Updated Posts, Powerful Ideas
Keywords
Don’t Let The Competition Scare You
Aug 5th
The best type of keyword to rank for is one that has a lot of daily searches and doesn’t have a lot of competition. Unfortunately for most of us, these keywords are rare and hard to find. So we are left with the option of entering markets that have more competition than we would like.
The question is:
How much competition is too much?
Some say that you should only enter markets with less than 100,000 competing web sites. Others say the competition should be less than 50,000. While these guidelines are useful, I want to show you something about competition numbers that may surprise you.
The reality is that the competition numbers you see in the search results aren’t the only information you need before you decide to enter a market.
I’m going to show you how the competition numbers you see are not the number of sites you’re really competing with.
Let’s look at the digital camera market. It’s a big market with a lot of competition. I decided to take a look at “waterproof digital camera” to see if I could enter the market as an affiliate for Amazon.com.
I started with Google, and when I entered waterproof digital camera without the quotes Google showed me that there were 2,500,000 competing web sites. Not good news!
Next I entered waterproof digital camera with quotes, and found that there were 361,000 competing sites. While better, that’s still a lot of competition.
Then I went to Bing.com, entered waterproof digital camera, and found there were 12,500,000 competing sites.
In each of these searches, if I had stopped there, I would have given up hope and moved on to another market. But wait…
I went back to the Google search results page and kept clicking forward in the search results. At the bottom of the page, you can opt to go to the next page, or skip ahead 9 pages deeper. What I found was really cool…
For the search phrase waterproof digital camera without the quotes, with 2,500,00 competing web sites, Google only listed 639 pages. Only 639 out of the 2,500,000 pages made it to the search results pages.
For the search phrase waterproof digital camera with the quotes, with 361,000 competing web sites, there were only 620 pages listed.
Using Bing, with 12,500,000 competing sites, only 819 pages were listed.
Using Yahoo, I couldn’t see a number of competing web sites, but there were only 1,000 pages listed.
The lesson here is that you shouldn’t be deterred by the competition numbers you see. In a lot of cases, you’ll find that there are a lot fewer competitors than you thought there were. With less than 1,000 competing pages in Yahoo, and even less in Google and Bing, this is a keyword that’s worth looking into.
A final tip:
On the Google search site, click on setting in the top left corner, and select “Search Settings”. On that page, you can select the option to show 100 results on each page. This makes it a lot quicker to get to number of pages that are listed on the Google search page.
How To Discover The Markets You Can Compete In
Jul 29th
Finding the keywords that you need to target for your marketing is vital. It’s also important to know when trying to compete in a market is extremely difficult. Here are a few things you should consider before you spend the time and/or money trying to get on the first page of the search engine results pages.
Let’s say you did target “weight loss” and you DID get a first page listing. While that is not something that will likely happen, there are a few drawbacks to getting there. While there are thousands upon thousands of searches for that key phrase, you really don’t know what they’re searching for. They could be looking for:
- Weight loss tips
- Weight loss menus
- Weight loss ebooks
- Free weight loss information
- Weight loss programs ( think Nutri-System)
- Weight loss workout routines
- Vegetarian weight loss
- Weight loss supplements
- Fast weight loss
If someone were to land on your site for the term “weight loss”, do you offer what they are REALLY looking for? And how would you know. The problem is that the term “weight loss” is a very broad keyword, and it covers a lot of potential possibilities.
If someone is looking for weight loss supplements and you’re offering a weight loss ebook…
If someone is looking for fast weight loss, and you’re offering an exercise program…
If someone is looking for free tips, and you’re selling something…
You’re out of luck…
You have successfully generated the dreaded “untargeted traffic”. People who get to your site who have absolutely no interest in what you’re offering.
Mega-market keywords look really good because of the number of searches that they get every day. But unless you have a site that covers just about everything that someone would want, you’re not going to make a lot of sales.
Another thing to consider is that where you rank is going to affect your traffic. If you’re not on the first page of the search engine results, you’re going to have a hard time getting any traffic. Let’s say you get your site in the top 100 sites for your keyword. Most people look at the first page of results, and if they don’t find what they want, they enter another search term. A few of them may go to the second page of search results. Very few of them are going to go through 10 pages of results to find your page.
That’s why it’s in your best interest to drill down in these mega-markets and target the related keywords. It’s a lot easier to attract the kind of visitor to your site that is looking for what you’re offering. And that results in you making sales. I don’t want you to waste your time targeting keywords that you’ll have a hard time profiting from. The sole purpose of writing this is so you can avoid the mistakes that I have already made. Hope this helps.
Finding Profitable Keywords In A Competitive Market
Jul 29th
When it comes to keyword research, most people will enter their main keyword into a keyword tool and see how many searches there are. If there are a lot of searches, they start thinking of all the traffic they’ll get and they create their pages and write the articles. And then they wonder why they aren’t getting any traffic and why it’s so hard to get a first page ranking for their web pages.
Let’s go through an example that will show you why it’s not always a good idea to target a keyword based ONLY on how many searches it gets. This is especially true in the mega-markets such as golf, dogs, and digital cameras. For this example, I’m going to use the weight loss market. Weight loss is a huge market, because there are always going to be people who are interested in losing weight.
I enter the keyword phrase “weight loss” in Market Samurai and find out that there are 818,630 searches per day!
That’s a lot of searches, and if you could get a first page listing on the search engine results page, you’d get a lot of traffic.
Let’s look at how much competition there is for “weight loss” – 65,200,000 sites. Over 65 million sites!
The main lesson here is to ALWAYS look at the competition you’re up against before you decide to use a keyword. Even though “weight loss” is very competitive, you can still enter the weight loss market. When I entered “weight loss” in Market Samurai, I got a list of 200 keywords and the competition for each one.
Looking through the list of keywords, I decided to look for the keywords that had less then 100,000 competing sites that still had a lot of searches each day. Here’s what I found:
- weight loss menus – 325 searches per day – competition of 14,400 sites
- weight loss meal plan – 595 searches per day – competition of 23,400 sites
- weight loss software – 266 searches per day – competition of 26,900 sites
- safe diet pills – 398 searches per day – competition of 45,800 sites
- fastest weight loss – 730 searches per day – competition of 62,300 sites
- rapid weight loss diet – 595 searches per day – competition of 80,600 sites
- weight loss patches – 398 searches per day – competition of 98,600 sites
These are just a few of the keyword phrases that came up, and they show that while there aren’t as many daily searches for these phrases, there is a LOT less competition. And a much better chance for you to use one or more of these key phrases to get traffic to your site.
Weight loss IS a competitive market, but it is also a market where people are spending a lot of money. You can still enter the market using related keywords that don’t have as much competition and will give you a much better chance of getting your web pages ranked well and driving traffic to your site.
Spend your time working with the keywords that you have a chance at ranking well for instead of trying to rank for the keywords that have the most searches. That way, you can still enter any market you’re interested in and start getting the free traffic you’re after.
The tool you use to do your keyword research is important as well. As you’ve already noticed, I use Market Samurai for my keyword research as well as all of the other features such as rank tracker, finding content, publishing content and much more. What you need to know is that the keyword module is ALWAYS free. Once the trial period is over, you can still use the keyword research part of Market Samurai forever. It’s a great tool to make keyword and competition research quick and easy. Get your copy by clicking here.
