Wayne's SEO World: Getting the Job Done

For most Webmasters, getting the job done in search engine optimization and search engine marketing can seem like an uphill battle.

Since these listings in the natural index are free for those to acquire, a lot of restrictions are placed upon how you can go about taking over top positions.

To be honest I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, “How long till I’m number one in Google?” Well the fact of the matter is, if you have a brand new domain and are in an industry where there are 100’s of millions of pages indexed, it’s going to be a while, especially with Google. Let’s discuss the first step in getting the job done:

Knowing your competition is key, especially if you are in a super aggressive online area: expect that your competition will utilize every keyword/phrase out there that is related to their offering.

Recently a person contacted me in regards to setting up a few sites. I asked, ” Who is your competition?” The answer I got back was amazing. They told me basically they had no competition since their support and product offering was the best. Guess what, if I were to type in your top ten key phrases in GYM, I guarantee you I will find competition. If there’s no competition, that means you own 100% market share and frankly don’t need my help. This is far from the truth. Maybe offline in the real world you have no competition in your geo-targeted area but online everyone that uses similar terms are your competition. Understanding what they have done to getting where they are is key.

Buying domains nowadays is pretty cheap, but keep them as keyword focused as possible. With the price of .com, .net, .info etc. going down all the time buy as many as your budget can afford. Next research your keywords heavily… I use Wordtracker, Overture’s suggestion tool and Ad words suggestion tool. Those will cover enough to get you going.

So now you have the industry, the domain and your targeted phrases, hosting is next. I use a variety of providers I found on Tophosts.com. Visit the Top25 List, you’ll find a good host at a good price.

The next questions that arise are: How many IP’s should I have? Do I need a private name server? How many sites can I put on one private name server? If you have one domain, you only need one. Place 2 substitutes off that as a start. You can always add more as you go. So, if you went to your host with 5 domain names, you should (if you can afford it) get 5 IPs; if not set a max of 2 sites per IP. Next, in regards to private name servers, you only need one to house all the domains you have, anymore is just overkill. For example if you are in real estate name your server “realestatednsserver”. That’s it…your set.

Now learn the steps:

1. Research Keywords…Try Wordtracker.com
2. Research competitive analysis…visit your competitor’s websites
3. Log file rendering…Look for spider crawls for indexing in the major search engines
4. Ongoing content development…Add daily content
5. Utilize a free Yahoo! and MSN blog. These 2 help a lot and will keep the spider active. That is the first step.

What you should expect

6. Patience. Your first step is to get the crawlers active, indexing will happen and once you see that you must address to that indexing accordingly. For example MSN bot is the easiest to figure out. Once you’re indexed by MSN look at what the crawler grabbed. Yahoo! will be next, same procedure. Forget about Google for the mean time. Aside from onsite they are looking for many off page factors… this is where you use the time consuming work of getting quality back links.

7. Understanding all the tools available to you are just interfaces for you to get the job done. It’s a quicker time frame using these applications and by no means do these tools work straight out of the box. You need to take advantage of the next add-ons all the time. Once again these add-ons are just the interface. You only get out of them what you put into them, that’s where you revert back to number 6.

8. Constant tweaking, adding new pages/links to your sites properly will help you achieve back links. Adding new paragraphs and fresh content, monitoring your log files…this is always ongoing.

9. Managing your own expectations. Here the frustration may set in. You don’t have the time to dedicate to the project or you don’t have the budget to buy everything. Start out with what you do have and grow from there at your pace. Don’t question or downplay an application if you don’t have the time to put into it (see number 7). If you have a full-time job and do Web promotion on the side, the hardest part to answer for me is: “How I can do this full time?” Well, that’s a risk for many, giving up guaranteed income for a risk reward. If you choose to keep your job going and do this at night, for example, make sure you put in the long hours on it when you can. Due diligence will pay off in the end…see number 6.

So, now you’re at the crossroads, you’re making a couple of thousand a month from it and decide you want to do it full-time…keep your job as well. Internet moneymaking is like the weather, it changes daily.

If you truly want to migrate to online income as your main resource make sure you are making 2-3 times that amount already above and beyond your current guaranteed income. Income online is very fast paced and some say working full-time online is a 4 to 1 ratio….for ever year you work online it’s like 4 years in the real work force, due to the constant changes and the ability to adapt quickly to them.

I hope I’ve touched on the “white hat “ approach here and comments are always welcome.

There’s no holds barred on the next article….”Why Google Sucks”. Ahhhhhh I can feel the backlash now.

Wayne Cowan
wcowan@marketingfind.com