Web Empire

Over on SEO Design Jeffrey L Smith outlines How to Extend your Keyword Empire in 3 Simple Steps. Well really there are two steps, the third is to look at the results of the first two steps and then repeat them with additional keywords.

Step one is to research the best keyword phrases to target, and create content around those. Step two is link acquisition, for which Jeffrey suggests three methods, finding sites linking to the top pages for the keyword and try to get a link too; directories; and submitting content to other sites (article marketing).

My experience suggest that the directories option is a waste of time — I did some research into that, using Vilesilencer’s list of SEO Friendly Directories. In short, results were not worth the effort. Article marketing, and contributing comments and guest posts is less work in the long run, and more effective.

Is it possible to be exhausted yet refreshed? That’s how I feel about our recent trip to Colima, where we spent the Christmas holidays on the beach. The break from routine was refreshing, and I’m all psyched to get going on new projects for 2008. At the same time, travel is always tiring, so I need to catch up on a couple days sleep. Not to be however, since New Years celebrations have begun already.

So this post will be brief, as I talk a bit about blogging. I have already stated that blogs should be an important part of your Web Empire — there are many advantages to this format. I also suggested that you need to post frequently during the early stages of creating your blog — then immediately broke that ‘rule’ myself, by skipping a whole week on this blog when there are only twenty-some posts. Some ‘rules’ are very important, while others can be safely bent to suit your situation.

In this case, I am working on a long-term project here, this is not one of those blogs that will have lots of posts at first, then taper off. That is for search-engine fodder blogs that exist to feed traffic and links to your money sites, and/or for advertising income. This blog is a ‘personal branding’ blog, so it exists more for you — the reader — than for the search engines. For real readers, consistency is important. I can tell real readers I will not be posting for a few days, and they understand, so by setting a precedent early on it tempers readers expectations. You now know I will warn you if I will not be posting for a while, and that is to be expected occasionally. Search engines use algorithms to track frequency of updates, they only understand the numbers.

You should include one ‘personal branding’ blog in your Web Empire if you sell products you produce yourself, but never more than one such blog. It is too much work, for one thing. You can take an occasional break, but long periods without posts are interpreted as an ‘Out of Business’ sign. Content blogs, on the other hand, can provide useful information on a topic without needing frequent updating. If you produce a few hundred posts on gardening, for example, that information will continue to be of value when you stop posting. You should constantly be creating new blogs on topics related to your main subject — as fast as earlier blogs ‘fill up’ to a convenient size (typically 100 to 500 posts) they can be left without updates, and a new blog started instead.

I found a site today that lists the top 100 blogs about making money on-line:

45n5

Actually there are nearly 300 blogs listed as of now, and a link to suggest more. Even though this site is only a month old, I wrote Mark at 45n5 to have it added — with luck maybe I can get the bottom spot for a while. The page doesn’t describe how sites are ranked, and so far I haven’t had time to search the entire blog for posts on the subject, but it seems to be some combination of google pagerank, technorati rank and alexa rank. He also has a link-back ‘widget’ to show your blog’s rank there, a great example of link baiting. I’ll certainly add one when my site gets listed.

Over on DoshDosh they posted a page of interest to readers of this blog:

Building an Online Empire: 16 Types of Websites You Can Create for Profit

Some of the suggestions are too much of a long-term time commitment for my tastes, but if your goal is to create your own online job/business, they will work. I’d rather my Web Empire be self-sustaining, with no more than an occasional tweak from me — though I’m a long way from that point now. Although I’ve been making living online for over ten years, it is only recently (OK, about a month) that I’ve decided this job I created for myself needs to have an early retirement as its goal.

Most of the suggestions on the DoshDosh list can be implemented using hands-off techniques like hiring help to do the day to day, however, and others are low maintenance sites. Let your own interests, knowledge and abilities guide you to the types of sites that are right for your Web Empire.

Blogs have several advantages over other types of sites, even if they are no longer ‘cool’ like they were a couple years ago. First, they are convenient. Using blog software like Wordpress provides you with a database-driven, modularly designed site within minutes of setting it up.

You don’t have to have all of the content ready-to-go on startup, in fact you are expected to add content a little at a time. You can use available layouts, or design your own — or any combination of the two.

There are features like pings and trackback, that help you promote the site, built right in. With Wordpress, there is even a feature that lets you post a weeks worth (or months worth) of messages at once, and they will appear on a daily basis, just as if you were really working.

Think of blogging software as a type of content management system — you do not need to have a subject oriented to current-news or your personal views. Any subject can be covered in a blog. Nor are there any rules about the frequency with which you post new content. Of course you will want to start with daily posts to get the search engine’s attention, but once you have twenty or thirty pages of content, you can begin posting more sporadically. When you have hundreds of pages, you can stop posting completely, and the search engines will continue to serve up your content in response to corresponding queries for months or years to come, just as with any other type of website. When a blog has a couple hundred pages, I like to add just one per month, to keep it from being dropped from RSS feed aggregators as inactive.

If you are building a Web Empire, you will want to include blogs in your network of sites. One good technique for extra links under your control, is to offer to make blogs for friends and relatives who aren’t tech-savvy. You should have hosting accounts on one or more servers that allow multiple (or even unlimited) add-on domains. You can register a domain for the blog, set up the software, and give the person whose blog it will be posting rights.

Or, if the ten dollars a year for a domain is too much for your friend or relative who wants to try blogging, you can put their blog on a  sub-domain of one of your existing domains. Then put links to your other blogs in the blogroll for the new blog. Edit the copyright notice to add a link to one of your sites. Put ads in the side-bar for your own products or services, or for affiliate products.

It’s win-win, they get a free blog, and you get extra in-coming links to your sites.

In addition to personal blogs where you have others doing the posting, you can have topical blogs where you post all the information. On these sites I look for public domain content, or subjects that require only minor editing, so I can post five pages within an hour or two. I set the posts dates for Monday through Friday if the blog is new, later cut back to Mon-Weds-Fri then weekly and finally monthly when the site is mature.

Choose topics that relate only peripherally to your main theme. So, if your main subject area is, say, Chicago area real-estate, you can have blogs on Chicago restaurants, other real-estate markets, tips on repairing a fixer-upper, how to make money buying and selling real-estate, Chicago tourist attractions, managing rental properties, etc., etc. Link all of these to your Chicago real-estate site, and the search engines will see them as relevant (because they are), you will get traffic through each of them and at the same time improve the ranking of your main site.

Do NOT link back to these sites from your main site. Do not link to all of them from each of the others. Have a few links from one to one or two others. If you have other, non-blog sites in your network, a few links to and from those will help. Use different link texts and keep things varied, so it doesn’t look like a network.