The BeBiz video tutorial that I needed to watch is working again, so I can push on …
Once you have identified some candidate keywords, it’s a great idea to see:
a) How much it will cost to purchase each of those potential keywords on Google Adwords (the little ads that you see on the side of the screen when you do a Google search and/or on many other sites, as well).
b) How much competition that you have for each keyword search term.
While BeBiz has some neat built in tools for each of these, it’s quite easy to try each of these on your own:
Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool (I mentioned this yesterday) is free and very useful!
There are four great options that you should try with this tool:
1. Limit the maximum CPC (‘cost per click’ i.e. how much Google would charge you to place an ad … they charge each time somebody ‘clicks’ on the ad regardless of what they do after that) to $0.25 unless you are selling something VERY expensive!
2. If you haven’t yet thought of any good keywords, this ‘trick’ is brilliant: select the option that allows you to put in the URL of your content website (if a blog, it may only come up with blog oriented keywords) … if that doesn’t work, then do what I did … I cut/pasted most of the text from some of my posts (actually, I cut/pasted almost ALL of the text from my e-book into the convenient text box) into the text box.
The online tool will then search through your text, probably finding a ton of potential keywords/phrases (it doesn’t seem to pick up everything) and price those for you. To make sense of this information, I suggest that you:
3. Hide and/or Add columns on the onscreen report so that you now display (feel free to add more, if they will fit onscreen):
- Estimated Ad Position
- Estimated Avg. CPC
- Advertiser Competition
- Approx Avg. Search Volume
4. Now, here’s the best part: you can export to a .csv file (the one that’s readable by Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet) and play around with it offline (i.e. see which keywords are in your budget range, have reasonable search volume yet your ad will still place fairly high) … remember: the top one/two/ or three positions MIGHT get you to the sponsored links right on top of the google searches for that keyword/phrase!
Next, I recommend that you type those same keywords into Google itself and check out the first two pages of listings (approx. the Top 20 search results) that come up for each keyword/phrase to see how much direct and indirect competition that you would find for your product/s … and, more importantly, who is offering something similar to what you are offering, but for free!
With Information Products, you might be competing with the online magazine, and article sites; they offer lots of free info that people searching (using the search terms that you are hoping will attract them to your site via your ad) for might perceive to be as useful as what you are charging for … clearly the fewer ‘free’ or even ‘direct’ (somebody else selling Information Products) competitors that you have, the better …
… ultimately, I expect that we will be looking to ‘pitch’ our site at keywords with: low CPC; few direct (and fewer ‘free’) competitors, where we might rank high in the search results and/or ad placement rankings.
But, that comes later …
Right now, I’m digging through google to check out the Top 20 search results (in exactly the manner that I described above) for about 20 or 30 keyword sets … this could take a while, but at least we are making progress!
6 responses so far ↓
Jeff // September 12, 2008 at 8:08 pm |
AJ,
I do a similar review as you reference above, however, I look for the highest CPC and High or Very High advertiser competition because I’m trying to find the most lucrative Adsense ads from a publisher’s point of view.
As another consideration, do you think it might be beneficial in your situation to look for keywords related to your content that have:
1. High search volumes – means lots of people are looking for it.
2. Low numbers of competing websites (ie. that contain “my keyword phrase”) – means the direct competition is not too numerically superior.
3. High CPC – This means Google charges a lot for ads related to this KW, but also pays ad publishers more as well.
4. High or Very High Advertiser Competition – This means advertisers are fighting to advertise on the best web sites related to the KW.
My thought here is that with numbers 1 and 2 you could probably dominate the search engine pretty quickly for that keyword. And with 3 and 4 you could use Adsense to create some revenue streams that are relevant to your topic.
The only possible downside you might have using Adsense on the site is possibly bringing in the paying competition. However, with a good number 1 and 2 marketing effort you’d wind up being the big dog for the KW and be able to generate traffic necessary to drive your on site products.
I’m just thinking out loud here…what do you think?
-Jeff
I’m Minding My Own Business, are you minding yours?
AJC // September 12, 2008 at 9:16 pm |
@ Jeff – I see what you’re saying … look for the keywords that will pay you the most to HOST ads on your site? I’ll put up a post in the next couple of my days, because it’s whole new subject … Thanks!
Jeff // September 13, 2008 at 4:55 am |
Exactly.
The only other piece I might offer is stepping away from the wordpress.com domain names. WordPress.com can shut you down if they think you’re getting too close to “advertising” on one of their URLs and you can’t sell a WordPress.com URL if your efforts take off and you want to sell the business.
A good “used” or “pre-owned” domain name can be found through Go Daddy’s auction links. Some are more expensive than others. So far I’ve been playing with the cheap ones, which are nothing more than domains that someone either let expire or forgot to renew.
Pre-existing URLs have the added benefits of already being aged a bit which can help you climb through Google’s rankings a bit faster and may already have some existing daily traffic and backlinks. These are all points that will help with the search engine marketing which is what helps get your web site in front of viewers for free.
Good Luck
-Jeff
I’m Minding My Own Business, are you minding yours?
AJC // September 14, 2008 at 4:48 am |
@ Jeff – Great point about ‘pre-washed’ domain names PROVIDED that you can find one that matches your preferred keywords.
Naturally, I won’t be advertising/ selling any products via my (now three) blogs … violates my personal code of ethics (but, don’t let that stop any of my readers who want a ‘commercial’ blog!).
Jeff // September 14, 2008 at 11:21 am |
AJ,
Just my two cents, but I don’t think you need to match your keyword exactly. Is that BeBiz’ recommendation to match the KW?
I think being in the ballpark is good enough rather having to match. You can market your way into high rankings for your chosen keywords through some pretty simple tricks with your website setup and backlinks.
Heck Courtney Tuttle (whose site I linked in the other comment thread) doesn’t even use a KW phrase for his domain name. He uses his name and has marketed the site as Court’s Internet Marketing School. Up until very recently he was ranked number one on google for Internet Marketing.
Court has been pushed back down in Google’s rankings as of late, which has been a big topic of discussion on his site. The best answer so far is that he received a manual “slap” from one of the Google engineers for some of his recent content concerning keyword targeting. It covered a lot of good “how to’s.”
-Jeff
I’m Minding My Own Business, are you minding yours?
AJC // September 14, 2008 at 9:45 pm |
@ Jeff – Maybe we should stop mentioning his name here, then
Actually, you are ahead of me on this; not exactly sure where BeBiz is heading with this, but SiteBuildIt! encouraged using the keyword phrase in both yor domain name and a specific number of times ONLY in the opening and closing para’s of your home page …
… we shall see!
AJC
PS I actually want to use the domain name RepeatUntilRich.com on one of my two sites (did I mention having a ‘content site’ directing traffic to the BeBiz ’sales site?)