Introduction to Keyword Sniping

re: http://courtneytuttle.com/2007/12/20/introduction-to-keyword-sniping/ 

Want to get a top ranking for a good keyword in Google? Chances are, you don’t know how to make that happen or you’re just unsure of yourself. A few of you might believe that you know what to do because you’ve read all of the generic, worthless garbage that’s out there, but have never put it into practice. Here’s the honest truth - you can out-rank internet marketing companies or anyone else if you can learn a few, simple techniques.

This lesson is going to teach you how to consistently beat major players that have bigger budgets, better skills, and more ideas than you. I can teach you to make a focused, {insert ninja-like word of choice here}, deadly attack on keywords. This lesson will reveal to you why people like me can beat multi-million dollar companies out for top rankings.

Introducing Keyword Sniping

Keyword sniping involves an extremely focused effort on a single keyword. The idea here is to choose a single keyword, and to set up an entire site (or even an entire group of sites) with the sole intent of ranking for that one keyword.

My most effective keyword snipe to date ended up making me over $3,500 per month with almost zero upkeep. Yes, this was from a single keyword. I set it up while I was working full time at my old job, and after I had it set up, it brought in tons of income with hardly any maintenance. 100% of the income was through Yahoo! ads (like Adsense), so there was absolutely no labor required.

Choosing The Right Keyword

Although you can use keyword sniping to get ranked for almost any keyword, some keywords will be easier than others and I would recommend starting with something that won’t be incredibly difficult. When I did my $3,500 per month snipe, I was using the keyword ‘motorola cell phones’. The reason I went after that instead of just ‘cell phones’ was because it is about 1000 times easier. Getting ranked #1 in Google for ‘cell phones’ would make you flippin’ rich, but it might take years. Choose a more specific keyword and you can get your ranking more quickly.

Not very many sites out there are targeting a brand-specific keyword with an entire site - most of them target brand-specific keywords with a subpage. This will give you a huge advantage right off the bat. You will always be able to get better rankings if you build the site around a keyword.

I use Wordze (paid service but worth every penny) to do my keyword research, but have also used the WordTracker free version and it works well enough for those of you that don’t have the budget. No matter what tool you use, you’re going to look for three attributes in a keyword, two of which can be found using either of the tools I mentioned. Here are the attributes you need to look for in keywords:

1. They get searched for over 200 times per day (obviously the higher, the better). Wordze and Wordtracker both show you daily search volume.
2. They have less than 1,000,000 competing pages (less is better). You can find this out by doing a search for your keyword in Google with quotes around it: “your keyword here”.
3. They have some kind of value to an advertiser. (Anything that can be bought and sold has value, anything that has commissions has value). Some keywords will have more value than others.

The above numbers are guidelines and definitely aren’t hard rules. I would stick to them until you get confident enough to go for bigger keywords. That way you will know you are going after something that has potential for you while you build confidence and knowledge of your own.

When you choose a keyword, try to find something that a tech-savvy person wouldn’t think of. Even ‘motorola cell phones’ has a lot more competition than most other keywords, and finding one without that level of competition will make your life 100 times easier. I like to try to picture a 15 year old girl or a 70 year old grandpa in order to come up with things they would search for. What would they search for on a daily basis?

Getting outside the tech/internet world will not only lessen your competition, it will also increase your conversion. People that aren’t as tech-savvy will click ads much more than people that know what the ads are. You may be able to get 10-20% click-through on ads instead of <1% on a tech-savvy, ‘make money online’ site.

Here are some examples of niches I would look into:

• Service niches (heating and a/c, legal, delivery, electrical, pest control, repairs, driving services, etc.)
• Non-electronic product niches (hair stuff, clothing brands, acne treatments, etc.)
• Select electronic product niches (You will have to dig hard to limit competition here.)
• Finance niches (specific loans, brand-specific loans, etc.)

Example keyword that fits criteria: radiant floor heating - 205 searches per day, and 223,000 competing pages. I found this keyword by searching for about five minutes. If you take some time to brainstorm, there will be tens of thousands of keywords you can find that fit the criteria.

How To Actually Snipe The Keyword You Choose

Set Up An Entire Website Or Blog
Once you have chosen your keyword, you will begin the process of targeting and getting ranked for that keyword. In order to target that keyword successfully, you will want to create an entire website or blog (preferred) around that keyword. I personally will buy a domain for the keyword, because that way I can sell it someday. You can be just as effective at getting ranked by using a Blogger blog, but then you can never sell the site. You’re going to have to pick what’s best for you and your budget, but using a Blogger blog could cost you tens of thousands of dollars someday because you will never be able to sell your profitable site. I use ProudDomains.com to buy my domains and host my blogs and sites.

When you buy a domain to target this keyword, you will need to keep a few things in mind. Getting a domain that has the keyword in it will really help you to get ranked for that keyword. However, buying a used domain can help you significantly to get ranked more quickly. If you’re in a hurry to make money from this keyword, I would recommend using TDNAM.com to find a used domain that you can buy. Any domain that’s been live for more than one year will decrease the amount of time it will take to get ranked.

The reason it can help you to buy a domain that’s been live for over a year is that it can help you to avoid Google’s sandbox (yes, it does exist). I personally have been able to avoid the sandbox on brand new sites, as long as I keep the sites small and target keywords that aren’t very competitive (less than 1,000,000 competing pages in Google). This means that I can spend just $8 to buy the domain and I can usually increase it’s value to a few thousand dollars within a few short months.

Once you get your domain, I would highly recommend installing WordPress to create your site. If you prefer to use HTML to create your own static site, feel free. I warn you that people like me will probably have a huge advantage over you - link building is a lot easier if you use blog software to create your site. Later in this lesson I will be showing you how to configure WordPress to target this keyword properly.

Content Keyword Attack
For the content of the site, I would recommend adding at least ten pages of solid content about the keyword of choice. Even though we will be using blog software to create this site, this site will not be a blog. It will look like a blog and smell like a blog, but there will be no need to post everyday or even every week. I personally would remove all dates that can appear because you don’t want people to know when it was created.

Each of your ten pages should be created with the intent of giving a keyword link back to the homepage with your main keyword. You want each of these pages to be at least 300 words. This is the hardest part of the entire process. I usually surf the sites that come up in Google for the keyword to get ideas for the 10 pages of content. I don’t take their content, but I use it to get ideas for mine. Make sure to link back to the homepage within every post - use your keyword as the anchor. This gives your homepage more ranking ability in two ways:

1. It’s getting more internal links with the anchor text.
2. It’s getting more external links with the anchor text. Spammers that rip off your pages will end up linking back to your homepage using your anchor text. This usually makes most bloggers mad, but you should embrace it because it only helps you.

Site Brand
Branding your site around your keyword is one of the most important things you can do to target your keyword. An example of this is Court’s Internet Marketing School. When I decided to switch the keyword I was targeting to ‘internet marketing’, I had to change the branding of my site. Now I refer to my site by this name and am establishing it as a brand. Many people link to me now using Court’s Internet Marketing School as the anchor text, and this gives me links with internet marketing in the anchor. Since I have branded the site this way, it happens naturally.

Note: You don’t necessarily have to use the keyword in the domain to use keyword branding. As you know, I don’t have my keyword in my domain on this site.

Site Structure
Creating the proper site structure is where most people aren’t doing an adequate job - this is good for me but terrible for them. Now I’m going to give you guys some advice on keyword placement. You will need to follow each of these instructions. If you don’t, don’t be surprised when people are constantly beating you into the ground.

Start by using a WordPress theme that has been optimized for use with search engines. My SEO WordPress Themes will help you to outrank people that use regular themes. Once you have installed one of those themes, continue with the following instructions.

Use keyword in the following locations:

• HTML title tag of every page in the site. I accomplish this by using the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin. My HTML titles are set to show the post titles first, and then the title of my site, which is currently set to ‘Internet Marketing | Strategy & Services’.
• H1 tag of every page on the site. My H1 tags appear in the upper-right hand corner of my pages. On my homepage, I have it set to ‘Internet Marketing’. On my other pages, I have it set to show ‘Internet Marketing | Post Title Or Page Title Appears Here’. I used a simple piece of code in my WordPress header to accomplish that. You can find the code here: H1 Dynamic Code. You can copy it and insert your keyword where is says ‘Your Keyword Here’.
• Footer link that points to your homepage. Create a link to your homepage in the footer, and use your keyword as the anchor text.
• Link within each post to homepage with anchor text. I already talked about this but am going to reiterate. Find a way to fit it in - you need this on all 10 posts.
• Throughout homepage text. At any given moment, you want your keyword to appear on your homepage at least 6-7 times. This is usually is taken care of since you should be using the keyword in your posts. Since it’s your actual homepage that will get ranked for your keyword, you will need to make sure that it’s there enough times. You also need to make sure that you have at least 1000 words of text there. This is easy to accomplish - 4 posts that appear there with 300 words will more than do the trick. This makes it so you don’t set off a keyword spamming filter with Google.

By using this approach, I’m consistently able to out-rank huge companies. This is because they are using one page to target a keyword, and I am using an entire site. This structure is one of the big reasons why I am running sites into the ground for ‘internet marketing’, even though I’m five years newer and have less links. Imagine what you can do with it if you target less-competitive keywords!

Inbound Link Methods
In order to effectively out-rank other sites, you will need to have a focused effort to get the right kinds of links. This involves a few different factors, here are the basics:

• Vary your anchor text, but use your keyword in most links. This means if I’m targeting internet marketing, I’m going to try to get links with the following anchors: internet marketing, Court’s Internet Marketing School, internet marketing strategy, internet marketing services, internet marketing tips, etc. This can be done with any keyword and will help you to avoid a link spamming/Google bomb filter.
• Get links from pages about your keyword. I use articles to achieve this with amazing results. I write an article called something like ‘Internet Marketing Could Change Your Life’. I then submit the article to a ton of directories and use the Author Bio to link back to my site with my desired anchor text. All of the links come from pages about internet marketing, because I wrote the content for the pages! I wrote a separate article about this here: How To Make Your Posts 500% More Powerful With Only 25% More Work. Some people think that article marketing doesn’t work - those are the people that I usually kick into the ground. I use Article Marketer to submit my articles to hundreds of article directories. You can also start forum threads about your keyword an link back with your signature.
• Get links from other types of pages. These won’t be quite as effective as getting links on pages about your keyword, but are still quite effective. The D-List can be effective for this. People don’t like it when you keyword stuff your comments, but are usually ok with it if you use your brand to comment. This means if your brand has your keyword in it… You get the idea. If anyone doesn’t like it, kindly apologize to them. Respect their decision.
• More of my link building methods here: 102 Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar

Keep in mind that by using this method, you won’t need as many links as you would need to get a single page ranked. Since you’re using an entire site to snipe this keyword, it will come more quickly and easily.

Keyword Sniping Timeline

The time table for getting ranked with a site like this can vary wildly. If you are able to get a used domain that’s related to your keyword, you should be able to get ranked highly within a month or two. A brand new domain may or may not take more time.

The amount of time it will take you to get ranked will be determined almost directly by the amount of competition out there for your keyword. Choosing a keyword with little competition will allow you to get ranked very quickly, possibly within a few short weeks. This is why you may want to start with a single, long-tail keyword. That way you can get used to the method and get a victory and #1 ranking on your first attempt.

With time, you will get more and more confident that you can use keyword sniping to take out major keywords. Start small and then start thinking big.

Questions?
On a lesson like this, I know there will be lots of questions. Consider this an open invitation to ask me anything related to keyword sniping. I will be answering every question on this post - that’s a promise.

If you would like to learn more about blogging and making money online, subscribe to my full feed RSS. My RSS feed is updated daily.