Building Squidoo Lenses and Keywords

In the past I have referred you all to the amazing “gtrends” tool from the thirty day challenge. I trust Ed Dale and the information he has provided in the 30 DC, but I’m not getting the results I expected from my “amazing” keywords on gtrends.

Now to be fair, I haven’t been perfect about following through with all the action steps of the thirty day challenge which may seriously be affecting my results.

However, I have some lenses at Squidoo that are taking off.  They are not gtrends keyword lenses.

They are lenses I made before I found the tool, and most of them are lenses I made before I even knew about keywords, or ones I just love the topic and thought it would be cool to have a lens on it.

These lenses have NO keyword research done, they are based on things I like/use or am interested in.

Here’s what I have found.  These lenses are doing GREAT. They are getting great traffic, they have landed in google and I’m getting page one traffic daily to the lens.  Not from 1 search term but from 5, 10 even 15  different phrases every day.

I went back once I saw how well they were doing and ran them through the gtrends tool.  NOTHING. They either came up with not enough searches, or only having 2 or 3 a day.

If I had seen that I would have NOT chosen to do those lenses, and now look where I’d be. One of these non keyword lenses is bringing in over 200 dollars every month with no work at all.  If I had known about keywords and gtrends when I made this lens back in November of 2007 I would be out quite a bit of money by now.

Now I’m not trying to say that keyword research isn’t necessary, it is.  But take it in perspective and don’t let it be the end all be all of your marketing.  Sometimes you have to do things just because they are fun, or because you love the topic, or you love the product. Go ahead and do them, whether the research says you should or not. You never know, these lenses might be your biggest sellers.

When you think about building a lens think about how many different ways someone might find your lens.  Even if the phrase you are thinking only gets a few hits a day, there are probably tons of other phrases that get a couple hits a day. When you add them all up they equal decent traffic, and sometimes excellent profits.

I know keyword research can be intimidating, and once you get the hang of it, it can be addictive. I also know it can be disabling.  You spend all this time searching and searching for the “perfect” keyword that is going to send you a flood of traffic and can’t find one. It’s easy to get frustrated and just DO nothing, chalking it up to “all the good keywords are already taken”.  This just isn’t true, there are plenty of keywords for everyone.

I’m not saying go for “make money online”, but even if you do have a make money online blog or site, your articles will bring people to your site from other phrases that are related to making money online.

Don’t get discouraged, remember the things you love. (if you love them someone else surely does too) Sometimes let go of the research and just go for it!!!

[tags]keyword research, do what you love, getting traffic to squidoo, get google traffic[/tags]