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crabfoot

Keywords that pay!

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by
crabfoot
, February 4th, 2012 at 03:25 PM (260 Views)
My panda-chewed aff sites haven't made tuppence since November 2011, so I'm working on ways to resurrect them. I've decided to just treat them as aged domains without a bad history, and throw sites on them as fast as I can.

At the moment, I'm just writing relevant articles to try and get the kudos back. If they start showing some of their former traffic, I'll be looking at monetizing them. But it occurs to me that I've been away from this stage of site generation for too long, and I'm making mistakes left, right and centre as I scratch-build each one again.

You can't keep all the relevant info in your head about preparing a website to make money for you. You need to work to a checklist - make one up to remind you what to do at each stage of construction.

Whatever, the biggest mistake I'm making is with trying to target my keywords for traffic. This is a fundamental mistake with any site you intend to make money.

Your objective is to get people coming to your site for "SELLING KEYWORDS". I hear you ask -

What's the stupid ol git on about?

Imagine Joe Public doing a search for a hifi system. The keyword "hifi" might get him looking at your site, using your info to help him form an opinion and make a decision. But he's not buying, he's researching when he looks. You want the keyword he's looking for when he's got the credit card in his hand and has made his decision - and at that point,"Marantz CD6004" might be a much more useful keyword phrase than "hifi".

That's today's handiest hint from me. Pick your words carefully has always been good advice. For more suggestions on picking words, stuff the following phrases up your favourite search engine, one at a time -

"keywords that sell"
action keyword phrases
"magic keyphrase"
"keywords that convert"

It's a well covered subject - hours of learning from each simple search - but it is so fundamental that a lot of the pros don't even think to mention it very often.

Go lookie see...

Submit "Keywords that pay!" to Digg Submit "Keywords that pay!" to del.icio.us Submit "Keywords that pay!" to StumbleUpon Submit "Keywords that pay!" to Google

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Comments

  1. KenW3's Avatar
    Excellent article! All traffic is not created equal. People searching for exact product names and numbers know what they want. I would sooner have visitors that typed "buy widget" than rank for "widget review", as closing a sale from the latter is much more difficult.
  2. Kay's Avatar
    I enjoyed reading your article. Thanks. Your advice refers to affiliate sites and you're emphasising the concept of pre-sales and how choosing keywords targeted towards a pre-sold audience will work better than others. I completely agree.

    However, I don't agree with your point that it's so often overlooked or not mentioned. In my experience it's frequently been one of the most basic concepts underlying any recipe for success in affiliate marketing. It's a point that's hammered home time and time again.

    Finding keywords that pay is, of course, a different matter if it's an AdSense site rather than an affiliate one, but that's another story.
  3. crabfoot's Avatar
    Your advice refers to affiliate sites
    Er - no, I'm trying to re-start domains that have been used for aff sites. While having keywords that pay is very important for aff site pages, the point I'm making is that "paying keywords" are a very relevant factor for any type of site. Yes, it is harder to see how to use them with Adsense, but the "targeting tags" can be used to (eventually) improve the ad focus.

    I've got some sites where I've tweaked the Adsense using the targeting tags to give much better results than letting the Adsense work from the text. The most important thing to take from this is the way that makes the tags work to show the ads you want.

    Now, let's say you have a page showing data for old radio valves, or vacuum tubes in Yankspeak. Left to its own devices, Adsense shows ads for all sorts of unrelated doodah.

    You set tags to make Adsense ignore the page text and use the targeting tags on a sentence somewhere on the page that reads "mysite.com, bringing you info about radio valves and vacuum tubes".

    After Adsense has thought about it for a week, your site is filled with adverts for radios, plumbing fixtures, vacuum cleaners and cardboard tubes.

    Change the sentence to read "mysite.com, bringing you info about radiovalves and vacuumtubes" and it looks stupid - but the ads show the products your audience want.
    Updated February 6th, 2012 at 12:29 PM by crabfoot
  4. Clinton's Avatar
    Excellent points, crabfoot.

    I know some people who used to be very good at this arbitrage - buying general "hifi" traffic from Google and elsewhere and convincing those visitors to buy a specific product.

    Find people who need a solution but are still confused. They may not be at the stage where they've got the credit card out but convince them that your solution is the best one for them and they'll click your affiliate link and make a purchase.
  5. bwelford's Avatar
    Sorry to be late to the discussion, but I did want to say how much I appreciated your post, crabfoot. In this long tail targeting, I find the title of the post (assuming we're talking blogs) critical in getting search engine visibility. As part of my routine, I always google the draft title I have to see what competition I'm up against. That often suggests a tweak of the title that will just rank ahead of even authoritative sites like wikipedia.
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