Let me clarify that what I am about to present to you is not about ranking your site, or your Home Page. It’s about Ranking Your Specific Long Tail Keyword Phrases… these are your money phrases, the phrases that people use once they have narrowed down their search – the Keyword Phrases that MAKE MONEY!

The first thing you MUST understand if you want to Rank Well for a Long Tail Keyword Search Phrase

PageRank is not SiteRank – Pages rank on their own for specific search phrases. You can not rank a single page for every phrase you want to rank. While you want a diverse incoming link base, you want those incoming links to be tied to specific anchor text phrases and to specific pages.

Too often people who do not understand this principal go out and just get as many links as they can and actually do themselves irreversible harm! They create untargeted incoming links that just confuse Google.

The result is non targeted keywords hurt Your Rankings. People waste way too much time trying to rank their Home Page for a ridiculously large set of keyword phrases. They lose site of the highly profitable Long Tail Keyword Phrases.

A well crafted page that is optimized for a Long Tail Keyword Phrase can outrank even high authority sites! Why? Because Google rewards information that is targeted to the search phrase over authority… they want to provide the “Best Match” for the search. This is great news for the Internet Marketer – it’s the loophole smart Internet Marketers leverage to make big profits.

Let Me Give You an Example:

Today I am researching a specific niche in Google in the Automotive Industry… a 3 word phrase “Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3″

Here are the particulars:

• Google Local Volume: 22,000
• Anchor Text with Phrase: 770
• Competition: 137,000 *

* This is not really competition; rather the number of times this phrase appears on other pages in Google’s Index.

Google Page 1 results for this Targeted Keyword Phrase:

#1 PR 0 – that’s right ZERO!
#2 Site has a PR of 4
#3 is also Zero!
#4 is PR 3.

What does that tell you about the PR as a ranking indicator? Answer: It is not! You rank for the phrase and the page content NOT the site!

Why does this PR ZERO Page using this Targeted Keyword Phrase Rank so High?

• The #1 Site contains the EXACT keyword Phrase in both the Title and the URL and has a nice distribution in their body text.

• The URL does NOT point to the Home Page, rather a highly targeted content page directly related to the search.

More Analysis:

I placed the High Ranking URL in SEO Elite so I could examine the linking structure and anchor text. The results are as follows:

Incoming text links:

• PR 4 – 1
• PR 3 – 1
• PR 2 – 4
• PR 1 – 4
• All other incoming links show no PR!

Only 19 incoming links total! All .com’s no edu, no .gov, no .net – Okay we all know that Google doesn’t like to show us the full results so one could infer there are additional incoming links… but the trend for low PR sites in this case is evident.

Age of the Sites Linking in:

The majority of incoming links are from sites created between 2004-2008

Authority Directories

Not listed in Yahoo, Wikipedia, or DMOZ

Anchor Text Analysis

Anchor Text from incoming links is split almost equally between the 3 keywords.

Cross Linking

This site cross links extensively between other company owned sites using specific targeted keyword phrases. Because the links are relevant it appears to be helping not hurting. So much for cross linking penalties! You should infer that it’s okay as long as the links are relevant. This is a sticky issue, but all you can do is test it for yourself.

Domain Age

This site was registered in 1998

Conclusion:

While you can not draw specific conclusions from a single Case Study with a single keyword phrase you can infer the following (I see these trends over and over as I do keyword research).

• PR does NOT matter for Long Tail keywords… get over it, forget about it, and move on. I do not believe it matters for any ranking. It’s just an indicator like a thermometer that says… yes we know about you and think your site is just nifty. Google is not publishing information to the general public in their PR indicator that really makes any difference to you.

• Keyword Anchor Text is CRITICAL. Do NOT mix up you keyword anchor text when commenting, posting to forums, etc. You want aneven distribution of your keywords… there are plenty of scrape sites and other sites you can not control who will mess this up for you. If you are targeting “Safe Baby Toys” the most variation you create for your own links would be to rearrange the words like this: “Baby Toys that are Safe”, “Safe Baby Toys”, “Safe for Baby Toys”… filler words like the, and or etc. don’t matter.

• The Age of your site absolutely matters. The older the better. Not much you can do about this. This is the reward for being an established business. If you have a great idea, buy the domain now, put up a little content and let it settle in. You’ll need it later.

• Use your keyword phrase in your Title in Exact Form. Put it in your URL and include it in your body text. I see this over and over in top ranking results.

• You should target your incoming links for each specific phrase to the page with the content, not your Home Page (Unless your Home Page is the target destination for the Long Tail Keyword Phrase).

FYI: The PR 4 site that ranks #2 has 50 “Dot Com’s” linking back to it from PR 1-6 sites and it’s getting beat! It does not contain the same high quality targeted anchor text link structure. It just has a lot more authority.

So if you are focusing on long tail you now know what to do! You still want high quality authority links… but you want to focus on your keyword phrase and anchor text. A high authority site will always outrank you all things being equal, but if you do your homework you can move to the top with Long Tail Keyword Phrases!

Good luck.

PS: If you have high authority and targeted Long Trail you can really cash in. You’ll get there, but focus on these principals, and make money now while you grow!

Software used: SEO Elite, Keyword Research Pro, Aaron Walls Free FireFox SEO Plugin

© Internet Marketing IQ – Republish on your own site approved only with a return link.

Website: Best Free SEO Tools

Be sure to grab  “SEO for Firefox” then read through the tutorials at the bottom of the page. As you get time you’ll want to investigate the additional premium SEO resources more fully.  Aaron Walls is well known and well respected in the SEO Industry.  You simply won’t find a better resource for FREE SEO.

Aaron Walls  FREE versions of his SEO Tools are better than most paid SEO Tools.

Website: SEO Elite

Note: I own SEO Elite and use it several times per week. Once you learn how to take full advantage of SEO Elite you’ll wonder why you didn’t buy it in the first place.  Now you might be one of the few who has not heard of SEO Elite or maybe you have heard about it but been put back by the price.  I understand.  It took me awhile to convince myself… then once I started using SEO Elite… really digging in and figuring out how to leverage the features… I was amazed of how much easier it made my job of gaining quality backlinks, the kind of links that really boost your site rankings fast. Remember when you are trying to rank your site, it’s not about the quantity of links, it’s all about the quality.  If you know a better, faster, easier way then you should do two things:  Tell me about it!!!  And buy that instead.  If not they you should get SEO Elite.

Tips on How I use SEO Elite almost Every Day:

• Project 1: Analyze Backlinks. This is by far the fastest and easiest way to score quality High PR backlinks to your sites.  I type in the domain I want to Analyze (Usually a Competitors Site or a site that ranks well for Similar Keywords). Next I check off Google, Yahoo, and MSN.  I don’t bother with AltaVista or AllTheWeb.  Then I select the check boxes for Alexa Rank, Google PR, Website Age, Whois Info… and I let it run for 1000 results.  This can take 10-20 minutes.  What you get back is a list of sites that can be sorted by Page Rank.  You simply click on the link, go to the page, and then see if you can leave a link back to your site.  If not then move on to the next one. This is a KILLER TACTIC that really works.  And SEO Elite makes it super easy

• Project 5: Find Where Your Site is Ranked for Given Keywords: This is really simple, click on add a site, then enter the keywords and let it run.  Again this can take 10-20 minutes so I just start it up and let it run in the background.  This helps me monitor how my linking campaigns for specific keyword phrases are ranking.  And yes you could do this manually in the search engines… but I have a hell of a lot of sites… and I don’t have time to dick around with the “long way”.

The above Project Features I use almost every single day!  The real benefit is how easy and fast I can do the grunt work that would otherwise take me hours and make me ornery and unfulfilled. If you hate “Grunt Work” as much as I do then you’ll understand that saving a couple of hours a day is more than worth it.  And yes some of you will say “Just Outsource it”.  And that’s great except I have almost 15 years experience and I have yet to find any one I can outsource to that I feel comfortable with sharing my personal “tricks”.  So I’m left to do the real work myself.

I do not chase after link trades so I do not use the built in link trading features.  But if you are brand new and your site has no incoming links it might be worth your time to do this at first. I have also used the built in Article Submitter and it’s okay; not as good as Brad’s  Premium Article Submission Software.  Project 1 alone makes this software worth owning. I know of no other software that makes “Link Planting” so easy and time saving. If you have one website maybe you could do it by hand, but if you have dozens like I do… no way in hell. Not enough time in the day.

SEO Elite makes it simple to REVERSE ENGINEER your competitors sites so you can see how they are ranking. If you want to out rank your competition you need to know why they are ranking in the first place. SEO Elite reports break down how many incoming links are from .edu, .com, .gov, etc. PLUS it tells you if they are in Yahoo, DMOZ, or Wickipedia and the exact keywords and frequency of those Keywords in the Anchor Text! POWERFUL!

Now for a run down of additional features that you can use to put your own sites in front of targeted customers.

• Article Directory Submission Management – You write and Article and Submit it to all the Popular Article Directories with a few simple clicks. Most beginning online marketers don’t know who they should be submitting their articles to… now you will! The only downside here is some of the article directories have changed, and do not always accept the submission. Make sure you are always using the most up-to-date version of the software. SEO Elite will automatically prompt you when new versions are available – download them!

• Find out EXACTLY why your competition is outranking you! There is no point in guessing; you need the facts. Even if you knew EXACTLY what to do… without automation these tasks would be so time consuming you wouldn’t have time to work on other critical marketing tasks. Excellent feature – take the time to watch all the tutorial videos on this section. You can easily find websites by Page Rank using a keyword, PageRank using a competitors site, or both. Extremely useful information for reverse engineering your competitions strategy so you can move past them.

• You need links; QUALITY links pointing to your site! How are you going to find these QUALITY linking partners? Problem solved… Find the linking partners you need and monitor those links (To make sure you are not being cheated) AUTOMATICALLY. This will work well, but it is very time consuming. And yes the softare will manage your emails and automatically create links pages to upload to your site. Honestly I do not use this feature as it’s intended because the chances of getting any real quality high ranking sites to link back to you based on an automated email request (Even though you can customize the letter) is slim. I use this feature to find the links, then sort by PR, then go after the big boys by offering them something of value! I don’t bother checking back to see who is cheating, because over time a strategy based solely on numbers will just be a waste of your time.

• Monitor your SEO Success… Do you have time to check the Big Search Engines for each of your Keywords to see if your ranking has improved; and your efforts effective? Probably not! Now you can do in a few minutes which would otherwise take hours. This is an awesome feature! Tells you where you are ranking so you can quickly and easily (Yes I said quickly and easily, because it really is) measure your efforts. You could do this manually in a few minutes, or do it this way with a few clicks… and check multiple keywords too!

• While it’s important that your “Site” is ranked, it’s even more important that your AFFILIATE Link Pages withing your site are ranked. Use this software to see your “Deep Links”…assuring your most important pages are indexed by the Search Engines; not just your Home Page. Good feature, however I focus on overall site ranking because I have so many sites to manage. Get them in and use quality keywords in your top level navigation and you don’t need to worry too much about people finding what YOU want them to find! You should also be checking your log files to make sure the pages YOU want them to see are being found.

• The above features are just an introduction to how POWERFUL the tools in the Software Package really are! The difference between success and failure in the Online Marketing world is measured first in your ability to generate TRAFFIC to your offering. An average individual can use this software to Skyrocket their sites ahead of the competition! It’s crazy how people will spend hours and hours in Marketing Forums each week and end up making no money for their efforts! However, if they would spend that same time using SEO Elite they could be well on their way to making a solid income. The choice is yours… the days of doing everything the old fashioned manual way are thankfully behind us. One feature I didn’t expect to use so much is the “Find Authority Sites”… simple and fast – use it!

SEO Elite – The “Right” Way to Manage Your Linking Campaigns

It doesn’t matter how great your site is, how many ads you have in just the right places, or how high the payout is on the products you sell if you don’t have traffic!!!

Skyrocketing Profits don’t just happen, you make them happen.  SEO Elite is the proven, tested, traffic generator you should use to drive highly profitable targeted traffic directly to your site. Again you could try to do this all by hand… but then you wouldn’t have enough time to do anything else. SEO is a full time job and the solo marketer simply can’t do everything. Buy the right tools for the job!

This is not an e-book; this is SOFTWARE… ingeniously designed software that will put you and your websites in front of the targeted customers you desire.

Today’s online marketing DEMANDS you must have tools to properly manage your linking campaigns otherwise you won’t get the traffic you deserve. I personally recommend this Software because it works! I own it, I use it. With an 8 week money back gurarntee and Lifetime Updates – you simply can not go wrong with SEO Elite. Go buy it… SEO Elite is a solid investment and powerful online marketing tool you’ll use over and over as you build your own online success story.

So few take the time to read this from the source instead searching forms for SEO Tips, Tricks, and Secrets. Who knows Search Engine Optimization better than the guys who make the rules? SEO begins with the programmers and filters out to the public via a stream of mistruths and guesswork.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer.” Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

Keep in mind that the Google search results page often includes paid advertising and free organic search results. Keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted by the heading “Sponsored Links”) as well. Advertising with Google won’t have any effect on your site’s presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Free resources such as Webmaster Tools, the official Webmaster Central blog, and our discussion group can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search. Many of these free sources, as well as information on paid search, can be found on Google Webmaster Central.

Before beginning your search for an SEO, it’s a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend starting here:

• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.

If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.

Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:

• Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
• What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
• What’s your experience in my industry?
• What’s your experience in my country/city?
• What’s your experience developing international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site’s presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. Here are some things to consider:

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue. Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:
  

  “Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do. Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or “throwaway” domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you.
• You should never have to link to an SEO. Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don’t affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines — at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.
• Choose wisely. While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html. While Google doesn’t comment on specific companies, we’ve encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes. While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they “control” other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn’t work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you’re considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.
• What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?

One common scam is the creation of “shadow” domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client’s behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor’s domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.

Another illicit practice is to place “doorway” pages loaded with keywords on the client’s site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO’s other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.

• What are some other things to look out for?
  • owns shadow domains
  • puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
  • offers to sell keywords in the address bar
  • doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
  • guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
  • operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
  • gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
  • has had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google
  • requests your FTP account information or root access to your server

  There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It’s far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:

  If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.

  In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click on “File a Complaint Online,” call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:

  Federal Trade Commission
  CRC-240
  Washington, D.C. 20580

  If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, please file it at http://www.econsumer.gov/.

You have a site, you want traffic so you can make money. It’s not a secret; in order to get traffic you need incoming links. It doesn’t matter how good your site is, without links you will not generate traffic. Developing and managing “Linking Campaigns” for your portfolio of Affiliate Marketing Sites is essential. A person who relies on “luck” is going to be sorely disappointed. Link management is work!

Two Primary Benefits of Building Your Own Incoming Links

1. Generate Traffic from Links exclusive of SEO
2. Build popularity and ranking, so you’ll get free traffic from the search engines.

Of course you have additional traffic driving alternatives; you can purchase traffic or promote your site with off-line advertising. But the real POWER of Internet Marketing lies in your ability to secure solid incoming links without monetary expenditure.  “Free” targeted traffic is a goldmine ready to be harvested!

Focus on generating traffic from links; not just building Search Engine Ranking. You’ll make a lot more money in the long run with this kind of “optimizing” strategy. The good news is you can do both at the same time!

Getting Ready to Build Your Incoming Links

Link Building is the process of asking other webmasters for links, creating content so valuable people will link to it on their own, and planting or “seeding” your links on Blogs, Forums, Social Networking Sites, Social Bookmarks, Directories, etc. Your ability to build the highest quality links with the least amount of effort will separate you from the “also rans”.

You have to decide which of two possible methods you’ll model your incoming link campaigns after.

1. Seeking very high quality traffic from respected established sites – good idea if you can do it.

2. Seeking links from anyone who will link to you. This can work if you are able to avoid the sites penalized by the Search Engines for links that come from sources they don’t like. Links that are not seen by people or Search Engines are useless.

Your time is best spent focusing on quality links from respected sites. This is also the most difficult because you have to have something of value to offer the site. What’s in it for them? Value is the “Key”. Can you send the site traffic? Is your site complementary to theirs? What can you offer them in exchange for a link to your site? Fortunately with Web 2.0 a whole slew of opportunity is available by joining communities and placing quality relevant comments on Blogs, Forums, and Social Networking sites.  Join the discussion and win!

If you have little or nothing to offer then you’ll need to spend some energy creating value in order to establish what I call “Link Trading Clout”.

Automated Linking Services Hosted on Other Peoples Sites are a BAD Idea

There are many services you can join where links are “hosted” on another persons/companies servers. In my opinion this is a very BAD idea because you don’t control your own destiny. Stop paying and your links go away along with your work. Use a free service and there is always a catch. Plus over the years all the services I tested resulted in very little traffic. This includes the very old concept of “Banner Exchanges”. You’re just spinning your wheels and wasting your time.

Automate the Linking Process with Software

Link building is simply too time consuming and often time wasting to manage without the appropriate softare tools. Rather than retype what I’ve already written about I’d suggest you see my article on SEO Elite (Just Click on the “Software” tab). There may be other good tools, but this is the one I suggest you investigate because it’s PROVEN. With SEO Elite you control your own destiny. Invest in yourself by investing in the best software tools to make your marketing dreams happen! Building a marketing empire requires these state of the art marketing tools. There simply is not enough time in a day to do everything manually.

Natural Links and Manual Link Building

Natural Linking – The only way to get natural incoming links is to make a site that is so good people will WANT to link to it. That is the definition of a Natural Link… a link that is placed to your site from another site just because they like your content. I’ll skip the scraped links in this category, as they are by definition “natural”, but are not very useful as they come from really low quality sites. If you want more natural links make a great site then keep improving it.

Manual Linking – Grinding it out; asking for links one at a time manually is an approached doomed for failure as you try to scale your linking campaign. Building links manually without the proper link management tools is simply too time consuming.

Managing a dozen of so manual links is very doable. Managing 100′s or 1,000′s of links is not. If you are requesting a link from a top Authority Site you should take the time to customize your link trading request to that specific webmaster/site.

Can you imagine coding your own webpages in a program like wordpad? How many of you are proficient enough in HTML to even complete the most basic of pages? Automation is the key! Everyone wants to be rich, but getting rich online is the same as offline, it required innovation, creativity, and the correct tools. Carpenters no longer build homes with hammers, they use compressors and air tools. What tool will you use?