Yesterday we talked about how you can discover new traffic sources to your site just by taking a little closer look at your analytics. Today I want to cover exactly how you can turn those discoveries into money.

Authority is the Key

First of all I have to acknowledge that these hidden rankings are the result of the authority my domain has with Google. I’ve spent over a year building that authority. That’s not to say that all of you don’t have some of these accidental rankings, but as your domain authority improves your ability to grab mid to high quality rankings will improve. Keep up all the work you’re doing to make Google like you – it will pay off.

For now, let’s focus on what it will take to improve an accidental ranking. The SEO approach will be slightly different than what you would use for your homepage.

First, Identify Your Hidden Gems

The first thing you need to do is go to your analytics program and look at the log of search terms that are bringing traffic to your site. (Some of you have commented on the value of hittail. Thanks for the input – that’s a great tool!) I use the free version of statcounter, so I’m going to click on Keyword Analysis in the left sidebar.

Based on my knowledge of how statcounter works, I estimate that I get about 8 to 12 visitors per day for the keyword ‘how to make money on the internet’. Right now I rank number 7 on Google for that keyword, and experience tells me I could probably increase that number to 30-60 visitors per day if I hit a number 1 ranking. Now how do I do it?

Get the Hidden Gems in Your Post Title

I’m going to look at the page with the ranking. In this case, it’s this one about how to make money blogging. The first thing I want to look at is the title of the post. Does it contain the keyword I’m going to target? If so, great. I leave it alone. If my keyword isn’t in the post title (in this case it isn’t), I’ve got a decision to make.

The post title is one of the most important elements in getting a ranking, so I may want to change the it to contain the hidden gem I’m trying to get ranked for. But that might not be the best thing to do. Here’s why.

I’m trying to improve my ranking for ‘how to make money on the internet’ and the page that’s sitting at number 7 on Google has ‘make money blogging’ in the title. I’m not going to mess with the title of this post because it will jeopardize the ranking I could have for ‘make money blogging’, which currently sits at number 60 on Google. That’s not a great ranking, but it will improve over time as my site’s authority continues to grow.

Create New Content for Your Gems

So what do I do? I create a new post with ‘how to make money on the internet’ in the title. The ranking I have with the other page tells me that Google is ready to rank me for that keyword, especially if I give the big G a more targeted post for that phrase. Of course it goes without saying that I’m going to write some high quality content on the new post. After all, my future subscribers and clients are going to see that page, and I want to make a good impression.

By the way, my next step if I already had my target keyword in the title would be to rework the content and the paragraph headings to make the page more friendly for my keyword. Note: I am NOT saying stuff the article and the heading with my keyword. I’m saying make sure the post is relevant to the phrase I’m trying to rank for.

Build Links, Build Authority

Once I’ve created a great post title and content, it’s time to go to work building links to the page. There are two types of links I’m going to build: internal and external.

To build internal links I’m going to look through my archives and find posts that have keywords and phrases similar to the one I’m targeting in their title. Then I’m going to find a place in the post to NATURALLY insert my goal keyword. I’ll make the keyword the anchor text of a link from the existing posts to the one I just created. I’ll do that with 10 pages or so. I’m not trying to spam; I’m just letting Google know my new page is relevant for the keyword I’m trying to target.

For the external links, I’m simply going to use Article Marketer. I’ll write a few original articles and submit them to Article Marketer for mass distribution. When I fill out my author bio on those articles I’m going to make sure I include my target keyword as the anchor text with a link back to the page I’m trying to get ranked. It will only take a few article submissions for me to get a nice number of inbound links to my new page.

Between my internal and external linking and the authority I already have with my domain, I know I’m going to improve my rankings for my hidden gems over the next few weeks. Better rankings = new traffic = more subscribers = more recognition of my brand = increased income!

This information may have come across a little complicated and I want you all to be able to get full the full benefit of it, so please ask questions in the comments!