I would have to say that in my years as a marketer online the number one question I am asked is “Why am I not getting any traffic?”.  Because I am Brad Callen and have developed SEO software for years I feel like I know a little about the subject so allow me to try and help some of the newer marketers with a few tips to get started.

I would have to say that despite the fact that there exists loads and loads of information out there on SEO, a lot of which is not likely accurate anymore, most people have the knowledge necessary to execute a well rounded SEO campaign already.

The beauty of SEO is that it’s very well structured.  I know what it takes to rank for “Brad Callen” based on data.  As much as we try and mystify it, it comes down to hard data and action to achieve success.  This is a great thing for you because what it tells you is that ranking for any keyword is achievable for any person regardless of who you are and what your current situation is.

So why is it that most people don’t have high ranking websites?

Here is what I think based on my own personal experience and in dealing with a lot of people on a personal level.

1.  They are not willing to rework or optimize their pages for SEO

A well rounded SEO campaign is comprised of both on-page and off-page factors with title tags being the most vital of the on-page factors. Once you make it to a SERP’s page having the right META description will help your website get click throughts but having that META description and META keywords around your niche is not going to help you rank.

Focus your pages content.  Think one page, one topic and focus building each page of your website around this.  In addition make sure all your content surrounds a major “theme” and stay within it.

2.  They think building out a website with very little original content or duplicate content will allow them to rank well

Google and the other major SE’s are moving towards stressing value as assessed by your peers meaning that if someone links to you it is like saying, “Hey thanks for putting up a great website!” to Google.

Without trying to reinvent the wheel, think about how the sites ranking well in your niche or market are building their theme and their content and try and differentiate yourself. Successful webmasters know how to pick successful topics so use those as a basis for new content.

3.  They care what their page rank is

Download the Google toolbar, enable the “view PageRank” option and look at the top 10 results for any given search term. It becomes obvoius that PageRank has nothing to do with website rank.  In fact the PageRank that Google reports is from approx. 3 months ago.  They will never display your “actual” real-time page rank so take it with a grain of salt and focus on more important things like better content and more links.

4.  They don’t bother to setup and pursue a link building campaign

As most people know by now rank is driven by link quality and to a lesser degree link quantity.

If you want to increase your rank for any given term you need to be building links from websites related to your own.  Of course do not discount the easy links such as the Yahoo directory or some of the other major directories as they provide significant value for very little work but if you want to increase rank for your core keywords you will need to build links from other websites.  An example may be you have a website on camping.  It would serve you well to have links pointing to your website from other camping websites, or from websites selling camping gear, or from websites talking about camping locations or even from websites talking about wildlife.

It’s all about creating a themed website and assuring that the links pointing to your website are the same theme as yours.

Finding potential link partners is time consuming and often times cumbersome but if you approach website owners with a dually beneficial relationship, i.e. you provide them content for a link, it can work well for everyone involved.

Remember if you develop a relationship with the higher ranking websites in your market it can only benefit you by associating with them at any level.  It’s not always ideal to consider them the “enemy”.

5.  They don’t know their competition

Ok this is a BIG one and one you really need to consider as a website owner.  What’s important is to try and consider this BEFORE entering a market. I am a strong believer that anyone can compete online regardless of your companies size, it has more to do with how much your willing to personally dedicate to it.

I could rank well within a few days for the phrase “yellow polka dot tennis shoes” because it’s not a competitive term (a whopping 13,000 search results).  Of course this means nothing because no one searches for that term.

Here is a great rough gauge for SEO competition.  Do a Google search for your term and look at the number of results:

shoes – 305,000,000

tennis shoes – 3,405,000

Obviously tennis shoes is less competitive than “shoes” itself but if you want to gauge SEO competition do the same search using the “allintitle:” modifier to see how many people have optimized their title tags for the phrase:

allintitle: shoes – 23,700,000

allintitle: tennis shoes – 134,000

As you can see this differential spreads out exponentially showing that “tennis shoes” is drastically less competitive than “shoes”.

Just remember you are never competing with Google for top search results. You are always competing with the websites currently ranking for the terms you want to show up for.  If you can get more and better links AND you have done a better job at optimize your on-page content than the person currently at the number one spot in Google you will eventually surpass him.

About the author:  Brad Callen is the founder of Bryxen Software, Inc. and has a passion for internet marketing and creating software products that will benefit the internet marketing community.

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How do you find potentially profitable keyword phrases for your web pages or AdWords campaigns

What factors should you consider when trying to determine the profitability of a particular phrase? Here are some suggestions:

• the frequency of which your keyword phrase is searched on
• the number of other web pages competing for your keyword
• how your keyword phrase is written
• how much Pay Per Click advertisers are willing to bid for your keyword
• how closely matched your product is to your phrase
• does your keyword phrase include a product or brand name

The 6 criteria above will go along way to determining how profitable a term will be for you.

So let me take you through each of the criteria in a bit more detail and explain further how each one can help you determine the potential of the keyword …

1. Keyword Phrase Search Frequency

The higher the frequency that a keyword is searched on, the higher the probability that it will be profitable as it will drive you more traffic. Lets face it, if nobody ever types it in a search engine, it is not going to make you any money!

2. Competition For Your Keyword Phrase

Just because a search term is heavily searched on doesn’t mean it’s going to be profitable for YOU!

There is no point in optimising for traffic from highly searched on keywords IF there are already thousands of other sites doing the same … because you’ll simply find it difficult to compete and your pages will have very little hope of ranking highly in the search engines.

For a phrase to be profitable, it needs to attract “reasonable” volumes of searches whilst not having too many web pages to compete with!

3. How The Keyword Phrase Is Structured

This is a key point. When you discover a keyword phrase that gets a lot of searches and is structured in the form of a “question”, you’ve potentially found a highly profitable keyword to exploit.

If you discover a highly searched on term that starts with “why”, “how”, “where” or “which”, you’ve discovered an opportunity to provide the searcher with a “really targeted benefit”.

4. How Much Google AdWords Advertisers Are Paying For The Keyword

If advertisers are prepared to pay a lot to display their advert against a keyword phrase, it must follow that its valuable and therefore should be profitable … makes a lot of sense I think you will agree? Life really does not need to be complicated …

5. How Well Matched Your Product Is To Your Keyword Phrase

There’s no point in identifying a potentially profitable term and then using it to sell a product that isn’t closely matched to it.

6. Include A Product Name

Phrases that include a specific product name or brand name are likely to be high converting keywords if you’re going to use them for affiliate marketing, because people already have been pre-sold on the product as they know of its existence before they search on it.

So there you have it, you now know what to look for when researching keywords that will potentially make you a lot of money using the 6 tips above.

The best keyword tool I have come across, and I’ve tried a few is Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite.  It’s an excellent tool!  The good news is he is releasing Keyword Elite 2.0 very very soon, click on the link to take a look!  And take a look at my Keyword Elite 2 bonus as well!

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