Darren Chow Article Marketing Specialist Blog

I ask you this question because having a keyword plan is tantamount to having a traffic plan when it comes to article marketing. The math is simple – the more keywords you rank for, the more traffic you will receive.

Many article marketers make the mistake of coming up with list that is made up of just random keywords. They have no idea what the traffic volume is, and they don’t know if those keywords will convert into sales. This approach will only work if you have a really HUGE list of keywords. When the numbers are in your favor, SOME keywords will eventually rank well and your efforts will pay off.

But this is hardly the approach that professional article marketers have taken. You see, when you adopt a random-keyword approach, you risk having the majority of your keywords being wasted. In other words, most keywords will either not rank well or they do not convert well. In this case, much of your time and effort would have gone down the drain. So what would a better approach look like?

1) Focus on your primary keywords first. – I’m assuming here that you are already familiar with SEO. Once you pick the right primary keywords, do EVERYTHING you can to rank for those keywords. Your primary keywords should always come first. A good set of primary keywords would be a phrase containing three to four words with manageable competition in the search engines.

Notice that I didn’t say minimal competition. Today, in most profitable markets, you will see considerable competition in the search engines. Over time, more and more niches will be uncovered and the search indexes will be filled up with more and more websites and web pages. So I think it’s about time to stop mining for keywords with minimal competition and really sit down and think how you are going to compete in the long term. If you have picked a niche that you know you are going to be in for the long term, you are more likely to stick with your SEO efforts and make doubly sure that you rank well for your primary terms. I’ll give you more SEO tips on how to keep your rankings at the top near the end of this post (see Google Panda Update below).

2) Take the time to understand the concerns of your buyers. – This is very important, so take the time to let the message really sink in. It can mean the difference between success and failure. What does this has to do with keyword research?

Everything.

Most people like to use keyword tools to generate huge lists of keywords. Again, this should not be a random effort. It should be based on the assumption that you already know what your customers want. If you know what your buyers want, then you know what they are likely to search for. Coming up with the right keywords becomes a walk in the park.

All you have to do now is to think about the products that you want to sell, then do a quick reverse-engineer and think about the problems that your customers are looking to solve. This should give you your first handful of keywords.

3) Expand on your keyword list gradually. – This is a step that most people ignore. They target the primary keywords, and then stop there. There is A LOT of targeted traffic that you can send to your website just by expanding on your keyword list.

Go to your web stats and take a look at the keywords that you are currently ranking for. Then note down their search positions. I can guarantee you, there will be keywords that you know you can improve on their rankings. These are keywords that rank on the first page of Google but they are on position 5, 6, 7, etc. By pushing them right to the top 3 spots, you can easily double or even triple your existing traffic. This is a very powerful method, especially when you ALREADY KNOW that these keywords are converting well for you. So all you have to do is to post more content relevant to those keywords on your site and then create internal links between these pages.

When you have at least 20 pages of unique content on your site, there WILL be keywords for you to work on. Improve the rankings of existing keywords first before searching for new keywords to target.

4) Searching for new keywords to target. This is the hard part, so pay attention. Earlier, I mentioned that you should take the time to understand the concerns of your buyers. This is to help you make smarter and more accurate guesses when choosing keywords to target. But they are, nevertheless, still “guesses”. Without hard data, there is always the risk that a keyword phrase may turn out to be non-performing.

But when starting out, you have no hard data to depend on. And you have to start from somewhere. So making smart and calculated guesses can greatly reduce the chances of identifying non-performing keywords. Once you have some hard data to depend on, it’s a lot easier. You just have to follow the data and dig out more relevant keywords. For example, if you see that “SEO software coupon” converts well for you, then you can try targeting similar keywords such as “SEO software discount”, “SEO software savings”, “SEO software cheap” etc.

This is the hard part because searching for the right keyword is like finding a needle in the haystack (if you don’t know where to look). So to make the job easier, you have to set some parameters. This will narrow down the scope and you will become a lot more efficient and effective at keyword research.

* What keywords are your customers likely to use when searching for the products you are selling?

* Are the keywords that I have chosen related to the products that I’m selling?

* Am I using words like “discount”, “savings”, “buy now”? These are commonly known as buyer keywords.

* Avoid targeting keywords that are too “informational” or “general” in nature.

* The best keywords are usually between three to five words.

* The best keywords should be targeted and have decent search volume. If search volume is lacking, then a keyword phrase must at least be highly targeted. These keywords lead to the occasional sale but when you add them up, the revenues can be substantial.

Google Panda Update

In April 2011, everyone was talking about the Google Panda Update (and how it affects them). I was rather quiet the entire time because this is something that does not appear new to me.

If you have read my previous posts, you would know that I’m a strong advocate of creating sites with unique and useful content. In other words, my advice to all my readers is to setup sites that the intention that they become authority sites in the near future.

Google Panda Update is about the user-experience. It is an update of the search algorithm to filter out poor quality sites that web visitors DO NOT want to visit. The quality guidelines given by Google are pretty much the same.

* Fast loading site.

* Easy to navigate.

* Content is original, useful and highly relevant.

* Content is not just aggregated.

* Observe proper webmaster guidelines (no participating in link farms, etc, etc)…too long to list here.

So if you have been observing these guidelines, then you have nothing to worry about and Google Panda has nothing to do with you.

Grow your web businesses with a solid keyword (traffic) plan. Hopefully, you find the information on this post useful.

As usual, if you have questions or anything to add, simply send me an email.

See you around!

Darren Chow

http://www.fastsubmitarticles.com

I’ve been receiving emails about how to choose the right keywords when performing article marketing. From my experience, keyword selection is more of an art than a science.

It’s easy to say “go perform a keyword search using Google’s famous keyword tool”. But the tool just throws up estimated traffic volume. The reality can be very different from what you see in the keyword research tool. That makes it all the more confusing.

Does it mean the higher the traffic volume, the better the keyword?

Well, not exactly.

If you know something about SEO, you know there is such a thing known as keyword competitiveness. Keyword competitiveness can be determined by making a quick search in Google’s main index. Some Internet marketers go around teaching others that the less search results you see, the less competitive the keyword – which is a good thing if you are trying to target that keyword. But that’s only part of the story.

The other part of the story consists of looking closely at the search results. From the top 10 results, you will be able to tell if you have a good chance of getting your keywords to rank. So how can you tell? You can tell by observing what the top 10 guys are doing. In other words, you are assessing their SEO capabilities.

For example,

1) Are the primary keywords in the domain?

2) What are they using for anchor texts?

3) How many backlinks do they have? And where are their links coming from?

4) How are they acquiring their back links?

5) Are they using the keywords in the page titles?

6) Are the URLs search engine friendly?

7) How many related pages do they have within the same domain?

If your competitors are doing all of the above well, you know that you are in for some stiff competition. Obviously, these guys know their SEO stuff pretty well. So if you encounter such a niche, you have to decide whether to go in and fight like a wild cat, or target some other keywords.

As you do your research, you will start to notice that some of the top guys are spending lots of money on links. Do you have similar amount of resources to compete with them? If not, you better get creative.

Let’s take a look at a concrete example – the “make money online” niche.

For this niche, it is notoriously difficult to get relevant keywords to rank. That’s because there are so many money making opportunities on the Internet and many of them overlap!

Just off the top of my head, we have…

1) MLM opportunities.

2) eCommerce – online shopping.

3) Adsense.

4) Data entry or work at home opps.

5) Surveys.

6) Affiliate marketing.

7) Traffic brokering.

Selling information.

9) Home business opportunities.

So if you are targeting the keywords “make money online”, which are you referring to? Does that mean you can’t target this market?

Well, there is a way to do this, and this method is known as long tail keywords targeting.

Long tail keywords are essentially phrases with 3 to 5 keywords. They are extremely targeted because usually such phrases are very specific.

For example, instead of targeting “Affiliate marketing” (which I think you have little chance of succeeding), you can target long tail keywords like “Clickbank affiliate marketing”, or “how to sell on clickbank”. You get way less traffic for these keywords, but they are very, very targeted. It’s also much easier to convert such traffic.

The same goes for ecommerce websites that are selling physical products. Let’s say you sell furniture on the Internet. Instead of targeting “home furniture”, you can target keywords like “cedar wood furniture”, or “mesh office chairs”.

Be creative when it comes to generating long tail keywords. As long as there is a chance of the visitor being in your target market, you should target those keywords.

To continue from the example above, let’s say you have chosen “mesh office chairs” as your target keywords. Now think a little harder. What does your target market use the chair for? Very likely, they needed some comfortable office chairs for work. And back pains are very common for those who work long hours in the office. A light bulb immediately comes on.

How about…

* “ergonomic office chairs”

* “mesh chairs that reduce back pain”

* “ergo office chairs”

* “clinically tested office chairs”

The list goes on…

This approach works extremely well because you face less competition, and you get highly targeted traffic. It’s important to remember that if you don’t rank in the first page of Google, your website or web page doesn’t exist. No traffic means no sales. So if you’re serious about SEO, and you want to make more money with SEO, you MUST rank.

From the article marketing perspective, you are leveraging on other people’s website for search traffic. The only reason you are writing and submitting articles is to drive traffic to your website. So if you choose the wrong keywords, and your articles don’t rank, then you are just getting some link juice. Isn’t it better to get some link juice and some search traffic at the same time?

Also, forget about posting the same content on your own website. If you are writing articles for distribution, use them solely for distribution only. Keep the content on your own site unique. That way you have a good chance of having 2 articles rank in Google instead of just 1. If you post the same content, chances are Google will just choose 1 article to include in the search results. It’s going to be a waste of your time.

How many articles you wish to write and where you wish to publish the articles depend on the model you adopt. Here are some recommended traffic generation models – they ALL WORK, but each has its own pros and cons.

Model 1: Drive traffic purely from other people’s website.

You are focused on driving traffic using article marketing. For this model, it’s important to INCLUDE your primary keywords in the article title. You must try to get as many articles as you can out there to acquire more traffic. Of the three models, this model gives you the quickest results.

Model 2: Drive traffic using articles from your own website.

In this case, you must build internal backlinks. Use your article to link to your internal articles, and remember to use the right anchor texts. DO NOT use the same keywords in the articles you are distributing so that the article directories will not compete with your own articles. This model takes a little longer because you need to build up the authority of your website.

Model 3: Drive traffic using other people’s website and your own website.

This is an interesting model to adopt, and I highly recommend adopting this model. Here is what you do.

Stage 1: Write and submit articles with back links to your own website to build up the authority level of your own site.

Stage 2: After 6 months or so, start posting articles to your own site. Remember, articles MUST be unique. Do not publish the articles that you have submitted to the article directories on your own website. Build back links to your internal pages and create links between your own pages on your website.

The third model is the slowest, since it requires you to write articles for distribution and for your own website. But you have more control over the traffic in the long run since you own the website. Alternatively, you can just focus on Model 1 in the initial stages so that you get traffic quickly, and then publish articles on your website much later.

I hope you have learned a lot about SEO and keyword research from the content I’ve given you above.

Here is a mistake that you would want to avoid.

Big Mistake: Overemphasis on page rank when building links.

It’s a common myth that only websites with high page rank gets all the traffic from Google. That’s not true! I own many mini-websites and most of them have page rank 0 or 1, and I get thousands of unique visitors for my sites.

Screenshot of traffic stats from one of my mini-site.

Here is the big secret: Unique and valuable content gets you traffic (wow, some secret…). If a keyword is under-served, you have a very good chance of ranking well. Yes, even the page rank toolbar shows a big fat zero. So there you have it – page rank doesn’t equal traffic.

The reason why I’ve brought this up is because I keep receiving emails saying that the blogs in my Blog Posting Service network has got Page Rank zero, and that they can get much better deals from other networks with more blogs that come with higher page rank.

Obviously, they have somehow missed the value of our blog networks, and I hope to set the record straight.

Client: Why are most of the blogs page rank zero?

We use our article submission service to promote these blogs on a regular basis. If the articles acquire page rank, and the page rank passed on to our blogs, that’s fine. But we are not too concerned here. What’s important here is that we adhere to good SEO practices and so far, that has worked pretty well. The links from the blog posts are showing up in our webmaster account. This is a clear indication that the blogs are in good standing from Google’s perspective. I welcome you to post a blog entry and see for yourself.

The best part is, our websites have gotten better rankings in Google. The results were captured in an SEO case study that was published on one of our blogs.

Client: Why are there only 10 blogs in each network? Other networks offer hundreds of blogs.

First of all, other networks offer hundreds of blogs because all those blogs are general blogs. They may not be relevant to the website you are trying to promote. Your articles may be next to many irrelevant articles in those blogs. By offering less blogs, we are in a better position to promote the blogs and your articles will appear next to highly relevant articles. Even the primary domain names are relevant to your market. Sometimes, less is more.

Here is how you can get the most out of our blog posting service.

1) Adopt any one of the traffic generation models above.

2) Write and post unique articles in our blog networks. Don’t post these articles anywhere else.

3) Embed up to 2 links in each article.

4) After 2 weeks, check to see if the links show up in your Google Webmaster account.

If you are doing everything right, you will be enjoying higher rankings and getting more traffic in no time.

Happy SEO-ing! – Not sure if there is such a word. Just felt right

Darren Chow.