Your Theme-Based Content Site is begins with a home page that gives the “what’s in it for me” about your site. It elaborates on the VPP (“Valuable PREselling Proposition”) and delivers the major benefit statements (more on content-building in the next section).
Think of your site as a pyramid, with the home page crowning the pinnacle….
Now for the details…
Your home page should link to seven other pages. These seven KeywordFocused Content Pages will contain content that is about your most profitable keywords and that fit with the whole Site Concept and VPP.
Review your MASTER KEYWORD LIST and select your seven best keywords (select on the basis of profitability and fit). You will link your home page to these seven, both within the body copy, as you outline what the site is all about, and from within a text or graphic navigation bar (NavBar).
Your home page should not link to any of your merchant partners, although it should contain mention of your service. But don’t PREsell yet -- it’s too early. The job of the home page is to deliver your VPP and to link to your highestprofitability pages. It must get the click to at least one of these seven pages. This is important for three reasons...
1) Your visitor hits a “money page” -- your highest-profitability Keyword-Focused Content Pages where along with your contact info on how to reach you for more info or for hiring your service, you weave “in-context” text links to your merchant partners. These pages are where you generate income, so you want to lead your visitors to your highest-potential pages ASAP.
2) Your spider-buddy follows the links and indexes (i.e., brings back to the Search Engine’s database) your most important pages first, and most reliably -the deeper a spider has to go, the more likely it is that he misses and fails to bring your bacon back to his database home.
So we want to structure the site so that the highest-profitability pages have the best chance of being dragged back to all those spiders’ homes.3) Your content pages are the pages that establish your credibility and build trust in you and in turn, in your service. Your visitor will have to be convinced of your qualifications before she hires you. So quality articles are the first step in the effective PREselling of your service.
We’ll call your seven highest-profitability pages “TIER 2” pages, since they are on a second TIER below the home page. Each of these pages can themselves link to 5-10 pages (“TIER 3” pages).
You likely won’t pick the absolute 7 highest potential keywords. Some will be too close in meaning. Others may not easily lead to a TIER 3, as we’ll see in a second. So you pick the 7 that make the most sense and that help to form the strongest site overall.
A TIER 3 page should relate to the TIER 2 page that links to it. For example, let’s say that “best abdominal exercises” is one of the most profitable keywords that your research has found. What do you do?
Create a TIER 2 Page (“best-abdominal-exercises.html”) called...“The Best Abdominal Exercises To Build Strength and Flexibility”
This page links to TIER 3 pages...
• a page that discusses the merit of the exercise ball (also called the Swiss ball) for abdominal conditioning.
• another page that rates the top abdominal exercise machines according to price
• another page that lists the best places online to buy abdominal exercise equipment
Here’s a key point about TIER 3 ... your main keyword for a TIER 3 page might be not so profitable. There is not as much DEMAND for “abdominal exercise equipment.” But add up the effect of all of these TIER 3s and the traffic adds up
- plus, the content itself acts favorably on your visitor’s overall attitude. Yes, find and use stronger, more in DEMAND, related keywords. But remember, too, that the overall effect of the sum of all the TIER 3s is great.
FIND-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-kaCHING!
To summarize… Your TIER 1 home page links to 7 TIER 2 pages (not more, because your
Your TIER 1 home page links to 7 TIER 2 pages (not more, because your 10 TIER 3 pages.
This clean, 3-TIER approach yields an easy, navigable site... for both your visitor and the spiders. Spiders always come in through the front door (as long as you submit the home page to them... more on this later). From there, you’ve left them a nice trail to follow. So they can easily index the rest of your pages. Humans, however...
Humans may find any page, TIER 1, 2, or 3, via the engines. So each TIER 3 page should provide a link back to its related TIER 2 and to your Home Page. And the same for TIER 2 to TIER 1. Otherwise, keep internal linking only to what’s really necessary and relevant. Remember, your real goal is for your visitor to hire you, or to click to your merchants!
SBI! makes site navigation easy. With the click of a few buttons you can make sure your visitors go to the right (i.e., profitable) pages in the right order on your site.
You can even customize the “Look & Feel” of your graphic NavBar with a Photoshop-like tool that works through your browser. (Or you use your favorite design software and upload your page into SBI!.)
After 3 TIERS and 50-70 pages, it gets tougher to get pages indexed. Yes, sure... do add more and more content, if there are still related, profitable keywords available. By this time, however, you should pretty much own this little niche. And your time will yield greater returns if you set up your next niche site.
For example...… “the-lower-back-trainer.com”
Remember, each niche stands on its own...
As the spiders gather up your TIER 1, 2, and 3 pages, the computer programs that analyze them are getting smarter and smarter... and theme-focused. What does that mean to you?...
1) They’ll analyze all your pages in their databases and decide upon the overall theme of your site. So none of your pages should be off-theme, or you’ll confuse the spiders. If you have a great idea for a highly profitable Keyword-Focused Content Page that is off-theme, save it for your next niche.
2) Have you already created a bunch of “gateway pages” by simply duplicating one of your pages and then replacing one keyword with a different one? These “almost identical” gateways were successful through the late nineties. But these smart programs that look across all the pages in your site... even across different sites… will no longer allow duplicating. Much better to create great content that humans and spiders will love!
So much for the structure of your site. Now let’s fill that structure with content C
that accomplishes our critical two goals...*************************************************** Deliver valuable content to your readers...
Build your site, supported every step of the way by the SBI! Action Guide and Site Central’s extensive online help. Check out the SBI! Action Guide and see how everything is integrated (no technical experience required!) into a powerful system that guarantees success...
http://action-guide.sitesell.com/
Let’s start this section the same way as we did for “The Structure of Your Site”... with the home page...
Your Theme-Based Content Site is made of a home page that gives the “what’s in it for me” about your site. It elaborates on your VPP (“Valuable PREselling Proposition”) -- your service’s most powerful benefit, combined with a strong, unique feature of your business. The content answers that most difficult question...
The home page's content accomplishes this while focusing on your Concept Keyword. What do I mean? Well, like I said above, you have two audiences... your visitor and the spider.
Your home page delivers the above content to your visitor. The other pages of your site, your Keyword-Focused Content Pages, deliver content (related to your service) concerning high-profitability topics.
As you write each Web page, you focus upon using a single keyword slightly more than your high school English teacher taught you was “good English.” This is the keyword that you want the Search Engines to rank highly. We’ll call this word the Specific Keyword from now on.
Choose your Specific Keywords from the MASTER KEYWORD LIST of highprofitability keywords that you developed during DAY 3 (and continue to develop). Each of your Web pages will focus upon a Specific Keyword to do double duty...
• as the PREselling topic for the pageThe term General Keywords refers to more generic words that are associated with your Specific Keywords. You’ll never win the Search Engine war for General Keywords by themselves -- you don’t really want such non-specific traffic anyway.
But many people use “WORD COMBOS” to search. They’ll enter a Specific Keyword and also a General Keyword one. For example, a searcher might enter...
“exercise and weight loss”As I said, you’ll never win at the engines for the General Keyword “exercise” – there is just too much competition. In any event, even if you win, the traffic is just too non-targeted to likely be interested in your specific niche.
But if you include the General Keyword “exercise” in some of the major parts of your Web page (outlined below), you’ll do well when searchers use WORD COMBOS. And these are excellent, highly targeted visitors!
Blend some General Keywords with your Specific Keywords. You need to include them only once or twice -- you’re not trying to win the war for General Keywords, just for the WORD COMBOS. So no need to use them nearly as many times as your Specific Keyword for that page.
This is definitely worth doing. Why? Let me repeat...
OK, back to our home page. For your home page, the Specific Keyword is your Concept Keyword... “abdominal exercises” in our example. Just before the sidebar, I mentioned that your home page establishes your VPP. In other words, it answers what specific and high-value information you deliver, and it develops your unique positioning, your unique angle of approach. That does not mean that you should start like this...
“Welcome to the-abdominal-trainer.com, your home for information about abdominal exercises. I am an A.C.E. certified personal trainer who has spent a lot of time searching for information and I will be giving you all the best of my research right here.”
No-o-o-o-o-o... Keep it fun, bright, intriguing! Bring out the appropriate emotions for whatever your topic happens to be. For example...
“Drenched with sweat, you grit your teeth in determination as you force out 3... 2... 1 last reps! Your eyes burn, but your abs are like fire!
Passionate about abdominals? Looking to build an awesome six-pack, strengthen your lower back, lose a few pounds, or just build up some core strength?
You need one-on-one abdominal exercise training!• the most effective ab exercise equipment ever constructed, plus tons of relevant articles dedicated to building a slimmer, trimmer, and sexier YOU?!
Nirvana, right? Even better... Abdominal Nirvana!Is this you? If so, welcome! You may be reading this at home, but you're on the road... a cyber-road to “Abdominal Heaven.”
Yes, you can write like that. Really, it’s a snap since you have lived this stuff. First, just feel the emotions that you feel. What are they? When do you feel them? You know this, right?
Now... put yourself into the skin of your reader. Put those emotions into your visitor.
Use Make Your Content PREsell! as your mentor. Learn how to write to “communicate” with your visitors. Spark a connection, a lasting rapport with your audience. It’s a skill you can acquire on your own even if you have never written anything before.
http://mycps.sitesell.com/
The few intro paragraphs above establish your VPP while quickening the pulse of your reader. From here on in, you’ll deliver the benefits of your site... you’ll answer the “what's in it for me” question that every visitor asks when arriving at a site.
As you do this, you continue to work your Specific Keywords (and, to a lesser degree, your General Keywords) in everywhere and often... but not too often. Where, exactly?...
The next several pages will introduce the 80-20 best practices of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Effective SEO improves the likelihood your submitted page will obtain a Top 10 to 20 ranking position for your Specific Keyword on a Search Engine’s results page. The higher the ranking, the better are your chances that a surfer will see your listing and click over to visit your site!
Please follow these recommendations but be careful not to go overboard. Some online marketers fall into the trap of constantly experimenting with on-page criteria in order to obtain better rankings. There are so many criteria factored into SEs' ranking algorithms that such efforts are extremely low-yield. The key is to
build your pages properly the first time, and then focus on the C
of…C
T
P
M
SEO is comprised of two elements… • On-page ranking criteria - This refers to ranking elements occurring directly on the Web page you are creating. For example, the Title of your article as it appears on the <TITLE> tag of your page is an on-page criterion.
• Off-page ranking criteria -- This refers to ranking elements that do not occur on this page but still affect its ability to rank well and obtain listings. Off-page ranking criteria are important indicators of human behavior, and they reflect the quality of a page.
An example of such a criterion would be an IN-pointing link (i.e., another site has your URL on its site). While your first priority will be to create and optimize your pages, obtaining a few credible IN-pointing links should be a close second. This is known as building link popularity. (We’ll see how to do it in DAY 7.)
Both on-page and off-page criteria are necessary for success. Let’s begin by highlighting the most important standards for on-page ranking criteria.To rank well at the SEs, your page’s Specific Keyword must be integrated in all the right places. Where, exactly?...
1) TITLE tag
2) META keyword tag
3) META description tag
4) H1 and other header tags
5) Body copy
6) Link tags
7) File name/domain name
8) Image ALT tag and name of image
1) TITLE tag =
The Abdominal Trainer.com
• Must contain your Specific Keyword at least once, no more than twice, and with some kind of variation or synonym. Try to include your most important General Keyword, too.
• Can have up to 70, even 80 characters. Get your most important message in, right at the beginning. If the engine cuts your title off at 60 characters in its listing, you’ve still fired your “big gun.” Meanwhile, some engines will show up to 90 or so characters.
• Title appears as the link in Search Engine listings. It must “get the click” -- so make sure it’s attractive, without being misleading. Getting your Title right for both your reader and engine is the single most important thing you can do.
The TITLE tag is one of the most important on-page elements. Make sure every single one of your pages (yes, even your TIER 3 pages) contains a relevant, keyword-rich TITLE tag.
In general, it's a good idea to position your Specific Keyword near the beginning of your page elements… TITLE, META description, headline, body copy, etc. Search Engines give greater prominence to keywords that appear closer to the beginning, rather than the end.
2) META keyword tag = <META name= “KEYWORDS” content=”factory outlet stores”>• The page is about “abdominal exercise.” Don’t dilute your META tag with a million synonyms.
• You could add a few General Keywords that people might add when they search (ex., “equipment”).
• Consider adding a common synonym that has a near-exact meaning (ex., “stomach crunches”).
• If you put more than one keyword in this META tag (separated by commas), always put your most important one, the one that this page focuses upon, first. Here’s an example of an expanded META keyword tag...
<META name=“KEYWORDS”content=”abdominal exercise, equipment, crunches, stomach, videos, 6 pack, personal trainer”>Don’t lose sleep fretting over your META keyword tag. It is rarely factored into ranking algorithms these days. Just include your most important keywords and a couple of variations, and move on.
3) META description tag = <META name=“DESCRIPTION” content=“Passionate about abdominals? Looking to build an awesome six-pack, strengthen your lower back, lose a few pounds, or just build up some core strength? You need one-on-one abdominal exercise training!”>
• The META description often comprises a portion of what searchers see in the Search Engine’s listings (different SEs display their results slightly differently). So, like the Title tag, make sure it’s attractive, without being misleading. Your goal is to entice the prospective visitor to click through to your site. A gentle, good-natured tease, like the above, will do well.
As with the META keywords tag, most SEs do not place much ranking weight on the text inside META description tags. So focus on getting the click through, and don’t worry too much about just the “right” blend of keywords for this tag.
• Use 150-200 characters. Some engines cut off the Title listing at as little as 140 characters. So again, make sure you get your “#1 benefit statement” up front. Remember, a “benefit statement” does not have to be “in your face” -- read the META tag above.
• Should contain your Specific Keyword at least once (try twice if it fits and see how it ranks). Include one or two of your most important General Keywords. Also, use common synonyms 2-3 times more (ex., “outlet” and “mall”).
(Synonyms will work better and better as engines become more and more sophisticated. But your first priority is to place sufficient focus on your Specific Keyword.)
• Remember, do not repeat the TITLE in this tag. The reader will just see the same phrase twice in the Search Engine’s listing, once in the Title and then again in the description. That’s wasting valuable “word real estate.”
4) H1 and other header tags = The Ultimate Abdominal Exercise and Fitness Program!
The headlines are more important than your regular body copy. That’s true for both human readers and for the engines. As far as ranking criteria goes, it is likely that the <H1> tag is second only to the <TITLE> tag in importance.
Please keep in mind that some engines don’t use the META description tag to form the second part of their listings (i.e., after the Title) in their search results. In those cases, they will usually use the first words on the page -- your H1 tag (first headline), and the first words in the body copy after that.
Here are the key “musts” for your H1 tag...• Does not exceed 80 characters, 40 is better. Long headlines feel rather “hypey.”
• Helps to “get the click” -- so make sure it’s attractive, without being misleading.
• Does not contain your Title. Otherwise, if the engine uses your H1 tag, your listing and H1 tag will both say the same thing... needless repetition.
Consider this strategy…
Take your META description tag and chop it into two pieces -- one part for the headline and one part for the opening paragraph of your body copy.
If a single discussion warrants more than a single headline, use a smaller headline (<H2><H3>) containing variations of your page’s most important keywords.
Special Note… Every single content page must contain a <H1> or <H2> tag for maximum ranking relevancy. If you are not using these tags, you are missing out on free Search Engine traffic!
5) Body copy
We started the body copy at the beginning of DAY 6. Let’s see what our search result listing would look like for those engines that don’t use the META description tag...
First... the Title appears as a link...The Abdominal Trainer.com
This is followed by the