Keyword sniping is a phrase coined by Courtney Tuttle to target keywords by making the whole site optimised for 1 or 2 keywords. If you haven’t seen Court’s post on this head over to Introduction to Keyword Sniping. Most sites will optimise a page for a keyword, by optimising the whole site you can, in theory rank well for much more competitive keywords. I was very impressed with this method which is very clearly explained by Court so I’ve set up a couple of sites to see how it goes. I’ve also tried to keep the cost down as much as possible by using free software (WordPress and WordBay) and submission services when possible.
I won’t explain the whole method here, Court does a very good job of that, instead I’ll document what I have done to test this method and report on my results.
My Chosen Keywords
I chose two keywords, both more competitive than I would normally tackle for a niche site. These are still much less competitive than Court seems to use but I’ll go for smaller rewards before I tackle the big ones!
Optimised WordPress Theme
I know I develop themes myself but Court has made some great themes specially optimised for keyword sniping so I chose to use one of those rather than take the time to develop my own. When I get the time I’ll have a go at adapting one of mine for this method. The theme I chose is Dateless Sniper.
Aged Domain
There are some advantages to using an aged domain, it may help to escape Google’s sandbox (with Google who knows? one can only hope!) and Google seems to give preference to aged domains as opposed to new domains. I found a 3 year old domain on GoDaddy’s After Market for just $5 + registration fee that has one of my keywords in the name. I used a .com domain but a .net or another tld (top level domain) could work as well. I’d advise against using a .info domain! I checked that the site was still indexed by Google by searching for site:www.xxxx.com and I checked the age of the site using Whois Domain Tools.
Setting up the Site
I set up the site as explained by Court with my two keywords linking to the homepage in every post. I set up WordBay and made some pages with eBAy auctions. On some of the pages I linked to the home page using my keywords as the anchor text. I wrote 8 (so far) posts about the subject of the site. On the home page I put links to my eBay auction pages and extracts from my posts including my keywords. You need the keywords to be repeated 6-8 times on the home page but you need to have around 1000 words to prevent Google seeing it as keyword stuffing.
Set up the Auction Pages
I set up the auction pages with at least 100 words on each page before the auctions and linked some of the pages, using my keywords as anchor, back to the home page. It’s not always easy to write 100 words on each category or subcategory and it’s VERY boring but I forced myself to do it. In the past I’ve found a lot of pages dumped in the supplemental index by Google (I really need to find time to go back to those sites and write some more unique text!) so I’m hoping this will keep the pages in the main index.
Off Site SEO
Directory Submissions
This is the part I always find the hardest! I love setting up the sites but the most important part is getting backlinks. I paid for 400 directory submissions form a member of Digital Point Forum. I’ve used his service many times, he’s fast and reliable.for the main keyword, with the keyword text changed a little. For instance if my keyword was laptops (of course it’s not this would be impossible to rate highly for!) I used cheap laptops, laptops for sale, discount laptops etc as alternative keywords. I also did some deep linking for the second keyword to the appropriate page on my site. Directories take their time placing your entry so this will gather backlinks spread over the next few months.
Article Writing
I then wrote two articles to be submitted to article distribution sites. Ezine Articles is a good site to submit to, but doesn’t include submission to other sites. I rewrote the article to submit it to the free article distribution services Free Article Submission Service and the low cost service ($2 an article) at iSnare. The problem with the free services is that it takes a while to get your article accepted. So far I only have 1 article accepted. I intend to write some more articles when I get the time, two is not really enough!
Bookmarking the Sites
For more backlinks I submitted deep pages of the sites to bookmarking sites using Get Bookmarks. This takes a while to set up as you need to register with the bookmarking sites but once set up you can post bookmarks with one click.
Advertising
I also added some of the pages to Kaboodle and USFreeads. I’ve had a few visitors from USfreeads in the past and many more from Kaboodle but my main aim is to get more backlinks. If you’re making a UK site other good places to advertise are UK Classifieds(free)and Preloved ,which costs £20 a month, but it’s sending me lots of visitors to my UK site.
Results so far
Date set up June 28th
Keyword A
- visitors per day from #1 156
- Competing sites 6,300
- *AIA 3810
- **AIT 117
- Position after 2 days 219
- Position after 1 week 125
Keyword B
- visitors per day from #1 163
- Competing sites 4950
- AIA 2830
- AIT 114
- Position after 2 days 112
- Position after 1 week 106
*AIA all in anchor **AIT all in title
Visitors So Far (July 7th)
Google 23 Preloved 13
Table of contents for Keyword Sniping Experiment
- Experiment in Keyword Sniping
What tool are you using to see how far down you are in the rankings? I use one, but it only shows top 100.
Hi Micro Niches
I’m using Check top 1000 pagerank Google SERPs SEO tool
Nice info and u got a cool blog. Thanks for sharing.
I find that using multiple keywords on the pages still linking to other pages the way its done on wikipedia.
I am new to Search Engine Optimization. Thanks for helping get started in understanding some of the concepts.
Really nice info. I read it again and again to understand it very well. @micro SEOdigger is a great tool to know the keywords rank on your site.
Wow, those are some great tips. I have been focusing on a couple keywords per page. I think I might have to focus most of my time on just a few keywords for the entire site, and then expand from there
Thanks!
A very interesting approach. This one will require some consideration. While it works I’m not sold on the fact that it is the best way to go, unless you only have one product.
Hi A Tucson
You’ll still get hits for long tailed keywords while trying to optimise for the more competitive keywords which could take some time. I’m already getting hits on my site and have had about 200 visits from organic search engine traffic in 2 weeks.
Thank you for the idea to use aged domains. Its wise.
I am new to SEO and want to learn all new information and tools available.
Thank you for your help.
Really Great tips for SEO. I used Sheerseo tools to keywords ranks. IT is great tools
Isn’t counted in “Black Hat”? I think Google bots can sense it as they will get a repetition of keywords again and again. I am sorry if it will sounds “stupid” but I am not expert at SEO(I am just learning and learning).
Cool info. I am a new blogger and hope this will help me a lot. Thanks:)
thanks for seo information
really very good
Thanks for the help…I hope to utilize the utilities.
Nice post mate! You shared some important stuffs with us concerning keywords. Im always interested in this work of seo stuffs. lol. Thanks for sharing..keep it up!
Thank’s a lot for a really great information.
This a great tip, this information can make or break some sites. This is something I will start to implement in marketing plans.
Thanks for the post,
Matt Belock
Internet Based Business Opportunity
What a cool information! Thank you so much for the tips.
should be great to know if that work in a competitive market like loans and credits
Wow thanks soo much for these great tips!
I am new to Search Engine Optimization. Thanks for helping get started in understanding some of the concepts. Very informative article indeed. Keep it up.
Great information, Thank You for sharing……….
Thank you for the idea to use aged domains. Its wise. Good one
Very good post i really like the information that you have shared here
Good idea. We are also in the mist of optimizing a keyword per page for one of our new site. I believe it is rather a good way by creating individual pages for each keyword.
I think this is a very good piece of information for niched sites.
Cool stuff! thanks a lot and keep up the goodwork.
ya… to me its a lot easier and mangageable to focus on 2-3 keywords, instead of 4-10, which can be quite discouraging.
-Jake
I have been focusing on a couple keywords per page. I think I might have to focus most of my time on just a few keywords for the entire site, and then expand from there
How is the experiment doing so far? I’m trying out keyword sniping as well right now and trying to monetize through EPN with PHPBay Pro. My site was ranked as high as 4 for my chosen keyword, so it seems to be working
best of luck to you.
I really enjoy reading your blog. Keep up the good work.
Its good information about keywords using.
As far as i suggest Your Web site acts a great role in providing information to targated visitors. I recognize or rated it as excellent.
I thought he said look for searches between 50-200 searches/day? Also, I’m curious as to how long it is taking you to reach top 10 and I deal top 1-3. Thanks!
It is best to have a min of 3 - 5 keywords per page. This will achieve optimum results.
Thank you for sharing these plugins. I could really use some of them for my work. Keep it coming.
-M from Mexico
Thanks for sharing. Some great techniques to build backlinks
One of the best post!!
This post is very impressive.