Screw You Google

Ok here’s a step that works on a supposition that one would rather compete against 100 people for $10, as opposed to 1,000,000,000 people for $100,000. Check out your competition and compete for SERP against fewer, weaker opponents.

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.

Ok, so on to step two, which is a step a lot of people have trouble with needlessly. If you want to make money you must to DO GOOD KEYWORD RESEARCH. Your keywords affect sooooo many things from how often people will search for your site everyday, to how “valuable” your keyword is, to how high you can realistically (which I’ll talk about in step #3 ). There are a lot of tools out there, some free and some paid but all useful.

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.

Ok so it’s time for Step one of how to build a good money make, high SERP ranking website. This step seems to “make sense” but it’s not always as clear as one would think.

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.

Ok, so what is the key to success to beating Google while still making money? Every internet marketer dreams of being ranked #1 for a competitive search term but few ever attain it. The #1 ranked site for a search term recives about 40% of the search traffic for that term, 6% goes to #2, and then #3-#10 get between 2-0.5% each. I get more traffic to most of my sites for #1 rankings for terms that are searched like 10 times a day then I do for 2nd page rankings on those terms searched 1000’s of times.

So the question becomes how do you get top SERP rankings, effectively “beating” google? Well there are 2 keys: 1) Content and 2) Backlinks. As a tool for building effective sites for this type of project I’m going to outlay a 18 step plan over the next month or so that should help you build a site in around 4 or 5 days if you work at it. This type of site can easily make $1/day, if not $10/day if done right. This might not seem like a ton of cash but they key is to build literally hundreds of these smaller sites. If you have 100 sites each making you $1 a day while doing nothing more that is a nice little chunk of change.

I’m going to encourage people to take up a new project. Build a new site along with this guide and track your results. If you follow this guide along with any other SEO knowledge you have there is no reason why by the end of the project you won’t have a successful site. Give it a shot, work hard and you WILL be successful.

Check back in throughout the week for updates and participate in the discussion. I’m far from being the utmost of authorities on the subject, all I can tell you is what worked for me.

So I figured I’d do a post about something that really bugs me. I have 70 stumble friends and last time I went through and send them a post only 3 people gave my post a thumb up! When and of my stumble friends send me a website it not only gets stumbled, I comment on it in order to give them the greatest benefit possible.

I wont even start to get into the benefits of Stumble Upon, they are huge, but would take a far longer post than this to describe. The bottom line is if you’re not using it you are missing out on one of the biggest possible traffic sources on the internet.

Anyway I personally will be using this post to clear out my friends list. If you don’t like this post you’re not the type of friend I want anyway.

Every once in a while I suggest doing a post, with fairly widespread appeal, every once in a while and sending it to your full list. Look at everyone who gives it a “thumbs up”, and delete the rest. I’m personally considering using this post to do house cleaning on my list. Heck you can even copy this post and use it on your blog for all I care.

What I really want to do is share a few tips on being a good stumble friend:

1 – Thumbs up sites your friends send you **If you like it, but strongly consider it** (the basic do unto others what you would have them do unto you). It takes 5 seconds to gives a thumbs and is a big boost to your friends.

2 – Thumbs up your friends’ profile It benefits you both. The more people who like your friend the more value it has when your friend stumbles your posts. It’s a win-win.

3 – Stumble sites your friends have liked It’s as easy as clicking a button. Again this will benefit you and your friends if you all do it. They will more likely have their personal pages stumbled, and so will you. I don’t stumble random sites. I look through ones my friends have liked.

4 – Add people as friends who add you as a fan. I rarely personally add people as friends out of the blue anymore. If people add me as a fan, then I make them a friend, and will continue to do so until I hit my 200 limit. Take an interest in people who take an interest in you.

5 – When you thumbs up a post, leave a comment – When you comment on a post it gives more juice. All you have to do is as little as highlighting a piece of text from the article and use that.

*** If anyone has any more tips to being a good friend please leave a comment and add it to the list**

If everyone starts doing these thing it will add a great benefit to you and your friends alike.

If you think you may have bad stumble friends feel free to use this post. Just copy it to your blog and stumble it sending it to all your friends. Feel free to just copy it but please give me credit.

Your Stumble Friend,
DaMan

http://screwyougoogle.com

http://demerchant.stumbleupon.com/

Here are the family members you can treat readers like. Again you need all kinds to make your blog a family community

First of please don’t be offended if I make readers sound like commodities… although realistically I suppose it’s what you are… wow that sounds callas

1. Girlfriend – Complement your readers. Everyone likes to be told how smart they are and your readers are no exception. (PS – I really do think my readers are super smart) Oh and yes… this is my actual girlfriend

2. Grandmothers – Guilt visitors into doing you a favor. Ever need $50 bucks? —– “Yeah Grammy, I was going to go to the movies tonight, but dad wouldn’t lend me any money”… “Gee thanks Grammy… I just hope one of my friends will share their popcorn with me” —– you get the drift… it’s the same thing as when you are asking readers to send you off to their social networking sites. (And again please do)

3. Mom – You know when you need someone to make you feel good… well that’s one great thing that my readers on my various sites do for me. When someone sends you a pile of traffic it really can brighten your day.

Yeah sorry this is a short and shitty post. I have a trial bench (Fake Fake Court) in a couple hours that I need to practice… so ummm… be my mom and make me feel happy

What women in your life is your social networking system like?

–DaMan