Have I got this right?

Hi I haven't been that active on this forum as most of my questions have been answered by searching. After reading loads of threads and comments for the last week or so I have decided I want to get into IM more so affiliate marketing. Tried torrents and other ppd ideas but didn't really succeed. Don't know if I was doing it right or people just see a survey and thought sod that but yeah. I gave up on it and decided to try a different route. Thats when I fount BHW. First of let me just say congrats to all the decent members on this forum for creating a helpfull community. I fill i have learnt more in the last week from this forum than any other.

So IM... From what I have read you basically find a niche preferably one with a nice keyword that you could rank for. create a site that is SEO'd to your specific keywords backling, backling and bit more backlink. Then hopefully if all is correct you should rank on the first page of the big "G" getting loads of free organic traffic and hopefully due to your impressive review of your product SALES!! Easy right???

Well that's what I thought... I have basically got a free domain (money bit short so can't buy one) and installed wordpress on it. I have installed the all in one seo plugin and also another one (can't remember the name) and learnt how they work. It helped in a big way learning SEO and how it works but I still have a few questions which I can't find a answer for.

1, I target a keyword for example "body repair shop (specific location)" when I include my keyword in my content does it have to match the exact search term quoted or could I do for example "We are a friendly reliable "body repair shop". We have been running for a year and are located in "location"..

2, I understand the affiliate market is a hard one to get into due to high competition. I don't mind that as I like a challenge and to knock someone of a top spot would fill good. But for a begginer I want to start out small and get to grips with it all propally before hand. So what would be a decent place for a begginer to start with the competition. i.e global monthly searchs, yahoo answers, amazon, big names! who could I and whou couldn't I knock of the perch.

3, ROBOTS.TXT!!! What's the deal? I understand that it stops nasty bots screwing with your site. But is it needed? does it help with the SEO of the site? Ifso does wordpress have one? I had a look on my host and didn't see it but heard that it has a virtual one. How do I ensure the virtual one is working.

4, lastly.. I learn more easily from video tutorials than e-books. could anyone recomend a decent subscription channel on youtube to help me on my journey. I have no idea about html or php and so on, so any tutorials like that would help. When I see the html side of wordpress I kinda got lost. When I started reading about the robots.txt and google anylatics and see I had to include scripts and such I started to google for tutorials but they all beet around the bush. I want a straight to the point this is how it works like it or lump it tutoroial

Looking foward to hearing your replies and hope someone can help me. If you don't understand one of my questions please say and I'll try to phrase it better

robots.txt is a simple file that tells search engine spiders not to crawl certain pages on your site. It's not important, you have other things to worry about.

Videos are huge time wasters, and e-books are worse. Your most efficient learning is from patient reading of relevant threads and engaging knowledgeable members in dialogue.

If your kw is really local-business related, your best-bang-for-your-buck is local citations. Backlink research into ranking competitors and copying what they do. Monkey see, monkey do. You need volume for affiliate marketing; I wouldn't even think in that direction, but I guess it depends on the kw and the industry. The number of words that separate the different kw's has some significance, but not as much as it used to. You need to optimize for humans and 'bots now, and kw density at 1 to 3% is good enough, and packing kw's has risk with no reward. Write naturally. If the kw is "special" in some way, make a secondary page for it, or a list of some sort (top 10 reasons to hire an authorized <city name> service provider to do you <keyword variant> work.

I'm in process of assembling a Skype-based "mastermind group" focused on Local SEO, and anyone with strong English skills are welcome to connect. Please see my skype icon in the profile. Also, there's a Local SEO discussion group, but right now the forum software is putting a serious handicap on it's usefulness due to restrictions in the number of words that can be made in a single post. So joining that is an investment in the future at this point, until Staff address the issue(s). (There are others.)

Cheers for that B. friendly. Glad robots isn't a major requirement, as for your info about my KW. The reason I used a specific location is because a friend owns a body shop and doesn't have a site so I suggested I built him one. He gets free advertising and I get to practise my SEO skills at the same time. When I start to promote products for other companies I know it wont be specific locations but instead specific products that I will be trying to rank for.

So what your basically saying is aslong as the content is good for humans and bots then it shoudl rank with only a small percentage of keywords. I did read that KW stuffing can make engines penalize you. Also the KW I target doesnt have to match exactly as long as the kw are in the same sentence and not paragraphs apart.

As for the skype group I am really interested in that and will be looking into it in a bit

Thanks for your answers helped in a big way

You might reconsider the idea of using Local as a transition stage to "global" SEO. Local SEO is HOT right now, and the competition is low. You also land contracts based on real-life personal relationships. Did I mention it's easier? Plus, at some point the skills are either/or. Practice on your friend's body shop. At some point he should pay you, when the phone starts ringing. And if he doesn't do that, he needs to REALLY sell your services for you to anyone and everyone he knows. You ought to have your own local seo site set-up, and a backlink from his site to yours, so you get some benefit for whatever work you do for him in the form of backlink juice.

If you pay attention, there are certain people here that REALLY know what they are doing. Subscribe to all threads that might be useful to you, become friends with people that you think know something. Find me on Skype and we can take a look at the potential profitability of your friend's local niche. I have a method in mind for affiliate marketing local businesses, and we can take all your learning you are doing for free for someone else, and apply it to your bank account.

As you do not have any ideas about html or php then you should take a try to make this happen in the according way. And to do that efficiently you have to practice as much as you can.

B. Friendly said:

You might reconsider the idea of using Local as a transition stage to "global" SEO. Local SEO is HOT right now, and the competition is low. You also land contracts based on real-life personal relationships. Did I mention it's easier? Plus, at some point the skills are either/or. Practice on your friend's body shop. At some point he should pay you, when the phone starts ringing. And if he doesn't do that, he needs to REALLY sell your services for you to anyone and everyone he knows. You ought to have your own local seo site set-up, and a backlink from his site to yours, so you get some benefit for whatever work you do for him in the form of backlink juice.

If you pay attention, there are certain people here that REALLY know what they are doing. Subscribe to all threads that might be useful to you, become friends with people that you think know something. Find me on Skype and we can take a look at the potential profitability of your friend's local niche. I have a method in mind for affiliate marketing local businesses, and we can take all your learning you are doing for free for someone else, and apply it to your bank account.

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My mate has offered to pay me some time ago. I just said to him we can discuss the price after it's done, all though he is a very close mate so I don't want to charge him over the top as he has helped me in the past. Apart from that I'm sure if I ask him if I/we can monetize of his site I'm sure he wouldn't mind as long as it brings in custom for him. Anything earnt of the site I have no problem with shareing with you for your help.

I've noticed this forum is full of helpfull people and some of them know exactly what there talking about. I have a few threads that I have been watching all week haha. I've sent you a request on skype mate.

snow I say I have no html knowledge.. Last year I read a book to do with html and basically designed a very small site just useing html. It didn't have a css sheet with it and wasn't fancy. The mpost flashy thing on the site was a animated banner that I made.. I'm pretty sure html has changed some since I learnt it as for any other form of language I wouldn't have a clue. But learning it all is one thing I would be willing to do. Know of any good sites? A mate recomended htmldog but I haven't yet looked at the site