Every entrepreneur or manager knows how important it is to implement long term strategies for different aspects of their business, like marketing, branding and so on. However many still neglect strategy implementation for web business projects. The reason is because of the technical aspect of internet business. If you want to get things right, you’ll need to combine both technical as well as commercial parts. One option is to hire professionals (like search engine optimizers and online business consultants) to do the job, another is to read this article and learn at least the basics yourself.

Starting an internet business project, be it an affiliate product selling page, or a blog that’s supposed to attract a lot of traffic is a combination of many connected aspects like online marketing, branding, advertising, copy writing and seo.

You can imagine the importance that long term search engine visibility has for the continuation of blog revenue and readership. Serious web professionals know that planning ahead as far as possible in regard of search engine visibility can be crucial to success of their project.

It’s been a while since I started studying the subject of search engine optimization. I’ve read many advices from forum members, comments on blogs and quite a few books on it. I’ve never really read anything about building a long term seo strategy though. Maybe the reason is because there is no universally applicable optimization strategy and because every project is different. This also makes the subject quite hard to write about.

What I’ve tried to do in this article is take the subject (long term seo strategy building) and explain it from a theoretical ideal situation outward. The example in this article built around this theoretical ideal, so in reality, the situation might be a little different. Nonetheless, understanding the methodologies and the reasons behind them is very valuable if you want to learn how to think of your own search engine optimization strategies. Because, again, this is vital if you want to succeed online. Aside from that, another good thing is that this article will show you the mindset that you need as a web entrepreneur in order to make your online business venture successful.

This post is built out of 4 different parts. In these parts I am going to show you how to build an optimal keyword attack formula for your blog. Because the example is about a blog this post as it is, is very interesting to bloggers who are planning on generating revenue (making money) from their blogs. However, with a little thought, the procedure can be modified to facilitate other things such as affiliate product landing pages. I will add a little paragraph on this subject too to get you started.

So take a deep breath …

A note for newbie search engine optimizers
Trying to keep this article basic isn’t easy. You’ll need to at least be a bit familiar with the basics of search engine optimization. Meaning that you know what keyword research is, what is meant with competitive, medium, long tail phrases and that you have an idea about Google’s ranking factors (value of inbound links from relevant blogs for example).

If you don’t have any prior experience with search engine optimization then I advice you to read a good book first and visit some good blogs about seo. It also helps to ask questions on forums. I can recommend seochat because the good atmosphere and its knowledgeable members.

Understanding the importance of a long term seo strategy
Nowadays blogs can be serious matter. Blogs, with all the expandable functionality that can be added by using plug ins can even substitute an e-commerce sites that sell products. Blogs are used by businesses as communication tools, as marketing tools or by individuals as personal journals. Some professional bloggers are even making thousands of dollars a month through affiliate programs, advertising and other smart ways. This doesn’t happen just like that. These people treat their blogs as a business. They have become web entrepreneurs.

That said, not acknowledging the importance of search engine optimization as a long term strategy for your blog or web business venture can result in failure or force time consuming re-adjustments. Without search engine visibility, marketing and branding campaigns are ineffective. If you don’t have traffic, you won’t be able to sell online advertising. If you don’t have the correct targeted traffic, you won’t sell the products that you want sell.

Keeping as many aspects of what’s needed to succeed is essential. Once you start doing this you are already starting to think in a strategic way, because strategy, be it marketing, branding or seo, is long term.

The ideal situation
The ideal situation when running a blog, having affiliate landing pages or doing business through web pages depends on what your goals are.

For now, let’s say that you are a blogger who’s out to ‘nibble’ from all sides of the pie and generate as much revenue from their blog as possible. If that would be the case, then you’d probably like your blog to rank well for certain competitive keyword phrases so that a large amount of traffic can be enjoyed and also for more focussed selected keyword phrases at the same time.

The traffic that results from competitive and more general keyword phrases is less targeted then traffic that medium and long tail keywords bring in, but nonetheless offers great possibilities if a blogger wants to monetize (make money from) their blog. The more people view your blog, the more attractive it would be for businesses in that segment of the market to advertise on your blog.

On the other hand it’s good to attract the correct visitors through more specific medium competitive and long tail keywords. These visitors know what they are looking for and they are the ones that should be targeted when you’re selling something specific, like product. These visitors usually leave a blog or web site when they don’t find what they are looking for.

Wouldn’t it be good to have both options, instead of just focusing on one and excluding the other ?

Introducing - the optimal keyword attack formula
Because it’s harder (and takes much longer) to rank high for competitive and more general keywords, many experienced optimizers will advice beginners and non-pro’s to target medium competitive and long tail (many low search volume phrases that are easier to rank for) phrases, because ranking for the very competitive keywords is ‘too hard and takes way too long’.

Before long most people will have left the idea for ranking for competitive keywords altogether and instead they end up attacking only less hard to rank for keywords. Because they do this, they focus on only parts of their potential online market without brainstorming and searching for ways to rank for each level of keyword competitiveness, from hard to long tail. This is where our concept comes in. At the end of this part, you will understand why it is important to also include hard to rank for keywords in your plans.

First, here’s a ‘complex’ definition of the optimal keyword attack formula concept. If you don’t completely get this, then don’t worry. It will become more clear when you read on.

The optimal keyword attack formula is a concept that is meant to make you select the correct keyword phrases (in this example for your blog), spread over (A) : a wide spectrum of competitive levels(hard - medium - easier) according to your own judgment and capabilities. Additionally, the optimal attack formula concept ensures that the keyword phrases that you select are (B) optimally related to each other, resulting in an internal topical network in which the topics can be interconnected through your (C) smartly written content (articles).

In a sense, all I’ve done is take a number of variables which I know make sense in regard of search engine optimization success and web business, and thrown them into a basket. Next I thought up a procedure which makes it possible to combine them optimally together into something usable. This nifty little thing turned into what I call the optimal keyword attack formula. Again, let me remind you that this example is about a blog, but with a little modification of the process you can just as well do the same thing for affiliate program landing pages.

Let me explain some more about the concept and how I got these ideas, so read on …

(A) Keywords on all levels of competitiveness
As said earlier, who wants to close options for themselves ? Theoretically, we need to aim for situation that ‘ideally’ suits our goals, because we’d like to have the option to eventually achieve getting good search engine rankings for whichever keyword we like, from hard to easier.

In order to start working on this we first have to create a correct foundation from where to work out from. A framework that allows you to attack keyword phrases off all levels, hard, medium and easier at the same time.

By attacking keyword phrases on all competitive levels we can attract traffic quickly through easier keywords while building rank for the more competitive ones at the same time.

B.t.w. the process of gaining better search engine placement for competitive hard to rank for keywords can be faster when you use extra techniques like smart content writing, cross linking articles and focused PPC campaigns. I will discuss this in the last part of this long article.

(B) Building an internal topical network based on optimally related keyword phrases
You probably know that search engines give you positive points if you have inbound links from web sites or blogs that relevant to your own blog topics. Logically it will work against you if lets say : you have a blog of about small business but all your inbound links are coming from sleazy porn sites.

This is because search engines are smart enough to recognize that a site linking to yours is not related to your content. In addition, the traffic that you’d receive from that link would be far from useful. These visitors are looking for porn, not information about small business.

So, in a sense it helps to create or associate your blog with a network which consists of relevant other web sites and blogs. This has been known for a long time. If networks on a macro scale can be that beneficial, why not try to create some sort of micro network on the inside of your blog which works in the same way ?That’s exactly one of the things you create a foundation for when building your optimal keyword attack formula.

Furthermore, most seem to forget, or not know, that there actually are levels of relatedness between keywords. Determining which ones are more related to each other means that it’s possible to make more effective combinations. The procedure in the other parts of this article will show how this is done !

(C) Interconnecting the topics of your internal topical network through smart content
When a search engine crawls your blog it will go through all your internal links. Because the topics in your blog are related are optimally related, you’ve made sure that your internal topical network is as effective as possible ! Both for the search engines, and in the eyes of your readers as well.

By ‘interconnecting’ levels of competitiveness through content you can let the readers of the blog easily move between points in the internal network. If for instance an article is optimized for a medium keyword phrase, it could be written in a way that the reader will want to check out a different article, which happens to reside on a more competitive keyword level. If the content is written smartly, your options are endless.

Advantages of the optimal keyword attack formula
Once you attack the correct keyword phrases on all levels (hard - medium - easier) by using an optimal keyword formula, it can create a snowball effect. If your were to be attacking only competitive keyword phrases, then yes, it would take an incredibly long time to rank from them.

If your are using an optimal keyword attack formula you’ll be targeting keywords on all levels from the start, and they will be chosen as such, that they ‘add push’ to each others rankings. In addition, you’ll have a usable platform in place to control your readers through smart content writing.

For example:
You’ve attracted a number of visitors for a medium competitive keyword phrase. If you write your posts in a way that you can divert your readers towards posts that are optimized (don’t have to be ranking yet) for competitive keywords then you are already receiving traffic on that level.

On that particular page may be able to make more money from advertising then on low level pages. Google adsense payout could be higher for the content on that page for instance.
Also, if the article is any good, you have a chance of receiving valuable links from other blogs to that particular page. This will help you rank faster for that competitive keyword phrase. Also, you can imagine what happens to your traffic if you get 100 links from good sources to that particular page.

As a result of these advantages, by using this optimal keyword attack formula and writing your content correctly to facilitate its effectiveness, the speed of which your blog will rank for particular keywords can be much faster. Actually, the blog is receiving traffic already for these some keyword phrases, benefiting from possible revenues on that page and at the same time attracting more targeted traffic on the lower competitive levels (and possible selling products there as well).

If you decided to not include competitive keyword phrases into your strategy, the example above wouldn’t have been an option for you. Now you know why adding competitive keywords is an important part of the optimal keyword attack formula, and seo strategy

Ready to see procedure of building your optimal keyword attack formula for a blog ?
By now, you may be wondering how to put together an optimal attack formula for you blog. This is where the real work starts.

I suggest you take a look at part 2 of this post. It will take you through an example !