First page for a high competition keyword, how can I monitize?

Noob here, first off thanks to BHW and all its members for posting some great info, also to people I have worked with, a truly invaluable resource.

So being the noob that I am, I decided my first goal was to rank for a keyword I could monitize with a local business, like selling leads. Since my friend owned a financial type business i decided to rank for a keyword in his industry. Well after 3.5 months I finally reached first page with a high competition keyword. Heres the kicker though, since im a noob i missed some critical points when I selected my keyword to rank for, please dont laugh.

First, its a location/city based keyword
Second, the search volume for this keyword is 1,600/month

A sale for this keyword is around 500 - 1,000

So the thing is, where do I go from here? The site is in a pure blog format, so theres no sales or squeeze page setup. Should I try and optimize for sales, try and rent space on it, or just flip it now that the work is done?

What would you do?

Even though this might not have been the best keyword to rank for im super stoked that I was able to get to a first page result for a high competition keyword. Was just wondering where to go from here.

sorry,m one more question here, what do you guys think about location keywords, work for any of you? Im almost scared of the big general keywords, im scared they are really difficult to rank for lol

Well, you claim to be a noob, what makes you say it is in fact a high competition keyword? Have you put google keyword tool on 'exact' yet?

If it was up to me, I would open (digital) yellow pages and start visiting/calling bank franchisees sort of speak, as in family owned banking offices, and offer them an advertisement on your homepage for $xx to $xxx a month, depending on city and/or service

lol well there you go, learned something new, exact phrase lowers that search volume, something else i should learn.

I like that idea

Only look for exact phrase (broad match is the mistake that everyone has done at the beginning)

So I dont completely feel wrong in my noobie analysis of keywords, getting the to first page of a high competition keyword is somewhat valuable i hope, even if it is about the pricing of adwords, i mean im there organically instead of paying for it.

Since im throwing all my mistakes out there, is ranking for a bunch of local evergreen service based keywords valuable? or am I grasping at not very valuable straws?

Nothing like learning the hard way lol, you live and you learn i guess. Thanks guy

Not exactly, you can follow what has been done in the thread below

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...d-10k-month-online-offline-hybrid-method.html

It never hurts to try. Worst case scenario ask your buddy to see if he would be willing to advertise on your website!

dmoney2011 said:

So I dont completely feel wrong in my noobie analysis of keywords, getting the to first page of a high competition keyword is somewhat valuable i hope, even if it is about the pricing of adwords, i mean im there organically instead of paying for it.

Since im throwing all my mistakes out there, is ranking for a bunch of local evergreen service based keywords valuable? or am I grasping at not very valuable straws?

Click to expand...

kshatriya said:

It never hurts to try. Worst case scenario ask your buddy to see if he would be willing to advertise on your website!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, that was initially what I was planning to do and the link affirms my belief that if you can send someone customers they will pay you for it.

I have about 6 other websites for the same area for a service and got them all to the first page about a month ago, unfortunately its a seasonal service so I cant really know its potential traffic until then, i guess rather than wait I should keep building other site, something has to hit eventually. Rinse repeat.

WP Core Conversion plugin..

Redirect all that traffic to a relevant CPA offer or any website while keeping your rankings. I think that's worth a try..