seocrab's AdSense journey to $500/month
ardley216
Elite Member
- Mar 28, 2008
- 2,389
- 2,418
Ucantbevan
Registered Member
- Jul 2, 2012
- 67
- 20
In on this thread, I'm hoping to reach this goal soon as well. Wish you good luck on your journey!
seocrab
Elite Member
- May 2, 2013
- 1,579
- 1,991
I second this, I am planning a good JVIP thread soon too
Nice idea; I'm keeping this one newbie-friendly, but will save something special for the VIP section soon. Looking forward to your thread.
erickishere
Elite Member
- Nov 27, 2012
- 3,185
- 1,176
Can't wait to see the results in this journey. Good luck bud
seocrab
Elite Member
- May 2, 2013
- 1,579
- 1,991
Thanks for all the encouragement!
Starting today with STEP 1:
With good keywords I'm looking for 3 things:
1. High search volume
2. High CPC (cost per click)
3. Low competition
For the first 2, I am using the Google AdWords keyword planner tool (https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner). Anyone can access the tool by activating AdWords on your Google account.
Keyword Selection
Select the country and/or language you want to rank for. I usually go for English/All locations unless I'm looking to rank for a very country-specific phrase.
Pick a very general keyword, such as "bicycles" to start with. Choosing something you are interested in/passionate about will help later down the line when the hard work kicks in. If you're completely stuck for ideas, try Google Trends for inspiration (http://www.google.com/trends/).
Select the "keyword ideas" tab and sort the suggestions by 'Avg. monthly searches', from low to high.
Look for a keyword that has a decent suggested CPC (over $1) and over 1,000 monthly searches if possible. Google's suggested 'Competition' rating refers to AdWords competition; sometimes this correlates with ranking competition, but you will need to check this manually (see next step).
From a test search for "bicycle", the keyword phrase "custom cycling jerseys" caught my eye. But I'm not finished yet (it's not quite that easy).
Checking Keyword Competition
Now I paste "custom cycling jerseys" into Google.com (or the relevant local search engine if you want to rank in a specific country) and take a look at the competition:
By using Firefox with moz's SEO Toolbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/seo-toolbar-by-seomoz/) and the SEOQuake addon (https://www.seoquake.com/) I can quickly see that the top 10 results for "custom cycling jerseys" are all high PR, large domains; outranking them will take too much time/money.
Avoid selecting keywords with the following competitors on Page 1:
High Value Keywords
Think about AdWords users - they are mainly companies looking to get people onto their sales page. That means, most AdWords campaigns will focus on products or services. Obvious sales-related keywords like "buy iPhone" will be massively competitive. Think like a PPC professional for a minute and imagine how you would target customers:
- My website sells iPhones
- People that search for "buy iPhone" probably want to buy an iPhone
- But people that search for "iPhone reviews" are probably considering buying one too.
- What about "iPhone versus Samsung Galaxy"?
The best AdSense revenues come from sites that target keywords that have the right balance of 'information' and 'sales' queries. Basically ask yourself: "What do people want to find out BEFORE they make a purchase?".
Let's try the Google Keyword Tool, with this tactic in mind.
Keyword Selection & Competition (2.0!)
This time, I found the keyword "stiff bikes" just by browsing through Google's Keyword Tool, the same as before:
While it reportedly gets fewer monthly searches than "custom cycling jerseys", the competition is far easier to beat:
Rather than focusing on 1 main keyword per site, I am choosing to pick 4-5 less popular keywords that are a) easier to rank and b) have higher CPCs. The end goal will be higher earnings for less work (if all goes well!).
Checking Competitor Backlinks
The final part of the 'competition research' involves looking at competitor's backlink profiles. Useful paid tools include ahrefs (http://ahrefs.com) or moz's Open Site Explorer (http://opensiteexplorer.org). I personally like SERPS (http://serps.com) because it aggregates data from both ahrefs and OSE and lets you find links to just specific pages if required (but it is costly). If you are short on funds, you can do 3 trial searches a day on ahrefs and OSE (and if you have proxies to change your IP, you can keep on going!).
I can see that the top-ranking pages for "stiff bike" have very few backlinks, mainly from forums. The ranking domains/subdomains have between 1k and 65k natural whitehat backlinks mainly from blogs, forums and social networks. These can be easily matched without spending too much time/money.
So, by correlating search volume data with CPC estimates, competitor on-page metrics and competitor backlinks, I can conclude that "stiff bikes" is a valuable keyword for an AdSense site.
---------------
So, that's STEP 1 complete! I'm not actually using the cycling niche for any of my AdSense sites, I just used it to illustrate the keyword selection and competition analysis process. I've used the same process to pick a different keyword for my first AdSense site (and, no, I will not be sharing it!).
The next step will cover choosing a domain for fast ranking.
Starting today with STEP 1:
With good keywords I'm looking for 3 things:
1. High search volume
2. High CPC (cost per click)
3. Low competition
For the first 2, I am using the Google AdWords keyword planner tool (https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner). Anyone can access the tool by activating AdWords on your Google account.
Keyword Selection
Select the country and/or language you want to rank for. I usually go for English/All locations unless I'm looking to rank for a very country-specific phrase.
Pick a very general keyword, such as "bicycles" to start with. Choosing something you are interested in/passionate about will help later down the line when the hard work kicks in. If you're completely stuck for ideas, try Google Trends for inspiration (http://www.google.com/trends/).
Select the "keyword ideas" tab and sort the suggestions by 'Avg. monthly searches', from low to high.
Look for a keyword that has a decent suggested CPC (over $1) and over 1,000 monthly searches if possible. Google's suggested 'Competition' rating refers to AdWords competition; sometimes this correlates with ranking competition, but you will need to check this manually (see next step).
From a test search for "bicycle", the keyword phrase "custom cycling jerseys" caught my eye. But I'm not finished yet (it's not quite that easy
).
Checking Keyword Competition
Now I paste "custom cycling jerseys" into Google.com (or the relevant local search engine if you want to rank in a specific country) and take a look at the competition:
By using Firefox with moz's SEO Toolbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/seo-toolbar-by-seomoz/) and the SEOQuake addon (https://www.seoquake.com/) I can quickly see that the top 10 results for "custom cycling jerseys" are all high PR, large domains; outranking them will take too much time/money.
Avoid selecting keywords with the following competitors on Page 1:
- Large news/magazine sites (this is common for editorial keywords like "how to program your iPhone")
- Established e-commerce sites (like the cycling example), or major players like eBay or Amazon.
High Value Keywords
Think about AdWords users - they are mainly companies looking to get people onto their sales page. That means, most AdWords campaigns will focus on products or services. Obvious sales-related keywords like "buy iPhone" will be massively competitive. Think like a PPC professional for a minute and imagine how you would target customers:
- My website sells iPhones
- People that search for "buy iPhone" probably want to buy an iPhone
- But people that search for "iPhone reviews" are probably considering buying one too.
- What about "iPhone versus Samsung Galaxy"?
The best AdSense revenues come from sites that target keywords that have the right balance of 'information' and 'sales' queries. Basically ask yourself: "What do people want to find out BEFORE they make a purchase?".
Let's try the Google Keyword Tool, with this tactic in mind.
Keyword Selection & Competition (2.0!)
This time, I found the keyword "stiff bikes" just by browsing through Google's Keyword Tool, the same as before:
While it reportedly gets fewer monthly searches than "custom cycling jerseys", the competition is far easier to beat:
Rather than focusing on 1 main keyword per site, I am choosing to pick 4-5 less popular keywords that are a) easier to rank and b) have higher CPCs. The end goal will be higher earnings for less work (if all goes well!).
Checking Competitor Backlinks
The final part of the 'competition research' involves looking at competitor's backlink profiles. Useful paid tools include ahrefs (http://ahrefs.com) or moz's Open Site Explorer (http://opensiteexplorer.org). I personally like SERPS (http://serps.com) because it aggregates data from both ahrefs and OSE and lets you find links to just specific pages if required (but it is costly). If you are short on funds, you can do 3 trial searches a day on ahrefs and OSE (and if you have proxies to change your IP, you can keep on going!).
I can see that the top-ranking pages for "stiff bike" have very few backlinks, mainly from forums. The ranking domains/subdomains have between 1k and 65k natural whitehat backlinks mainly from blogs, forums and social networks. These can be easily matched without spending too much time/money.
So, by correlating search volume data with CPC estimates, competitor on-page metrics and competitor backlinks, I can conclude that "stiff bikes" is a valuable keyword for an AdSense site.
---------------
So, that's STEP 1 complete! I'm not actually using the cycling niche for any of my AdSense sites, I just used it to illustrate the keyword selection and competition analysis process. I've used the same process to pick a different keyword for my first AdSense site (and, no, I will not be sharing it!).
The next step will cover choosing a domain for fast ranking.
illfounded21
BANNED
- Dec 19, 2011
- 1,152
- 1,188
Seocrab knows what's going on.
Exec VIP isn't too far away
Exec VIP isn't too far away
- Apr 13, 2013
- 8,294
- 2,799
Good luck with your journey buddy
webmasterbd
Elite Member
- Dec 2, 2009
- 5,393
- 3,004
Sounds like a good plan to me,what tools you been using for keyword research if I may ask?
seocrab
Elite Member
- May 2, 2013
- 1,579
- 1,991
Nothing special; as mentioned in the STEP 1 post above, I used:
- Google Keyword Planner Tool
- Firefox addons (moz's SEO Toolbar and SEOQuake)
- SERPS.com for backlink checking