Keyword and Marketing Techniques That Work

     When I make my own web page, I want people to find it and look at it! The first rule of profitability is to drive traffic to my web site. A page must have a top 10 keyword ranking to attract visitors. About 95% of search engine traffic never looks past the top 10 sites. If a web page has no traffic, how can it have profit?

you MUST have top 10 keyword ranking

     The internet is vast compared to traditional "brick and mortar" businesses, so, before we can determine keywords, we must decide on our subject or product. The search engines like you better if you highly focus your content on a specific subject.

     Let's say our product is paper clips. If we live in a small town of 500 people, then we probably need to totally dominate the paper clip market (and staples, and pencils, and... etc) in that town just to make a living.

     On the internet, we have a potential audience of millions. If we specialized in red, white and blue paper clips, we could more easily learn, understand and supply that market. We would strive for people to always think of us for red, white and blue paper clips. Finding a smaller niche and totally dominating that niche is usually more profitable than sharing a huge niche with lots of other people.

     So, what do you love to do? What knowledge do you have that other people want to know? Be specific. You can expand later after you have success with the first item. Once you do this, the real fun can begin.

     Once you find a niche subject, check a search engine to see what's out there already. Don't worry about the numbers yet. Just look around to see what's going on. Find out which of your competitors have successful web sites, and learn from them. How do we know if they are successful? Look them up in Alexa.

Check out Alexa Ranking, shows the busiest web sites on earth

     Alexa shows the top several million web sites (about top 1%). It is surprising just how little web site traffic it takes to get on that list. There is plenty of room for you to compete, if you know how.

Drive Traffic to My Web Site (Find High Demand)

     If you want to make money with your web page, then you must get web site traffic. When people look to the search engines, statistics show about 95% of searchers stop before the second page and virtually all searchers quit before the third page.

     This makes it apparent that if you do not achieve the top 10 keyword ranking (not 10,000 or 10 million, just 10), your page will get very little of that traffic.

The First Tip for Getting Traffic to Your Web Site

     If you "Google" yourself, you should find your web site in the top 10. If you have a common name, try your phone number or email address. This simply tells you that your are listed in the search engines. Try this in each of the search engines.

     The next question should be, "would my customers look me up this way?" Most times, unless you are already famous, the answer would be a resounding NO. Obviously, the next question would be, "what would my customers look up?" Good keyword marketing is the best tip for getting traffic to your web site.

     Take your time when choosing keywords and marketing takes care of itself. If nobody is searching for your keyword, then you receive no traffic. How do we determine the keywords that are being searched for? Let's look at some samples.

     The word "travel" is one of the most sought after words on the internet. It is usually in the top 10 words searched for. It usually gets a couple million hits a month from various search engines. Since millions of people struggle to get top 10 keyword ranking for the word "travel," it may not be worth the trouble to stay up there.

     On the other hand, if your keyword is so obscure that nobody looks for it, first position would be simple to maintain but, wouldn't be profitable, because of low keyword preference.

     So, the big question is...

what keywords do I focus on to drive traffic to my web site?

     The search engines keep trying to invent a better keyword position tool. In the past, the Overture search suggestion tool was a wonderful tool.

     Well, time marches on. The new top tool that promotes bidding keyword traffic to reach top 10 keyword ranking, is the Google adsense keyword tool. Some keywords are more expensive than others. Many search engines allow bidding for the keyword and charge by the click-through. Customers are willing to pay more for keywords that are sought after, so they show us the rankings. Do we want to do "pay per click?" Maybe, but let's look at the free tools first! They can be pretty amazing!

Adword Keywords from Google      This adsense keyword tool comes from Google. They supply this tool for people who want to buy keywords. You simply lookup a word you are interested in, then they tell you how many people have been looking up this keyword, along with a list of related phrases. This is real demand by real potential customers, monthly. Adword Keywords, free from Google

     When you click on Google Adword keywords, you are asked for your keyword preference. You may choose a single word or a phrase. Since every one seems to enjoy travel, let's try out the word travel and see what comes up.

Searches done in May 2008
Count	Search Term
185,000,000	travel
37,200,000	travel deals
13,600,000	travel insurance
2,240,000	travel city
1,830,000	travel vacations
1,500,000	european travel
1,220,000	air travel
823,000	best travel
823,000	cancun travel
673,000	orlando travel
673,000	travel agents
550,000	cheap travel

Note: This is a short version of the list
     Notice each phrase contains the basic keyword? Each specific phrase brings in the specified number of searches per month. Of course, search rates can change, especially if the keyword is seasonal (like christmas). Check them once in awhile. This keyword positioning tool does show activity for the past year. As you read through a list of related adword keywords, some phrases may stimulate other ideas for other keywords. Check on them too!.

These Adword Keywords are What Potential Visitors Want (Demand)

Start the Chart

     The results from the Google Adsense Keywords gives us the adword keywords our potential visitors are demanding. These are words with potential traffic and profit.

     It would be great to have top 10 keyword ranking for every one of these words. Reality is that some are much more difficult than others. You might imagine, if 185 million people are searching for 'travel', someone else has noticed before you!

The easiest website traffic to obtain are the potential visitors who are not being served at all

     To test for this, let's start a spreadsheet program like Excel, Quattro or Lotus. A spreadsheet is a very useful and common tool and is fairly simple to use. It is like a big checkerboard. Each square is called a cell. A cell can contain text, numbers or a formula. If you don't have a spreadsheet or just don't want to use one, you could simply scratch this out on paper.

     After inserting the headings, fill in the blanks with the Google Adword keywords (demand) results. It should look like the following chart.

	A	B	C
1	Search Term	Demand	Supply
2	travel	185,000,000
3	travel insurance	13,600,000
4	travel city	2,240,000
5	travel vacations	1,830,000
6	european travel	1,500,000
7	air travel	1,220,000
8	best travel	823,000
9	cancun travel	823,000
10	orlando travel	673,000
11	travel agents	673,000
12	cheap travel	550,000

Drive Traffic to My Web Site (Find Low Supply)

     Now that we know what our potential visitor wants (demand), let's find out if anyone else is currently meeting that demand. How do we find out? The search engines give us great information about supply. We simply search and find out how many web pages supply the demand for each word.

Alta Vista Search Engine      The Alta Vista Search Engine is one of the oldest and biggest search engines. If you can get into the top 10 keyword ranking in this arena, you're doing great.      For checking supply, the Alta Vista Search Engine works well because it gives an accurate count of sites containing the requested search term. http://www.altavista.com/

Better Searching      Using quotes during your search keeps your list more accurate. By quoting a phrase, the search returns to you, the pages containing that exact phrase.      Boolean Algebra provides computer geeks with a mathmatical basis for figuring all this stuff out.      In simple terms, when we search for web page: if web gets 1,000,000 results and page gets 500,000 results web <or> page should get 1,500,000 while web <and> page might only get 45,000 results      The AND indicates both must be present while OR says just one needs to be present, either one. OR is much bigger.

     I added a supply column to the chart. This is where we put the Alta Vista Search Engine results. Check each item in the Demand column one at a time. Make sure to put quotes around each phrase. This gets the Boolean right.

     In fact, using quotes actually looking for web and page together, as in web page. This would even get fewer results. This can be a useful trick when the internet wants to give you too much information.

     Well, back to those Alta Vista search results. Using the quotes limits the results to the specific phrase (AND). The Alta Vista results include the number of pages found. This is the supply. Write this into the next column in the spread sheet. Quite simply, this is your competition for this phrase.

	A	B	C	D
1	Search Term	Demand	Supply	Ratio
2	travel	185,000,000	1,400,000,000
3	travel insurance	13,600,000	21,900,000
4	travel city	2,240,000	912,000
5	travel vacations	1,830,000	1,490,000
6	european travel	1,500,000	1,540,000
7	air travel	1,220,000	1,400,000
8	best travel	823,000	5,880,000
9	cancun travel	823,000	377,000
10	orlando travel	673,000	490,000
11	travel agents	673,000	20,400,000
12	cheap travel	550,000	6,720,000

Google Search Engine      Another popular choice for search engines is Google. While they are considered one of the newer entries, they have done quite well with their systems. In fact, they are the largest search engine now.      you submit your domain to Google, they spider and include your entire web site. http://www.google.com/

Tip for getting traffic to your web site (Profitability Ratio)

     The profitability ratio is demand divided by supply.

demand supply

=

Profitability Ratio

     In spreadsheet language, the formula +(b2/c2) would be in cell d2, +(b3/c3) would be in cell d3, etc. The beauty of spreadsheets shines out with the discovery of how to copy formulae from one cell to a block of cells without having to make any adjustments (cut and paste).

	A	B	C	D
1	Search Term	Demand	Supply	Ratio
2	travel	185,000,000	1,400,000,000	0.13214
3	travel insurance	13,600,000	21,900,000	0.62110
4	travel city	2,240,000	912,000	2.45614
5	travel vacations	1,830,000	1,490,000	1.22819
6	european travel	1,500,000	1,540,000	0.97403
7	air travel	1,220,000	1,400,000	0.87143
8	best travel	823,000	5,880,000	0.13997
9	cancun travel	823,000	377,000	2.18302
10	orlando travel	673,000	490,000	1.37347
11	travel agents	673,000	20,400,000	0.03299
12	cheap travel	550,000	6,720,000	0.08185

Free Keywords from Word Tracker      This keyword positioning tool comes from Word Tracker. Now that you understand the time and math behind supply/demand, you can really appreciate the tracking tools Word Tracker has to offer.      They track the supply and demand for each of your adword keywords for several different search engines. What a time saver! Free Keywords from Word Tracker

     Once we have the ratios, the results become clear. The highest ratio is the most profitable keyword. The smallest ratio is the least profitable. The word "travel" by itself turns out to be one of the least profitable in this instance.

Supply and demand is the basis of our economy.

     What happens when 50 people want something and 5000 people supply it. Those 50 people can afford to pick and choose. What if only 2 people supply it. They may not even have to compete, but just try to keep up with the demand.

     Look at the supply of people performing travel services. Even the best profitability ratio keyword (travel city) has about 912,000 web sites trying to supply this demand already. The travel agents out there have their work cut out for them, as even "travel city" would be a tough phrase to rise to the top 10 keyword ranking. Besides, "travel city" is the name of a travel agency.

     Think while you invest time and money into this keyword marketing campaign. Your best bet might even be to purchase web site traffic. A serious passion and money is required to make some of these huge keywords succeed. It might be more profitable to carve out an even smaller niche, like "CanCun travel" or even "Idaho travel." You would be much more likely to increase search engine traffic with a smaller subject.

Better to be a big fish in a little pond, than a little fish in a big pond

     By the way, while checking out the supply, take a closer look. Some of these folks are competition. Study them and get ideas about why the successful ones succeed while the others don't. If they refer to great resources with affiliate programs, note those too. The competition could become your partner. Keep track of the better ones. Make a list now, before you make your own web site.

Make Money With Your Web Page

     Wouldn't it be great if all these tools were integrated into your webpage building environment? How about something that tracks the Adword Keywords for your site, tells you what supplies are already being provided? How about a tool that even tracks your usage of Adword Keywords within the webpage?

     The SiteSell BuildIt! program does all that and more, for less cost than all those individual tools, and even provides webpage building and webpage layout for you!