Today I would like to talk about making money online, or to be more precise – the specifics of making money. OK so that is still really ambiguous, but it will all make sense once we get onto my favourite aspect of making money online – Keywords!
I have spoken at length and in detail about the importance and relevance of Keyword Research and how it is important to choose synonyms that have less competition, but sometimes in order to find the optimal keyword we need to think outside the box a little, or at the very least start to get a little more specific. If you are in the Sporting Niche, for example then you would rely heavily on specifics within your key phrases because not only do you have the usual keyphrases associated with sport, (baseball, cricket, tennis racket) you also have the specifics like: Tiger Woods, 1972 Olympic Games, England vs. Brazil 2010 World Cup, etc.
Getting specific is something that can help a niche site marketer generate huge amounts of traffic in short periods because a site can be built around an event rather than a topic or product, but getting specific with your keyword selection has tremendous benefits for the blogger too.
Blogging with Specifics.
No matter what your niche is, there are going to be specifics within it for you to take advantage of, and because they will have very little competition (granted they will have low search numbers too) you will easily become the destination for very targeted visitors. When I say specifics I mean people, places, times, events , more, and these are the things you need to take advantage of. I don’t mean to go and write a post about say, article marketing and then call it ‘How Tiger Woods won the 2001 US Open using Article Marketing’ , just be smart about it. You want to keep the title interesting and relevant so that by adding the specifics you create extra interest as well as more chances for organic targeted visitors.
If I had written that post and wanted to get specific I might have called it ‘How I use Article Marketing to get more traffic than Mike Filsaime and Guy Kawasaki Combined!’
Need some Specific Motivation?
Let’s use the Motivation/Inspiration Niche as an example (because I think Karen has an amazing blog over at A Meaningful Existence and she’s one of the writers here so it’s only fitting)
The M/I niche is very much alive with personalities and events, and because they are all related to the same topic, utilising them within posts and titles is not misleading, I’m not sure what it is but I call it ‘Optimizing’. So let’s Optimize for Inspiration and Motivation.
- Thinking inside the box: One of the biggest names in this niche is Tony Robbins, and with over 1.5 million followers on Twitter alone, his fans are obviously very net savvy so he is a really good choice to help optimise your posts. He is also a keyword with a lot of competition so you may need to get even more specific. I am not going to do my homework here but the guy does live shows so with that comes ‘specific dates’, add them to the key phrase and watch your competition number drop dramatically.
- Thinking outside the box: Recently on the News here in Australia, and hopefully around the globe – a 16 yr old Girl named Jessica Watson sailed solo around the world. She arrived in Sydney to a torrent of fanfare and for the weeks to follow it was all people talked about. This is a story about sailing but really it’s a story about Inspiration and Motivation. Hmmmm. Maybe I should write a post on the topic called ‘7 Inspirational lessons Jessica Watson taught me’. It’s all about being Timely and relevant. More people still watch the News each night than use Facebook (I’m actually not sure if that’s true anymore actually!)
This is where the real money can be made. If you Optimised posts with Jessica Watson in the title and body and then spoke of inspiration and linked to your ebook or list, imagine how many sails (see how clever I am) and sign ups you could make. You would not get any after a few weeks as the story died away, but this is all about being timely and reacting to the real world. Blogging is fun but if you can optimize each post for the moment and provide your new guest with somewhere to go (mailing list or product) then blogging will soon become your business too.
Keywords – Now showing weeknights.
Sometimes the best optimization is staring us in the face every night. Specific TV shows are geared toward different themes and niches and finding the more popular ones can help you come up with specific related key phrases to optimize for. The News is also a great source of timely relevant keywords as I mentioned earlier, but really it’s about keeping your finger on the pulse of the real world and not just the one you have grown familiar with online. If you can speak of people, events, times, and dates within your niche and then give these people somewhere to go then you are only helping yourself achieve success.
Your Keywords are your friend. Take them on a date occasionally, introduce them to a well known friend, at the very least attend a seminar or event with them. You never know, they might start being a lot nicer to you too.
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Alex Whalley is the author of Alex Whalley.com where he writes about blogging, niche site marketing, and keyword research techniques. Alex recently quit his fulltime job to tackle niche marketing fulltime and uses his blog to catalogue and document his experiences with making money using niche sites and search engine marketing. If you’d like to see how easy it is to build, market and monetize niche sites check out his blog. You can also Follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his RSS Feed.
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Now there’s something I hadn’t thought of doing…. Too bad I don’t watch the news or TV myself, but I’m sure there are other things I can use to do the same thing. I’ll have to think about this and come up with some ideas to use for myself.
Thanks for the tips, Alex!
Jess Webb´s last [type] ..The Evolution of a Website Geek
Hey Jessilicious!
I don’t get a chance to watch too much TV these days either, and even when I do it is recorded and a week old LOL!
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, glad you enjoyed the post Jess!
Alex Whalley´s last [type] ..The Keyword Research Pro Review
That’s a problem of mine. I write about my niche in topics that are NOT time sensitive. They will always be relevant. Only a few have actually been written that become obsolete, like Christmas 2009 Gifts or Valentine’s Day. I usually stay away from sealing their fate with a date.
P.S. How does this work if you don’t get much traffic and Google takes weeks to spider you? That date could be here and gone…
Hey Richard my friend.
The Jewelry man and his quandaries
I have had a site indexed within 3 hours, and I know of people who have had their site indexed within minutes! If you have a blogging backend then you can ping the crap out of the search engines and they have no choice but to stand up and take notice.
Within your niche there is plenty of specifics man, you just gotta think outside the box.
Think how many famous people are blinged up the BS and then think how many people want to be just like them?!
Thanks for stopping by TIP Richard!
Alex Whalley´s last [type] ..The Keyword Research Pro Review
Hi, Alex, great post. I have a question, though:
My niche is fitness and martial arts, so one of the timely things I regularly write about are MMA events. I try to be as detailed as possible within the article itself, but I don’t think my titles are as good as they could be. For example, one of my more recent reviews is titled simply “UFC 116 Review Part 1: Lesnar vs. Carwin” (since I do several review articles for big events). How would you, for example, make thatbetter / more specific? Thanks!
Noel´s last [type] ..UFC 116 REVIEW PART THREE- THE MAIN CARD
Hey Noel,
Mate that is a good question.
I have been pondering this one and I think it comes down to looking at the numbers. This title is optimized not only for that phrase but also for UFC Review, so as long as you continue to add this part to each title and then maybe optimise the post a little more with that in mind then over time the accumulative effect will see you ranking for UFC Review which I can imagine gets a million searches a day (not quite but anyway)
In regards to each post, the only changes I could think to make would be to make it a little more enticing for the reader, but I guess the nature of that niche is it is very fact specific, and since the fight already happened, you can’t exactly build suspense in the title.
Hope this helps even though I answered nothing
Thanks for your comments Noel
Alex Whalley´s last [type] ..Why Keyword Optimization is so Important The Show and Tell
Alright, I’ll keep all that in mind. Thanks very much, Alex!
Noel´s last [type] ..MEDITATION AND THE KARATE KID
I write about a lot of timely events on my Northern California Hiking Trails blog. Lately I’m being more careful and putting both the day and the year in the post. People are finding old posts about scheduled hikes and events from 2008 and 2009. They need to know that’s old news.
I want to rank well for my posts, and I want to be careful not to mislead readers.
Great post Alex!
John Soares´s last [type] ..Lake Siskiyou Summer Swimming
Hey John,
I guess with some of the Niche sites you run, specific and timely Keyphrases would be an integral part of it, but I still say optimise posts for whatever HUGE hiking related events occurr so that you get the numbers. it’s all about CPM baby lol
Thanks for your comments John!
Alex Whalley´s last [type] ..Why Keyword Optimization is so Important The Show and Tell
Hi Alex,
Thanks so much for the mention. You’ve really got me thinking of how I can add more time-sensitive and keyword-worthy posts to attract more traffic to my site. Normally I’m more interested in pillar or evergreen content, but I can definitely see the attraction of adding more timely posts, too. It’s a good combination.
Thanks for the tips,
Karen
Karen´s last [type] ..An Important Exercise To Help You Create The Life You Want
Hey Karen,
Considering all the times I am annoying you with my keyword suggestions I felt it only right that I say hi
I think that once you are at the stage that your blog is at, your readers will not mind the occasional post that directs them to purchase a product, because they will know it is those coming from Google that you wrote it for, not those coming from RSS.
Alex Whalley´s last [type] ..Why Keyword Optimization is so Important The Show and Tell
Ha. Jessica Watson was all over the news. Nice job using Karen’s (excellent) site as an example.
You are surely right about keywords needing to be timely. I would guess that many bloggers want their posts to be relevant forever, but I ask – is that realistic?
The thing that I find most fascinating about Internet marketing is that, it appears, the demand is constantly shifting unless you are marketing healthcare products or food. Even then, I would think there is some kind of shift over time.
Have you yet written about the best places to put keywords? Are they most important in the title or headers? Should you only worry about the first 50 words in a post? That kind of thing.
Have a great day!
mark´s last [type] ..How to Determine If You Use Your Time Wisely
Hi,
Thanks for opening my eyes to how effective timely keywords can help increase traffic. Will explore more on this area. One thing I can come up with is trying to hitch a ride on some big product launching.
But I really wonder how we can sustain the visitor volume rather than just a short spike of visitors. Any tips?
Cheers,
MingJong
Ming Jong – How I Made My First Million Dollars´s last [type] ..Response cached until Sun 18 @ 3:59 GMT (Refreshes in 0.00 Hours)