After a few months I target ‘web hosting promotion’ keyword, now this site is number 1 on Google.com.my for the keyword even though the keyword is one of the competitive high paying keyword that most people know.

This is the results on 14 November 2011. As time goes by, my rank might be different and probably no longer on the first page.

So how the hell I manage to beat other web hosting companies in Malaysia for the keyword? What’s the real secret behind it?

This is what I did.

First secret: Internal linking

If you see on the sidebar, there is a link with anchor keyword ‘web hosting promotion’.

The advantage of a blog compared to company websites is that the a blog usually has hundred pages while a company website usually has around 10 pages.

I clearly beat them in term of internal linking.

Second secret: Guest post in specific country

I have written two guest post that contains backlinks to this site with ‘web hosting promotion’ as the anchor keyword.

Those companies probably have done a lot of link building such as forum profiles link building or article marketing.

However nothing beat the link juice that come from authority website in the specific country. If you want to rank well in Google My, you need to have backlinks from Malaysia website. You either need to pay others for link, or you can have win win situation by writing good quality guest post.

Third secret: Don’t lazy to do off page SEO

To be honest, I don’t like to build backlinks since it consumes a lot of my time.

Thus I only use FREE software such as Social Monkee that automatically submit your page to various social bookmarks.

I know that links from social bookmarking sites cannot be counted as quality backlinks. But if you are the only one that do that and your competitors don’t do it, then you will be the winner for sure.

The Crucial SEO Mistake one should never do

Okay, that’s for the rank on search engine.

Since I get to target high competitive keyword, for sure my traffic will increase drastically isn’t it?

That is what most people think.

Something seems beauty on the outside might not be so in the inside.

I target the keyword because I know the keyword is one of the high paying keyword without doing the proper SEO keyword research first.

Just now when I check it using Google Adwords Keyword, I get to know that the keyword has a fatal flaw that is the monthly searches from Malaysia are too small.

What can I expect from a keyword that only receives 45 search query per month?

That’s only the search query. Not the number of users that actually click your website.

From 45 searchers, I believe only 50 percent will click the link provided.

So you try like crazy doing SEO on a keyword until it reach the top spot on search engine, but at last you realize that the spot only gives you 30 unique visitors per month.

Is it worth your effort?

That’s why SEO keyword research is the most important phase that you should pay attention before optimizing a keyword.

If I have taken some time to do proper keyword research, for sure I will optimize ‘web hosting in Malaysia’ keyword which receives around 4000 monthly search queries instead of ‘web hosting promotion’ keyword.

We always hear that updating our blog as frequent as possible is the best method to get traffic.

Yes, I agree.

However that is only applicable if you want to target returning visitors.

If you are an Adsense player, I am sure you are aware that most of the clicks come from search engine visitors instead of returning visitors.

So how to make your website appears on the first page of Google.

What? You are already satisfied with being on the second page?

Come on… the difference of traffic between first page and second page is like West and North.

Even you… I know sometimes you only open the first three listing on Google isn’t it?
You want to find a solution as fast as possible. You just don’t have time to read the whole 10 listing on the first page.

Oh, now you want to learn the secret of dominating search engine?

The secret is backlink and backlink.

Backlink is the one that tells search engine that your page is important and should be rank higher.

That’s why some sites that only has a few pages manage to rank well on Google.
Because they have a lot of backlinks pointing to the site.

However search engines are not dump enough to rank a keyword that easily.
You need to make sure backlinks to your site look natural and consistent.
It is not wise to build 200 backlinks today and no backlink tomorrow.

If you need help in link building, these are the best tools ever to help you growing your links automatically.

While your competitors spend hours to build backlinks manually, you just need to spend sometime in setting up appropriate tools and then just wait for the result.

Social Monkee

This is one great FREE social bookmarking service. Once you register with Social Monkee, you can submit one entry to 25 social bookmarking sites automatically.

That means 25 free backlinks to your page daily.

Since it is FREE, there’s nothing to lose.

Article Marketing Robot

Everyone knows article marketing is one of the best link building method. However do you have enough time to submit the article that had written to 1000 article directories?

Is it possible to do it manually in one week time?

You need to register for all appropriate website, you need to verify your account through email, and lastly you need to submit the same article over and over.

Things might work differently if you use Article Marketing Robot. Just sit back and let Article Marketing Robot do the entire harsh job for you.

Since Article Marketing Robot has spinning option, you don’t have to worry about duplicate content issue. Article Marketing Robot will only send the same spun variation to one article directory.

That is the secret how certain few pages website manage to sit on the top three Google listing for high searches and very competitive keyword.

Terms: Social Monkee review, Article Marketing Robot review

Have you heard about any traffic exchange programs? Every traffic exchange program promises that they can bring traffics to your site more than the traffics that you give to them. How can this be true? If you come across a website that use traffic exchange program such as Market GID, you will be taken to the Market GID website if you click related banner.

From there, you had to choose which article that you want to read. And after you have made your choice, the chosen article is opened in a new window. As the windows is still opened, you may come back again to click another another article.

And when you realize, you already read a lot of informative articles that Market GID suggest. And that is how one traffic from a website, can actually generate more traffic to other websites.

In my opinion, link within plugin is as useful as traffic exchange programs since you cannot bait readers from other sites to go to your site. Maybe those readers can be your loyal readers. Who knows?

Here is the list of traffic exchange programs that you can join. However certain program require you to have sufficient unique visitors to be accepted.

International traffic exchange programs

Market GID traffic exchange

2Leep traffic exchange

Traffic exchange programs in Malaysia

Apesal traffic exchange

GengCyber traffic exchange

Sometimes it is a hard task to get the idea for your blog post. So, below are a few ways that you can do in order to find the idea for your blog post.

Advertisements

Advertisement especially Google Ads can be seen in a lot of websites or blogs. Sometimes certain advertisements can give you an idea for blog post. Furthermore, posting based on ads that appear will likely to make the ads appear in your blog post too. Ads that relevant to a blog post always increase click through.

Unanswered questions

This is one of the best way to find a nice topic to blog about since unanswered questions mean that the somebody actually want to know about the issue.

However, where to get unanswered questions? You can get it from

• Yahoo Answers
• Answer Dot Com
• Forum (people always posts in forum to ask for advice or helping them with their problems)

Other blogs

Have you ever come across a certain topic in a blog that interested you? Then you can blog about the same topic too. Although this idea looks cheap, I don’t seeany wrong with it as long as you do not copy the idea and writing.

Most Popular Post

Most blogger usually put this widget at their sidebar. Try to think carefully why the posts are popular? Either many readers read them because of the good topic or a lot of people stumble into the posts from search engine. That mean the topic is worth to be blog about and perhaps your post could attract a lot of readers too.

Newspaper or online news

You can discuss about certain issue in a newspaper. Most of the time, readers like to know your own idea about certain issue.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Most blogger use Google Adwords Keyword Tool for keyword research since they could know the estimated number of search by using this tool. However, Google Adwords Keyword will also give related keyword suggestion based on the keyword that you typed.

For example, you just need to enter ‘How to do’ and then Google Adwords Keyword will suggest keywords related to ‘How to do’.

Google Hot trends and Google Trends

Google Hot trends and Google Trends are tools that show us the current hot keywords or topics. That means, a lot of internet user is searching for the keywords or issues during the time. You can grab this opportunity to get traffics by writing about those keywords or topics.

E-Book syllabus

Have you come across website that sells e-book? Usually, most of such website would disclosed about about their syllabus so that the visitor could know what they could get by buying the e-book.

You can take this chance to make blog post based on their syllabus. This is okey since the content of the syllabus come from yourself and no plagiarism.

Google search suggestion

Do you notice that each time you type a keyword or phrase at Google, Google would list keywords that contains the keyword or phrase that you typed. Logically, the keywords that contain in the drop down list should have people searching for them. So, any keywords that appear in the drop down list is suitable to be written as a blog post.

To get better chance of high ranking in SERP, you should find a keyword that get high number of search but low number of competitor.

Previous Blog Post

Sometimes I would find a certain keyword in my previous blog post and I would write a blog post that is in the same genre or topic as the keyword. One of the benefit is that I could interlink between contents and this is a good way to decrease bounce rates. Interlinking between content also let visitors stay for a long time in your site.

Alexa Site Info

Do you know that you can view several information about a website by using Alexa? You can view the website traffic rank, page views,  the websites that link to them, and the most important is the search terms that driving traffic to them.

Yes, that means you could steal their keyword and optimized their keywords in your blog post. The best way to do it is by writing a blog post based on the keyword.

You Tube (or video sites)

There are tons of videos available at Youtube. And new video is uploaded every second. You can choose a video that worth to discuss about and embedded it into your blog post.

Another good way is to combine a few top videos in a blog post. For example, you can make a blog post about ‘ 10 funniest video ever’ and embedded 10 videos from Youtube that you think are funny.

For now, that’s all I do to get idea for my blog post. If I get new idea, I will update this list. So make sure you subscribe my feed.

The reason most blogs are not well known is because they stuff many information into one blog. To make a famous blog, we need to focus on one thing only that is also call niche blog. By making a niche blog, we can show to readers that we are really expert in that area and not just junk writing.

However, we need to know how to choose the right niche before decided to make any niche blog.

1. Find keyword relating to the niche:

Firstly, I will use Google Adwords Keyword to find the keyword with high hits per month. Then I will search at Google the keywords to find the overall results for the keyword. The overall results will symbolize how many your competitors. If the overall results are lower than 100 thousand, than the keyword is suitable to be optimize into niche blog. 

2. Find niche with high paying keyword:

You can also use other services such as keyword country or wordtracker but I prefer Google Adwords Keyword because you can filter the results based on country and you can also see the estimate Cost Per Click that you will get. This thing is not a mandatory but it is better to have a niche with high paying keywords.

If your niche is not a high paying keyword, you can write article that contains high paying keyword. For example, your niche blog is about how to fish trout. Then you can make article about buying insurance before going fishing since ‘insurance’ is a high paying keyword.

3. Killer tactic, list the titles first:

The drawback of niche blog is that you need to concentrate on one area only. If you really do not expertise in that area, sometime you will lack idea to write. If you still insist to write, the produce article will be reduce in quality and thus will affect your readers’ perception towards you.

To avoid this, I really suggest that you write at least 30 titles of relating niche. Titles are important, the contents are second. Logically, our way of thinking always change by time and our knowledge always increase. If you can list the titles, it will be easy to write the contents anytime since you already know the main idea. Besides, you can arrange the titles according to it sequence so that your blog posts will look related to each other.

If you think that producing article will consume your time, you can always ask freelancer to do the dirty work. It is also best if you can find team members for blogging.

Once you have setup the niche blog and have a few posts, you can try to be an affiliate partner of someone selling products related to your niche. For easy access of affiliate products, you can register with clickbank.

Sub categories for technology:

• Alternative technology
• Appropriate technology
• Assistive technology
• Banking technology
• Cyber Infrastructure
• Cybernatics
• Digital Technology
• Drilling Technology
• Drive by wireDisruptive technology
• Domestic technology
• Educational technology
• Electronics
• Emerging technology
• Energy
• Environmental technologies
• Explosives
• Film and video technology
• Flavor technology
• Geographical technology
• Green energy design
• High tech
• Industrial technology
• Information technology
• Low-technology
• Lubricants
• Machinery
• Media technology
• Military technology
• Mining techniques
• Microtechnology
• Music technology
• Nanomanufacturing
• Sound technology
• Space technology
• Telecommunication
• Transportation
• Travel technology
• Vehicle technology
• Waste treatment technology

Based from Wikipedia.

Have you ever wonder how some sites are listed in Google search? When a site appears in Google search, then it means that the site is indexed by Google. To index a site, Google need to send web spiders  (also known as web crawlers) first to your site.

In order for Google to send web crawlers to your site, Google need to  know the address (or URL) of your site. This can be done in two ways, the first way is too submit your site at Google Add URL, while the second way is by placing your website link at website that most likely to be visited by web crawlers. In this case, social bookmarking sites like Digg and Magnolia are  good choices.

After Google has indexed your site, it needs a few time for your site to appear in search engine. Meanwhile, make sure that you updates your blog or website frequently because Google loves it. And please don’t put duplicate contents in your website because Google is smart enough to differentiate duplicate contents.

If there are too much duplicate contents in your website, Google might consider your website as spam blog or website. If this happen, you never need to dream about getting your website appears in Google anymore.

I like to read manga a lot. That’s why I often Google about the latest manga chapter. Although the chapter isn’t out yet, the number of results are surprisingly a lot. But when I open the page, what I get is nothing more than trash.

Just some webmaster putting a lot in SEO to get good ranking in Google. They spam the post with certain keywords like spoiler, chapter, and episode so that they will rank high in Google. Indeed they are.

If there is only one person that do like that, I am sure there are visitors that would click their ads. Somehow when there are more than one, I would not bother to read at all.

I will just give them an ‘X’.

Do you know about Google honeymoon period? Google has high tendency to rank new entry at the first page. That’s the reason why blog authors are encourage to update their blog frequently.

But that’s just during the honeymoon period. After some times, your ranking would going low and lower. To keep your ranking at the first page, link building is an option. There is another way to go that is by getting back in the Google honeymoon period.

How to do that?

That’s really easy. You just need to update the blog post by adding a few new lines. You also need to change the old published date to a new date. Once you re-publish the post, there is a high chance for Google to treat the post as new release entry.

The proof:

• My third post (date December 2008) in this blog has no where to be in Yahoo and Google SERP. I just use the above method and suddenly the post ‘POP’ out in the first page of Google SERP.
• Look at the date. Google even show that the post is just released for not more than 1 hour despite the fact that I was just re-published old entry.

Ps: I am using the Malaysia search function. The web function is too tense full of competitors to beat.

Most professional blogger suggest to have niche blog rather than personal blog. The reasons is that niche blog is more targeted and specific compare to personal blog or a blog that jumble all stuffs in one.

I agree that niche blog is far better in earning revenue but somehow I disagree that personal blog is useless. I recommend that every blogger has at least two blogs, one personal, and the other is focus on the main subject.

At first, I decided to blog about gadget at one of my blog. After a while I run of idea and something new get to my eyes. The blog that was supposed for gadgets had turned into a sports blog. And after a while I feel bored with sports, and then I wrote about movies.

At last the supposed to be niche blog contains too many niches. That is the time that I put in my mind to just make the blog as a blog to put irrelevant stuffs. I would go to that blog whenever I feel attracted to something new and got something to share. By having a jumble blog, my other niche blog is saved from irrelevant stuff.

That’s not all. Personal blog is also good in doing keyword research and choosing profitable niche that has high demands. Since I jumbled all stuffs into one blog, I can compare the traffics that I received for certain niches. Sometimes I feel really surprised when something so short that I post gain more traffics from SE compare to a long one. And sometimes I fell surprised when the keyword that I think had no value turn to be a diamond.