Chistmas Eve I talked about choosing keywords that will make article writing worth while, and I’m going to continue to expand on this, because it’s a huge and very important traffic generating tactic.  One that I use and will continue to use in 2009 to make this my six figure year.

When choosing keywords period you need to keep 3 things in mind.

1. Relevancy - has to be relevant to what you’re promoting! 
2. Competition - to ensure success,  the keyword/keyphrase should have no more than 5,000 ”quoted” results when searched in Google.
3. Traffic – decent search volume

Again, most importantly you should base your keyword selection on relevancy and competition. Yeah traffic is important, but they always say it’s much better to get 100 relevant clicks from 100 different keywords, than 100 irrelevant clicks from one keyword!

The Google Keyword tool along with a Keyword generator will give you the information that you need to make informed decisions regarding keywords that will get your articles listed on the first page of search results.

So let’s get back to how and where you’re going to find profitable keyword ideas. 

Dmoz

A great place to do research is the DMOZ open directory located at http://www.dmoz.org

This is truly a gold mine for article marketers as you can generate a ton of article ideas in just minutes. I’ve followed the real deal marketing gurus for a long time now, and Dmoz seems to be the one thing they all have in common.  So look here!  You might just find a gem.

I wanted to show you screenshots for examples to understand the process better, even though its really straight forward, but for some reason I am unable to upload any images whatsoever, which I will work on getting fixed for future articles.  Reason being I think people are visual learners, I know I am! So I will get this fixed up so that in the next article I can add screenshots to go with my ”instructions” so that you can understand better and ultimately learn better from the experience! Right now, try I will just try and explain using my words

1. Go to the home page and you will see categories, such as Arts, Business, Computers, etc.  Lets use the category “Shopping” for this case study.  Click on “Shopping”, and you will then be presented with various sub-categories.

2. Go down to the sub-category called “Health”. You will then be presented with yet MORE sub-categories, so keep digging!  Lets click on “Weight Loss” now and then click on “Supplements”.

At this level now, you have dug down into the “health” industry and fine tuned your search to come up with more specific sub-niches within that industry. 

At this point you can go over to the Google Keyword tool and do a few searches to find some keywords:  Type in the category that you were searching within:  “weight loss supplements”.

Now with the keyphrases you may have seen with the Google Keyword Tool, search for a few of those keywords in Google to see what kinds of search results you come up with.  Remember to search for the exact keywords by placing quotes around them. Remember, traffic is important but low competition is what you really want to focus on right now.  So when choosing what keywords to choose, sure choose the ones that show are getting traffic first, and then check out the competion in Google.  Obiovusly the more traffic the better, but in most cases, those high traffic keywords have a lot of competition, so don’t worry if your keyword doesnt have a LOT of traffic, thats ok. 

REMEMBER: Its better to get ranked on the first page of Google with a keyword that gets 100 searches, rather than get ranked on page 100 on Google with a keyword that gets 10,000 searches.  Think about that.  Which one do you think will get the most clicks? 

Now for example, using the main keyword “Weight Loss Supplements” in Google Keyword Tool, it came up with a few good alternative keywords. Here are just a few results in Google Keyword Tool I got using the main keyphrase “Weight Loss Supplements”:

• Results 1 – 10 of about 5,320 for “top weight loss supplement“. 

      – a little over 5K results, but still doable.

• Results 1 – 10 of about 1,200 for “weight lose supplements“. 

      - 1,200 results, awesome! Notice the Spelling error? It still gets lots of searches!

• Results 1 – 10 of about 4,070 for “best supplements for weight loss“.

      – 4,070 results, great!

In just a few minutes we started out with the very broad topic called “Shopping” at DMOZ and dug down to find a sub category “weight loss programs”.  One search using the Google keyword tool and we have come up with some keywords that you could use to advertise virtually ANY diet supplement affiliate program, dieting program, or maybe even an e-book!  Rinse and Repeat this process and you’ll be able to come up with a lot of hot keywords that will be listed under with ease.  Use your hard earned keywords to write kick butt articles, submit to article directories and start getting long term traffic you deserve!

Resources:

www.dmoz.org

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

I find after talking to webmasters for any extended amount of time though that some people are intimidated by the process of setting it up. They think it is too complicated or just something they don’t want to bother diving into. Im completely guilty of this!  Ive been niche and internet marketing years and I just recently dived in to Google Analytics.  So I hope this information helps as I wish I had these instructions when I started out!!

Sure some of the features give you more information that you probably need but better to have more than not enough. To help those who still have butterflies in their bellies – here is a step by step guide to get you going.

Getting Started with Google Analytics…

Go to the Google Analytics web site and sign up for an account or login with your Google login details. You already have a Google account, right? Post login, click on the “setup” button to get going with the setup process.

Give Google Your Web Site’s Details…

Next you load up a screen that wants you to put in some information about your web site. Type in your domain name, account name and set your time preferences. The account name will be the group name for the series of web sites you use Google Analytics on.

Fill in Your Contact Information…

The next page wants you to put in your contact information. If you don’t want to do this – just select your country and you should be good to go to the next step.

Check Out the Terms of Service and Agree…

One of the last pages you will see is Google’s terms of service and legal agreement. Skim through it, read it if you want to. I know your probably not going to though. Click the “I agree” check mark box and move on.

Cut and Paste the Code!

The last step gives you a ‘bit of javascript to cut and paste onto all of your web pages that you want to track. Just copy it from there and paste it into your web site. Get past that step and your done! You have successfully setup Google Analytics.

Adding Google Analytics on Blogs

In a Wordpress install, this will allow you to see how people are finding your posts, and how many are viewing your posts, and when. When used correctly, you can optimize which keywords are used and where to drive more traffic to your site.

How is it done? Very simple. Using your favorite editor, open upo \wp-content\themes\yourthemenamehere\footer.php and do a search for the </body> tag. (Hint, in most editors you can do a <ctrl-f> key command to find it)

Directly above the </body> tag paste in the code given to you by Google. It should like something like this:

<script src=”http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js” type=”text/javascript”>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
_uacct = “UA-0000000-0?;
urchinTracker();
</script>

The 0000000-0 would be replaced by the user account number provided by Google.

Save and upload your modified footer.php and you will be good to go. This will allow every post and the main page to be tracked. In general it will take a few hours for Google to begin tracking data so be patient.

Google Analytics Wordpress Plugin

Want a handy Google Analytics Tracking PLUGIN for your blog?!??!  Click here to see one of the coolest wordpress plugins for installing Google Analytics!

That’s it. Google Analytics updates every day, you can access the reports from your Google account or here: www.google.com/analytics

Yeah, I’m serious. Don’t write your ebook…..yet.  If you want to sell ebooks online, you’re going to have to start with a hungry crowd of buyers who want your ebook even if they dont know it yet because that will be your job to determine it. You want them eagerly waiting for it, and gladly willing to pay you to give it to them.

And where do you find such buyers? On your blog. And what’s on your blog? Everything they want, which is the content they’ve been looking for. So plan out your ebook, and while writing your chapters, post a short excerpt of it on your blog regularly. Make them interested. Get their attention.  You want them to want to know what happens next, whether its how to knit a scarf or how to drive 1,000 unique visitors to their website in 5 minutes.

As visitors to your blog read your content, they will want more. Tell them you’re planning an ebook on whatever topic it may be and ask them what they want to learn from it. This gives you free information, information that will be vital to the success of your ebook.  For every one person that wants it, theres another one hundred who do too.  And those one hundred people are another one hundred Potential customers!! So remember, every small thing you take in to consideration can mean big profits for you in the end!