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Website Content DevelopmentWebsite content development involves doing research to discover if your favorite topic has the potential to be profitable. In our last lesson on how to find an idea for a website, we talked about using supply and demand as a way to measure the potential of your website concept. Demand is measured by how often people search for a specific topic, and supply is measured by how many websites supply information on that topic. You may have discovered one topic that really excites you and seems to have a lot of potential. Before you make the final decision on this, you'll need to determine whether this will be the most profitable topic for your website content development. You can do this by expanding your list of keywords and checking out the competition. Expanding Your Keyword List Expanding your keyword list is important because it allows you to focus your website content development on a very specific topic. To do this, use the Google Keyword Tool to brainstorm more keywords for your topic. When the search box loads, type in your main keyword click "Get keyword ideas". The keyword suggestion tool will return the results for your specific keyword, plus related keyword phrases. To get a more accurate idea of the search volume for the exact keywords, select the "Phrase" option under "Match Types". Write down the keyword phrases that target your specific topic and the number of times that each was searched for, excluding those that aren't relevant to your topic. Make a List Of Your Potential Keywords Continue using the search feature and record the results for the rest of your keywords. You will want to build a list of at least 50 or more keywords. Also, think of terms that are closely related to your main topic to find more keywords. For example, in our last lesson we determined that the topic "cats" had a good potential. Related keywords that you could expand on might include cat supplies, cat food, cat books, etc. Sort Your Keyword List Once you have researched your keywords, sort your list from the highest number down. A high number of searches for the selected keywords usually indicates that there are a lot of people searching for information about your topic. If the results are low (less than 100), this means that there isn't a lot of interest in this particular topic. Low interest will make it hard to generate enough traffic to make your website profitable. Using the previous example on the topic of "cats" for our website content development, the final results might look like this (irrelevant keywords and low search numbers have been deleted):
Judging from the number of searches done on this topic, "cats" has good potential for further website content development. Find Out Who Your Competition Is Now you will need to check out the competition for your concept. To do this, take the 5 to 10 most searched keywords from your list. You can do this research using the steps below in the Search It tool (if you can't access the SearchIt tool, find out how to disable popup blocker utilities so you can use it).
This will give you the results from Google for your specific keyword. You need to click on each of the top 10 websites listed to see what each website is about. If the top 10 sites don't offer information that is relevant to your topic, maybe you have picked the wrong keyword for your website content development. For example, even though "Artic cat" was searched for 43433 times, the top ten websites focus on a specific snowmobile, and not the type of cat people have as pets. If you find similar results with some of your keywords, delete these off-topic keywords from your list. Investigate Your Competition Further You can learn a lot from your competition. High ranking websites get to the top of the search engines by focusing their website content development on a specific topic. Research how your competitors generate money with their websites and how they organize the information on their sites. You'll also want to find out what keywords they've targeted in their website content development. Look at Your Competitor's Source Code To do this, look at the top of your browser window. Click on "View" and choose "Source" (or Page Source) from the drop-down menu. This will open notepad, which will display the html code for that particular web page. Not all websites use META tag data, but you should use the information from those that do. You will need to concentrate on the description and meta keywords tags. The description tells search engines what the particular page is about. And the keywords are the specific topic for that page (plus a few related keywords). Make Note Of The Description They Use To find the description, look for
For our "cat" example, the most on-target website listed the description as Discover Which Keywords They Focus On Next, you need to take note of the keywords that are being used on this page. To find the keywords, look for
For the "cat" example, here are the keywords for Cats.com. If the site is using relevant keywords that you haven't considered, add them to your list of keywords. Check For Affiliate Programs Also, see if any of these sites offer an affiliate program. When a website has an affiliate program, it means they will pay a commission when your referral to their site results in a sale. This can be important when considering different avenues for making money as part of your website content development. To find out if a website has an affiliate program, look for the words "affiliate", "affiliate program", "make money with your website", etc. If the website does offer an affiliate program, check it out and make a note of commission paid for referrals. You can also see if a particular website is an affiliate for another company. To do this, click on some of the recommended products that they feature. If this takes you to a new website, write down that website's information and check out their affiliate program. Find out How Much Your Keywords are Worth Another way to check out the profit potential of your website concept is to find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for your top keywords. To do this, use Search It and follow these steps:
After the Google Keyword Tool loads, enter your keyword into the keyword box. Type in the security code that is shown and click the "Get Keyword Ideas" button. The results will show you the relative number of advertisers bidding on that keyword. A solid green bars indicates that there are a lot of businesses bidding on that specific term, indicating a higher profit potential for that keyword. Analyzing Your Research This has been a lot of work for one lesson. You need to review your results to determine whether you have picked the best topic for your website content development. Ask yourself if the topic has a good number of searches. Are businesses willing to bid on this topic? You also want to be sure that you have enough keywords to build a website around this topic. The final concept will form the foundation of your website success. I know this seems like a lot to go through just to build a website, but you are building more than a website... You are building a business!! Think about it. Would you open an actual business on Main Street without thinking about who your customers are and what your competitors doing? Of course not! The same reasoning applies to building a website. Your research at this stage is the most important part of your website content development. In our next lesson, you will work on expanding and refining your keyword list, which will help you further refine your website concept. Return to top of Website Content Development Next: Choosing Keywords Related articles:
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