I’m too lazy really to figure out what keywords I want to use to tag my posts, so I use a super nifty plugin called simple tags. With simple tags I just click a button (click the yahoo one the rest suck) and it scans my content and gives me a list of clickable suggested tags. Look for good longtail tags, not short one worders.

Simple tags has the added bonus of automatically giving you a related posts plugin built in which is great for internal linking which SEO Zombie talks about at his blog.

Anyway I know this one was short but every little bit helps in this game.

Keyword Density: I don’t REALLY worry about keyword density. It’s a good idea for sure to have a keyword you are targeting at least once, you can put it more just make sure it doesn’t look spammy. I personally would aim for using the keyword 3-5 times in an article.

Original Content: Google tries to beat down duplicate content, but it doesn’t do a great job by any measure. Grizz talked about using a content scraper successfuly in his post Duplicate Content is Google’s Weak Link. The one thing that is for sure is that you shouldn’t straight up copy an entire page from a site.

Writing content is one of the biggest time expenditures for a web entrapruner. Don’t waste it.

For everyone of the keywords you found that will be a post. Use your keywords as your post title, if you are selling an affilaite product feel free to tack on a sales word like “buy” or “for sale”. I have a lot of success writing reviews. Before buying a product it’s suprising how many people search for [product review].

Using your keywords as your title does two main things. 1 – It get’s your keyword into your URL and 2 – it gives your post internal authority for that keyword (internal anchored links).

Don’t feel the need to get too fancy with this step, it’s important but an easy one to fix (by coming back and making a new post) if you screw it up lol.

Setup – There are few things you need to change on your blog which are VERY important. First go to the options tab and change permalinks to “custom” and use the following:

/%postname%/

Next you should have your keywords in your title and tagline.Theme Selection – There are TONS of themes out there to choose, but I always find mine at Courtney Tuttle’s SEO Wordpress Themes. I personally LOVE the Keyword Sniper theme (and it comes with a few directions). It’s easy to edit yourself (and I’ll show you how to get a ridiculous CTR on it once I’m done this guide). If you are planning on doing adsense in my opinion a theme with 2 columns on the same side is a must. Court’s SEO themes will give you the best bang for your buck.

Plugins – There are a few essential plugins for your blog: all-in-one-adsense, all-in-one-seo, global translator, simple tags, xml sitemap. I’m not going to go into how to set all those up, you can read the FAQ yourselves. There are other good SEO plugins, but this should give you a good start for sure.

Anyway it’s as easy as that to set up your SEO Wordpress blog, so go ahead and give it a shot.

(Added March 28th/07) 1000 appologies, I promised to comment on Blogger blogs (not that there really is a lot I can tell you). I know they can do very well (as good as any other site) but can’t really tell you how as all I use is WP. Blogger is owed by Google so it has the advantage of being indexed very quickly. Anyway the place to go if you want to learn about using a Blogger blog is: Grizz’s Make Money Online for Beginners.

TOP LEVEL DOMAIN (the .com part of your URL)

Generally choosing a generic  top level domain is a good idea. .com is the most popular but from everywhere I read using .org, .net, .info or whatever.  People generally want to get .com, and I would recommend that as my first choice, but getting another generic one is fine, just harder to sell if you ever want to flip it.

**REVISED Aug 13, 2008 – Google is now heavily penalizing .info domains due to them being spammed heavily so stay away.

If you are going to target a niche in a non-USA country using a country specific top level domain might be beneficial. for example: in Canada using a .ca URL might be beneficial (as it will rank higher at google.ca).

DOMAIN NAME (the screwyougoogle part)

This should contain your keyword string. If you want to target ranking high for  “why turtles operate quickly” then getting the url “whyturtlesoperatequickly.com” is your best option. Generally (at least for me) if you want a keyword(s) that are searched regularly all the URL’s are bought up so I’ll add on a word that makes it sound like a magazine or paper like “today” or “daily” to get “whyturtlesoperatequicklytoday.com”. Alternatively think about better targeting what tye of visitors your want, if you’re selling green widgets use “buygreenwidgets.com” instead of “greenwidgets.com”. Adding the word “online” can also be a good idea.

Basically the important thing is to realize that a lot of domains are bought up and it is hard to find one that fits you sometimes. Just keep looking and don’t get discouraged, and MAKE SURE YOUR KEYWORD STRING IS IN YOUR URL.

The first and most basic step is to type your search term into google [my keyword]. This will be how people will find your site, so I guess it’s the most important (it’s not really). I don’t even really look at the number of competitors at this level, what’s more important is PR. If there are 6’s and 7’s at the top few sports on the SERPs you’re in trouble with this keyword (Even 5’s are tough). If the PR’s are 4 or less you should have NO problem getting a good ranking for your keyword (Don’t worry you wont need to get to PR5 to beat a 4 if you build your site properly).

The second step is a more targeted search by quoting your keyword ["my keyword"]. This is where I start to look at my number of competitors. More than 2 million and I’m not happy, more than 5 million and I’m really not happy (will only do it if it’s a really juicy keyword), more than 10 million and I’m going and looking for a new keyword. PR is important at this step too. Hopefully no one has higher than a 5, if they do then take that into account with the number of competitors and think if you want to work this hard to make a small site.

Third do a targeted search for the top two criteria for on site keyword ranking, your title and URL (I’ll talk about this in steps 4 & 5)[allintitle:"your keyword" & allinurl:"your keyword"]. The number of sites that come up for these should be a lot lower. Look for numbers less than 50k for these, and again preferably under PR5. If there is a site that comes up number 1 rank for both of these searches and has a high PR it will be tough to beat out.

Anyway if you make it through this step and are still happy then you’ve probably found a winner so congratulations. Next time we’ll get into building your site and the fun begins.

The way keyword research tools work is that they get a small bit of information on internet searches and extrapolate that into total searches on the internet. I personally use Wordze and this it is the best tool out there (Sometimes they give away free 30-day trials so sign up for my RSS and keep an eye out… I’ll let you know). Another useful FREE tool is Wordtracker.

What I will generally do is start with a very general one or two word term in Wordze. I search for my term using “broad search” and have a look down the list. Generally I target keyword sets that are 3 words and have 6,000-10,000ish searches per month (200-300ish per day). If a set of keywords look too weird to be true they probably are (If “parrot umbrella Sunday” is being searched 10,000 times a month something is probably fucked up). Secondly (because keyword tools are quit inaccurate) I use Wordtracker to verify my search volume for the topic (Note Wordtracker uses daily searches so look for 200-300ish).

**REVISED Aug 13, 2008 – One of the most important developments for SEO site makers happened when google put actual search data into it’s keyword tool. Now there is no need for these paid tools when you can get better, more accurate information here.

Ok so now you’ve found a decent keyword the last step is to check the value of your keyword using Keyword Enchanter’s CPC Tool. Who cares if you find the world greatest keyword, but it doesn’t have any affiliates and pays $0.05 per click. Don’t panic if your EXACT keyword has a high CPC, if related keywords (Keyword Enchanter shows them automatically). AdSense is the standard measure of the “value” of a keyword.

Anyway I’m away for the weekend so subscribe to my RSS feed so you get notified when I post up Step #3.

First: PICK A TOPIC YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT AND WRITE ABOUT IT. I have even been guilty of building sites trying to get into some higher paying niches, but the fact is if you don’t know about it, things will take you 10x longer to write, ideas will be 100x harder to think of, and your content will be 1000x more painful to make. I made a site about snowboarding a while ago and it was BRUTAL. I couldn’t write my own content and ended up just taking it off the product I was promoting’s site.

If you don’t know about a topic how are you going to find a niche? Using any search information software you’ll get screwed because they always have crappy not-real search terms in them. “OH WOW! ‘Forex for your mom with banana syrup’ gets 1000000 searches a day!” it happens and makes it very painful when you build a nice site, get a #1 ranking for your keyword, and then get 1 hit a week.

**Revised Aug 13, 2008 – Now Google is releasing search numbers so you can get much more accurate results about related keywords here; however, still write about stuff you know about.

Second: PICK A TOPIC THAT YOU LIKE. It can be a bad idea is blogging about your job (especially if you hate what you do). This is strange advice for me to give because I am a law student and I frequently make blogs about the law, but hey, I like the law, I talk all day about the law, and when I go home I watch TV about the law and think about the law.

If you have a hobby write about it. If you like it so do other people and you can make it work.

Today was sort of a touchy feely topic, which I don’t love, but it needs to be said. Check back over the next few days when I’ll write about “Keyword Research”, a topic that mystifies a lot of people.