Episode 24: Keyword Research on Crack - Spencer Haws and Long Tail Pro

Transcription

1 Episode 24: Keyword Research on Crack - Spencer Haws and Long Tail Pro This week we re talking all about how you can start crushing your competition. And not just crushing them, but outranking them in Google with just a few clicks of a button. Now, I know that sounds a little bit crazy, but I assure you it is possible. Just ask our guest this week, Spencer Haws. Spencer Haws is the creator or NichePursuits.com; a website dedicated to teaching others how to create and monetize profitable niche sites. He is also the founder and creator of our favourite keyword research tool, Long Tail Pro; a software that helps you locate profitable low competition keywords that you can use to outrank your competition. With big name marketers like Pat Flynn and the EmpireFlippers singing the praises of this software, it is a robust tool that helps you put your keyword research on autopilot. And in case that s not enough, he also just launched RankHero, a private content network where users can sign up to drive high powered links to their websites. ***** Josh Hey Spencer, great to have you on. I m super excited to talk to you about keyword research today, especially with all the changes I ve been noticing lately in the search engines. I want to dig deep and get your opinion on a lot of things. Spencer Yea Josh, it s great to be here. I absolutely love talking about keyword research, so I m excited to be on the show and share what I ve learned along the way and we can start discussing some interesting things here. Josh I know both of us are kind of nerds when it comes to keyword research and SEO. From all the stuff I read, you sort of seem like the same sort of mindset as me. Spencer Definitely. I am somewhat of a nerd in that aspect. I love keyword research and that end of the data, so it s fun. Josh Nerds are going to take over the world, I know it! Just so everyone can kind of understand a bit more about yourself, do you mind introducing who you are, how you got started online, and eventually how you came to build Long Tail Pro. Spencer Yea. Again, my name is Spencer Haws and I have not always been involved in online

2 marketing. I started out like a lot of people, I went to university here in the States and got a degree in Finance. Then, I worked in the corporate world for about 7 years. I also got my MBA along the way, but I was working in finance and business banking. I worked for a large bank in the USpencerand didn t really like my job that much, believe it or not! It was the corporate world. I was in a cubicle making phone calls and doing all this sort of thing, but I always had the itch to do something different. I ve always been a little bit entrepreneurial, so on the side I started building websites really at first as a hobby to see if I could build a website and that led me on a journey from building websites to Can I make money from a website? That led me to understanding what search engines were. When I first started I had no idea to rank a site in Google. I didn t know what SEO was Josh I couldn t either, when I first got started! Spencer So, it started as hobby, then became almost a passion. I would do it in the evening, late at night, after work or school and started to have a little success. I really sort of had the a ha moment when I discovered that if you can target these low competition keywords, you can rank very quickly. Even though your website may not get a ton of traffic, it can get some free traffic really quickly and I replicated this process and started lots of niche sites. In early 2011, I quit my job because my income from those sites was more than my day job. I ve been doing it full time ever since. It was shortly after I quit my job that I created Long Tail Pro, the keyword research tool as well. Josh All this stuff is so relevant to everyone listening here as well because one of the things we like to talk about on ScrewTheNineToFive is firstly, replacing your income. Essentially what you are doing is building small niche sites, which is sort of similar to the model that we teach, but with slight differences. It was kind of enough for you to get to a point, where you felt comfortable to quit your job. Would you agree that that s maybe the first goal people should have when they re first getting started online? Spencer Yea, I think so. It s just smart. I ve always been fairly conservative financially. I want to make sure that I ve got some money coming in the door. You know, I m not gonna go out and just risk everything. I m a family man, married with kids, so I have a lot of responsibilities as far as that s concerned. So yea, I think that s a good goal. Make sure you have some money coming in the door before you make any drastic moves. Josh For sure. I ll bring everything back on topic. So, we re talking about keyword research here. One of the first things I wanted to ask was, in your opinion, what do you think the current state of keyword

3 research is? Hummingbird was released last year, what s your opinion? Has that changed your keyword research, like how you pick your keywords? Spencer That s an interesting question. Really, I m always refining the way that I do keyword research because search engines do change so much. You have to be on top of that. I wouldn t say that things have changed drastically for the way I do keyword research. I m still looking at a lot of the similar things that perhaps we can go into as far as strength of page, number of backlinks, how well sites are targeting keywords on the page, things like that. Definitely things have changed a little bit. Google is getting smarter about understanding searcher intent; what is the person searching, what they really mean. So, they understand synonyms, they understand whether they are looking for a navigational type keyword, are they looking for a health related keyword, and because of that, Google will give favor to certain types of sites. Things have evolved due to Google Hummingbird and all their other updates, but the core of how I do keyword research is pretty much the same. Josh And that s sort of the second thing I want to talk about because we were speaking before about the fact that a lot of the keywords that I was targeting have now sort of been taken over by some major authority sites because of that synonym aspect. Just because I was targeting the exact match keyword, for example how to treat cellulite it doesn t really give you necessarily a leg up now because Google knows that keywords like cellulite treatments is still recognized as being the same kind of thing; the same kind of search topic. So, that sort of means maybe now people need to be even more strategic in finding the keywords where the competition on page one is even less now. That s why I suggest to people, and I use this myself, where I use the average KC tool in LongTail Platinum and it s so important because I know that if page one has an average KC of above 35 then I know it s going to be very difficult for me to rank for that keyword term. Anything under that, especially under 30, I understand that the process I have in SEO is enough for me to be able to rank on page one for that. Can you talk a little bit about how the average KC tool in LongTail Platinum and what people can expect from it. Spencer Yea, absolutely. I agree with the numbers you gave there, as far as a 35, under 35, is usually lower type of competition keyword. Under 30 would be even better. As far as the way it works, it s a formula that essentially I and my team created at Long Tail Pro that gives you one number that tells you how difficult the top ten sites in Google will be to outrank. So numbers between 1 and 100. The lower is easier to rank for and it s primarily based on a few factors. It s based on page authority overall of the individual pages that are ranking, it s based on the number of backlinks coming to those sites, it s also based on whether or not those sites are

4 using the exact keyword in the title of their page and in their domain. You also have to understand that page authority actually takes into account a lot of those things. It takes into account site age, social metrics, really everything that you would look at to determine how authoritative a site is. And so the average KC takes all those numbers that I just talked about and averages the top 10 sites and gives you that one number. Josh Right, so it takes a look at both onsite and offsite aspects. How old the the domain is, how many backlinks it has, the quality of the backlinks, etc. With the onsite, you mentioned that it checks to see if the page title has the exact match keyword in it so for example, how to boost memory, if that keyword term is in the title of multiple pages on page one, would that make it more competitive or more difficult to rank for? Spencer Yes it would. It takes the base page authority number and then adjusts it up or down based on the on page factors. If all of those titles had how to boost memory it would adjust the KC up because they are targeting the exact match keyword. Josh I m slowly starting to move towards things like domain authority and page authority now because I know that things have kind of opened up for a lot of these big sites. They are able to rank for a lot of keyword terms that they re not necessarily trying to actively target in the search engines, but because they have such good authority and Google is so good now at determining synonyms. It s given them a big leg up over people being able to just target that keyword term and have an advantage over those big domains. The thing that I ve started doing now, and this is going to be a totally new approach that I want to tell people about, is the backlinks, the domain authority, the page authority in my opinion, has started to become more and more important. If you re going to go up against sites on page one that have a massive domain authority or massive page authority, you ve basically got no hope or very little hope with this small site. Unless of course, you have an amazing way of building links. Now, I know you ve got RankHero right, and I know RankHero you have built some really powerful links with high page authority. Has that sort of come into play for you lately? Have you been using a lot more backlinks with high page authority and seen Google results out of that? Spencer I want to answer that, but I kind of want to comment on what you said there as well, just about keyword research and looking at high authority domain results and how to analyze those. I agree with you that Google is favoring a lot of brands more. It can give higher ranking to essentially high domain authority/page authority type sites, but there s a couple of points I ll just make there. One, you already mentioned earlier that you just maybe need to do a little bit broader searches or

5 dig deeper on different types of keywords. You re going to have to spend a little bit more time on finding those types of keywords that aren t dominated by those large sites. One thing to think about is that, believe it or not, there s new keywords born every day. There s new search terms each and every day that didn t exist yesterday. That s the exciting thing about our industry is that how to treat cellulite has been around for a long time, and maybe it s just going to get super competitive, so that we can t rank for it. Things like and I m just thinking off the top of my head here smartphones didn t exist until that long ago, so something like best smartphone covers is a new keyword that didn t exist probably 5 years ago. There s other keywords that are much more recent than that. So, new products, new events, there s new search terms created each and every day. Josh This is really cool because this ties into the last thing I want to talk to you about and that is, how should people start to approach keyword research in 2014? Should they start digging as deep as possible now and maybe trying to find the niches that aren t taken over by these massive sites because they do exist. I know for a fact that they do exist and they re always going to exist because as you said, things come out onto the market, new niches come out, new products come out, and when that happens, there s an immediate opportunity to jump on board and rank really quickly and start making cash. Is that what you would suggest for 2014 with keyword research? Spencer There is a lot of opportunity there and I think that is a good approach. When it comes down to it, you just need to keep searching until you really do find some results that you feel like you can rank for. Whether that is brand new terms that are just created, there s a lot of focus there that somebody new coming in could just do. There still is a lot of opportunity for search terms that are maybe hard to explain, but they do exist. That is actually the other point I wanted to make about your comment, is that when you see results that are dominated by high domain authority, you can still find some results that have one or two smaller niche sites or lower page authority. That can sort of be your ticket to knowing that you can do the same as well. That is what I really look for. I do all my analysis, but then on top of that I like to see are there a couple of niche sites that are already ranking there. Even though 8 out of the 10 might be really high page authority, if I see a couple of smaller niche sites, I go Ok, I know I can at least rank. Josh Okay, that s really cool. That s one of the things I m going to start looking at now. If you can t see one ranking on page one for a lot of keywords that have sites similar to your own, but all you are seeing is major authority sites like WebMD and they re just running the show, you might want to just take your time, check out some other niches and see what you can find, right? It s better off spending that time at the start researching than you are just jumping into something

6 and then just pushing as many links at a site as you can. You re just beating your head against a wall eventually. Spencer Exactly. I would move on if you re seeing some definite low competition sites, niche sites. If you re not seeing it there already in Google, that s probably a sign that Google doesn t want to rank that type of site or that particular type of search query. I would move on, so getting to the link building that you finally asked me about... Josh We were kind of jumping into something different right now. That s alright. I love talking about this stuff! Spencer Yea, it s good stuff to talk about. Link building is important and it always will be important. One thing that I do say about link building is that my strategies change quite frequently. It s an ever changing, evolving market so something that I used to do 6 months ago and recommended 6 months ago, maybe doesn t work today. Its just sort of the way it is. I hesitate to give specific tactics such as, definitely use RankHero for the next year, or always use expired domain networks. That s working right now, but at the end of the day Google has always valued links the same way. They look at overall page rank, page authority and relevance. The best that you can do to get relevant links and coming from sites or pages that have lots of authority, that s what you need to do. Believe it or not, I m not out building a ton of links. I m trying to just get fewer and better links. That s what I m really focused on. So great quality on page, and then if I can get a few strong links off page, that s really what I m trying to do. Josh Again, it comes back down to if you ve done the research properly at the start, you don t actually need a lot of backlinks anyway. A lot of the niches that I jump into, I ve realized that all I need sometimes is less than 5 links from reliable sources and that s enough for me to rank on page one. That s why keyword research is so important for everyone listening. If you can get out there and sort of nail this from the start and find niches where the keywords have low competition then you re not going to be beating your head against a wall trying to rank on page one. You re going to be up there straight away making money because if you re not on page one, you re not anywhere. You re not getting any traffic. Alright man, I ll let you get back to work now. I know the kids are in bed and you kind of want to have some free time for yourself now, so I won t hold you here any longer. Can you just tell everyone about your plans for this year and also where people can find you?

7 Spencer Absolutely, I m over at NichePursuits.com; it s my blog. People can follow along there. I do blog a couple of times a week. In particular to your question on what I have planned, believe it or not, I ve got a post written and ready to published in the morning on my 2014 goals, so it s fresh on my mind. I have a lot of goals as far as building out new niche sites. I m really investing in that. I ve actually hired a full time employee to help me out. And then of course, growing out Long Tail Pro is a big focus for me, growing the community over at NichePursuits.com and hopefully just some other interesting projects that come along the way. I m excited for I see a ton of opportunity still. People are building websites the right way, as we talked about, doing keyword research the right way. Google is still there. They still need to rank websites and there s no reason that if we re not providing the right information that we re not going to rank our websites for particular terms. I m still excited about it, so those are the plans for this year. Josh Excellent mate. That s what I love about you, you re always still building niche websites like that. You could easily now sit back, and focus on building out LongTail Platinum and building services, but you love building these niche sites. Spencer I really do. I really do. Niche sites have always been a passion and I think it always will be. Josh They re fun right. I mean, especially once you figure it out, they become fun. It s like a hobby. Spencer Definitely! Josh Thank you so much Spencer. I m going to check out your post tomorrow, by the way and I ll see if my goals kind of match what you re up to. See what happens! Spencer Awesome. Thanks Josh, I ve had a lot of fun. Josh Catch ya later.