As a newbie the hardest part is the beginning, keyword research before you start a website and register a domain. Keyword research becomes easier over time and in this post I’ll try to explain how I do things.
There are many great courses out there on how to get started in internet marketing and for the purpose of making passive money online using SEO you want to make sure you get it right. I heavily recommend the keyword academy since they have more in dept information (they have a first month free trial too) and great tools (more on that later) for~$30 a month after the first month. Of course, do not waste too many hours/days hoping for the “perfect” niche/keyword because it probably will not happen.
First off, if you are completely new to this I’ll give a brief explanation.. What are niches? A niche is something like the “Health” niche which has many sub categories such as nutrition and diseases. When looking for a website to start you do not want to make one on general health but instead drill it down. For example, Health –> Skincare –> Acne and from the subject of acne you start doing keyword research on the adwords google keyword tool. You might want to do a free adwords Google account ( you can use an existing gmail account) and login, that way you get up to 800 keywords when you search from something.
Below is a video I made on helping you use the google keyword tool:
You’ll see something similar to the picture on the right. You want to make sure you check the “exact” box and click on columns to enable global (searches around the world) local searches (searches in the selected country, US in this case), local search trends and Estimated avg CPC.
Now, the last 2 can be quite important. Local search trends is useful to see if a keyword is seasonal (for example Christmas probably has higher columns around november/december, while acne is stable all year long as you can see). This is useful if you are building a keyword on something seasonal, don’t expect traffic until the season hits! This still can work very well, just don’t expect to make millions off your Christmas website during July!
Estimated average CPC is another very important value if you are planning on using ad sense to monetize your website which is what is most easiest for a newbie. Basically, you can expect the average click to be around 50% of this value for your website. Why 50%? well the number shown there is a bit higher due to increased competition for ads on the google search box and also google takes a ~30% cut from each ad click on your website. so if you see a CPC value of $1 on the keyword tool, you can expect the AVERAGE click on your website to be around 50 cents.
Buyer keywords
For adsense buyer keywords are less important but if you are trying to sell a product or service (affiliate income) you want to search target keywords such as cheap/buy “product name” or “product name” review/scam. This is because people are more prone to clicking on ads or buying the product your pimping on your website (hopefully with a solid review that you wrote) when they are searching for those words.
You have to start somewhere. I recommend on your first website niche/keyword that you mostly go after something that is easy to rank for than something that you feel will make you instantly rich. My first website was a under 1000 per month search keyword and within 2 months made $1/day ( it still makes 1-3$/day actually, and I haven’t worked on it for at least 5 months). This was not much in the grand scheme of things but it got me going and motivated me! You will learn a lot by just starting a website with a keyword/niche that seems easy
Making sense of large amounts of data to find your niche faster
Now, as you might expect theirs some great software out there to help you do keyword research and you really only need one of whatever software/service for keyword research that I might review or talk about on this website as a newbie with limited income. I used to recommend something called “Niche refinery” that was provided with the TKA subscription but it has been discontinued.
Currently, I honestly almost always just type keywords in the google keyword research tool and see if they have potential in terms of search results and I click on the ones that interest me to quickly look at the PR/look of the website in the top 3-5 on Google using Seo Quake. Earlier this year (UPDATE: in 2012 too, I made the video below) when I was looking for analyzing keywords I was using secockpit combined with semrush which I had made a post about. Secockpit is definitely an expensive service when you are starting out but if you go that route it definitely will help you save time in keyword research when you are starting out and that’s what most of your work hours are centered on. It’s also quite useful to quickly judge competition/domain availability and a few other metrics as I describe in the video below which goes in the process of how I do my seo keyword research and look at niches in detail.
Most of the time I do not use any paid tools since I rarely start new websites. At this point I just think about new keywords for my existing sites and check if I feel I can beat the competition (low PR or if it’s a big brand ranking up top can my website do a better job?).
However, Using Secockpit can definitely be very useful as a newbie to give you a better way to judge the competition until you have ranked a few websites and you get a better idea of battles you can win (and more importantly, how long does it take?). Here’s an image below about how I use it to quickly glance over large amounts of keywords and see potential winners in terms of competition I can beat.
You can never truly know… but you get a better idea if you might be able to beat them and within 6 months or a year. I also use it a few months here and there when I want to start new websites and I need to process a lot of data. It makes it easier to track potential winners :).
Optional:
If you need more help finding niche ideas you might want to look at this post about how I use a paid service called SEmrush to help me find niche ideas that big websites are ranking for. I did a post and video on how I use semrush here. However, it will cost you $50 per month (though 1 month should be more than enough).
Got your Keywords? Time to register and host a domain!
If you have any questions about how I do keyword research or niche refinery ask away below!
Hey man,
if i’m searching for my keywords only at google keyword tool,also i own market samurai to help me, can you give me basic principles to follow with competition…you said:
”
My personal selection is to put potential at $10+ and competition to 250 when searching for the theme or main keyword of a new website and at $4+ + competition of 200 when looking for new keywords for pages on my website to write about. ”
how would you define it, if i had to do it manually..how many competitor to look for in “quotes” and what principles should i use to decide if i’m going on this keyword or not…
I’ll do everything to make it work for me also….hope you understand my question because english is not my first language 🙂
thanks!
I never look at competitors in quotes, it’s a mostly useless value. However, I guess to help you sort large amounts of keywords you might want to use the new SEOUC value that market samurai gives. I haven’t tried it myself since I stopped using market samurai a while ago but they recommend 500-1000 as a value on their blog post about it. SEOUC basically means how many of your competitors contain your keywords in their url which is probably a pretty decent way to check out the competition. I just do not trust that value all that much because I could be competing with 1 million people but all I need is to reach and beat the #1.
BTW I used to use market samurai but I just find it so slow to find niches now… I still use it for SEO competition but I just don’t recommend it right now on my blog because $100+ just for that is a bit expensive.
Alex when then you say to yourself, yes I can beat the number 1.
are you looking for their backlinks? I mean what do you do to start a website on this keyword other than finding you can buy domain, I found already couple keywords with 1000 or more exact searches a month and cpc 1$ at least…and I don’t have the full trust in myself yet that I can rank it high , how then you would decide that?
You never know 100%… If I have the exact match domain than I’m pretty confident I will get at least top 3 but if I do not I make sure their are other keywords I can rank for besides the main one… I don’t build websites centered around only one keyword I try to find keywords that might be able to help me broaden the website so even if I cannot beat the #1 website as I was hoping to I might still make money with my inner pages ranking for their own keywords.
Ultimately you just have to take the plunge, build it up, do backlinks over time and wait and see.
So only the first 4 page ranks matter? How is it that alot of times a site with a PR of 1 or 2 is beating a site with a 4 or 5.
So even if there are 4-5-6 PR it doesn’t matter as long as they are not in the top 4?
The website with high PR is probably not optimised for those keywords (in title, content and anchor text of his links). It could be not optimised for any keyword and get almost no traffic. PR doesnt mean traffic. It could also suffer some penalty from google.
What would you consider the most important of the 3 steps listed so far, and why?
Also, how many steps are in the entire process and will you continue to write after those steps are done?
Thanks!
Well they are all important if you needed to success at one and do ok with the others you would be better off with keyword research. As much as backlinks are important google does a great job at ranking quality sites over time, backlinks done in a white hat way just helps the process :).
Can you explain a little further this:
1.You say that you create pages? I mean you make a site with some PAGES ( not actual posts ) ( 5-10 pages) and you backlink to them and also when you want to cover a new topic/keyword add a new page ? or you do posts or you can use watever?
2.Also 1-3 month, at the beginning, after I made what you said, the following days/weeks, should I post some articles to the directories/web 2.0 and do some backlinking ?
I used to only do pages, now I always do posts. Personal preference. I used to do a main page on my website that would have in text links to all my relevant posts but as they grew it got annoying to keep updating it.
2) Not too sure I understood your question correctly but you should be spreading out your submissions. Maybe day 1 submit to ezine and buzzle, day 5 submit to ~5-7 directories (they wont all accept it on the same day, and even if they did nothing negative will happen). Than you can do another round of that on week 2. Than on week 3 you do hubpage/squidoo/infobarrel etc.
cool, I got this part now. ( and I hope other users see this too )
Sorry for double reply, I forgot to ask you another important question:
Scenario: let’s say I finish doing 3 quality posts for my keyword, when I do submissions to ezine,buzzle and the other, how do you spead your links in the articles?
keywords:
seo book
seo marketing
begginer seo
Now after doing these I need to do the linking and after submitting some articles to directories and web 2.0 ( let’s say today I submit to all that you recommend with a link and an anchor text (keyword 1 – seo book) from the first post, tomorrow I submit to the recommended with the anchor text of the second keyword and link to the second post ( seo marketing ) and so on?
You are over complicating things I think… I just spread my links naturally in the article unless you are only allowed to use it in the resource box.
I just naturally vary my anchor text that I use. If I really want to rank for one keyword and less for others I just put more often the one I really want to rank for.
another point taken. tnx alex
what about category ? how do you spread your categories ?
keyword 1 – category 1
keyword 2 – category 2
or?
Its more like 10 keywords as part of a category. It’s not too improtant, I just like them to make sense.
What’s CPC?
Cost per Click
Hi!
I finished “THE CHALLENGE” a month ago and it is interesting which your filter are to choose the right keyword. In THE CHALLENGE it’s
Daily Traffic: 80
Phrase-to-Broad-Match: 15%
SEO Competition > 30.000
what do you think about that?
My first websites were using the challenge filter but ultimately their goal during the 30 day challenge is to get you ranked and start making money as quickly as possible. While the SEO comp of under 30 000 is a good way to make sure your website ranks within a quick time frame if you want to make a living off IM you should go for harder keywords that might take you many months to rank for but that you can hopefully reach the top 3, which why I only look at the top 3-5 listings for keywords nowadays.
Their 15% phrase to broad match ration is only useful because for some reason they really insist on broad match searches which is one of the reasons my first websites were much poorer than they first seemed.
“Their 15% phrase to broad match ration is only useful because for some reason they really insist on broad match searches which is one of the reasons my first websites were much poorer than they first seemed.”
that also my experience.
so which filter would you recommend with market samurai?
Daily Traffic: ??
Phrase-to-Broad-Match: ?
SEO Competition ??
For a new website theme keyword I would go for at least
Daily Traffic: 100 exact
Phrase-to-Broad-Match: I still put this at 15 but I doubt it matters in exact
SEO Competition 250 000
Seo competition is not a great value to determine competition but if you put it somehow high you are less likely to filter out good keywords that you can definitely compete against. It’s kinda like judging competition on PR like I do now… Not perfect but if a word has 3-4 pr 3+ websites competing against you it’s probably quite hard to rank for so I filter those out in niche refinery.
thanks for advice alex!
So this is gonna sound n00b as, but how do you actually make money doing this? Do you sell something? Is it an affiliate thing with “landing pages”? Or is it a consuting thing where you help other businesses get more traffic?
Sorry if that seems dumb.
All of those are valid ways to make money but the easiest way when starting out is to either make websites that display adsense ads or sell promote products that you get an affiliate commission from.
Cheers mate.
What a great website you have here and a wealth of information, thank you so much! Very-very helpful.
I wanted to ask – do you outsource any of your work and if so, which part? If not, do you plan to outsource?
Also, do you use Google Analytics or another service for tracking, and after reviewing the tracking data, do you adjust anything on your sites? What do you pay the most attention to? What is most important in analytics? Thank you.
i have no idea what the fuck is going on here. this all makes no sense and cant be real. no one has even explained WHAT IT IS.
Ok bro
how much money can you make, realistically? Over at the keyword academy, they basically say around $1k per month might be possible. But you guys both appear to be making more than that, true? What’s your thoughts on income potential (without saying the obligatory “it’s what you put into it and it will take a while”).
They say 1k a month to keep expectations low so people do not get discouraged. All I will say on income potential is that I’m aiming for $150/day by end of June and $300 by the end of the year. Pretty sure Dave is aiming for 30k/month at this point, basically hes trying to double his current income.
“it’s what you put into it and it will take a while” is obviously how it is. I put a lot into it, 40+hours a week unpaid for 6 months to reach my point. Most people will probably not share my work ethic and will take longer to reach the same point, hence the lower expectations on TKA.
thanks…..two questions:
1) if you were me, and starting from the real beginning, without knowing anything really, what would u do to get started? Would you buy an account with keyboard academy or would you alternatively research this?
2) how long has it taken you to get to $150/day?
1) I started by reading forums for a few months and random basic ebooks I found telling me how to setup wordpress etc. I joined TKA 3 months later and I still think they are a good guideline to start with but ultimately in SEO you have to try things yourself and not just blindly trust others (even if they are often right, a lot of things in SEO are “discovered” by now).
2) I’m not there yet, that’s my goal for this summer. It was really easy for me to go from $20 to $100 a day but i’ve been stuck there for 2 months or so. Well, for adsense at least… I’m starting to make a few extra hundreds off CPA/clickbank/amazon now.
so that’s about (150 x 7 = 850 / week)?? That’s exactly what I make at my job per week. And my job is killer stressful. (not to mention other costs people forget about like gas to and from: $300 month).
do u report this income to the IRS?
Well the IRS would come knocking on our door because we have a house or car and no income so obviously we do. Since you are self employed you can deduct a lot of expenses though including rooms of your house, computers etc.
Hey man. Since I left my last comment I’ve learned some basic html/CSS, and bought a couple books about web design and SEO. I’m going to sign up for the TKA trial in the next couple of weeks too.
So far I’ve realized that hard-coding my sites is going to eat up way too much time and effort, and that most people just use DreamWeaver or WordPress anyway.
Now I’m trying to figure out what kind of sites I’ll be building and if I should invest in a copy of DreamWeaver.
Does the website format (ie. blogs, generic page-by page sites etc) matter, specifically in regard to adsense/commissions?
No, people just use wordpress because it’s easy to get setup. My first website might have taken me up to an hour, nowadays it’s 5 minutes and I know all the plugins I want by heart. WordPress is also helpful for SEO.
Thanks Alex. I guess a lot of this shit I’m just going to learn as I go anyway.
What are the plugins you recommend besides the one in your guide?
do you guys use keyword tool dominator to search for general topics?
I use it from time to time, Fingerman does not.
I’m working on starting a fitness website. It is essentially a blog, but I have plans to monetize it in the future.
I’m not completely clear on setting a domain name. I have a few ideas for the name of the website, but I understand that I want a name with a lot of keyword hits.
Am I right in thinking that I need to find the big hit keywords and structure the blog name around that?
Thanks.
Theirs 2 options in that scenario, either you go for a brand name or mostly keywords. I would suggest a mix. Something like weightlossdrama.com , so if you become popular and people link to you, it’s going to help you rank for weight loss keywords. Like, marksdailyapple is a good brand name, but marksweightlossguide could have been more helpful in terms of SEO. He would probably be ranking all over the place for weight loss, well maybe. Anyway, I doubt you have any exact match domains that are decent left in that niche so I think a brand name is better, ideally with some keywords you would like to rank for.
Is your advice for my domain name still applicable? I have updated my goal of making a website to promote an e-book that I will eventually publish. My thought is I could make the website and start posting articles covering different aspects of fitness and then promote the e-book when it is ready.
Or would it be more beneficial to make the e-book and have a sales page only?
Thanks man.
well if you only make a sales page you would need other ways to bring traffic to that page then SEO. You can just have a sales page as part of your website too
Do you create websites about stuff you know a lot about, or do you just find a good keyword about something you aren’t interested in and find information about it on the internet?(outsource and copy them and stuff).
I use to just go after any keyword because I had a hard time finding good keywords in stuff I knew about. Nowadays I go in niches that I enjoy (also because competition is not as big of a factor in stopping me now)
Alex,
Thanks a lot for the great info – you guys rock!
Can I ask you to comment on my approach to niche research?
Currently I am going only for niches with: >1000 monthly searches, =<$1 CPC and only where exact match domain is available. Also with low competition so they look beatable.
(1) Does this sound like a good plan to you? Am I likely to rank relatively easy with not too much backlinking work by doing this? How long would you expect it to take you to get a site such as the one above to #1 on google?
(2) Most of my domain names are 5 word long keywords, I'm a bit worried that that doesn't leave any room for expansion should the niche do well. Is it worth my while creating these small sites, from a long term business point of view or would I be better going for bigger keywords and building up medium to large sites over months? I kinda look upon these small sites as testing the market as I don't know if a niche will be succesful or not. Also I want to make money quicker to reinvest.
Steve.
man that’s what I did with my first site, its kind of the way to see that you can earn money with this…i was in the first page within 2 weeks or so…
but dont except more than 1$ per day at max! with that keyword.
Ya I agree, I did the same thing. In fact, the google keyword tool got updated to be way more accurate by the end of 2010 and my first website still makes almost $1 a day with like 900 searches a month…
As for the domain names, if they are already created you might as well keep working on them. Exact match domains are just a shortcut to being on first page and getting #1.All the good exact matches are probably taken by now, Keywords in the domain are a factor but my #1 site is making a lot of it’s money from keywords that are not in my domain name… In fact the domain name was a keyword that turned out to be a failure with less than 1k searches a month…
Hey Alex,
Great info, currently trying to follow the guide step by step – can’t wait to see the results!
Anyway, I want to cut down on keyword research time. So when you use Niche Refinery, do you look for a certain Total Potential amount for the list of keywords, is there a minimum like $1,000+ that you aim for?
Thanks.
I do not look at the potential values much anymore, because they vary depending on so many factors beyond simply just the CPC of a keyword. Usually I just look for search volume, 5k+ for a keyword for a new website and 500+ for pages for my existing websites.
I’m wondering why you didn’t recommend http://keywordtooldominator.com/ product that helps alot. It’s from Thekeywordacademy people. Only $40 as well.
Because I don’t think it’s a good idea to be spending a lot of money on IM when first starting. It kinda horrifies me how much I see people in the TKA forums or elsewhere actually spending hundreds a month or so on articles/services and articles for their backlinks that they submit to networks such as postrunner. I did not spend above hosting + domains for like 3 months (total cost were probably $50, and I had reached $1/day at that point). Then I tried out TKA and AR eventually since they had a free trial and AR was $2/article…. Basically following this guide your only major costs for the first month should be domains (near free hosting, free trial of TKA) so you can learn all you need at almost no cost.
Anyway, on the topic of KWD ya it’s good, I use it from time to time and it’s been helpful at times, mostly because it returns so many keywords it might give you weird keywords that gave me ideas of other searches I should do. I did not really use it in my current keyword research these past 2 weeks though. I know a couple of people reading this guide bought it and enjoy it but I’ve also had problems with my new internet connection that constantly makes it send me captchas :(.
Hmm he does have a 7 day free trial so I’ll add it in the post and let people decide if they want to keep it or not after.
What method have you been using to research in the past two weeks?
I’ve been trying out SEMrush and checking out the keywords that other websites are ranking for, article directories, competitors in niches I’m already in etc.
Could Fingerman explain his methods to Keyword research? or is it explained accurately enough in this article. I’m just having a hard time grasping good keyword research.
He keeps it even more basic than me. He ALWAYS ONly used the basic google keyword tool, nothing else. He randomly thinks about topics during the day (this does not happen every day but maybe every few days he thinks of something). Like, recently we are both really into nutrition and a paleo diet (low carbs) and he started a blog on that. Well, he’s writing all the content for it but he still is doing keyword research around that topic to see which topics he should be writing on that are lower in competition to get some people to his blog. Of course currently his goal is not to make more money and only be the most fit person on the planet so he’s not too worried about the money but really keyword research is a bit of luck and also taking action, especially if you are currently not making money online . Just start a website on something that seems ok in competition and give it a shot.
Thank you for your quick replies. They have been very helpful. I’m starting to understand that SEO is revolved around providing value to readers through articles. And choosing keywords is not a science. And success come from your ability to put enthusiasm into your work. All that backlinking stuff is just details to make sure you’re paid to cover a topic of interest that will provide value to a market that lacks value and desperately needs it.
Hi Alex and Fingerman. Very informative and helpful posts.
What are your thoughts when you find keywords that google keyword tools shows has hi volume, low competition, but are dominated by big name sites like cnn.com, huffingtonpost etc? Also, what would you suggest as an alternative to adsense, besides network offers?
I probably would still make an article on it but if those articles are targeting the keyword well don’t expect to beat them until many many months. if it’s a keyword that you want to be the “theme” of your website (something like skincare for the elderly) than make sure you have other keywords that are easier to rank for that you can also target on that website.
Theirs no viable alternatives to adsense…. But infolinks and chikita are the closest but when I try them as a direct replacement to adsense the revenues are much smaller.
hi nichrefinery questions
as a newbie what level of compition would you not persue a keyword
say nichrefeinery shows the top four site as page rank 5 page rank 4 page rank 6 page rank 5..
would you tackle that ?
also in this article it says competition to 250 is this what nicherefinery calls difficulty range ?
Many Thanks for your help
Andrew
ya competition = difficulty and now I would not tackle the example you gave as a newbie.
thanks alex
Ey thank you so much for the stuff here, I think is more than awesome, and for free (oh my god) I did the challenge 2010 and got my site on position 1 of google, I then didn’t create any content (1 blog post/3months…..) because I didn’t know shit about my niche and keep only doing 8-10 backlings a day or every 2 days but only with blogs of my own (wordpress, typepad….) now my site is on 500 (I track it with MS).
I have been a bit of confused and lost out there because when I finished the challenge I got on their paid site but the site is only about product creation I think. What I really needed and need is to get to first page, so I need SEO advice, and your blog Alex and Fingerman is really great, I took a look also to TKA and the forum is very SEO oriented I think. I just cancelled my paid suscription to the challenge this month and I’m probably get one on TKA, seems very helpful, and it give me access to the nicherefinery, good.
I just have three questions.
1. The niche refinery is similar to Market samurai?
2. I have a question about a IM product I wanna ask, can I ask it here (Dont want to spam the site hehe) or can I e-mail you? if so, whats your e-mail.
3. Since you said SEO is and investment (I think about it in terms of time and money) I’m an online poker player, nothing mayor but I got 1000$ bucks, and I play and study it, and also I’m trying to become a social media manager (the site is at 80%) with a “famous” course that I get on my e-mail from one marketer. And then I’m trying to do well on IM, my goal is to make a site/s that makes me 600€. So I share the time I have beetween all this 3 areas, do you think it is a great idea? or do I must focus on one or two? obvios IM and other one or only IM because is worth the investment?
Thank you guys
1. No, niche refinery only does KW and the reason I use it instead of market samurai is that I feel it makes things quicker. KW research with MS takes a lot of time for me so I stopped using it. With niche refinery I quickly check and download all the .csv files for the keywords I am interested in and then plug them in niche refinery and check the ones with competition ranges that I can feel I can beat.
2. You can use the contact form link at the bottom of this website
3. Well I was able to juggle a lot of things in my life simultaneously when I learned IM but I had a clear definite goal that IM was my #1 priority which took time away from my school/job. In terms of money, SEO does not initially take that much money. All you need is the $10/year per domain and $10/month for hosting for all your websites. Beyond that, I use niche refinery (so around $35/month) and some articles for AR. You should be making some money at this point and that’s when you want to try other services that might help you save backlinking time (software such as article marketing robot that can automate the distribution of all your articles for backlinks).
Few questions – I’ve been reading for a week or so [like 5+ hours a day, lol] and I wanted to get started.
1) Would it be best targeting a product [CPA] and having a keyword relate to that [“free xxxx”, or “cheap xxxx”], or just doing some random keyword first and then do adsense? Best as in easiest for just starting out.
2) Is a domain/hosting required? For just starting out, would it be wise to use a free wordpress blog [xxx.wordpress.com, or whatever subdomain they use] or would it end up being time wasted. Reason I ask is I really don’t want to invest $10 for my first site if my keyword ends up being bunked – but I also don’t want to spend weeks/months on a free wordpress/blog if having a EMD would be that much better.
3) How far off is a goal of making $50-$100/day by the end of this year? It seemed to me that any relatively low competition keyword can be good if you just backlink it enough to get to the first page/top of google’s results, and once you get there you can easily start making some amount of money.
Thanks for the info!
1) Cpa has the potential to make you faster money if you are “lucky” in terms of finding a good product/service to promote without too much competition that converts well. Of course, with experience it’s less luck and more your own knowledge. Adsense is “easy” to understand but will take months before you make some $$$ off it if you have no websites currently but you do not have to worry about having a product/service that converts. Not sure which one is easiest, I like better adsense but I’m an overall patient guy :P.
2) If you have an EMD a free blog does not compare. If you do not have the EMD and you really want to save $10 I guess a free blog is ok, the thing is you never have complete control over those but it’s your choice.
3)It’s possible… I reached some $100 days by November of 2010 starting last week of Feb, all depends on how much time you put into it.
Thanks-
I just feel that its hard to start getting up in the Google Rankings without having programs to help backlink, etc. I also wanted to minimize my starting costs. I was thinking of possibly starting two in the beginning, one w/ CPA/Product and one w/ a random keyword and adsense and see how it goes with each.
The main question w/ the blog was I was wondering if there way a way to “test” a keyword before “investing” [yes, $10 lol] into it. I just didn’t want to make 10 domains before finally finding a good keyword 🙂
The only other way you could test a keyword is by using PPC. It’s something I used to do before the google keyword tool became as accurate as it is nowadays.
Hey Alex,
I wanted to thank you for all your help and wanted to let you know that I started my membership with TKA (through your link). I also have a few questions for you:
1) Before I started TKA I found a keyword that had 5400 searches and I got an EMD which I was excited about because most of the EMD’s I found were like 1000-2000 searches. Now, after running that keyword through niche refinery, it came back as very competitive. The top 4 sites were PR 4,5,5,6. From what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have started this site, but does that fact that I have an EMD for that keyword make this site worthwhile still?
2) Most people at TKA seem to be against spun articles all together (even for backlinks) It seems like they do unique articles for everything. Wouldn’t that take forever to get a decent amount of backlinks? I know from reading all of your posts that you like to use AR, AMR and UAW (which is what I am planning on doing as well). What are your thoughts on spun articles for backlinks vs all unique content for backlinks? There seem to be a lot of posts about people using spun articles with AMR, ect and dropping in the rankings. Is that most likely because they did too many at one time? Does this “Panda” update that everyone seems to be talking about affect your backlinking strategy?
Thanks again!
1) Depends if those web sites seem to be targeting that keyword heavily or not… Do they have it in the title etc? Anyway, since you have the EMD I would still give it a try. You probably can beat it if they are inner pages of large websites. If they are domains ranking for that keyword with those Pr’s it might be a bit harder…
2) People in the TKA forums can say whatever they want, what I put on my blog is what worked for me and many others. SEO is not clear cut, many things work… Its best to test things out and try for yourself. Panda is really no big deal besides for large website owners from what I saw.
Hopefully I can get this out right…
I read in the forums that its typical for you guys to take a couple weeks to do kw research? Does that happen all the time?
I mean I just took action on your semrush tutorial and found a kw with 5k+ and cpc $6 with “emd”x.net domain. Took me minutes. BUT I also read here that you make sure you don’t just create a site with one kw either.
So how is it that you go about or make sure that there are more topics to write about for that main kw? Can I contact you personally to tell you what it is so you can give me an idea if this does have more kw’s to target?
I really just want to get this part right.
Toki
I hope that makes sense…
KW research is not something that you can define in time, you might find some quickly or can take you days. It’s just to not be overwhelmed with everything else I have to do a few months ago I put aside everything (besides replying on this blog) and did keyword research.
To find more topics to write about just do keyword searches around the one you found.
I was showed a keyword that has 90,000 searches and an EMD with .net, but the competition is all 4s, but hes saying its rankable and u dont need to be number 1 to make money from it. Is there a search volume peak that indicates that a keyword that has profit potential without being number 1?
If you have the EMD I probably try it out, PR4s are not a big deal for me but I would only do it if I had some interest in that website and that I could expand into many pages (in case you do not rank highly for that keyword for the first year or something, depends on the competition). It’s not a search volume peak… It all depends to what is profitable for you. Some thing with 90k searches a month even if only 1k reach your website because you are rank #5+ could still mean $100+ for that website, and then it will only multiply as you reach above rank 5…
Hey Alex,
I took the free trial with TKA and was going through the kw research tuts… Do you use the keyword dominator tool during your initial search? Also they state to only look for 3 words or more for kw’s, do you do that with kw’s or ur emd’s?
Thanks.
I used the keyword dominator tool a few times , I’m more or less into it. But it does have a trial if you want to try it. Usually most words I tend to get are 3+ words so yes.
Another question – when doing adsense sites (besides all the factors you give in your post) do you also look to see if there are advertisers selling in a particular niche?
So if you type your kw in the Google and there are no adwords ads on the search page do you still pursue that (or those) keywords?
Thanks!
ya I check on google for sure if they have ads.
Say I have a blog about fish food, is it still possible to write articles about fish and rank for keywords on fish/the broader keyword? or do I have to only stick to fish food/the narrow keyword? I’m just wondering because I have and EMD on the narrow keyword and it’s not that expandable but it has the broad keyword in it so I’m wondering if this would be suitable?
ya you could probably do that.
Question 1: How many Google sponsored ads does a kw have to have for you to pursue it?
Question 2: If wikipedia is ranked number 1, do you still pursue that kw?
Thanks!
1. At least 4+ hopefully, but that’s for the main keyword I based my site around, I don’t care about CPC for the rest.
2. Only if the keyword has 5k+ searches at least.
Might be a silly question, but is there a tool or a way for someone to grab the keywords from the top ten website results in G when typing in a kw into the search?
you mean by putting every website in the google keyword tool as a url? If so, I think keyword tool dominator does that ( not sure if it’s working again or not).
Hey Alex,
I actually found a tool called “web content studio” that does what I wanted. It will scan the top ten websites for phrases and key terms (relates to your niche) so you could create articles that G likes…
Hard to explain what I was asking, sorry… I was just looking for a way to know what content and key phrases G likes (hence why the top ten websites were ranking).
Hope that makes sense 🙂
Ya I tried that out in the past, didn’t like it. The free google wonderwheel does the same thing anyway.
1Using SEOquake It shows me that my competitors only have 7 backlinks. Does this mean I need to only get say around 15 backlinks to outrank them for my keyword? Or is there more at play?
2 Also my comp has pr of 3. Should I be worried if they don’t have more than 10 backlinks to their articles?
Seo quake takes it’s date from yahoo which does not show that many backlinks, maybe 10-40% or so. Beating a competitor is not as simple as “doing more backlinks”. Anyone can do more backlinks using spammy software… The quality of your backlinks (and the anchor text these backlinks are using). and age of the webpage are other important factors. Ultimately though, that seems like a very winnable ranking, if it has a PR3 with 10 backlinks I assume it’s an inner page of a big site which means you might be able to beat it after your website ages a bit too. If it’s to the domain.. it probably has an EMD which makes thigns harder of course…
Hi Alex,
If SEOQuake does not give accurate backlinks statistics then what do you suggest we should use to check backlinks of our own site or our competitors?
nothing is 100% accurate for finding backlinks. I often track my own backlinks when possible (when you do your own article submissions and not to networks…). The other way to track your backlinks is using majestic SEO but it is not free since they maintain a database of backlinks they gather by spidering the internet themselves as a search engine like yahoo or google does.
Niche Refinery is now almost useless. I have a 3k job sitting at 80% and it started 2 weeks ago and had 66% already cached. Do you know any other alternatives to bulk checking PR?
I would just check my main keywords manually, which is what I often do anyway. the only alternative that I know and tried in the past is this one, SE cockpit (affiliate link) but the reason I have no actively recommend it is because it is $70+/month… I might make a post/video about it because it does research competition a lot better then niche refinery (it actually even checks the backlinks of your competitors according to SEoMoz’s metrics which are not perfect but decently accurate when compared to my websites).
I used it a few months ago but at it’s price range I have trouble recommending it for now, back then it also did not have an import keyword feature which is great for quickly uploading a ton of keywords in it. They might have this now which would make it a clear upgrade over niche refinery (but quite expensive)
1) I was thinking about using Market Samurai since its trial is pretty long.
When checking competition at what values do you look at? How many page and domain backlinks should a competitor have for someone to be able to outrank them?
2)I’m looking to create sites similar to xfactor’s new ebook but I still want to do decent keyword selection. I saw a 20k badge earner on TKA forums saying that pagerank is irrelevant most of the times and I find that it’s somewhat odd considering most of TKA’s keyword selection is based on it.
Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions here 😀
1) It’s not an exact thing but backlinks is just one of many factors to consider, especially if the anchor text of those backlinks are the keyword it is ranking for or not… Giving exact numbers is meaningless because maybe a website has 1000 backlinks but they are 1000 sitewide links off the same website. Anyway, for a beginner ideally the top 3 has under 40 backlinks shown in yahoo.
2) Pagerank is irrelevant… It’s just a rough estimate of how much google trusts it. But it’s not because facebook is pagerank 9-10 that it’s no1 for all search queries right? Lots of other factors come into play.
Then it’s a good thing MS lets you see where the backlinks come from 😀 From what I see you can use both MajesticSEO and yahoo to see them.
Thanks for the answers, Alex!
Is it that important for a keyword to have 3 or more words? I have several ones that are 2 words and the competition does not seem to strong.
no it’s not, I target keywords of two words too.
Also, how hard is it to rank vs amazon and similar online sites?
Usually it’s not very hard, at least compared to outranking wikipedia. Not a big piece of cake as it used to be though, but I do target harder keywords now then amazon listing with few backlinks… If it does not have many backlinks it’s probably easy.
I noticed that on MS you get backlink results from both yahoo and majestic seo, but the former always show A LOT more backlinks than yahoo. Like 150 vs 30.
If I see a keyword has low competition on yahoo but high on majestic (while still being green by Ms standards) should I choose it as a beginner?
It’s a hard call, I personally quickly check the top 5 or 10 backlinks majestic SEO will show for free and check with http://www.analyzebacklinks.com/ (or inside MS for those who have it) for the anchor text the yahoo backlinks are using to link to the competitors website.
Hey Alex,
I’ve started reading your blog and its really helpful.
Small question regarding the keyword selection for the pages once you’ve got the your main keyword page set up on an EMD:
Do you recommend going for longtail keywords containing your main keyword even if the potential is below 4$ or do you go for other broader keywords relevant to the niche that have enough potential (but don’t include the main keyword)?
Thanks for sharing all of this man. I briefly met you at the Summit and talked with other guys interested in SEO…seems like everyone is trying to get involved! I’m going to bust my ass and see what happens…and after being involved with RSD for 2 years I’ve learned that failures are lessons.
Cheers,
Zach
Good to see you here, lots of people interested in SEO these days, I guess it’s easily understandable why :).
=D
Hey Alex, I’m working through TKA’s 2.0 guide (was on 1.0 before I realized they updated!), and they recommend using KTD. Does that replace the use of Niche Refinery, or does TKD simply streamline the process and make things easier for using niche refinery?
Cheers!
I just read that Niche Refinery is being retired!
What is it being replaced with? I haven’t used it in months since I did not need to do keyword research.
Unless KTD now shows you difficulty, it does not replace NR
Would you recommend Market Samurai over niche refinery? Or do I not understand the function of each program?
Considering MS just takes it’s data from the google keyword tool and does so slower then I like I don’t really like it for it’s keyword research functions. However I do like the SEO competition module from time to time. Anyway, you could try the trial but at $100+ It’s a great software but does not make things go faster for me so I rarely use it.
Thanks Alex. I’m running the trial to help me figure out if I can compete for some keywords I’m checking.
Hi Alex,
Thank you a lot for this great article and fruitful discussions.
concerning micro niche marketing, i have some questions please:
1- if I find 2 keywords with a common word, can i rank one EMD domain for these 2 keywords maybe with 2 inner pages each targeting one keyword . Example: keyword1=”a b” and keyword2=”b c”. can I register domain a-b-c.com or abc.com and get it ranked for these 2 keywords?
2- I searched the internet to get answer about this question and I found a lot of different opnions.. but I need a confirmation from an expert. Does abc.com acts like a-b-c.com for EMD micro niche domains?
3- I would highly appreciate if you can give a more detailed overview on how to measure the competition in Market Samurai. i have read posts above but get losted! SEOC, SEOTC, SEOUC or SEOCTR ! Ranges of values for each of these factors!
I made some experiments in Market Samurai SEO Competition module and I can see that its results are parallel to SEOTC regardless of SEOUC. Can you confirm?
Thank you.
-Fadi
http://www.optimizing.se
1. Yes, of course if you do a-b-c.com you don’t get an EMD bonus for either though but if it makes sense as a domain name it’s not a bad idea.
2. a-b-c.com is not an EMD, or rather you do not really get a real EMD bonus. it’s ither keyword.com/.org/.net or you might as well just make up a good brandable domain name.
3/. Most of what I look when I use Ms to analyze competition (I usually just check the top 5 of google with the seo quake plugin, it’s faster..) is the PR of the pages andhow many backlinks they have. If they have a lot of backlinks and it’s an aged domain I check the anchor text those backlinks are using to link to my competitor’s webpage (does it have the keyword I want to rank for?).
Thank you for your quick response Alex.
But as I read from my internet search, that “hypens” are considered as “spaces” in domain names. So, if the keyword is “a b” why ab.com would be an EMD wile “a-b.com” wouldn’t ?
When searching for a keyword inside a niche, number of searches we get for keyword “ab” is most probably different from “a b”.. I have just verified that with google traffic estimator. So, if the keyword is “a b” why choose “ab.com” and not
“a-b.com”?
by the way, what could or should we learn from google traffic estimator when looking for a keyword? Should we trust the Daily estimated cost and the average CPC? How to analyze this indicators?
-Fadi
http://www.optimizing.se
Alex,
After registering a domain name.. most of people are using wordpress to buildup the website… this is ok. I’m experienced with wordpress… but I read that there is a special way to proceed in installing wordpress for micro niche to help getting the website ranked 1st. However, there is a list of plugins that should be used: what are these plugins, their roles and how do we use them to favorite the 1st ranking?
Thanks,
-Fadi
http://www.optimizing
The only plugin that can help somewhat with SEO are some like all in one seo or seo ultimate which I just did a post + video on. Installing word press has most things taken care of.