I want to review once again the Keyword Pyramid Two-Pronged Approach to SEO strategies because it is slightly hard to grasp. Since we are looking to do search engine optimization for terms like cheap discounts on magazine subscriptions we have to also build out a keyword pyramid for related search terms with words like library, corporate, student discounts, gift subscriptions or even renewals.
So we do keyword research to uncover the following items:
Your most desired search phrase to get a #1 ranking for (ie. your “Primary Keyword”. This is probably the search phrase that is both most competitive (because other sites also want top ranking for this keyword phrase) and most relevant to your site (because it is directly related to what you are trying to sell). This phrase will be at the top of your keyword pyramid.
All keywords related to your site – ie. Your entire keyword pyramid.
The top search phrase that is the most relevant to your site and least competitive (ie. your “Blogging Keyword”). You will use KEI from WordTracker most likely to find this phrase. This phrase will be somewhere near the bottom of your keyword pyramid. You will then take a two pronged approach to keyword domination. We call this two pronged approach, Simul-Phase SEO because instead of concentrating all your efforts on one set of keywords as many other strategies advise, we help you concentrate your efforts on TWO sets of keywords at the same time.
Since I’m writing a blog I’ve decided to end each blog with a link from a selected magazine in our catalog. Today that magazine will be Smartmoney . If you want to get a discount on a Smartmoney Magazine Subscription then click the link to read about it and see what kind of deals we are now offering. It’s surely not going to be a waste of time.
If you are interested in learning how to optimize your own web site, visit the search engine optimization timetable.
In Simul-Phase SEO we target two sets of keywords at the same time. So from one direction we pursue “magazine subscriptions cheaper discounts” and from another direction we make sure our on-page content is highly search engine optimized for the term “magazine subscriptions”.
Primary Keyword Phase:
The first keyword phrase you start targeting in the Simul-Phase SEO process is the one for which you will optimize your “on page” content because it is the most competitive and most relevant. All directory listing efforts will center on this same search phrase (usually in the description text used in each directory submission). Our primary keyword is going to be “magazines” or “magazine subscriptions”. I will teach more about this in upcoming posts.
Blogging Keyword Phase:
You will use Simul-Phase methodology to to start blogging with content related to your “Blogging Keyword”. As that keyword starts to get top ranking you start using keywords on upper levels of your pyramid in your blog content until you finally reach your Primary Keyword – and your keyword worlds collide into top rankings for ALL your keywords. The keywords we will be addressing as we move forwards in Simul-Phase will cover topics like student discounts on gift or renewal subscriptions, or perhaps library or corporate subscription services. Since we offer business magazines and consumer magazines it makes sense to target all appropriate markets.
In sum, you can think of the Simul-Phase SEO process as a bottom-top and top-bottom strategy with the end result being that ALL your keywords in the keyword pyramid get ranked in the search engines.
Since I’m writing a blog I’ve decided to end each blog with a link from a selected magazine in our catalog. Today that magazine will be Forbes. If you want to get a discount on a Forbes Magazine Subscription then click the link to read about it and see what kind of deals we are now offering. It’s surely not going to be a waste of time.
If you are interested in learning how to optimize your own web site, visit the search engine optimization timetable.
Once you get your pages with “easy keywords” (and example would be a multi-keyword phrase like “cheap magazine subscription discounts“) to rank high in the search engines, a good keyword pyramid with good search engine optimization techniques will enable you to ultimately get your site ranked for upper level, higher and more competitive main keywords (like magazine subscriptions or discount subscriptions or gift or library subscription services).
It is worth noting that the strength of your success on the less competitive lower level words gives the search engines the impression that more competitive keywords ALSO should be ranked. This process is called becoming Authoritative and this is a major ingredient in the overall recipe for SEO. So as you travel up the pyramid you start getting ranked for phrases like discount magazines or even magazines or subscriptions alone when you reach the peak.
An Example of a “Keyword Pyramid”
The top of our pyramid is the search phrase “magazine subscriptions” – a highly competitive keyword (there are over 34,100,000 web pages identified by Google alone with this keyword search term.
At the second level of the pyramid we would add one word to the primary keyword phrase and generate some likely search possibilities. For example, “magazine subscription student discounts”, “online magazine subscription services” and “cheap magazines online”.
At the third level of the pyramid, the keyword phrases you are targeting with your SEO methods might be “coupons for magazine subscriptions” or “library subscription services”.
Although at the deeper levels, the keyword phrases seem long, and potentially not high volume searches, they are still vitally important because their presence on your site goes a long way to establishing your site as authoritative and thematically linked to searches for other keywords within the full range of “magazine subscription” searches.
Since I’m writing a blog I’ve decided to end each blog with a link from a selected magazine in our catalog. Today that magazine will be Kiplingers Personal Finance. If you want to get a discount on a Kiplingers Personal Finance Magazine Subscription then click the link to read about it and see what kind of deals we are now offering. It’s surely not going to be a waste of time.
If you are interested in learning how to optimize your own web site, visit the search engine optimization timetable.
Starting Your “Keyword Pyramid” for magazine subscriptions is no easy task - there is no cheap way to do it and no discounts either on the time it takes. But it is certainly easier than figuring out your primary keyword. Alas the hunt must continue.
After you have successfully identified and pinpointed your “primary keyword”, your next step will be to build out the rest of your keyword list using a visualization strategy we call the Keyword Pyramid.
At the top of your keyword pyramid is your most desired top search phrase (ie. your 2 or 3 word primary keywords). When you go down one level from the top of your pyramid (think ziggurat) you have a lot more room than just two words. At this level of the pyramid you will be able to have multi- keyword phrases which contain your primary keywords plus additional related search words. You might also have semantically relevant search terms but not exactly the same words as your primary keywords. As you go to the 3rd level, your search phrases become even more laser focused and specific so that you may have 5 or 6 word phrases.
Another way of describing this methodology for long lasting and dominant keyword rankings is to focus your initial optimization efforts on search phrases known as “low hanging fruit” (this means easy pickins for you farmers out there). What this means colloquially is you start the optimization process with “easy keywords”, ie. Those relevant keywords which do not have a lot of web pages attached to them from competitive sites and for which there are at least a considerable number of searches per month.
Since I’m writing a blog I’ve decided to end each blog with a link from a selected magazine in our catalog. Today that magazine will be Business Week. If you want to get a discount on 51 issues to a year long Business Week Magazine Subscription then click the link to read about it and see what kind of deals we are now offering. It’s surely not going to be a waste of time.
If you are interested in learning how to optimize your own web site, visit the search engine optimization timetable.
As you continue to build your keyword pyramid for searches related to “cheap or discount magazine subscriptions“, the first thing you want to do is to establish a two or three word search phrase that best matches your site’s content, purpose and objective. In our case, we’ve got a big problem because depending on the audience, they could be looking as a student for discount subscriptions, or as a business or corporate magazines or subscriptions, or a school might want library subscriptions. Even an individual might want gift subscriptions for Mother’s Day or a birthday.
Despite the difficulty the task remains the same because the idea is that if you get a top ranking for the phrase you finally settle on, it will be the most profitable phrase for your site. We’ll call this search phrase your “primary keyword”. Once you have this phrase it will be much easier to continue building your comprehensive keyword list (ie. Keyword pyramid).
As you research all the search phrases relevant to your web site, you will hear a lot about a concept called KEI. It is not worth delving in depth here in this guide since there is a lot of literature on this valuable concept. Suffice it to say that you need to keep in mind the KEI value of every keyword you are researching because that point value will help you determine the profitability potential of that keyword – ie. how fast you can attain ranking for that keyword and how much competition there is for that ranking as well. For more info on KEI – http://www.seotimetable.com/kei.html
One of the things to keep in mind is that the primary keyword phrase you want to target should be one which will optimally generate a large volume of targeted traffic. You, of course, won’t be getting that traffic immediately because obtaining top ranking results on a high traffic keyword requires months of optimization and linking. Don’t be dissuaded by the time it takes to accomplish the task. It will be worth it in the long run.
Since I’m writing a blog I’ve decided to end each blog with a link from a selected magazine in our catalog. Today that magazine will be Newsweek. If you want to get a discount on a Newsweek Magazine Subscription then click the link to read about it and see what kind of deals we are now offering. It’s surely not going to be a waste of time.
To review, the first step in figuring out how to obtain rankings is to figure out which words you need to be ranked for. To accomplish this you need to build your keyword pyramid which contains ALL possible keyword permutations of search phrases that people would use to find your site. So in our case “magazines” is the top level and most competitive keyword. The next most competitive phrase would probably be “magazine subscriptions” or “magazine subscription services“.
Then you move down a level in the pyramid and the search phrases expand both in terms of thematic connection and in terms of the number of words in each typed in query. The range of terms could include “Corporate subscriptions” or “business magazines” and depending on the industry could be even more laser targeted to things like “Library subscriptions” or gift or renewal subscriptions. Even student discounts could be a viable phrase.
Once you have arranged your keyword pyramid, your method of attack in terms of the actual optimization process is to use a TWO PRONGED APPROACH.
- On your web pages and with web site directory listings you actually target the search term from the top of your pyramid (“Primary Keyword”) and you just mix up the content on your pages so that you are not always focusing JUST on the primary search term but close derivatives of it.
- Through blogging and article marketing you use a bottom up process whereby you intentionally target a search phrase on the lower levels of your pyramid that is the most relevant to your site while being the least competitive (“Blogging Keyword”). As these lower level terms start getting ranked, you move up a level in the pyramid and build more content on more competitive terms until finally you get to the top of your pyramid and start getting all your keywords ranked.
For two great tutorials on keyword research, visit:http://www.seotimetable.com/keywordtutorial.htmlhttp://www.seotimetable.com/keywordresearch.html
Because algorithms are constantly changing it makes the goal of obtaining top rankings for magazine subscription oriented search terms like cheap or discount magazine subscriptions, a rather difficult task. The last few years of SEO tactics suggests strongly that there are two primary ways that will continuously influence your ranking results regardless of whether you are optimizing for library subscription services, corporate or business subscription services or student discounts on magazines, or even just gift or renewal subscriptions.
Have content on your site that contains the keywords or related keywords that people are typing into the search engines. This means you need magazine content specifically related to the ordering of magazine subscriptions online at cheap discount prices. If you don’t have web pages with these well-chosen keywords and phrases on your Web site, the odds will increase exponentially that the search engines will not list your site in their results and your site will not be found in any search queries.
Have numerous and relevant links from other web sites to your site. The quality and quantity of links affects the ranking power of your site in two ways. First, some engines (like Yahoo at this time) just like to see a very high number of sites linking to yours. Secondly, the engines measure the quality and relevance of the site linking to you and the content of the link text used to link to your site. So if a site linking to yours is in the same industry (ie. It has similar content to you), that is a point in your favor. As well, if the actual link to your site uses a keyword you are targeting you get another point. This link text by the way is called “anchor text”. While I’m mentioning this I might as well point out that it helps as well to vary the anchor text because if all the anchor text is the same on these inbound links (that means links pointing to your site) then the search engines start deducting points because the links start to look artificial.
Since the first pillar of SEO is having content on your site that matches the keywords people type into the search engines, you need to first find out what keywords relate to your site. In my case it’s easy because I am focused on magazine subscriptions services that are cheap and discounted. Thankfully there are a lot of ways to facilitate the process of uncovering the most relevant keywords for a site like mine. The goal is to cover a lot of bases so that if someone is looking for corporate or business subscriptions, or student or library discounts on magazines or just discount, gift or renewal subscriptions I ‘ve got content devoted to each search term.
Don’t try to strike gold on your first effort by looking for the most popular “search term”. Your goal at the initial stage of understanding your “keywords” is to build the most comprehensive list of ALL “search phrases” relevant to your site.
The “Keyword Pyramid” Methodology
Did you notice how I just used 3 different ways to describe the same thing: “keywords”, “search terms” and “search phrases”. The reason I did this is to show you that people on search engines also use different routes of searching to get to the same end goal. They don’t just type “magazine subscriptions”. They could type “Subscribe to magazines” or what is called long-tail terms like “discount magazine subscriptions”.
The goal of the keyword pyramid is to amass a list of ALL the types of searches people MIGHT use to locate your type of site. Once you have the list, then you start prioritizing the search terms and grouping them into categories. The 2 main categories are “least/most relevant to your site” and “least/most competitive”. At the top of your pyramid is the search term that is most relevant and most competitive and thus the most profitable if you get ranked in a top position. At the bottom level of your pyramid are search terms that are least competitive and least relevant.
It’s not easy getting ranked for terms like magazine subscription services. It is like a full time task to do comprehensive SEO (Search Engine Optimization) actions that propel your site to the top of the engines. What you need is a step-by-step process of getting your site optizimized to appear higher up in the results of the search engines and a good way to do it so that if you are selling something like magazine subscriptions to businesses or corporate customers or students or even libraries who buy them as gifts or renewals or just as new subscriptions, you can attract new customers very easily.
Good SEO is a combination of:
· Associating your web site with the keywords that people use when searching for sites like yours (whether they know it or not)
· Figuring out how to get the search engines to present your site before other sites.
The search engine spiders (these are robot like software scripts that cruise the web going from link to link and reporting back what they find to the mothership) use their own proprietary algorithms to determine how your content relates to the keywords being searched and they come up with a scale to produce the rankings you see online. This blog covers a lot of techniques we are trying to boost our rankings for natural search engine visitors.
When people use a search engine to locate a web site selling magazine subscription services, they type typically in one or more words phrases that describe the site they are looking for. In the case of MagMall, they could type in phrases like magazine subscriptions, magazines, student discounts, discount magazines, discount subscriptions, business magazines, business subscriptions, library subscriptions or even corporate subscriptions.
These word queries are colloquially referred to as “Keywords”. To be clear, a keyword is not a numeric reference to the number of words that a user types into a search engine, but rather it refers specifically to the totality of what people type into the search engine as their search request.
When the user gets a search engine results page (SERPs) in response to the query, the SERP contains a list of web sites that most closely match the keywords. Each engine has a different logic which accounts for the different results you see from engine to engine. This logic – otherwise known as the search algorithm - is the secret sauce that explains why one web site appears higher than another in the list of results.
My goal is to increase the search engine rankings for queries relevant to magazine subscription services. The reason is that MagMall offers hundreds of subscriptions to magazines at great savings. and if i want to increase sales i need to increase exposure. this blog describes the process of obtaining that exposure and increasing our subscription sales.
