Keyword Research Strategy For Building Profitable Affiliate Websites

When I first got into the world of online marketing, I quickly gravitated towards to SEO (search engine optimization).

After all, from everything I had read and seen from others it seemed like SEO was one of those rare methods that I could start with essentially nothing more than a domain name and some inexpensive web hosting and create a sustainable passive income for myself from scratch.

Well, that is true...but it's a lot harder if you follow what most other courses and information you find online teach about keyword research.

Sure, you want to ideally rank for keywords that get lots of searches per month, because searches should equal traffic and as we all know traffic translates to dollars.

But, what they fail to really emphasize in a lot of the free information that you find online about SEO is how freakin' hard it actually is to rank for most keywords with lots of searches...and that's even if you're a badass SEO.

Furthermore, not only does it take a lot of money and resources...it takes time too.

And, when you're first getting started, you're usually broke, so you really don't have that much time to wait to get results.

So, if going after semi-competitive keywords that get a decent amount of monthly searches is not the most efficient plan of attack, what do you do?

Is there a simpler and lower cost way to actually get some traction if you're just starting out?

Absolutely.

And, it took me years to stumble upon it and really understand it, but I'm going to share it with you here for free.

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So, it basically comes down to targeting long tail keywords.

But, not just targeting one or a couple and crossing your fingers, hoping that you're selecting the right ones.

I go after hundreds or thousands of long tail keywords.

I call it the shotgun approach.

We're targeting TONS of long tail keywords with low competition.

Unfortunately I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know exactly which ones are going to stick the best and which ones are going to bring in the most amount of traffic...

But I do know that I significantly increase my odds of getting any traffic at all if I target lots of them.

And there's several benefits of targeting longer tail keywords as opposed to shorter, more competitive phrases...

- They're much easier to rank for
- There's TONS of them
- The competition is almost non-existent

And, as a bonus, since they're more specific, the visitor is usually more aware and farther down the customer journey towards the purchase of a product or service, which means you don't have to do as much selling, and the traffic often leads to higher conversions.

Also, in my experience, targeting lots of long tail keywords results in just as much, if not more traffic, than trying to rank for a few shorter keyword phrases.

So, if the traffic winds up being about the same volume...in my opinion, I would rather have the long tail traffic, because once I am ranking for it, there's typically going to be far less competitors trying to steal that traffic from me.

Which means, once I am ranked and getting traffic for those keywords, I'm probably going to be receiving traffic for a very long time, which is the whole goal with SEO.

Yes, it takes effort on the front end, but the payoff is that once the initial effort has been put in, the traffic and sales that you receive over time usually require very little effort to maintain and are for the most part 100% passive.

So, Where Do You Get Ideas For Long Tail Keywords To Target?

That was always the big issue, until a few years ago.

While you may have heard of long tail keywords a decade ago, there weren't a lot of great tools to help you discover them and give you insights into phrases that people were actually typing in until recently.

But, luckily, now there are tons of free tools that give you that data.

One of my favorite tools is called KeywordTool.io.

How To Do Long Tail Keyword Research

I like to start with what I call a root keyword, like "teeth whitening".

And from there I'll see all the long tail keyword suggestions the tool gives me.

From that list I may take a couple of the keywords and type those in to dive a little deeper and get even more specific long tail keyword lists, until I have several lists of keywords to create content around.

And then I take those lists and start either: creating the content myself, curating it from other sites, or outsourcing the content to other writers.

Then I just keep producing content for that website until I start to see traffic rolling in consistently through my Google Analytics dashboard.

That's pretty much the formula.

It's very simple.

In fact that's the same exact strategy I'm using for the website you're on right now.

In short, I target a shit ton of keywords.

And over time, the traffic will eventually come.

That's the "secret".

But you have to put in the work.

Then once you have traffic coming to your site from there it's pretty simple to monetize it.

You can add banners from a variety of ad networks, link out to affiliate products, collect leads to promote offers related to your content or niche, etc.