Archive for September, 2009

How To Find Long Tail Keywords

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

This is part 2 of how to get more search engine traffic which tells you helps you find find long tail keywords to get more traffic from search engines. You can read part 1 here.

There are four methods which I have tried to find long tail keywords each having their advantages and disadvantages and I will explain each of these methods along with some advantages and disadvantages so you can decide which one is the best method for you.

Method 1. Keyword Analytic and Tracking Programs

I order to use a keyword analytic/tracking programme you will need to place a few lines of code into your site, so they can recommended long-tail keywords specifically related to your website.

Having tried a few keyword analytic/tracking programmes for myself, I found several problems with the ones I used. Firstly, if the website is new they are useless as they won’t be able to provide any long tail keyword suggestions due to you not getting any traffic from the search engines. Moreover, if you are getting some search engine traffic and the site is new then you will also receive the suggestions slowly which is annoying as you can’t plan to develop content in advance which match these keywords.  Secondly, on the other side of the spectrum if you have a website which receives a considerable amount of search traffic, they give you too many suggestions and on several occasions provided far too many to implement. Moreover,  if you decide you would like to filter and select specific keywords off the lists provided be prepared to spend a considerable amount of time with these programmes as the user interface is poor which makes it really hard to group, sort and tag keywords according to your priorities. Finally, they don’t provide a search volume measure for the long tail keywords they suggest which again means you will have to spend time using a search volume analyzer to find out which long tail keywords you should prioritize.

Method 2. Monitor Internal Searches

I haven’t tracked them on Profit Baron yet to create content maybe I should although, I have used this method on other websites I own/have owned and by monitoring what keyword phrases users are searching for on your website this allows you to create create content directly related to what they are searching for.

Method 3. Analyse Your Competition

This is an awesome method because, the competitor has already done the hard part for you – finding the long tail keywords and all you need to do is discover what those are. I believe that there are only two ways they’re the only ones I know to find what your competitors keywords are which is by visiting their website and analysing it by viewing their page source to find their title, meta tags and back links. However, this approach can take a significant amount of time but the benefit is that the research is detailed and you will understand your competition in much greater detail. The other method is a faster approach and this is by using a keyword parsing tool.

Note: This method depends on your websites rank in search engines, its link profile, on-site optimisation etc to ensure that you have a better chance of ranking better than your competition in the search engines.

Method 4.  Develop Natural Long Tail Keywords

This is the easiest and simplest way to develop long tail keywords as it requires little to no research at all. This is because, all you have to do is update your website with new content regularly or more frequently by adding new pages and core keyword-friendly content. The key is frequency because, being more frequent allows you to increase your visibility in the search engines and in turn will help to increase search engine traffic.

So, You Want More Search Engine Traffic?

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

I believe that the best cheapest way to receive high quality targeted traffic is via a search engine, and by having the amount of traffic coming from the search engine increased is great for any business. This is because, due to the increase in search engine traffic you will receive a bigger audience which could result in profits rising in the long term via sales, referrals, advertising etc.

In order to discover how to bring more search engine traffic to your website you need to understand the Long Tail theory and how to apply this theory.  If you’re not interested too lazy to read the Wikipedia link then basically long tail keywords are multi-phrase search queries which are far more targeted than a main keyword topic as they specifically are targeted to information a user is looking for. In order words, by targeting low-volume search queries rather then dominating the major ones you will receive more traffic to your website!

For instance let’s say that the main keyword is “Business” then you would have the following long tail keywords:

  • How to start a business
  • How to write a business plan
  • The benefits of getting a business mentor

The examples listed above are what real users are searching for and by optimising your website to target these long tail keywords by creating content for them then you are likely to get far more traffic then if you ranked for “Business”.

Firstly by adopting this method, you will receive higher conversions as visitors are already likely to purchase or convert on affiliate programs or recommendations as their search was more specific to the offer you are offering.

Secondly, the monetization potential is increased because, these visitors are highly targeted which means they are more likely to click an ads or subscribe to your site etc which means your audience size has increased and allows additional product sales in the long run.

Moreover, long tail keywords are easier to rank as you are likely to face ‘weaker’ competition as the larger sites are keener on targeting the main keywords.

Finally you are going to receive more website visitors as you will have more pages indexed by the search engines and this results in increased visibility which equals search engine traffic.

In the next post I will explain how to find long tail keywords.

Update: The second part can be read here – How To Find Long Tail Keywords

Why I Unfollowed 4,145 Twitter Users!

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Just over a month ago, there was a trend of unfollowing on Twitter which although occurs regularly was different to the norm. This type of unfollowing was where a user unfollows everyone that they follow and then only follow a few users.

Since then it has received considerable attention and I have read numerous arguments for jumping on the unfollowing trend and against jumping on the unfollowing trend.

I’m not going into too much detail regarding as to why I decided to unfollow everyone as the advantages and disadvantages are well documented, although I will discuss the two main factors of my decision.

I recently blogged about how I was starting to like Twitter by actually realising what the service means to me and this helped to make the decision to unfollow the 4,145 users that I was following. A decision which has significantly improved my experience.

This is because, you can’t realistically follow 4,145 people unless you want to use a significant amount of your time to read all those tweets of the users that you were following.

Furthermore, if you follow only a limited amount of users the level of spam decreases to zero unless you want to follow spammers especially in terms of DM’s which whilst I still have a DM bug, I am yet to receive a spam direct message  since adopting this new policy.

The disadvantage of adopting this policy is that you’re going to lose followers. My follower count has fallen by 506 already to 3884 followers. The drop of 506 may not seem significant but considering the amount of followers I had 4390 when I decided to do the mass unfollowing then I have already lost over 10% of my followers and I’m expecting to lose more. The fact that I have lost over 10% of my follwers doesn’t concern me because, if people are only following me because, I am following them – I don’t want them to follow me.  I only want people to follow me who want to see what I have to say and not because I am prepared to follow them back.

Why I’ve Started To Like Twitter

Friday, September 4th, 2009

According to Tweetwaster I’ve wasted 3.25 days on Twitter (280,920 seconds or 4,682 minutes or 78.03 hours) and if you asked me during that period if I felt that I’d wasted my time on Twitter I’d have probably said yes but that’s all changed…

In case, you’re wondering how I got to so many tweets on a service that I didn’t see the value of then, blame FriendFeed as for a small period of time I imported my likes and my comments too.

You may highlight I’ve gone on record saying that Twitter has problems and you’re right I have but I’m not going to sit here and pretend they don’t because, those problems are still there – my DM bug is still there and they’ve increased the usage of URL shorteners but nothings perfect, right?!

However, I like the fact they are a highly ambitious and open company more then they’d like to be as, we’ve all seen their admin area and know that they want to become the pulse of the planet but, they aren’t the main reasons as to why I’ve started to like it.

This is because, after 9,364 tweets I’ve found a reason to use it by realising,  I was looking at Twitter wrong and I believe that this is probably the same reason that 60% of Twitter Users Quit Within the First Month.

Let me explain.

I assumed Twitter should be like FriendFeed by having threaded conversations, likes (which could easily be implemented by fixing favourites) and a bunch of other cool features which are already existent on FriendFeed such as, expand shortened URLs  which it does on Twitter Search, a RT button, display images and play videos inside Twitter etc. Whilst some of these features are coming soon like the RT button I realised Twitter doesn’t need to be packed full of features well ok, maybe it does need some of them because, after all it is there to ask you one question what are you doing? and if you start to use Twitter for only that purpose you’ll find value in it.

Sure you can use it for other purposes such as  finding news, getting feedback,  notifying customers, find potential customers/people to network with, acquire votes on places like Digg etc but these are kind of involved in the whole process of what are you doing? anyway.

Why? Because Twitter isn’t a multifunctional tool like the ones that we’ve become accustomed to. For example, Facebook provides messaging, applications, games, videos etc rather Twitter is a tool which only does one job and it’s good at it too and I’m certain if you start to think of Twitter like that then you’ll start to like it too.