Keyword Sniping 101
written by Anthony Dinh
key•word snip•ing [kee-wurd snahyp-ing] - noun
1. selecting a keyword, and building a niche site or network of sites around the keyword with the intent of achieving #1 ranking for that keyword.
1. Selecting the Keyword
When deciding on a keyword to snipe, some factors to consider are:
- The more specific the keyword, the more difficult it will be to obtain a high ranking, so keep it broad for now (i.e. breast surgery vs. breast surgery doctor philadelphia).
- Your keyword is searched for at least 200 times a day, obviously, the more the better. There’s a bunch of keyword search tools out there, but I use WordTracker which shows daily search volumes, and it’s free!
- There’s less than 1 million competing pages returned for this keyword in Google, obviously, the fewer the better. You can determine this by searching “your keyword” with quotes around it.
- The keyword has value to advertisers. Basically, anything that can be sold or has commissions has value.
- Select a keyword that is outside of the techie/internet world. Think of a keyword that your average teen or 70-year-old would likely be searching for. Doing so will not only leave you with fewer competitors, but it will also increase your conversion rate as people who aren’t as tech-savvy are more likely to click on ads.
Just to give you a few ideas and to get your mind going, here are some niches I would consider looking at:
(pest control, lawn care, hair products, acne treatments, teeth whitening, mortgages, loans, debt consolidation, home improvement, baby products, men’s/women’s health, etc.)
The daily search volumes and competing pages figures mentioned above are just guidelines that I would stick to until you’re comfortable and have gain more confidence with keyword sniping. Once you achieve #1 ranking for the long-tail keyword, then you can certainly focus on ranking for the bigger keyword. One big advantage that you already have going for you is that most sites out there are targeting keywords with a single subpage. It’s much easier to obtain a higher ranking if you build a whole site(s) around a keyword as we are doing here.
2. Sniping the Keyword
- Building a Website/Blog Around the Keyword - In order to successfully target a keyword, you will have to build an entire site or blog around the keyword. Before you do this, you will have to purchase a domain, preferably one which contains your keyword. This will definitely help you rank higher for the keyword, not to mention it will be much easier to sell the domain in the future if you ever choose to do so. If you’re able to find a used domain on TDNAM.com that contains your keyword, it would make getting ranked significantly easier and much quicker as the domain has already been indexed and backlinked by other sites. Additionally, a domain that’s been live for awhile will help you in avoiding Google’s notorious “sandbox effect”. If budget is an issue, you can also opt to use a free Blogger sub-domain. I currently register and host all my domains with IX Webhosting, so I would definitely recommend them. Now that you’ve got your domain, the next step would be to either install Wordpress or create your page statically using straight HTML. Just remember that it is much easier to link build and make your site SEO friendly using Wordpress.
- Link Posts Back to the Homepage - You will need to create and publish a minimum of 10 posts surrounding your keyword with some solid content that speaks with authority on the subject matter. Though you are using Wordpress blogging software and your site looks like a blog, the difference is that you won’t have to post regularly as you would with a typical blog. As a matter of fact, I would suggest removing all post dates as the information you provide should not appear to be dated in the readers’ eyes.
- Post Requirements - Each of your 10 posts should be at least 300 words and contain a keyword anchor text link back to the homepage which also contains the keyword. It may seem like a daunting task to write 10 posts about the keyword, but you can simply Google for the keyword to get some ideas, but don’t copy or steal the content! Linking each of your posts back to the homepage with the keyword anchor will help your homepage rank by giving it more internal and external links with the keyword anchor text. The external links come into play in the event that an aggregator or scraper site steals your content, there will always be a keyword anchor link which points back to your homepage.
- Keyword Location and Site Structure - The structure of your site must be built correctly in order to achieve SEO optimization and higher ranking, so it’s important that you chose an SEO friendly template. Courtney Tuttle offers a few nice ones that I would recommend.
Once you’ve installed your template, place your keyword in the following locations:
- Page Title: This can be accomplished with the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin. I prefer the “post title | site title” format.
- H1 Tag: The keyword should appear in the H1 tag on all your site pages.
- Footer: The footer should contain a link that points back to your homepage using the keyword as the anchor text.
- Inpost Link: As mentioned above, each of your 10 posts should contain a link back to your homepage with the keyword as the achor text.
- Homepage: Ideally, your keyword should appear about 6-7 times on your homepage, but this is usually covered by virtue of the links that you’ve placed within each post. Being the homepage, it will get ranked for your keyword, so be sure that your keyword appears on it enough times. To avoid tripping off Google’s spam filter, your homepage should contain at least 1000 words, this should be covered if you have 4 posts with a minimum of 300 words each.
- Backlink Methods
There are many ways of creating inbound links to your site, but if you focus your efforts on the following methods, you will surely be able to out-rank all the other sites.
- Varying the Anchor Text: By varying the anchor text while still maintaining your keyword within the links, you will be able to avoid setting off the Google link spamming filter. For instance, if I’m targeting the keyword breast surgery, I can vary the anchor text with words like “breast surgery doctor”, “breast surgery philadelphia”, “about breast surgery”, you get the idea.
- Obtaining Links from Pages About Your Keyword: To achieve this, write an article about your keyword like “What You Should Know About Breast Surgery”, and submit it to a bunch of article distribution sites like Article Marketer or Ezine Articles. Then, use the author profile/bio section to link back to your sight with the desired anchor text. Also, you can start forum discussion threads about your keyword and then link back to your site using your signature.
- Obtaining Links from Other Types of Pages: Though not as effective as getting links from pages pertaining to your keyword, getting links from other pages will still contribute to your ranking to an extent. You can comment on other blogs that don’t pertain to your keyword and use your brand to link back to your homepage, but keep it mind that some authors may ban you for keyword stuffing their comments, so use it sparingly. Also, this method will only work if the author has disabled the “nofollow” feature.
- For more tricks on building backlinks, check out Courtney Tuttle’s “102 Ways to Make Your Site a Backlink Superstar“.
As far as timeline goes, getting ranked for a used keyword based site can vary, but you should have no problem achieving it within 1-2 month’s time. Getting ranked for a brand new site, on the other hand, may or may not take more time. There’s simply just too many variables to tell, like the number of existing competing pages for your keyword, so starting off with a single, long-tail keyword would be the route to take. Once your’e comfortable with the whole process, you can go for the gold and start targeting bigger keywords. If you follow the steps that I’ve outlined here, you should have no problem achieving a high rank for your keyword and blowing your competition out of the water!
* source: CourteyTuttle.com
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