Savvy Affiliate

Day 24 of The 100 Days To Building A Great Website Guide

So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.
- Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War thousands of years ago, yet the principles of what he is saying is still being studies in today’s military schools.  Even more importantly, to you, you can apply what he says to your website.

Search Engine Rankings Are a Battlefield

Not to offend anyone in the military, because clearly the two are completely different, but the principles are similar.  To advance in the search engine rankings you need planning, resources, dedication, and savvyness.  There are thousands of other people competing against your for the same spots, to beat them you have to understand your strengths, and their weaknesses.

The way to get keywords is to go for the weak ones first

If you are a new blogger, you may be envious of some of the prestigious rankings you can’t compete for.  It would be great to rank well for “Make Money Online”, but how well defended is it?  The top two rankings for Make money online are John Chow and Bidvertiser, a PR 6 and PR 7 page.  Nothing that a new blog can hope to trump.  But you don’t need to attack their strengths to get search engine traffic, you need to attack weakness.  Instead of “Make Money Online” try a variation, like “Get Money Online”

Looking at the variation, you can see that their are still top competitors their.  But they aren’t directly targeting it.  Clearly they are ranking for that keyword through SEO bleed over from their other keywords.  “Get Money Online” is a long tail keyword for them, and you can take it away.

Direct Targeting Can Beat Higher PR

There is a reason that a few sites don’t rank well for everything.  Google tries to match up searchers with high ranking sites, but equally important is targeted results.  No one can target everything.  Even the biggest blogs only directly target 10-30 keywords.  The rest of their search engine hits are accidental, or at best good luck through good planning.  If you find a keyword which isn’t directly target, you can take it over.  Try searching your keywords with quotes around them.  See what comes up and it will give you a good idea of who is directly targeting that phrase.

Once you have one keyword, expand

Once you have gotten a high ranking for one keyword, expand into its neighbor.  If you have a 3 word keyword that is doing well for you, try keeping 2 of the words the same, and using a synonym for the third word.  Your SEO bleed-over will carry you a long way, and direct targeting will help you go the rest of the distance.