New member, new blog site - help finding a niche

[kjs1938]

Hi everyone.my name is Kim.

I have published a blog that is an affiliate with many of the largest merchants in the U.S.

The url is Shopping-bargains-savings-discounts

Basically I would like any comments on this this blog site . Good,bad ,indifferent.

Thank you all. and most important the best of luck to all of you.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi kjs1938,

Welcome to 5 Star.

Well you asked so here you go. Have a couple important tips for you.

Think of your blog as a store and search engine robots and real people as your visitors.

What you have right now is like a store that had 1,000s of products from A to Z all dumped in a pile in the middle of the store in no order with no easy way to find ANYTHING.

Search engines like blogs due to ongoing added content and search engines look at the title as most important. You have ONE page (a store) with one title "Shopping-bargains-savings-discounts" and everything under the sun just thrown in a pile in middle of the store. No one's going to find it plus people don't like banner farms. Plus "Shopping-bargains-savings-discounts" in the title I think will show up as one long hypenated word and no one would even search for so in the page meta title you need to break it up. "Shopping bargains savings discounts"

You need to add single pages - try for one a day. Each page targets a specific key phrase and a specific type of product. The more targeted the product and least competition, the better chance you will get of having someone that's a potential buyer find that SPECIFIC phrase in the search engines.

Example (use your site KW + product)
"Shopping bargains savings discounts on blue electric widgets"
Then you need to write AT LEAST a couple paragraphs about the product, description, benefits and related keywords.

You also should include text links in the body of the copy.
Banners don't convert very well.

Sorry that's all I have time for right now.

Anyone else?

[kjs1938]

Thank you for your comments. Need all the help I can get. I re-designed the blog. Please comment. Is this more of what you are suggesting?

Thanks

K

[Linda Buquet]

Hi K,

Good job on changing the page title.

No you need individual posts with CONTENT and keywords about each type of product.

post #1) Title: "Swimwear Sale at One Hanes Place! Save 25%!"
at least 2 paragraphs of text ABOUT Swimwear, different types - bikinis, one piece, sexy swimsuits, plus size swimsuits, ect. Get differnt related keywords in the text. Then also have some text about One Hanes Place and why they are a great place to find discounts on Swimwear with a text link to Save 25% plus the banner.

So that's ONE post filled with content for that one offer.
Then start post #2 (different timestamp, new title, page of content) for the next offer.

Look at it this way though - you are really doing a shot gun approach and it won't work well.

Example using your 1st offer. Search Googe for "Swimwear Sale at One Hanes Place" Swimwear Sale at One Hanes Place - Google Search

There are 157,000 competing PAGES using those keywords. Yours, as is, may come up on page 132,000 if you are lucky. No one will ever even find it. The ones that come up high have LOTS of content related to the keyworks and are using lots of other techniques.

If you search for your very generic page title keywords in Google "Shopping bargains and discount savings" there are over 1.3 MILLION competing pages.

You are trying compete with BizRate and Yahoo and big established coupon sites and sorry dear but you arent ready to play with the big boys. To try to shotgun sell all types of different products and compete with all those top sites you REALLY need to know what you are doing and you are there yet.

DON'T WANT TO rain on your parade, but sincerely trying to save you some time, money and heart-ache!

You need to pick a NICHE - one product category that's very targeted and not too competitive. Write in-depth indiv articles and learn the ropes. Study our newbie sticky threads and then go to the niche forum.

Hope this helps!

[kjs1938]

Linda,once again I thank you. This is the reason I joined 5 star. To get help.

I am following what you are saying and will proceed accordingly.
You spoke of a niche ,in your experience can you reccomend any that I can investigate and do this right.

Thanks much

Kim

[kjs1938]

Hi Linda, any comments on my last reply yesterday June,15.???

You have been very helpful and my question is do you is ,in your experience,know of any affiliates that are less competitive than others that would be very good to promote?

Thank you

K

[Linda Buquet]

Hi K,

The best niche can only be determined by YOU! If there was one great niche that could work for anyone, everyone would be doing it.

You need to find something you know alot about, or are passionate about, or are INTERESTED in learning more about OR have problems with. This is important, since you will need to generate content and do research and if it's something you have no interest in it's just plain boring WORK! Also if it's something you are interested in it will keep you more motivated to do all the hard work that comes BEFORE the money starts coming in.

One way to think about it (I like brick and mortar analogies) is this.
If you were going to invest in opening a store - would a clothing store be smart, since theres a Macys and a Walmart right down the street? Or is there some cool and needed product you could focus on that a very targeted, loyal customer would love to be able to find? If you DID decide you REALLY wanted to open a local clothing store, then it would be much easier to focus on ONE type of product. Lets say bathing suits. But thats still pretty general, so how about PLUS sized bathing suits. So now (thinking offline to make the example easier) you have a very specific type of person you are target marketing to - not people in general, women. Not just women that swim but plus size women. You can be REALLY good at just finding great swim suits, the big malls don't carry and get a reputation and word of mouth because you FOCUS on one specific demographic.

On the Internet side, just using the example above, everything gets easier - ALL your copy and all your research is about that one product AND more importantly that one type of person with that specific type of problem.
How can big women find suits that they feel comfortable in?

NOT SAYING at all plus suits is a hot niche. Just showing you how drill down to a more specific part of a big broad product category.

OR think about problems, not products. Do you have a health issue you are always trying to find help or new solutions for? You know alot about it and others are also looking for help? Or some other type of problem? This can be very lucrative, BUT the most common problems like weightloss, acne, back pain are all very competitive. So again drill down to find a sub niche or more specific problem.

So you need to do a self inventory, make a list of possible niches then do keyword research. The niche forum has tons of resources and ideas to help you.

[route609]

Hi

I have looked at your site. I am unsure if your style sheet is attached or if there is a current problem with the server when i previewed it. Anyway, the site just appears text on all white? Is this how it should be?

If so i would recommend differentiating the shops. For instance, maybe use a block of color behind the first, then the same colour behind the third, fith seventh etc- just to split the links up.

Although i have a lot of experience in affiliate website design i have never really designed this type of site so i wont say too much.

In terms of your SEO and google listings i would maybe create a small introductory paragraph into your site that contains keywords that are within your meta keywords, this will help with your google rank.

Also another tip is to use the same keywords into your meta description.

Its not much but it may help

Good luck