What they don't tell you about keywords - revisited

In the middle of building my mini-web/mini-net, and I came smack up against the definitions of what a keyword is and isn't.

"Long-tail niche keywords" are supposedly built up of several combinations of words which people look for, but no one has particularly built a site that takes advantage of these searches.

Computers don't think the same way you and I do (at least for now, but they are getting closer...). Computers simply take the characters between two spaces as a "word". If you've got four words in your title, it sees four words. Simple. It doesn't see a phrase.

What gets you high rankings is that your sets of words are consistent through your title, descriptions, incoming text links, etc. The theme of your page (keywords you use) matches the reputation (keywords others use) of your incoming links.

Now, I've been reading that you take a primary keyword phrase and then tie in another secondary keyword phrase, which is what is on the pages of your mini-web which link into this page. Primary: Golf, Secondary: Clubs. And that page could have another (tertiary) keyword (polish, or bag, or covers, or...).

But you theoretically aren't trying to take over "Golf", which has a lot of competition. You are trying to take over Golf Clubs, which doesn't (so much). The computer actually scores you higher for golf the more pages you have which say this in their links. So while you are only concerned with Golf Clubs, your rankings (if you got curious) for Golf were improving all the time.

So you could theoretically cut a wide swath in a major term if you -

1. very carefully tailor your pages to these keywords, and
2. build a site with lots of pages over time on a regular basis - each page being unique to the others on that site.

It's just the way it is. You don't have to concentrate on phrases - and not so much on a particular order (although this sometimes has its place). The more you use a word in your links to and between your pages, the more someone will find your site.

The trick is also to look at the individual keywords you are using.

Take "An Online Millionaire Plan - a guide to Internet Marketing"

Top words in this are Online, Marketing, Internet. (Plan and Guide are also top words on their own - articles are ignored on the whole).

Key phrases in this: online marketing, internet marketing, online millionaire, internet millionaire. But these phrases don't pull as much as the individual words.

When you take this down to online millionaire marketing, or internet millionaire marketing, the hits drop way down, just as they did from one-word to two-word keywords. However, the competition also drops - which is where you can grab the attention of these niche seekers.

An interesting thing is that you can work with these a bit. I've compiled, edited, and wrote a book called "An Online Millionaire Plan". Simply as there is some attention on Online Millionaires. And the idea behind this book is to become personally rich. This plan just lays out how people can market their product and earn millions in the process.

Now my top page would have "online millionaire marketing" in it, but I am really seeing that "online millionaire" and "online marketing" both show up in that title. My sub-words would then continue to push "online millionaire marketing", and add another single word (as I've found eight different ways to market online).

Let's take one example, "online millionaire marketing - article". This combo has "article marketing" and "online article" to the mix, both of which have competition and traffic in adwords. So by making pages devoted to these phrases, I actually then find myself with rankings on these searches (assuming we build honest pages and optimize them for keywords, but don't over-stuff them.

If I added articles to this site (or other additional pages) about article marketing, these would then drive pagerank to this above page. Now, if my below pages only said "article marketing", then the drive my above page higher for that term. But to be smart, they would say things like "online millionaire marketing - article writing" or some such. In that way, I can actually show up on any combination of keyword searches within that phrase.

The term "millionaire" is a bit of a clunker compared to the others. But it fits the title of my book and so pulls the whole theme together for the site. And I might as well attract searches for online millionaire, millionaire marketing, millionaire article, etc.

See how this goes?

It's just an interesting sidebar to building a mini-web - but I thought it interesting enough to post just on this subject.

- - - -

With another book - "Go Thunk Yourself!", I have to take a different tack. What I am building there is a brand. It is unique as the book is a new line of research. But I build that brand through extension. All the books I've written, edited, and published after this one are on the Lulu Go Thunk Yourself storefront.

As I build a mini-net, this book is at the pinacle. The sub-pages have to do with the GTY series themselves, a series on the Secrets to the Law of Attraction, and an Online Millionaire Plan series.

You can see I have keyword problems, since Secrets has to do with secrets and law of attraction. Online Millionaire we've discussed. And Go Thunk Yourself is unknown.

The solution to this is to resolve the keyword GTY should be known for = "personal development". Because more people look for that phrase than self-help, self improvement, or personal growth, et al.

I just leave Go Thunk Yourself as a main page with just that in its title. But that isn't where I make my bread and butter. The GTY series page has "go thunk yourself" and "personal development" as keyword phrases. So the sub-pages in the GTY series are all titled "personal development [something-or-other]". And I can add authors as one of those keywords, who themselves have mini-webs (and maybe mini-nets, depending on how prolific they were).

So, "personal development wattles", "personal development haanel", "personal development atkinson", etc. Within those pages, I can have "personal development wattles - MP3's", "personal development wattles - books", "personal development wattles - ebooks", etc.

Right now, you see that I have already a three-tiered set of mini-webs, which are building into my mini-net on personal development. All this page-rank on personal development is pushed up to Go Thunk Yourself.

As well, all the pages on Online Millionaire Plan and Secrets to the Law of Attraction also push page rank up to Go Thunk Yourself. And so I build a publishing empire.

I could then build another mini-net as the publisher - which would push along links to this other site. A mini-net of affiliate programs would also push links.

So my mini-nets continue to grow. And as these pages drill down, they have fewer external links - just links to other areas on this mini-net. And marketing loves to bring people into a silo of opportunities.

And this silo gets higher rankings and so gets more Internet Search Engine traffic, while it builds other input as well.

Interesting stuff, this.