Creating a niche site isn’t difficult, Seo isn’t difficult , Keyword research isn’t difficult so why do we all (myself included) make things so difficult that we sometimes struggle to get it right?

What’s difficult about creating a site? Install WordPress with a few clicks of a button, add a simple theme , add some plugins that do things we need then add content.  Voila that’s it… why the hell did I then spend 2 hours yesterday getting a header in the right place on a blog and reorganizing the sidebar?

Have a look at the quote below, can you guess when I wrote that?  last month? last year when panda hit?  Wrong I wrote that back in  2007

Taking things back to basics also means you can react to situations quicker, if Google tweaks their algorithm again. Also by keeping things simple you are doing what the search engines want you to do. Which do you think Google finds more appropriate a wordpress blog updated 3 or 4 times a week with unique content or a generated site with multiple pages of PLR content and random rss feeds added?
Read more: http://mjthompson.net/57/want-to-make-money-online-the-keep-it-simple

Lets all make an effort to build a blog this week and keep it simple I mean really simple. Then see how it performs.

Keyword Research

Find 3 keywords that you think you can write about without much effort.

Forget finding a specific number of searches, thats irrelevant, what counts is how much you’ll make when someone clicks on an Adsense ad so take the number of searches and multiply it by the adsense CPC.   If it comes to $3000 or more consider it.  Look at the top 10 results in google, have they been updated recently?  Do they look very professional?  Do they have loads of social media interaction.

If the answer is no to all 3 then Use the keyword.

Create Your Site

Set up Wordpress and Use the 2011 theme, put a recent posts widget in the sidebar and add no more than 6 plugins.  Choose wisely!

Create Content

Write 3 articles based around your 3 keywords.  Post them to your blog.  Now set aside 30 minutes every day for the next month (5 days a week) to write one article per keyword.  Don’t worry about article length just make sure you create good content.

Simplify SEO

We are going to keep this simple, no more than 15 minutes a day.

First off get your onsite seo as good as you can so one of those plugins should be an SEO plugin

When you write a post, link to it in Facebook, Google + Linkedin. Tweet about it, and do some blog commenting. Take one of the articles you posted on your blog the previous week and post it to an article directory BUT link it to a new article (not the same article).

Do the things you have forgotten about, Article Marketing , Yahoo answers, press releases, use forum signatures etc.

Read Store Coaches Insanely simple seo plan for ideas and adapt it to your situation

Without further ado (whatever that means), here’s my insanely simple SEO plan:

• Post at least once a week in 2 different authority forums in your market
• Post as a “researching shopper” in 2 forums per month
• Answer at least 1 ‘Yahoo Answers’ question a week
• Post 1 article a month on an authority article directory
• Post 1 press release a month
• Post once a week on your on-site blog
• Post once a week on your off-site blog
• Get at least 5 social network links per month
• Get at least 2 “personal or hobby site” links per month
• Get at least 1 guest article posted per month

Using this plan & this plan alone you should be able to get to the top of Google for your targeted keyword phrase

Once your keywords are researched and your site is built then you only need to focus on 2 things content creation and then SEO. Get up 30 minutes earlier and go to bed 30 minutes later and you have all the time you need.  Take time when you are sat on a bus or train or drinking a coffee to jot down ideas for articles or indeed write the articles.

Keep it simple and i think you’ll be surprised at the results.

When I first started all that you needed to get a site ranked well was a bit of link building and a few keywords in the header of your site. Those times are long gone as As we found out when we did the SEO Debunked case studies there is a lot more involved in getting your sites ranking high in google.

There are 3 main aspects that you need to focus on.

On Page SEO – Thats basically creating good quality content and making sure that you have good basic SEO, keywords H1 tags and a sensible keyword density (I look for 0.75% to 1% anything more can look like keyword stuffing and read badly)

Off Page SEO – Basically your backlinks . You don’t need hundeds of poor quality links. Try for good a handful of good quality links a week you’ll be surprised at how well they can help you rank.

Social Signals – Under estimate this at you peril.

As I said in the first line of this post times change, more and more weight is being put on social signales by google.  Put yourself in Googles shoes for a moment, they know that people have the ability to build links on an industrial basis. I can go and have 20,000 verified links by tomorrow to this post for $75 or 500,000 unverified for $39.95.  So why should google pay any attention to links?

What would you do in Googles position?  Look for some other indicators that you are connecting with your readers?   thats what i’d do.

They have several metrics they can use  Bounce rate & time on site to name just two BUT they can also track social signals.

How many tweets does a post have, how many times is it liked in Facebook, how many plus 1′s does it have , how many comments etc etc.

What I am trying to say here is you need to manage your social signals, just as much as you manage on page and off page seo.

Once you start to manage them you can start to ensure you get exactly  the social signals you need  For example  If you want to find out how I would get 500,000 links in a day (if I was stupid enough to try it click on the like button below and all will be revealed… literally!

To manage them you need to track them.  Watch the video below to see how I track them and how I’ll be ensuring that I manage all the social signals properly to help me rank higher.

If you like to know more about Social Metrics Pro  then just click here

If you like it and buy through my link 2 things will happen ..

1.  I might earn some commission from the sale.. thank you

2. If you send me your receipt via the helpdesk I’ll send you a free report I am creating about social signals and why they are important and how you can get them.

Finally don’t forget to send out some social signals by sharing this post and commenting… you know you want to!

(Listen to the interview below …it might just change the way you think about Backlinks)

If you’ve been paying attention you’ll have noticed thatIam running an SEO competition. As a resultIam working hard every day making sureIresearch as much about what is working in sep at the moment and what’s not.

It’s pointless just taking what people say about SEO for granted ,Ilearned a long time ago that the only way to get the truth about whats working is to do it yourself or look at case studies that people have published.

One thing that I’ve long suspected is that back linking is not as effective as it once was, it’s obviously really once everyone starts building massive amounts of back links google are going to penalize them in some way.

A few weeks backIpicked up a report from a guy called Casey Case who got a Keyword to the first page of google in 11 days and number 1 in 39 days. 2 months later he’s still in number 1 spot.

usually in these type of case studies the keyword is one that’s easy to rank for …Not in this case. Casey went up against some big and small companies and got there with just 70 back links . Some of his competitors had thousands of links and sites that were 12 years old.

Casey beat them by focusing on a few key tactics he’s picked up over the past year.  There is one tactic that will change the way your front page looks forever!

I was originally only going to release the interview to the people taking part in the Seo competition butIreally think this should be shared among as many people as possible.

Don’t worry it’s only 15 minutes long and gets straight to the point.

If you like what you heard and would like to read cases report it will cost you less that $10 and might just be the best investment you make this year…especially if you are building thousands of backlinks!  Casey Case SEO DeMystified

The first is a WordPress backup plugin that uploads to your Amazon S3 account.  Amazon S3 is an online storage facility provides by amazon that will cost you cents to implement, it really is a great option for backups at a cost that won’t break the bank. The plugin is called Automatic WordPress Backup and is available  for free.  If you value your blogs then you really should be backing them up and an automatic system like this is ideal.

The second Plugin is one that was developed by a member of the wordpress Goldmine forum in response to a problem we identified there.  Last month I posted a video which showed how sites like ezinearticles often failed to get all your articles indexed. You can read it and watch the video at: http://mjthompson.net/445/are-you-an-article-marketer/

As a result you are wasting up to half your articles as they weren’t getting back-links or generting traffic for you. You were literally throwing money away.

Peter developed an indexing plugin that fixed this problem, not only for ezinearticles but anyplace where you have content and a feed.  By simply adding your feed to the plugin you will help get those articles indexed quickly,  when they are indexed the plugin ignores them and moves onto the next article. Pure genius!

However thats not all as a bonus you get what is by far my favorite plugin at the moment. Install it in your blog and It will tell you what keywords are used to find your blog AND where you rank in google for that keyword. Allowing you to focus on promoting the keywords that matter.

You can get details Of peters plugins at: Indexing Tool

Here is  a short Video that will show you the Plugins in more detail

I’ve been recommending Micro Niche Finder to my members and subscribers for several years now. yesterday there was an update that makes it a complete and total no brainer. If you want to make money online micro Niche Finder will now make the job so much easier. In the video below it takes me less than 10 minutes to find a Niche i can rank at #1 for with very little work.

The key things you need to make money quickly are:

A niche with searches and very little competition.

A keyword based domain name

An indication of how much work you need to do to rank well.

MNF now delivers this with a few clicks of a button. Watch the video below where I find a good niche in a few minutes.

Once you find your niche there are several things you can do , expand it into a site with 5 to 10 related pages and work on getting all of them ranking well or why not try the simple and easy option. Create Micro Micro niches.

Micro Micro Niches are small sites that start out with just 1 or 2 pages. You create them then leverage your content until you rank #1 in google. You can then either leave them or add to them using the keywords that have been used to find your site. They are quick and simple sites that are designed to make you money , base them on the keyword phrase you are targetting and use good on page seo and they will rank well in a short time.

If you’d like to know how to leverage your content then grab my free report from this post Article Leverage Report

First I suppose I had better let you know what my views on back linking were before I started.  I believed that all the talk about the power of back links was over rated and just something that SEO guys kept on promoting as they know normal people like us just can’t be bothered to do on a regular basis. I can pretty much generate all the traffic I want by choosing the right keywords , the right Domain,good on site SEO and writing the right sort of articles, so I have never really bothered with it.

So has my view changed in the last 6 weeks??  No not much.

I will admit that there is a place for “good quality” back links for long term results and I will admit that ” poor quality” back links will give you a boost in the short term.

So let’s look at types of back links and see if they have any long term value because long term is where you’ll make your money. It’s great having a site making $5 a day for a month because you got some back links to it but what you should want is a site that makes $5 every day for the next few years.

Back Link Packets.

I am sure most of you know what I am referring to here. Monthly lists of High PR sites that allow “do follow” links. They do work short term, every site I promoted with them had a big jump in rankings to start with. Often from the 200′s to the top 20 or 30. With these you could probably get a site into the top 10 of Google for most easy  difficulty search terms. But you can also probably do that with a few good articles.

Long term they don’t have much of a future and may even eventually damage your sites ranking. Google is not stupid they know what’s going on with these and they can instantly devalue the links. Many of the site owners aren’t stupid either and can quickly make your links worthless. Nor are the software developers stupid, want to bet the next version of the software they release uses “No follow”

The number of sites I look at that have posted links based on these packets but have no good on site seo is amazing I would say that 70%-80% aren’t optimized. By spending 10 miuntes optimizing the sites they would probably rank higer than they do with bad optimization and loads of back links.. Remember The O in SEO means OPTIMIZATION!!! If that’s not a clue nothing is!!

I do use these at the moment but am planning on cutting back and concentrating more permanent methods of getting back links.

Link Directories:

The less said the better about these. In the main low quality links and you have no control over what other sites are linking from the same site. Do you really want a link from a site with 80% porn and meds links? Avoid like the plague!

Social networking/Social book marking sites:

Generally good quality links and can give extra juice by using the link wheel method. They not only generate links but traffic as well and can be integrated into an article marketing strategy. Unfortunately getting Links is not easy and takes time and effort, not a bad thing because it keeps a lot of the spammers away.However there are ways of automating it and still getting good quality long lasting links. More of that another time after I’ve shared my methods with the WordPress Goldmine members.

BTW in case you are wondering if the methods I teach in WordPress Goldmine work, here is part of an email I received today.  The funny thing is , I’ve not done any SEO work on that site as of yet!!

For starters congratulations on some outstanding SEO work. That is actually the reason for my email. I am a hard working entrepreneur who is having the hardest time getting my website on the 1st page of Goggle.

I was sadly burned 3 times by SEO companies, and I just feel so close in giving up. But then I came across you and your site and if I am not mistaken, you are ranked so well on Google yet your site is new, and doesn’t seem to have an overload of back links and you are in a pretty competitive niche.

So to summarize do you need hundreds of back links? It depends on the competition, your keywords and the Domain name. There is no straight answer, but before you set out to get hundreds of low quality back links first ensure that all your on site SEO is set up properly on a page by page basis. Once you have that sorted , you’ll find where you rank, then you can plan your back linking strategy.