So much has been going on in the last few weeks. Most obviously, I was able to convince Garry Conn to redesign my blog and create this killer custom theme just form me. Garry is a great guy, and he knows a heck of a lot about niche IM. On top of that, he is pretty handy at php, CSS and graphics. If you need someone you can trust to work on your blog for a fair price, I can honestly recommend him unconditionally. I am still turning some knobs and adjusting some dials (most notably, Aweber), but I could not be happier with the new look (and the amazing service from Garry).
Turning my attention back to Elvis Presley
Now that the new theme is up, I simply cannot believe that my plan to document my creation of a Niche Super-Site started on February 4th. Man, time flies when you are having fun with part-time Internet Marketing. In case you missed the press frenzy in early February (LOL), I am quite literally taking a page out of Caroline Middlebrook’s free eBook and documenting my experience of trying to create a niche site. I picked a random topic (Elvis Presley), and so far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:
- Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
- List of Niche Super-Site design goals
- How to select your niche
- Choosing your keywords
- Choosing a domain name
- Setting up your niche site
- Making things look nice
- Installing Plugins
- Getting listed in Google
- Making Money with phpBay
- Adding PopShops to your site
- Adding Adsense
- Adding Amazon Omakase Widget
- Adding a favicon
- Testing the Long Tail Keyword (1) (2) and (3)
At the end of the long-tail keyword test, we were able to declare victory because I now rank on page one of Google for the killer MMO phrase “Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie.” This shows that on-page SEO works to get listed for a search term. The problem is that where you rank for that term depends on your off-page SEO. For more on this, I recommend the free EasySEO eBook from Josh Spaulding. As I mentioned in my previous post, with “Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie” under our belt, it is now time to attack higher competition phrases — “elvis presley collectibles” (74 searches per day), the “life of elvis presley” (226 searches per day) and “elvis presley history of” (4383 searches per day).
Simple plan for niche market SEO
Simply put, my strategy is to create a landing page for Elvis Presley collectibles and another for Life of Elvis Presley. I’ll write good SEO copy and pay attention to details like making sure the keywords appear in the title tag, headers, beginning of the article, exerpt, etc. Basically, I will simply do all of the things that are documented in the free EasySEO eBook. Once those pages are complete, I plan to use the variation on Bum (article) Marketing taught in Josh’s Article Marketing Domination (AMD). If you are not familiar with article marketing, the basic idea is to write articles about your niche containing your keywords. At the end of the article, you include links back to your site for your keywords. You submit the article to article directories. These directories are well indexed, and they allow you people to copy your article, propagating your links. (Note that you do not put these articles on your own site).
In Article Marketing Domination, Josh outlines some key steps for article marketing, including
- Creating effective articles
- Creating an effective signature block
- Submission strategies
So, I plan to put this to the test starting in a few days. The problem is, I need some articles. I am not sure I have lots of Elvis Articles in me (this is why it is useful to choose a niche you really care about). 🙂
Buying Articles
Article marketing is the perfect place to use a writer for hire (ghost writer). I was able to hire a lady on ScriptLance to write 20 300 word articles about Elvis for $70 ($3.50 per article). ScriptLance is neat because your job goes out for bids, and you can select from the people that respond. This writer has a BA liberal arts and is US based. The $70 is held in escrow until I am happy. Now, I might not always want to spend $70 on a marketing — but this is an experiment…
So, we’ll see how it goes. The traffic data for HistoryOfElvis.com is contaminated by this case study, so it may be hard to judge. Again, we’ll see.
Topics remaining on my list for this niche super-site series include the following:
- eZineArticles Content
- Write your own content
- Set up AA404 plugin
- Set up a pseudo-link-directory as pillar content
- Remember to back up your data.
- Comment Kahuna
- Secure WordPress
- Other marketing ideas
- The 50 site checklist
- Others…
Best regards,
Mark
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