Does PR really matter?

After seeing a discussion on this topic in a forum earlier I decided to take a look at this subject and disucss it here. This is a perfect example of what I talked about before, finding topics to discuss from blogs. Let’s get started.

Does PR Matter?

Well first off PR stands for PageRank and it is a number that Google gives to websites that range from 0-10. 10 is the best and 0 is the worst, but I want to discuss if having a 0 PR site really is the worst. Many webmasters will rank their success by the PageRank of their sites. However, I think this is the wrong thing to think about because PageRank isn’t the only factor of success, and in some cases it doesn’t even affect your success. Too many people think that PageRank is the end all but in fact it really isn’t. 

I have seen in many cases that 0 PR sites can actually out rank higher PR sites in Google. It’s a fact that Google doesn’t rank sites in Google based upon their PR, just go search any term and you will see fluctuation between each site’s PR. In my experience I have had sites with 0 PR rank first for certain keywords over sites with much higher PR. In my opinion that is way better then having a good PR because if I don’t get traffic and results with a higher PR then it’s useless to me. Ranking in Google is always my number one concern and it should be yours too.

So basically when you are creating your sites you shouldn’t even worry about PageRank because it’s not worth the hassle to worry. The only time PR is worth anything is when you are selling your sites to other people, but it usually ends up that they don’t understand PR either. Just try and get into Google for your desired search terms and you will see PR follow, just keep working at it. See you later.

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Tags: pagerank

Permalink Settings

Today I am going to discuss something that I wasn’t planning on until it was brought to my attention. Since I really want this blog to get noticed then I have to do everything I can to make sure my on page SEO is the best that it can be and when something was brought to my attention that showed that my SEO wasn’t as strong as it could be it caused me to take immediate action to keep my SEO the best it can be. Now I want to show you how to do it so you don’t make the same mistakes. 

How to Set Solid Permalinks

Well permalinks are the URL links of each of your individual posts, for example the permalink for this post is http://websitedevelopmentology.com/2009/01/18/permalink-settings/ . This is important because we want to make sure our article titles stay in the URL for increased SEO benefits.  The default for WordPress permalinks sets your posts as .com/?p=23 where 23 is the number assigned to the post and as you can see that’s not very good for your SEO because that doesn’t mean a thing to me or the search engines. Now I will explain the steps to checn your permalink settings.

1. In your WordPress admin area go to Tools and then Permalinks.

2. Click on Day and Name and then click Save Changes.

3. If your .htaccess needs to be changed, which I needed to do, then do this. 

3a. Open Notepad.

3b. Paste this,

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

</IfModule>

3d. Save as .htaccess

3e. Upload to your public_html folder.

4. That should be everything, refresh your permalinks settings page and see if the changes were saved, it should say so in the top left corner of the page if you did it correectly.

Now that you have done that you will have much better on page SEO and you need to make sure you do this very soon because your previous links will lose whatever is attached to them so switch over to get yoru new links some juice. That’s it for today and I’ll see you back here tomorrow for some template talk.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: Basics, development, SEO

Installing Wordpress

Here is the day that I have been waiting for. We’ve done the research, we’ve got our domain, and we’ve set up our hosting and now it’s time to start the blog. I love when this happens because I just get so excited when I set up a new blog. Setting up a new blog is just so much fun as it means starting something new and I just love the feeling of that. It’s such a wonderful feeling to see all the hard work you’ve put into this so far come to life. so without further adieu let us begin.

Installing Wordpress

Ok, so you may be thinking, “This is going to be really hard and I won’t know what to do,” you’re wrong because it’s really easy. It will be even easier for you if you have Cpanel because there are easy one click install buttons right inside Cpanel to make the simple as easy as clicking a button and inputting in a few fields. However, if you don’t have Cpanel it’s still really easy! Essentially it goes like this,

1. Download the WordPress files from WordPress.org.

2. Follow the instructions right on the 5 minute handy installation guide. 

It really is that easy. The only thing you have to worry about is this, download, edit the config.php file with your database name, upload, run installation. If you have a little trouble with the database stuff it’s really easy. That guide has the process to do it all no matter what you use so you should definitely be able to figure it out, if not come back here and leave me a comment, I would LOVE to help you out. Maybe even I could install if for you if you are having a lot of trouble because I find it really easy and actually kind of fun

That’s it for today, so get your blog set up and get ready for tomorrow. Again, if you don’t understand something on the guide or if you just have a question or comment I would lvoe to help you out so don’t be afraid to drop me a line and I’ll get back to you as fast as I can.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: development, wordpress

The Competition Looks Tough!

We are almost done with our research! As of now I am pretty sure this will be the last research portion and we can move onto the actual website development tomorrow, which i am really excited about because that’s when things actually get “fun”. Today is all about checking out or competition in the search engines and seeing how well we need to do to hopefully defeat them in the all important search engine battle.

Researching the Competition

It’s important to check out your competition in your niche so that you know what you’re going to be up against. All of this research we are doing is going to help us out when we start developing and the competition research is just as important as the rest. If we figure out how the competition has gotten to where they are then we cna get a figure of how well we must do to beat them but of course this will just be an estimate. First I must say that when I do my competition I use FireFox because normally I use Chrome for all my other stuff but FireFox has add-ons that make this work a lot easier so I highly recommend that you download it if you don’t already have it. The first thing you need to do is download the SEO For FireFox add-on. This add-on allows you to see useful information such as PageRank, age, Alexa, and links among other things and it is just one plugin that makes all the competition research much easier. Now what we do is plug in our niche keyword into Google, or Yahoo, andI usually like to put quotes around them, “keyword here”, like that because then you will find the sites that are actually trying to rank for those specific keywords.

I usually just take a look at at least the first 3, but sometimes I will look at the top 10 or so just to make sure I can see the averages of the sites. What I do is first look at the PageRank of the results, the top sites usally have a decent PageRank so if say the average is 3 then I will want to get at least 3 and preferably 4. Then I look at Alexa and then links, because these are the other two important factors. Alexa may not be incredbily important but it’s just another indicator of a site’s strength. The links is what I want to look at, if say the top site has 100,000 links then I know that I need to get either that many links of the same quality, or less links of higher quality because the higher quality will rank more in Google’s eyes. I write down these numbers for future reference and then I go ahead and just quit FireFox because I don’t need to use it anymore. Once you have these numbers you can understand what it will take to rank on the first page or so for Google, and then you are done.

I love when I finish my research because it means I get to move onto development which in my opinion is the really fun part. Once you finish this up go ahead and give yourself a very well deserved break and get ready for a nice day tomorrow because I am sure looking forward to it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: research

Is this Niche Worth It?

I don’t want to ever waste any of my time on something that won’t pan out in the end so I also want to make sure that you do the same thing. Picking the right niche to promote is very important because if you put all your eggs in one basket then you might end up being out of eggs. So to make sure that we don’t fall to this trap we will spend a little time researching if the niche ideas we came up with are worth actually promoting.

The first thing I always do when seeing if my niche is profitable is I just pop it right into the big G and see if there are any AdWord ads on the right side, because my philosophy is if people are spending money in the niche then there must be money to be made. If there are at least a few then it is a good sign that the niche is at least slightly profitable, but it usually is much more then slightly. If your niche idea doesn’t have any ads on the right don’t worry just yet because that doesn’t mean all is lost.

The next place we are going to check out is ClickBank, one of the best places to sell and buy digital products, that is, items that aren’t actually shipped and rather are downloaded. ClickBank has many products in many different categories and I’m pretty sure that you can find just about anything for your niche needs, but if you can’t don’t worry. There’s another site, Comission Junction, that is just like ClickBank but some belive it is even better then ClickBank, and sometimes I agree just because of the sheer amount of offers they have. You really should be able to find something on those sites pertaining to your niche. If you find one that you think is good you should take a look at the money you make per sale. There’s no real price target that you should be looking for but of course the ones that are higher you will be more attracted to. On Clickbank check the offer for a high gravity because that generally means it’s a better offer. If you can at least find one offer to promote then you should be good.

The last possibility that I always search is Amazon. If you can’t find any decent products on the previous sites then you amy want to check out Amazon because they sell actual items that you can get a commission on for every item you sell. If you want to sign up to Amazon Associates  you can go ahead and do that and check out the tools and things they have to help you make money through geting them sales. It’s a good alternative if your niche is more focused on tangible items. 

Once you go through and check these out you should be able to see if this is worth it. After doing the research you should be able to make an educated guess on how the niche should perform. We are almost done with the research and I just have one more post, at least for now, to research a little bit more on your competition in your niche. Once we finish that we get to the real “fun” stuff, so I can’t wait for that.

Popularity: 58% [?]

Tags: Basics, Niche, niche research, research

How to Find a Niche

Okay, so now that we know what a niche is we can actually go out and find a niche to build a website around! We know the benefits of niche marketing and how awesome it can be it’s time to find a niche that is suitable for you and that can get you money. 

Let’s Find a Niche!

Well, there is actually no “easy niche” but there is a niche out there for everyone that they will feel is easier to promote. Generally speaking, things that you enjoy you are more likely to stick with, because let’s face it, if you don’t like doing it you don’t want to do it. So picking something you enjoy would be the “easiest” thing to do. try thinking of your favorite hobbies, because the fact is that if you like it, odds are that other people like it too. If you don’t really have a hobby then pick something that you think you will enjoy promoting and spending a LOT of time working on. If you at least know a little bit about the niche you are going to promote it will be better then nothing. 

Let’s take a look at how to find ones if you are having some trouble coming up with ideas. There is a nice program that allows you to find a niche really easily if you just put in some things that you enjoy. It’s called Micro Niche Finder and it delivers every last thing that you need to do your research. It cuts down on the time it takes to do your niche research and your keyword research and puts it all into one simple and easy to use program. It does cost a little bit to get this program but I think that if you have the money that it would be well spent because it does dramatically cut down the time it takes to do all the research and allows you to move on to other steps faster. However, if you don’t have the money to spend on it or you don’t feel like it’s necessary then we can move on.

This is how I generally go about picking a niche to get started. I think of one random niche, such as finance. Then I use the tools that I talked about in my keyword research article to find a nice sub niche to target. You get lots of suggestions and if you dig a little you can find some real gems. That is generally a good way of finding a niche if you can’t really think of anything off the top of your head. If after all of this you still can’t think of a niche then maybe just take a nice break, then come back and try again. Once you get back just think of 5 random words that pop into your head. Write these down on Notepad or something else. Then think of other topics in each of these words. Sometimes I am able to find a niche I didn’t think of before by doing this. Now that we have gone over all of these you should definitely either have a nich idea in mind or have a nice set of ways to get ideas, so try and get at least 1 or 2 ideas for niches that you want to promote and tomorrow I will talk about how we are going to decide if these are worth spending time on.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: Niche, research

What is a Niche?

In my last post I talked about picking your niche market to target and how to do keyword research on said niche, but I never actually adressed how to find a niche and what exactly a niche is. I assumed that people knew what it was but that shouldn’t have happened, I want this blog to go over every aspect of creating websites and I apologize for failing to recognize that not everyone knows what a niche is, so this article is here to explain what it is and the next post should tell you how to find one.

What is a niche?

The technical definition of niche is something along the lines of, a focused, targetable section of a market. Basically what this means is that it’s a small portion of a larger market that you can create your product, or blog, or entire business, focusing on giving them a solution to their problem. These niches are handy because they allow you to know exactly who and what you are going to try and sell your stuff to.  In each individual niche there are smaller markets that I like to call sub-niches but others may call them micro niches or other such names. These niches are even more targeted and specific. Take for example, weight loss, that is a niche that is very competitive and pretty vague. What my thought is that you should try and focus on a sub niche because there is bound to be less competition and it’s very specific. So if you were doing weight loss your sub niche could be something like weight loss after pregnancy and thus you can sell products on how to lose weight after having a baby. Finding a solid sub niche can mean you amke even more money and have a slightly easier time beating out your competition.

Why is this helpful?

Finding a niche and creating a blog around it allows you to focus on one thing and after a while you will become an expert on this niche. If you become an expert then you will gain credibility in the business and thus will have better odds of selling your stuff. Also marketing to a sub niche allows you to get visitors, and potentially buyers, that others may have overlooked. Niche marketing is so targeted I think it’s hard not to make money from it, because the visitors are coming to your site for an answer and as long as you deliver I’m prety sure you’re going to make money. 

That’s what a niche is, it’s critical that you understand this so you don’t waste your time and energy, and possibly money, going after a niche that you feel is a sub niche but is actually a top level niche. Finding a sub niche and developing a quality site can allow you to make lots of money even after you finish your work, and that’s what this is all about, building residual income that continues after your hard work has been completed.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Tags: Basics, Niche, research

Laying the Foundation

The basis of any good blog or website starts at the very beginning, before you start any of the actual website work. When you set yourself up for success the odds are in your favor that you will achieve this success as long as you stick with it and never give up. Without this solid foundation you will be like the foolish man who builds his house on the sand rather then the rock and when the water comes all the hard work and effort get wiped away and there is nothing left to show for everything that had been put into it. So let’s get to it and examine where we start and where we are going with this.

Keyword Research

In order for your site to have any sort of direction you must know which keywords to target and how to target these keywords to benefit your website’s popularity and authority. Here I will guide you in the step by step guide to tell you how to properly do your keyword research.

Step 1.

Go  to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com,  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal,   or http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/ and enter your initial keyword phrase, for my example I entered “golf”.

Step 2.

Examine the list for a more descriptive keyword that can be used as a possible “long tail” keyword. In my example I chose “golf clubs”. 

Step 3.

Repeat step 2 to build up a list of keywords that can be used to target your content and while doing so make note of the estimated searches for that keyword because this is important to make sure you get traffic to your site. Make a list of about 10 keywords in total, you can have more or less then 10 but I think that 10 is a good number to keep you targeted,  and put these in your favorite organization method, I just put them into a simple Notepad document but if you feel entitled you can go above and beyond and put it into a nice Excel spreadsheet.

Step 4.

Now that you have a list of some really nice keywords you can set your sights on what you’re going to be focusing your site on and have a nice target set for what you want out of your blog. These keywords set up your blog’s future, so make sure you save this document for later.

So that’s it  for your initial keyword research but this is really just the beginning of the search process so make sure you get geared up to go more in depth with these targeted keywords next time and really look at some nice statistics.

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Tags: Basics, keyword research, keywords

The Steps We’ll Take

This website is all about taking your site from just an idea to a real life, quality website that brings in lots of traffic and visitors and hopefully makes you money. In order to do this you need to follow some simple instructions to get everything set up properly and so that you don’t waste your valuable time and effort making the best site you can. This process can normally be done in a matter of days but at first it may take you a week or more but don’t worry about that because it does get easier. Once you get this process down making websites become so much easier and you can just churn out site after site in a matter of hours, instead of days. At first however we should take time and go in depth to each aspect of the process to really understand everything we are going to be doing, so let’s go over how we are going to do that.

1. Keyword and Niche Research

This part of the process allows for us to set up a solid foundation for the website and allows you to be even more successful if done correctly. We will go over this step further tomorrow.

2. Website Development

This is the part where we actually start building the site and adding content. This is by far the part that takes the longest time but it’s the part where we actually start to see results, even if they are minimal. We will go over this in much further detail in a few days.

3. Website Promotion

Lastly we have this step which is designed to get your site on the map so you can actually get people to visit your site, because that’s what it’s all about anyways, because if people don’t come your work is useless. This step will be discussed either next week or the next, we have to create the website before we can promote it right?

So that’s how we are going to do this. Maybe it’s not the best but it’s what has worked for me and it can work for you too if you just put it into action and take a chance. That’s the biggest thing that you need to do, take ACTION! Without it you will just be reading and wasting time, you can suck up all the information you want but without ACTION! you will still be stuck in the same spot. So that’s it, we’ll get started tomorrow with keyword research.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Tags: Basics, research