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Organic SEO Tips to Grow

Traffic, Sales and Rankings

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There is nothing I love more than researching a market,

unearthing lucrative keyword verticals and building out a site.

Crash Course in Organic SEO

Sure, there are a million and one ways to accomplish the

same task, but despite the fundamental differences in

approach there is a sequence that is repeatable,

evergreen and transcends topical search engine

algorithm revisions and works time and time again

regardless of the topic, market or competitors.

All techie SEO jargon and nomenclature aside, I will

attempt to keep this as straightforward as possible to

ensure that there is something for everybody from newbie to SEO expert.

These are the annals of tried and true methods I have

used over the past 14 years to conquer competitive

verticals time and time again. So, I hope you appreciate

them as they represent years of testing and over the

years, these methods have made millions for us and our clients, and it can do the same for you.

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LEGAL NOTICE: Before you scroll down and read anything in this guide, you need to be made fully aware of the following things... Rankings and Page Rank Disclaimer: This document contains business strategies, search engine strategies and other business advice that, regardless of our results and experience, may not produce the same results (or any results) for you. We make absolutely no guarantee, expressed or implied that by following the advice below you will make any money or improve current profits, increase page rank, increase search engine rankings. There are multiple factors and variables that come into play regarding any given business and the competitive landscape. Primarily, results will depend on the nature of the product or business model, the conditions of the marketplace, the experience of the individual, and situations and elements that are beyond your control. As with any business endeavor, you assume all risk related to investment and money based on your own discretion and at your own potential expense. Liability Disclaimer: By reading this document, you assume all risks associated with using the advice given below, with a full understanding that you, solely, are responsible for anything that may occur as a result of putting this information into action in any way, and regardless of your interpretation of the advice. You further agree that our company cannot be held responsible in any way for the success or failure of your business as a result of the information presented below. It is your responsibility to conduct your own due diligence regarding the safe and successful operation of your business if you intend to apply any of our information in any way to your business operations. In summary, you understand that we make absolutely no guarantees regarding search engine rankings as a result of applying this information, as well as the fact that you are solely responsible for the results of any action taken on your part as a result of this information.

Terms of Use, Personal-Usage License This document is FREE – if you have paid for this Ebook, please send us the details in an email to: abuse@seodesignsolutions.com so we can send this information to our attorneys. Furthermore you cannot use this Ebook in whole or partial as; a bonus offer, blog post, or anywhere online or offline without our expressed written consent. We will ensure appropriate legal action shall be taken to preserve our brand, and to ensure that we preserve the exclusive nature and value of this product in the interest of our proprietary information.

Brought to you by: Jeffrey L. Smith http://www.seodesignframework.com/ SEO Design

Solutions, Inc. Copyright © 2015 All Rights Reserved

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Preface

You should put as much work into finding your market

or niche as you do building it out. Neither should be

taken lightly since time, energy and money are at stake and ROI is the ultimate objective.

Remember, you are creating a potential long-term asset

for passive recurring revenue. So just keep in mind,

based on what you put in, you will get out. The key is

efficiency and repeatability and to work smarter not harder on the way up.

Realize that nothing happens overnight for a new

domain. Search engines are programmed to ignore

websites that lack the proper ingredients of trust, citation or relevance.

However, if you give search engines what they want

(content, strong site architecture, internal links, deep

links, citation from multiple sources), they respond in

kind with keywords rising on the horizon sprouting into

the top 10 results (which is the proving grounds for

continuity, message match, user engagement and conversion).

But first, you have to build it, so here are the steps

involved.

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Steps to Optimizing for Search Rankings

1. Keyword Selection: the language of conversion.

2. Site Architecture: Mapping the Nodes of the

Website Silo Architecture.

3. On Page SEO: Determining on page internal link

thresholds.

4. Off Page SEO: Determining off page backlink / deep

link thresholds.

5. Timing: Allowing for website theme synergy, trust

and buoyancy.

6. Analytics: Observation, tracking, testing,

refinement.

7. Content Development: Staggered content creation

and content syndication.

8. Evolution: Finding lucrative effective keywords and integrating them into additional branches.

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Keyword Selection:

Keywords, aside from being the

language of conversion, are the

gatekeepers traffic from search engines.

Keyword or vertical online market

analysis / research is the most critical

step which can either make or break

any of the following steps. If you fail to comprehend the

language your prospects are using when engaging a

search engine, then you may miss the boat entirely when

it comes to crafting expert solutions, pre-sell pages or

authoritative industry solutions that differentiate your web property from your competition.

Similarly, if you fail to understand which keyword phrases

have semantic connectivity and share a high citation or

relevance score to search engines, then your website will

never truly enjoy the cohesion or develop the authority

necessary to rank competitively against other websites that do understand this vital keyword DNA.

There are different types of keywords, or rather, as

Russell Wright from ThemeZoom has coined them, “the 9

species of keywords” which you can use to entice your audience and facilitate conversion.

Once you grasp the function of the different species and

what they represent to your business, you won’t have to

guess which phrases to use, you will KNOW which types

of keywords fit in their respective segments of your site

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architecture and how to maximize them for both (a)

destinations and (b) supporting articles to chip away at

the more competitive, lucrative, traffic-bearing

behemoths that are the apex, i.e. Industry-defining

keywords, that all competitors in the space seek to capture and wield as their own.

While markets differ, the approach is very similar. The

way I view this is simple. I use competing pages and

daily search traffic as a barometer to assess (1) the

barrier to entry and (2) a rung in the ladder on the way up the vertical.

Also, each phase of your website’s roll-out represents

certain thresholds that you can feasibly tackle. For

example, while we have conquered top 10 results in 6

weeks or less for keywords with 1.5 – 2 Million competing

pages in “exact match” in competitive markets, it is not

always the case and may take months to accomplish the

same (depending on the market, climate and competition).

The solution involves using a more tactful approach.

Rather than targeting keywords outside your reach

(which is only temporary) on the contrary, you have to

build the topical base of your web property through

creating a solid semantic foundation (content) using both

educational and commercial queries while paying

attention to whether they are long-tail queries, mid-tail

more competitive popular queries or industry defining keywords (as they take more time to get ranked).

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Those primary phrases are what we call the low-hanging

fruit or less competitive keywords and that is where you

start using intelligent, cohesive content creation coupled

with on page and off page optimization (more on that later).

Regarding the first steps of keyword research and how to

implement cohesive site architecture, you can read more

about this approach here in a post called “how to SEO

your website” which I wrote previously, but the gist is simple.

Start with less competitive keywords you can rank for

using citation (these are keywords that rarely require

links, but just the presence of other similar keywords in a

cohesive category structure). As you create those

primary articles, blog posts, etc. you sprinkle in the more

competitive keywords (from the rung above it) as

secondary, tertiary phrases so you can augment them

with internal links from those “supporting articles” by

linking from those supporting articles to the more competitive keyword / landing pages.

The supporting articles serve a dual purpose (a) to

increase spider activity to your website and (b) to provide

internal linking opportunities for your “big picture” keyword/ranking objectives.

Once you have conducted your research and understand

the hierarchy, then you take that data and map your site

architecture to augment the ascent through assigning

tiers based on competing pages, search volume and time to rank/ barrier to entry and ROI.

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The more competitive the keyword, the more supporting

content, internal link citation and deep links (backlinks)

you will require from other websites to cross the tipping

point. However, the more keywords you work on

simultaneously exponentially expedites the entire process

to toggle what we call keyword stemming where the

website gains its own momentum and starts to rank for

dozens, hundreds and eventually thousands of keyword

variations based on the synergy of signals gleaned from the methods we are about to share.

Site Architecture

Using the analogy of tiers simply

envision a cascading progression of

champagne glasses stacked on atop

the other with one on the top, two

under that, three under that row and so on.

Tier 1: The first tier represents your websites theme.

This is the homepage and often will serve as the apex for

your most challenging industry keyword. There is a

reason for this (1) the homepage will garner the most

link-flow and link-equity naturally as a result of being

included in any other URL for any other page

(yourdomain.com/page.html) as a result of being in the

root or rather being the root of the website, it naturally

has the potential to magnify any of the topics stacked under it.

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Page Rank and link-flow always move up from sub folders

into the root folder, so, you will always want to keep your

tier 2 pages (primary landing pages) in or as close to the root folder as possible.

Tier 2: Tier 2 pages (as mentioned briefly above) are

your category / silo landing pages. They serve as the

designated landing page for your most competitive

keywords. Each competitive keyword should have its own

landing page. This way, when the website becomes an

authority site, you can have a specific page ranking for

the keyword of choice rather than something generic (like your home page ranking for it).

Since rankings are by the page, it is much easier to

develop dozens of tier 2 landing pages to capture

keyword-specific rankings from internal links and deep links from other websites.

To provide an example of a tier 2 page for a website

about health that houses multiple topics would be

domain.com/diet-tips where there may by multiple topics

in the site like domain.com/sleep-disorders or

domain.com/healthy-eating-habits in either case, the

landing page in the root folder would be the recipient of

any internal links for the keywords (diet tips, sleep

disorders or healthy eating habits) from any other page in the site.

Then, since each of those phrases is competitive, they

will still require layers of nested supporting articles. So,

while they are landing pages, they also represent

categories for nested content such as domain.com/diet-

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tips/5-foods-to-avoid.html domain.com/diet-tips/4-

healthy-meat-alternatives.html, etc. By adding this

nested content in layers under the category/silo, then

buoyancy occurs for the more competitive apex / terms

the silo is based on. That silo landing page (in the root)

then using contextual links and navigational links to tie

itself to the tier one primary home page and the home

page reciprocates by linking to the tier 2 landing pages either through navigation of contextual links.

Once you break away into a category/silo, those page

can have their own navigation structures that are more

conducive to the topic (health, diet, exercise, etc.) and

then they are all tied back through the home button in

primary navigation, sitemaps or contextual links (so

getting to any category from any other category is possible within 3 clicks).

Tier 3: Tier 3 pages are unique articles (in the case of a

content rich site), blog posts, or products in the case of

an eCommerce site. While you can create additional

cascading tiers of relevance and site architecture, keep in

mind that the further you go from the root, the more diffused the ranking factor becomes.

This is ideal if you want to tactfully create more buoyancy

for your more competitive keywords, then keep adding

nested content in the category and build internal links

contextually (link from the editorial portion of the page)

instead of through navigation, sidebars, images, etc.

while accruing deep links from other websites to those

tier 2 silo landing pages with a mixed semantic theme of

anchor text.

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On/Off Page Thresholds - Panda and Penguin

If you have control over your link

building (which you should or will need

to in order to compete) you’ll want to

limit the use of the “exact match” anchor

text to not more than 5-10% of your

backlinks. (It becomes more or less

important to keep this anchor % low

based on the level of (over) optimization

present on the website, so educate yourself about over optimization.)

To establish and/or maintain the theme (topic), 20-30%

of your anchors should be a shingle or variation of the

primary phrase (an overlapping keyword variation) or LSI

(synonyms and other related terms), and the rest a mix

of your brand name variations, and/or generic keywords, such as “Click here” or “More information”.

By doing this, you make your link building efforts appear

more natural and will avoid tripping any filters and

getting punted back several pages in search engines as a result of over optimization.

Aside from mapping each category according to its

purpose, and for all of you visual types, feel free to read

more about that here in a post called how to easily create

silo site architecture, you will need to understand simple on page requirements such as:

Put your keyword first in the title.

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Keep titles short

Use the H1 tag for the keyword that page is

designed to rank for.

Use H2 tags for close cousin synonyms

Mirror the keyword in the URL (so if the page is

about diet tips, don’t call it page1.html name it

domain.com/diet-tips.html).

Create at least 400-750 words of “unique content for

each primary tier 2 landing page”.

Limit the number of outbound links on pages, the

less links leaving the page (internally or otherwise)

the more concentrated each link becomes.

Vary navigation on themed categories to avoid

boilerplate templates.

Remove navigation on pages with less content and

use contextual links to get link flow in or out of those pages.

Aside from this, you should understand what internal link

thresholds keywords have and how many deep links you need to provide buoyancy for that keyword.

Be Realistic About Timing

Like anything, quality takes time, so,

invest in your websites and

understand the matrix of frequently

asked questions (FAQs) you should

address, “should ask questions”

(SAQs) you should have covered,

and span commercial and

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educational queries to garner social media engagement

to “get more shares” rather than using dry, lackluster content to build out your website.

Remember, after the Panda update, Google can read and

it knows quality (algorithmically to some extent) as a

document classifier. If your pages score a dud as far as

quality score and relevance, the game is over before you even get started.

As an example, you can use this guide as a barrier to

entry for exact match typing a keyword “in quotes” in a

Google search to determine how many competing pages

you have in phrase match to compete with. From there,

the timeline looks like this (using competing pages as a barrier to entry).

Competitive Keyword Index Ranking / Timeline

0-50K (easy to rank) long-tail keywords 1 month

50-100K Competing Pages Popular Keywords 2-3 months

100-300K Competing Pages Category Keywords 3-4 months

300-500K Competing Pages Mainstream National Keywords 4-6 months

500-1MM+ Competitive Keywords that Require

Development 6-8 months

While you could use baseline metrics such as this, you

also have to take other factors into consideration such as

the age of the website, Page Authority (PA) and Domain

Authority (DA), as well as the trust of the links coming to

the site, Trust Flow (TF), Citation Flow (CF), and most

importantly, Topical Trust Flow (TTF).

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These factors will impact the SERPs and individual

keywords based on their relative values. For example, as

a site becomes more authoritative, the need for off page

ranking factor diminishes. Also, the correlation between

indexation and these other factors flows through the

connectivity of the site architecture.

Content Development

Content development and managing

content development is an ongoing

endeavor. Try to drip at least one

page or post a day for new sites for

the first 4-5 months 120-150 posts.

This will help the site to (a) increase

spider and ranking activity and (b) gain more trust and authority.

Once you have trust, you can see posts get indexed and

rank in minutes rather than weeks or months and all the

while, each internal link aid on page and each new page

is a new opportunity to syndicate and gain new backlinks with.

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Evolution

Evolution is the goal and by

using analytics, seeing which

keywords convert and staying

active with content

development, syndication

(such as RSS aggregation,

social media and editorial links) ROI will eventually start to roll in.

Building sites in this manor will ensure that authority is

the result and it is scalable, hence the bigger the budget,

the more nodes you can fire at the same time to devour your market or niche.

If you like what you read, pass it along and share with

other. As always, we appreciate you taking the time to

stop by the SEO Design Solutions Blog where you will

find SEO tips, tactics and strategies to define your website in search engines.