Using Keyword Research When Building Authority Sites

I'd been doing the same tactic and I agreed one of your point, let go if we are not familiar with the niche. The problem is our heart is one, I would like to ask u how many sites u are able to own as just a single person.
 
I'd been doing the same tactic and I agreed one of your point, let go if we are not familiar with the niche. The problem is our heart is one, I would like to ask u how many sites u are able to own as just a single person.

Up until the past few months I had a little over 40 but have moved a couple so I am at 36 now. You can handle that volume if you make that your job, are diligent in your work and have the ability to manage a few different things.
 
BasstrackerBoats, This is an amazing thread. Thank you for this.
I have one question. So i sat for a bit, thought of a few things i am well versed to write articles on without the need of Internet research and came up with a whole bunch of keywords.

However after spending a few hours surfing the Internet i have a nagging doubt at the back of my head. Everything has already been done. There are big sites and small authority sites and blogs which are already pumping out so much content for the keywords that i want to target. Do you care about this when starting a new site or do you just aim to overwhelm them with your own SEO strategies ?

The reason i ask is coz i ran a sports news site for one of the biggest sporting franchises for 3 years and i virtually earned like a 100$ (adsense) a year from it. and that site was supported by an authority twitter account and was at the bottom of SERP page one.
 
However after spending a few hours surfing the Internet i have a nagging doubt at the back of my head. Everything has already been done. There are big sites and small authority sites and blogs which are already pumping out so much content for the keywords that i want to target. Do you care about this when starting a new site or do you just aim to overwhelm them with your own SEO strategies ?

Never, my sites are all in the business and finance niches and they are overwhelmingly competitive and there are zillions and zillions of them out there. There is almost always something about my site, or the others for that matter, that is a little different and causes the search engines to see them differently, so getting them to rank never seems to have been a problem.

That does not mean there is no work involved; there is usually plenty of work but if I am going to build a site I plan on working.

The reason i ask is coz i ran a sports news site for one of the biggest sporting franchises for 3 years and i virtually earned like a 100$ (adsense) a year from it. and that site was supported by an authority twitter account and was at the bottom of SERP page one.

I can't address a sports news site in particular as I have never looked at them from the point of view of a web site with a couple minor exceptions back in 2004 or so. I was completely clueless then and only made a few dollars because I stumbled into something by accident. I imagine it is a little competitive though on a grand scale as I do read plenty of them and the choices are astronomical.

I did have a news site that had an aspect of it about sports business that did pretty well but I had to add content to it several times a day in various "news niches" and although it made money it got a little tiresome so I moved it.
 
Never, my sites are all in the business and finance niches and they are overwhelmingly competitive and there are zillions and zillions of them out there. There is almost always something about my site, or the others for that matter, that is a little different and causes the search engines to see them differently, so getting them to rank never seems to have been a problem.

That does not mean there is no work involved; there is usually plenty of work but if I am going to build a site I plan on working.

That's very good to hear actually. Plenty of work is always welcome. I've been sitting since i last posted on this thread and i really want to thank you for your KW research method. I alway struggled to find kw but now i have plenty. I am doing the thing you talked about and already have a whole bunch of excel sheets :)


I imagine it is a little competitive though on a grand scale as I do read plenty of them and the choices are astronomical.

I did have a news site that had an aspect of it about sports business that did pretty well but I had to add content to it several times a day in various "news niches" and although it made money it got a little tiresome so I moved it.

Couldn't agree more. The days when i saw thousands of visits to my site was when i updated content multiple times a day and dear lord it is tiresome. After my experience with sports, i have realized that the big guns [ESPN B/r] have really moved into the sports blogging space now and not sure how much space there is for good old 'sports bloggers.'

One follow up question tho; Assuming you use Wordpress, how do you run categories for your massive number of keywords ? Each kw becomes it's own categories or do you try to hold them under a general umbrella. ? I have found categories and tag management in Wordpress to be really troublesome so far.

Thanks for all your help :)
 
One follow up question tho; Assuming you use Wordpress, how do you run categories for your massive number of keywords ? Each kw becomes it's own categories or do you try to hold them under a general umbrella. ? I have found categories and tag management in Wordpress to be really troublesome so far.

Thanks for all your help :)

I use very broad categories; using the KWs for the category does not fly with Google on these bigger sites and the same with tags. I use a variant of the KW for the tag generally.

For instance if I was writing about the NY Jets, I would maybe put that in a category named NFL Teams or AFC Teams... something pretty broad depending on your site and vision.
 
Of Course, some niches are going to make more than others as they offer a better opportunity.

Technology is usually not a money niche when it comes to adsense but could be if monetized a different way

So i have another question (surprise surprise). Reading this thread again, i came upon what you said above. What is a good way to determine 'money niches'. Cpc ? or just the amount of traffic Google keyword tool shows ? I have been in situations where i chose a wrong niche or perhaps didn't know how to monetize it and in the end, in-spite of the authority content it didn't work for me. This time my main emphasis is on an authority site which runs adsense and i don't want to make the same mistakes.
 
What is a good way to determine 'money niches'. Cpc ?

To me, money niches are niches in which I have an interest and can build a decent sized site.

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.

ANYTHING can be monetized, ANYTHING.

It is just a matter of finding the best way to make a buck off of a site through testing a variety of methods.

This time my main emphasis is on an authority site which runs adsense

Adsense is not always the best method and I've experienced that first hand with more than one site; in fact, Adsense is not even my biggest revenue stream from my sites. One of the last things I do when building a site is figure the monetization method as I believe that is usually putting the cart before the horse.
 
Adsense is not always the best method and I've experienced that first hand with more than one site; in fact, Adsense is not even my biggest revenue stream from my sites. One of the last things I do when building a site is figure the monetization method as I believe that is usually putting the cart before the horse.

Oh damn ! For some reason i thought you monetized your 36 sites with Adsense. I am focusing on making an informative website which teaches a niche skill that is required to work in an industry. I can easily write 100's of in depth articles about it, since i have worked in the industry before and it interests me very much. Though, i am not sure how i can monetize it (apart from Adsense or making an information product later).

I followed your excellent methods and did some KW research and here's what comes up with Google KW planner for two diff KW's for this particular niche.


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I am a bit clueless here, the comp is low and CPC quite good. To my amateur eye, The figures looks so good but can i trust these numbers and just run adsense on the site?

Just when i thought i had this figured out i am utterly confused with Monetization. I really appreciate your help BTB and as you said, i want to figure out monetization before i start working hard on this.
 
Nice sharing. Keyword research is really important to get traffic and gain PR. Your post will be helpful for SEO experts.
 
Nice post and really informative.

I remember in the early days, I use to make my main keywords my category, my tags, and put it in the header tags on my site before I realised that I am doing this completely wrong.

Remember guys, if you want to do an authority website make sure your tag, author, and archive pages are not indexable since they could be seen as duplicate content in Google's eyes.

An important thing to remember as well as you gain authority, you may want to have a list of buy keywords to sell something potentially to your follwers to get additional conversions in the long run. I have always had a big thing with buyer keywords for authority sites because it gives you that potential that if you set up a newsletter pn your site you have the ability to send your subscribers a neat sales e-mail.

Thanks again
 
Its great that you started this thread, more and more people on this forum should share information about the merits of doing things the right way, big big sites that are packed with high quality unique handwritten content gain solid long term rankings, and the bigger the site, IMO the less offpage optimisation you have to do in general (the site in question will always likely need SOME offpage), big sites rank easier, and for longer... because its a huge quality and relevance signal... and putting it all together and writing the text is cool because you know in the long run it will pay off... an approach that works WITH Google instead of AGAINST Google... thats what works for me
 
Oh damn ! For some reason i thought you monetized your 36 sites with Adsense. Though, i am not sure how i can monetize it (apart from Adsense or making an information product later).

You would be surprised how much better some of the other monetization methods work, at times, than Adsense. I use CJ, Amazon, eBay, CB, CPA offers and my own products as well as Adsense. As opposed to you making an information product take a look at some of the other opportunities out there to generate revenue... you might just be surprised.

I followed your excellent methods and did some KW research and here's what comes up with Google KW planner for two diff KW's for this particular niche.


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hHzSSxx.png

I'd use those KWs on my sites... no doubt about it.

works WITH Google instead of AGAINST Google... thats what works for me

When I started in the business I did not know about working "Against" Google (heck I did not know about anything!), but I eventually learned there was a way to get your sites ranked in Google and always had the mindset of working in such as way as to make Google happy as opposed to beating G over the head.
 
36 sites? WOW! Good job managing all those properly.... I will try this. thank u!
 
This is for mac users. If you're following this method and struggling with how to merge different CSV files (that contain info about your researched KW's) then here's a nifty trick.

- Open terminal and navigate to the directory where you have saved all the CSV files. (use cd for changing directories)
- Once you're in the directory, enter
Code:
[COLOR=#fff0f5][FONT=Menlo]cat *.[/FONT][FONT=Menlo]csv [/FONT][FONT=Menlo]>[/FONT][FONT=Menlo]merged[/FONT][FONT=Menlo].csv[/FONT][/COLOR]

This will give you a file named Merged.csv which will have all the contents of your other CSV. Quick and easy !
Cheers !
 
Figured out one more thing. When you download the Google Adwords KW research results in CSV it will not show competition as "High, medium and low". Instead it shows a numerical value, to a maximum of 1. This is what it means.

0 to 0.33 - Low
0.33 to 0.66 - Medium
0.66 to 0.99 - High


Source
 
Thank you for this steps. Definitely, I use this steps for my own niche.
 
Figured out one more thing. When you download the Google Adwords KW research results in CSV it will not show competition as "High, medium and low". Instead it shows a numerical value, to a maximum of 1. This is what it means. 0 to 0.33 - Low 0.33 to 0.66 - Medium 0.66 to 0.99 - High Source
just remember too, that the competition metric in the adwords tool is for advertiser competition, NOT SERPS competition (ie, its the number of advertisers competing to pay for the kws, not how many sites are competing with u to display the kws). generally, lower competition means less ad inventory for g00gle to display ;)
 
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