How to Build a Site to get Search Engine Rankings (Part 2 of 2)

Part 1 of How to Build a Site to get Search Engine Rankings left off with a list of keywords ...

Go through your list and make your first cut. Cross off anything with a Results / Search ratio that is clearly higher than the average for your topic. These terms are too competitive. Look for those terms with high bid prices and large numbers of PPC campaigns. These are probably too competitive as well. Finally, stay away from terms with a high search volume when you are just starting out or youll likely loose interest before you see any meaningful results.

In this cut you should be looking to narrow your list down to under a hundred potential keywords around 50 would be better to start with. You should also start to get a feel for what keywords are going to work for this topic. Take a close look at these keywords. Are you still excited about the topic? If not, you should stop here and go back to your short list and start over. Passion is key.

The list youve just compiled will contain the keywords that you will turn into your site pages. As you look over this list and begin to do the next step in the analysis process you should be thinking about your primary keyword. This will be the strongest keyword left on your list. You want to pick the word with the most search volume and least results, with few PPC campaigns and low bid costs. This primary keyword will form the basis of your all-important index page and will direct the selection of your domain name.

Dont settle on your primary keyword just yet though you still have some data collection and analysis to do.

For each keyword you need to collect another set of data. Again the best way to do this is by creating a spreadsheet or chart to help you record and compile your data. This data set will look at the search engine optimization of your competitors. This information is invaluable in two ways. First, it will show you which keywords represent opportunities for high rankings due to the currently top ranked sites poor optimization. Second, it will show you exactly what you must do to get top rankings for any given keyword.

Create a chart for each keyword listing the URLs of the top 3 competing sites. Youve already collected the URLs so you can start creating your chart. Use the following columns.

1. Site URL
2. Title tag
3. Keywords Meta tag
4. Description Meta Tag
5. H1 tag
6. Bold tag
7. Italics tag
8. underline tag
9. Image alt tag
10. Keyword density
11. First word
12. Last word

These items comprise the bulk of the on page optimization factors. While on page optimization is important to achieving high rankings you wont get anywhere just by perfecting your on page optimization. Top rankings only come through a combination of on-page and off-page optimization.

Collecting this information is a matter of doing your research. Go to each site and use the View Source menu option to look at the HTML underlying the page. Identify and record the title tag, keywords meta tag, alt tag and description meta tag. Then use the Find tool in your browser to find the H1 tag, bold, italic and underlined text.

Youre looking for your keyword in these tags. The more often you find your keyword in these tags the more optimized this site is for that particular keyword. More optimized sites are going to be harder to displace because they are usually run by SEO savvy webmasters who will not take a decline in their ranking lightly.

Look at the site and record the first word on the page and last word on the page. Again youre looking for your keyword. Finally you need to determine the keyword density. The ideal density is between 3%-7%. Less and the keyword isnt considered very relevant on the page. More and the Search Engines may flag your site for keyword stuffing. You definitely wont rank well then. You can use this tool to figure out your keyword density. http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/. Its free.

This completes your on-page optimization spreadsheet. Go through each of your keywords and collect this data for all three top competing sites. You should start to see where your best opportunity in this niche is by now but you still have a little more data to collect. So far you have all of the on-page factors of your competition, but the more important part of achieving high-rankings is your off-page optimization.

Off-page optimization boils down to links. The internet is, in essence, nothing more than pages linked together. The search engines determine the importance of a page, in large part, based on the number, quality and relevance of incoming links to that page.

The final component of your data collection is to record the inbound linking information of all inbound links for each of your competitor sites. Once you have completed this rather tedious task you will be ready to make your final decisions about your site keywords.

At this point you will have to sift through all of the data you have collected and decide which keywords to cut and which to use for your site. Its more important to select keywords that fit a common theme and offer little competitive resistance than it is to select a large list of keywords. Since you are going to save this data you can use it to determine pages to be added later. For now, focus on keywords that you can be successful with. Later as you add pages the weight of your site will help pull them up the rankings.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didnt mention a few tools that can greatly speed up the process Ive just laid out. But, before you go out and spend your money on a piece of software I highly recommend that you go through this process at least once manually. It is tedious but it will also give you invaluable insight into the search engine optimization process.

The first tool I use is called Keyword Elite. It automates the process of collecting all of your keyword data as well as the on-page optimization factors of the top ranked sites for each keyword. I highly recommend it.

The second tool I use is called SEO Elite. It allows you to research the linking structure of any website. Once you know what the top ranked site is doing you can duplicate their linking strategy and secure top rankings very quickly.

These two tools combined give you a better insight into the state of your niche market than anything else Ive found on the net. If youre serious about SEO you should plan on buying both of these software applications. The alternative is a lot of very tedious work and Ive found that that takes all the fun out of the whole process.

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