Is ranking in the top 10 good enough?
April 11, 2008
It seems that most webmasters and internet marketers have the goal of getting their sites onto page one of Google. I admit that I, too, feel a sense of joy and satisfaction when my sites hit the top 10 for my keywords.
But is the top 10 good enough? Should you rest on your laurels once you've achieved page one ranking? Not according to the AOL search data that was compromised in 2006. Yes, that data is two years old, but I think it's important to revisit those results and remind ourselves of what it revealed.
That compromised data gave us the following break-down of the percentage of clicks received by each of the top 11 search results:
| Rank | Percent |
| 1 | 22.6% |
| 2 | 6.4% |
| 3 | 4.5% |
| 4 | 3.2% |
| 5 | 2.6% |
| 6 | 2.1% |
| 7 | 1.8% |
| 8 | 1.6% |
| 9 | 1.5% |
| 10 | 1.6% |
| 11 | 0.35% |
"Wait," you say, "those numbers barely add up to 50%!" That's true. According to the AOL data, that's because 46% of all queries resulted in no clicks — meaning that the user didn't see what they were looking for and so tried something else or moved on.
There are a few points I want to make about this. First, this is data from AOL, and without being too unkind to AOL users, well, they're not the savviest of searchers. That makes a difference. I would theorize that Google searchers would be a bit more prone to "dig" for the result they need, especially since in my own experience the figures aren't quite so drastic as this data shows.
That said, though, this chart helps to demonstrate the vast difference between the #1 ranking for a set of keywords and all of the other rankings. Basically, the number one ranking gets the lion's share of the traffic, and the other 9 of the top 10 just get the tricklings.
Number 11, the first result on page 2, gets virtually no traffic at all. I included it in the results to demonstrate how little effect a page 2 ranking has on your traffic.
This is one of the reasons I advocate trying to rank for a series of long-tail keywords, and not putting all of your efforts into one set of very popular keywords. Getting to #1 for a single set of competitive keywords requires an exponential amount more effort than ranking #1 for dozens of long-tail keywords. And, as demonstrated by this data, those dozens of "lesser" rankings will be far more valuable to the bottom line of your traffic than a #9 or #10 ranking for a competitive keyword.
Let me illustrate.
Let's say that your niche has a set of competitive keywords that generates 10,000 searches a day. Sounds like a goldmine if you have a page one ranking right? Let's see.
If you managed to get on page one, but only rank #9, based on the AOL data you would only get 150 of those visitors to your site (4,500 or so per month). However, if you manage to rank #1 for 10 keywords that each only receive 1,000 searches a day, you would get 226 visitors (6,780 or so per month). That's 150% more traffic for the long-tail keywords. And I promise you, it's dramatically easier to achieve (and maintain) 10 less competitive rankings than it is for one super-competitive one. In fact, in many cases you can achieve multiple #1 rankings for long-tail keywords with the same quantity of links needed just to get you on page one for the super-competitive keywords!
Just ask the happy 3WayLinks.net customer who recently posted at the users' forum regarding their first $369 day in affiliate profits. Or another forum poster who reached his first $100+ AdSense day thanks to 3WayLinks' ranking his sites for lesser-competition keywords.
So remember, when planning your keyword targets for your web site, don't forget to target a variety of long-tail keywords. Even if you are planning on going after a competitive set of keywords, still keep the long-tail on your agenda, and give them at least as much of your time and resources. Do so and you'll reap the rewards to be found in Google's "low hanging fruit."
Don't forget the smaller markets!
April 3, 2008
Back in late November I did a promotion for Alok Jain's Project Quick Cash. That promotion did very well, even prompting me to write a report about it (Pre-Selling Secrets).
I'm telling you about this because today I happened to look at my AdSense account and noticed that yesterday the case study blog I created for the promotion had earned $3.50 for the previous day. That's not a lot of money, it's true, but it's a lot more than I expected from a case study blog that I haven't touched at all since November 23, 2007.
I was intrigued, so I looked at the stats for that blog. To my surprise and delight, the blog has averaged almost 1,200 unique visitors a month since the last time I added content to it in November.
And where is this traffic coming from? 62% is coming from search engines, with 68% of the search traffic coming from Google.
I also checked my AdSense account, and in the 4 untouched months that little blog has earned me an extra $110. Not a gold mine, no, but then I stopped doing anything to it in November. Imagine if I had created 100 little blogs that I stopped working on, and 4 months later each one had earned me $100? That's $10,000 and a steady monthly revenue stream. Or better yet, what if I used a powerful article research tool to help me create content fast, and regularly updated those blogs? Imagine the kind of traffic I would see then…
The case study blog has very few backlinks, and yet has gotten traffic from a combination of 773 different keywords (according to the stats). All I did was follow the first of Alok Jain's 5 methods from Project Quick Cash, and use the tools that I created as the one-time-offer for PQC to automate the process. I posted to the blog daily for about 3 weeks.
What this tells me is that it still pays to research untapped niches for content creation. So many marketers are so focused on the hot items (diet pills, celebrities, insurance, etc.) that they miss the smaller untapped markets that can really bring in traffic long-term, and that require very little work to rank for.
Find those smaller niches, and create solid content for them, and you'll see the traffic and revenue roll into your sites. I've always found this to be true, and this little forgotten blog is just one more pillar supporting that truth.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
A 4-legged approach to link building.
March 21, 2008
The algorithms of search engines are constantly changing. The big 3 (Google, Yahoo and MSN) may love your links today and devalue them tomorrow. I think the largest evidence of this is what happened to reciprocal links. At one time they were all you needed to rank very well in Google. Now, though, they have a tiny fraction of their previous value.
The sudden, drastic change in reciprocal linking is evidence that you need to vary your link gathering methods. Putting all of your links in one basket will work for a while, but when it stops working every site you have will suffer greatly.
That's why I recommend a four-legged approach to link building:
- Automated link building.
- Links from article distribution, press releases and blog comments.
- Social bookmarking.
- "Natural" links resulting from great site content.
Let's go over each one of these methods in a little more detail.
Automated Link Building
To stay ahead of your biggest competition, many of whom often have a full time staff working to build links, you need to consider a proven automated linking method. Whether you use a semi-automated approach (such as SEO Elite), or a fully automated method (like 3WayLinks.net, you need to think seriously about the efficiency of automated link building. It helps you to keep pace with those who have a staff, especially if you're a one man (or woman) show.
Links From Article Distribution, Press Releases and Blog Comments
I'm grouping these three methods together because they're all part of what I consider "in-content linking" — where your links are surrounded by content related to your link and the subjects that you want to rank for. Since all three accomplish this in a similar way, I've put them all together under one "leg."
Gaining backlinks from articles will never go out of style. People have been building their brand and generating sales from article syndication for many, many years. Now, in the age of the Internet, in addition to the direct traffic generated from the links in the articles, you also help your ranking in the search engines.
Articles do more than help boost your ranking through link building. They also build your personal brand, establishing you as a knowledgeable authority in your subject area, and that builds trust that works to drive sales.
Now that articles are also used for search engine optimization, though, it's important that you understand the ins and outs of how best to write articles that are both informative and educational, while also being effective at drawing people to your site without sacrificing their SEO value. A great report that outlines a number of "best practice" methods from a proven article marketer is Josh Spaulding's Article Marketing Domination.
Press releases are less for building authority and more for generating buzz, but they still give you a great way to get a lot of low-cost links into your sites. Have a new product or service available? Create a great new concept or idea? Then write a press release and submit it to the top sites for quick traffic and link building.
Blog comments are a third great way to get high-quality links to your site from pages of content related to your site. Of course, spam commenting won't do. You want to make sure that you read the blog posts that you're going to comment on, and write a thoughtful comment that adds to the post.
A great way to automate your efforts is by using Fast Blog Finder. Click here to download and install the free version. The free version limits how many blogs it will find related to the keywords you provide, but it is not crippled beyond that. If you feel it's as great as I feel it is, you can go to the Help menu and buy the full version that has no limitations.
Social Bookmarking
If I need to get a site crawled and indexed fast, I usually post a few social bookmarks to it. The search engines quickly follow, and within a few days or a week, the site is almost always fully indexed.
But social bookmarking is also great for building backlinks. For automation, I like to use Social Bookmarking Demon. It makes it easy to submit to dozens of social bookmarking sites. Keep in mind, though, that if you submit to a lot of these sites at one time, and your site is pretty new, then Google will probably drop your ranking after a few days. Your ranking will stay down for a week to two weeks before those new links are calculated into Google's algorithm. When that happens, though, I always see a significant boost up from my original ranking.
So for new sites, social bookmarking is a definite must-have on your list of linking techniques.
"Natural" Links Resulting From Great Site Content
I use the word "natural" in quotes because I'm not completely in line with Google's notion of what constitutes a "natural" link — but that's a post for another day.
Regardless, though, if you want to have an army of people adding links to your pages without you having to pay them a salary to do so, then you need to have outstanding content on your web sites. Outstanding content is link bait! People will link to it like crazy and tout how wonderful your site is to other people, encouraging them to visit.
This works well for you in terms of direct traffic from those pages as well as increasing your link popularity and, thereby, your ranking in the search engines. However, because "natural" links don't always follow Google's prescribed method of including the keywords you want to rank for in the anchor text, it often takes a lot more of these kinds of links to rank well.
Four Legs Makes a Table Sturdy
Using multiple link building techniques can be likened to building a table. You can get a table with one leg to stand up if you're really careful, but any little bump or movement and it'll fall over. Two legs will hold up a little easier, but still, it's precarious. Three legs isn't bad. In fact, many a table is built with three legs. But four legs is by far the most sturdy, able to withstand all kinds of bumps, shoves and movement without falling over.
The same holds true with link building. Today the search engines may value automated links more than links from articles or press releases, or vice versa, but tomorrow that formula may change (and, based on past experience, it's likely to). So if you have your links spread out across many possible categories, your rankings are much more likely to survive the ebb and flow of search engine algorithms.
An added benefit of using techniques such as article writing and press releases is that they have their own innate traffic value. So even if your site disappeared from the rankings completely, if you have thousands content-based links in articles and press releases spread across the web, you won't lose all of your traffic. In fact, I've got one site that I worked hard to get quality links to from related niche sites that actually received 70-75% of its traffic from those links (to the tune of 15,000 visitors per month). Keep that in mind when planning your link building strategy as well.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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