I hope everyone had a great Christmas!  I know I did.  I have to admit, even though big screen TVS weren’t under the Christmas Tree (next year huney I promise, tehe), spending quality time with family is what Christmas season is and should really be about.   But 2009 is coming quick, and I want you to follow me while I make 2009 the most abundant and prosperious year ever.  Every article I write will contribute to my success, and I hope that while I’m writing about it, you’re taking action on it! 

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