Content Sites

Content sites are informational sites; they offer specific details about a subject. In contrast to a mini-site, a content site is as large as you want it to be. This type of site has the advantage of enhanced search engine placement - it's intended to be a free traffic generator.

Since the point of a content site is to provide valuable NEW information and to show well in the search engines, we'll be covering those topics in depth in this program.

Step One: Not all keywords are created equal.

This is the vital foundation for everything that you do; in the online world, you need to learn to think in terms of keywords. A keyword is a word, or a keyword phrase is a group of words, that people use in the search engines when they want to find something.

On the surface, this may sound very simple. But it's a combination of art and science that will allow you to be successful.

The Art Part:

The art is part intuition, which you will develop with practice and it's part psychology.

For example, what are people thinking when they search for "pens"?

There are plenty of opportunities that exist where advertisers are paying a dollar and more per click, so just keep searching until you find what you're looking for.

Why bid postition number 5? It's a more accurate base to judge from. You might see prices bid up by a couple of ego trippers - ie, you'll see the top five bids look something like this - $3.00 - $2.25 - .75 - .69 - .49

Here's a visual example of what I'm explaining:

If you don't know how PPC works, at least through Yahoo Paid Search, you only pay a penny more than the bidder below you.

So the guy "bidding" $3.00 is actually only paying $2.26. And the guy at 2.25 is only paying .76. The "bid price" represents the maximum an advertiser is willing to pay - not what he's actually paying.

Many advertisers don't know this, so by having this information you can get a better gauge on the true price being paid - and what you'll be making.

Plus, you are only paid a percentage of the pay per click price - probably in the range of 25-35%. So that .49 paid click probably means .12-16 for you. That adds up, but we want as much as we can get for our time. It's the same amount of work any which way.

IMPORTANT NOTE: One reason I stress to trust your intuition is that not every industry has embraced Internet marketing - yet. When I first built my Outdoor Fireplace site, the criteria I used was seeing there was low competition - ie, not many sites on the subject.

In one year, the marketplace has changed dramatically and it's just the beginning. There are many more sites, more competition, and the advertisers are willing to pay two-to-three times as much per click.

You may be smart to consider who you know who hasn't embraced Internet marketing - it's probably indicative their industry is behind the curve and building your sites on the subject might be like buying up prime real estate in an urban growth path.

How difficult is it going to be to get search engine placement?

There are many ways to determine this and none is "perfect". So, go with a couple "rules of thumb".

One, the more general the search term, the more competition there will be. IE, "home improvement" will be more competitive than "how to replace kitchen counter"

And, that's funny really because "home improvement" can mean any number of things, while "how to replace kitchen counter" tells us very specifically what the searcher is looking for - that's the person we want anyway.

Step Two: Plan your site

You will come up with so many ideas by following step one that the biggest challenge will become managing them. That's why it's really important to make plans for your site now. My site, HomeSellingHelp.net, could focus on how to sell your home yourself - ie, For Sale By Owner - or it could focus on ways to make little improvements that help your home have maximum curb appeal. But, if I'm not careful, it can easily become an out-of-control monster that never reaches anything close to completion!

I suspect there's more money in helping people sell their homes, so that will be my focus. You can quickly get the outline for your site by picking up a book - or an article - that talks about selling your home.

So, I went to Google and did a search for "home selling tips". The numberone result is a site ( http://content.realestateabc.com/homeselling/ ) that gave me almost exactly what I'm looking for. It seems to cover the bases well. Looking further, I found another site that might be even better - http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/housing/sellhome/sellhome.htm

Between the two I get the following ideas:

1. Preparing Your Home for Sale
2. Getting the Best Price for Your Home
3. Selling with a Realtor
4. For Sale By Owner
5. The Need for Legal Representation
6. Tax Implications

So, each of these six themes are potentially very good money makers, whether by Adsense or selling products and services.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Many people are tempted to save some money by using articles written elsewhere. This is not a good idea - at least not for the first phase of building your mini-site. Although some people cry chicken claiming "you'll get a duplicate content penalty", the real reason is you simply need fresh, unique content written to exact specifications for optimal search eninge placemnet.

re Duplicate Content Penalty

A "duplicate content penalty" is just the search engines way of avoiding the first 50 search listings being the exact same article. This used to happen frequently. I once wrote an article and distributed it to the affiliates of a program I managed; for a specific keyword phrase, eight of the top twenty results were this exact article.

So the search engines way of dealing with this is to give a "duplicate content penalty" which amounts to "this isn't the original source, so we don't want your page to rank highly". On the whole, it doesn't hurt your site. It simply means you stand little chance of receiving good search engine placement using someone else's content.