Think you know the secret? Think it is all about getting your lens to the first page of Google? That’s how you get traffic right? So the secret must be backlinking ~ because that’s what you have to do to get to page 1.
NOPE.
That’s not the secret. The secret is something that comes way before you even write 1 word.
The secret is SEARCH VOLUME.
Here’s a conversation I’ve had with at least 5 people in the last few days:
Them: “I want to promote this product”
Me: “Ok, what keyword are you targeting?”
Them: “Ummm… keyword?”
Me: “uh ~ yeah, keyword. You know the words you target your page for so you will get traffic for that term? Keywords”.
Them: “oh ~ I guess I was going to go with __________ ” (just fill in the blank).
Me: “ok, let’s take a look at it. Well this term has no search volume. No one is searching for this keyword”
Them: “oh ~ is that important? But this product is popular. But this product is a big seller. But this product is selling like hot cakes on ebay. But but but but but…”
If this conversation sounds familiar please, don’t think I’m picking on you … I’m not. This is a KEY stumbling block for many new internet marketers. In fact, it was the main thing that held me back for a couple years. I thought if I just wrote about something people would come ~ people are interested in the topic right? So they should come.
Well it doesn’t quite work that way.
If you can get this one thing ~ you will be more than half way to success. I understand as with everything in internet marketing there is always conflicting information. Some people will tell you that search volume doesn’t matter, and just find a hungry niche and start selling. That may work for them ~ and maybe it really does ~ but it does NOT work for me, and I have not met a newbie yet that can make it work.
The thing about going after a hungry market ~ think weight loss ~ is that the market is really competitive. While competition can be a good thing ~ it tells you people are buying ~ for a newbie it’s like trying to swim to the mainland from Alcatraz. There’s sharks everywhere, the currents are crazy, the water is wicked cold, and the chances of you making it ~ with no experience swimming in these waters is slim to NONE.
Before you start swimming from Alcatraz you have to do some learning ~ and a lot of practicing. You have to learn how to manage your body swimming in cold water, how to navigate the currents, how to stay out of the shark’s mouth. 
It’s not much different when we’re talking about internet marketing.
What I’m trying to teach you ~ with Christmas cash blueprint, and all these tutorials is how to manage all the variables so you can learn how to manage all the pieces ~ then when you’ve got the hang of it you may want to try swimming from Alcatraz ~ however, you may find that swimming in a small, warm lake with only a large mouth bass to worry about is a much better way to go!
So here’s what I suggest ~ you learn to swim before you journey from Alcatraz ~ and in internet marketing that means finding good keywords.
There used to be one saying that annoyed, aggravated, entirely pissed me off more than any other when I was a newbie marketer and that was “find good keywords”.
The problem was, no one EVER told me HOW!!!! I knew it was importatnt, but you don’t know what you don’t know. I can’t rightly find good keywords if I don’t know what the hell that means or how to do it. Right??
Well today I’m going to show you how to find good keywords and what they can do for you. (I’m aplogizing already because my analogy has already taken us to over 600 words lol but bear with me because this is HUGE)
I’m going to go through the proces of finding good keywords in a few different ways to hopefully help the most people. I’ll do text ~ video using free resources, and video using micro niche finder, so choose the method of learning that suits you best and go for it!!
Finding Good Keywords 101
What makes a good keyword?
2 things.
1. search volume
2. minimal competition ~ I’ve already covered how to find low competition keywords here.
Search volume:
Search volume is simply the number of people who have gone to a search engine and typed in a certain word or phrase trying to get information. This is called a search query and we are going to focus on Google search engine since they get the majority of searchers.
Search volume tells you what people want. It tells you how many people want it. It tells you exactly what words to optimize your page for. It can tell you exactly what product or service to offer on your page.
The name of the game in internet marketing is figuring out exactly what people want and giving it to them. When you use keyword research to do this, it is very easy to make your product/keywords/content all completely relevant and this will increase your conversion rate.
So let’s get started with our keyword research
I’m going to work on finding keywords for specific products because that’s what we’re doing currently. There are other ways you can do keyword research but for these purposes we’re going to look at products.
1. Get an idea.
You’ve got to start somewhere. This is why I sent you to Amazon to look for product ideas. You can start with a specific product, a product line, or even a general product category.
Today we’re going to look at inversion tables as a starting place.
We’re going to go to the Google keyword tool (or micro niche finder if you have it) and put in our idea.
We’re going to hit search and see what we get. This is why it’s called research ~ you have to go in with an open mind ~ you want to see what is going to show up. If you go in with a predetermined idea of what you’re going to do you will miss a lot of really good stuff.
2. Look through the results and see what’s there.
Look for specific product names, product groups you can look further into.
Let’s just take a look at what showed up. This is only the first few things, there were a couple hundreds keywords that popped up, but already we have some great information.
f7000 inversion table ~ that sounds like it could be a specific product, so does f5000.
Lifegear and Teeter sound like brands we could look into further, and do some more investigating.
Now the big thing we are looking at here is SEARCH VOLUME. That’s the number on the right hand side. When looking for these specific product keywords you want to find keywords with at LEAST 1000 searches.
Here’s why:
It’s pretty well accepted that if you can get your site to the #1 spot in Google you will get about 40% of the estimated search volume in traffic. (if you want to learn more about that Google it and take a look, there’s lots of info out there on this).
Let’s say you’ve chosen a keyword that has 500 monthly searches. If you get your site to #1 in Google that will mean you get about 200 visitors per month.
That’s sounds ok ~ however there are some other numbers you have to look at.
Let’s say you get about 20% of the people to click through to your product page ~ which is a conservative but realistic estimate. 20% of 200 is 40 people. That’s 40 people clicking through to your product page.
Average conversion rate can be from 1 to 3% (product pages can be much higher, but let’s stick with the average.) We’re saying out of 100 people you might get 1 to 3 people to buy. If you’re only getting 40 people a month to your site you’re going to be waiting probably 2 1/2 months before you make a sale!! That’s a LONG TIME to be patient!!!
Now let’s say you’ve chosen a product with 2000 monthly search volume. That’s 800 people a month to your lens. at 20% click through rate that’s 160 people getting to your sales page a month. with a 1 to 3% conversion rate you’re making at least 1 sale a month.
It’s a huge difference. Now don’t get discouraged ~ these numbers are just estimates and just to prove a point. You’ll see if you look on a lot of the Amazon pages they’ll say 75% of people who landed here bought, so your conversion rate can be a LOT higher ~ but if you don’t start with a decent level of initial search volume you’ve got nothing to work with.
I’m NOT saying look and look and look for keywords with 50,000 monthly search volume. You will be wasting a LOT of time doing that ~ but as you can see there are a lot of keywords out there with at least 1000 monthly searches.
Back to the keyword research:
You can now check competition for a keyword (like the specific product sounding keywords) or you can dig a little deeper. That’s what we’re going to do now.
Go back to the keyword tool, and let’s put one of the brand name keywords in and see what we get. Remember the more specific the keyword the more closely you can match the product and the higher your click through and conversion rates are likely to be.
Let’s take a look at the lifegear inversion table and see what happens.
That really netted us nothing further than what we already had ~ so let’s try ironman inversion table and see what we get.
This has yielded a few keywords that might be worth investigating:
Now when I say investigate I mean look at the competition and check to see if there are other Squidoo lenses for that specific keyword. But this is how you find search volume. Search volume is the key beginning to finding good keywords.
Let’s take a look at this in video now.
Keyword Research with Free Tools:
We’re going to be using the Google keyword tool, and SEO for firefox in this video. As well as Amazon.com
In this last video I’m going to use Micro Niche Finder to look for good keywords. Unlike the google keyword tool MNF will give you keywords that are not directly related to your initial query but are relevant to what you’re searching for. What’s really fun about this is that you can end up finding keywords you never would have even thought about searching for ~ that’s where it really helps you find keywords not everyone else is looking for.
If you have any questions about search volume, choosing good keywords, micro niche finder or any of the other tools I’ve used in this post and video ~ feel free to ask in the comment area. If you want some one on one help finding keywords for YOUR lenses feel free to grab some private coaching time with me. Sometimes it’s just easier to be able to talk about specifics individually.
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I've tried Squidoo in the past and never made any money. I have about 15 lenses that aren't doing anything for me. I think I'll try some of these tips and see what happens. Thanks for the advice!
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