Your SEO Is like Shouting In Outer space!
Imagine shouting in outerspace for a sec, bet your SEO efforts can sure feel like that. The emptyness, not even an echo as you words ring out.
Funny thing is you really shouldn’t feel so empty once you UNDERSTAND the emptiness. Astronauts can feel completely at home in outer space, because they know they’re coming home… are you?
I know, this is a strange analogy, so lets get to the meat & potatoes. I bet you’ve written some amazing content, added pictures, added the human touch… It was one of those posts on your website that you were sure was going to get tons of hits, tons of links and just a earth shattering server breaking level of traffic.
But… Come time to get it all up on the site, Digg it, Tweet it and everything… Nothing… A week later.. Google’s not pickin’ it up, and no mad rush of traffic!
There’s a few key areas that can make this happen and understanding is half the battle.
#1. Market Space
If you’ve just gotten started and your site is young… and your in a super competitive space, I mean like Viagra, Real Estate, Money & Credit, Weight loss, you can expect that it’ll be years before you see great rankings. In fact i’d say roughly 3 years to be exact unless you REALLY know what your doing and hit the gas pedal hard (and spend lots of money).
Picking less competitive markets is the key to really getting those overnight success stories happening to YOU. You really want to rank for those 100,000 hits per month phrases, but it’s not going to happen overnight for weight loss terms… But it might for an area like Brazilian neck ties.
Figuring out what markets are non-competitive and easy to rank for is no easy task, but my blog does offer a free book in our newsletter that helps you figure that out pretty quick… “unstoppable keywords” now free when you sign up to our newsletter.
#2. Domain Age & Link Juice
Yes, if you have an older domain name with trusted links pointing to it, some might see that as having a high pagerank like PR5 or better, while others may realize that just a few really trusted sources like CNN or even lesser trusted sources like about.com linking to you can help get you there. I won’t dig deep into what makes a trusted domain because that in itself would be a book’s worth and too much time to write.
#3. General Popularity
If social media and other small time bloggers pickup on your stuff, it can quickly provide the authority juice necessary to rank, if that doesn’t happen, no matter what you say won’t get found on a Search Engine…. Networking with related sites and asking them to link to you or offering them something for linking to you can definitely help here.
#4. Topical and keyword relevance
Having content that’s so well optimized (in some lightly competitive markets) can help gain the traffic your looking for. Using tools like the synonym finder and such can help you theme your content properly while using proper keyword tools like wordtracker in combination with Google’s and 7Search and other tools can give you the info you need to ensure your not writing about topics no one cares about.
Conclusion
In most moderately competitive niches (exercise, finance, computers, cell phones, travel) even if you’ve picked a super niche-specific area to write about where few others write, you still may find it tough in the first 3 years to start gaining any traction.
I bet you feel pretty frustrated by that and most people would. The old fashioned strategies play best here until the Search Engines realize just how valuable your content really is…
Assuming you already have amazing content, the next pieces to be focusing on while the search engines do their magic are:
* Join niche clubs and membership sites in your market space.
* Talk in related forums and get your name out there
* PPC advertise and contextual ad advertise if it’s within your budget to do so
* Join Twitter and tweet your good stuff and also spark conversations with related persons on Twitter using the @reply format.
* Slowly build up your newsletter list and offer way more content than you do advertising, in fact try not to sell anything if you can.
* Answer questions on Yahoo Answers related to your niche
* Sponsor events, organizations and other things… Even if you don’t get a link from it as long as you get the name recognition from doing it.
* use parasite hosting – yes that sounds ugly and it too is a book or post within itself.. But let me summarize parasite hosting from a good standpoint.
Using Squidoo, Youtube, Hubpages, EzineArticles and getting material on THEIR Domains to rank for your keywords with YOUR material (link or no link) to get your brand and tips and resources out there helps build brand awareness.
A parasite requires the larger organism to survive. That’s how it gets that name. Parasite hosting is when you post content on an older more reputable domain name that already has juicy link power and get a page on THEIR domain to rank for your phrases. Then leverage that traffic.
Those are just some of the strategies you can use while your site isn’t yet ranking for the terms you desire.
Daniel j Deyette
P.S. we don’t advertise or sell hardly anything but try to deliver insane value in our newsletter. Signup – It’s free!
