The following is a guest post by Darrell Lischka of about-internetmarketing.com.
You decided that you had enough at your job and want to start building an online business to make money. Great, welcome to the internet club. Now what are you going to do? In today’s article, I will describe the process of creating an authority site and how you rank it on page 1.
The article will go over the essential elements that one should focus their time on, if they truly want to see results. This is not the fluff type of article that tells you how to make 10K a month in only 3 months. Nope, far from it, because if you truly want financial freedom, then you will have to pay a price to fire your boss. My article will cover keyword research, domains, back linking strategies to rank on page 1, niche marketing ideas and strategies, and even mentioning some software that will leverage your time more effectively.
The fact is Google is the most popular search engine and because of that, my methods will be related to ranking well on their search engine.
Authority Site
My definition of an authority site is simple. It’s a website that ranks on page 1 of G. The fact is authority sites come in all types and sizes. They can range from a 1 page website, to hundreds of pages.
How to make money with proper keyword research
When I first got started, I listened to someone that I honestly believed knew what they were talking about. I found out later, they were just trying to up sell me with their own marketing system. So I learned the hard way and wasted a lot of time trying to figure out keyword research. I was new at this SEO game several years ago. I made the same mistakes the that newbies make, by going after the big keyword categories. Forget the big keywords when you are starting off. Go after the low competitive terms. It will literally save you time, money and of course some sleepless nights.
Niche Marketing Tactics – What The A-Listers Won’t Tell You
My advice in terms of niche marketing ideas and niche marketing strategies, is to start at the low end and work your way up the keyword ladder. For example, search for key phrases that range between 10 to 20 searches a day. Your competitors will be lower in that niche market, than attempting to rank for large key phrase categories. Better to start out small, build up your rankings for a number of low phrases and start earning some cash, than waiting 6 to 12 months or more to see results. Successful individuals who earn money online, use this approach all the time.
Domains
Before you register any domain names, first get your keyword research out of the way. The reason, you should when possible, try and include your keyword phrase in your domain name. You certainly don’t have to, but it will give you a little extra SEO juice based on personal experience. You can of course take any domain name and rank it on page 1 for essentially any keyword category. But any advantage that you can get, make sure you do because your competitors are doing it.
Another tip that you can do when registering a domain name, is to see if there’s a domain available for sale with that term. Now, I would never suggest you invest hundreds or thousands of dollars, but depending on the niche and your financial situation, it might be worth it. I would suggest you only do this when you have some experience first.
The Importance of Getting Back Links
Back-links are the back bone of the ranking game. One way links should be mostly external, but you will also need to do some internal linking within your website. An external links means, when you post an article at an article directory like Ezine Articles, you hyper link your keyword term back to your website. That is what the SEO community means by back links.
As well, you can improve your own site by making sure your internal link structure is set up correctly. For example, for some of your pages within your website, link that page back to your home page. Don’t do it for all of them, but a few of them. As well, you can pass some link juice from 1 page to another page. Those little tips can again, give you a little bump in the rankings.
To Rank Well – You Need a Back Linking Plan
Now that I covered what external and internal links are, lets discuss how you go about getting the maximum back links for your website. It really revolves around creating content and submitting it to various article directories and Ezine directories. The most popular is Ezine articles. The best thing to do is simply type in top article directories or do follow article directories in G to get a list. There are literally thousands of places to post content.
My general approach is to post 5 to 10 unique articles at the top article directories and move on. However, there is one key piece of information that must do, to rank well and make your site strong. When you link back to your website, make sure you are deep linking 80% of the time to pages and actual articles on your website.
If you are confused, just hang on for a minute. Deep linking means your URL that you hyperlink from your article will link to an actual article within your site. Fail to do this for competitive terms and you will likely never rank on page 1. Trust me, I have made this mistake in the beginning.
You can help you website by doing some comment marketing at other forums and websites. My only caution is to make sure you add value to the discussion and not some spam type comment. Over time, you will gain recognition as someone that can be trusted and other readers in time, might start checking out your site. The more readers that go to your site and spend time there, will count towards the overall ranking game because how much time someone spends at your site is part of the algorithm for Google or better known as the bounce rate.
One final comment about back links. They are not created equally. For example a back link from Ezine articles is not the same as a back link from a brand new article directory. So, when posting your content, go for established and authority directories. To look natural, you will end up with a variety of links for all over the place. Just getting high quality back links could flag Google and that’s the last thing you want is a manual inspection and get de-indexed from the search results.
Strategies To Help Your Article Marketing Efforts
If you struggle for time like most people because they work full time, you can leverage your time more effectively by looking at software tools that help you create more versions of your article. They are referred to as article spinners or an article rewriter. If used properly, you can create dozens of unique versions. Just keep in mind, you still want quality content, but I have found it saves me time on manually editing articles and being able to post to more places.
Well, there you have the essential elements on building and ranking an authority site. Just keep in mind, start with good keyword research, picking the right domain name, niche marketing strategies and the most important part, building back links for your website.
If you want to dramatically improve your article marketing efforts and get more back links to rank higher in the search engines, Go Here: Article Rewriter.
April turned out to be a pretty good month. I received an increase in 
Today I have the opportunity to answer a couple of questions from a struggling marketer who came to me and is losing patience trying to make money online.
Wow, I can’t believe we’re a whole month into 2010 already. January felt like it went so fast. Almost too fast, actually.
