- Mar 10, 2010
- 42,697
- 107,142
This may not be the best way and it is certainly not the only way but it is my way these days and it works and works well and slightly different from how I did KW research a few years back which I have posted here on BHW last year or so.
In the internet marketing industry there are several different points of view when it comes to making a living online; I?d like to share what I have had the most success with over the 7 ? 8 years I have been working online full time; Huge Authority sites.
When a person makes the decision to go ahead and build a huge authority site, they can expect an awful lot of work ahead of them and also a very nice long-term revenue stream, if the site is built properly and proper keyword research as well as back linked in a fashion that stands up to the tests of time and the ever-changing dynamic algorithms of the search engines.
The first thing that I do when I am getting ready or pondering building a new authority site is to see if the thought process is something I can carry out over the long term. So what I look for are projects and verticals in which I have an interest. If I don?t have an interest odds are I will not continue to build the site and the site will become an orphan site in the eyes of the search engines.
One of the ways I decide if this is going to be a project that can make me a sustainable revenue stream is by my initial keyword research. I don?t use fancy tools or websites or even suggestions by Google to start my project. I simply sit down with a pen and paper and write down as many keywords I can come up with for that particular project inside of five minutes. If I cannot come up with 25 to 30, or even more keywords, in those five minutes I bail. That?s not a project for me because there?s not enough going on between my ears with that niche.
To me that is the first step in common sense SEO; conversational keyword research.
Those 25 to 30 keywords that I generate may not even be keywords sought by those that use the Google search bar, but odds are, they are because they are common sense keywords and keywords that are used in conversation and thus tagged by me as conversational keywords.
Once I have those keywords and I feel comfortable knowing that I can expand into something of value I then go ahead think of synonyms for those keywords, add them to my list and start to use the Internet and see what others are thinking because I?m not selling to myself I?m selling to others.
This is going to get a little tedious so maybe you need a cup of coffee to get through the next few minutes of content on about to share.
I take each individual keyword and use the authority sites on the Internet, such as Wikipedia, eHow and some of the other big sites that typically rank 1, 2 and 3 when searched for most terms. As an example I would open up Wikipedia type in the keyword in the search bar and see what other related or ancillary keywords show up on that site. I grab those keywords and put them in a file. Surely if they are looked upon as possible related keywords in the authority sites I want to consider them for my own site, not to copy the authority site but rather, to take advantage of the work they?ve already done.
When you take into account all of the different processes I have just done, which could take several hours, I end up with hundreds of keywords. That actually is significantly more that I used to get before expanded on my keyword research process for building authority sites.
At this point I take advantage of the Adwords Keyword Tool or a site like Keywordrevealer.com and use their free tools to generate even more keywords. My goal is to get as many possible keywords that tied to my initial, broad-spectrum, niche idea and hopefully end up with several thousand to start building my site.
Here comes the tedious part, Folks!
I take each individual keyword and put them in the tool and generate spreadsheets for each individual keyword. This, unless you?re some sort of alien with supersonic powers, is going to take a minute or two. But the return on your time could very well be a recurring income of thousands upon thousands of dollars per year until your as old as Methuselah. In my opinion if you do hard work, which is what this actually is, the return should be exponential and the return on your time investment should be there for years to come.
How much money can one make with an authority site?
I won?t share specifics but I will tell you that a couple of decent authority sites built my way can easily take care of all your household bills and also leave plenty of cash left over to enjoy some of the nicer things in life.
So now you have several hundred different spreadsheets taking up all sorts of space and probably causing, at least in small part, some Internet marketing stress. Well were about to clean some of that up.
Consolidate all those spreadsheets into one massive spreadsheet. A huge Excel file that is second to none when it comes to keywords related to your broad spectrum niche. It will be a monster but a monster is what you want because this is not a monster that hides under your bed but rather one that put cash in your wallet.
With the spreadsheet consolidated use the data sort feature and delete all the duplicates as there will be a bunch of them sitting in there. That will eliminate 20 ? 30 % of the keywords that were generated and possibly more.
That is step one to getting things cleaned up so that you can start putting some content in place.
Step two is to eliminate any keywords that do not generate any real traffic. I am not real picky there and if there are triple digits (over 100) monthly searches I keep the keyword and I also keep EVERY keyword that I initially wrote down (my conversational keywords). So now you have kicked a bunch more keywords to the curb in your culling process.
You would think that after that process you are good to go and start building your site. Sure, you can do that, but I would not. I then want to expound and get long tails for those keywords. Longtail keywords will give you a whole bunch more new keywords that you can target and will get you a whole lot more targeted traffic which is what you are building the site for so you can make a buck.
I use any number of different keyword suggestion tools such as suggester.timrottmann.com or ubersuggest.org and that will give you a lot of different long tails to take advantage of in your content building for your site. Those long tailed keywords are very important for the structure of your authority site and will make you money in a lot of different ways.
With the above you now have a pretty good basis to start the process of content development for your authority site.
You have conversational keywords, keywords from authority sites, keywords from Google and longtail keywords which gives you a nice blend of what people may be looking for when they are searching for information related to your broad-spectrum niche authority website.
Granted, if you follow my general outline, you going to do an awful lot of work and it?s going to take an awful lot of time, and you may need reading glasses when you?re done but the payoff can be huge because Google will rank your site for many of the keywords chosen as well as many that are not on your list and you will make decent money from your site, if monetized properly, after all is said and done.
That, Folks, is why I do that kind of keyword research for an authority site.
In the internet marketing industry there are several different points of view when it comes to making a living online; I?d like to share what I have had the most success with over the 7 ? 8 years I have been working online full time; Huge Authority sites.
When a person makes the decision to go ahead and build a huge authority site, they can expect an awful lot of work ahead of them and also a very nice long-term revenue stream, if the site is built properly and proper keyword research as well as back linked in a fashion that stands up to the tests of time and the ever-changing dynamic algorithms of the search engines.
The first thing that I do when I am getting ready or pondering building a new authority site is to see if the thought process is something I can carry out over the long term. So what I look for are projects and verticals in which I have an interest. If I don?t have an interest odds are I will not continue to build the site and the site will become an orphan site in the eyes of the search engines.
One of the ways I decide if this is going to be a project that can make me a sustainable revenue stream is by my initial keyword research. I don?t use fancy tools or websites or even suggestions by Google to start my project. I simply sit down with a pen and paper and write down as many keywords I can come up with for that particular project inside of five minutes. If I cannot come up with 25 to 30, or even more keywords, in those five minutes I bail. That?s not a project for me because there?s not enough going on between my ears with that niche.
To me that is the first step in common sense SEO; conversational keyword research.
Those 25 to 30 keywords that I generate may not even be keywords sought by those that use the Google search bar, but odds are, they are because they are common sense keywords and keywords that are used in conversation and thus tagged by me as conversational keywords.
Once I have those keywords and I feel comfortable knowing that I can expand into something of value I then go ahead think of synonyms for those keywords, add them to my list and start to use the Internet and see what others are thinking because I?m not selling to myself I?m selling to others.
This is going to get a little tedious so maybe you need a cup of coffee to get through the next few minutes of content on about to share.
I take each individual keyword and use the authority sites on the Internet, such as Wikipedia, eHow and some of the other big sites that typically rank 1, 2 and 3 when searched for most terms. As an example I would open up Wikipedia type in the keyword in the search bar and see what other related or ancillary keywords show up on that site. I grab those keywords and put them in a file. Surely if they are looked upon as possible related keywords in the authority sites I want to consider them for my own site, not to copy the authority site but rather, to take advantage of the work they?ve already done.
When you take into account all of the different processes I have just done, which could take several hours, I end up with hundreds of keywords. That actually is significantly more that I used to get before expanded on my keyword research process for building authority sites.
At this point I take advantage of the Adwords Keyword Tool or a site like Keywordrevealer.com and use their free tools to generate even more keywords. My goal is to get as many possible keywords that tied to my initial, broad-spectrum, niche idea and hopefully end up with several thousand to start building my site.
Here comes the tedious part, Folks!
I take each individual keyword and put them in the tool and generate spreadsheets for each individual keyword. This, unless you?re some sort of alien with supersonic powers, is going to take a minute or two. But the return on your time could very well be a recurring income of thousands upon thousands of dollars per year until your as old as Methuselah. In my opinion if you do hard work, which is what this actually is, the return should be exponential and the return on your time investment should be there for years to come.
How much money can one make with an authority site?
I won?t share specifics but I will tell you that a couple of decent authority sites built my way can easily take care of all your household bills and also leave plenty of cash left over to enjoy some of the nicer things in life.
So now you have several hundred different spreadsheets taking up all sorts of space and probably causing, at least in small part, some Internet marketing stress. Well were about to clean some of that up.
Consolidate all those spreadsheets into one massive spreadsheet. A huge Excel file that is second to none when it comes to keywords related to your broad spectrum niche. It will be a monster but a monster is what you want because this is not a monster that hides under your bed but rather one that put cash in your wallet.
With the spreadsheet consolidated use the data sort feature and delete all the duplicates as there will be a bunch of them sitting in there. That will eliminate 20 ? 30 % of the keywords that were generated and possibly more.
That is step one to getting things cleaned up so that you can start putting some content in place.
Step two is to eliminate any keywords that do not generate any real traffic. I am not real picky there and if there are triple digits (over 100) monthly searches I keep the keyword and I also keep EVERY keyword that I initially wrote down (my conversational keywords). So now you have kicked a bunch more keywords to the curb in your culling process.
You would think that after that process you are good to go and start building your site. Sure, you can do that, but I would not. I then want to expound and get long tails for those keywords. Longtail keywords will give you a whole bunch more new keywords that you can target and will get you a whole lot more targeted traffic which is what you are building the site for so you can make a buck.
I use any number of different keyword suggestion tools such as suggester.timrottmann.com or ubersuggest.org and that will give you a lot of different long tails to take advantage of in your content building for your site. Those long tailed keywords are very important for the structure of your authority site and will make you money in a lot of different ways.
With the above you now have a pretty good basis to start the process of content development for your authority site.
You have conversational keywords, keywords from authority sites, keywords from Google and longtail keywords which gives you a nice blend of what people may be looking for when they are searching for information related to your broad-spectrum niche authority website.
Granted, if you follow my general outline, you going to do an awful lot of work and it?s going to take an awful lot of time, and you may need reading glasses when you?re done but the payoff can be huge because Google will rank your site for many of the keywords chosen as well as many that are not on your list and you will make decent money from your site, if monetized properly, after all is said and done.
That, Folks, is why I do that kind of keyword research for an authority site.
