A faithful follower recently sent me an email asking if I was okay as she hadn't seen anything from me in awhile. How sweet is that? I was quite touched!
I have been busy, to say the least, but still actively building my own Amazon business, answering emails and participating in great discussions inside the new OBI forum (more below).
I hope you've also been busy because Cyber Monday is less than a week away! No way I could let this pass without sending you some last minute tips.
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How to Find an Endless Supply of Keywords for Squidoo Lenses and Amazon Review Sites
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Do you find it difficult to locate great keywords to use with Squid Pro Quo or to use as buyer-targeted posts for your review sites? You'll love this tip that will help you come up with an endless supply of them AND in the small appliance niche - something people buy ALL YEAR LONG!
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Colleen Slater launched her Appliance Treasure Chest package and I had an ah-ha moment. I wondered if I could use her information to help find Squid Pro Keywords. For less than $10, it seemed a wise business move considering how much time it can take to find keywords.
And my test worked. Not only did I find a TON of great keywords for Squid Pro Quo but they're all on appliances - items people buy ALL YEAR LONG. Here's what you do to keep generating an endless list of keywords:- Go get Colleen's
Appliance Treasure Chest product
- Open the folder called apptcgoogleanddomainresearch
- Open the sub folder inside and then the folder marked Exact Match
- Open the spreadsheet marked Appliances Exact Amazing
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Start with the first keyword on her list, follow the instructions for Market Samurai or the Google Keyword Tool from Squid Pro Quo and use her keywords as seed keywords
- Save all the "ideal keywords" you found for your list of lenses to create or as post topics for your site
- Take all the keywords generated by step #5 and run THEM through Market Samurai or the Google Keyword Tool as new seed keywords for even MORE ideal keywords that didn't come up with the first phrase
Continuing to run more long tail keywords through the keyword tools will churn out more and more long tail phrases.
The package comes with 3 spreadsheets and another 10 text files (in the folder marked apptclongtailkeywordresearch) with MORE keywords. Use all of them to run the above exercise and you'll be able to generate an endless list of keywords. Running just one of those phrases through MS uncovered excellent finds like this one:cheap microwaves under $30
- with 260 exact global searches a month, 8 PR0s on the first page and 9 pages with 0 backlinks. That's an easy keyword and certainly buyer-targeted! (And no Squidoo lens currently existing for that URL, btw - somebody grab that one!)Why use this instead of coming up with phrases on your own? Because Colleen's already done the research to find low competition, BUYER-TARGETED keywords and these keywords will lead to even more low competition, buyer-targeted keywords. She's shaved a whole step out of the process - one of the most time consuming steps, for that matter.
NO more struggling to come up with seed keywords and thinking you're the only one who can't find the "good ones". Plus, these small appliances she's covered are purchased all year long AND make great Christmas gifts, too, so there's sure to be an upswing in activity in December that won't die out completely come January.She's got all these other bonuses built into the product, too. Although I wasn't after them originally, I thought it would be great if I could get even more value for the money spent on the package. Well, inside is a set of blog headers for a number of appliance niches. If you have (or want to build) a site for any of the appliances covered by her package, you're good to go.
If you're just doing Squidoo - guess what? - you can use those headers IN your lens! Just download them to Photobucket and insert them for an eye-catching banner that dresses up your lens.
Next, take a look at her templates for doing articles, Doc sharing, PowerPoint presentations and Press Releases and use those to create content you can spread around the web to increase traffic and backlinks. If you have a site in the appliance niche, Colleen's package is a must besides just being a great source of keywords.
PLUS - did you know you can use the SAME keyword finding strategy from Squid Pro Quo to find topics to add to your review sites? The entire strategy can be adapted to your sites.
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Last Minute Holiday Online Shopping Tips to Prepare your Sites and Lenses
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This time of year, it's almost like shooting fish in a barrel - a saying that means it's just too darn easy. If you can get people over to Amazon, you should make sales.
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Online holiday shopping really starts on Cyber Monday. That day has repeatedly been my highest sales day each year. Traffic drops a bit after that but remains higher than the rest of the year until approximately December 20th.
That means that even if you miss out on Cyber Monday you still have several great weeks of activity so it's not too late to put up more Squid Pro Quo lenses or posts on your site targeting low competition keywords.
Getting them to Amazon is key, though. Make sure you have obvious calls to action like text links people know can be clicked, buy buttons or action buttons that link to Amazon, and even images that suggest people click on them to see more detail on Amazon.
Did you know Amazon has a page for most categories called Most Wished? It shows the products people have put on their wish list in Amazon more than other products in the niche.
USE THAT TO GENERATE MORE CLICKS TO AMAZON!
To find the Most Wished page for your niche, go to Amazon and enter your niche or navigate to the Category page in the left sidebar corresponding to your niche.
Click on the link to Bestsellers that shows just under the search box on Amazon.
Scroll down the right sidebar until you see Most Wished and click the link next to that heading that says See the Top 100. You might have to do some further drilling down using any categories showing again in the left sidebar.
In Squidoo, insert a Big Arrow module in your lens, get your affiliate link for that Most Wished page, and put it in the module. Use the title/text "Click here to see the Most Wished for (niche) for 2012!"
For sites, use a text link or a banner you create and link it to your affiliate link for the page on Amazon.
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What Can You Expect on Cyber Monday?
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What can you expect this time of year? Last November, my Amazon commissions from Cyber Monday to the end of the month (a period of just 3 days) was 40% of my commissions from November 1st through the 27th! In just 3 days I made nearly half of what I made in the first 27 days of the month. That's how big Cyber Monday is to us Amazon Associates.
It is not too late to make some little additions to your sites and lenses in order to prepare. Amazon runs a Cyber Monday deals page and, if I remember correctly, there are even some that are niche specific. Link to those pages on your sites and lenses. You can always remove the links later.
For sites, just put it on your home page, in your sidebar or in a few pages of your site that get the most traffic. Use either a text link that stands apart from the rest of your content, use one of Amazon's banners, or make your own banner or graphic.
For lenses, it might be hard to update a whole bunch all the evening before or the morning of. You can always edit the lens this weekend and get it ready for the link to that page. Just Save the lens and don't Publish the update just yet. When you have the link from Amazon, go into your lenses, insert the link, and THEN Publish the update. That will save you from eating up precious time on Sunday and Monday morning trying to figure out where to put the link.
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For OBI Members, don't miss...
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Two threads that clarify procedures for Squid Pro Quo and share time-saving lens building tricks:- Let's Build a Squid Pro Quo Lens
- How Long Does it Take You to Create a Lens
Both can be found in the Amazon section of the forum. If you haven't joined yet, you can get the WarriorForum special discount through this link:
http://www.extremereviewer.com/joinericastone.
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