Actually, getting in the #1 spot is best, but I will settle for the top 5 or even anywhere on the first page for very competitive keywords. Obtaining those top rankings for your targeted keywords in Google will obviously be very important to achieving your online goals.
I don’t have some magic formula, just marketing online stuff that works. Very simple stuff that everybody can do to get those top rankings. Here are some of the tactics/things I do:
– article marketing through the free article directories
– create videos on my niche products
– make blog posts in my niche areas
– do press releases for my targeted products
– create free ebook guides on my subject areas
– build separate lists for each major niche market with follow-up emails
– participate in online forums with my sig links added
– make regular tweets about any new content
– find out my competitors’ main backlinks and duplicate them
– create Google Alerts for my major keywords and add comments/links to the ones I like
– keep adding fresh content pages to my sites keyworded to phrases used by buyers
Now on second thought, some of those are not so simple, but they can be easily done by most webmasters. Or, you can get someone to do them for you. For example, I get my videos done for me since I simply don’t have the time or expertise to do them myself. If you’re poor at writing or have little time, you can even get someone to write your articles for you as well. Same goes for your web content, but you have to be careful and make sure it is of the highest standard.
Still, these tactics are fairly basic marketing stuff which anyone can do to get those higher rankings. Perhaps, what many webmasters fail to realize is that getting and keeping your keywords on the first page of Google does take a lot of work and time. For very competitive keywords, I usually put in a year’s work to get to those top spots. It sometimes takes a lot less if your content (an article or video) becomes viral and lands on a lot of sites. That does happen, but for me it is mostly building steady one-way quality links back to the page or site I want ranked high.
However, it is this time factor which DEFEATS most people. They don’t have the patience or the resources to wait it out. After a couple of months they throw up their hands and come away believing all this Internet marketing stuff is for the birds.
Don’t get the wrong idea, there are probably programs and systems out there which will give you instant success on the web. I just haven’t found them yet, nor am I really looking since I have figured out how to get those top rankings and earn money on the web. However, the catch is, it usually takes around a year or two of hard work before the serious money starts flowing.
There are exceptions. If you’re good at writing articles, you can get immediate traffic and a few sales. Same goes if you’re into making videos and they become popular and featured in Google… you will make some sales.
However, for steady traffic which flows regularly and keeps the sales coming each day; you will need to keep those top rankings in the search engines for your keywords, especially in Google. Once you get those top rankings, I find you have to maintain them by continuing to build links by writing articles, making posts, creating videos… and so on.
My goals are very modest. I am doing affiliate marketing or sales where I usually get from 2% to 5% since I am promoting high-end electronics which provide low commissions. I also do some ClickBank type info products where the commission rates are much higher – 50% or more.
I also concentrate most of my time on products/services which give me a recurring income – make one sale and earn a percentage for years to come. The trick here is to promote services where once clients sign up they tend to stay with these services for years… services like web hosting, autoresponder services, telephone services, internet services and so on.
If you have yóur own products, your daily earnings will be much higher. Same thing if you do drop-shipping… but that also brings in other complications and worries. I like affiliate marketing because it suits my lifestyle. I refer the sales or clients and the merchant does all the rest.
Now, I have also found if you target longer keyword phrases which have little traffic but also much less competition, you can bring in sales in a matter of months, sometimes weeks. This “long tail marketing” as it’s called, goes faster, but you have to cover a lot of ground to be successful.
I prefer picking “mid-range” keywords that have competition, but if you put in the work, you will land on the first page of Google. I usually stick to keywords which have around 1,000 – 10,000 searches a month. Highly popular keywords which get hundreds of thousands or millions of searches I don’t bother with because I know I just can’t compéte with multi-national companies getting most of this traffic.
So it is a matter of picking the keyword battles which you have a good chance of triumphing. You do need to do a lot of research to see who is ranking for these keywords, what kind of backlinks they have and what kind of resources they’re pouring into obtaining/keeping those rankings.
I also check to see who owns the domains in the top five spots or on the first page. If one person or company owns 4 or 5 of these sites, it means you’re going to have your hands full trying to grapple for the top spots.
One simple strategy for getting those top spots in Google is to create two or three keyworded domains competing for the top spot. Link these together and one or, in most cases, all of them will land in the top three or four positions. For lucrative keywords, this can prove very profitable because your sites are receiving the majority of the web traffíc for those keywords.
Keep in mind, however, that in many niche markets major companies are now hiring writers, SEO services and webmasters to get those top spots.
It sometimes can be unnerving. Imagine you’re a small webmaster operating in a niche for years and suddenly you have four or five top brand multi-billion dollar companies competing with you for the same keywords in the search engines. This happened to me and to Google’s behalf, small webmasters still have a chance to keep their spots on the first page.
How long before these small webmasters are totally wiped out is anyone’s guess, but I believe for very lucrative keywords, it is only a matter of time before big companies throw so much advertising revenue and SEO resources at getting those top spots that the little guys will have a very slim chance of holding their keywords.
Fortunately, there are countless small niche markets and products that an online marketer can target and rank well for in Google with just a little hard work and patience. Using some of the tactics listed above will get you to those Top 5 spots in Google – just give them and yourself some time to reach your goals.
