Okay, you’ve done some research and found an affiliate product that looks like a potential winner. Before moving on to creating a website, there’s one last critical step that that you need to take care of before you can move on - keyword research and selection.  Although this is probably the most difficult aspect of affiliate marketing to grasp, it’s vitally important to your success.  And don’t worry – with a little practice, you’ll become a pro!

What Are Keywords And Why Do They Matter?

“Keywords” are nothing more than the words that your potential customers will be searching on Google and other search engines when looking for a product or a solution to a problem.

Let’s illustrate with an example.

Say you’re thinking of marketing an ebook on dandruff remedies. What are some of the words that a person with dandruff might be searching on the internet?

To find out, we’ll use the Google keyword research tool, a good starting point for your keyword research.

Entering the term “dandruff”, the Google keyword research tool displays a list of over a hundred dandruff related phrases that people have searched, including the following:

Google Keyword Research - Click to Enlarge

Each of the words or phrases on this list is a “keyword” or a “keyword phrase”.

You will note that the results include not only the keywords that people searched for but also how many times each of those keywords was searched.  For example, the term “dandruff problem” was searched 880 times.  

So, why is all of this important to you as a marketer of a dandruff remedy ebook?

Because you want as much free traffic as you can get!  And the way to get that free traffic is to appear on the first page of Google’s search results for some of the keywords on the above list. 

To achieve these first page search result rankings, you will ”target” certain keywords meaning that those keywords will  run throughout your entire marketing campaign as follows:

1. You will include them right in your web page (and, many times, in your site’s name) so that your site is ranks well in Google for those keywords. (If you want people to find you when they type in the term “natural dandruff cures”, you would need to use that term on your web page.  If you don’t use that term on your web page, Google isn’t going to show your web page in the search results when someone searches it.  Simple enough, right?) We’ll get into this in more detail later on!

2. You will use them in your free traffic generation techniques such as article marketing which we will be discussing more in later tutorials.   (Don’t worry about this right now.  Just understand that these techniques will focus on the keywords you have chosen and will be used to deliver targeted traffic to your site.)

3.  You will use them in your paid advertising campaigns if you choose to use paid advertising to bring visitors to your site. 

Why Not Just Use Most or All of The Keywords?

So, why do you have to be choosy about the keywords you target?  Couldn’t you just target all or most of the above keywords or maybe pick 10 of them at random and build a web site and marketing campaign around those?

No, there are three reasons that you shouldn’t target too many keywords or target keywords at random: 

First, some keywords are just way too general.  Take the word “dandruff” by itself for example.  Although most of the people searching this term are looking for a dandruff solution, some of them won’t be.  For example, some of them may be looking for for information on a science project on dandruff.  The point is that when you target a general search term like “dandruff” or “car” or “house”, you are casting too wide a net.   These search terms are not specific enough and they are far too common.  For example,  Google the word “dandruff” and you come up with 2,350,000 search results.   That means that you would be competing with 2,350,000 other web pages to get on the first page of Google’s search results!  What do you think your chances are?  Pretty close to zero!  You need keywords that are more specific.

Secondly, some of the terms are just not relevant to the affiliate product that you are marketing.  A couple of obvious ones from the above list are ”cat dandruff” and “dog dandruff”.  People searching the term “dog dandruff” probably aren’t going to be interested in your ebook.  A less obvious one is “dandruff shampoo”.  It’s certainly more relevant to the product you are marketing but probably still not relevant enough.  Put yourself in the shoes of the person searching that term.  Yes, they likely have a dandruff problem BUT they are looking for something specific, dandruff shampoo.  And that’s NOT what you are marketing.  While you may be able to turn some of these people into paying customers you probably won’t be able to convert very many of them.  So, you wouldn’t want to spend a ton of time building a web page and marketing campaign around the term “dandruff shampoo” because your results would likely be disappointing.  Find customers who are looking specifically for what you are offering by choosing highly targeted keywords. In other words, you are looking to target “buyer keywords” – keywords that will deliver prospective purchasers to your site.

Thirdly, even if a keyword is both specific AND relevant, there may still be too much competition already for that keyword.  For example, the term “how to get rid of dandruff”  passes the first two hurdles.  It’s fairly specific AND the person searching this term is probably more open to your ebook than someone searching for “dandruff shampoo”. 

However, if you do a Google search of the term “how to get rid of dandruff” (in quotes), you get 1,480,000 web pages.  Still waaaaay too many sites to compete with if we want that first page ranking!

So What Keywords SHOULD I Target Then?

For a keyword to be worthwhile, we want it to have the following characteristics:

1.  We want the keyword to be specific as opposed to general – don’t choose general keywords like “dandruff” (or “car”, “money”, “water”, etc.).  Choose longer keyword phrases (often referred to as “long-tail keywords”) that are more specific. Keyword phrases with three or more words in them are ideal.

2.  We want the keyword/keyword phrase to be relevant to the product we are marketing – ask yourself whether the person searching the term is likely going to be really interested in the affiliate product that you are offering.  Keyword relevancy is very important for everything that you will be doing from hereon out.  Make sure you choose relevant keywords right from the start!

3.  Not too much competition – When you search the keyword in quotation marks, it should return no more than 10,000 results (ideally, less than 5,000).  This will give you a good chance of getting a high search engine ranking for that keyword.  (Yes, I know that web surfers don’t use quotation marks in Google but it’s how YOU as an affiliate marketer need to search when doing your keyword research. It gives you a truer indication of your competition for those exact keywords phrases. ) 

4. Decent monthly search volume – A keyword isn’t much good if barely anyone is searching it. Competition may be low, but you still won’t get much traffic. I usually aim for a search volume of 3,000 Google searches per month.

With all of this in mind, let’s keep going down that big  list of “dandruff” keywords. 

When I do a Google search of the keyword phrase ”remedies for dandruff”, I get 17,100 page results.  Getting better but still not good enough! 

How about “dandruff remedy”?  Only 6,330 results!  Now we’re getting somewhere!  This could be a good keyword to target because:

1.  It’s not too general;
2. It’s fairly well targeted or “relevant” to the product we are marketing.
3.  There are only 6,330 pages on the entire internet that refer to that exact keyword phrase meaning that we are not competing with too many other people to get ourselves on the first page of Google’s search results.
4. It has a nice monthly search volume (5,400 searches in Google alone).

So, I’ll put the keyword phrase ”dandruff remedy” down as a good potential keyword and keep working my way through the list of keywords to see which others meet my criteria.

Once I’ve gone through all of the relevant keywords and compiled a list of all of the ones that look good,  I can move on to building a website and marketing campaign around those keywords and start generating some income! 

Conclusion.

If all of this information has your head swimming, don’t worry.  Here’s all you really need to take away from this tutorial:

1.    Before deciding to market a particular affiliate product, use the Google keyword research tool and come up with as many keywords as you can that are: (a) not too general; (b) relevant to what you are promoting, (c) return less than 10,000 results when you search the keyword/keyword phrase in quotation marks; and (d) have a reasonable monthly search volume.

2.  Save these keywords (and related search information) in a list because you’ll be using them later when you create your site and begin your marketing campaign.

3.  If you cannot find decent keywords that are both highly targeted to the product you want to market AND don’t have too much competition, either keep brainstorming for additional keyword possibilities or choose another affiliate product and repeat the process above.

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Although the Google keyword tool is an excellent (and free!) tool for conducting keyword research, I have been using Keyword Elite 2.0 to get my keyword ideas for some time now. It generates huge lists of highly targeted keywords for me in minutes AND, better yet, it analyzes my competition for me so that I can quickly zero in on popular keywords with very few competing pages. Then I simply build quick little mini-sites around those keywords (using the exact techniques that I’m showing you in these tutorials) and suck in lots of hungry traffic!

Up Next: With affiliate product and keyword selection out of the way, things start to get exciting – it’s time to build your affiliate marketing website!

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