There are a number of great keyword tools out there, to do keyword research.
Including free ones from Google.
But after I’ve determined that a niche or some keywords have potential, I like to do something “shocking” that most people don’t think of.
I actually run an Adwords campaign, for a short run, that goes to someone else’s website (that I’m not even an affiliate of)
That may seem crazy. Why advertise for something you don’t make any money on?
Well, it’s a great way to do some real-world market research.
You can research and analyze things to death, before taking a step into advertising. But I’ve found that if you really jump in there, with real ads to real searchers, you get a Lot better idea of how viable the keywords are for what you’re wanting to present to your audience.
I’ll setup an adgroup with 2 ads (running in parallel), and see how they do.
I’ve found you can get a good feel for the potential for around $5 (depending on the average click costs of your keywords)
Now the reason to go to someone else’s site is that you can target a site that has the quality that you’re looking to have for your site.
You should be looking to do a site that has good (or great) quality. Or in numeric terms, your keywords should have a quality score of 7 or more (if you’re doing your ad right).
Now instead of taking the time to put together a site that has that quality, you just target someone else’s site.
If the keywords (and niche) pan out, then you work on doing your own quality site.
I want to emphasize:
You’re doing this so that you get real-world information, before committing a bunch of time into a site or a niche. To test the viability of your offer and your keywords.
About the offer: since you’re running ads in parallel, you can try different variations on your offer or your pitch.
I recently did this for a “juicy” niche I’m looking at. From my initial research it almost seemed too good to be true.
But I’ve been there before. You think you’ll get a ton of impressions and then a lot of clicks. But after rolling it out, it just kind of sits there without much action. It didn’t live up to predictions.
In this recent case I wasn’t “holding my breath” about the results. Neither did I spend a lot of time creating a site up-front.
So I found a site very similar to what I wanted to do. Though my version would actually monetize the content (which wasn’t the case with the existing site)
I ran a couple ads for a couple days. I spent about $4.
But that $4 gave me great market information. I found the actual keywords that got clicks. And two “big” keywords, I thought were the main ones, actually had horrible CTRs.
I found that the niche and most of the keywords did “work”. Extrapolating from my results, and expecting to improve CTR over time, I predicted a healthy number of clicks per day – after it really gets humming.
Plus I found other keywords that I hadn’t thought of. By diving into Google Analytics (you need to track what’s going on) I was able to find new keywords that really worked.
And I found that one pitch worked a lot better than another.
Try getting that real-world information from Your keyword tool!
I want to know what are “real clicks” that are found on my stats for my website? “real clicks” is one of my categories on my stats for my website. Tell me how is that compared to traffic clicks i receive from targeted traffic advertising? On my targeted traffic campaign, they said i receive 3,333 clicks to my site. On my website stats, My “real clicks” says 5
Hello Darrell
I have a question regarding this interesting strategy before I give it a go:
Do you know whether using someone else’s URL as a target without their permission breaches Google Adwords guidelines?
Regards
Michael
I agree- interesting post – and I am also curious exactly how you measure the results.
Karen
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Interesting concept.
One question though: how can you use Google Analytics if you’re targeting someone else’s site (as you are doing in your example)?
see my reply to the prior comment
I’ll also add this:
One of the nice things about doing JVs is that you have more opportunity to do your own tracking, or to have shared access to the tracking details.
I mean for true joint-ventures. Not these cases where they’re affiliate programs calling themselves JV programs.
If the person (or people) you’re working with don’t have analytics on the site. Then make sure they put it on. It’s fairly easy to do … and the price is right (free)
That tip may not help right now. But keep it in mind for the future.
Just wonder, how can you dive into Google Analytics if you promote other people websites?
Unfortunately, as a general rule, you can’t put your tracking code on someone else’s site (unless it’s someone that gives you access to their site).
There are some Clickbank vendors who let you put conversion tracking code on the thankyou page. So you can track conversions (different than the full analytics).
What I’ve done, to give some sort of tracking, is to track when someone clicks to go to the other site. That gives you at least a relative measure of “conversion” and action. People are taking the next step to go to the other site from your link.
That may not sound like much (and it’s no where nearly as good as full analytics), but it’s enough to base split-testing on (split-testing ads, pages, emails)
Good posting Darrell! You should give a list of the keywords tools you use.