Hi
Gang,
Thanks for
being here, I value every one of you
and truly hope that you become successful online!
Sorry again
for the delay, I have had to work remotely. Hopefully
the $100 surge protector I have will protect my computer
from any more failures. (I couldn't believe they sell
a $100 surge protector. What is the world coming to? Ugh!)
The Holiday season is here and people
are "reflective" of their lives...they are looking for ways to improve themselves
and the quality of life they have.
It is just a reflective time of year.
What does this mean to you as an Internet
marketer?
Well, if you're going to do any special
promotions, this is the time to do it...in fact, doing ongoing special promotions
prior and after the end of November is a smart thing to do.
After about the 2nd week in December,
people start watching their dollars with regards to self-improvement products
because they usually still have Holiday gifts to buy and may have
to entertain family, go out to dinner, etc.
So, if you're going to do any special
promotions, better get on it!
Getting updates from "Starting
Smart!" without worrying about email filters:
We all know the spam filters are tough
to crack these days and lots of emails sometimes don't get through. As a matter
of fact, this newsletter comes to you via email and is
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Yet another way I'm ensuring
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There's
1 article in this edition - "Choosing
Keywords"
Enjoy the
issue!
Once again,
thanks for being here, your membership to this e-zine
is what matters most to me as an Internet marketer.
"The Regular
Guy"
Karl Augustine
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If your site is complementary
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In
this edition of "Starting
Smart!"
*Featured
Article: "Choosing
Keywords" Copyright
2004 Karl Augustine
*Welcome new subscribers!
*Copyright
and Publisher Info
"Choosing
Keywords"
Choosing the right keywords
is the main beginning point of your Internet marketing
campaign if you're going to utilize the power
of search engine optimization and/or PPC (Adwords) to
market your product or service offering.
Too often marketers choose
the wrong keywords and don't leverage the right keywords
in the beginning of their efforts. You should choose main
set of keywords that defines your USP and that matches
the keyword phrase that you believe will be most utilized
by people when they search for what you have to offer.
And remember, the search
engines on the Internet are used to get free information,
people don't search via Google to buy something...DON'T try to sell!
Once you get your main set
of keywords - 1 main keyword phrase incorporate that into
your domain name...in fact, if you can make THEE keyword
phrase your actual domain name, all the better.
Example:
You sell small blue widgets. And you find out through
keyword research that "small blue widgets" is
searched on a good amount of times per month and has some competition (#
of sites in that market) but the competition isn't too thick just
yet.
A good domain name (if not
already taken) could be smallbluewidgets.com - your domain name would be your
keywords phrase...you'd be starting off good!
To choose 'money-making'
keywords, you should ask yourself these questions about
your 'would be' target market's population and the traits
of the people who make up that target market:
1. Where do they hang out
on the Internet?
2. What makes them tick?
3. Do they have the money
to spend on what you have to offer?
4. What specific problem
do they have and how does your offering solve that problem?
5. Is their problem painful
or is it somewhat fleeting?
6. Are they passionate about
their problem?
7. Will they spend money
on other related products so that you'll be able to
increase your back-end sal.es?
8. If you were a part of
your target market, what keywords would you use to find
information about your problem? For instance, if you were
on the main page of Google, what would you put into the
search field to find your solution to your problem?
Once you've done some brainstorming,
and have found your potential list of your main keyword phrases - one of which
will become your domain name hopefully - go down the list of
the results (sites) from the search engines and assess the
websites that are listed on page 1 of the SERP's for that keyword
phrase.
Use these factors when assessing
the websites that are listed on the 1st page of the SERP's for each keyword phrase.
SERP = "Search Engine
Results Pages"
Factors to assess
websites that come up page 1 of SERP's for potential
main keyword phrase:
1. What # listing is the
site and on what page?
Example:
If you put in Google your keywords and there's multiple
pages of sites that sell what you sell, take a look at
the viability of the sites.
Assess the sites email and
name capturing capabilities, maybe even sign up for the
newsletters themselves. Look at the overall professionalism
of the sites...you may even go so far as to look at the Alexa
ranking to guess how much traffic the sites are getting.
** Remember, the Alexa ranking
isn't very useful - BUT, if there's a site in a true niche and its Alexa ranking is
less than 70,000, might have a heavily-trafficked site in a
niche...you might even have a serious traffic-generating JV
partner.
2. How many affiliate links
on thru Adwords sponsored area are present that sell what you sell?
You can tell the affiliate
links by looking at the ad itself...the affili.ate links usually have "aff"
somewhere in the ad.
A lot of affiliate sponsored
links could be a good thing because it means that the affiliates have taken
the time to spend money on an Adwords campaign because it’s making them
money. Of course, this isn't set in stone. A lot of affiliate sponsored
links may deter you from going through with an Adwords
campaign yourself or it may make you think that you've
entered a saturated market.
Of course, this may NOT be
the case, there's a lot of variables to this. There may be more than
one affiliate ad in the sponsored links section selling the same product!
To go into further details about this would make this issue longer than need
be...I plan on developing a new product around this very subject
and will let you know when it is finished.
3. Do the sites have specific
ways to follow up with their web site visitors? You'd be amazed at how many sites I assess
in my niche (not I-net marke.ting) that spend money on Adwords
campaigns that have no way to follow up with the visitors
who don't buy - major mistake.
4. Backlinks: Try and find
a section of the site that has reciprocal lin.ks and review those links. If there are
links that are pointing to the site on page one of the SERP
that are from heavily-trafficked sites, that's a good sign that
the market is there for what you have to offer...see if your
product is different in some way from the product being sold on
the larger site.
There's other factors to
look at here but the length of that discussion would be outside the
parameters of this newsletter and will be explained in my new product down the road.
The point of this was to
see what main keyword phrase you could use for your domain and
still be able to compete with the sites that are already on the
1st page of the SERP's assuming that you'll be trying for free
and targeted traffic from the SE's and/or you're going to use PPS (Adwords).
Choosing the right keywords
is one of the most important things you can do to secure success for your I-net marketing
efforts.
Much more on keywords coming soon
in my new product, currently under development.
For now, please go to Feedback
and give me your feedback.
Please, feel free to ask
questions, let me know what you'd like to learn, or just
give a general comment about this edition (or any other edition)
of "Starting Smart!"
Thanks, I'll be back with
the next edition soon.
Karl Augustine
"The Regular Guy"
(c) Karl Augustine
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