Top Rankings With Small Sites

[stephen todd]

Following on from a thread I started re. building small sites instead of blog sites:

I got another email from the same guy:


1. Research low-competition keywords that get between 1,000 and 3,000 searches in Google per month.

You want to target "low hanging fruit" for this method, so look for long-tail keywords that the AdWords Keyword Tool says get between 1k and 3k searches per month.

2. Make sure the top 10 currently ranking sites are mostly inner pages from big sites like Amazon.com or EzineArticles.com etc.

If most of the top 10 pages are inner pages with few links to them, then the pages are being ranked based on the site authority rather than the page itself. That means it's pretty easy to rank for those terms.

3. Register an exact-match .COM, .NET or .ORG domain name.

For instance, if the keywords are "small green widgets", then I register smallgreenwidgets.com or smallgreenwidgets.net or smallgreenwidgets.org. No dashes in the name, and no .info or .biz etc. domain names — only .com, .net and .org. Google gives a nice boost to sites whose domain name exactly matches the search query.

4. Create a small 5 page site around the content of the primary keywords plus 4 related keywords.

Nothing fancy required. Just about 300-500 words of content per page centered around the keywords for each page. I also have a site map, privacy policy and contact us page on each site.

5. Build backlinks to the new pages in order to get them indexed by the search engines.

[Maya]

Its tought to ank well with only a 5 page website. You are better off building a micro niche site that acts as a directory.

[Nathan]

Originally Posted by Maya

Its tought to ank well with only a 5 page website. You are better off building a micro niche site that acts as a directory.

Translation:

Its tough to rank well with only a 5 page website.

Actually the whole point of what Stephen Todd is saying is that it is not tough at all. Rather by following his method you can rank very high with only a five page website, and if you design it right around the right keyword you can make good money.

[stephen todd]

Originally Posted by Nathan

Actually the whole point of what Stephen Todd is saying is that it is not tough at all. Rather by following his method you can rank very high with only a five page website, and if you design it right around the right keyword you can make good money.

Yes, it's quick and easy - but you obviously have to go for the easy pickings - often called "low hanging fruit", "cherry picking", etc. by various people such as niche marketers

It won't work for high competion search phrases - but it will work with low competion phrases - because hardly anybody is specifically targeting the keyword phrases

Good keyword research, keyword domain, good SEO, is all it takes - I got an email from a member of this forum a couple of days ago who's just done it - he's got #6 spot on Google for his primary keyword phrase in next to no time

We're talking low competion here - If you've got competion then build a blog site as usual

[Interpersonal]

It still involves a lot of hard work just to catch that "low hanging fruit".

[stephen todd]

Originally Posted by Interpersonal

It still involves a lot of hard work just to catch that "low hanging fruit".

yes, but the hard work is in finding the fruit - not constantly making fresh blog posts - it's a do it, then forget about it strategy

once set up, these sites makes money without further work

the appeal is that you make money for the minimum amount of effort

instead of working on blog posting, you work on researching and getting your next mini-site online, i.e. rinse and repeat

even with a blog site, I spend a minimum of 4 hours doing keyword research before deciding to launch the site - otherwise I know the blog will simply be a waste of time and won't get search engine traffic or generate advertising revenue

the alternative is to set up an auto-content generating wordpress blog - but they really do take a lot of time to set up

[pcsourcepoint]

Good tips - Thanks. I read a similar article in SEO Zombie. As you say finding the fruit - i.e topic or niche can be difficult, and for me I would want to be interested in that topic. But probably have to research any rising competitors over time; e.g checking/comparing say the 1st 20, 50, 100 back links to try spot any rising SERP dominator's for that new niche.