Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself...)

Chris Sweeney · 10-21-2010, 09:29 AM

Ok, so right now I am kinda p****d off but kinda happy and laughing at myself at the same time. I'll explain why, and I'll try to make it as brief as possible.

So 2 months ago I purchased 6 new domains (using just the exact keyword I was going for in each domain, and either .com, .net, or .org). I used the Google Keyword Tool to do my keyword research and found some great keywords with 3000+ searches per month and less than 100,000 phrase-match competition in Google. And guess what? I'm now in the top 5 of Google for 3 of those 6 domains I bought. Woo hoo/Yippee/Yayyyy, right?! WRONG!

After having those top spots in Google and wondering why I was still getting minimal traffic and minimal clicks/sales, I decided to start over from square one - my keyword research phase (to see whether I had made a mistake or if people were really searching for the keywords I chose). And here's what I came up with.

Originally, one of the keywords got 3300 searches per month, and I am actually at number 2 in Google for it now. So at about 100 searches per day, I was expecting to get maybe 40 of those visitors, and for 10-20 of them to click on an AdSense ad.

NEVER HAPPENED. Wanna know why?

BECAUSE I FORGOT TO SWITCH THE GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL TO EXACT MATCH/PHRASE MATCH - IT WAS STILL ON BROAD MATCH! Ahhhhh! That keyword actually gets......drumroll please......a whopping 26 exact searches per month! Wahoooo! I can feel that traffic coming from miles away! (can you sense the sarcasm?

)

So yeah I was mad, but at the same time, I'm pretty happy because now I think I've finally found an answer to the question "Why the heck aren't these sites making any darn money or getting any darn traffic?!" So lesson learned! I'm actually quite excited to begin my "new era" of keyword research and I hope you don't make the same mistake that I did!

Chris

P.S. I'd absolutely love to hear if you made that same mistake or one similar. It will make me feel like much less of a jack-wagon!

Barry Unruh · 10-21-2010, 09:46 AM

Great reminder post for all of us!

I've made the same mistake, but thank goodness only on one blog and did not get too deep into the project before I ran it through Market Samurai and went "What the....."

petelta · 10-21-2010, 09:50 AM

I think we have all done this in the beginning Chris lol. I think it was about 5 websites into my internet marketing career when I looked back and realized not one of them was for a good keyword.

You learn though and never make that mistake again lol.

Don't think your sites are a total loss though. If you have a decent amount of material on your site and have a good sales funnel to make money from it, don't hesitate to get other sources of traffic to it.

There are lots more ways to get traffic then search engines and you can still get that page ranked for good keywords without the domain being exact.

I can tell by the sound of your post that you are going mostly for search engine traffic right now and that's understandable. I was there at one point too....

You live and learn.

Travis

JohnMcCabe · 10-21-2010, 09:56 AM

Chris, you have a healthy attitude. Good job...

At least you didn't do like one person I won't mention, but carries a fish around the forum with him, who set a nice Adwords campaign and linked it to his download page instead of his sales page...

Stephen Bray · 10-21-2010, 10:01 AM

I think keyword research is one
of those skills that needs practice.

Also you must be prepared to drop
some bloopers.

It seems like your keywords would
be OK as one of a number of posts
on your theme.

So, it's difficult to say, without
knowing your site, but most likely
you need to amend your front
page, and add more long-tail-kw
posts.

Or you could simply buy a new
domain and start again, which
can be the cheapest option.

Stephen

Superior Content Creation · 10-21-2010, 10:03 AM

Yep, for a long time I didn't even realize that was the way to go about it...LOL And then I did it on accident once as well. I've still got some domains I got that way and trying to figure out what to do with them. I always double check all my numbers before I purchase now.

King Shiloh · 10-21-2010, 10:05 AM

Thanks for the heads up. It's better to learn from someone else's experience.

Michael Mayo · 10-21-2010, 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

Chris, you have a healthy attitude. Good job...

At least you didn't do like one person I won't mention, but carries a fish around the forum with him, who set a nice Adwords campaign and linked it to his download page instead of his sales page...

Talk about going all out just to give something away...ROFLMAO
I think I remember that guy telling the story here on the WF a while back.

Chris, You have a good attitude.
Most of us have done things that weren't what we thought we were doing
in the past. Live and learn. I bet you won't do it again RIGHT?

Have a Great Day!
Michael

PS. John, You may not have made that mistake if you would put down the
fish and type with your hands for a change.

ELVISTHEPELVIS · 10-21-2010, 10:12 AM

Every time I see a good volume of searches I always double check to see if it is broad or exact. Yeah, that has got to stink but at least you will never make the mistake again.

Brian

Tom L · 10-21-2010, 01:45 PM

Oh boy... do I understand the feeling. I have done the same with my first two sites... lol... I thought wow they have around a 100 people coming in per day. The additional mistake I made was that I did not know how to rate the competition very well and it was not that easy for a small niche. After a month and a half I looked back and found out they only get about 37 visitors per day and now after google updated their keyword tool it is 7. The lesson was great and imagine that... I managed to get to position 3 on google with my first site.

Live and learn

deloriagod · 10-21-2010, 01:59 PM

Man I did that on my first couple of websites. It all looked too good to be true, and it was. We all make silly mistakes, but what matters is that we learn from them. These days I'm a bit on the fence about even using keywords in title. It's starting to look really spammy to me, so I can only imagine how normal internet users feel.

cagliostro · 10-21-2010, 02:20 PM

Exact is not what it is needed, Phrase is more likely.

Benguy · 10-21-2010, 05:45 PM

I actually did the exact same thing for my first four blogs lol, you're in good company. And yes, it is rather exciting when you find out you did everything right except for one very important part

terryd · 10-21-2010, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cagliostro

Exact is not what it is needed, Phrase is more likely.

No you are wrong, exact is what was needed in this situation......

Jacob Martus · 10-21-2010, 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Sweeney

I was expecting to get maybe 40 of those visitors, and for 10-20 of them to click on an AdSense ad.

Just a heads up so you don't get your hopes up...expecting a 25-50% CTR is being very very optimistic. It will of course depend on your niche, but I would say shoot for between 5 and 10%. So out of 40 visitors/day, expect 2 to 4 clicks per day. You may very well get more, but going in with that kind of assumption is going to set you up for a disappointment.

Mike Anthony · 10-21-2010, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Sweeney

P.S. I'd absolutely love to hear if you made that same mistake or one similar. It will make me feel like much less of a jack-wagon!

Well be prepared to feel better then. I've been doing this for quite some time but I did that in a rush about two weeks ago. Only thing is I caught it before committing to the keyword phrase. Easily could have gone through . Just went in checking something else and realized what I had done.

seoindiaforu · 10-22-2010, 01:48 AM

I do not think you have done a very big mistake.You should focus on promoting your website and you can rank well for all those keywords you are targeting.Although getting a exact domain helps but even a broad phrase keyword domain can get you good results.

thebitbotdotcom · 10-22-2010, 02:19 AM

Google Keyword Tool claims another victim! Don't feel bad. It has happened to all of us.

rinor81 · 10-22-2010, 03:08 AM

Oh man, great post - thank you!
I bought some domains and it showed me 12,000 searches a month, now I see in EXACT it's only 70 a month!!! What a difference oh my god!
I bought about 20 domains, well....I will be using and building them but thank you for sharing, now we all know we need to search for Exact...
Good Luck all.

F1SEO · 10-22-2010, 03:32 AM

A timely reminder of the importance of good, and relevant keyword research. Because the default setting on GAKT are broad match a lot of people still see those values as accurate not realising that exact match is a lot more accurate.

brettb · 10-22-2010, 04:51 AM

Yeah, The Keyword Academy teaches the importance of the EXACT matching.

We've also found out there are just massive differences between the old and new Google keyword tool search volumes.

On top of that, my highest paying new keyword actually says it has $0.04 bids in the keyword tool, so it's all completely meaningless really!

diamondman · 10-22-2010, 07:30 AM

I actually came here to ask question but the discussion has already answered my question

spyoftheworld · 10-22-2010, 07:58 AM

Oh That's gonna drive me crazy man
but that's really a lesson you won't forget
Thanks for sharing

theleathercollection · 10-22-2010, 09:03 AM

Yes, the google keyword tool has changed alot just in the past few months. I just re-did all of my keyword research because I also didn't do exact. I got lucky and a lot of my keywords weren't that far off.

jhonsean · 10-22-2010, 09:09 AM

We've always learn for what we've done the only good thing here is you may lessen the worst scenario that will come into your sites.

Dan Weaver · 10-22-2010, 09:44 AM

One of my clients got stung by this... (How bad is this)...

There a site call RankPay... that is a 'performance based SEO' firm ... Google it and have a look... when you enter a keyword, it returns a load of prices for reaching the 30 to 20 spot, 19 to 10, 9 to 4 and the top 3. It also displays the estimated number of global searches for that term. Compare it to the Google Suggestion Tool and you'll see they're displaying the broad search!! Totally misleading!!

10-21-2010, 09:29 AM	#1
Chris Sweeney HyperActive Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Ambler, PA (suburb of Philly) Posts: 418 Thanks: 68 Thanked 35 Times in 24 Posts Social Networking Contact Info	Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself...) Ok, so right now I am kinda p****d off but kinda happy and laughing at myself at the same time. I'll explain why, and I'll try to make it as brief as possible. So 2 months ago I purchased 6 new domains (using just the exact keyword I was going for in each domain, and either .com, .net, or .org). I used the Google Keyword Tool to do my keyword research and found some great keywords with 3000+ searches per month and less than 100,000 phrase-match competition in Google. And guess what? I'm now in the top 5 of Google for 3 of those 6 domains I bought. Woo hoo/Yippee/Yayyyy, right?! WRONG! After having those top spots in Google and wondering why I was still getting minimal traffic and minimal clicks/sales, I decided to start over from square one - my keyword research phase (to see whether I had made a mistake or if people were really searching for the keywords I chose). And here's what I came up with. Originally, one of the keywords got 3300 searches per month, and I am actually at number 2 in Google for it now. So at about 100 searches per day, I was expecting to get maybe 40 of those visitors, and for 10-20 of them to click on an AdSense ad. NEVER HAPPENED. Wanna know why? BECAUSE I FORGOT TO SWITCH THE GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL TO EXACT MATCH/PHRASE MATCH - IT WAS STILL ON BROAD MATCH! Ahhhhh! That keyword actually gets......drumroll please......a whopping 26 exact searches per month! Wahoooo! I can feel that traffic coming from miles away! (can you sense the sarcasm? ) So yeah I was mad, but at the same time, I'm pretty happy because now I think I've finally found an answer to the question "Why the heck aren't these sites making any darn money or getting any darn traffic?!" So lesson learned! I'm actually quite excited to begin my "new era" of keyword research and I hope you don't make the same mistake that I did! Chris P.S. I'd absolutely love to hear if you made that same mistake or one similar. It will make me feel like much less of a jack-wagon!

10-21-2010, 09:46 AM	#2
Barry Unruh Loving The Philippines War Room Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Pampanga, Philippines Posts: 1,737 Blog Entries: 1 Thanks: 478 Thanked 668 Times in 475 Posts Contact Info	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Great reminder post for all of us! I've made the same mistake, but thank goodness only on one blog and did not get too deep into the project before I ran it through Market Samurai and went "What the....."
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10-21-2010, 09:50 AM	#3
petelta Travis Petelle War Room Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Nashville, TN Posts: 1,405 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 484 Thanked 1,065 Times in 276 Posts Social Networking Contact Info	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. I think we have all done this in the beginning Chris lol. I think it was about 5 websites into my internet marketing career when I looked back and realized not one of them was for a good keyword. You learn though and never make that mistake again lol. Don't think your sites are a total loss though. If you have a decent amount of material on your site and have a good sales funnel to make money from it, don't hesitate to get other sources of traffic to it. There are lots more ways to get traffic then search engines and you can still get that page ranked for good keywords without the domain being exact. I can tell by the sound of your post that you are going mostly for search engine traffic right now and that's understandable. I was there at one point too.... You live and learn. Travis
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10-21-2010, 09:56 AM	#4
JohnMcCabe Happy Hooker War Room Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: North of the Peace River, Southwest Florida, USA. Posts: 8,038 Thanks: 2,931 Thanked 4,902 Times in 2,616 Posts Social Networking	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Chris, you have a healthy attitude. Good job... At least you didn't do like one person I won't mention, but carries a fish around the forum with him, who set a nice Adwords campaign and linked it to his download page instead of his sales page...
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10-21-2010, 10:01 AM	#5
Stephen Bray HyperActive Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Amos Beach, 12 Miles North of Rhodes, Turkey Posts: 115 Thanks: 9 Thanked 34 Times in 28 Posts Social Networking Contact Info	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. I think keyword research is one of those skills that needs practice. Also you must be prepared to drop some bloopers. It seems like your keywords would be OK as one of a number of posts on your theme. So, it's difficult to say, without knowing your site, but most likely you need to amend your front page, and add more long-tail-kw posts. Or you could simply buy a new domain and start again, which can be the cheapest option. Stephen
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10-21-2010, 10:03 AM	#6
Superior Content Creation James Druman War Room Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Current' "hanging out" in Southeast Asia. Posts: 410 Thanks: 974 Thanked 98 Times in 59 Posts Social Networking Contact Info	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Yep, for a long time I didn't even realize that was the way to go about it...LOL And then I did it on accident once as well. I've still got some domains I got that way and trying to figure out what to do with them. I always double check all my numbers before I purchase now.
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10-21-2010, 10:05 AM	#7
King Shiloh Banned War Room Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Port Harcourt, Nigeria Posts: 1,623 Thanks: 503 Thanked 410 Times in 270 Posts Social Networking Contact Info	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Thanks for the heads up. It's better to learn from someone else's experience.

10-21-2010, 10:12 AM	#9
ELVISTHEPELVIS Active Warrior Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 78 Thanks: 33 Thanked 10 Times in 9 Posts Social Networking	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Every time I see a good volume of searches I always double check to see if it is broad or exact. Yeah, that has got to stink but at least you will never make the mistake again. Brian

10-21-2010, 01:45 PM	#10
Tom L HyperActive Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Brooklyn / Hamptons Posts: 188 Thanks: 3 Thanked 26 Times in 15 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Oh boy... do I understand the feeling. I have done the same with my first two sites... lol... I thought wow they have around a 100 people coming in per day. The additional mistake I made was that I did not know how to rate the competition very well and it was not that easy for a small niche. After a month and a half I looked back and found out they only get about 37 visitors per day and now after google updated their keyword tool it is 7. The lesson was great and imagine that... I managed to get to position 3 on google with my first site. Live and learn

10-21-2010, 01:59 PM	#11
deloriagod Motivationally Challenged War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2010 Posts: 360 Blog Entries: 3 Thanks: 38 Thanked 22 Times in 22 Posts Social Networking	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Man I did that on my first couple of websites. It all looked too good to be true, and it was. We all make silly mistakes, but what matters is that we learn from them. These days I'm a bit on the fence about even using keywords in title. It's starting to look really spammy to me, so I can only imagine how normal internet users feel.
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10-21-2010, 02:20 PM	#12
cagliostro HyperActive Warrior Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 474 Thanks: 19 Thanked 14 Times in 14 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Exact is not what it is needed, Phrase is more likely.

10-21-2010, 05:45 PM	#13
Benguy Active Warrior Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 83 Thanks: 17 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. I actually did the exact same thing for my first four blogs lol, you're in good company. And yes, it is rather exciting when you find out you did everything right except for one very important part

10-22-2010, 01:48 AM	#17
seoindiaforu HyperActive Warrior Join Date: May 2010 Posts: 123 Thanks: 3 Thanked 5 Times in 5 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. I do not think you have done a very big mistake.You should focus on promoting your website and you can rank well for all those keywords you are targeting.Although getting a exact domain helps but even a broad phrase keyword domain can get you good results.

10-22-2010, 02:19 AM	#18
thebitbotdotcom Senior Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: U.S. Gulf Coast... Posts: 1,791 Blog Entries: 119 Thanks: 167 Thanked 192 Times in 158 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Google Keyword Tool claims another victim! Don't feel bad. It has happened to all of us.
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10-22-2010, 03:08 AM	#19
rinor81 Advanced Warrior Join Date: Jul 2010 Posts: 514 Thanks: 70 Thanked 15 Times in 15 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Oh man, great post - thank you! I bought some domains and it showed me 12,000 searches a month, now I see in EXACT it's only 70 a month!!! What a difference oh my god! I bought about 20 domains, well....I will be using and building them but thank you for sharing, now we all know we need to search for Exact... Good Luck all.
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10-22-2010, 03:32 AM	#20
F1SEO HyperActive Warrior Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: , , . Posts: 113 Thanks: 65 Thanked 8 Times in 6 Posts Social Networking	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. A timely reminder of the importance of good, and relevant keyword research. Because the default setting on GAKT are broad match a lot of people still see those values as accurate not realising that exact match is a lot more accurate.
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10-22-2010, 04:51 AM	#21
brettb Hubpages Fanboy War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: London, UK Posts: 359 Thanks: 122 Thanked 35 Times in 34 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Yeah, The Keyword Academy teaches the importance of the EXACT matching. We've also found out there are just massive differences between the old and new Google keyword tool search volumes. On top of that, my highest paying new keyword actually says it has $0.04 bids in the keyword tool, so it's all completely meaningless really!

10-22-2010, 07:30 AM	#22
diamondman Active Warrior Join Date: Jul 2010 Posts: 37 Thanks: 0 Thanked 3 Times in 3 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. I actually came here to ask question but the discussion has already answered my question
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10-22-2010, 07:58 AM	#23
spyoftheworld HyperActive Warrior Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 126 Thanks: 9 Thanked 5 Times in 5 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Oh That's gonna drive me crazy man but that's really a lesson you won't forget Thanks for sharing

10-22-2010, 09:03 AM	#24
theleathercollection HyperActive Warrior Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 112 Thanks: 0 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post Social Networking	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. Yes, the google keyword tool has changed alot just in the past few months. I just re-did all of my keyword research because I also didn't do exact. I got lucky and a lot of my keywords weren't that far off.
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10-22-2010, 09:09 AM	#25
jhonsean Advanced Warrior Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 852 Thanks: 0 Thanked 26 Times in 26 Posts	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. We've always learn for what we've done the only good thing here is you may lessen the worst scenario that will come into your sites.

10-22-2010, 09:44 AM	#26
Dan Weaver SEO \| Marketing \| Design War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Reading - UK Posts: 21 Thanks: 10 Thanked 8 Times in 7 Posts Social Networking	Re: Lesson Learned! A Time-Wasting & Money-Wasting Mistake On Keyword Research (I'm kicking myself.. One of my clients got stung by this... (How bad is this)... There a site call RankPay... that is a 'performance based SEO' firm ... Google it and have a look... when you enter a keyword, it returns a load of prices for reaching the 30 to 20 spot, 19 to 10, 9 to 4 and the top 3. It also displays the estimated number of global searches for that term. Compare it to the Google Suggestion Tool and you'll see they're displaying the broad search!! Totally misleading!!