#1 On Google With ZERO Keywords!

Internet marketers place significant importance on selecting keywords as one of the first priorities when designing and building a website. Articles from popular business publications like Forbes to thousands of blogs repeat this like the Holy Grail. Not only does that overstate the case (it worked in 2002 but has minimal effect now), it's possible - as you'll soon see - for a site to rank #1 on Google without a single keyword!

Now don't get me wrong - keywords do play a role, especially when a website is new. Keywords and content together can make web pages highly attractive to the search engines. There are specific recommended actions to optimize web pages. Optimizing for 2-3 keywords per page is a highly effective tactic.

The more content and pages on your site, the better your chances of usurping your competition. If your competition only has 25 keywords, none of which are long-tail, and you have twice that many plus long-tail, it won't take too long for you to pass them in the fast lane, without looking back.

If you're using internet marketing to sell a product or service, there are many aspects of business you need to know. Those attributes, which include legal, accounting, human resources, etc., are beyond the scope of this article. Assuming you have those skills or have hired others to handle those responsibilities, market research is the foundation for a successful online endeavor.

Your market research should uncover primary and secondary competitors. If there are no competitors, then an unbiased outsider reading your market research can only reach two conclusions: (1) The research was flawed or (2) the market is too small to be of any worthwhile effort. Naturally, there are exceptions, but let's stay based in reality for 99% of businesses.

If market research indicates many competitors, chances are very good this is a niche in which money can be made. It will, of course, require creative thinking, calculated risk-taking, time and old-fashioned hard work to make a dent in the market. A little money to spend won't hurt, either. The more competitors there are, the longer it will take to get your site ranked on the first page. First page for a new website using a competitive keyword isn't going to happen in a week. Period.

So, let's have fun with this #1 ranked website. How did it get to be #1? First, let's look at what it's not doing correctly:

• It doesn't have a 301 redirect. Remember, www.XYZsite.com and XYZsite.com are read by Google and other search engines as two different URLs. In this case, www.XYZsite.com has about 106,000 backlinks while XYZsite.com has about 114,000 back links. By using a 301 redirect, this site could have about 220,000 backlinks. Setting up your site to maximize your backlinks is simple. In most cpanels, there is an icon for ‘redirects' or you can add a snippet of code to the .htaccess file.

• The site has 29 images, only three of which have ALT tags. Just over 10.3% of the images contribute to SEO. Imagine if all the pics had ALT tags.

• It doesn't have a heading summary, also known as an H1 tag, a very powerful piece of SEO.

• It's not listed in DMOZ, a great directory from which to get a powerful backlink.

Using a keyword difficulty tool to see how difficult it would be to rank #1 for a particular keyword in their niche, it scores 48/100, about average. Just read back to the first bullet point, however, and you see their secret very clearly: backlinks. Not a few backlinks. A boatload of backlinks.

Is the phrase competitive? It gets about 15,000 total searches per month. The site, however, gets about 30,000 unique visitors per month. With an average 2% conversion rate on a $20 retail item, they're selling about $12,000 per month. Not too shabby. So, what is the site? Google the phrase conservative t-shirts. The #1 website is www.thoseshirts.com. High Performance Search Engine Marketing is not affiliated with them in any manner and we refuse to get involved in ideological politics. Look at this site some more. The Alexa ranking is pretty decent at about 161,000. If this doesn't convince one of the power of backlinks, then probably nothing will.

If you find a #1 ranked site without any keywords, please email us at info@lukebrownmarketing.com and let us know. We'll add it to this story with regular updates. Now go get your backlinks!

Luke Brown is the founder of Luke Brown Marketing, a Los Angeles-based internet marketing firm. They are specialists in market research, effective and efficient website design, CRO (Conversion Rate Optmization) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).