In this post I want to look at the characteristics of web sites built with the Build A Niche Store script that have not been deindexed by Google. To find a large group of Build A Niche Store based web sites I used the following search string in Google search, "Powered by Build a Niche Store" inurl:".info" (leave the quotes in). This search query will not return every BANS site built on INFO domains. It will return a cross section of web sites built with the Build A Niche Store script that have left in the "Powered By Build A Niche Store" link.

When I did the first search for BANS sites using this search query there were 12,300 web sites indexed by Google that had the "Powered By build A Niche Store" link. Today, as I am writing this post that number has dropped by 500 to 11,800. What the drop in the number of BANS sites from this search query means would be pure speculation. I didn’t think to use the version of the query. So I do not have any base to directly draw a conclusion between domain TLDs with BANS sites on them. By the way there were a little over 500,000 BANS sites returned using the COM version of the query. But, the sites returned by the query included sites selling BANS, not just sites built with the Build A Niche Store script.

BANS Sites On INFO Domains Indexed By Google

The point of this  post is to compare and contrast the characteristics of BANS sites on INFO domains indexed by Google to the characteristics of my BANS sites that were removed from Google’s index. So, I have not spent any time looking at BANS sites built on other TLDs. As a reference point here are the 7 BANS sites that I built that were removed from Google’s index.

1. tennisequipmentstore.info
2. baseballbatstore.info
3. baseballequipmentstore.info
4. softballbatstore.info
5. emergencysurvivalsupplydepot.info
6. gpsgadgetstore.info
7. scubaandsnorkelingstore.info

The first five sites were built around May 1st, before Google went through its mass removal of INFO domains. The last two sites were built after Google purged INFO domains. GPS Gadget Store and Scuba and Snorkeling Store were each fully indexed by Google but only stayed indexed for about 10 days. The Baseball Bat Store, Softball Bat Store, Emergency Survival Supply Depot, and GPS Gadget Store all received traffic from Google. Not a lot of traffic, but some. Now, I realize these sites aren’t very pretty. At the time they were built I was focusing on building stores and not on making them look nice. The plan was to go back and make them pretty later.

Could these stores may simply be a victim of the Google sandbox? They are in high traffic niches and the keywords used are core keywords and not long tail . I had planned on completing the menus with long tail keywords. But, then the sites were deindexed. So, I haven’t bothered working on them any more.

So what are the characteristics of BANS sites on INFO domains that have not been deindexed by Google. I tried to look at the links and indexing for both Google and Yahoo on a mass scale using SEOQuake but keep getting flagged by both search engines. now keep in mind that I was not able to look at all 11,800 pages listed. But, from the pages that I looked at the best characteristics for BANS sites of INFO domains are as follows.

1. Domain Age: It seems that the older the domain the better off you are. For the INFO domains returned from the search query age seemed to play a significant role in that older domains had more links and a more targeted keywords. Nothing new here. But, realize we are looking for reasons why a site may not have been deindexed.
2. PageRank: I looked at several hundred BANS sites. The highest PR that I found was a PR 1. Now I was not able to look at all the sites returned as Google kept flagging my query. Some of the pages that were two years old did not have any page rank. I did find one site that had over 150,000 links showing in Yahoo. It was not even a PR0. Even my parked domains have a PR0.
3. Number of Menu Items (Keywords): The number of keyword menu items targeted seemed to play a significant role. For newer sites the fewer the better. The few older site I saw had 5 plus menu items. None of the sites I saw had significant keyword stuffing in the side store menu.
4. Number Of Links To Domain: Generally speaking most of the BANS sites I looked at had very few inbound links and even fewer had any authority links. Most of the sites listed had fewer than 20 links.
5. Custom Template: Some had custom templates and some did not. Whether a BANS store ran with a custom template or one of the default templates does not seem to play a significant role. But, there were a much greater number of BANS stores with customized templates.
6. Google Adsense: A large number of the sites had Google Adsense. I doubt this plays a role in whether or not a BANS site was removed from Google’s index.
7. Interlinking Between BANS Sites: There were a few BANS sites that were interlinked with a network of BANS stores. Although Google tends to penalize Blog Networks for interlinking that did not seem to be the case with the BANS stores interlinked in a similar fashio.
8. Showing eBay logo: Some BANS store showed the eBay logo but most did not. Could a visual inspector consider not placing an eBay logo on an eBay affiliate site deceptive? I do not know.
9. Amount of Page Content: Most BANS stores I looked at had little or no content. Almost all of the PR 1 stores had NO content.
10. Keyword Stuffed Content: Most content on BANS sites that I saw was keyword stuffed. As I said earlier I was not able to look at all of the sites.

Conclusions For Build A niche Store On Info Domains

I am taking this from the perspective that INFO domains are viewed by Google, to a certain degree, as spam domains. My perspective may be wrong. If you are using an INFO domain that is not aged you need to build it slowly. Build only 2 to 5 keyword targeted menu items. The same seems to be true for back links, build them slowly. I aggressively built links to all of my BANS sites. It does not seem to matter if you are using a custom or customized BANS template. But, due to the current nature of INFO domains and the likelihood that they will be kicked for visual inspection, I would customize the template a little.

Personally, I had expected there to be more BANS stores on INFO domains. I had hoped that I would find a few BANS stores on INFO domains with at least a PR 3. But, this does not seem to be the case. in my opinion if you expect to make money from a BANS store in the long run, I would not build it on an INFO domain. make the investment stick to a COM domain.

I just did the search query once more to see if Google would let me finish looking at the stores and there were only a little over 5000 pages returned. I am starting to be, strongly, of the opinion that BANS stores on INFO domains is a bad combination. If you have the choice build on COM domains or preowned domains then don’t bother with INFO domains. At least if you are having problems getting indexed or to rank you will have a piece of mind that the issue is not the TLD. You can’t change Google’s opinion about a TLD. But, you pretty damn near can make any other change necessary to get indexed and rank.

I am not against developing web sites with the Build A Niche Store script. I just don’t think BANS sites should be built on INFO domains.  Spend a few extra bucks and buy a COM or preowned domain. I wish I had.

Update: I just found one PR 2 BANS store on an INFO domain (diamondearringandnecklaceset.info). There is no content, it is using a customized default template, and only shows 13 yahoo domain links. Neither SEOQuake nor SEO for Firefox will give me the age of the site the site is about 1 year old. maybe there is hope yet. Well after a bit of investigation the sites PR2 seems to be due to two PR3 links from the comment section of ClickNewz.com.

If you know of any INFO domains that have a page rank of 3 and above please let me know about them in the comments section. I would especially like to see any INFO domains Build A Store Sites on them that are ranking higher than a PR 2. I just don’t think they exist.

At first I was hesitant to build a web site on an INFO domain. Although, up until this point, I had only built about ten web sites, they had all been on COM domains. With COM domains I have never had any problems being indexed. Moreover, none of the sites had ever been deindexed. I wanted to make sure that the INFO TLD would not be a major issue. After a little research I was convinced that the Google algorithm does not treat domain TLDs differently. But, like so many other things having to do with search engines, and Google in particular, things change. On May 1st Google took steps to purge its index of many of the INFO domains.

Domain Tasting And Google Index Spam

To understand why Google would potentially purge its index of INFO domains you have to understand that Google is constantly fighting to get rid of spam in its index. One of the biggest sources of spam in Google’s index was due to a practice known as domain tasting. In January of this year Google took steps to end the practice by not allowing Adsense to be placed on domains less than 5 days old.

Domain tasting is when a domain is registered and then returned to the domain registrar prior to the end of a five day grace period. The grace period was originally intended to enable market testing of a domain name. But, over time the practice of domain tasting became abused. Instead of testing the marketability of a domain domain tasters began monetizing the domains with no intention of keeping them. They would make money off the domain for five days and then return the site to the registrar prior to the five day grace period ending.

Some domain tasters would take the practice even further through a process known as domain kiting. Domain kiting follows the same premise of domain tasting but with a twist. With domain kiting the domain taster would return the domain to the registrar before the five day grace period was up and then immediately reregister the domain. This would enable the domain taster to lockup a good paying domain without ever having to pay a dime for it.

The practice of domain tasting was basically free money. Individuals and companies would register thousands of domain names at the same time. Domain tasters reaped the benefits of having the domain without having to pay a dime. There was a lot of money made by domain tasters. Let’s say you picked up 10,000 domains and only made .25 cents per day per site. That is still $2500 dollars per day or $12,500 for five days.

So, why would Google care about the abuse of domain tasting? There are two big reasons Google would care. First, the practice became so wide spread that it started to clog the SERPs (search engine response pages) with low quality web sites that did not fulfill the needs of search users.

Second, domain tasting sites would normally be monetized with Google Adsense. This meant that Google advertisers were getting charged for low quality exposure. In essence the practice of domain tasting degraded both Google’s search results and its ability to funnel quality traffic to its advertisers.

In January of this year Google stopped allowing Google Adsense on domains that were less than five days old. this policy change by Google effectively ended the practice of domain tasting. Or, did it?

Domain Tasting And INFO Domains

Recently, several domain registrars most notably GoDaddy.com and DomainSheriff.com have been registering INFO domains for a measly .99 cents. At .99 cents INFO domains aren’t free and are a little more risky for domain tasters but they are still profitable. And now they have a full year to make a profit before having to return the domain to the registrar, if they decide to.

Take the same 10,000 domains at .25 cents per day and multiply by 365 and you have a potential return of about $913,000. That is a lot of incentive. By purging most INFO domains from its indexes Google was protecting itself from a potential huge influx of spam. By continuing to hold INFO domains to higher scrutiny Google is protecting its algorithm and advertisers from the potential spam abuse caused by INFO domains being so cheap.

BANS, INFO Domains And Spam

Google is constantly fighting to rid its index of spam. And spammers are constantly finding ways to get spam into Google’s index. If in Google’s view the INFO TLD is the domain TLD of choice for domain tasters then Google will be putting the INFO domain TLD under greater scrutiny. INFO domains have always been cheaper than other domain TLDs. And, so have had a reputation of having a larger majority of the spam type sites. If you put together the INFO domain TLD’s reputation for spam content, a new demand from domain tasters for a source of domains, and the rock bottom price of .99 cents for the INFO TLD, you have a recipe for greater scrutiny from Google.

Now this is just a speculation on my part, but the purge of INFO domains was an attempt to put in new counter measures to find spam and filter it from Google’s index.

So what does this have to do with BANS? BANS in essence is an affiliate script that pulls data directly from eBay. When a store page on a BANS store is indexed much of the content could be considered duplicate to the content of that found on Ebay. Is the amount and type of content pulled from eBay be considered enough to get a duplicate content penalty. Under normal circumstances on a COM domain or on a site with a little authority or an aged domain, I wouldn’t think so. But, with a new INFO domain in an environment of greater scrutiny from Google, there is a good possibility that the site will get greater scrutiny.

The Googlebot may now be looking at more factors to try and lower the likeliness that spam gets into the index. For instance, if you have 20 or 30 pictures on a BANS store page all being pulled from eBay the Googlebot may perceive this as some form of spam and kick the site for human review. The human reviewer looks at the site and sees the generic site template, and sees little content on the page, or little content at the top of the page then the product pictures and a lot content at the bottom and the person doing the inspection may decide your site is spam and you are deindexed.

What Does It All Mean For BANS Built on INFO Domains

Before I draw my conclusions let me first say that I am not an SEO expert. I am not good buddies with Matt Cutts and have insider information. my conclusions are simple logical deductions. Which can be flawed. I am just presenting a theory as to why BANS sites on INFO domains are being deindexed.

Does this mean that if you build a BANS store on an INFO domain Google will deindex the site. I don’t think so. There are plenty of BANS stores out there on INFO domains. Just search for "Powered by Build a Niche Store" inurl:".info" at Google — leave the quotes in. There will be little over 12,000 sties returned. That is by no means all of the BANS sites on INFO domains; just the ones that left the BANS affiliate link in the footer.

What it does mean is that BANS sites on INFO domains will be kicked by GoogleBot for greater scrutiny more often than a BANS site on a COM domain on a domain wit more authority. This means that if you are going to build a BANS site on an INFO domain you will need to set it up so that it will pass a visual inspection by a human. Getting indexed is not a problem staying indexed is.

In my next post I’ll look at the characteristics of BANS sites built on INFO domains that have not been removed from Google’s index.

A month ago I jumped on the INFO domain band wagon. I bought 75 of those little buggers. The plan was to build out BANS stores and highly focused niche sites. With the INFO TLD being so cheap this would really make it affordable for me to quickly build a large network of potentially profitable sites. However, it seems as of May 1st Google has done a mass de-indexing of most of the .info TLD.

Before this happened I had already built 5 BANS stores. The sites indexed fairly quickly. But, within a week they were removed from Google’s index. That was around May 1st. A week or so later I built two more BANS sites on INFO domains. I went ahead and built the two sites because I thought they were simply victims of Google’s INFO TLD purge. At first i thought this assertion was correct because these sites were quickly indexed.

I was elated at the prospect that my investment into INFO domains had not been in vain. But, sadly one week later the new sites were also removed from the index. Now being new to BANS and INFO domains and having little experience with SEO in general I am not sure why these sites were removed from Google’s index. However, there are a few possibilities for why these sites were removed from Google’s index.

1. The INFO TLD has fallen out of favor with Google.
2. Google does not like BANS sites (May see them as duplicate content with Ebay).
3. The sites were too heavily optimized for Google.
4. The sites were sand boxed because they were viewed as either spam like or keyword stuffed.
5. The sites were removed from Google’s index because too many links were built to the site too quickly.
6. The sites are in highly competitive niches with a lot of traffic and were sand boxed because they are new. (The vicious Google dance).
7. The sites just simply added no value to Google’s index and were removed.
8. The sites were reported as spam and sis not pass visual inspection.

If the sites were deindexed because of BANS I can change that. If the sites were deindexed due to over optimization, I can fix my optimization techniques. If the sites were de indexed because links were built too fast I can change my tactics. If the sites are simply victims of the Google sand box then I will have slowly develop the sites and wait for them to come out of the sand box. BUT, if the sites were de indexed because Google had a mood swing and decided that most, and therefore all, INFO domains were bad for its algorithm, that I cannot change. I can’t control Google. But, I can control what I do. But, before I can fix the problem with these sites I have to understand the potential issues and how to resolve them.

There has been a lot of speculation on why some BANS sites have been deindexed and others have not. I have made a fairly significant investment in BANS already. This investment has primarily been in time researching and building the BANS sites themselves. The financial investment has only been about $180 dollars; BANS only costs about $97 dollars and the domains cost roughly $80 dollars. At this point its the time that is the most important. So, before I spend any more time building out BANS stores I really want to understand why these sites were deindexed, what I can do to get them reindexed and what I should do to avoid having these sites deindexed in the future.

So why were these site removed from Google’s index. That is precisely the question I am going to try and answer over the next few posts. I am going to look at each potential reason for these sites having been deindexed and try to figure out how to get these sites reindexed and how to keep them indexed.

Whether you do keyword research the hard way or the easy way the quality of the results is still dependent on your understanding of the niche you are targeting and your ability to choose keywords the right way.

As we all know the goal with keyword research is to find keywords or keyword phrases that search users might use to find our web site, blog or whatever. Because no one person thinks like another and our individual experiences influence how complete tasks being able to develop a list of targeted keywords is a key factor in online success.

Keyword Research Building The List

Building a list of say a few hundred keywords and keyword phrases by sitting down and just writing up a list would be nearly impossible. I don’t know of anyone that builds a keyword list that way. If you cannot afford to subscribe to services like Keyword Discovery or WordTracker then you are pretty dependent on free services such as the free WordTracker keyword tool, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, or the keyword tool from SEO book. you can get varying degrees of information from these tools. But, none of them are the holy grail of keyword research.

Of the three mentioned tools the best is the one from SEO Book. Primarily the keyword research tool from SEO Book stands out because it aggregates information from most of the better free tools that are available. But, because they are free tools you will always question the accuracy of the data. Moreover, at times each tool will give you a different set of words or phrases. So, which tool is more accurate?

At this point you are only trying to build a list of keyword to start your research from. These tools really only help you build a list of key words. Yes each tool gives you a bit of different information about the keyword or phrase. However, they do not do any processing on the keywords and phrases they return to you. That is left up to you to accomplish.

Keyword Research Processing The List

To begin processing these keywords and phrases and to start determining  how competitive each keyword is and extracting the long tail phrases from the rest you have to export the data to a spread sheet like Excel. Once you have the data situated in a usable format in the spreadsheet you will need to manually search each term in Google to determine the number of competing pages.

Can you imagine how long this would take to do with a keyword lit containing several hundred keywords and keyword phrases. Once you have determined the number of competing pages you can then use a the basic formula of (searches /(searches*page results) to determine the KEI for each entry. This is not really very time consuming using the copy paste function. Now you have to determine which base keywords you are going to use from your list.

Because you now have the KEI to help guide you it should not take long to determine which keyword phrases you can be competitive for. But, KEI does not give you the whole picture. You need more information to make a well informed decision. Sometimes KEI makes a niche look more competitive than it really is. The vice versa is true as well. Sometimes KEI makes a keyword phrase look less competitive than it really is as well.

Free Tools For Keyword Research And SEO Analysis

You can use free tools like SEO Quake and SEO For FireFox to look at the competitive nature of the pages ranking for the keyword phrases you are targeting. These tools are good for limited use. Here again these tools are free. Although they will help you in your keyword research they will not give you the information you need to be competitive in a timely manner.

But if you are building BANS store you have only just begun the process. You now have your site and main menu keywords. You will now need to start the process over for each keyword to drill down to the long tail keyword phrases to build your second level menu. These are the keyword phrases that you should be more competitive for. But imagine if you had 10 or 15 menu items for a particular niche that you were building a BANS site for. Just the keyword research process, alone, would take several days. Much less the time it will take to do the competitive analysis necessary to make a well informed decision.

Now that you have looked at the traffic, KEI, and the relative competitiveness of the keyword phrases you would like to target you might think you are ready to move on, but you are not.

You now need to look at the back links that your competitors have been able to build. Without knowing the PR of the linking page and the anchor text used you have no idea what you will need to accomplish to move up in the ranks. Just like with anything else SEO related there are free tools to help you. Just do a google search for backlink analysis and you will find a lot of them. But, remember these tools are mostly free for a reason. They are limited in what they can do for you.

Keyword Research The Hard Way Conclusion

Keyword research is not just building a list of potentially useable keywords, keyword phrases and long tail phrases. It is also competitive analysis of the web sites ranking for those keyword phrases. You have to have the right tools for the job.

Using free tools to manually build and process a list of keywords to find the best long tail keyword phrases is doing keyword research the hard way. Time is money, so if you think you are saving money by using free research tools you are only fooling yourself. When I first started building BANS sites I got bogged down in keyword research and frustrated by the length of time it was taking. So, instead of taking the time to find the true long tail keyword phrases of their niches I rushed the process and used keywords that I thought I could be competitive for. Bad move on my part now I am stuck with 5 nearly completed BANS sites that will never be very competitive.

There is an easier way. Next Time.

When I first started researching and learning how to blog I put a lot of time and effort into reading the traditional blogs about making money online. One thing I realized was that none of them really taught me how to make money online. Out of the three hundred blogs that I read, at the time, not one blogger laid out a plan a true strategy for making money online. most of what I learned centered around building readership, RSS, and social media traffic so you can sell ad space. It made sense, at the time. But, selling ad space is not a strategy for making money online, it is a strategy for selling ad space online.

The truth about making money online is that most bloggers in the make money online niche cannot teach you how to make money online, because they themselves do not know how to make money. I started TzuVelli because I realized that most make money bloggers didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. I thought I could learn a little bit about making money, experiment and then write about it. Boy, was I wrong. I quickly realized that I knew so little that I had to take a step back and figure things out.

The first post I ever read that actually taught me something about making money online was Your Local Niche Market at BloggerUnleashed. I wrote about this in 12 Reasons To Start A Local Niche Blog. It was at this point that reality started setting in about making money online. Although, I gave Vic credit for inspiring the post, I did not give him enough credit for beginning to open my eyes to how to truly make money online.

Ever since reading that post I have slowly come around to the reality about making money online. If you truly want to learn how to make money online then you need to read BloggerUnleashed. Vic outlines repeatable strategies for making money online and will open your eyes as to why what is traditionally taught in the make money niche is simply bad advice regurgitated by idiots that don’t have a clue as to what they are talking about.

Vic’s recent strategy push has been on BANS and leveraging the online auction giant Ebay to make money online. Although I have not written about it, I do plan on picking up the strategy. Most of my attention has been focused on understanding keyword sniping. It seems that the only difference between the two strategies is their monetization methods.

I have been hooked on BloggerUnleashed for the past few weeks. If you don’t read BloggerUnleashed then you’re not learning how to make money online.

Blogs that I have been reading recently that have really helped me to actually learn how to make money online; BloggerUnleashed written by Vic Franqui, Court’s Internet Marketing School written by Courtney Tuttle, and  Griz of How To make Money Online For Beginners, written by Griz.

Some of the time that I have spent away from TzuVelli has been used trying to find strategies for making money online. I have been looking for repeatable money making strategies. Strategies that do not have giant barriers to entry. For making money online i would define barriers to entry to be needing huge readership, a large number of RSS readers, or a large email list.

I was looking for strategies that all you needed was a small financial investment and a lot of hard work to be successful. Well I have found two; Making money with BANS out lined by Vic of BloggerUnleashed and Keyword Sniping outlined by Courtney Tuttle of CourtneyTuttle. I have chosen these strategies to concentrate my efforts on for several reasons. First, the strategies have been outlined by both Vic and Court from start to finish. So, I have really good idea of how the strategies work. Second, these strategies emphasize the basics of Internet marketing, SEO, and SEM.

With this focus in mind I have and will be making some changes to this blog. First I have changed the Blog Promotion Category to Internet Marketing. Blog promotion is just a subsection of Internet marketing and so it only seemed appropriate. The resource sections for Blogging Tips and Internet Marketing will be swapped as the resources currently listed for each seem more appropriate for the other. The resource section will eventually be completely revamped. These changes will take some time to complete.

I have a heavy technical background and so it has been easy for me to pickup and understand the basics of SEO, SEM and IM. Although I have the technical background I have learned a tremendous amount just in the short period of time the blog has been open.

The changes to the blog have occurred as I have learned more about making money online and I have become more focused. Over the next few weeks and months I will be writing heavily about my experiences with both BANS and keyword sniping.

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 gain 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.

I am getting ready to start implementing a strategy I learned reading Courtney Tuttle’s Internet marketing blog. He calls it keyword sniping. I think its a great starting point for learning how to make money online.

I read Court’s first post on keyword sniping several months ago. But, frankly, I was too busy doing other things and did not have time to look at it further. Now, I seem to have a bit more time on my hands and am ready to dive into learning how to make money online.

In short keyword sniping is a strategy for creating a blog or web site or group of blogs using one highly targeted keyword or keyword phrase as the focus of the content. Realistically, the keywords you will focus your efforts on are considered long tail keywords. Long tail keywords, really keyword phrases, don’t generally get a lot of traffic. Lower traffic potential, within reason, can actually be a great advantage. Lower traffic CAN mean lower competition. Lower keyword competition means it is easier to get to the top of the SERPs. Being at the top of the SERPs means you are more likely to get the lion’s share of the traffic. A greater volume of targeted traffic creates more opportunities for a sale or a click. More sales and clicks means earning a better income for your efforts.

Using a strategy like keyword sniping requires a different mind set.  When you first start learning about blogging you read a lot about how your primary goals should be creating authority, networking, and building a strong readership. But, with keyword sniping all that is required is creating focused content and building back links. Its about competing for a keyword phrase and and its position on the SERPs and not reader’s or reputation. This strategy goes against the grain for many bloggers. It is an Internet marketer mind set and not a blogger mind set.

Over the next few posts I’ll be putting some tools and resources together for making money using Court’s keyword sniping strategy. I’ll be outlining a basic keyword research strategy, the tools to use, resources to quickly build a blog, cheap hosting, competitive market analysis, and building back links.

I plan on keeping these posts really simple. My primary intention is for these posts to act like an action plan. You don’t make money by building blogs. You make money by taking action. You make money online by implementing some type of advertisement, affiliate or direct sales program. Every minute you waist building your blog it costs you money. So, this action plan will be as short and succinct as possible. I want to trim all the fat out of the process making it as efficient as possible. I’ll be be writing update posts, over the next few weeks, refining the process, replacing what does not work, or works too slow, with what works faster and better.

I believe Seth Godin said, "Do the best you can as fast as you can." I believe I’ll make this my new motto. Perfection is over rated. Start making money blogging using keyword sniping.

I have an inner ear problem. When it is active I loose about 50% of the hearing in the affected ear and suffer from bouts of vertigo that last for about 3 hours. These aren’t simple dizzy spells. My entire world turns upside down. It is completely debilitating. Once the vertigo has subsided, I am physically exhausted. I have been suffering from these for about six weeks with about one bout of vertigo a day. Today is actually the first day that I have not had vertigo. In some ways, though, the vertigo has been a blessing in disguise. If you look hard enough there is always a silver lining in a dark cloud.

For me, as far as this blog is concerned, the silver lining has been that I have had some time to step back and get a perspective on where I am going with this blog. The first series of posts that I wrote were researchish and collegic in tenor. Maybe even cold. Kind of like the guy on the old cop show Drag Net, "Just the facts mam." I don’t have fun writing like that. The writing becomes a burden, a stress. Besides, worrying about whether you have touched on each point, or worrying about your use of language structures and pronouns it takes up way too much time.

I started thinking more about writing style. I realized that the problem that I was having wasn’t truly about writing style but "voice" and finding a voice for this blog. In college I was taught that you should not write the way you speak. Theoretically, this helps create focus for your writing. But, it also removes personality from your writing. When you remove your personality from your writing you are not being true to yourself. We each have a unique distinct personality that sets us apart from every other person in the world. Be true to yourself and your uniqueness will show in your writing.

Your blog’s voice is its personality. You don’t have to struggle to find a voice for your blog. Be true to yourself first, find your personality and you will find your blog’s personality. Your blog’s voice is just an extension of your own personality. Even if you are a blogger that uses a pseudo, or made up, personality to write your blog, that pseudo personality is still an extension of you.

One last thought. Don’t let the idea of obtaining authority for your blog over shadow your personality. Authority without personality is dry and boring. Look at the blogs in your niche that you think are authoritative. I’ll bet you’ll find that personality, in some form, comes before authority on just about every single one of those blogs. Your blog’s voice is you.

So, I decided to organize these bookmarks on the landing page of each related category. I could have just written a few resource posts for each category but posts tend to get pushed to the back and forgotten about. Besides these are resources that I plan on using, updating and adding to often. So, I wanted them to be where I could easily gt at them. Not everything is currently included on the resource lists, yet. But, as I continue to clean up the bookmarks and spreadsheets I have and come across other resources I’ll add them.

I have reduced the number of categories I have from four to three. I am now down to Blogging Tips, Blog Promotion, and Make Money. I am very interested in social media but I am not Muhammad Saleem and social media is not my focus. As I create more content, develop more skills, and develop a broader back ground I will be adding other categories such as Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing. Going down to three categories will enable me to focus on the basics.

The first phase of changes at TzuVelli is finally complete. Now I can move onto learning how to make money online. And, learning about all the steps that go into creating websites and blogs that you are able to make money from.

Good keyword research seems to be the lynch pin for making money online. With that in mind, I’ll be devoting the next few posts to exploring how to conduct keyword research and how to leverage what you learn from keyword research.