ClickBank Blog » keywords

Google Panda Effects on Affiliate Sites

Molly Lane, ClickBank — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:09:44 +0000

Written by: Guest Author, Mark Ling

Hey everyone,

I’m writing this blog post for ClickBank Affiliates (and this applies to vendors too for that matter) who are concerned about the impact of Google Panda‘s update has on the way in which they should be optimizing their sites for the search engines going forward.

Since February 24, Google has run several Panda updates (the most recent was Panda 2.2 on June 16, 2011). Firstly I want you to be aware that Panda is an update, not an entirely new ranking algorithm so many of the things you do to try to achieve high search engine rankings still apply as they used to.

The initial Panda update did in fact affect approximately 12% of the websites in Google, however the effects were much larger than Google has stated because most of the sites that were affected were websites that rank in the top pages of Google.

In addition, Google have also publicly stated on Google Webmaster Central Blog that Panda is not the only significant update that they’ve been running and that there will be more than 500 tweaks to their algorithms throughout the year. Furthermore, Google states “Some publishers have fixated on our prior Panda algorithm change, but Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year.”

What’s more, Google’s representative says, “In fact, since we launched Panda, we’ve rolled out over a dozen additional tweaks to our ranking algorithms, and some sites have incorrectly assumed that changes in their rankings were related to Panda. SEO is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users.”

Google’s representative went on to list the following as questions that one could use to assess the quality of an article or a page:

Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
How much quality control is done on content?
Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

As you can see based on the questions above, Panda is an attempt for Google to assess websites that have too many low quality pages. If your site carries a Panda penalty, that doesn’t mean your site is out of Google, however it does mean that your website’s pages carry a penalty that makes it harder for them to get to the top of Google’s search results.

Also remember, if you make changes to your pages based on the information above, it may take several weeks before you notice changes to your rankings as Google only runs the Panda filter periodically to calculate the values it needs (about every 5 to 7 weeks).

Going forward, the key takeaway from this is that when you build your websites you need to start with your potential visitors in mind. This is a key distinction from those who have been creating websites based on highly searched for keywords and on securing low quality writers to throw up content based on those keywords.

You now have to think about producing content that users actually want to read.

This was always a good practice, however it has become even more important for those wanting to thrive with their affiliate sites (and vendor sites) going forward.

About the Author

Mark Ling is the founder of Affilorama. Visit Affilorama to gain free and instant access to over 100 hours of easy-to-follow, step by step video lessons on affiliate marketing, plus online web based tools and a community of over 150,000 members willing to help with your affiliate marketing success. Click here to visit Affilorama.

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Convert Visits to Sales with “Buyer Keywords”

Beau Blackwell — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:21:22 +0000

Written by: Matt Carter of Matt’s Affiliate Marketing Blog

One of the biggest lessons I learned in my Internet marketing career is understanding how to find people online that are ready and willing to buy! Once I worked out how to do this, my Internet marketing efforts really started to take off. In this post I’m going to share with you some tips to help you master this vital online marketing concept.

Finding the Buyers

Keyword data is the biggest factor that distinguishes online marketing from the offline world. Before the days of Google and keyword data, businesses relied heavily on market research companies to provide insight into the mind of the consumer.

These days we can simply analyze the keywords they type into Google and base a lot of our decisions on this. You might think this is obvious, however you would be amazed at how many people fail to grasp this.

Commercial Intent

This leads me onto my next point; ‘Commercial Intent’. This is simply judging how likely a person is to buy, based on the keywords they use in their search.

Ideally, you want to be driving traffic to your sites on keywords with high commercial intent, as these keywords will convert at much higher rates than more general, information-seeking keywords.

Example Searcher

Let’s look at an example to demonstrate this point more clearly. If a person types “acne” into Google, I would consider this to be a low commercial intent keyword, the reason being that we can’t tell what their intention is at this stage. They may just want to learn about acne and how many people have it, or the main causes of acne. These searches are known as “information seeking keywords,” and they’re not likely to result in high conversions to sales for you.

However, let’s say that the person who typed “acne” into Google did in fact have bad acne and needed a cure. The next thing he/she might do, after they browsed some websites about acne, is head back to Google and refine the search a bit more.

They might start researching the kind of acne they have, and type into Google “Types of Acne.” This is not a buyer keyword, but it may reveal to the searcher that they have a type of acne known as cystic acne.

So they might now type into Google “cystic acne treatment” and read some more webpages about possible acne treatments that you can use. At this stage, the commercial intent of the keyword has increased, and the conversions to sales also increase with it. We know exactly what the searcher’s problem is and that they are looking for a solution for it.

You can take this even further by getting very specific, and get extremely high commercial intent with keywords like “buy cystic acne treatment.” When you see the word “buy” in the search phrase, the searcher is blatantly telling you that they are ready to buy.

Conversions & Profits

Essentially, the higher the commercial intent, the higher the conversion rate for keywords and the more profit you will make. Therefore, it is important to build your websites on keywords that have a high amount of commercial intent.

What you must keep in mind, though, are the traffic stats for a keyword. It’s all well and good to be targeting a super-high commercial intent keyword, but if no one is searching for it, then you won’t make a penny.

When I look at keyword figures I usually aim for no less than 500 exact match searches a month in the local market I am targeting. I then start with half a dozen keywords and build my sites from there, with the intention to grow the list of keywords I’m targeting out over time.

Also, I will often target lower search volume buyer keywords as my secondary keywords for a page. For example, if my primary keyword for a page is “cystic acne treatment” I might target “buy cystic acne treatment” as a secondary phrase to collect that extra bit of buyer traffic to that page.

Although there are several more steps to creating profitable affiliate sites, building on a solid foundation of buyer keywords is the most important thing to get right.

About the Author

Matt Carter is a full-time Internet marketer based in Australia. His main focus online is building affiliate sites and doing search engine optimization. To learn more about Matt and his free video training, please visit Matt’s Affiliate Marketing Blog.

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Moneywords: Your Key to the Keyword Kingdom – Part 2

Beau Blackwell — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:14:53 +0000

Written by: Adam Short, Guest Blogger

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of identifying and targeting search keywords that aren’t overly competitive, but that also receive enough searches to build a profitable site around.

Let’s walk through the process now of finding these “Moneywords.”

Take a moment to look at the Moneyword Matrix Chart, developed by my team at Niche Profit Classroom. You can see exactly what keywords you’re trying to find within any given niche market.

As you can see, the sweet spot is finding keywords with over 500 searches per month but under 10,000 competing pages for that particular keyword. The higher the search volume per month and the fewer the competitors, the better the keyword. You can plug any keyword you like into the matrix and instantly see whether it is poor, fair, good, excellent, or jackpot. Let’s walk through a real-world example of how to use this matrix, so that you can apply it to your own niche.

To begin, you’ll want to type the general niche topic into Google’s External Keyword Tool.

For example, if you type the term “Roses” into Google’s external keyword tool, you’ll get back hundreds of results. These are the terms related to roses people are actually searching with when they’re looking for information.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see three different settings you should use for your initial keyword research:

Type the niche topic into the search box.
Set your Match Type to “phrase.” Without going into too much detail, this gives you more accurate information to base your keyword research on. Some people use the exact term, and that’s a great tip for PPC advertising. But for information on organic search results, I prefer the phrase match. (The “exact” match is too restrictive).
Use the advanced filter to remove any keywords or keyword phrases that get under 500 Global Monthly searches per month from the results.

While not highlighted in the picture, note that we use the United States as the locale. Using a different country, even if you live in that country, is not going to give you the full potential audience, since you’re marketing to people worldwide.

If you get a lot of results that aren’t specific to the niche you’re looking at, use the “Include terms” and “Exclude terms” boxes in the upper left to further filter your results.

Looking at the results, we find there are tens of thousands of searches for many of the keywords. For example, according to Google’s tool, the phrase “blue roses” gets an estimated Global Monthly search volume of 49,500, as pictured below:

However, the number of competing pages for that term is 6,040,000 — which means over 6 million others are competing for it.

How did I find the number of competing pages?

Go to Google’s home page and type in the term within quotes. It’s important that you use the quotes so that you get the correct phrase match search results and the correct number of competing pages.

The picture below shows the correct way to look for competing pages for a particular term.

Now, if we plug those two numbers into our Moneyword Matrix, we can see immediately that the results are not very encouraging. This is a poor keyword to target for your website.

One of the terms that came up in our example above was “Rose Drawings,” which has 6,600 Monthly Global Searches per month. When we put that phrase into Google’s search engine inside quotes, the number of competing pages is 12,600. Can you see where we’re going here?

Let’s plug these numbers into the Moneyword Matrix.

We’ve found a Moneyword!

This would be a superb keyword phrase to build a page on your site about. You could feature pencil drawings, or have other drawings displayed, or maybe include an article on drawing techniques to create the perfect rose drawing. Such a page or article is likely to be ranked at the top of the organic search results within days or weeks, and can drive continual traffic to your site.

Finding 10 or 20 of these types of Moneyword keywords will cement your site, articles, and content at the top of Google’s organic search results and drive thousands of visitors to your site every month.

You definitely want to keep all the Jackpot, Excellent, and Good keywords, but don’t discard all those “Fair” keywords just yet. They can be useful in finding additional Moneywords. First, however, I want to tell you that very few people are going to take the time to do manual research for keywords in this manner, even with the Moneyword Matrix Chart to give them exact results.

This means that if you’re willing to take the time to do your due diligence, you’re going to be way ahead of the game when it comes to competing for search engine rankings.

Fortunately, there’s an automated solution that will save you time and effort. We’ve developed a tool that does most of the work for you. Simply download the Google results to your computer via a CSV file, and then run the tool. It will automatically get all the competing pages, match them with the number of searches per month, and return the rating of Jackpot, Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor.

Here’s a screenshot of Niche Profit Classroom’s Moneyword Matrix keyword tool, which is available to Niche Profit Classroom members.

Remember I told you to not discard those Fair keywords? Search through the Fair keywords and locate the ones that have over 10,000 searches per month. You can then use those keywords to do additional keyword research and find other terms that may be useful.

For example, let’s take our “blue roses.” If we put “blue roses” into Google’s AdWords Tool search suggestion box, one of the terms returned is “blue roses meanings,” which gets 4,400 searches per month. If we go to Google and type in “blue roses meanings” with the quotes, we find the competition is only 7,700 sites. Using the Moneyword Matrix Chart, we discover that this is another Excellent keyword.

So while “blue roses” is not a Moneyword, the phrase “blue roses meanings” (note that it’s plural) is a Moneyword we can confidently rank for.

One way you can put Moneywords into action is by searching ClickBank’s Marketplace to find affiliate products to promote. By using our explanation here to find the right keywords, you can easily dominate the affiliate market for that product.

Once you’ve found a market you know is profitable, these steps make it easy to find highly searched, low competition keywords and phrases. This is the key to your continued success and profits. The Moneywords Matrix is your key to the keyword kingdom!

About the Author

Adam Short is a successful Internet marketer, speaker, and coach. Through his training, software and coaching platform at Niche Profit Classroom, he helps others start and grow successful and profitable online businesses.

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Moneywords: Your Key to the Keyword Kingdom – Part 1

Beau Blackwell — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:56:20 +0000

Written by: Adam Short, Guest Blogger

Have you ever tried to optimize your website for Google and other search engines, but failed to attain the results you were after? Most Internet marketers at one point or another find themselves quite frustrated with their lack of search engine success. Many elect to throw in the towel and pursue other avenues of traffic. Unfortunately, this is often a mistake. Most marketers don’t realize that just one simple change to their approach to search engine optimization could revolutionize their results. So what is that one simple change? Simple – it’s keywords. Website traffic success depends on the keywords you choose, and most people use the wrong ones, which inevitably leads to disappointment and wasted time.

Fortunately, choosing the right keywords is a relatively simple and straightforward process. You don’t need to be an SEO guru, and you don’t have to spend a ton of time, money, or effort. In this article I’ll show you how to pick the right keywords to obtain top organic search engine rankings, thereby securing a free flow of highly targeted traffic to your website.

Before we get started with keyword research, let’s answer the question: Why is search engine traffic so desirable for website owners?

Here are a few of the key reasons:

Search engines are collectively one of the largest traffic sources in the world.
Search engine traffic is highly targeted traffic.
Organic search engine traffic is free.

On top of that, organic search engine traffic can be very low maintenance and low stress. Once you obtain top rankings for your “Moneywords” (we’ll define this term later), your rankings will often stick for months, or even years. This means you do not need to constantly fret over losing your rankings, thereby enabling you to direct more positive energy towards other aspects of your business.

Furthermore, obtaining top rankings in Google (and other search engines) is a win-win situation for both you and the search engines. Here’s why:

Google wants to give people the most relevant search results they can. Google wins when it can provide quality, relevant search results.
People who search on Google win when they find web sites that give them the information they’re searching for.
You win by targeting the right keywords and having your site appear at the top of the organic search results, thus capturing the attention of people who are looking for the very subject or niche you’re marketing.

So ultimately, everyone gets what they want. What could be better? With that said, let’s get into the “nitty gritty” of keyword research and how you can use it to drive swarms of free search engine traffic to your website.

First off – what is keyword research exactly? In a nutshell, keyword research is the foundation of Internet marketing. If you understand what terms or phrases your customers use to find information in search engines, you’ll know how to reach them. You’ll understand exactly which keyword phrases you should focus on so that your marketing efforts reap the most rewards.

I’m sure you’ve heard the famous marketing tenet, “Find out what people want, and then give it to them.” The problem is, no one really explains how to do that. That’s where keyword research comes in. It enables you to find out what people really want.

By knowing exactly what keywords people are using to search, and by understanding how to target those valuable keyword terms and phrases, you can rank at the top of Google’s organic search results any time you want.

Let’s explore two of the most common approaches to keyword research. Do a gut check and ask yourself if you fall into one or both of these categories:

Targeting the highest search volume keywords in your niche
Targeting only long-tail keywords in your niche

While both of these methods are common, neither one is ideal.

Let’s look first at high search volume keywords. These are usually keywords that are just a few words, such as “Roses Flowers,” or just the term “Roses.” Sure, it may be a profitable market, but getting ranked for such short keywords can be very difficult.

The number of other sites targeting or competing with you for these keywords is often enormous, so even if you do make it to the top of the organic results for such keywords, someone is always nipping at your heels, trying to knock you off of Google’s first page.

It’s a no-win situation. You‘ll always be competing for the top spots, always marketing to keep your keywords ranking where people can find you.

Long-tail keyword targeting also has serious drawbacks. These are words, terms, or long phrases of four, five, or more words within any given keyword phrase. (Such as “pink roses grow best in organic soil”.)

The problem with long-tail keywords is that they get little to no traffic each month. You have to target and maintain high-ranking results for hundreds, if not thousands, of keywords to generate enough traffic to continually sustain a profitable web site. That’s a lot of work. Creating content for that many keywords is time consuming and can be very expensive.

That brings us to a superior method for doing keyword research – targeting “Moneywords.” This approach examines keywords in a more scientific way. A “Moneyword” is a keyword that has very high search volume (lots of people are searching for the keyword each month) and very low competition in the search engines (very few websites are targeting the keyword).

The benefits of targeting Moneywords are many:

You’ll achieve multiple first-page ranking in Google’s organic results within weeks, and sometimes even within days.
You’ll spend minimal effort — especially with our Moneyword Matrix formula and keyword tool.
Your website ranking will stick to the top of the organic search results like super glue.

All of this results in long-term, automated traffic.

Sound good? Be sure to read Part 2, where I walk you through the exact process of identifying Moneywords and learning to dominate your niche.

About the Author

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The Low-Cost Guide to Getting Started in PPC Marketing: Part 3

Beau Blackwell — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:31:11 +0000

Written by: Charles Kirkland, Guest Blogger

This is the final post in a three-part series. Be sure to read Parts 1 and 2 first!

Factor 3 – PPC Marketing the Smart Way

When using PPC marketing, there are several factors to take into account to guarantee that your ads are displayed properly so that your money is spent on the clicks that have potential for converting into affiliate sales. These are some tips will help you get started with PPC marketing for your affiliate products the smart way.

1. Properly group your keywords

Creating groups of keywords based on their theme will assist the search engine in displaying ads that are relevant to those particular keywords. Avoiding placing all of your keywords in one large group makes it easier to test the strength of your different campaign ads.

2. Link to a specific web page on your site

Every click counts. If you are displaying a specific ad for a particular keyword then you want to ensure that the ad directs the visitor to the appropriate page. In general, this would mean a specific landing page and not the homepage of your website.

3. Focus on a keyword’s overall conversion rate

It is common for marketers to confuse a keyword’s high click through rate (CTR) with its actual overall ability to convert. The CTR is only referring to those who clicked on the ad and reached your page. It does not count the amount of people who then went to the merchant’s sales page and actually purchased the product.

4. Split up campaigns based on region

It is ideal to display your ads based on the geographic region of the visitor. If you organize your keyword ad groups properly, you can customize your ads to attract more people. This is a key method to personalize your ads, as you can write them in a language native or familiar to people.

I hope these tips have been helpful for you in getting started in your affiliate marketing business. The key point that I want you to remember is that PPC can be done very effectively on a shoestring budget, when you have the right offer, when you have the right landing page and when you are taking advantage of PPC marketing.

About the Author

You can read about Charles Kirkland and his adventures and misadventures in affiliate marketing at his blog. He also provides free affiliate training and videos for marketers at any level there as well.

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5 Steps to Making Your First Sale as an Affiliate Marketer

Beau Blackwell — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:49:11 +0000

Written by: Steven Clayton, Guest Blogger

One of the things I get asked a lot is where to begin as an affiliate marketer.

It can all be so overwhelming. There are so many different ways to get traffic, build sites, and pick products to promote (these are the three components of any affiliate marketing effort). In addition, some of these traffic and site building options can be expensive and highly technical, requiring a lot of training and expertise.

My goal in this post is to highlight a way to get started as an affiliate that’s relatively easy, risk-free, zero cost, has a great chance to make your first money online, and doesn’t require any technical knowledge or experience.

We’re going to use ClickBank for our product, a BlogSpot blog for our website, and search engine optimization to get traffic. If you’re totally new to search engine optimization and want a very quick introduction, you may want to check out this video.

Step 1 – Find 10 products you’re interested in promoting

One of the best parts of being an affiliate for ClickBank is that it’s so easy to get started because there are thousands of unique products to promote. Once you have a ClickBank account, go to the Marketplace and browse it to find products that you have an interest in and/or that you or someone you know would buy.
Make a note of the products, including their Pitch Pages and the custom HopLinks you’ll use to promote them (you’ll get these by clicking the Promote button next to the Marketplace listing). It’s a good idea to save this information in a text file on your computer.

Step 2 – Find potential keywords using Google’s keyword tool

Go to Google’s external keyword tool.
For each product you picked in Step 1, enter the most generic keyword that applies to your product. For example, if you’re promoting a product on how to cure tinnitus, use the keyword “tinnitus” and click the Get Keyword Ideas button.
Go over to the Match Type drop down box and select Phrase Match.
Sort the list in descending order of global search volume by clicking on the column Title.
Make a list of any keyword that is between 10000 and 30000 global monthly searches, and that has something to do with your product.
At the end of this step, you’ll have 10 lists. Some of these lists may be empty, as it’s possible that there won’t be any keywords that meet our criteria. We’re being very careful about selecting only the ones that will work for us, so have patience and don’t get discouraged.

Step 3 – Evaluate the competition for SEO

Now we need to see if it would be possible for us to actually rank in Google for terms that would drive traffic to the product we’re going to market. For each keyword identified in Step 2, head over to Google and type the keyword in quotes. For example, if the keyword phrase was “cure tinnitus,” you’d type “cure tinnitus” into Google.
You’ll see the search results and the words “Results 1-10 of about xx,xxx” on the right hand side. If the xx,xxx number is less than 100,000, move on to the next step. Otherwise, discard this keyword.
Do another Google search by typing inurl:”keyword phrase”. For example, for our keyword above it would be inurl:”cure tinnitus”. Take a look at the number of results again. If that number is below 1,250, this keyword is a winner. Make a note of it.

Step 4 – Pick the keyword you want to start with and build a BlogSpot blog

We’ve picked a BlogSpot blog for 2 reasons: it’s easy to build a nice-looking site quickly, and blogs rank very well in Google.
In general, pick the keyword phrase that has the highest search volume, the lowest competition numbers from step 3, and seems to be the best fit for someone looking to actually buy your product. There are really no wrong answers here, just go with your instinct using these criteria as a guide.
Build your BlogSpot blog. Sign up and watch the tutorials on how to create content like posts. When setting up your blog, make sure that the blog title is your keyword phrase.
Make sure that the blog address (URL) also contains the keyword phrase you’ve picked in some way. So in our example, best-tinnitus-cure, my-tinnitus-cure, etc., all work just fine. Dashes are fine anywhere, so with a bit of creativity you should have no trouble coming up with a name that’s not been taken.
The goal of your blog is to inform and to sell. Provide valuable content from the Pitch Page of the product, as well as outside resources. Add your HopLink to the actual product using text and possibly images. You can often get images from an affiliate page for the product, which can be found in the product’s Vendor Spotlight in the ClickBank Marketplace.
Important: Never make up any information about the product! I encourage you to buy the product or have someone you know purchase the product, so you can give a truthful and accurate opinion of it.
The exact steps to build out the site are too extensive to go into here, but an example should do the trick. Check this page out. It will give you a great idea of what we’re after.

Step 5 – Do some link building

Link building is the key to search engine optimization, and the best way to quickly get included in search engine results for the keyword you’re targeting.
The process of getting a backlink is a bit different for each option listed below, but you can’t go wrong here. The idea is to do three things: get a link to your site, use your keyword phrase in the description or tag when you’re using a bookmarking site, use your keyword phrase as the “anchor text” (the text that’s clickable…that is the actual link to your site) whenever possible. Don’t worry about getting this perfect…any link is better than a perfect link, and you can do no harm!
Blog comment posting is a popular way of getting backlinks. Here’s a nice page that explains how to do it.
Social bookmarking can be a great way to build backlinks to your site. Here’s a huge list of them! Just set up an account with them and add your site.
Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. are great places to put up a small amount of content and then to add a backlink to your site. Here’s a nice list of these types of sites.
Also take a look at this guest blog post I did previously for other ideas.

Try to build at least 5-10 backlinks every single day! This will give you the quickest results.

Conclusion

The most important part of this process is the keyword research in steps 2 and 3. If you have trouble finding the right keyword phrases for the 10 products you selected, go get 10 more and try again. Have patience. If you stick it out and find the right keywords, the rest will usually take care of itself.

After a while… it could be days, could be weeks, you should show up in the Google search results and people will click on your links to the ClickBank product and you’ll make your first money online! Best of luck in your affiliate marketing efforts.

About the author

Steven Clayton and his partner Tim Godfrey are the creators of several best-selling Internet Marketing information products, including Commission Blueprint 2.0, Niche Blueprint, and SEM Business Blueprint. You can get more great advice and information on their blog.

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Competitive Niches: 5 Ways to Beat the Big Guns- Part 2

Beau Blackwell — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:52:22 +0000

Written by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

This is Part 2 of my series “Competitive Niches.” Be sure to check out Part 1 first if you haven’t already.

#2 – An effective SEO strategy

Most website owners say they do SEO, but a lot of them are half-hearted about it. They forget that the O in SEO stands for optimization. When you optimize for something it means you are thorough in covering all your bases to make sure your site is built for ranking, with every screw tightened and every page fine-tuned for search engine love. Just having the keyword in the page title is not enough!

You can review how heavily optimized the top 20 sites are for any given keyword phrase using the SEO Analysis feature in Traffic Travis. It looks at 12 different things a website can do to optimize for a phrase, so you can check if a site is dropping the O out of SEO!

Some particularly important SEO factors to keep in mind:

Keywords in H1 headings, page titles or page description
Directory listings in DMOZ or Yahoo!
Backlinks to your site (including trusted backlinks from .edu and .gov sites)

If any of your competitors are missing one or more of these things, then you’ve just found a significant weakness that can be exploited for your own benefit.

While SEO is sometimes talked about like a way to ‘game’ the search engines, it’s better to think of it as preparing a good CV (or resumé for you Americans). And as we all know, when it comes to getting a job, sometimes half an hour’s extra tweaking can make all the difference.

Stay tuned for Part 3 tomorrow, where I’ll talk about “thinking outside the box” when it comes to your niche.

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. You can follow them on Twitter.

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Choosing the Best Keywords to Promote ClickBank Products Using Search Engines

Beau Blackwell — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:50:09 +0000

Posted by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

At Affilorama we specialize in helping our members get buyer-converting traffic. One of the most important ways to do this is learning what keywords to use. We want to share some lesser-known techniques for building a highly-optimized keyword list, including some novel ways to catch extra traffic. You’ll learn methods that will help you find keywords your competitors are missing. Follow these steps and you should be on the right path to affiliate success.

Step 1: Know who your target is

Start by thoroughly researching your target market. The better you know your buyers, the more effective your keyword list. Here are some ways you can do that. As you research, note down potential keyword phrases you could target.

Visit forums related to your niche
Join special interest groups (online or offline)
Subscribe to competitor newsletters
Read up on the industry

Once you’ve done your background keyword research on your chosen niche, it’s time to start seriously drawing up your keyword list. From this list you can build out the structure of your campaign.

Step 2: Brainstorm keywords

On a blank sheet of paper note down all the keywords you gathered from your research. Let your mind freewheel and try to capture as many as possible.

Your list can be as broad or as narrow as you like – anything from single words to five- or six-word phrases are worth recording. For example, in the dog training niche you could have a broad keyword like “dog obedience” and a narrow phrase such as “Walking a Chihuahua on a leash.”

This brainstormed list is a great starting point – now let’s convert it into a killer list with some advanced techniques.

Step 3: Fragment your list the easy way

Since there’s a lot of search engine competition for popular keywords, one of the best ways to make headway is to “fragment” your list into a much larger collection of keywords you can target. To help fragment, or expand, your list, use the following tools.

Google Keyword Tool
Traffic Travis SEO Software (Traffic Travis queries all major search engines, not just Google, to get its results)
Affilorama Keyword Suggestion Tool

Using one of the keywords you noted down earlier, enter it into either of these tools and it will build a list of similar phrases that actual searchers have used, along with their search volumes.

This can be a great way to find some variations of keyword phrases that you haven’t thought of to add to your existing list. Google’s keyword tool will also give you an idea of how competitive a phrase might be, so you can decide whether the competition to traffic ratio is worth trying to rank well on it.

Step 4: Smart ways to uncover effective keywords

Another way to expand and add variety to your keyword list is to try these different methods. With a little lateral thinking you can often uncover some largely untapped, yet high value, traffic.

Misspellings – If you check the search volumes for “loose weight” you might be surprised how much traffic this misspelling gets. Try to think of similar common misspellings in your niche.
Product or Author Names – Adding a product or author name to your list can help you target searchers nearing the end of the purchase cycle.
Immediate Words – One of the main reasons people turn to the internet is to solve a problem. When they want a problem solved they want it done now. Even tomorrow is too late. So add some immediacy to your phrases by adding words like “stop,” “fix,” or “now.”
Money Words – Target the buyers by using words they are likely to search on such as “get …” “review …” or “buy …” No surprises there.
Information Words – Not everyone who goes online is planning on buying but that doesn’t mean you don’t want them visiting your site. The power of your sales copy could easily lure their credit card out of hiding, or if you have a tool to build a mailing list, you can contact them again in the future. Try adding words such as “how to…” “free guide…” or “homemade” to catch this type of traffic.

After assembling your keyword list, it’s important to identify the intent of the visitor that has searched for the particular keyword and group them into different traffic types.

Step 5: Focus your aim by sorting your list

It’s important to think about the intent of your visitors and the types of keywords they will use. Linking your keywords with specific visitor types will allow you to concentrate and strengthen the focus of your sales pages.

Divide your keywords into the following three types of visitors:

Buyers – This is the highest quality traffic you can attract, since they are right at the end of the purchase cycle and very close to buying. Unfortunately it is also the lowest volume. Words that buyers use include the money words mentioned above, as well as product or author names.
Product seekers - This segment has more traffic but it is lower quality, since they are not as close to making an actual purchase. They know about the niche and are thinking about buying a product to improve their experience but they don’t really know what products are available. Words found in this group are similar to information seekers but will tend to be more about solving an immediate problem and recognize the need for help. For example, in the dog training niche, they may be searching for a “dog training book,” “fix Doberman behavior problems,” or “training collar.”
Information seekers – While this is the lowest quality traffic it is also the highest volume, meaning it’s easier to get plenty of these types of visitors. The keywords assigned to this type will be the most general, or broad. Group your information-based words (see above) in this category, including any phrases that relate to information on how to solve a problem.

The first two are your most valuable; in particular, you should focus most of your energies on attracting product seekers. This has the best combination of traffic and potential buyers.

Shorter, broader phrases often have more competition, so don’t be afraid to target the long tail keywords that are more focused and have less competition. For example, in the dog training niche, you could focus on a specific breed or a well-known trainer like Cesar Millan.

With experience comes the natural intuition of recognizing “money keywords.” Spend time studying the search engine results for the keywords you are targeting. Monitor the traffic you are attracting to your site with the use of statistical tracking. Refine, tweak and experiment.

What types of keywords do you find work best to target your buyer traffic? What methods do you use to unearth good quality keywords? I’d be interested to know what works best for you.

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education and software tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers.

Please note: Any opinions expressed here represent those of the author, and are not necessarily recommended or endorsed by ClickBank.

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