Keyword Research For Keyword Sniping

In my last post, I wrote about making money with keyword sniping and why I thought it was a fantastic strategy to make money online. I would like to emphasize that keyword sniping is not only a great strategy for making money but it is the perfect strategy for someone beginning to learn how to make money online.  The strategy is perfect for a beginner because it emphasizes knowing the basics; such as, keywords, SEO, link building, the basics of building out a blog and developing targeted content.

If you did not read my last post, let me say this first, I am writing about keyword sniping because I think it is a great strategy for making money online. I did not come up with the strategy. I first learned about it by reading about it on Courtney Tuttle’s Internet marketing blog. What you are reading about here are my thoughts on the strategy.

With keyword sniping you have a short term goal of finding a keyword phrase to build a blog around and then make it highly competitive for search traffic. You are not looking at the daunting task of creating years and years of content before you see a return for your efforts. A short cycle strategy like this is great for building skills and hopefully making a profit.

How you research and find keywords to use with the keyword sniping strategy is not the same as researching keywords to build a full web site or blog around. The site you are going to build is hyper focused on the keyword you choose. Therefore you will be building your site around a very limited number of long tail keyword phrases. For a full web site or blog you are looking to build a web site or blog around the keywords of an entire niche. Finding the right keyword phrase to snipe is obviously the most important aspect of successfully implementing keyword sniping as a money making strategy.

Use Niche Core Keywords To Start Your Keyword Research

Finding a high paying keyword may seem like trying to find a needle in a haystack. After all, there are millions of keywords that can be used.  Finding high paying keywords is not that hard. However, finding high dollar keyword phrases that have some decent traffic, and low competition, can be challenging but not impossible. It will take time and perseverance. The niche markets are there and waiting to be discovered. Focus on keywords and keyword phrases that fulfill a need. The more dire immediate and desperate the need the higher the payout.

In the keyword research I have done so far, I have found that unless you know a niche well, or you have done some keyword research on the niche, it is best to start with what is considered a core keyword for the niche. In other words start with a broad keyword or keyword phrase and work your way to a more specific keyword term. I start with a core keyword because it is easier for me to stay focused. Focusing

What you are looking for are considered long tail keyword phrases. Long tail keywords are keyword terms that are not searched for as often and have fewer web pages competing for search traffic. By the same token, long tail keyword phrases will send less traffic to your web site. But, because there is less competition for the phrase it is easier to capture that smaller amount of traffic. Moreover, long tail keywords by their very nature of being MORE specific will send more targeted traffic.

The more specific a keyword phrase you use the more long tail characteristics it will have.  But, don’t think that just because a keyword phrase has multiple words that it is automatically long tail. Long tail keyword phrases are, simply, less commonly used than short tail keywords.

People tend to think that just because a niche is competitive that all of the high value keywords are locked up. There can be nothing further from the truth. If you start your keyword research in this frame of mind you will miss out on some great opportunities. You want to focus your efforts on finding long tail keywords within competitive niches.

The niche has to have some kind of competition for it to qualify for keyword sniping. No competition means no or low ad revenue. Getting to #1 for a non-competitive keyword is worthless. Unless you are using the keyword to drive traffic deeper into your blog or web site. But, that would not be a tactic you would use for keyword sniping.

Find the core set of keywords for the niche you are researching and work your way into the long tail keyword phrases. Sometimes your brain just goes blank and you have trouble thinking of core keywords to start with. Court has an excellent article outlining a really ingenious way to come up with ideas to start off your keyword research.

Keyword Sniping: Researching and Qualifying Keywords

Once you have decided on a niche and the core keywords you want to research you have to qualify them for keyword sniping. Keyword research is easy. But, qualifying them is not a straight forward process.

Qualifying a keyword means that you have to decide that the keyword has both enough traffic as-well-as  small quantity and low quality competition making it worth the work you are going to have to do to be ranked first on Google. Remember the goal is to get to number one on the search engine response pages. Otherwise, keyword sniping as a money making strategy will not work very well.

Qualifying long tail keyword phrases for keyword sniping will make your keyword research meander. The normal process for keyword research is where you look for a set of niche keywords that have sufficient traffic to drive sales of your product. This is a pretty straight forward process. The only qualification is sufficient traffic potential. This type of keyword research is conducted for Adword campaigns and the like. But, when qualifying keyword phrases for keyword sniping  you also have to qualify the competition for the traffic.

You may find a keyword that has low competition with a good price only to find that first twenty entries on the search engine response page PR 4 and up with tens of thousands of quality back links. So, in this instance the quality of the competition would disqualify the keyword phrase as a good candidate for keyword sniping. Although, that particular keyword phrase is disqualified it does not mean that that line of research is disqualified. It will be a meandering back and forth process to find a long tail keyword phrase that is right for keyword sniping.

Characteristics Of A Good Long Tail Keyword Phrase For Keyword Sniping

I think what would be considered good characteristics of a long tail keyword phrase that would be a good candidate for keyword sniping would be dependent on the keyword sniper. What keyword phrase will work for keyword sniping is heavily dependent on your skills in search engine optimization and your understanding of how Internet traffic works. So, the more skills you have, the more assets you have to support those skills the more competitively difficult keyword phrases you can use.

Court in his post Keyword Sniping – Finding And Choosing Profitable Niches talks about using long tail keyword phrases with less than 5000 competing pages and at least a $2 to $3 dollar payout. He uses these numbers in terms of an exercise, so that you can gai
n confidence in your skills. I think he is right, go slow, learn to walk first and then run. But, I would take note of any keyword phrases that seem to have reasonable competition and payout. Until I do this enough I do not think I can give a range of values for the characteristics of a good keyword phrase for keyword sniping. Like I said before much of this is dependent on your skill level. What I would think is impossible may seem easy for Court or his partner in crime Vic.

What I can tell you is what I think are good characteristics. One of the keywords I discovered today has a CPC of $73.00, only 67,000 competing sites and the site in the first position of the first SERP of Google is a 2 year old, PR 3 with a total of 75 links and 14 pages cached. The number 2 site is a PR 2 with only 50 links. It does not seem as if this will be hard to beat either of these sites.

I’ll be doing both. I’ll be using Court’s numbers to build my skills in keyword sniping. And, I’ll start building out blogs based on keyword phrases using characteristics I outlined above. As I build each site I’ll post on what I had to do to get it to be indexed, ranked and traffic. It will be a learning process

In my next post I’ll be going through a process for doing keyword research and the tools you can use to choose the right long tail keyword phrases for keyword sniping.

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