Keywords and second sites

[seanf]

Hey everyone (especially Chris!),

I've got a few questions concerning my site Catch the Snitch. The site has been going a few weeks, not long

1) The site is in Google and I have been getting some hits from the big G and AOL. I'm number one for certain keywords (e.g. harry potter book facts) and have been found using these keywords. My question is what keywords should I target? I'd love to be on the top for Harry Potter, but the first pages are full of high ranking sites and I'm absolutely nowhere! Should I target Harry Potter or is it just too competitive? The top of every page has the words "Harry Potter news, books, movies, games, merchandise and more." Should I get people to link to me with that text or should I be more specific?

2) Is there any point in setting up another site to promote yours? For example, should I provide the news from my site on the second site with each item linking back to the main site?

Sean

[Chris]

Use wordtracker.com to figure out which keywords are the best to target. For instance I once targetted "Amazon.com Coupons" only to later find out that "Amazon Coupons" was 6x more popular.

Also there is something of a cascade effect if you target more general keywords.

For instance targetting "harry potter" will also help you on "harry potter xxx" where xxx is any third word or phrase.

Getting people to link to you using the text "Harry Potter" would probably give the most benefit. Also linking from your subpages to your homepage the same way would be a good idea (it looks stupid, I know).

For your menu if you changed "Book Facts" to "Harry Potter Facts" and News to "Harry Potter News" etc etc you'd also get your subpages ranked better.

Link to the page with whatever text you want to target. Unless you're targetting "News" in general and want to compete with CNN you should be more specific in your link text. "Quidditch" would be fine as is though because it is already quite specific.

[Chris]

Oh... and there isn't much of a benefit to building a second site at this point.

Multiple sites are good when you have a substantial change in content, you don't have that. The benefit of multiple sites is that it is easier to get multiple listings in places like directories. You can promote each site separately and listings for one site will not hurt your chance to get listings for the other.

[seanf]

Thanks for the guidance

Originally posted by Chris
Getting people to link to you using the text "Harry Potter" would probably give the most benefit

So just get people to link to me with Harry Potter and nothing else in the link?

Sean

[Chris]

That'd be the best way, yes.

[seanf]

Ok, thank you Chris

Sean

[seanf]

Will a graphical link have the same effect or is a text link better?

Sean

[Chris]

much much worse.

Text is always better for search engines.

[seanf]

Ok, thanks again

Sean