Is this like searching for the golden fleece? Does it actually exist?

Like many affiliate marketers I was brought up on the dream of the golden keyword.Once upon a time it was easy to find the odd nugget but it is getting a little trickier now.

I see many affiliate marketers falling into the trap of spending so much time looking for the right keyword, the one that has X number of searches, competition under Y, that they don’t actually do anything but search. And they make no money.

For years we have been told to check keywords out by putting them in quotes and searching on Google to find out how much competition there is, this is OK up to a point but it really doesn’t tell you what you need to know.

The “quote” search only tells you how many pages are indexed with that exact phrase on the page, it is NOT an indication of competition. In any niche certain phrases will come up time and time again and they will be on a web page but that does not mean that the page is actually targeted for that phrase.

Example: Listen to any conversation about golf, how many times will terms such as ‘driver’ or ‘wedge’ come up? Yet the conversation may really be about The Masters, or ‘Golf Bags’ Related but unconnected and therefore not competition, the same applies to keywords and web pages.

The most reliable way to find the competition you are battling is to use these terms:

inurl:”keyword”  Will return pages with the exact phrase in their url.

inanchor:”keyword” Will return pages with backlinks containing the exact phrase.

intitle:”keyword” Will return pages with the exact keyword in the page title.

If a web page has these features then it is a fair bet that it has been optimised for that phrase. This does indicate proper competition.

If, after checking the keyword for these factors you find that there is a lot of competing pages does that mean the keyword is no good? Not necessarily, you then need to check how strong these pages are by examining the Page Rank, the age, the number of backlinks etc.

Using a tool like SEO for Firefox this is a fairly simple procedure although a little time consuming. You can find keywords with seemingly thousands of competing web pages but on investigation the top ten results might have no pages with any PR or backlinks, these will be easy to beat.

On the other hand another keyword may have only a handful of competing pages but they are all PR5/6 with thousands of backlinks, you will spend years trying to get above those and possibly never will.

Keyword research is something you love or hate but it is a fact that you will not make money online without it.

Is there a golden keyword? Of course but you may waste months or even years looking for it, lower your sights and take action, find keywords you can target using the method above and then commit.

If you have the budget there is a tool that will do all this for you and more, it’s called MicroNicheFinder, it’s the one I use every day and I couldn’t live without it. See for yourself here

Related posts:

1. Does Google Need Our Content?
2. More Keyword Research
3. Keyword Research & Page Rank

Google serves up results based on an algorithm which basically is a fancy piece of software that collects and sorts web pages. This software is highly secret or otherwise webmasters would just analyse it and find ways of artificially increasing their web sites rankings.

Like scientists who discover planets in the far off galaxies we can’t directly observe this algorithm, we can only measure it by the effect it has. Oh my god!!

There a few ways of determining whether Google will want the content we produce based on our keywords and although perhaps not entirely accurate it is based again on best guess.

So, we have found a keyword phrase of three to six words, now what? Well first we need to know how much other information is already out there that Google knows about.

The simplest way to do this is to go the the search engine and type in our keyword. Google will return a list of results with an indication of how many pages it thinks is relevant to the search. If you get a return of over two million you may want to start over.

Now to refine this very broad search is to enclose your keyword in quotes i.e. “keyword phrase” and search again. You will notice that now there are much fewer returns. This is called exact search and identifies pages that contain the exact phrase, hence the name. This gives you a much better indication of how many other pages you will be competing against.

As a rough guide I like to look for competition numbers of less than 50,000 and the lower the better. After you have done this there are a couple of other ways to gauge the work you will have to do but we will discuss them next time.

Related posts:

1. Does Google Need Our Content? Part 2
2. Finding The Golden Keyword
3. More Keyword Research

Right, how do we find out the right keyword to use as our bait?

I am going to point out a couple of rules now that will at least give you a way to make your decisions based on what I have found to be true.

1) A good keyword in the buying stage will be three to six words long.

2) A good keyword will have searches of over one thousand per month.

Ok for point number one lets look at why that might be true. Imagine you are a buyer and you want a widget, if you are ust deciding on buying a widget you will in all likelyhood type ‘widget’ into Google and look around to see what is available.

Moving on, you have already done this and you have decided that, yes, you want a widget but which one? A blue widget, a green widget? OK so now you type into Google ‘Blue widgets’ Now, you are narrowing it down and so you finally decide on a blue widget with fur on it.

Now you type ‘blue furry widget’ and buy one.

Now, lets look at the keywords:

Widget; 10000 searches per month, no sales.

Blue widget; 5000 searches per month, no sales

Blue furry widget; 1000 searches per month 10 sales.

Which keyword will you go for? 10000 visitors per month and no sales or 1000 visitors and 10 sales?

This series continues tomorrow….

photo credit: Ray Devlin

Related posts:

1. Keyword Research & Page Rank
2. Keyword Research-Why?
3. Even More Keyword Research

1) There has to be a good number of searches for a keyword to be profitable, if no-one is actually typing a keyword into a search engine what is the point of it?

So, how do we go about finding these profitable keywords?

First off I am going to qualify that statement by breaking it down a little bit more. To make a keyword profitable it has to be searched for in Google and it needs to be a word or more usually a phrase which is at the buying stage of the visitor cycle.

I am going to take a shortcut here because it will save time, me and you. Any purchasing decision with the exception of sweets at the checkout will go through a cycle of three or more stages.

1) General research: The buyer will do some research on the widget they are thinking about buying. Note the ‘thinking’ part, no decision has been reached as to whether they will buy or not.

2) Product research: Having made the decision to buy a widget most people will have a look at what widgets are available. This is still not a buying stage, they may well purchase something but exactly what is still undecided.

3) Buying stage: Hoorah! The person has decided that they want a widget, model xyz and the wallet or purse is out. This is the visitor we want.

Now, all we have to do is place our baited hook in front of them and with any luck they will bite.

Tomorrow, finding the right bait. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. Finding The Most Searched Profitable Keywords
2. Keyword Research Baiting The Hook
3. Keyword Research & Page Rank

I think everybody is aware that in order to make money online you will need to put in the work to find and qualify your keyword research.

No brainer, huh? Yes and no, I read pages and pages of articles on keyword research because it is my thing! I love it, creating content, boring, designing web pages, yawn, CSS, What???

But keywords, I love them. I like to picture myself as a fisherman and each of my keywords is a little baited hook in the ocean of the internet. Each and every one has the potential to make me money.

But, and it’s a big but, some bait is a lot more attractive than others, some will catch a few tiddlers, some will catch a big bass and just a few will get the marlin.

The question that arises is what is good bait?

A good keyword has to be defined by at least two parameters:

1) There has to be a good number of searches for a keyword to be profitable, if no-one is actually typing a keyword into a search engine what is the point of it?

2) Google has to require the information. I say Google but it applies to all search engines, from now on I will say Google only because it is quicker to type than all the search engines.

Tomorrow we will discuss these points in greater detail so stay tuned.

photo credit: Blyz

Related posts:

1. Finding Profitable Keywords | The Right Bait
2. Most Searched Keywords & How To Find Them
3. Most Searched Keywords 3

This is just a short post to put together a list of free keyword tools. There are lots of places to get keywords and it is essential that you put in the time to refine your keyword lists.

Having a spreadsheet to record your keywords makes life a whole lot easier and so I suggest you start a keyword master file that you can update and modify as those all important keyword phrases come in.

To start with the main free keyword tools are:

Free Wordtracker

Keyword Discovery

Google Adwords Tool

Ebays Popular Search Terms

Paypal Shops Finding products to promote

Shopping.com Find out what people are looking to buy

Googles Search Based Tool

All these tools can be used to discover keywords that are being punched into search engines every day. Do not become to hung up on search counts as long as there are more than about twenty per day you can still be making money.

It is the long tail keywords that are easiest to rank for, say phrases between three and six words as these are generally people in the buying phase of research.

Someone who types in “Red widgets” is usually looking for information and are in the pre-buy mode but someone who searches for mink fur red widget is normally looking to buy. They have done their research and have decided that they want a mink fur red widget and so will buy.

It is far better and much more profitable to be ranked on the first page of Google for a keyword with twenty searches a day than it is to be on page forty for a term with 1000 searches.

The money is often in the detail and so if you are promoting a niche product it will serve you better to write content around a particular term than try to encompass a whole niche at once.

For instance if you have a site pushing golf putters break it down into types of putter, mallet, half mallet, blade, belly putter, and then break it down further, Adams belly putters, Cleveland belly putters, Titleist belly putter and then break it down again, Adams 1201 belly putter, Adams 471 belly putter etc, etc.

The search count for an Adams 1201 belly putter may only be two a day but add that to two for the 471 and so on and you start to have a site with a large searching audience and more importantly a buying audience.

By using the free keyword tools you can easily break down any niche into a very profitable bunch of keywords and the site will almost build itself as you write small articles, one per keyword,  on each item and load them onto your pages.

PS. I made up the model numbers but you get the idea.

Related posts:

1. Keyword Tools I Use Part 1
2. Keyword Research & Page Rank
3. More Keyword Research

There are numerous keyword research tools available some free, some very expensive but the cost or otherwise is not neccesarily an indicator of how good they are. I use several different things to help me decide which keywords to target.

The Google Keyword Tool

This is a good first choice if you are starting out. Although free it will give you a headstart in the search for keywords that you may not of thought of yourself. The drawback is that you then have to flip backwards and forwards between the keyword tool and the search pages to get the competition numbers. The Google Keyword Tool is here

Mozilla Firefox and SEO Extension.

If you use the  Google Keyword Tool the Firefox browser with the SEO extension is a must. It allows you to get so much information at one place it is priceless. Firefox and SEO

Those are the free tools and they have their place on your computer however if you intend to get serious there are some paid tools which are worth considering. The best thing about them is not the information that they get you, you can get that for free as I have said, the best reason for buying them is the enormous amount of time that they can save.

Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a subscription tool that charges a monthly fee for access. It is a very popular keyword research tool for affiliate marketing and avoids the pitfalls of many desktop based tools in that you are using their bandwidth and proxy servers. You have a variety of tools in one and it is quite quick, the drawback for me was the monthly fee. If you are researching keywords a lot then this is a great tool and worth the money. Personally I look for a bunch of keywords in one go and then concentrate on content so I wasn’t using it to the full, however if you are into bum marketing or article writing this is heartily recommended. Find out about the free trial here

Microniche Finder

This is my favourite keyword tool at the moment. There, I said it, for the price this research tool is incredible. I am an affiliate niche marketer at heart and MNF allows you to get to keywords and search terms so quickly it is worth twice the price in my opinion. This is a one off payment keyword research tool that sits on your computer,I will be putting some posts up about how to get the most out of it but in the meantime check it out here.

Keyword Elite

In my opinion-Don’t bother! Sometimes hype and advertising overcome actual product. Think Windows v Mac, if your’e old enough think VHS v. Betamax. I did use this keyword tool for some time and occasionally it worked very well, but, most of the time it locked up, required captcha codes to be entered every 30 seconds and frequently got me banned by Google. This very expensive tool in my opinion is a waste of time.

Related posts:

1. Keyword Research & Page Rank
2. Free Keyword Tools
3. Finding The Golden Keyword

As I said Page Rank is a factor in deciding on whether you want to target a particular keyword.  Now perhaps this is not as clear to you as it is to me, but I have been doing this for quite a while and sometimes forget that other people have not got to the same stage .

When you perform any keyword research part of the equation is the competition and how strong is that competition. If you find a search term that has a lot of searches and few results pages, is that a good keyword?

On the face of it, yes, high search/low results= Good! But there is another factor and that is the PR (page rank) of the sites that are listed in the return. Lets research the term ‘fuzzy red widget’ Hey there are 120,000 searches a month, thats a lot of searches, lots of people want fuzzy red widgets!

Lets say there are only 5000 results for the term ‘fuzzy red widget’, this looks promising but if the PR of each page is between 7 and 10 you will have a lot of trouble getting your page anywhere near them. Remember PR is a measure of importance determined by Google and so a high PR is harder to beat than a low one. It may have 120,000 searches but you will never get any of them.

Lets try again, ‘red hairy widgets’ has 50,000 searches each month and there are 50,000 results. This does not look brilliant, fewer searches and more results. But, hang on, the PR of the sites on the first page never gets above 2, this means that you have a very good chance of beating any one of them. This would get you on the first page with a term that is searched for 50,000 times a month. Excellent!

Before you go checking up on me, the figures above are imaginery.

There is a tool that can speed this whole process up and it is free. The best browser around is Firefox, if you haven’t got it go get it now. You can download it for free here. Once you have that head on over here to get the seo Firefox extension. This allows you to view PR, back links, page links and much more. Once again it is free!

Related posts:

1. Keyword Tools I Use Part 1
2. Keyword Research Baiting The Hook
3. More Keyword Research