Step 2: Research Your Competition (Keyword & SEO
Analysis)

Before you even consider starting your online marketing efforts you need to do some research.

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You need to find out what people want, source a supply of that product and provide to your hungry audience. This is extremely important in affiliate marketing (selling other people’s products)

And, if you already have your own product, you need to find out whether your product is in demand. Do people want or need what you have to offer? It doesn’t matter that YOU think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, if nobody else thinks so; you are dead in the water. There must be a demand for what you are offering.

So how do we find out if our product is in demand? You need to do some research. You need to identify whether there is a demand for your product or service. The easiest way is to jump onto a search engine like Google and type in the type of product or service you are offering into the search bar and see what comes up.

Do not get caught in the trap of “our products are unique and no-one else in the marketplace has what we have got” syndrome. The truth is, there are millions of websites out there and you can bet there is someone else selling your product or something very similar competing for your customers. Do your due diligence and find out who they are.

Getting to know your competition is power. If you know who and what
else is in your marketplace, you will be easily able to identify your USP (unique selling point), and focus your marketing around that. So type into the search box what you think people would type to find your product.

Now if you look to the right at the top of the page you will see the total amount of websites vying for that phrase you typed in. For example, if I typed in the phrase “help with stress” it says: Results 1 – 10 of about 107,000,000 for help with stress. If there is no websites vying for your phrase, then there is no or very little demand for your product because no one is searching for it.

Now look at the top three websites listed in your search; read their headlines, sub-heads and first few paragraphs in the body text. What need, want or solution are they offering their readers? What keywords are they using?

Hot Tip: Find a blank spot of the home page and right click with your mouse and select ‘view page source’ and you will be presented with the HTML code. Near the top of the page you will see the keywords they are using. Now don’t just copy and use them because some are probably useless. Just make a note of them.

Now you utilize a keyword research tool like Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool to find related keywords to the keyword you have selected. When searching for keywords you are initially looking for two things; supply and demand.

1. Supply pertains to your competition, which is, how many websites are using the keywords you are targeting in their pages? Less is better here (30,000 or less)

2. Demand pertains to how many people are typing in those keywords when searching on Google and other search engines. How many people are searching for that keyword? More is better here (min. 80 searches per day)

This will allow us to get an accurate estimate on how many people search for these keywords and how many websites exist around these keywords. So what you are looking for are keywords with high traffic and low competition.

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before you can determine whether your keyword has a marketing edge over your competition such as:

• What is the SEO potential of your keywords?
• What is the phrase-to-broad match of your keywords?
• What is the monthly trends of keywords?
• Adwords traffic your keywords might attract
• How many people would likely click on your page with that
  keyword?
• How much would you expect to pay for the keyword in PPC
  campaigns?
• How many websites are competing for that keyword?
• How many people use that keyword in PPC ad campaigns?
• What is the potential value of that keyword (how much could
  it make you)?

Now before you start pulling your hair out screaming ‘I thought he said this was simple’, these are tactics that will give you an unfair advantage over your competition because 90% just are not doing this sort of research.

Yes, this is very time consuming stuff however, there is a solution. For a small investment into your business you can get access to software that will do all the above and more for you with a click of a few buttons… now that’s simple! Check Out The Software Here!

So now you have your high-traffic, low-competition keywords for your product. Now we need to look at how to get online… bookmark this page by adding to your favourites or subscribe to my RSS Feed (its free of course) to receive each instalment as it is posted. Not sure what an RSS Feed is or how to subscribe? Check out this cool YouTube video. Which shows you how.