The Extra Money Blog

How to Execute On Page SEO on Web Pages Vs. Blog Posts to Achieve a 100% Score

Many website and blog owners often don’t fully optimize web pages and blog posts because there are several components to achieving 100% on page SEO.

As a result, their web properties struggle to attract free, organic, long term and targeted search engine traffic. For example, many bloggers are successful blogging but only until they continue to blog. What happens when they stop producing content?

The traffic stops coming in and so do the advertisement deals (the #1 way most average bloggers make money online).  A well optimized blog or website on the other hand can generate free, targeted traffic for a long time well into the future, forming the basis for a residual income stream.

There are numerous challenges at play here. First, many don’t know what SEO is and what it really can do for them. Those that do may confuse on-page SEO and off-page SEO (search engine marketing).  Those that do get what on page SEO is may not know how to fully execute it.  And finally, those that execute it may not be executing it as well as they should.

Moreover, blogs have an inherent limitation when compared to static niche websites when it comes to “on page” search engine optimization (SEO).  On page SEO refers to the stuff that you physically do to a web page or blog post, whether it is the visible content, or the back-end content (code) that is not visible to the human eyes).  I will discuss this limitation later in this post.

And as if this material isn’t already convoluted enough, add to that the fact that is there even such a thing as 100% optimization? If so, according to who?

Every web page or blog post that you publish gets an on page SEO score from search engines.  Only search engines know this score, and it evolves over time as their search algorithms change.  However, representatives of major search engines (i.e. Matt Cutts of Google) give enough public guidance to deduce what consists of good SEO.

In order to maximize the chances for your web page or post to rank on page one of search engines, you must do all you can to optimize your published material.  There are other off-page Internet marketing strategies you can engage in as well, but this post will only focus on the on page SEO characteristics. In other words, actions you can take that directly pertain to your webpage’s or blog post’s content and code.

The on page SEO components involve the keyword you will be targeting, the post or web page’s file name (slugs), meta data, page headings, keyword density within the content and anchor text linking.

Let’s look at each one of these in detail.

Keyword Targeting is the Foundation of On Page SEO

Any SEO starts with effective keyword research and keyword selection.  Though you can target any particular keyword you want, targeting one that is highly searched for or popular will bring you more traffic providing you can rank on page one of search engines.

There are Internet marketers that will attempt to target a dozen keywords or even more in each post or webpage they publish.  Super optimization is tough because your attention starts to shift away from your human reader in the interest to forcefully include keyword that may unfavorably affect the way your content reads.

Excessive and repetitive keyword usage may also be penalized by Google as “keyword stuffing”.  Search engines are only getting more sophisticated, which is also a big reason I am not in favor of this strategy. When I attended the Google webmasters conference, it was widely agreed upon by website owners and bloggers that one should limit targeted keyword usage to five keywords per content piece.

What I do for my niche websites is exactly that. From the keyword research I conduct, I choose a set of five related keywords to target in a single content piece.  Of those five, one serves as the main keyword for that content piece, while the other four are “supplemental keywords”.  More discussion on this below…

You can read more about the keywords in my post on why keyword research is critical to your success online here.

Optimizing Your File Name (WordPress Slugs)

File name refers to the name or the unique identifier of your content piece.  For example, www.dubai-information-site.com/dubai-flights.html is a unique URL that pertains only to that respective webpage.

The two components of your content piece’s unique identifier or URL are the main URL of your website or blog, which in this case is www.dubai-information-site.com, and the actual file name which is dubai-flights.html.

So how do you optimize the file name? Simple.  Make it the main keyword of that particular webpage or blog post.  In this example, the main keyword targeted in this content piece is “Dubai Flights”, and thus the file name.

As I wrote about in my post about the best domain name for your website from an SEO perspective, including your main keyword in anything you do is important. There is much debate about separating words with dashes rather than underscores or nothing at all from an SEO perspective so I won’t get into that much. Suffice it to say that I have several niche websites that are on page one whose domains contain dashes, while I also have sites on page one that have domains with no dashes.

Optimizing Meta Data (Meta Tags) – The Meat of On Page SEO

Once you have the file name of your post determined, it is time to optimize the meta tags of your webpage or blog post.  If you don’t know what meta tags are or where on your website or blog you can find and edit these, you will appreciate why my blog’s SEO is so good.  Getting the meta tags right is the most critical component of on page SEO.

There are three important meta tags that you must include your keywords in, the title tag, keyword tag and the description tag.  There are some very specific guidelines for each of these fields if you want to maximize your on-page SEO.  Let’s look at each in detail.

Title Tag – Your title tag must include your main keyword once and only once, preferably to start off the title.  The title tag of our sample webpage is “Dubai Flights – Dubai Airfares, Airline Tickets to Dubai”.

As you can see, the main keyword “Dubai Flights” starts off the title of this page.  Further, you can see that the title is limited to 56 characters. I am actually “underutilizing” the title tag’s potential because you get more characters for this field.

The accepted norm on title tag length is typically between 67-70 characters. Anything more than that is either ignored, or penalized by search engines, especially if you are “keyword stuffing” it.  Moreover, your human reader will not be able to read a lengthy title because it cuts off right at the 67-70 mark when displayed in Google search results.  Here is an example of how the title looks to the human reader:

Notice how my competitor’s title is cut off?  4 out of these 6 search results are links to my website.  Notice that none of my title tags are cut off and that they look much cleaner to the human eye?

Keyword Tag – Your keyword meta tag is where you would include the five keywords that you are targeting in your content piece.  The important thing to remember here is to include your MAIN keyword first, followed by the four supplemental keywords separated by commas.

Here is how the keyword tag looks like for our sample webpage:

Notice that the main keyword “Dubai Flights” in the beginning, followed by the four supplemental keywords I chose to target in this content piece (the rest are cut off because I had to crop the image size).  Also notice how the supplemental keywords are directed related to the main keyword.  This helps search engines gauge the relevancy of your content piece to what web surfers are wanting to read when they type in certain key terms when they search the Internet.

Description Tag – Your description meta tag is what readers see when they see your webpage or blog post listed in search engine search results.  It looks like the tag underneath the keyword tag (see above).

Notice how the main keyword is included in the description tag? Also notice how some of the four supplemental keywords are included.  As much as you can, try to include all five keywords in your description tag without sacrificing the quality of how the content reads.

You are not required to include all five for SEO purposes, but you are required to include your main keyword, preferably as early as possible in the tag.  The rule of thumb for description tag length is 160-170 characters.  Anything more than that is not visible to a web surfer’s eyes.  Notice in the above image showing the search listings in Google how some of the listings have their descriptions cut off? Yes, including some of the links to my website.

Optimizing Page Headings

Your page heading is the title of your content piece which is visible to the human reader when they are reading your content page.  Here is what the heading looks like for our sample web page.

As you can see the main keyword is included in this heading / page title.  Why is this important?  Because to make the text appear big and bold, the HTML code that is used is typically the heading tag, which looks like < h >.

This alarms the search engine spiders to put emphasis on what’s in between those tags and heightens the important of the content in it.  It is critical that you have at least one page heading, preferably at the beginning of your webpage.

This is how the code of the heading looks behind the scenes to the search engines.  Anytime you want to see a web page’s background / HTML code, simply navigate to the “view” menu (usually on the top left of your browser) and select “view source” or “page source”. In Chrome, just hit Ctrl + U and the code will pop up.

Yes, you can spy on other websites and blogs to see what they are doing so well that is getting them ranked higher on search engines.

Final note on headings.  There are a variety of heading tags, h1, h2, h3 and so forth.  h1 is typically the one that looks the largest to the eyes, and the one that search engines heavily favor most.  Try to use h1 in your on page SEO efforts. Further, include it in the beginning of your content piece (to start it off) like the example above shows.  The image above also shows a sample h2 sub-heading.

Getting Keyword Density Right

At this point you should have your solid set of five keywords to target, a file name saved for your content piece, all the meta tags filled out and the most critical heading of your webpage or blog post.  The next step is to optimize the keyword density of the content piece.

Keyword density refers to the weight of your targeted keywords in relation to your entire content piece.  It is very important to get this correct.  Not having enough keywords in your content piece will not maximize your on page SEO efforts, while including too many will cause search engines to penalize you for keyword stuffing.

What’s the right balance? Depending on who you ask the answer varies between 1-3%.  I keep mine in the 1-2% ballpark.  This means that I use my main keyword 5-8 times at best for every 500 words of content.  In addition to the main keyword, I insert my supplemental keyword at least once within those 500 words.

The number of times I include the supplemental keywords don’t change as the words increase (you can however). However, I do increase the frequency of the main keyword as my content piece’s keywords increase.

Anchor Text Linking

Finally to conclude each content piece, you need a link from the content piece back to your website or blog’s main home page, which is the index.html file.  Why is this important?  It is important because your main URL or homepage is what you want to eventually propel into the first page of search engines.

By linking all pages of your website back to your homepage, you are not only ensuring that you pass page rank juice (popularity) upward, but you are also ensuring that all your web pages are “tied together” by linking all of them to the homepage.  This makes it much easier for search engine spiders to crawl your website in its entirety. Read how you should really structure your website here for effective on page SEO results.

Not executing this step is one of the most common reasons why people have trouble getting all their web pages indexed / listed on search engines.  This is also a big reason why many are not benefiting from their on page SEO efforts as much as they have the potential to.

Similarly to linking back to the home page, you should also link back to the web page from where your current content page originated from.  If your current content page is going to be a link directly from your home page (what I call a tier 2 page), then you don’t need to take this extra step to optimize your content page.

But if your current content page is a page within a tier 2 page that is linked to the home page, you must link back not only to the home page, but also the tier 2 content page for the same reasons discussed above.

In our example, one of the links from the Dubai Flights page is a link to a Travel to Dubai page.

There is a very specific way you should link from your current content page to the home page and tier 2 page.  Make sure your main keyword is part of the text you use to link to the home page.  Further, ensure that the link also includes the main keyword of your home page.  Do the same for the link to the tier 2 page.

Let’s look at the Travel page, which is a tier 3 page (which means that this page resulted from the Travel page which was a page directly linked to the home page).

Notice how there are two links to conclude the page. One link points to the tier 2 page from which this tier 3 page came from, while another link links back to the website’s home page.  Notice the anchor text usage.  These links successfully utilize the main keyword that each page is targeted for.

A word of caution here:  Including your page’s main keyword in a link more than twice in the same page will raise a big red flag and will get you penalized by search engines.  Not doing so all together will kill you from an SEO perspective.  This is a critical step to conclude your on-page SEO efforts.

Inherent SEO Limitations to Optimize Blog Posts

While each step discussed above can easily be implemented in a niche website, as you can imagine by now it is not as easily “executable” for a blog.  Why?  The structure of a blog is not really conducive to the interlinking efforts I’ve discussed above. Further, the file names, URL, permalink structure of blog posts are not as ideal for on page SEO purposes.

Another challenge with a blog is that posts are written with a more natural flow of words.  Blogging is like chatting to most bloggers (I know it is to me), so it becomes more difficult to get the keyword density component of it right without sounding unnatural to your readers.

You can implement many of the strategies discussed in this article to achieve maximum on page SEO, but you may have to revisit each post or page with SEO specifically in mind, spend a bit more time implementing the strategies and ensure your density is correct. In short, it is more difficult to pre plan a fully optimized blog post in advance relative to a static webpage on a niche website.

That said, it is doable.  After all, a blog post is just another webpage on the Internet.  You will definitely see your on page SEO efforts pay off whether you build a niche website or a blog.  However, a blog may get you 90% of the way there, whereas a static website may get you there completely.

This is why I prefer a niche content website over a blog purely from an on page SEO perspective.  This is a big reason I am able to rank a niche website high on search engines quicker and much longer.  I have websites that have been on page one for over 3 years now consistently earning a healthy passive income for me month after month.

You can also read a PhD professionals expert opinion on why niche websites are better than blogs for SEO and making money online here.

An Automated Tool to Streamline the SEO Process

I know that all this information can be overwhelming.  It can also be difficult ensuring that you execute each step correctly in your on page SEO efforts.  What’s helped me over the years however is the Site Build It! automated tool that I use.

The tool not only reminds me of each step of the process while I build my web pages and blog posts, but also tells me what I have not done correct and what specific changes I need to implement to obtain a full 100% on page SEO score.

I can use the tool “unlimitedly”.  I make the tweaks recommended by the tool and re run the program (screening process) until it has indicated that I have optimized every single aspect of my webpage.

Here is an example of how this tool looks:

I simply input the information in the relevant box and hit the “Analyze It!” button.  A sample report looks like the following:

Notice the scoring system? Notice the specific instructions? The tool not only tells me what is wrong, but also why and what I need to do to fix it.  After making tweaks, I can re run the Analyze function until I get a report that looks like this:

Only after getting such a report do I move forward with publishing my webpage.   This is a one and done approach in that after you go through it, you will never have to touch that particular page again from an on page SEO perspective.

I also use this tool for my non SBI sites.  I copy paste the information in the fields and run the Analyze function and keep tweaking until I achieve a full on page SEO score. Once I do, I simply take the information and use it on Dreamweaver, WordPress or whatever other website platform I am building my site on.

This tool is best for websites, and although you can make it work for blogs, the best comparable tool for blogs is Traffic Travis, which I use to optimize my niche sites that are built on the WordPress platform.  It is a built in tool that automatically flags the “flaws” in your content and gives you suggestions to achieve a full on page SEO score for your posts and pages.

Alternatives to the Site Build It! Tool

There are some alternatives to using the SBI tool, but they are more costly and limiting in their functionality.  For example, there are paid WordPress plug-ins that will help you optimize your blog posts, but these services cost anywhere from $49 a month and upwards.  That is a minimum of near $600 per year.

SBI on the other costs only $299, but the best part is that it comes with a full suite of tools, not only an on page SEO tool.  For example, SBI comes with a built in keyword research tool, which is what I used to use before Market Samurai when brainstorming website concepts and composing blog posts.

This keyword research tool is just as good as Market Samurai, in fact it was the first and largest of its kind, but I would never subscribe to it on a stand-alone basis because it comes with an expensive monthly subscription cost.  Market Samurai on the other hand costs only a one-time fee.  However, SBI provides this tool built in for free, which is why I use it.

What is also God sent with SBI is the suite’s automatic updates of the search algorithms.  The company backing up SBI dedicates a full staff on monitoring search engines and changes that take place in the algorithms.  This ensures that you are always up to date on leading industry practices in on page SEO.

For example, if Google changes its rules on keyword density, or the title tag, or the interlinking rules, you wouldn’t have to worry about learning about the changes and then making changes to adopt to it. Rather, SBI will do this for you.  When you run your content piece by the on page SEO tool discussed above, SBI will tell you what changes to make in order to fully optimize your webpage or blog post.  This feature alone makes the suite worthwhile having.

Another benefit of SBI when using it to build niche sites is its ability to automatically generate and submit a brand new sitemap to search engines each time you make a chance to your website such as adding a new content page.  Many don’t realize the importance of this and what they are missing out by not having this functionality.   You can read more about my thoughts on the importance of a site map generation and submission process here.

Finally, SBI also provides full service hosting, your own domain name and industry leading customer support all inclusive in the $299 package.  Do the math and add up the cost of a domain, hosting, keyword tool, on page SEO checker plugins and what have you.  Add to that the coaching and other behind the scene tools you get with SBI and it starts sounding like a great deal.

As a “busy” individual who wanted to establish passive income streams on the side, SBI was and still is the perfect tool for me to accomplish my goal.  I didn’t want to waste time learning about every single component of website building and marketing and then try it out to see if it’d work for me.  SBI helps you eliminate all the learning curves and get straight to content creation while it takes care of everything else.

With all that said, I have just scratched the surface of what else SBI offers.  For me, there is no single best tool to build niche websites than the SBI suite.

Concluding Thoughts

I hope you found this post helpful in your efforts to better optimize your web pages and blog posts.  I know the information can be overwhelming, but it is not impossible to implement all the on page SEO steps effectively.  You can do this manually, or by utilizing tools that expedite the process because you don’t have to worry about learning all the technicalities.

I felt like diving into the technical details so you become familiar with what goes into it behind the scenes.  By no means should you feel however that you need to know this information.

It is good to have the right tools at your disposal to help you maximize benefits from your on page SEO efforts as you create your web content. However, by no means I am saying that you absolutely have to have these tools.  You can definitely execute sound SEO without spending a dime by implementing the steps discussed in this article.  Tools are meant to make our lives easier, save us time and many times overcome the fear of the unknown.

For me, it is nice to resources to help me execute the process, especially when the tools I use are so cost effective relative to the value I get out of them.  My SBI sites pay for themselves quickly after having built them, thus yielding profits relatively early in the process.

Even if you don’t utilize tools in your online entrepreneurial initiatives, learning the proper way to optimize web pages and blog posts is critical to your long term success. Practice implementing the principles discussed in this article until they become second nature (and yes they will be).

Once they are, you can apply these principles in anything else you do online, as well as teach them to others on a consulting basis, or train your own staff like I did who now helps me optimize and market my niche websites on the internet.

Readers: Do you have any questions about the on page SEO methods discussed in this article?  What are you doing to ensure your web properties are fully optimized?  What tools are you using and how are they performing for you?  Most importantly, would you rather take the time to go through learning all the components of online business before implementing them or would you prefer an easier route to bypass the technicalities and focus on what you do best, which is to create content for your own niche or business.

How to Get Your Web Pages & Blog Posts Quickly in the Search Engine Index

Here is how I get in a search engine index in less than 24 hours.

Each time I publish a web page or a blog post, I can usually find my page listed in Google’s search engine index within a day.

Getting your web pages and blog posts in Google’s search engine index quickly is not a difficult task, but it does require some work on your part.  For those who have published web pages ages ago but are still not indexed, I am certain that this back linking strategy will help your page break into Google’s search engine index.

The PR Juice Flow Back Linking Strategy

I call this back linking strategy the PR juice flow strategy because you are essentially transferring page rank (PR) from a popular website to your website, thus alarming the search engines of your existence so they can include you in their search engine index.

This strategy is a lot easier and less time consuming to execute that the link wheel back link building strategy.  Whereas in a link wheel you close a loop between multiple websites, this strategy only requires you obtain back links from one popular website.

How to Get Your WebPages in the Search Engine Index

Select a page on your website that you are having difficulty getting listed in the search engine index.  Spin the content or write a new content piece of approximately 500 words all together.

Open an account with a popular article directory such as EzineArticles or a web 2.0 property like TypePad and submit your article for inclusion.  Your article must have two links in it, one to your website’s main page or home page, and one to the specific web page that you are having a difficulty getting indexed or listed on search engines.

Use specific keywords as the underlying text (called anchor text) to link out from your article to your website and web pages. The anchor text that you use should be the main keyword of the page you are linking to.  The best way to demonstrate this is to walk through an example.

This is one of the articles I submitted to EzineArticles to get one of my web page’s indexed.

Notice the two links on the bottom of this article.  The key phrase care of lucky bamboo plants links to the webpage on my website that is targeted to rank for that keyword, while the key phrase growing bamboo links to the home page of the website.  I am trying to get the website to rank for “growing bamboo”.

I plan on writing about what the main keyword of a specific web page is in a post on optimizing web pages and blog posts in the near future.  It is important that you utilize the main keyword in your back link building efforts for maximum benefit. This not only ensures you get into the search engine index, but also improves your web property’s overall search engine optimization.

Why Deep Linking?

The act of linking to web pages within your website is called deep linking. Conventional link building methods only emphasize linking back to the home page of your website, which is not wrong. However, one is leaving a lot on the table by not implementing deep linking in my opinion and experience over the years.

When you are deep linking in addition to linking back to your website’s home page, you are flowing page rank from the website you are linking from to the specific web pages on your website.  When you do this for all individual web pages on your website, you are building your website’s overall popularity.  If you are going to resort to article submission to get into a search engine index, you might as well spend an extra thirty seconds including a deep link to your website also. Why? Because of the cumulative push-up effect.

Always think about your website as a pyramid, where your home page is the tip and the web pages are the underlying base. As each web page gets listed in a search engine index and develops page rank or popularity over time, all of the web pages together collectively push your home page rank higher in search engine search results.

Sitemap Generation and Submission

The PR juice flow back link building strategy works like a charm and works very fast.  Another way to ensure you get into a search engine index  quickly is by generating and submitting a sitemap to search engines each time you make a change to your website or blog.

The sitemap generation and submission process helps tremendously, but comes with its own set of challenges.  It is time consuming and inconvenient to recreate and submit a new sitemap each time you edit your website.

If you are on a blog platform such as WordPress, there are plugins available that help you automate this process for a blog. However, I have only found one tool that allows you this automation with a static website.  Building and submitting a sitemap each time you update a website can be a big pain, and not doing so can hurt your website’s performance. Read how you can overcome this challenge easily here.

In conclusion, this strategy is best and quickest if you are having a hard time getting some of your web pages listed in a search engine index. A quick article submission to a reputable article directory or web 2.0 property with the appropriate back linking structure should get your webpage indexed in less than 24 hours.  Give it a shot and see how it works for you.

Readers: Do you have experience with this back link building methodology to get into the search engine index? What has your experience been like? What other back linking strategy has worked best for you?

How to Build an Effective Website Structure: The Pyramid Model

One of key reasons I attribute the success of my niche websites to is building an effective website structure following the Pyramid Model.  In case you are wondering, the “Pyramid Model” is not a phrase commonly used in the web development community, at least not to my knowledge.

I have coined this method a pyramid because a website built with this method looks just like one.  Hang with me and you will see why I say this, as well as why this method of building a website structure is so effective.

If you are wondering how a website can look like a pyramid, well….it can’t, not to the naked eye at least. The pyramid I am referring to is the underlying website structure, or what I call the design blueprint or infrastructure.

Just like architects first need to layout a blueprint for a house before building it, successful internet entrepreneurs who make money online from niche websites build out the website structure before putting together the actual website.

The Significance of a Pyramid Model

Laying out a website structure before embarking on development enables you to do a few key things:

1)     It allows conceptualization of the website before it’s even done, therefore allowing you (the entrepreneur) to plan better.  Planning can refer to your presentation, soft selling, call to action and implementation of your monetization method mix.

2)     It allows you to line up keywords that are closely interrelated and benefit from relevant interlinking within your website.  Interlinking passes page rank from one page to another.  It is one of the most unknown, underestimated and underutilized on page SEO strategies.  It is extremely effective in my experience of building successful niche websites.

3)     It keeps your visitors on your site longer.  Because of content relativity, your visitors are more likely to click the links within and stay on your website.

4)     Most importantly, it allows you to strategically build your website in a way where the content pages that are focused on keywords that are easy to rank for collectively push your homepage up on search engine rankings.  Because this is the primary benefit of an effective website structure, this post will mainly focus on what you can do to take advantage of this strategy.

How to Build an Effective Website Structure?

You likely already know that effective keyword research is the most critical component of building a niche website.  I won’t be focusing on keyword research in this post.  If you are not familiar with this topic and terms such as keyword supply, demand and profitability, I highly recommend you read my post on keyword research before you continue reading this post.

For the purposes of this post, I will assume that you have already decided on a niche and have a set of keywords to work with from your keyword research initiative, including the main keyword of your website’s topic.

The main keyword, which I also refer to as your “website theme keyword” is what your website is all about. For example, in my niche site on Bamboo Plants, the main keyword or phrase is “bamboo plant care”.

Similarly, “paintball” is the main keyword of my niche site Paintball Tips.  Why didn’t I provide this example first? Because one-word website theme keywords are typically very hard to rank high for and can take light years.

I don’t mean to discourage you.  It is possible and I have done it repeatedly, but I wouldn’t recommend it for someone new to building niche websites.  Targeting such keywords is a very ambitious approach, one that requires a lot of training, initiative and perseverance.  The rewards can be mind blowing however as you can imagine.  Save this project for later.  For now, let’s focus on the low hanging fruit, the Bamboo website.

So assuming you have your main site keyword decided on (based on whatever method or strategy you are employing) and some relevant supplemental keywords to build your website around, the next thing you need to do is rank and re order the list of keywords in a structure that resembles a pyramid.

What is the Pyramid Model of Building Websites?

I want you to envision a pyramid and visualize its tip and its base.  Imagine the tip as the home page of your website and imagine the base as the rest of the content of your website.  We will call the tip Tier 1 or T1.

Notice how the area below the tip and above the base is larger than the tip but smaller than the base? This also represents content on your website, but because it is the middle layer, we will call this Tier 2 or T2 content.  The base therefore is Tier 3 or T3 content.  It is important to remember this analogy when reordering and organizing your keywords.

Now, think of each of your keywords as either a T1, T2 or a T3 keyword.  You will be organizing your keywords in one of the three buckets.  Your T1 keyword is your website’s main keyword, the keyword you are trying to rank on Page One for.

T2 keywords are all the relevant keywords to your main keyword that have a relatively healthy search demand (search queries entered in search engines), while T3 keywords are ones that have a relatively low demand compared to your T1 and T2 keywords.  Often times, your T1 keyword will have the most search demand, but also the most competition (number of competing websites on the internet) and therefore the toughest to rank for on Page One.

This is what an effective website structure looks like when done.  I use an excel spreadsheet, nothing fancy.  As you can see, it involves some research, prep work and some brain power, however when you have your website structure ready in blueprint format, you have pretty much defined the structure of your website and are ready to build.  Building the website is actually the easy part.

Using this website structure I am able to build the website infrastructure that is needed to get my website on page one of google for its main target or theme keyword.

I want to highlight a few things on this image (the blueprint). Each one of the keywords you see on this spreadsheet represents a single, individual webpage on my website. Notice how the keywords are grouped.  They are grouped by relevancy, as well as according to the pyramid concept discussed above.

For example, notice the T3 keyword “how to grow bamboo” with a demand of 2,321 monthly searches.  Notice how it is grouped with one other similar T3 keyword, both of which support the T2 keyword “growing bamboo”. There is a good reason for that which I will discuss below.

But before moving on, I want to show you how this looks on the website itself.  Fire up the bamboo plant care website and notice the tab on the left hand navigation menu titled “Growing Bamboo”.

This webpage is optimized for the T2 keyword “growing bamboo” from the blueprint spreadsheet, hence it is one level away from the home page, which is optimized for the one and only T1 keyword of your selected niche.

Now go to the Growing Bamboo webpage and scroll to the bottom.  Here you will a link linking this T2 page back to the T1 page or the home page.  Notice how selected keywords are used as anchor texts in the link?  I will discuss how to specifically interlink webpages further below.

Just as T2 pages are linked to the T1 page, all T3 pages should be linked to their relevant T2 pages.  For example, go to the T3 webpage How to Grow Bamboo and scroll to the bottom.

Here you will notice two links, one linking back to the T2 webpage from which this T3 webpage stems, and another linking back to the T1 page or home page of the website.  I will also discuss why we do this below.

Why Does a Pyramid Website Structure Model Work?

There is a very specific rationale that explains why this methodology works.  From studying keyword research, we know that a keyword demand represents the number of searches for that keyword and the supply represents the number of competing web pages on the Internet which are optimized for that keyword.

By targeting T3 keywords which are relatively lower in demand but much lower in supply, we are essentially going after those keywords which are the easiest to rank for in your selected niche. The entire premise of selecting low supply keywords as T3 web pages is to get the web pages indexed quickly on search engines. Not only that, but by properly optimizing these low supply web pages, you are pretty much guaranteeing your chances on ranking on Page One of search engines for these keywords.

What this does in turn is helps push the T2 pages that the T3 is linked to higher up on search engines.  Because the T2 pages are targeted for keywords that have a healthier competition, the momentum of the underlying T3 pages linked to it will propel it higher in search engine listings.

You can imagine what this does to the home page. When you have several high demand and supply T2 web pages ranking for their respective key terms, they collectively push your main website keyword to the top of search engine listings.

The best metaphor I can describe this with is an ocean waive propelling a surfer higher as the waive generates momentum from underneath.  This process works like clock-work. If executed correctly, the methodology is very powerful, one that results in heavy organic search engine traffic and as a result healthy profits for your niche website.

How to Interlink Web Pages

This post would not be complete if proper interlinking is not discussed.  Interlinking is simply linking one webpage to another within your website.  And although you can do this a variety of ways, the most effective way in my experience, and one that many successful webmasters recommend is as follows:

Ensure all T3 pages are linked to their relevant T2 pages, as well as the home page of your website.  Also ensure that all T2 pages are linked to your home page.  Finally, ensure that all T2 pages link to their respective T3 pages, and that your homepage links to at least all (or as many as possible) T2 pages of your website.  When possible, link to as many T3 pages from your home page as well without making it look like one huge link farm.

You can navigate through my Bamboo site and observe how I have done this.  You can also refer to the images above to see how I have concluded each page with some links on the bottom pointing to the respective home, T2 and T3 pages using the relevant anchor text.

This structure does a couple things. First, it ensures that page rank juice is flowing from one page to another in sequence up and down the pyramid chain.  Your webpages will gain popularity and page rank over time as they are indexed in search engines, liked on Facebook, tweeted and re tweeted on Twitter, Dugg, Stumbleuponed, mentioned in blogs, forums and discussion boards, or one of several other ways.

Other resources essentially link back to them.  And as webpages gain quality back links, their page rank increases. Because you never know which web page gets picked up or linked back to by a popular outside resource, linking all your pages internally ensures that the page rank effect will pass from the webpage linked to by the outside resource to the rest of your website. Remember the waive metaphor?  That is exactly what is happening here.

Second, by tying all pages together and rolling them all up to the homepage, you will be ensuring that every single page of your website is “crawlable” by search engine robots or spiders.  This ensures each of your webpages is indexed in search listings, giving you the maximum exposure to visitor traffic.  Executing effective interlinking is a key strategy in making your website successful. Do not rush this step of the process.

Couple Important Ancillary Details

There are a few other points to keep in mind as you execute this strategy.  You will notice in the spreadsheet image above that the main website keyword is also listed as a T2 keyword (you can see this on row 20).  The reason for this is that a website’s home page is always titled “index.html” and can be optimized for any keyword.

Proper on page SEO starts with the webpage URL (file name), and since the home page does not require a keyword rich URL, you can use the