The Affiliate Lifestyle Blog

Here’s part 3 of the Keyword Research guide.

#1 How To Find Golden Nugget Keywords

There are thousands of searches every day in most market segments. Most marketers focus on a small percentage of the total keywords in their niche, even though many of the keywords they are missing could bring in additional sales.

The trick is to know when to use a keyword in your marketing campaigns, and when to avoid it. The basic rule is to test everything. If you are guessing what keywords are working, you will probably end up missing dozens or hundreds of profitable keywords.

On the other hand, if you add every possible keyword combination, your campaigns may be too broad, and you may not have enough time to manage it properly.

For this reason, I suggest a progressive keyword research strategy, where you are continually testing and adding new keywords, but always focusing on the keywords that are generating sales.

I consider a golden nugget keyword to be a keyword that has low competition, and consistently generates sales. Finding these keywords can often be difficult and time consuming, however there are a few tricks.

Using the domain names or brand name of your competitors is one way of grabbing onto a few Golden Nuggets. Most people searching for your competitors may also be interested in what you are offering. If you are doing PPC, this is entirely legal if the company has not specifically sent Google or MSN a request to stop bidding on their trademark.

I’ve personally spoke with a Google Adwords representative about bidding on competitors keywords and brand names, and they told me it broadens the options for consumers, which is a good thing.

You can find other golden nugget keywords from the index in the back of industry books, words found in trade journals, scouring message boards to see how your customers talk about your product, extracting keywords from your competition’s website, or viewing which keywords your competition is bidding on (see KeyCompete).

These are just a few examples of where to find great keywords. Always remember to keep testing and keep adding new keywords to your portfolio.

#2 The Difference Between Lateral & Vertical Keywords

“When you first launch your campaign, the breadth of your keyword list is MUCH more important than the depth. “ Amit Mehta, SuperAffiliateMindset.com

Very well said. What Amit refers to as “breadth” I’m going to call “lateral”.

Lateral keywords represent different keyword themes.

For example, for the niche “acupuncture”, lateral keywords include: chinese medicine, acupuncture, natural healing.

Whereas vertical keywords are acupuncture, acupuncture healing, acupuncture heal, acupuncture natural.

Do you see the difference?

If you want to dominate your online competition, you need to start thinking about building your campaigns with a large breadth, or lateral list.

It’s a bit tricky at first to see the difference. Many times lateral keywords represent completely different ideas or themes, whereas vertical keywords are usually stems of the parent keyword(s).

The reason why this is important is because with lateral keywords you can target a larger volume of potential keyword searches. Vertical keywords are still good, but it’s better to add these after you’ve tested the lateral keyword base.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under keyword research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.