After keyword research, the next step is figuring out how to rank well in SERP’s (search engine result pages) for the specific keywords you picked out. This article is for both new and experienced bloggers.

This post is part of the How to Build Income Online series.

I have a lot of info about keyword research on this blog, How to Perform Keyword Research Day #1, and How to perform keyword research Day #2 are part of this article series, and my Keyword Research Cheat Sheet has lots of links to get you started as well. I find when talking to bloggers that many, whether beginner or experienced, don’t have a solid strategy in hand for what to do with those specific keywords to get good search result listings – which ultimately result in traffic (and profit!).

I’m going to give you an example scenario of how to rank well for a completely new set of keywords, meaning your blog URL, title, description, and keywords you’re using now are something different. For instance – let’s say your domain name is “cookinghealthy dot com”, but you want to start coming up for the phrase “free recipes”. You found that keyword phrase gets 20,000 searches a month and you want to grab some of that exposure (without diluting the SERP’s you already position well on).

It’s very important that you understand what you are doing here, and why you are doing it. If you have a brand new blog (under 100 posts) – continue to hammer away at your main keywords used in your home page title, description, and domain name until you get good search results for it. Then, slowly develop a list of additional keyword phrases to work on over time. The theory of “not putting all your eggs in one basket” is why it’s best to do this. Just like having multiple blogs and multiple monetization streams, multiple keyword phrases (for one blog) generating traffic make sure that your always getting traffic, and over time these keyword phrases are like sowing seeds in a garden. With care, some will grow beyond your wildest imagination.

So, in this scenario I want to come up as high as possible for “free recipes”, but the competition is pretty stiff. I would come up with a game plan to change that, and this is what I would do:

10 Step Keyword Ranking Process

  1. Write a recipe post and make the title “Free Recipes: Recipe-Name-Here”
  2. In the first 15-20 words of the post say something like “My collection of <b>free recipes</b>: Recipe-Name-Here is so delicious you’ll want to make it again and again” (use different description phrase each time)
  3. Write a post 5 days a week for a month using the same “Free Recipes: Recipe-Name-Here” title and intro sentence strategy
  4. After the first post create a WordPress “page” simply titled “Free Recipes” with 1-2 paragraphs of original content (100-200 words), and create a linked list of the recipes posts – adding them as you go
  5. Add a “related posts” block to the bottom of posts, so all the free recipe posts show other ones
  6. In other posts (that aren’t about free recipes), add a sentence somewhere in there like “I’ve been addiing a lot of <b>free recipes</b> to the site lately (and link the full URL to your free recipes page like cooking healthy dot com slash free recipes
  7. Comment on other food blogs, and use “Free Recipes” as your name and the URL to the free recipes page on your blog as the link
  8. Comment in lots of forums, and use “Free Recipes” as the text and the URL to your free recipes page
  9. Submit every single recipe you wrote (with the first paragraph of text change a bit) to an article directory and use “Free Recipes” as the text and the URL to your free recipes page as the signature / byline / footer, etc.
  10. Post additional free recipes at least 1-2 times per month for 6-12 months for outstanding results!

The 10 step process I outlined is nothing more than basic SEO and linkbuilding. Notice in the intro sentence of the blog I put the keyword phrase in bold tags. This is an old SEO trick (that may not work as well anymore). You could use this process with any web site or blog, but my version assumes a few things.

Assumptions:

Ranking well for keywords is like cooking a good pot of soup. The individual ingredients aren’t nearly as good until you put them all together. And over time the longer you let them cook in the pot – the better the blend together and taste! Also, as I mentioned earlier – doing this with a domain that has at least 100 posts and good indexing (and some kind of pagerank) will yield the best results.