as domains, so wordpress can be installed in each subdomain folder without putting a load on the server.
Once you have a domain name picked and it is available, it must be registered through a domain registrar. There are a ton of registrars. All you have to do is Google it to see what is available. Typically, it will cost $9.95 per year to register a domain name, but there are always specials available for a few dollars less. If you are planning on registering many domain names, then it will be better to do it with the same company so it is easier to keep track of them. Once you aquire a hosting account, you will need to go back into your domain registrar account and update the nameservers to point your domain to your host. Domain registration and hosting are two different entities.
Some of the more prominent domain registrars are:
Be careful of ads that offer registration for a couple of dollars. That is usually conditional and sometimes only applies to .info domains. The registrars listed above are reputable and should work fine.
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Sat 23 Jun 2007
An integral part of finding a niche product is doing keyword research. What is a keyword? When someone searches for something on a search engine, what they type into the field of the engine is the keyword(s). It could be web hosting, xbox, buy treadmill, or a billion other subjects and combinations. The real question for the niche marketer is, what are the keywords that will bring buying customers to their website, what is the demand, and how much competition is there?
There are many tools for doing keyword research. Software you can buy, software that is free, and many online tools as well. Some well known online tools are Wordtracker and Overture. There is also a free tool on this site called Keyword Explorer. It shows the most popular keyword variations based on what you type into it and shows how many searches are performed each month for the particular keyword and also how many competing websites appear in google for the keyword search term. I use this tool myself to quickly find high demand, low competition keywords for my chosen niche.
Another great free online tool is SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. You can do a lot more with this tool, such as selecting what country you want results for, search results for Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You can view Google trends and if you click on a keyword, it breaks it down into even more keywords. Take some time to practice with this tool and you will quickly see how powerful it is. It may be the best free keyword tool online.
If you are looking for some powerful videos on SEO, I recommend Traffic Blueprint. These are the best SEO videos available at under $10 and well worth it. One of the videos goes into detail on how to use the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. It’s not difficult though.
So, the main idea behind keyword research is to find relevant keywords based on your chosen niche market and find ones that have a high number of searches and a low number of competing websites.
There is much debate about what is the optimum value for monthly searches and competing websites. It really depends on what your strategy is. If you have a very narrow keyword based on a product name, such as “bowflex series 7 treadmill”, then fewer people may be typing that into the search engines. On the other hand, there will also be fewer competing websites and those who are typing product names into the search engines may be more prone to buy that product. Keyword Explorer says there are 2,000 monthly searches with 26,000 competing websites. SEO Book says there are over 7,000 monthly searches for the above term. These are pretty good numbers. You should be able to find products that have over 1,000 searches per month and under 100,000 competing websites for product specific keywords. The more searches and fewer competing sites the better.
For a broader term like Treadmill or Horse, you will have hundreds of thousands of monthly searches, but the competing websites will be in the millions. It is important to continue drilling down into the more specific longer tail keywords to find the ones with high searches and lower competing sites, but keywords that attract buyers. The term “iron horse” might have good search/competition numbers but have nothing to do with your horse related products, whereas “horse saddle” might be a better fit. Relevant keywords, general to specific.
Once you find several long tail keywords related to your niche product, these keywords can then be used as article and post titles on your blog site. Using the keyword in the title and body of the article will help with search engine ranking. This is also true if you are submitting an article to directories. Your keywords are what draws targeted traffic to your article or site once indexed by the search engines.
As a final example, lets say you did your product research at ebay pulse and chose the High Definition TV niche, or “HDTV”. If you type this keyword into one of our tools, you will get many variations with HDTV as part of the keyword. We may want to ignore the lower priced items such as HDTV Antenna or a less relevant term like HDTV Info. However, there are more terms that are of interest such as
- Sony HDTV
- Samsung HDTV
- 32 LCD HDTV
- 42 LCD HDTV
- Sharp HDTV
There are many more that can be drilled down. Since these are popular items on ebay and people are searching for them in the search engines with the keywords listed above, this has the potential to be a profitable niche. Each item could be a seperate blog post or article optimized with the keyword phrase in question. If we use our ebay wordpress plugin to display relevant auctions it might look something like this:
This is what our site visitors would see if they are interested in 32 inch lcd HDTV. If they buy from your link, you earn a commission.
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