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Posts Tagged ‘ getting traffic ’

Dominate Google with the keyword Google

Whats this about?

It dawned on me a month or so ago that if I wanted to get an insane amount of traffic I would want to target a keyword that is typed into a browser address bar millions of time a day.  I ran through a few options:

  • Maps
  • Bing
  • Facebook
  • Google

Keyword Research

Then I did some research on those keywords, I was absolutely amazed at what I found.  Obviously there were millions of searches but to my amazement hardly any competition:

Showing keyword analysis from the google keyword tool

What is the reason for so little competition on these keywords?

What the hell am I doing?

Just for a bit of a laugh really, I decided if I could dominate Google with the keyword Google using this relatively cheap, new, small blog for the keyword Google I would be a very happy man.  I would be learning so much about what works and what doesn’t it would help my career progression no end. I only really started targeting keywords a few months ago and I thought this would be a great challenge.  It seems as though it is going to be possible, here is a screenshot of my webmaster tools – your site on the web – search queries:

Dominate Google with the keyword Google

So here we have the statistics from webmaster tools, early stages but progress is being made

The plan for this site is to see if Google is manipulating the SERPS as I read so much of this hype and to be frank I don’t believe it.

Why would Google want to risk their entire business model to earn a few extra bucks, its not as if  they are pushing the profit / loss line very hard is it.

So the only way I could think to prove Google’s innocence was to legitimately try and rank against them on their own system with their own keyword.  Maybe its a bit cheeky, maybe its a stupid idea but imagine if I could keep this blog going, get natural back links to this project – theoretically I could rank number 1 for the keyword Google on Google.  I am not for one second here thinking that is actually going to be possible, I am more interested in the theory…

However…. All that being said the screenshot to your left is actually showing that in theory its going to work

I just need to get ticked over onto the first page of the SERPS to get some traction to this experiment.

I am not undertaking any questionable SEO techniques, all I want to do is make the project aware to some people that might be interested in how to dominate Google with the keyword Google.  I will keep trying, keep posting to make it to page 1.

I would really like to understand a little information about how people arrive on this page, so I would be very grateful if you left a comment with your interests / profession. As I see it I will get 2 types of visitors to this post:

  1. SEO interested people
  2. People actually looking for Google

Thanks for reading, subscribe me to stay up to date on the project.  I am looking to write 1 – 2 posts a week on the subject / progress.  You won’t be spammed with nonsense posts I promise.

Together we can dominate Google with the keyword Google :)

Squidoo – Google (Stealing your money?)

A logo of the wonderful squidoo

Squidoo, the best interface for creating web2.0 properties by a large margin. In my opinion of course :)

It has long been a theory of mine that Squidoo has the power to unleash  its tenticals and drive lots of traffic to blogs and other websites.  Looking deeper into the business model of Squidoo we can see that by strapping itself tightly to googles back ensures it will get enough traffic.  So lets run through the whole business model of squidoo.

A user creates a lens

Squidoo tells the user to get backlinks to drive traffic

Squidoo’s clever system uses on page SEO to optimise each lens

Google ranks a Squidoo lens nice and high in the SERPS

Google delivers the visitor to Squidoo’s lens

Google shows adverts on the Squidoo lens

User clicks advert

Google takes a slice, Squidoo takes a slice and then you get the crumbs!!!

Ok so squidoo have built the infrastructure to create the lens an handle payments, big round of applause for that.  However thats really the end result.  Now Google is in charge of what happens from here on in.  Most bloggers or SEO specialists know that backlinks are key to ranking in the SERPS, so google allows users to create lenses at Squidoo and counts them as back links.  People then bookmark those lenses to drive traffic to them.

Now, because Google allows all of this to happen we can determine that Squidoo is getting larger and larger, because google actually wants the traffic to go to squidoo.  If the user does not click an ad on the side of the SERPS then send them to a page that has other google ads on.  Thus giving Google the opportunity to sell ad’s twice.

All this really means is that google gets fatter by working with stratigic partners, Squidoo does pretty well out of it too.

What do you get out of it?

Well, i think quite a lot but not a lot of money.  Does that make sense?

You know by building a lens which is not difficult that Google is going to automatically like that page and therefore count it as an authority page.  So you gain a spot in the google SERPS for your keyword which will rank well.  On your lens you can sell other services etc.

Conclusion

Google / Squidoo are not stealing your money they just have a nice honeytrap system going on that works well for them.  You on the other hand should not look at Squidoo as an income generator as it will be impossible to get enough traffic to earn enough.  Squidoo should be a place to air your views in a fun and easy space.  You can sell your “product” and try to drive traffic to that page but just be aware that the chances of a user following the link chain of:

Search -> Squidoo -> My Page -> My Sale

Is pretty far fetched wouldn’t you agree.  You do get a good quality backlink though and the chance to drive some traffic.

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New money earning techniques at Squidoo

A logo of the wonderful squidoo

Squidoo, the best interface for creating web2.0 properties by a large margin. In my opinion of course :)

So it looks like squidoo is expanding its advertising revenue streams past plain old adsense.  For some time now you could add text hover links to your lens and earn money through infolinks,  (see the royalties page of your lens).   The difference here is huge when adding up your money.

Adsense earnings go into one huge pot and depending on your traffic you get a slice of the cash depending on your squid ranking.  So the big players are taking a share of a bigger slice of cake!!!  For the newbie / baby squid, you will end up with a smaller slice and millions of squids trying to get a bite.

InfoLinks on the other hand only share the cash with those that have the option turned on….  When I found this out alarm bells were ringing.   So if only half of the community have this option on you will receive a bigger percentage of the revenue.  Sounds great.  In reality though the payouts squidoo receive are far less than adsense payouts.  So you need to be driving serious amounts of traffic to your squidoo lens to profit from this and if your already doing that your probably going to be making your dollar without the need for infolinks.

Another thing about infolinks, they detract from what the lens is doing and more often than not they return relevant results for the keyword (highlighted in green on the lens) however the keyword they choose is not at all relevant to the lens.  So the rule of thumb here is do not use info links if your lens is for link building or pre selling a landing page you have for a product.  Do switch them on though if your trying to earn your dollar through squidoo.

Below you can find an email I recieved from the boss of squidoo which has useful information:

Hey Squids!

I’m sending this email only to a select group of people on Squidoo: the people responsible for the top 3% of all our lenses.

That’s a pretty cool thing. And for many of you, earning royalties is what gets you really excited about your work here. So I wanted to send you some insider tips about the earning potential you have at your fingertips right now.

Two things to check out:

1) You’re the first people to see this new lens I just published: The top 10 ways to make money on Squidoo. Who knows, you might be surprised by a new feature or opportunity you didn’t know about.

2) Below you can see a pie graph of the top earning sources for lensmasters in January 2010. Not all earning sources, just the most popular ones. You’ll notice that the Amazon module, eBay module and InfoLinks are three huge moneymakers. And guess what? They’re all in your control. You decide if you add and perfect and spotlight the modules, you decide if you want to run InfoLinks on your lenses.

You’ll also notice that while Google AdSense remains a wildly successful core part of our co-op, display ads like the ones served by Glam have not performed so well in recent months, mostly due to a struggling ad climate due to recessions out of our control. We’re always trying new networks and trial partnerships to energize that section.

The secret is this: It’s up to you. It’s up to you to decide what topics or ideas or people or products you want to make lenses about, and then it’s up to you to choose which of these extra revenue offerings and ads and modules you want to optimize on your lenses. Then go do it and talk about your lenses in a way that makes the world better (and you a little happier and a little richer).

Good luck and good hunting.

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