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Choosing the right keywords – what is your strategy?

September 4, 2008 by John Dilbeck
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Attracting Visitors, Sitesell and Site Build It, WordTracker 

What are keywords?

I suspect that you probably know something about choosing the right keywords for your site, but, just in case this is your first introduction to this subject, let me give you a brief overview now and offer a couple of links to where you can learn more later on this page.

Keywords can be loosely thought of as the words or phrases that succinctly describe the topic of a page on a website, a Squidoo lens, a post on your blog, or anywhere else on the Internet.

Another way to think of keywords: they are words or phrases that people type into search engines to try to find websites that offer matching and relevant information.

You’ve probably done it yourself. Some of us search for information dozens or hundreds of times every day. The better you get at entering appropriate keywords into the search engines, the more likely you are to find what you are looking for quickly.

Now, let’s think about this from the other side of the screen.

How do we build our sites so that they will be found when people search for related topics and specific information we cover?

I’m sure there are more than two ways to approach this, but let’s think about the difference between trying to write about the most searched keywords versus choosing the right keywords.

One reason you should learn all you can about choosing keywords: it can bring more visitors to your blog or site and, if you do your job, this can result in more income.

How to find good keywords

What is one of the things professional webmasters, lensmasters, and bloggers do that sets them apart from their less-successful competitors?

They research topics within their subject areas that are being searched for many times each month in the search engines and then write quality content and put it on their sites to compete for some of those searchers’ attention.

If you’ve studied this topic at all, you probably know several free sites that you can go to that will show you adsense keyword lists, some of the highest paying keywords, or the most searched keywords.

These sites and lists can be worth knowing about, but they may not help you attract more visitors to read what you’ve poured your heart into writing.

Why not?

Many thousands, possibly millions, of people who are writing on the Internet know about those sites and lists, too. They’re busily writing content in the hopes of getting some of those searchers to come to their sites.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t try too hard to get a page one listing on Google when someone searches for topics like affiliate marketing. That’s too broad a term and there are too many competitors. I want to find a term that perhaps fewer people are looking for, but which also has many less competitors. The better I do this research, the more likely I am to get a higher listing on Google and other search engines and that means the probability of more visitors who are interested in a particular subset of affiliate marketing.

I’d much rather have someone who is sincerely interested in learning how to make money with an affiliate program and who is willing to put forth the time, effort, and money it takes to learn affiliate marketing in order to build a successful home based affiliate business.

So, I’m doing my best to attract someone, possibly you, who is looking for a high-quality affiliate marketing opportunity rather than just anyone who has a passing interest in affiliate marketing and learning how to make more money online.

This is more of an art than a science, but the tools to help us identify better niches are available and they’re getting more sophisticated all the time.

Rather than writing about the most searched keywords and fighting for recognition among a crowd of thousands or millions of sites, I concentrate on finding good keywords that fewer people are searching for, but which have only dozens or hundreds of competing pages on the web.

Just imagine for a moment…

What if all those people who are searching for affiliate marketing are standing in a long line in the real world where you can see them.

That looks pretty attractive, doesn’t it?

You see all those people there – potential customers – and just can’t wait to show them what you have to offer.

…but, then you notice something else…

Almost all of those people are lined up in front of one store. A little farther down the road is another store with lots of people lined up.

As you look down the road, you notice that each store has a shorter line waiting in front of it, and after the tenth store, there just aren’t that many people wanting to browse any of the other thousands of stores that are waiting there with their doors unlocked, the lights on, and darn few customers.

That’s essentially what happens when you compete for the most popular keywords that people search for on Google and the other major search engines. They enter those keywords in the text box at Google and Google shows them only the first ten stores on that long road with thousands of stores. If Google has done a good job of matching those popular keywords with the most relevant store, then the great majority of people will click on the very top link and off they go into the most popular store.

A few don’t like the looks of that store, so they’ll click on the second or third link. Almost all the searchers will pick one of the ten stores on the first page of the search results and then they’re gone.

Only the most dedicated – or possibly hardest to please – searchers go on to page two or three or further. Hardly anyone goes past page ten.

If your store isn’t one of the top 20 or 30, don’t expect Google to send many people your way.

Are you doomed?

Of course not!

But, you have to “think different” and try to make your “store” more attractive to someone who is looking specifically for what you are offering.

You have to specialize and let people know it. Yes, you’ll get far less people coming to your site than those thousands or millions who are searching, but you’ll get people who are looking for precisely what you are offering.

You have to understand your customers and what they are looking for. You have to understand the merchants and companies you represent. You have to find a way to get in between the people who are looking for exactly what you can offer, and then give them a convenient link to a merchant who can provide what they need.

When you learn how to master this art, you’ll achieve more success with your affiliate marketing business.

So, how do you learn how to do all of this?

I know of two excellent ebooks that will teach you how to segment your target market, find quality merchants who will offer products and services your market is looking for, and how to write your site in such a way that they’ll find you when they search for specific keywords in the search engines.

Interestingly enough, Ken Evoy wrote both of these ebooks. For years, one was sold to thousands of people at around $20 each. The other has always been free.

You can download his Make Your Site Sell! and you don’t even have to jump through any hoops or even give your email address. I was happy to pay about $20 for it when I originally bought it. You can get it free. It’s just as valuable now as it was then.

His other book started out as a free tutorial course delivered by email, but later was converted to a downloadable ebook. His Affiliate Marketing Course was updated in August 2008 and you can download it for free right here on my blog.

In addition to teaching you how to evaluate and identify the best keywords you can use to attract your target market, they’re going to tell you why Site Build It! is the best way to build an online business that attracts highly-targeted visitors. But, of course, you don’t have to subscribe to Site Build It. You can take what you learn and use it on any of your sites in any way you want. You just won’t be getting the full set of integrated tools that SBI offers.

Brainstorming keywords

Part of what you’ll learn from Ken is how to brainstorm and build a large list of keywords that are related to your site, and then to prune that list to select only the ones that will most likely attract the visitors you want most.

Site Build It has a module called Brainstorm It! that helps you in this process. It works quickly and stores what you find in a database on Sitesell’s servers. It makes extensive use of two popular sites that know a lot about keywords: Google and WordTracker.

So, if you are a Site Build It! subscriber, as I am, you have a tool that was designed from scratch to provide the best keyword optimization tools.

If you’re not a subscriber to SBI, you can still learn the art of choosing the right keywords to attract the people you want to visit your site. It will just take more work and you won’t have a database that you can refer to easily in the future, unless you build it yourself.

You can use WordTracker for your keyword research and they offer a free trial, free videos, and a free guide to help you.

If you are serious about using the best keyword selection tool, you’ll understand the value of Site Build It! or subscribing to WordTracker’s keywords analyzer.

You may insist on using only free tools, but I believe you will be limiting your earning potential when you do that.

I am happy to pay for the best tools I can find to research topics, brainstorm keywords, and build sites that attract lots of free, targeted visitors from the search engines for weeks or months after I write a page.

I’ve invested the time to learn this art, although I still have not mastered it, and I show many thousands of pages to interested visitors every month on my blogs, websites, lenses, and other sites.

You can learn these skills, too. It just takes time and effort. The ebooks are free and they explain what you need to know. You’ll have to pay for the best tools to help you, but they’re optional.

If you’ll take the time to study what many of your strongest competitors already know, a year from now you should become a better affiliate marketer than you are now.

So, what’s your strategy for choosing the right keywords for each page on your site?

If you want to win the competition and get more visitors from the search engines, it’s not enough to target your whole site for a particular niche, you have to target each page of your site to a particular sub-group of that niche. Yes, it’s more work and takes more knowledge, but it makes a big difference in the results you’ll realize.

Do you prefer to try to get people who have entered the most searched keywords, or do you present them with quality content based on the best keywords for your niche and each page you write?

Before you leave, take a few minutes and download either Make Your Site Sell! or the Affiliate Marketing Course. They’re free and will teach you quite a lot about affiliate marketing. You don’t have to choose one or the other, get both if you want.

They won’t do you a bit of good, however, if you just download them and let them sit on your computer. You have to read them, study them, and put into action what you learn. If you’re not willing to do that, don’t bother downloading them.

Act on your dream!

JD

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4 Comments on Choosing the right keywords – what is your strategy?

  1. Sire on Thu, 4th Sep 2008 10:30 pm

    2. Hiya John, this is a very concise article on keywords and their importance in getting your site, be it a website, blog or whatever, noticed by the search engines. I can tell you that whilst I know about keywords and use them in my posts and titles etc, my greatest flaw is that I do not spend anywhere near enough time researching them.

    Time for me is of the essence and it is more important to get out a good post than to worry about sourcing the right keywords. Sure I may not get as many readers but I have a happier lifestyle and I think that is much more important.

    If I didn’t already have a full time job I would probably spend more time on my keywords, but unless I win the lottery, I just can’t see that happening.

  2. John Dilbeck on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 8:35 am

    3. Hi Sire,

    Yes, we all have our priorities, and work on our blogs and sites doesn’t rank at the top of the list for most people.

    I enjoy working, especially so since I love my home based affiliate marketing business. I don’t have to leave home to go to a full-time job, so that makes a lot of difference. I’m also no longer married and my daughter is grown with almost-grown kids of her own, so my expenses are lower and my time is more my own.

    I enjoy working the puzzle of researching and choosing keywords that give my page the best chance of attracting just the right people. Sometimes it works better than other times; it’s a learning process.

    On a blog post, I do some research, but on a page on a static site, I do a lot more.

    A blog post will be popular for a few days and, probably, will slowly lose popularity over time unless we do something to bring it back to the forefront.

    On a well-designed static site, however, a page can grow in popularity over time. In that case, to me, it makes sense to spend an extra hour or two thinking about exactly who I want to read that page and what I want them to do when they get there. Then, I spend a few minutes using a keywords analyzer to help me find two or three of the best keywords around which to write the article.

    I try to define the most wanted response I’d like from the visitors and then offer a secondary response as a fall-back in case they don’t respond to the primary offer.

    That page is going to work for me for the next few months – or even years – and it just feels right to do a little extra work up front to give it a better chance to succeed in the competition for free visitors from Google and the other search engines.

    The more targeted visitors I can get to a page that converts well, the larger the commission checks I receive. I have some pages that are putting money in my pocket, consistently, month after month.

    Other blog posts and web pages are purely informational and the only thing I want my visitor to do is to learn something or think about something from a different perspective.

    The main goal I have for my websites is to help people find the tools, products, services, and resources they need to accomplish their goals as they act on their dream.

    Sometimes I earn money in the process, most of the time I don’t.

    The more my readers succeed, the more I succeed.

    Of course, I wouldn’t turn it down if I were to win the lottery, but I don’t think it would make a lot of difference in my life. The numbers in my bank account balances would be higher and I’d probably make more progress on building Castle Freedom, but otherwise I think I’d be right here doing what I enjoy doing.

    Thanks for your comments; they’re always appreciated, Sire.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

  3. Sire on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 10:40 am

    4. John, it is always a pleasure to read your posts and I hope one day that I will have the luxury of spending more time on researching the keywords. Perhaps once my kids get married and leave home and I retire I also will be able to spend time doing what enjoy rather than something that has to be done from necessity.

    Sires last blog post..Developing Good Blogging Habits Is Essential

  4. John Dilbeck on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 6:16 pm

    5. Sire, I can fully relate to what you’re saying.

    There were many years in my life when I had to do what needed doing much more than what I wanted to do.

    Still, it’s obvious that you enjoy blogging and I enjoy reading what you have to say.

    Act on your dream!

    JD

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