By researching keywords with low competition you can achieve first page ranking with very little optimization effort

It is known that if you target keywords that have 100,000 competing pages or lower you can rank to the 1st page in literally hours and this can be achieved with the help of very few backlinks if any at all.

Blogging is a good example, because each time you write a headline for a blog post the most important aspect of it is the headline which contains the keywords you want to rank for along with the meta title and the permalink. The content on the site itself is really secondary and is what I like to call the icing on the cake.

See the problem is Internet marketers get too caught up in chasing keywords that have high searches and yes of course to get top ranking for highly searched keywords you need loads of backlinks and maintaining position is even more of a challenge, so the link building aspect becomes not only difficult but time consuming and costly.

Link building is becoming less important as time moves on and even though it is considered to be Google’s main quality score when it comes to weighing up the authority of a site, Keyword competition is still the bread winner because if you research your keywords properly you can rank well without any backlinks at all. I have developed niche sites and seen pages rise to the top very quickly as a result of simply just choosing the right keywords.

This is why I like to use a SEO plugin called Keyword Winner as you can literally find keywords that are non competitive but yet have a promising search trend. One example is taking advantage of products that recently launched and have huge buzz but do not have any search competition at all, because they are being promoted in other forms of marketing such as email marketing, social marketing or viraly. But you can jump on them quickly write a review post about it and rank 1st page in a few hours. I have done numerous case studies on this and it is proven.

Keyword Winner basically gives you up to 10 keyword suggestions as you write a headline for your blog post in your dashboard and color codes the most competitive keywords against least competitive ones. It uses Google Insights to see the percentage of overall searches conducted for the month and Google Trends to see if the keywords are trending over a period of time. The problem is it’s a pain going back and forth to Google Insights, Google Competition and Google Trends for every blog post you do so the tool saves loads of time and headache.

So where does this leave us?

Will backlinks become less important as us internet marketers, bloggers and SEO professionals become smarter in finding ways to place ourselves in between competition in a very discrete manner? Just one keyword can make all the difference and can be a million times easier or harder to rank, so the point of this post is that if you get that winning keyword you will have less reason to need loads of links to enhance the chance of being ranked higher.

Make a new years resolution, for 2011 focus on keywords and put less effort into backlinks!

I know I have been asked many times over and over, if you are so good at doing SEO, why don’t you do SEO for yourself and not for clients, just continue to build more and more sites that generate income.

Well the answer is I do this, as well as servicing clients. Servicing clients guarantees me an income. With this in mind I decided to put a list together of what the positives and negatives are.

Doing SEO for your own sites

Positives:
1. You have the skills to generate your own traffic saving you money from getting someone else to do it
2. You keep 100% profit of what you earn apart from your own expenses of course
3. You get all the fame once your site is a success, not your client or the person your doing the site for

Negatives:
1. The income you generate may not be guaranteed and all depends on the product you are selling on your website
2. If you are selling your own product, it is up to you to have an investment towards that and depending how far you want to take it could be big.

Doing SEO for Others including clients:

Positives:
1. You build up a good reputation servicing clients and they refer others to you.
2. You get paid to do the SEO work for already established businesses
3. You get paid regardless of their product sells or profits

Negatives:
1. Setting up Invoices
2. Keeping track of accounting
3. Managing your own success according to clients expectations
4. Meeting targets and time lines

If you have any experiences or can relate to this feel free to let me know about it. For those who are thinking about doing SEO yourself I encourage you to buy the Do-It-Yourself For Dummies book!

Offering SEO as a service is extremely competitive and there is always a new Design agency or IT company coming out of the wood works suggesting that they can offer SEO.

The thing that all us SEO professionals know is that they are no where near as experienced as what other SEO companies are and have been doing for years but there are still a few pointers to go by to stay ahead of the game.

Be different
Offer a unique service and do well at it. Be on top of the game and up with new algorithm changes and what is happening in the industry.

Be competitive
Do a good job at the right price and deliver on time. You do not want to guarantee results at a time frame if you can not stick to it.

Be aggressive
Work hard on all your clients, if you are overloaded with work this does not mean you should spend less time on one client and more with another, spread out your efforts evenly even if it means you need to work harder or get a helping hand.

Be assertive
Always stay positive and on the ball, if your clients ask questions through email do not delay responses, keep them happy and trusting in you by answering all the questions they have asked you.

Ask questions
Get to know your clients marketing perspective, what they have done in the past both online and offline and what has or has not worked for them and use this information wisely. To be successful in any SEO or Marketing project you must ask questions before the project and during. If it’s a one way street it will not last.

Prove your experience
Show your clients examples of results you have achieved for keywords and sites you have got to 1st page of the search engines on and testimonials of clients that are genuinely happy with your work.

Reporting
Give your clients monthly reporting and if they require reporting when they ask you should also provide this. It will settle their nerves and give them the information they need to see that you are actually doing the work.

Everyone is trying to take advantage of the industry and as a result it is carrying more weight then it can handle.

There are a load of sites or companies out there who say they can do SEO. The fact is that they usually outsource to other SEO companies and use their site as a front door. There is still really only a hand full of professional SEO experts that SEO companies are outsourcing to.



When a website say they offer SEO it really doesn't mean they do it. It's a bit like graphic designers saying that they do printing but really they don't.

SEO takes a certain skill and what gets me is designers or people who are new in the inductry all of a sudden wanting to get a piece of it. By profession I am a Graphic Designer and Web Designer aswell but over the course of 5 years I applied and did better then ever with SEO. But there is a reason why I stick to what I do. I find if your really good at something stick to it. Don't get me wrong I encourage entusiasts to learn, this is why I have SEO Workshops.

But the bottom line is after the workshop if you are still technically or creatively not handling it, then perhaps it is not for you and you can stick to what you are best at or you can give the job to a professional. But overall the great thing about doing a half day course is to know if this is what you want to do for the rest of your life or it's something you want to do just as a one-off for some small web project.

Getting into the market now particularly when the market is oversaturated is not easy, so I encourage people who want to learn to apply their knowledge to their own one or two websites they own. I don't encourage you to go out and start your own SEO company as it is really difficult to break into the market for new SEO's who are trying to get a name for themself.

Be aware when your looking out for a SEO company to take care of your sites needs. Be sure to check out testimonials and other examples of their work before going ahead, and make sure they have been around for a while or the CEO of the company is well known in the industry.

Really to be strong with SEO you need to be fully focused on ensuring you stay quality by contiuely protecting your efforts. For example, your competitors can easily check your sites backlinks and target the same links.

Be sure that the links you get are not easily obtained. The easily obtained links are usually the ones that are not quality and will easily be scraped up by your competitors.

So there are 2 ways to stay ahead of the game, either go full speed and fast when getting to the top, so even when they do try and follow and chase your links you are already too far ahead. Or go slowly and steadily and cover yourself at the back of what you do. Alot of smart SEO guys do just that. They join in forums for example but they do not add a signature link in their posts. The reason why they don't add a signature link is so that they don't have their competitors track their every move.

The Easily Obtained Links:
Sites that say "Advertise here" add your link here" are prime examples of easily obtained links.

The More Discretely Obtained Links:
Partnering or specifically contacting quality sites and asking them to allow you to sponsor them.

Either way you go about it, just be quick and smart, don't let fear hold you back too much, as with SEO time is never on our hands and time is very precious. If you are not sure about what you are posting and which site you are posting a link on where your competitors can follow then leave it and go to the next task, but make sure it get's done.

When joining groups, forums or communities a very useful tip is try mixing up your usernames, for example if in one community you use the name joeblow, make the other community you join something totally differnent. This way competitors can not track your username in search results to precisely. Mixing it up is good and more confusing for followers.

Another thing is if you target specific keywords competitors will always be able to check the keywords you are optimizing for in your source code. Obviously when you are good with SEO, particularly on-page SEO you do not have to use keywords so precisely in your meta. I have seen sites rank to the top without using keywords at all in the source code. This can only be achieved if you are highly experienced with off-page optimisation.

If you are very good with off-page optimisation your users will not see what you have done if they usually are used to checking on-page that is, and if you are better with on-page and your competitors are checking your off-page efforts then go as crazy as you like. I tend to use no-follow attribute where and when I can, both off-page and on-page to keep myself covered.

So when slapping on the SEO Sunscreen don't just put the sunscreen on the areas that you think you will get burned. It's important you put sunscreen all over. This way you will not only keep your competitors away but you will also keep Google and other Search Engines from any kind of penalty. This might include dupicate content penalties, cloaking what ever the case may be, just work smart and effectively and good luck!