By basing our SEO strategy on fundamental marketing principles, we stand a much better chance of dominating the rankings, no matter what niche we choose to target.

Principles:

• Market Analysis
• Competitive Review
• Positioning
• SEO

Market Analysis

In the past, marketing was a last-minute ad on. A company knocked out a product, then it was handed over the wall to marketing, whose job it was to get the product out into the market. Marketing put a colorful picture on the box, commissioned a nice tune, and bought up millions of dollars worth of media time.

These days, marketing is more integrated. A product or service is designed with a clear audience in mind. The internet offers us the opportunity to design with a clear audience in mind, but with a lot less risk than brick-n-mortar companies. We can figure out if there is a market, and what that market demands, test that market, and then build a site to cater to that market. We can do this quickly and cheaply, using the power of search marketing.

Like SEO, marketing is part art, part science. Even if you cover the technical aspects of SEO, there is no guarantee you will rank well. Likewise, if you follow a marketing strategy, there is no guarantee of making money.

The trick is to find a place in the market that has two key aspects: clear space and consumer demand.

Perform Market Analysis and ask yourself three questions:

• What does the consumer need?
• How many consumer need this product/service?
• What is the buying process?

You must fill a genuine need in the market. Is there demand? It's no good trying to sell something, be it a good, service or opinion, if there is no demand for it. For example, do you know why most blogs don't get read? It is because there is a very limited demand for opinions from unknown writers. Demand is spread very thinly across the opinion/news space, and supply is virtually infinite. How do you find out if there is a demand for your idea? The SEO has a valuable tool at his/her disposal for determining demand. Keyword research involves mining databases of previously searched for keyword terms to see if there are existing traffic streams (demand) they can tap into. Any volume of keyword searches indicates demand.

Positioning

• Undertake keyword research
• Look for a niche that is "worth remarking upon" and is new, or doesn't have a lot of existing competition
• Select a brand name and domain name the describes the niche ie. SEOBook.com. It is useful to include a keyword term
• Build a site that focuses exclusively on this niche, and no others.
• Conduct SEO campaign
• Monitor results.

What do you think of when someone mentions the name "Google"? = Search, right. How about IBM? Computers. Hewlett Packard? Printers. If you aim to be the first in the customers mind when they think of a keyword term, you can easily win the ranking game. Be First

SEO

• Build content. Get a list of 50 keywords and write a page on each. Include how-to's, generalist information, news (use Blog software), video, photos and maps. Tag all graphical content with keyword terms
• Write naturally, stay on a single topic per page. Forget keyword density, it is overrated
• Layout site. Place most important (money) pages at the top of the hierarchy, one step away from the home page
• Create a Google Site Map to ensure crawlability
• Once the site is complete, submit to the top directoriessuch as  Yahoo!
• Issue a press release. Ensure you include a link back to your site.
• Open Twitter and Facebook accounts, and update each time you add a page of content
• Add one new page of quality content to the site per day
• After 30 days, examine your stats. Look for long tail keyword terms, choose the most popular term, and write a page about it. Use this list of long tail keywords as article starter ideas
• Every 15 days, do the same thing again
• Remember to write a new page of quality content every day
• Find the top ten sites in closely related niches, and offer to write articles for them. Include a link back to your site

GWS-Studio.com assist you during the development of your (Joomla) web site with these principles.