There are three different ways to perform keyword research, I don’t mean tools you can use, I mean there are different strategies, and you need to use the correct strategy for your website.

Trophy Keywords

I personally do not go after these trophy keywords, especially with newer websites. By trophy keywords I mean just going after 1-5 main keywords which are highly competitive e.g. ‘car insurance’.

If you are a new site chances are you will never get ranked for that term no matter how hard you try. However, if you are creating a small micro site to just target one keyword that is fine, maybe you are selling a eBook or something in that market, but if you are going down this route you need to make sure it’s not too competitive, because otherwise even with an exact match domain you will struggle to rank.

I would suggest aiming for a keyword, which has low – medium competition, with at least 1000 searches per month. However, if for example you want to rank for ‘red mice’ then just because they keyword ‘red mice’ gets more traffic then ‘buy red mice’ it doesn’t mean it is better to target that keyword. As people typing ‘buy red mice’ have their buying hat on and are more likely to convert into a sale.

LongTail Keywords

If you are building a large site which you plan to make an ‘authority’ site then this is most likely the best way to go for you.

Large sites mean lots of content’ and if you target each article you write to a specific keyword, even if that keyword only gets say 200 searches per month, times that by say 1000 articles and you’ll have a lot of traffic.

Longtailk keywords are generally easier to rank for, and in a lot of cases they convert better as they are more targeted search terms.

No keyword Research

Believe it or not, some people still create sites without doing one bit of keyword research or SEO. Sometimes this can work well because out of luck their content targets keywords anyway, but most of the time this method will fail, and in time they will have to go over their whole site and perform SEO to each and every page.

Keyword research should always be carried out before performing any other part of SEO, without it you have no idea what to write for your Meta tags, titles, links and articles.

The only problem I see is that a lot of them have ‘bulked up’ their list so it seems like they have more ideas then others, the problem is they mention doing some tactics which you really shouldn’t be doing and could be throwing you into the 70′s themed disco while doing the Google Dance, ugh platforms, flares and whats up with their hair! Or even worse these link building strategies could be throwing your site in completely the wrong direction!

So I bring to you my friends, the list of link building techniques you really shouldn’t be doing!

1. Directory links

   Seriously whats the point? The only directory you should try to get into is DMOZ, when the Yahoo directory was around that was worth the money but now, it is very rare to find a directory that is going to give you any boost in the SERPs.

   The website directory scene has been washed away by ammeter directory owners out for a quick buck and spammers.

   Saying that though, just so I do not annoy all of you ‘good’ directory owners, I am sure there are some decent human edited un-spammed directories out there, but still your time will be much better spent link building in other ways rather then hunting around for a mediocre directory link.

2. Forum Profiles

   Ok if your building links with forum profiles I am guessing you are either paying someone to do this for you or using SENuke or Xrumer to build them right?

   This is all very well if you’re out for a quick buck AKA a black hatter, but the results will not remain for very long. Also if you use these techniques you are almost certainly going to be affected by the Google Dance.

3. Link Networks

   These are bad, try not to use them, chances are you will not gain any high quality links from using them.

   Though I cannot rule this one out just yet, I am currently running a test on this using the link network Voltrank, you will see their ads around my site and in return I get links, I will keep you guys updated.

4. Buying links

   Ok surely everyone knows you shouldn’t be buying links right? Well you shouldn’t be, and if you are then you face the risk of being penalised by Google.

   However this is the safest out of all these options, the cances of actually getting caught buying links is very slim, unless you go the wrong way about it, never buy a link on a site that advertises they are selling links, you can find potential links in forums though! If you really want to buy links that is how I would do it, it’s by far the safest way.

5. Fiverr link packages

   Don’t by links from Fiverr! They will all be spammy (unless you get a link on their homepage) but all of the others like buy 250 edu links and so on are all a waste of time and money

   Depending on how you do your link building Fiverr gigs can be good for increasing the power of your link wheels

6. Reciprocal links

   Search engines now do not put much weight on reciprocal links, the links basically counteract each other in simple terms. I would not go out of my way to gain reciprocal links, however there is nothing wrong accepting to exchange links if someone with a relevant site asks you.

7. Don’t use software!

   This is a short one, do not use automated software like SEnuke, Xrumer, Scrapebox etc. While they may work temporarily, the results will not last forever.

Final Words

However you choose to do your link building either the black hat way or the white hat way, just remember that to have a proper online business you need your SEO efforts to stay forever not just a few weeks, the only way to achieve this is by playing by the rules!

However they were wrong the Google Dance still very much exists.

How do you know if you have been hit by the Google Dance?

If your website is constantly bouncing from page one to page 5+ and then back to page one then you have probably been hit by the famous Google Dance.

You should not get this mixed up with the Google Sandbox, the Sandbox is fairly easy to overcome and it doesn’t last long, it is very common to see Google rank a new website highly for the first few weeks but then drop it down the rankings until finally it will place it in its correct position.

The Google Dance however will keep bouncing up and down for months!

What can you do about the Google Dance?

The best way to combat the Google Dance is by not getting it in the first place, this does sound easier said then done but if you play by the rules then this should be quite simple.

From research I have done, it seems you become affected by the Google Dance only when you have a dodgy backlink profile, or if you have major duplicate content issues.

When I say dodgy backlink profile I mean you have a bunch of ‘rubbish’ links and only a couple of authority links. In the beginning it is actually better to have no links then lots of poor/spammy links e.g forum profiles, blog comments and low quality article links.

I would recommend building your site and gaining ONLY high quality links, no forum profiles, no blog comments, no rubbish article links and no free directories. Then just do this for a few months until your new site has aged and has a stable ranking in Google. Then and only then should you go on a full blown backlinking campaign.

Didn’t manage to avoid the Google Dance?

Once you have been affected by the Google Dance it is very hard to get out of it and it can take months!

The only three things you can do about it are:

Personally if I was hit by the Google Dance again I would leave it alone and start on a new site, only adding new content every week or two. If you just leave it eventually it will stop Dancing, but your time will be much better spent creating a new site rather then trying to work your way out of the Google Dance.

Have you been affected by the Google Dance? Did you manage to get out of it? Let us know in the comments!

In this blog post I am going to show you how to properly insert your keywords into your posts and what keyword density to use.

One very important thing you must do is to not use your keyword too much in the post this is ‘keyword stuffing’ and can harm your rankings!

Your keyword density should be around 4% – 5% (less if it is a short post) you may see other people say it should be more or less, but this is what I use and it works very well for me.

To check your keyword density you can use any of these sites:

• Webconfs Keyword Density Checker
• SEOChat Keyword Density Tool
• Keyword Density Tool

A lot of other web guys only target their main keyword in their posts, this is where you will have the upper hand.

When Google crawls a web page it not only determines what it is about but taking the most used keyword. It scans your whole post and uses all the words on your page to determine what it is about.

If you place certain keywords correctly on your page then you will have brilliant results.

The secret to amazing on page SEO is…

Use keywords that are related to your main keyword aswell!

This is very easy to do with the help of the Google Keyword Tool.

If you go to the Google Keyword Tool and type in your main keyword or phrase, then below that result you will see another section titled ‘Keyword Ideas’. You then want to go through these and select up to 4 other keywords preferably with low competition. You will then include these keywords into your post/page aswell as your main keyword, these should have a keyword density of around 1% – 2% and your main keyword should have a density of around 4% – 5%.

Do not over use your keywords and if you cannot achieve a 4% – 5% keyword density or even a 1% density with your secondary keywords then do not just stuff them in, you must make sure your content always reads well for the user.

If you follow these steps then not only will it help your main keyword ranking but also your secondary keywords.

However his tactics worked he was number one! Even though he stole my spot I didn’t report him, I wanted to see how long he stayed up there for. I thought he would be gone in a week of so but to my amazement he stayed number one for a good 3 months, he must of made some money!

I thought I would give this black hat world a try, so I started a new site (I won’t name it), I used black hat tactics to get it ranked including spammy blog comments, forum profiles, link exchange networks and Fivver.

I staggered each tactic per month, the first month I created well over 5,000 blog comments the following month 1,000′s forum profiles. By this point I was actually ranking ok on the 2nd page for a keyword that had medium competition.

The next month I had a go at some link exchange networks, these worked the best and I managed to get to first page.
Last but not least I tried fivver and brought thousands of blog comments + got myself onto some link wheels.

After all these spammy black hat methods which took me about 4 months to complete I was comfortably sitting in position 4 and making around $8 per day in Adsense revenue.
But to no surprise 46 days later I received a message on webmaster tools from Google saying they have detected un-natural links (or something like that) please fix the problem and submit a reconsideration request.

So the answer to the question ‘Does black hat SEO work’ is yes it does, but not for that long. Though I did make around $400 during the months the site was live so if you minus the fivver gigs brought, hosting and the domain I had made a profit of around $350. Which I do not think is too bad!!

I think that if you made a site say 4 months before Halloween and blasted it with links then you could rank for say ‘Halloween costumes’ and make even more, it doesn’t matter if you get slapped after you can just repeat it the following year on a different domain.

I do believe though that if I was a bit softer in my approach and didn’t just blast my site with links but instead staggered them and built just one or two high quality links then I wouldn’t have got slapped, I will test this and report back!
So to sum up if your just out to make a few bucks fairly easily then yes, black hat does indeed work.

I’d like to shed some light on this matter, and I’ll keep it short and sweet:

The company I work for has many hyphenated domain names and every single one of their sites ranks well in Google.

That doesn’t mean you should get a domain name like:

should-i-use-hyphenated-domain-names.com

When choosing a domain name you want it to be as short as possible and unless your trying to build a brand you should have some keywords in it. Yes hyphens do add extra characters to the domain name thus making it longer but it also means you may be able to obtain a domain name when the original without the hyphens is already registered, having the keywords in a domain name is more important then adding a couple of extra characters.

For me hyphenated domain names work very well I also think it is better for the users because its easier to read.

Google sees the hyphens as ‘spaces’ so in theory this is the correct way of writing the name, you may have read on the internet that hyphenated domain names are bad and will have a negative effect on SEO this is untrue, and honestly it doesn’t make a difference. However if you buy a domain name like should-i-use-hyphenated-domain-names.com it does look spammy to the user but it still wouldn’t affect your Google ranking. In-fact you will actually see yourself ranking for ‘Should I use Hyphenated domain names’ in no time at all. Google puts a lot of weight on exact match domains this is to prevent anyone out ranking a Brand name

I hope I have made things clear with this post.

One of the most important parts of getting ranked in the local listings are: Make sure you listing is completely up to date and accurate. Also make sure you use the correct categories and you target the keywords you want to rank for in your description similar to the organic On-Page SEO.

Reviews and comments also help but sometimes these are hard to obtain, a tactic I use to get more reviews and comments is simply asking my customers to leave a review or comment after I have provided them with a service and most of the time (if the service was good) they will. You should also add in some pictures to your places listing the more content the better.

Try to avoid using keywords in your business title Google and other search engines don’t like this kind of keyword stuffing unless of course its your business name.

If you concentrate on the above steps, build your reviews up and be patient you will soon see your local listing page rise in the rankings.

If you have just signed up for a Google places listing and you cannot see your listing in the results then try waiting a few days then look again, Google can take some time to add your listing to the results. If you are still not seeing your listing anywhere in the rankings take a look at the business listings guidelines. If you are sure you have followed the guide lines then the next best thing is to report the problem to Google.

Remember anything that involves Google can take some time and you wont see results overnight so try not to beat yourself up too much if you don’t see yourself in the rankings after a day or two, just be patient.

Step 1

Login to the admin panel and navigate to settings > Permalinks

Step 2

Click on the ‘Custom Structure’, fill in the structure you want. The structure I usually use (other then this blog) is just

/%postname%/

This will just show the post title at the end of a url like:
www.example.com/my-post
I find this is the most search engine friendly way and it also allows you to include keywords into the URL. For a full list of the different URL structures visit the WordPress codex.

Before I start you should know its not Pagerank that improves a websites SERPS rankings, infact I have PR0 websites ranking on the first page while my PR2 sites are ranking on the 3rd.

The main reason I ever want to build Pagerank is when I am selling or flipping a website as this will increase the websites value. I also try to increase the PR of a site when I want to sell links on a website.

OK so here is how I increase a websites PR:

I find blogs that have some PR in the articles generally these are the older articles since they have had more time to mature and build links.

This trick doesn’t work with every blog, and its not the same old comment spam your probably all to familiar with.

The trick to it is to write helpful comments or even just comments that make sense, your not aiming to get a link in the comment message its self but in your name to the left of the comment:

Usually these are followed, to check you can use the trick from my other blog show no followed links in firefox.

The main part of this PR trick is making sure your comment stays or gets approved, it has to be on topic and if possible you need to help out or point out a problem.

Remember this is just a way to get PR it wont help you rank for any of your keywords other then your name!

Also don’t try and change your name to something stupid like “red widgets” just so you get an anchored buckling, it will get deleted or wont get approved at all.