Is Targetting the Least Competitive Keywords Safe?

In my humble opinion for the average guy trying to obtain natural search traffic online, targeting main and competitive keywords is a fruitless task not even worthy of pursuit. From analyzing past websites I have owned and even a few currents ones I find no matter what you put up, people will find your content eventually through obscure phrases no-one could ever dream of targeting.

I’m beginning to think not targeting keywords might actually be the best approach - to forget them entirely and throw out keyword research tools such as Wordtracker and Wordze. One things for certain and that is if you’re targeting big top tier keywords or even the least competitive keywords in your titles etc then Google will know right off the bat you’re attempting to manipulate their engine, which they may reward you with a long time-penalty or whatever else it is they do.

I guess what I’m trying to address here is whether or not it’s good practice to target small keywords because I’m building a few new sites and I’m still in the mind-frame of researching and building sites around words and phrases that people are actively searching for in the hope of gaining more natural free traffic.

I’m concerned this is an out-dated strategy and as website owners we can suffer for it but trying to determine this is difficult. I have read about a -950 penalty for over-optimization which some say using exact keywords in titles can trigger and Matt Cutts himself mentioned this subject in a video here which makes me wonder.. or worry.

I guess I’ll soon know, if one of my new sites ever gets re-included (I purchased a domain that was banned, put up good unique content and submitted a re-inclusion request on March 18th which I’m still waiting on).

Uhh - I’m beginning to wonder if I should have left this all behind and if returning back to it is a bad idea!

120 Days Employed & Settled - Time for the Sideline

Since returning back to work in September 2007 after trying and failing to make it big online and deciding it would be better to be employed and work on the Internet as a side project, 4 months have passed. I’m settled in my job and it’s not difficult to get up for at all. Phew. It’s time to develop the sideline I mentioned.

After analyzing the statistics of a 330 page content site I sold to a friend a few years ago it became clear that over 95% of his search traffic was coming from keywords that I didn’t even target - and believe me I targeted lots of small ones with that particular site - meaning purely on long-tail he was picking up over 6,500 keywords per month and over 1,000 visitors per day. All from 330 articles.

For my next project I will be developing a monster content site on a high-dollar subject combined with my own clickbank product.

I already have the product and have contracted free-lancers for roughly 20 articles per week and now that I’m able to invest in the project with money I’m earning from my job, there’s no reason this site won’t be crammed with over 1,000 articles before the year is out.

That is all for now. Wish me luck.

Ron Paul Annihilating Hillary Clinton on Google Trends

With the USA Presidential Election coming up, even through I’m from the UK I find the whole online buzz on Ron Paul pretty incredible and thought it would be interesting to stick a few of the runners in to Google trends against Ron to gauge online popularity.

Here’s the results including the mainstream media-popular Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, Barak Obama and then the lesser known Ron Paul, who which I’m sure more Americans will hear of over the coming weeks and months.

I’m sure with his upcoming appearance on Jay Leno (over 5 million viewers) and plenty of money being put in his kitty for radio and TV advertisements the trend graph below will become even more surprising in the near future.

Clearly Hillary is ahead purely on news media coverage popularity but as we can see from the search trends chart above Ron Paul is leading the pack in search popularity by a substantial margin. That’s a lot of interest in a lesser-known candidate.

Pretty interesting I thought.. now off to the bookies I go before Ron Paul gains more traction in the media and his odds are slashed even more than they are being already week upon week!

Returned Back to Full Time Employment after 5 Years

That’s right! I’ve just completed my first week of employment - I’m working for a company again. It was quite a shell-shocking head-fuzzing experience after working for myself since 2002 and trying to hit gold online.

I even did optional overtime this evening until 7.30pm and walked away quite pleased with myself having learnt most of the ropes of what I’m doing and managed an almost error-free day.

I thought working was going to be another soul-crushing and depressing affair and approached with caution not knowing if I could stick it, but they’re all a good bunch and my supervisor isn’t a c*nt like my last boss, far from it in fact. I’m quite possibly the most miserable bastard there, but I’m already feeling myself being assimilated - it won’t be long before I’m as just as happy as everyone else!

After the hell of debt, bankruptcy and an uncertain future.. I’m now officially debt-free, earning a regular wage at a secure job and finally I’m able to realistically plan to move in to my own gaff early next year and I will officially have a life to call my own!

Fair enough I’m on minimum wage but the idea is to start a digital sideline on the Internet to subsidize my income and continue to do bits and bobs for my good friend Pilkster when I can spare a few hours here and there - and never will I consider replacing my full-time job for Internet gold again. This job’s too damn good to let go.

Who’d of thunk it!

Catching Terrorists with Google Adwords

What do bad breath sufferers like myself and terrorists have in common? We’re both interested in Hydrogen Peroxide. For the bad breath sufferer, a mouthful is sufficient to kill the bacteria producing the odors, and for the terrorist, large amounts are useful in blowing up cars and murdering civilians.

I found it interesting that when I searched Google for hydrogen peroxide the Police here in the UK were advertising on Adwords basically asking for extremist Muslims who may be searching for hydrogen peroxide to snitch on their fellow plotters, or anyone in the hydrogen peroxide ‘industry’, I assume:

Now that’s a novel idea, eh. Given that I can’t stand the Police I’d say click the advert a few times for shits and giggles, but it’d only come out of our pockets as UK tax payers.

Making Internet Marketing a Sideline & Getting a Job

After much booze and contemplation I’ve reached the conclusion that there’s a point when you must jack it in (albeit not completely), if only to progress and get on with some sort of life!

After 5 years of some success (but not enough to live off) it’s time to get a ‘real’ job.

I’m demoting Internet Marketing to a sideline and I’ll be working less and less on it as I work a normal day job to support myself.

(This replaces a blog I wrote saying I’m jacking it in completely which I decided wasn’t true after sobering up a little)

Clickbank Product #1: First Sale, Copy & Rankings

Well, it’s finally happened - my first of two new products I had in development was approved by Clickbank and received its first official sale yesterday after 40 unique visitors since the product went live last week.

Ahh.. It’s always nice to get that confirmation as it’s easier to relax knowing people actually want your product. ;o)

In regards to sales copy, I decided to contract a copywriter to revise the copy. Regardless of the current conversion (which I couldn’t possibly know at this stage), I’ve seen this guys work and I know for a fact it will be improved upon a lot by his work.

The website has started moving up in the rankings in Google and Yahoo and it’s around 50th place in both engines for the main keyword I’m targeting. Now I just have to work on some link building and promotion and I’m hopeful within 6 months I should be seeing some solid rankings for the main keywords, but it is natural search we’re talking about, and anything could happen.

In related news: Product number 2 should be written within 6 weeks. I think I will use the same copywriter to write the sales copy from scratch given I REALLY don’t want to write more long sales copy myself. It’s a terrible task unless it’s your passion!

Submitted My First of 2 Clickbank Products for Approval

Diam, things move slow when it comes to product creation.

Out-sourcing has it’s advantages, but many drawbacks - let me explain.

The good news is, the first of 2 new products for Clickbank I was making is finished, the sales copy written and submitted to Clickbank for product approval.

The bad news is, my usual copywriter is going through some personal stuff right now and was unable to write my copy. The kind soul that he is, sent me the entire $800 back for the 2 products he was going to write copy for and apologized citing his person reasons for not being able to write the copy.

This means I had to write the sales copy for the first product, and I’ll probably write it for product number 2 once that’s complete.

I’m not a great copy writer, not by a long shot, but I do understand the basic principles. I don’t expect GREAT conversions from my letter.. but it will do for the time being. Money’s tight and I could really use the money the copywriter sent back right now.

That’s all really - hopefully Clickbank will of approved it within 3-5 business days and I can get it listed on the Clickbank Marketplace so affiliate can begin to build a few links for me, causing my website to rise up the natural search rankings. It’s currently on Page 7 of Google and in the top 120 positions in Yahoo from just a few links.

Given the domain is fairly old (which I purchased) and has the full keyword in the domain, it shouldn’t be long before the site’s up there and receiving some traffic.

Then I’ll be able to gauge the conversion rate and report back some results.

I’m shattered, and in celebration of Paris Hilton getting sent to jail - I’m off to watch The Simple Life that’s just starting on e4 to see how many times I can laugh.

God I’m fucking sad. ..and I’m a cunt.

Matt Cutts & Matt Mullenweg Start a Gay Relationship

Firstly, I’m not suggesting Matt Cutts & Matt Mullenweg are gay or having sexual relations, what I’m referring to is the big gay totally-blown-out-of-proportion hoo-har in the Wordpress community about the use of ’sponsored themes’.

Sponsored themes can be used by anyone who uses Wordpress, free of charge, with the actual design of the themes supported by advertisers whom pay to have their URL at the bottom of the theme. The designer or creator of the theme receives money for their handy work.

Well that’s cool - right? Yeah, you would think so.. I mean, look at Template Monster where designers put Wordpress themes up and charge $300+ for the use - what sponsored themes for Wordpress do is allow anyone to use great looking themes for free, the only ‘cost’ is keeping the advertisers link at the bottom intact. You know, like software supported by advertising.

A bit like… search engines (and their staffs pay packets) supported by advertising.

A bit like… Wordpress supported by Matt Mullenweg creating un-related pages on asbestos, debt consolidation etc to game the search engines not so long ago using the high PR power of Wordpress.org from guess what? Having the ‘Powered by Wordpress’ link on every single damn un-modified Wordpress blog out there.

So I really don’t get why Matt Cutts or Matt Mullenweg have beef and are speaking out against sponsored themes. Sure if it was themes that were malicious or had hacker exploits in them, remove them from Wordpress.org etc - else just ensure sponsored themes are labelled, explain what that means and leave it as such.

Sponsored themes rock-on, not everyone can afford the cost of custom themes or the high price tags on Template Monster, and most ‘free’ themes are garbage, it only takes a brief look on Alex King’s popular Theme Viewer to notice that.

How Many Turds Have You Thrown at the Money Wall?

Exploring why old online business projects failed is crucial to fine-tuning our knowledge as marketers, and in them lies the secrets to future success.

I’d like to tell you about my most prominent failures and in return invite you to have your say at the bottom of the entry telling me and anyone else who reads this yours - I’m positive we can all learn from each others mistakes.

Personally I can think of 3 failures, or turds as I call them, that I have thrown at the wall of internet marketing success, not making the actual stick.

The fact I can only think of 3 inspires me as 3 isn’t that many at all - giving much hope to my current projects in development that I have applied the skills learned from the 3 failures I’m now going to mention:

1. Content Websites using Google Adsense

I believe I got in to this game way to late - I was under the impression that with quality content that wasn’t duplicate, which I had freelancers write for many, many websites that it would be possible to rank for hundreds of search phrases that weren’t searched for much.

Unfortunately while I had brief success with MSN Search due to it’s lax algorithm and favor of websites hosted in the UK, Google wasn’t having any of it.Even with plenty of back links built using free directories and paid directories and frequently updated content, the new sandbox (at the time) kept all of the content websites from ranking for anything at all.

I perhaps made a few hundred dollars with content sites and Adsense, and a few thousand dollars when I sold them as they weren’t making enough for my liking - never more than $8 per day.

2. Ecommerce Online Store using Google Adwords

As previously mentioned in my blog this was a venture that led to my bankruptcy. I imported select collectible items from the USA in to the UK and sold them using Google Adwords, which worked briefly until the errors I made in buying a lot of useless stock caught up with me and I headed right in to debt.

I’m re-starting this venture with more smarts this time 5 years on - time will tell if it becomes another turd welded on my wall of failed projects.

3. Pregnancy Fitness Guide on Clickbank

This wasn’t too well thought out - I ended up trying to market a product created for women who had just had their baby (it was on losing weight after pregnancy) to women who were still pregnant.I modified the guide to include information on having a healthy pregnancy but hit a stumbling block.

It was quite some time ago and I lacked some serious knowledge on marketing and sales copy etc. I sold the website and guide eventually for a few thousand dollars and moved on.

Have a think about your most prominent failures and share your thoughts on what went wrong using the ‘Have Your Say’ link to the bottom right of this post.