This is the second article in the “Affiliate Marketing News” series, describing step #2 on your way to successful affiliate marketing. In the first step I gave you some ideas on how to find the right products to promote. The second step is keyword research.
You have probably already heard of what they call “long tail keywords.” These are phrases of at least 3 words or even more. Let me give you a simple example, which will make it very clear.
Let’s assume you know a lot about sewing and you found a real cool sewing patterns product to promote. Go to Google and search for “sewing patterns.” You will get over 1,300,000 results! There is no way for a complete newbie to compete against so many sites. Now try to search for the exact phrase “sewing patterns online” and you will get only 10,600 results. If you learn the next steps of my plan, you’ll know that it is not hard to dominate this niche.
I have a tool that also tells me how many sites are actually optimized for this phrase. I can tell you right now that only 4 (that’s a four!) out of these 10,600 are optimized for “sewing patterns online.” True, the same wonderful tool tells me that “sewing patterns” is searched 176,000 times a month, while “sewing patterns online” is searched only 4,500 times a month.
However, this is not a bad search volume, and if you also use another phrase, like “sewing patterns costumes,” which receives over 2,000 searches a month and has zero web sites optimized for it; and if you also master the next steps of the plan - you will be able to set up a promotion for your sewing product and get high search engine results.
Conducting a comprehensive keywords research is absolutely essential to your success. This is the bread and butter of Internet marketing. There are many tools and many resources that will help you find all the information you need.
Always start with the broad term: “sewing”, “cars”, “diet”, “loans,” and work your way into digging deeper and deeper and finding long tail keywords, checking Google, Yahoo and other search engines results, checking the monthly or daily search volumes, until you find 3-4 phrases of 3-5 words that have a decent number of searches and a low number of optimized competing site.
Keyword research is the most important step on your way to a lucrative marketing business. Spend the time and the effort. If you find a very good tool at a reasonable price - invest in it. It will save you time and, eventually it will save you money.
In a couple of days I will publish the 3rd article in this series, in which I will point out different ways for online promotion of products.
