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Monthly Archives: July 2008

Keyword Stuffing and Domain Names – Does it Matter?

In 2005 nobody would have argued that having the most relevant keywords stuffed into your domain name was worth more that just about anything when working the SERPS.  You could buy thousands of dollars worth of links and never achieve the same results that domain name keyword stuffing would do.

Today that is different.  If you take a look through the SERPS for most keywords, you’ll find about one third of the domains have keywords.  Compare that with 2005 and I would imagine that 75% of the domains in the top 10 had keywords stuffed into them.

So does the domain name really matter?  Not to me.  I still own a lot of domains that are stuffed that I purchased over the last few years, but I’m finding that they rank just as well as domain names without any keywords (or words).

So if you have the choice between a brandable keyword domain such as Flickr, Google, or Technorati, choose that over a keyword stuffed domain.

By |July 4th, 2008|Make Money Online, SEO/SEM|7 Comments

How to Increase SERPS from Top 20 to Top 10

Yesterday I talked about whether or not you should work on pages that are already making money.  That is a decision that you must make on your own.  When you start building additional links and marketing those pages, there is a chance that you might upset the delicate balance that put you in the top 20 in the first place.

But, if you’re willing to take that risk, here are a few tips that I’ve found to help move you up a few spots in a competitive niche.

1. Add a blog.

If your site is currently a static html site, try adding a blog either in a subdomain or in a folder off the root.  blog.example.com or example.com/blog will both work.  In that blog, make a lot of semantically related posts.  If your site is about making money online, your posts should be related to “money”, but not always “making money online”.  Example posts could be, “Your Money and the Dollar”, “How Inflation Changes Your Money”, “How to Make Money in a Slow Economy”, etc.  If you notice, you’re using your keywords, just not your exact key phrase.  Whenever you make those posts, make sure and link back to your money pages with appropriate keywords.

Those links should always have varied anchor text and the anchor text should be relevant to the post, not to the money page.

2. Add content.

This one might be a little controversial as many people don’t like to touch a page that is already starting to rank.  I feel a little differently and my feelings are based on actual tests.  I have had a few pages ranking for a variety of keywords and have added content including additional adsense blocks, links, pictures and more text without losing my rankings.  I have never tried to make that page rank for additional keywords, but sometimes that happens naturally.

3. Buy some links.

If you have the skills to buy links without being detected, this is a great time to buy them.  If you do buy links, make sure and vary your anchor text heavily, and think like a newb.  When rookie webmasters want to link to a cool site, they don’t always use good anchor text.  That will keep you from looking like you’re buying links and make it look like those people just like your site.

Those are a few things that I’ve done with pages that are already ranking decently to make them rank really well for their keywords.  Keep in mind that these are also great places to start with a site that isn’t ranking for anything yet.

By |July 3rd, 2008|Link Building, Make Money Online|5 Comments

Are You Watering Your High Dollar Pages?

Many times you’ll have a website with 50 unique content pages, some decent top level domain links and maybe a few internal links.  All pages are decently interlinked and monetized.

Then out of nowhere a single page starts getting a ton of traffic because it starts ranking for a keyword.  When this happens you have two options.  Leave it alone and hope it keeps getting traffic, or work that page and try to increase traffic.

The pessimist in me tries to stick to the first option, just leave it.  It’s already making money, so leave it and move on.

The optimist in me sees that I’m not ranked #1 for the big money keywords, but I am ranked in the top 10 for decent keywords.

This usually looks like this:

Widgets – Ranked #20

Blue widgets – Ranked #4

So instead of just being content with your #4 ranking for that decent keyword, do you go after that big dollar keyword?

For me it really depends on how much money that #4 ranking is making.  If it is making enough for me to just leave it alone, I do that.  If it is less than $30 a day, I will usually try to either focus on moving that keyword to the #1 spot, or working on that high dollar keyword.

Tomorrow I’ll give you a few hints on how to move your keywords from top 20 to top 10 rankings!

By |July 2nd, 2008|Make Money Online|2 Comments