BOOMER eZINE

The Online Entrepreneur Magazine

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Table of Contents for this issue.....

1.    Authors Comments

2.    Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

3.    Keyword Spy Software

4.    Good Keywords Tool

5.    Next Tag Price History and Other Data

6.    Eons and Cranky – An Experiment

7.    You Need Top SERP Position

Author's Comments

Poof! Another month gone in the blink of an eye.  As we get older, time definitely moves faster.

This issue focuses on keywords.  The Internet runs on keywords.  Keywords are what Google and the other search engines use to match a search with the search results.  If you have the right keywords and your content is good, your website or blog will be the one presented to the searcher.

If you pick the right keywords and write killer content on your web page or blog, the search engines will reward you for it by driving traffic to your site.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

We received many requests for advertising this month.  As Boomer eZine’s circulation continues to grow, the advertising requests also grow in number.  We are very careful about any advertising we publish.  We will not run any ad without thoroughly checking the product it advertises.  Notice that you almost never see an ad in our publication.  We will pass on making money rather than advertise junk.  

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please use this suggestion form to give us your suggestions or your input.  With your help, we can improve the Boomer eZine.  This link will open a new page.  Close the page to return to Boomer eZine.  

Keyword Spy Software  

There are many keyword spy software packages on the market that give you insight into the overall competition for a particular keyword and into how your competition does with that keyword.  All the information that you can get from these packages is public domain.  It is information that you can get yourself if you spend hours at your computer searching for the information.  

The good news is that most of these websites have free demos to try to sell you their services.  You can use these free demos to find information about keywords that you are considering.

SpyFu – www.spyfu.com  

Cost - $38.50 per month subscription, 3-day trial for $6.75, annual for $296.00

Alexa rank 6,902  

Keyword Spy  -  www.keywordspy.com  

Cost - $89.95 per month

Alexa rank 19,301  

KeyCompete    - www.keycompete.com  

Cost - $39.00 per month, one-day trial for $19.00, annual for $299.00

Alexa rank 33,792

I like the free information you can get from SpyFu.  It shows a quick summary that includes the cost per click range for the keyword you enter.  

You can get a lot of information from these sites without subscribing.  If you are a serious about pay per click (PPC) advertising, these services are something to consider.  They will save you hours of grinding out your own research on keywords and competitors.  

Even if you are not into PPC and you have a website or blog to which you are trying to attract traffic, you need to know about the keywords for each page on your website or the keywords in the article that you write in your blog.  If you choose a keyword that has stiff competition, you will never attract traffic since you will not make the first page of the search engines.  A little research can help you find some keywords that do not have tremendous competition, but still have enough search volume to make it worth your time.  

Author’s Note:  The information in the following pictures from SpyFu is from its February 1, 2008 data.  There are some differences between what is shown in the SpyFu results pictures and the current Google search results.  

As an example, let’s take the keyword “retirement”.  This keyword is VERY popular.  If you search Google for “retirement”, it has 123,000,000 results.  When you look at the top results you see the “big boys” CNN Money, Social Security Administration, Wikipedia.  The top AdWords are purchased by T. Rowe Price, Schwab, Old Mutual, and Zecco.  You can be certain that they paid a handsome price for those positions.  SpyFu says that the top price for “retirement” is $3.83 per click.  

What does this information tell me?  That I do not want to even attempt to compete for the keyword “retirement”.  

Now, let’s narrow the keyword.  We will use the keyword “retirement jobs” which is the keyword theme for my website, www.retirement-jobs-online.com (RJO).  The Google search for “retirement jobs” shows 601,000 results.  We have reduced the competition by 99.5%.  We are now into a “niche” of the keyword “retirement”.  

When we look at SpyFu for “retirement jobs” we find:  

Using “retirement jobs” as a keyword and with the help of Site Build It, www.retirement-jobs-online.com is number 2 for Google Search for that keyword.  

Now, let’s narrow the niche a little more with the keyword “jobs for retirees”.  Google shows 235,000 search results for this search.  Here are the results from SpyFu:  

Using this keyword, I created a page on the RJO site that is ranked number 1 on Google.  The link to the page is:  

http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/retirement-jobs.html  

In summary, there are numerous tools available to you to use to help you analyze keywords before you spend hours creating content that will never be read because no one will ever find your website or your blog because it will never make it to the top five search results.  

Don ’t let passion for your topic overcome logic and reason.  Do your research first.  Create your content with keyword intelligence so your efforts are not wasted.  

Good luck on your future website or blog.  May your keywords put your website or blog on the top of the first page of the Google.  

Good Keywords Tool  

Since we are talking about keyword tools, Good Keywords v2.01 is a free tool for doing keyword research.   You can find it at www.goodkeywords.com.  This is freeware from Softnik Technologies.   

The download page for it is http://www.goodkeywords.com/products/gkw.  

The main feature I use is the misspelling tool.  I am running a pay per click campaign on Microsoft AdCenter and Google A dw ords for various GPS units.  I needed to come up with all the various spellings for the word “garmin”.  Garmin is the company that makes many of the most popular GPS units being sold today.  

The misspelling tool will take a word and create all kind of misspellings.  There are options for the types of misspelling variations you want.  The Duplicate Characters option will generate accidental double key strikes.  The Missing Characters option simulates the user not quite hitting the key hard enough to enter the letter.  The Swapped Characters option simulates character transposition (one of my big problems), and the Keyboard Proximity option creates words with the letters from keys near the correct key.  

To start creating misspellings, we start with the word “garmin”.  

First, I got Linda to help me with the normal misspellings.  Linda is great at this since she likes word games.  She works the crossword puzzles everyday.  When she cannot sleep, she doesn’t count sheep.  She does word games in her mind like taking a word and seeing how many words she can make from the letters in the base word.  

The first misspelled words were the normal changing of vowels.  Swapping a,e,i,o, and u.   Here is the start of the exercise.  

garman

garmen

garmin – this is the original word which is left out of the final list

garmon

garmun

german

germen

germin

germon

germun

.

.

.

gurmun  

From my keyword research, I found that some people misspelled “garmin” as “garvin” so we did the same thing with “garvin”.  

Then we entered each of these into the misspelling tool and came up with 1,220 misspelled words.  

These misspellings coupled with the Garmin model number give me possible misspellings for the various Garmin GPS models.  Other variations are whether the searcher enters the model number before or after Garmin and whether or not they leave a space between the model number and the word.  Examples: Garmin 350, 350 Garmin, Garmin350, 350Garmin.  

Now all I have to do is combine the model number with all the misspellings in these four formats.  What? That is 4,880 combinations to type!!!  Then there are many, many models of Garmin GPS.  

Never fear.  I use Excel for this type of letter and word manipulation.  It has the ability to handle letters and words just like it can calculate numbers.  The ampersand character “&” is the “string” combination character.  A string is a group of text letters.  

I created a spreadsheet with formulas to create the four possible entry combinations we previously discussed.  Now, I can enter the model number into the yellow cell and Excel will combine the model number with the misspelled word for me.  The starting misspelled words are in the left column and the calculated variations are in the next four columns.  

Here is a picture of the upper left of the spreadsheet:  

The formula in the cell that contains “360 garmen” is =$B$1&" "&A3.  This tells Excel to take the fixed cell containing the model number ($B$1), combine it (&) with a space “ “, and then combine it (&) with the contents of cell A3 which contains the base misspelled word “garmen”.  This creates the string “360 garmen”.  

There is one more step to make the words acceptable to AdWords.  The cells that you see above contain formulas that create the words.  If you copy these cells to AdWords, you will get the formulas that created the words, not the words themselves.  To get the words as text, we highlight the column we want to convert to text and click “Copy”.  We then move over to an empty column on the spreadsheet and right click the cell where we are going to start the Paste operation.  Select “Paste Special” from the dropdown box and then select “Values”.  This will strip out the formulas and leave the results of the formulas which are the misspelled keywords we want.  These can be copied from the spreadsheet and entered directly into AdWords or AdCenter.  

You say, “why go to all this trouble”?  The reason is that these create cheap keywords to put on Google AdWords.  You only pay if someone clicks on these.  If someone is searching for a Garmin model number and misspells the name, your ad will be there for them to see and you will be at the top of the Sponsored Links at the right side of the page.  

Set these misspellings up and leave them.  They will stay as long as you leave them up and odds are the sometime in the next couple of years, some searcher is going to find your ad and subsequently your landing page from some of them.  And the click cost will be LOW.  

If you would like the Excel model that I use for this, contact me using the contact page at Request Excel (This is the suggestion form) and I will email it to you.  

Next Tag Price History and Other Data  

Did you know that you can find price history and other key information on many popular products sold on the Internet?  

The website www.nextag.com is a comparative shopping site that has that information if you know where to find it.  I use this resource to check the price history for some of the electronic products that I sell through affiliate links.  It also tells the number of sellers selling the product and the number of leads by month that hit its website.  

I searched for the Garmin Nuvi 350 and here are the results.  The price history graph is in the bottom right corner.  

When you click the image, you will get a larger view with additional information.  This is where you see how many sellers were detected by NexTag and how many searches it received for the product.  

This can be valuable information when you are evaluating the popularity of a product or you are looking for the number of competitors.  

Eons and Cranky – An Experiment  

 In Volume 1, Issue 48 3-9-07, we wrote an article about Eons and its associate search engine www.cranky.com. At that time Eons limited its membership to Boomers.  It has changed the age limit and even though it still targets the 40’s and older group, it is open to anyone over 13.  

I request your help with an experiment on Cranky.com.  

Our website, Retirement Jobs Online.com (RJO), fluctuates between fourth and fifth place in the search results on Cranky for the keyword “retirement jobs”.  In January 2008, RJO received 90 visitors from Cranky.  In February, it received 46 visitors.  

The difference was that in January, RJO was in fourth place on the search results much of the time which is on the first page (there are four search results per page).  In February, it spent most of the time in fifth place which is the first position on the second page.  When I checked on the morning of 2/29/08 , it had slipped to sixth place.  It also had a result in seventh place.  

Cranky allows viewers to review the search engine results and give the results star ratings.  RJO has one 4-star rating and I admit, I wrote it myself.  

The experiment is to determine if Eons member ratings have any effect on the position of the search results or if the results are strictly based on the search engines.  

To participate in the experiment, join http://www.eons.com if you are not already a member.  It is a great site focused on Boomers, and I think you will enjoy it.  

If you have not been there before, go to www.retirement-jobs-online.com (RJO) and get a feel of what is on the site, how the site is organized, and the mission of the site.  

With your knowledge of RJO, go to www.cranky.com and search for “retirement jobs”.  Find the first search result for retirement-jobs-online.com and write a review about it.  You pick the number of stars based on you opinion of RJO.  I think it is a 4-star site, but I am prejudiced.  

I will report back next month on how many reviews were entered and in which position RJO is on Cranky.  

I ask that you help with this.  Linda and I work hard to bring you this ezine each month and you can repay us by taking some of your time to participate in this experiment.  Thanks in advance for your help.  

Just as a footnote to this.  On 2/29/08 , the first place for the keyword “retirement jobs” was held by my friendly competitor, Dave Wright, with his website pppretirementplans.com.  His site is a Site Build It website as is our RJO site.  This is just more proof that Site Build It helps its owners build successful websites (and successful online businesses).  If you haven’t done so lately, check out Site Build It.  

You Need Top SERP Position  

What in the world is SERP?  It stands for search engine results page.  For your website to be seen, you need to be “above the fold” on the first page of the SERP for your keywords.  

We wrote an article entitled “Living Above the Fold” in http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I44_020907.htm.  Basically, you live above the fold and die below the fold.  The fold is at the bottom of your monitor when a web page loads.  Below the fold is the part of the page you cannot see unless you scroll down to view it.  

Here is a picture of the traffic analysis for retirement-jobs-online.com for January 2008.  Notice that the top 25 referrers to RJO came from search engines.  This is free traffic which is the best kind.  Most of these came from keyword searches where the results were above the fold on the first page.  

Whether you are writing a blog or building a website, research and plan your keywords to land on the top of the first SERP.  Find niche keywords and build a page just to take advantage of that keyword.  Not all keywords have to have high volume traffic.  If you build enough pages on your site that attracts “a little” traffic and move the viewer to your home page, all those low traffic landing pages add up to substantial traffic over the month.  

That wraps up this issue.  Until next month, stay tuned.  

John and Linda Howe  

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