Self Employed or Bust

Where Can I Find Good Keywords

November 3, 2008 – 7:00 am

In my previous post – The Importance of Picking Your  Keywords – I tried to make the point that finding a niche keyword worth targeting should be your first step. This is your starter pistol – the bang that will get your blog moving and dictate everything else in the near term. I discussed the “optimized” element of optimized niche blogging as it relates to keywords and emphasized that you want to narrow your focus rather than going too broad and facing insurmountable competition. A friend, also on the road to self employment, who reviewed what I wrote had an immediate question, though, so I’m going to expand on that post. The question was, “how do you come up with keywords.”

 

 

 

It’s a darn good question and it’s with that question in mind that you should decide up front what you want to accomplish with your blog. Unfortunately, the answer requires more than just pointing you at the nearest source of inspiration. If your objective is minimal work and growth over time, you’re going to take one approach. If you want to put your all into a single blog, you’re going to take another approach. Since we’re focusing on optimized niche blogging, we’re going to focus on the former but I’ll touch on the latter a bit to help you make the distinction.

 

 

 

With optimized niche blogging, your focus is on volume. You want many blogs covering many precise topics which cater to a very specific clientele. Drop the word “optimized” and you’re left with a niche blog. Rather than spending your time building many blogs targeting very specific keywords, you will invest your time becoming an expert in one or two fields and writing a lot of very good content. Either way, your objective is to offer value to your visitors but, with a niche blog, you’re offering it virtually to the exclusion of all else.

 

 

 

You may be able to apply some of the concepts you learn here to niche blogging but that’s not my objective. Again, we want to optimize our time, our effort, our potential and our niche blog in an effort to minimize the effort over the long term. So why was all that information about non-optimized blogs important ? Because, if you are going for optimized niche rather than just niche, it helps to think of the visitors you want to target.

 

 

 

If you are writing a regular niche blog, your objective is to be a subject matter expert. You want to provide the best information out there on your particular niche. In doing so, you will garner the best traffic for that subject and place high on search. Months or years later, when you do decide to monetize the site, you may or may not do well. Again, you’re giving away the cow with the milk as far as subject matter information is concerned. Still, sponsors will be willing to pay you to show their ads based, if nothing else, on the high volume of traffic you bring to the table. That’s important.

Sponsors are not Adsense. Sponsors may be perfectly content with paying you CPM – for every thousand views, you get a little money (potentially a LOT of money). Adsense pays per click (on the ads). If you’re getting thousands of visitors everyday on a non-optimized Adsense site, you might very well not manage to convert those visits into clicks because, again, all the information your visitor needs is right there on the site (unless it’s about a product they might want to purchase.)

 

 

Now with an optimized niche site, your focus is on introducing visitors to ads relevant to their needs. You need them to click on those Adsense ads or you aren’t getting paid. They are looking for very specific information. Your blog provides information on the topic in which they’re interested but also provides ads which are very well suited to their needs. The visitor clicks the ad, sees the perfect solution to their need and buys from your advertiser. Everybody comes away a winner. Which brings us to the important question – who clicks on ads?

 

 

 

As you analyze the keywords you want to target, keep your audience in mind. High tech terms don’t convert well. Neither do blogs focused on keywords like this blog you’re reading now. The more tech-immersed your readership, the less likely you are to convert readers into clicks and money. Why? Well these are people who likely spend hours of their week online. They are so internet-saturated that they effectively become ad-blind.

 

 

 

Having seen thousands of sites just like yours and owing to the fact that they are familiar with page layouts, their eyes naturally skim over what they consider to be non-relevant (even though an ad may be exactly what they need) and they just peruse the true content of your blog. Not finding exactly what they needed, they move on. Or, worse, click a link in one of your posts to another site better suited to their needs (ouch). Now consider the alternatives. Who do you think might not be as web-savvy? Who do you think might be just as happy with the content of an ad targeted at the information or products they are searching for as the information on your page?

 

 

 

I read somewhere that the best keywords target the young and the old. Though true, I think that approach omits a large potential audience. Yes, grandparents looking for good information on a toy or product for their grandchildren are more likely to click on an ad than, say, the father of those children who works in the tech industry. But the farmer shopping for parts for his combine might be inclined to click ads too. The elementary school teacher is also inclined to click ads. The sweet lady working in the craft store down the street might be a clicker. Your uncle Charlie, the fisherman, he might be a clicker. There are plenty people out there who are not so jaded to online advertising that you can focus your optimized niche blog on. No need to just target the very old and very young.

 

 

 

So at this point you’re probably thinking I’ve gone completely off topic. Wasn’t this supposed to be a post about finding keywords? Yes it was and no I haven’t. I had to take you through those considerations because without that information you might have used what’s next to go out and hunt for what you thought were great keywords but which, in fact, cater to audiences unlikely to click your ads. Now that you have the information you need to begin your hunt, let’s talk about inspiration.

 

 

 

When I first started optimized niche blogging as a vehicle to self employment, I really struggled with where to find ideas. I thought there was some formula, some font of inspiration that could help me. Now that I’ve been at it a while, I find there are, indeed, great sources. In fact, in researching one keyword of interest, I often find several completely unrelated ideas. I can’t describe to you how I got to that point other than to say that time and familiarity with the process make it easier and easier. But you need a jumping off point and I’m going to give you several.

 

 

 

First, look around your room. What do you see? I’m looking at an IPT phone, my Blackberry, several computers, the speakers for my computers, my aquarium, several cans of Mountain Dew, a flash drive, my Climbing magazine (and right there’s another source of potential ideas), some quarters on my desk, some decorative pottery, a VPN concentrator, my guitars, and on and on. From that alone I can find several ideas to start with. Acoustic guitar strings, for example, or rock climbing shoes. Saltwater aquarium fish might be an idea as might antique gold coins. Now I’m not saying those are good keywords. There’s research still to be done to determine if that’s the case, but I hope I’m showing you how everything in your world can serve to inspire ideas if you just open your eyes.

 

 

Get in the habit of looking at the world differently. Whether at home, watching TV, driving to work, at lunch with a colleague, just take in the world around you and look for things people might search for online.

 

 

 

Second – Ebay. Go to Ebay now and look at the long list of categories. From there, browse into one of the categories and dig a little deeper. For example, we might click on Crafts. From there we might click on Airbrushing and find ourselves subsequently inspired to create an optimized niche blog on airbrush compressors or airbrush spray guns.

 

 

 

Third – Amazon. Go to Amazon and check out their offerings. They don’t just sell books, folks, but if books are your interest, fine. Rather than just “books,” for which you’ll never rank above someplace like Amazon, dig deeper. Books could become books on forts and fortresses. Maybe you’d want to focus further on Ancient Roman Fortifications. Look at some of their sporting equipment. Maybe there’s some inspiration there. Heck, look at anything and everything.

 

 

 

So to summarize, in the optimized niche blogging element of evolving into a self employed life, targeting an optimized keyword is critical but so, too, is considering your audience. Avoid catering to an audience unlikely to visit your advertisers. Think moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, teens, farmers, dock workers, car nuts, hobbies, collectors, etc. Think of people who don’t live with a broadband connection practically wired into their skulls. Find your inspiration surrounding you every day as you work and live. Finally, write out a list of 10 keywords you think you’d like to start with and come back soon. We’ll be covering how to research those words to see if they’re worth pursuing in our next post.

Stumble it!