LLboss
Regular Member
- Dec 10, 2017
- 405
- 173
I’ve thought about writing this piece for a while and give back to the community a little, so here it comes, finally. As with everything related to SEO, there will possibly be conflicting opinions here as well, but what I’m sharing isn’t anything shocking, just some common sense and experience.
Anyway, a one of the things I’d like to mention when it comes to keyword research is that there seem to be more and more newbies seem to want the “million dollar keyword” that they can rank for with no effort and make thousands of dollars with. Regardless of the hype around any keyword research service (mine included), do you REALLY think that such keywords exist today, in 2018?
Like, REALLY? Whoever sells ONE KEYWORD that has high search volume and is “super easy to rank” or “no competition” is trying to take your money and that’s it. All they need to do is perhaps show you some screenshots of some tool, or claim how their onpage is subpar, or how they didn’t do any link building, when in reality for a lot of big affiliate keywords at least, you would have a few results on page 1 that are using PBN links with blocked crawlers, making whichever screenshot of whichever tool the seller shows you irrelevant.
The standard seems to have become “keywords” instead of “low competition keywords” or even proper keyword research.
Look at it this way – there are companies (hell, sometimes even affiliates) spending hundreds of thousands on SEO. Literally. If a keyword had such great potential and high search volume, do you think that they wouldn’t be able to find it with the resources they’re putting into this game?
You got keyword research all wrong. It isn’t about dominating ONE or a handful of keywords anymore (if you could even claim it ever was).
It’s about doing the best you can starting off narrower, and leaving room for expansion later on. How do you do the best you can? By doing proper niche and keyword research and making sure you can make the most of it.
Enough rambling, let’s get started with the actual tips. Some of these are more relevant than others, but it should all come together in the end.
1. Finding and targeting keywords the right way
This part is larger than the rest, so will put it in the beginning. The average blackhatter will either:
a. Start a website, add content, then start doing link building and forget about the content, or
b. Start a website, add content, do some link building for it, and keep adding subpar filler content just because -
Both of this approaches don’t necessarily work too well nowadays, and in my experience there is a better solution:
Plan your site
Know what your “silos” are going to be. If you have a kitchen reviews website, know where you will be expanding. Fridges? Knives? Ice Machines? Just don’t go for all of them at once.
Plan your content and steal from your competition
Do keyword research for each silo separately. Target 2 to 5 main keywords per article, depending on the length of the article. A good indicator of what your article size should be is taking a look at the average word counts of competitor sites. But, not just any competitor site. Chances are, Consumer Reports is ranking much better than a website with similar on-page because of authority.
So, take a look at websites that you think are ranking well because of onpage, amongst other factors. See what they’re doing in terms of article length and keyword targeting, then do similar, but better.
After you have your main keywords, plan your headings. Having the right words in H2s can bring in a lot of long-tail search traffic if you do it right. Try to diversify and don’t write “Product Model Review” in every heading as that will just look stupid and whatever SEO advantage (more likely damage though) you get will be worthless compared to the increased bounce rate and dissatisfied visitors.
Then, find long-tail and LSI keywords for your main keywords. Check Ahrefs and find out what your competitiors are also ranking for, then consider targeting those keywords as well. Just don’t keyword stuff – as a general rule, don’t add anything in your article that doesn’t look like it should be there. It will only hurt you. Don’t get too deep into the additional keywords just yet.
Results, such as which keywords you’re getting search impressions for will be visible in the search console after some time and likely link building. Wait for those, and re-optimize then. You can’t possibly know everything in advance now, can you? But you sure can increase a website’s worth times 5 after you have some actual data to work with. You should still use a fair amount of LSI keywords, as long as, again, everything looks as if it was written by an actual sensible human being.
Start link building while adding more GOOD content
This is crucial. Don’t forget about content after you’ve started building links. But, do it as planned. Adding “filler”, subpar content is stupid. Why would you waste energy on such content? Is it means to expand your website? Increase its value? Bring more visitors? If not, then don’t do it.
2. Niche is everything, and nothing – and so are keywords
Here’s the thing about niches – they only work if you do. You could have the most amazing niche out there and be a complete moron about monetizing it right. There is someone out there killing it in weight loss. And dog collars. And binoculars. And tea cups for four year olds. And virgin killing sweaters (it’s a thing).
People worrying about someone “stealing their niche” make me burst out laughing. Why not do an “under construction” on your website as well and not even allow anyone to see it, if you’re so scared of someone stealing it? We’ve even heard people say they were scared to give their writers the keywords to write for.
Unless you’re making a very significant amount of money and somehow ranked with 0 effort and experience, what do you have to worry about? We all know that Best Buy is making a killing by ranking for “apple watch series 2” but you don’t see them losing sleep over it.
The truth about any keyword is that it’s only good as the person who’s trying to rank for it. If you’re just starting off and this is your first project and you think that all you need is that small head start, that perfect keyword that you should be targeting… You’re doing it wrong.
You need A LOT of things, and not just keywords. You need to read, you need experience, you need to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I would even go as far as to advise newbies NOT to start a website until they’ve had success doing SEO for someone else and learning what they’re doing and what’s worked for them. Not only will you learn, you can also get paid while doing so.
3. Know your audience
You could have 10,000 people with a rare kidney disease visiting your website and desperately wanting to spend money, and all you’re doing for them is trying to sell a spammy, overpriced ClickBank ebook. Learn what your audience wants, PLEASE. Go on forums and other online communities, see what they’re asking and what’s getting the most engagement. If this seems like such old-fashioned advice, it’s because it is.
Know who your customer is. Learn what they want.
Then learn what to sell to fix their problems and WHEN to sell it. An email lead in a certain niche can be worth 1000 times more than an email in another, and if all you’re doing is redirecting your visitors to an affiliate offer, you could be missing out. Just some food for thought.
Find out the best keywords around their problems and you got yourself a winning formula that you can later expand on.
4. Forget about monthly searches. Calculate the ROI
Let’s say you’re ranking third for a 200 monthly searches drug rehab keyword. You only get about 30 hits per month. Your affiliate program is Pay Per Call and you’ve optimized your content and website so that people really feel as if though they should call that number.
About 5 people call the number per month, and one ends up converting. If you’re tracking trends on OfferVault, that would be $700 right there. Every month, on average, as long as you keep ranking.
What you should do is calculate the average value of a visitor in your niche, and then do keyword research accordingly. A good indicator of this is PPC – about the only thing that the Google Keyword Planner is still useful for.
See what other people are paying per click and assume that they’re making a lot more than what they’re paying. See how these websites are optimized for conversion and see how much from that you can use under-optimizing your content.
5. “Microniche” is dying, and that’s a good thing
Of course, bigger isn’t always better, but the fact of the matter is that the good old microniche site is [almost] gone. There is a reason why some of these cost $30 on the Marketplace, other than the fact that they’re awful, fourth-world, barely English garbage. It’s because no one will ever make any money with them, ever. They’re as good as auto blogs, with almost no effort put into building any of these sites. That doesn’t go just for the $30 ones though.
Microniche websites targeting a 1-2 keywords are super easy to copy-paste and that’s what these sellers take advantage of. If you fall for these, you are merely a consumer. If you buy a website, get one that has potential. And if you think you will target a keyword or two per website, better not even start.
What’s the alternative to microniche, you wonder? It’s not building an “authority site” that covers anything and everything in a very broad topic. It’s giving yourself room to have a site grow into such a website, but starting off with a single silo. Got a kitchen appliance review website? Start off with microwaves. Dominate that first, and then move on to other “silos”.
Gone are the days where you rank and stay ranking with a 10-article website. Growth is a must, or your website will disappear into oblivion.
6. Stop being an idiot “tracker” aka The Rank Tracking Disease
I understand that tracking everything you might have mentioned in a single article might seem intriguing, but the fact of the matter is, all that would do is make you upgrade the plan of your SERP tracking software. Don’t be scatter-brained.
Why in the world would you track anything that’s 20 monthly searches? You would just end up increasing the average monthly volume artifically since you’re tracker is “googling” the keyword on a daily basis. That isn’t do say you shouldn’t:
- Make your content LSI-rich
- Target some decent long-tails keywords
The problem comes, when people obsess over being on page 2 for a rather irrelevant long-tail keyword and they consider that “results”.
Do you find yourself checking ranks more than once per day? Install an extension such as StayFocusd (Chrome) and block the tracking website, and I promise you a more fulfilled life. Rank tracking is a very small part of what doing SEO is about, and wasting more than a minute or two per day on it is silly.
7. If a kw proves to be evergreen and very profitable, dominate page 1
Because why not? Why would you let your competitors have a piece of the pie? If you really love your niche, build multiple websites/properties targeting some or all of your money making keywords and dominate the niche. Of course, it might sound silly, but especially if you have your own PBN network and the super power of ranking your websites by yourself, it sounds more silly not doing it.
That’s all I have for now. I think that we need to start developing a “start with the end in mind” sort of attitude when it comes to SEO and slowly get rid of the “churn and burn” attitude. It was fun while it lasted, but as we’ve seen over and over during just the last couple of years is that content and authority are becoming more important than ever and while PBNs and other things we’re used to will surely stay a thing, without a good foundation you could lose a lot in the future.
This is why I’m a big fan of making a website in a niche you have a strong interest in. It makes you appreciate it more and put more effort into it. Your visitors will be more satisfied and that's what matters at the end of the day.
Anyway, a one of the things I’d like to mention when it comes to keyword research is that there seem to be more and more newbies seem to want the “million dollar keyword” that they can rank for with no effort and make thousands of dollars with. Regardless of the hype around any keyword research service (mine included), do you REALLY think that such keywords exist today, in 2018?
Like, REALLY? Whoever sells ONE KEYWORD that has high search volume and is “super easy to rank” or “no competition” is trying to take your money and that’s it. All they need to do is perhaps show you some screenshots of some tool, or claim how their onpage is subpar, or how they didn’t do any link building, when in reality for a lot of big affiliate keywords at least, you would have a few results on page 1 that are using PBN links with blocked crawlers, making whichever screenshot of whichever tool the seller shows you irrelevant.
The standard seems to have become “keywords” instead of “low competition keywords” or even proper keyword research.
Look at it this way – there are companies (hell, sometimes even affiliates) spending hundreds of thousands on SEO. Literally. If a keyword had such great potential and high search volume, do you think that they wouldn’t be able to find it with the resources they’re putting into this game?
You got keyword research all wrong. It isn’t about dominating ONE or a handful of keywords anymore (if you could even claim it ever was).
It’s about doing the best you can starting off narrower, and leaving room for expansion later on. How do you do the best you can? By doing proper niche and keyword research and making sure you can make the most of it.
Enough rambling, let’s get started with the actual tips. Some of these are more relevant than others, but it should all come together in the end.
1. Finding and targeting keywords the right way
This part is larger than the rest, so will put it in the beginning. The average blackhatter will either:
a. Start a website, add content, then start doing link building and forget about the content, or
b. Start a website, add content, do some link building for it, and keep adding subpar filler content just because -
Both of this approaches don’t necessarily work too well nowadays, and in my experience there is a better solution:
Plan your site
Know what your “silos” are going to be. If you have a kitchen reviews website, know where you will be expanding. Fridges? Knives? Ice Machines? Just don’t go for all of them at once.
Plan your content and steal from your competition
Do keyword research for each silo separately. Target 2 to 5 main keywords per article, depending on the length of the article. A good indicator of what your article size should be is taking a look at the average word counts of competitor sites. But, not just any competitor site. Chances are, Consumer Reports is ranking much better than a website with similar on-page because of authority.
So, take a look at websites that you think are ranking well because of onpage, amongst other factors. See what they’re doing in terms of article length and keyword targeting, then do similar, but better.
After you have your main keywords, plan your headings. Having the right words in H2s can bring in a lot of long-tail search traffic if you do it right. Try to diversify and don’t write “Product Model Review” in every heading as that will just look stupid and whatever SEO advantage (more likely damage though) you get will be worthless compared to the increased bounce rate and dissatisfied visitors.
Then, find long-tail and LSI keywords for your main keywords. Check Ahrefs and find out what your competitiors are also ranking for, then consider targeting those keywords as well. Just don’t keyword stuff – as a general rule, don’t add anything in your article that doesn’t look like it should be there. It will only hurt you. Don’t get too deep into the additional keywords just yet.
Results, such as which keywords you’re getting search impressions for will be visible in the search console after some time and likely link building. Wait for those, and re-optimize then. You can’t possibly know everything in advance now, can you? But you sure can increase a website’s worth times 5 after you have some actual data to work with. You should still use a fair amount of LSI keywords, as long as, again, everything looks as if it was written by an actual sensible human being.
Start link building while adding more GOOD content
This is crucial. Don’t forget about content after you’ve started building links. But, do it as planned. Adding “filler”, subpar content is stupid. Why would you waste energy on such content? Is it means to expand your website? Increase its value? Bring more visitors? If not, then don’t do it.
2. Niche is everything, and nothing – and so are keywords
Here’s the thing about niches – they only work if you do. You could have the most amazing niche out there and be a complete moron about monetizing it right. There is someone out there killing it in weight loss. And dog collars. And binoculars. And tea cups for four year olds. And virgin killing sweaters (it’s a thing).
Your niche means nothing. You could have a great seed keyword to start off with – but it only matters what you do with it.
People worrying about someone “stealing their niche” make me burst out laughing. Why not do an “under construction” on your website as well and not even allow anyone to see it, if you’re so scared of someone stealing it? We’ve even heard people say they were scared to give their writers the keywords to write for.
Unless you’re making a very significant amount of money and somehow ranked with 0 effort and experience, what do you have to worry about? We all know that Best Buy is making a killing by ranking for “apple watch series 2” but you don’t see them losing sleep over it.
The truth about any keyword is that it’s only good as the person who’s trying to rank for it. If you’re just starting off and this is your first project and you think that all you need is that small head start, that perfect keyword that you should be targeting… You’re doing it wrong.
You need A LOT of things, and not just keywords. You need to read, you need experience, you need to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I would even go as far as to advise newbies NOT to start a website until they’ve had success doing SEO for someone else and learning what they’re doing and what’s worked for them. Not only will you learn, you can also get paid while doing so.
3. Know your audience
You could have 10,000 people with a rare kidney disease visiting your website and desperately wanting to spend money, and all you’re doing for them is trying to sell a spammy, overpriced ClickBank ebook. Learn what your audience wants, PLEASE. Go on forums and other online communities, see what they’re asking and what’s getting the most engagement. If this seems like such old-fashioned advice, it’s because it is.
Know who your customer is. Learn what they want.
Then learn what to sell to fix their problems and WHEN to sell it. An email lead in a certain niche can be worth 1000 times more than an email in another, and if all you’re doing is redirecting your visitors to an affiliate offer, you could be missing out. Just some food for thought.
Find out the best keywords around their problems and you got yourself a winning formula that you can later expand on.
4. Forget about monthly searches. Calculate the ROI
Let’s say you’re ranking third for a 200 monthly searches drug rehab keyword. You only get about 30 hits per month. Your affiliate program is Pay Per Call and you’ve optimized your content and website so that people really feel as if though they should call that number.
About 5 people call the number per month, and one ends up converting. If you’re tracking trends on OfferVault, that would be $700 right there. Every month, on average, as long as you keep ranking.
In the meantime, you could be ranking #1 for a 100,000 monthly searches fake hack CPA keywords which everyone and their grandma is targeting, and make roughly the same.
What you should do is calculate the average value of a visitor in your niche, and then do keyword research accordingly. A good indicator of this is PPC – about the only thing that the Google Keyword Planner is still useful for.
See what other people are paying per click and assume that they’re making a lot more than what they’re paying. See how these websites are optimized for conversion and see how much from that you can use under-optimizing your content.
5. “Microniche” is dying, and that’s a good thing
Of course, bigger isn’t always better, but the fact of the matter is that the good old microniche site is [almost] gone. There is a reason why some of these cost $30 on the Marketplace, other than the fact that they’re awful, fourth-world, barely English garbage. It’s because no one will ever make any money with them, ever. They’re as good as auto blogs, with almost no effort put into building any of these sites. That doesn’t go just for the $30 ones though.
Microniche websites targeting a 1-2 keywords are super easy to copy-paste and that’s what these sellers take advantage of. If you fall for these, you are merely a consumer. If you buy a website, get one that has potential. And if you think you will target a keyword or two per website, better not even start.
What’s the alternative to microniche, you wonder? It’s not building an “authority site” that covers anything and everything in a very broad topic. It’s giving yourself room to have a site grow into such a website, but starting off with a single silo. Got a kitchen appliance review website? Start off with microwaves. Dominate that first, and then move on to other “silos”.
Gone are the days where you rank and stay ranking with a 10-article website. Growth is a must, or your website will disappear into oblivion.
6. Stop being an idiot “tracker” aka The Rank Tracking Disease
I understand that tracking everything you might have mentioned in a single article might seem intriguing, but the fact of the matter is, all that would do is make you upgrade the plan of your SERP tracking software. Don’t be scatter-brained.
Why in the world would you track anything that’s 20 monthly searches? You would just end up increasing the average monthly volume artifically since you’re tracker is “googling” the keyword on a daily basis. That isn’t do say you shouldn’t:
- Make your content LSI-rich
- Target some decent long-tails keywords
The problem comes, when people obsess over being on page 2 for a rather irrelevant long-tail keyword and they consider that “results”.
Do you find yourself checking ranks more than once per day? Install an extension such as StayFocusd (Chrome) and block the tracking website, and I promise you a more fulfilled life. Rank tracking is a very small part of what doing SEO is about, and wasting more than a minute or two per day on it is silly.
7. If a kw proves to be evergreen and very profitable, dominate page 1
Because why not? Why would you let your competitors have a piece of the pie? If you really love your niche, build multiple websites/properties targeting some or all of your money making keywords and dominate the niche. Of course, it might sound silly, but especially if you have your own PBN network and the super power of ranking your websites by yourself, it sounds more silly not doing it.
That’s all I have for now. I think that we need to start developing a “start with the end in mind” sort of attitude when it comes to SEO and slowly get rid of the “churn and burn” attitude. It was fun while it lasted, but as we’ve seen over and over during just the last couple of years is that content and authority are becoming more important than ever and while PBNs and other things we’re used to will surely stay a thing, without a good foundation you could lose a lot in the future.
This is why I’m a big fan of making a website in a niche you have a strong interest in. It makes you appreciate it more and put more effort into it. Your visitors will be more satisfied and that's what matters at the end of the day.
