How to get started in Internet Marketing in the cheapest possible way?

GolfBravo

Bonzowaite wrote: »

One of the biggest mistakes that I see is people targeting very competitive keywords upon the basis that there are 50,000 monthly searches. They think "nice big pie and I want a small slice of it".

Ditto.

This is actually how Google make money through their AdWords - people rush in to their keyword planning tool, type in one keyword and then copy whatever suggestions they get. And nine out of ten of their competitors will use the exact same keywords. And then they compete agains each other, spending £50 on adwords to make £30 profit.

You really need to spend some time to research your keywords to find your own niche. You need to write content (eg. reviews, product descriptions, etc.) that your target audience thinks its great.

And do take advantage of long-tail keywords.

Bonzowaite

GolfBravo wrote: »

Ditto.


You really need to spend some time to research your keywords to find your own niche. You need to write content (eg. reviews, product descriptions, etc.) that your target audience thinks its great.

And do take advantage of long-tail keywords.

Agreed.

Long-tail keywords are a great device. Get good rankings in short-term for long keywords and hopefully get the shorter ones too as time goes by.

PS. I have never paid anyone for any keywords.

kobracai

Wow I didn't expect so many helpful replies, thank you very much first of all

I tried looking into my hobbies/ interests but I ran a Google adwords search on related keywords and there was just no interest, 30 or 40 searches worldwide or something. I understand what you guys mean by choosing something you're passionate about but in fairness I am looking at this from the perspective of making money and then build my knowledge, and start from there. Nothing wrong with that I guess? No kid has ever dreamt of becoming an IT helpdesk analyst, but there's lots of them because it's a job that pays

I've only skim read the thread, will give it a proper look tonight and reply any question

@Bonzowaite, thanks for your input

Bonzowaite

kobracai wrote: »

Wow I didn't expect so many helpful replies, thank you very much first of all

I tried looking into my hobbies/ interests but I ran a Google adwords search on related keywords and there was just no interest, 30 or 40 searches worldwide or something.

1. There are much better tools than Google Adwords
2. Have you heard of the Alphabet Soup technique for finding candidate keywords?
3. If you Post/PM hobby/niche I would happily try to find some decent keywords and explain how to find them.

kobracai

Bonzowaite wrote: »

1. There are much better tools than Google Adwords
2. Have you heard of the Alphabet Soup technique for finding candidate keywords?
3. If you Post/PM hobby/niche I would happily try to find some decent keywords and explain how to find them.

Thanks, I PMed you

Bonzowaite

kobracai wrote: »

Thanks, I PMed you

You're welcome - I answered.

Unless someone tells me otherwise, I think that it's prohibited to name the free keyword tools here even though I wouldn't benefit financially from posting the naked links?

Anyway, Google is your best friend and look out for one that offers 30 free searches without any sort of credit card payment to activate the free trial (I hate those sites that hope you will forget to cancel a free trial and sting you with a £50 charge for something that you never actually wanted in the first place!)

Savvy_Sue

Bonzowaite wrote: »

Unless someone tells me otherwise, I think that it's prohibited to name the free keyword tools here even though I wouldn't benefit financially from posting the naked links?

Actually, I think that's fine. Affiliate links would be a no-no, but naked links would be OK.

It's complicated, I know. If in doubt I refer to the Forum Team.

Bonzowaite

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Actually, I think that's fine. Affiliate links would be a no-no, but naked links would be OK.

It's complicated, I know. If in doubt I refer to the Forum Team.

Ok thanks.

I had an account at Jaaxy.com for a few months when I first started. You get 30 free keywords searches (no credit card required to sign up). If you use those searches wisely, you can get over a hundred posts - should keep you busy for a while. Jaaxy draws data from other search engines in addition to Google. It tells you the number of competitors and number of monthly searches for given term. Generally, I wouldn't touch anything above 300 competition (and usually under 200). There is also a traffic light system to tell you which KWs to go for. Each KW search yields 30 or so related results which is how you get more than 30 keywords out of your 30 free searches. Beware, some of the keywords will not make grammatical sense and they are not worth using. No-one wants to read a post called "best Keyword Tool Rankings UK 2014!" and Google will just laugh at you :mad:

I paid the $19 pro membership for 2 months after the free trial, but then cancelled it since I had about 1,000,000 years worth of content ideas by that stage. The good thing is that my account just reverted back to free account and my saved keyword lists were preserved for me to access indefinitely even though I am not paying them anymore money. Oh, and there are some short training videos on the website to teach you how to use the tool.

Another tool that I haven't yet tried, but that has good reviews, is Long Tail Pro - I think you get 7 or 10 days free trial instead of a defined number of searches. Again, unless there is a daily limit, you ought to be able to get lots of content ideas from there. I think the premium service is a one-off $100 or so.

So, using the 2 free trials mentioned above, you can get lots of keywords from premium keyword research tools without spending a penny.

When you do get your killer keywords, remember not to stuff them into the same post 20 times. Google will penalise you - this is not just a myth, Matt Cutts says so repeatedly on his YouTube Channel.

Title, first paragraph and perhaps once more in the body of the post (if it fits naturally) is more than enough for Google to identify the subject matter of the post and rank it accordingly for your chosen keyword.

Here it is from the horse's mouth - Matt Cutts on Keyword Density:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk4qgQdp2UA

Billy_Goats_Gruff

The hardest part is to drive traffic to your site and to achieve a high standing with googles search engine. Some provider charge a lot for this but I managed to find a very good one for cheap via lowcostbusinesssuppliers.
Check out Click Submit as a SEO provider, their reviews are highly impressive and they do not operate on a contract basis. They only charge £16.66 a month including VAT and via the discount code LCBS077 you can get 3 months free so you can affectively use it as a free trial.

Bonzowaite

Billy_Goats_Gruff wrote: »

The hardest part is to drive traffic to your site and to achieve a high standing with googles search engine. Some provider charge a lot for this but I managed to find a very good one for cheap via lowcostbusinesssuppliers.
Check out Click Submit as a SEO provider, their reviews are highly impressive and they do not operate on a contract basis. They only charge £16.66 a month including VAT and via the discount code LCBS077 you can get 3 months free so you can affectively use it as a free trial.

I would never pay anyone to do my SEO for me. There are far too many cowboys out there using outdated (and dangerous) blackhat techniques ... and it's not exactly rocket science.

Write good content, put your keyword in title, first paragraph of post and maybe one other place if it flows naturally - job done.

If you want something done properly, you need to learn to do it for yourself.