Keyword Pyramid

If you’ve gotten yourself here somehow looking for skin lotion I suggest clicking here and checking out Amazon.

But if you are actually in the right place…

One of the most important things you can do for a site is build links for keywords related to or that contain your main keyword. Generally speaking the longer the keyword is the easier it is to rank for, so while you’re seeking that coveted #1 position for your keyword why don’t you try to get some of its cousins’ rankings up there as well? Let me explain what I like to do.

First, I start with my site’s main keyword. Of course, I put some effort into tracking a good one down, because nothing sucks like building a site and pushing it to number 1 only to find out that it gets no traffic. Or working for 12 months and realizing that you’re never going to rank for the same term as something with a movie by the same name. Let’s say for the purposes of this article my word is going to be “skin cream”.

Secondly, I like to find 3 or 4 related keywords that are essentially the same thing as my main keyword; basically in any given sentence they could replace the actual keyword. These should be words you really could build an entire site around if you wanted to. For this example let’s say “facial cream”, “body lotion”, and “hand cream”.

Third I think of some qualifier words that I could easily stack on the front of my keyword to make it a long tail keyword. Find words that are somewhat related to the industry your site is about… again for this site I’m going to use “anti-aging”, “moisturizing” and “natural”. Now I’ll work my way down and make all the combos of my stacker words combined with my keyword and its cousins:

 

– skin cream

– anti-aging skin cream

– moisturizing skin cream

– natural skin cream

– natural anti-aging skin cream

– natural moisturizing skin cream

– moisturizing anti-aging skin cream

– natural moisturizing anti-aging skin cream

 

– facial cream

– anti-aging facial cream

– moisturizing facial cream

– natural facial cream

– natural anti-aging facial cream

– natural moisturizing facial cream

– moisturizing anti-aging facial cream

– natural moisturizing anti-aging facial cream

 

– body lotion

– anti-aging body lotion

– moisturizing body lotion

– natural body lotion

– natural anti-aging body lotion

– natural moisturizing body lotion

– moisturizing anti-aging body lotion

– natural moisturizing anti-aging body lotion

 

– hand cream

– anti-aging hand cream

– moisturizing hand cream

– natural hand cream

– natural anti-aging hand cream

– natural moisturizing hand cream

– moisturizing anti-aging hand cream

– natural moisturizing anti-aging hand cream

 

For my main keyword and all its major cousins I will write a LONG post (like 2000 words) and give each of them their own “page”. The main keyword I stick on my main page permanently. Try to write naturally, and try to use the longer versions of your keyword more than the shorter version. I name the post pages the longest word we came up with.

Now comes the link building. When I build links to sites like this I generally build somewhat evenly for all my keywords to start out. Get the site to rank at least in the top 5 pages for all its words and then start worrying about particulars. Once all your words are findable, I start working from the bottom up (ie. start at the longest version of each keyword). I’ll still link with all the different anchors, but until I break into at least the top 5 spots on page one my focus will be on the longest word. This will give you some confidence and hopefully a little trickle traffic.

Once I’m ranking well for “natural moisturizing anti-aging skin cream” as an example I go up and start hammering the site for my next level of keywords (all three of the ones with 4 words). Again I try to get them into the top 5 or so, and I bet you’ll see your 5 word keyword move up a little as well. And just keep working up the list, now focus on your 3 word keywords, and when they are doing well it’s time for the big guns, our two word keywords (which by this time should be ranking pretty well on their own).

Hopefully you’ve worked all your keywords into the top 3 at this point and now is where you need to take a look at your stats. What keywords are driving the most traffic? Are you in position 1 for those words? If not start working on those ones until you are. It won’t take long and you’ll have your niche (and a lot of keywords) completely taken over. And hey, if you ever manage to get into position 1 for all your keywords find another couple of cousins of your main keyword and start at the beginning. With the authority your site will have earned to this point I bet it is even easier than before to dominate another word and grow your site another 20%.

Best of luck!