We are going to target one keyword in the initial SEO stage. This will be the keyword or phrase that you have deemed to be your diamond in the rough. Remember that this is going to be a judgement call based on the competitiveness of your particular niche. If you are not sure which one to pick, I would go with one that has a low "allinanchor" number and gets a moderate number of searches per month. You also want to pick one of the top keywords in your niche and one very targeted long tail keyword that suits a product or service that you can promote. We will use these later.

You will see later that once we get your sites, (yes, I said sites, as in plural), indexed in Google, we will slowly change your targeting to more popular and competitive keywords. The main goal in the beginning is to establish a presence in the search engine indexes. The truth is that we are going to target Google and the rest will follow over time. Also, once you become familiar with the different Web 2.0 sites that we are going to use as SEO tools, it will be easier for you to rank your sites for the more competitive keyword phrases.

 We are going to have several sites that we will target with several different keywords. First of all you need to decide whether you are going to promote a website or a blog (if you don't already have an existing website). I highly recommend starting with a blog. The search engines love blogs and they are very easy to set up. To narrow it down further, I suggest using a Word Press blog. You can install Word Press from your C-panel hosting account by clicking on the Fantastico button and following a couple simple directions. If you have never set up a web page or blog before and need help, then leave me a comment and I will help you. If you don't have web hosting yet, click here. This is what I use. It's a C-panel account with unlimited everything  for $17.95 per month or even cheaper if you pay for longer term.

Now, for those of you who know your way around an FTP program and have put up a few websites, you may want to consider purchasing the Semiologic Pro  template for Word Press. It is what I use and it has many search engine optimization features already built in to its internal structure. Word Press is very SEO friendly but all blogs are inherently page rank leaky because of their internal link structure.

OK, let's recap. You need to have your webhosting in place with your Word Press blog set up. You should have three keywords picked out. One high traffic keyword that targets your general niche. Your diamond in the rough keyword which is moderate traffic with low competition, and one highly targeted, long tail keyword that we are going to use to get your blog indexed quickly and totally dominate the top 20 results in Google.

Get all this ready because next post we are going to discuss the three pages we are going to build and how to tweak the structure of your blog to make it a little more search engine friendly. That is only if you are not using the Semiologic Pro template. If you are using Semiologic Pro, then we will talk about which features to enable.