What is Search Engine Marketing?

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is an online marketing strategy I personally use these days to attract targeted visitors/traffic to specific web pages on my sites by using niche specific, keyword focused content.

What Came First The Visitors or The Niche Research?

Okay you can get visitors without research, that’s how I started, but the odds are definitely against you if you’re just guessing what terms will make you money. Once I realized my keywords weren’t making me any money I found Keyword Elite 2 and now use it as my keyword research tool.

There is unlimited money to be made using search engine marketing, however to make it work most efficiently you should take the time to learn the best path to take.

Get the best keywords for you and your niche correct and you can definitely earn your share of that niche money. On the other hand if you decide to just wing it you are likely to be left spinning your wheels, scratching your head and extremely frustrated.

Your best keyword phases are not necessarily the top keywords. Why?

The top keywords in most markets today have so much competition that it just takes too long to start earning money with them, no matter how much content you create. It will always take time to rank for the top keywords.

At the same time it doesn’t mean you don’t use those top keywords. If you plan to eventually rank for them you need to be using them now, just not as your main keywords.

Using Longtail Keywords For Faster Success

Longtail in Bermuda

Image by cdorian via Flickr

Two word keywords, even most three word combinations have just too much competition to make money right away. It could take months, even years but longer phrases, called longtail keywords have less competition which gives you the opportunity to make headway using them.

Research lessor keywords that still get money making traffic and you stand to start making money. Then work in the top keywords as you go and over time you will start to rank for those as well and make even more money.

Easy Way To See If People Are Spending Money

When you research longtail keyword phrases put each one in Google and see if Adwords ads appear on the right hand side of the page. If ads show for those keywords you know people are spending money.

Keyword vs Longtail Keyword

A keyword phrase example: salmon fishing, which has more than 2 million competing pages is going to be next to impossible to make money with in the short term.

A longtail keyword phrase might be: salmon fishing in Canada, with 500,000 competing pages. Still tough but can be done in a much short time than our first keyword.

Now to go a step further and make it more longtail, maybe: Atlantic salmon fishing in Canada, with 250,000 competing pages still makes people money.

Now localize the phrase to more than a country such as: Atlantic salmon fishing in New Brunswick, with 130,000 and people still make money.

Note that each phrase has less competition the longer it gets but you need to research each phrase so you know the competition.

So, putting your niche research first will help you to find those longtail keywords that will make it easier to earn.

In Conclusion

I did this same research on the home gardening niche. I was of course using keywords that I just couldn’t make any money with. Well really I couldn’t get the traffic I needed to make that money because the competition had the first few pages of Google all tied up.

After going in circles for a few months I learned about longtail keywords and started researching for different keywords.

I still use the keywords I was using and am finally getting ranking on some but I am sure I would have given up long before they started ranking if I wasn’t making money with the longtail keywords I found.

The longtail keywords I discovered while researching, which still had Adwords ads showing on the right of my Google searches, took me from less than 200 unique visitors a day to more than 800 unique visitors each day and has more than tripled my income for that niche.

So, if you are not making money with the keywords you’re using then it’s perhaps time to do that niche research again and find some longtail keywords.

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