Part 2: Testing Keywords - Longtail Sniper Guide

Welcome to Part 2 of the Longtail Sniper Guide. If you have no idea what this is, then go here.

After you collect a list of keywords and rank them, pick what you think is the best keyword. If this is your first time, don’t spend too much time on picking one. You’ll only get a better idea of keywords once you start testing them.

Now for some theory on Google…

Google is the most popular search engine today and receives about 60 percent of the searches on the internet. They are also the most progressive in terms of how much they change. Recently, newer “Web 2.0″ sites have allowed users to create their own websites easily using drag and drop interfaces. I’m pretty sure you’ve seen blogs before that start with http://funnyname.wordpress.com or http://funnyname.blogspot.com.

Wordpress and Blogspot allow users to easily publish their own website on the internet. The thing you need to understand is that Google for some reason is willing to put these websites into their search engines much quicker than brand new domains like http://www.yourkeyword.com.

What this means is that we can create brand new websites quickly and have them tested and ranked in Google in just hours. This technique has been known for quite some time now in the webmaster world, but many don’t realize how effective technique can be for keywords that have very little competition.

In other words, we will be creating “Mini” websites on other people’s websites that will rank in Google quickly.

Building an Effective Mini Site

Everything I’ve told you up till now is nothing new. I may have added a little bit of personal insight and experience, but that’s about it. The real trick is to create a mini site that Google loves, is easy to make money, and has minimum maintenance requirements. If each mini site takes hours to update every week, then you’ll be limited in the number of sites you can create.

The first step is to evaluate which website publishing platforms we should use for our mini sites. The popular ones like Wordpress and Blogspot are not recommended since they only limit you to a blog. However, don’t discard them because they can be very useful later when you decide to dominate keywords or niches.

A list of full web page creators:

Google Pages
Synthasite
Weebly
Jimdo
Sampa
SiteKreator
Doodlekit

There are more of these popping up everyday. I use popular websites like TechCrunch to keep track of new startups in the web publishing world.

I highly recommend checking out the tools above and see which ones you like the best. Each one has a different feel, and also act differently in the search engines. Sites like Webnode offer an incredible amount of flexbility while others are much simpler and easier to use.

The Ideal Design

This is something I’ve been tinkering with for awhile. The main objective you want is the viewer to come to your homepage which is your main piece of content that tries to get your viewer to go to your affiliate link and then either fill out a lead form or actually buy something. Here are the following tips that have worked for me.

  1. Put your keyword in the url. The free website creators will give you a subdomain (http://SUBDOMAIN.websitemaker.com) to put whatever you want in. Make this your keyword. Google and MSN/Live seems to place a lot of value on this.
  2. The main page (http://yourkeyword.websitemaker.com) should be the main sales copy. This should be a static page which means it shouldn’t be like a blog that has new entries at the top. Only part of it will change which I will get to.
    1. Write a minimum of 500 words (750 words recommended) split into three sections. Use your keyword an average of every other sentence. Bold your keyword and italicize your keyword once in awhile. Each section should contain a H2 tagged title with your keyword cleverly placed in. This may be difficult sometimes. If it is too difficult (in other words, looks spammy), just use another title.
    2. Update this page by adding at the bottom every week fresh content. For example, I will add in a hot news item (100+ words) near the bottom.
    3. Add affiliate links on a separate column to the right or left. Keep it simple text links. I find that the MORE simple you make your website (just words), then more likely Google will trust you. Think about it, how can it trust a site with random javascript tags.
  3. There should be a blog page or a page for new content. Blog will work fine, but you can also just create a page which you keep adding news items or articles. This is to tell Google you are updating your site with quality content.
    1. I usually start a mini site with 5 blog posts (100+ words each) or 1 nice 500 word article (or 2 - 250 word ones).
    2. Update this section once a week with at least 200+ fresh words.
  4. Add an about page at the minimum. SEO guys say you should also add a privacy page and terms of use. I’m not convinced yet if it is necessary.
  5. Add a Meta description and tags to your homepage at the minimum. This is important in my experience.
  6. Add Google Analytics for tracking. If you have a great mini site that really hits the spot, then Google might see this by checking out your Google analytics data (not sure if they do this, but… it might explain partly why I get great rankings quickly). But this means you better write quality content!

After this, you should have a nice little mini site at http://yourkeyword.websitemaker.com. What I told you above is the absolute minimum you need. I’ve done a lot of testing and anything less seems to make Google do funny things with your site.

Submit your Mini Site

Getting the attention of Google is a matter of sending your mini site to social websites. Social websites are sites that collect links from actual users. Some sites focus on bookmarking and others focus on social news like Digg.com.

Use tools like Social Poster and Social Marker to submit your new mini site to Web 2.0 sites. Caroline Middlebrook has a nice guide here to save time. Warning: avoid submitting your site to places that are about a single topic or niche. For example, Sphinn.com is about Internet Marketing, so a site about Dog Food doesn’t belong there.

After a few hours or a day or so, you’ll be indexed in Google. Search for your keyword and you should see yourself somewhere on the top 5-6 pages. If not, you may want to wait. If it has been 4-5 days, then something has happened, Google either doesn’t like your content, the keyword you chose has a lot of activity at the moment, or your keyword was way too competitive.

If you don’t find your keyword, try searcing “site:yoursite.com” without the quotation marks. If you see your website, then your page is indexed. Go ahead and continue updating the site. I’ve had sites not show up for weeks if not months, and then randomly show up in a high position. Don’t give up!

Now you want to try to boost the ranking.

Rising the Ranks

The most important thing you have to do is update your front page and blog/article page every WEEK. I have found that if you don’t update in about 7 to 8 days, Google will smack you down to oblivion. However, don’t keep me to this, because I’ve seen some of my sites randomly become #1 or #2 without touching them after the initial submission to social websites.

Google just works in mysterious ways sometimes, but your job is to reverse engineer as best you can for consistency.

The most powerful way to rise the ranks is to create a link on other people’s website that links to your website. First start with your keyword and look at every site in the top 100-200 results. Many of the sites may be forums or blogs where you can leave a nice comment with your link. It is true that many of them are no follow, but I recommend doing it anyway despite what SEO experts say about nofollow links. Use SearchStatus (FireFox add-on) to see if links are no follow (highlighted in red). Also try related keywords.

The golden rule is to try to obtain links from other websites that are related to yours.

A technique I find works well is writing an article with the keyworded in there a few times and then using the social posting techniques to boost it into the Google rankigns for your keyword. What will happen is that your new article will probably be ranked lower than your main page. However, Google might go ahead and push your main page higher since your other article is now ranking highly as well.

There are many ways to boost your rankings. I highly recommend you try method and wait a week to see what changes. Hang out in forums such as Digital Point to find out what other people are doing to get easy backlinks and other techniques.

Google Rollercoaster

Sometimes you’ll catch a lucky break and Google will let you keep the initial high ranking. Sometimes Google takes you off the map. It really depends on a lot circumstances that I still am trying to figure out.

But, once you find something stick and making money. MILK IT. That’s what the next section is all about.