Is The Bum Marketer Right About THIS?

16 replies
He says that if you're marketing using article directories to rank on the search engines, you need to try to only target phrases that have about 1,000 searches or so. Yet, I had also learned a while back that when you're trying to rank for the keyword in the title, it's not the amount of competition that matters hardly at all, but how major the competition is. For example, if you're up against 3,000,000 sites, but most of what's on page 1 are sites like amazon, etc, then doesn't it not really matter? That would seem to go against what Travis says. Any thoughts on which methodology is more in line with the truth?

Personally, I feel that it's possible to go up against millions of sites if they weren't all that strong. Or maybe the Bum Marketer is trying to keep the number of competitors super low so it's possible to rank far more quickly?
#bum #marketer
  • Profile picture of the author good2go4
    It is going to be easier for you to make money with Bum Marketing if you pick a niche that has a good search rate per month and not too much in the competition stakes - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try and target other more competitive niches if you are passionate about them. And you are right on the aspect of looking at your competitiors pages to see what they have in terms of backlinks and things like that - of course it is possible to knock them off top spot if they have not got a lot of "juice" keeping them there. Just make sure that your business plan involves covering all aspects that Google considers when ranking their results not just back links or keywords in the title of the domain.

    Best of luck
    Lisa
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  • Profile picture of the author Ronny Kibet
    I think the bum marketer is right about the competion issue as you wont target wight loss and expect to win but is you create sniper article or website about 3000 competion without any authority sites you are quaranteed rank, i got this information from google sniper.
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  • Profile picture of the author terrapurus
    Well... look at this way.

    I found a phrase with about 4000 daily searches. Competition? About 6000 pages.

    Fantastic right? Except I did not touch it with a 10 foot pole.

    My competition were PR 6 and 7 .gov sites in 5 or so of the 10 positions.

    Never just look at the figures. Look at actual market place as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Kelsall
    Originally Posted by Long Beach Nathan View Post

    He says that if you're marketing using article directories to rank on the search engines, you need to try to only target phrases that have about 1,000 searches or so. Yet, I had also learned a while back that when you're trying to rank for the keyword in the title, it's not the amount of competition that matters hardly at all, but how major the competition is. For example, if you're up against 3,000,000 sites, but most of what's on page 1 are sites like amazon, etc, then doesn't it not really matter? That would seem to go against what Travis says. Any thoughts on which methodology is more in line with the truth?

    Personally, I feel that it's possible to go up against millions of sites if they weren't all that strong. Or maybe the Bum Marketer is trying to keep the number of competitors super low so it's possible to rank far more quickly?

    Don't pay attention to numbers, pay attention to what the actual competition is.

    People throw out numbers like:

    "only go after a keyword if it has less than XXXXX sites in quotation marks"

    Because it is easier to say that than it is to explain how to actually analyze the competition that is present.

    If you can beat the the majority of the 10 sites on the first page...How many competitors you have means absolutely nothing.

    Think about it for a minute. Lets say you are doing research and come across a keyword like "how to teach your dog to use the toilet" and you check to see how many competitors are there, and there are 100,000 competing sites in quotes...

    The common keyword research methods say you should throw it away, right? But, what if a couple of other marketers stumbled upon the keyword a couple months earlier and did some serious mass article submissions through various services and blog networks.

    How many "junk pages" were just added to the index...probably a ton...So, how many actual competing sites were there to begin with?

    It's all about the sites on the first page - the rest of them mean absolutely nothing.
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    • Profile picture of the author vicone
      He says that if you're marketing using article directories to rank on the search engines, you need to try to only target phrases that have about 1,000 searches or so.
      Others have already commented on the level of competition. However, the notion of "1,000 searches or so" suggests to me that the original author was indicating a level of demand, or potential traffic. In which case you would want to set yourself a minimum level of traffic for a particular keyword phrase. I usually set that limit at 1,000 searches per month but, in practice, find that I am usually targeting keywords that have higher levels - the higher the better.

      However, when targeting brand names, the level of traffic is likely to be lower but, being more targeted, usually has a higher conversion rate.

      Ivan
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      • Profile picture of the author Richard Van
        Originally Posted by vicone View Post

        Others have already commented on the level of competition. However, the notion of "1,000 searches or so" suggests to me that the original author was indicating a level of demand, or potential traffic. In which case you would want to set yourself a minimum level of traffic for a particular keyword phrase. I usually set that limit at 1,000 searches per month but, in practice, find that I am usually targeting keywords that have higher levels - the higher the better.

        However, when targeting brand names, the level of traffic is likely to be lower but, being more targeted, usually has a higher conversion rate.

        Ivan
        I'm with Ivan here,

        People are right here, what the competition is doing is more important than numbers but if had a keyword with badly optimized competition that was screaming out to buy something, "I'm a desperate buyer keyword" I don't care if it gets 20 searches a day, I rank for it, I make sales. The keyword itself is just as important, the more targeted the higher conversions. There are lots of variable to look at, numbers, type of keyword and competition.
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        • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Kelsall
          Originally Posted by Richard Van View Post

          I'm with Ivan here,

          People are right here, what the competition is doing is more important than numbers but if had a keyword with badly optimized competition that was screaming out to buy something, "I'm a desperate buyer keyword" I don't care if it gets 20 searches a day, I rank for it, I make sales. The keyword itself is just as important, the more targeted the higher conversions. There are lots of variable to look at, numbers, type of keyword and competition.
          Amen Dude!

          I'm the same way...I don't care if the keyword is getting 5 or 10 searches a month. If it's a BUYING KEYWORD and I can rank...I'm going to rank. I'll take one extra sale a month possibly more every day of the week.
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    • Profile picture of the author tpw
      Originally Posted by Jeremy Kelsall View Post

      Don't pay attention to numbers, pay attention to what the actual competition is.

      People throw out numbers like:

      "only go after a keyword if it has less than XXXXX sites in quotation marks"

      Because it is easier to say that than it is to explain how to actually analyze the competition that is present.

      If you can beat the the majority of the 10 sites on the first page...How many competitors you have means absolutely nothing.

      Think about it for a minute. Lets say you are doing research and come across a keyword like "how to teach your dog to use the toilet" and you check to see how many competitors are there, and there are 100,000 competing sites in quotes...

      The common keyword research methods say you should throw it away, right? But, what if a couple of other marketers stumbled upon the keyword a couple months earlier and did some serious mass article submissions through various services and blog networks.

      How many "junk pages" were just added to the index...probably a ton...So, how many actual competing sites were there to begin with?

      It's all about the sites on the first page - the rest of them mean absolutely nothing.

      Jeremy is right...

      Most of those numbers people give you for analysis purposes are pure BS...

      This Bum Marketer guy is blowing smoke up your butt...

      Didn't you notice it coming out of your mouth, when you opened your mouth to yarn? LOL

      Your competition on any keyword is all that matters...

      The real competition on any keyword will never be found looking at the number of pages returned by Google for a particular search phrase, in quotes or outside of quotes...

      If you understand how to understand your real competition for a search term, you can build a dozen links for it, and sometimes you can outrank the Wikipedia for a particular search phrase... I bet you thought that was impossible to do, didn't you? LOL

      So do most people who improperly utilize those "research tools"...
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      Bill Platt, Oklahoma USA, PlattPublishing.com
      Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Some people, in fact a lot of people, would rather have a rule to follow mindlessly than actually use that brain of theirs for more than keeping their ears apart. Truth is, many of them would rather buy a tool that follows the mindless rules for them.

        Here are some facts:

        > You are not competing with sites. You are competing with individual pages. The PR of the home page may have little effect on the PR of the listed page, and PR is only one fraction of the ranking formula in any event.

        > To reach the first page of search results, you only have to beat one other page, not all ten. Once you reach that page, if your title and description are more appealing than those above you, you will get the click. Regardless of some statistical study telling you what percentage of searchers click the top link, second link, etc. Think about it. Would you rather click on a title/description that matches what you are looking for, or the text labels from someones navigation bar?

        > Even if the statistics on clicks vs. slot position were true, would you rather have 70% of 1,000 views or 5% of 100,000? (For the arithmetically challenged, 70% of 1,000 = 700, 5% of 100,000 = 5,000)
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        • Profile picture of the author tpw
          Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

          Some people, in fact a lot of people, would rather have a rule to follow mindlessly than actually use that brain of theirs for more than keeping their ears apart. Truth is, many of them would rather buy a tool that follows the mindless rules for them.

          Here are some facts:

          > You are not competing with sites. You are competing with individual pages. The PR of the home page may have little effect on the PR of the listed page, and PR is only one fraction of the ranking formula in any event.

          > To reach the first page of search results, you only have to beat one other page, not all ten. Once you reach that page, if your title and description are more appealing than those above you, you will get the click. Regardless of some statistical study telling you what percentage of searchers click the top link, second link, etc. Think about it. Would you rather click on a title/description that matches what you are looking for, or the text labels from someones navigation bar?

          > Even if the statistics on clicks vs. slot position were true, would you rather have 70% of 1,000 views or 5% of 100,000? (For the arithmetically challenged, 70% of 1,000 = 700, 5% of 100,000 = 5,000)

          Wow... Didn't you hear? We are supposed to be like the rest of the mindless, non-thinking rubes... You broke the trend... LOL

          I think your second point is the most useful part of your post...

          A great Title / Description will always out-pull the pages in the top spot of the search engine... I have said that for years...

          And yet, for years, people have tried to convince me that I was wrong...

          I finally just accepted that common sense is uncommon...
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          Bill Platt, Oklahoma USA, PlattPublishing.com
          Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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  • Profile picture of the author Super Affiliate
    Like Jeremy said, you can totally outrank 1 million sites if the sites in the 1st page of Google is not that competitive. Say all the sites in the 1st page of Google have less than PR 4, Page Links less than 300, and not keyword domains, it's doable. Only thing you need to look for other than that is to check if these are authority sites or not. If not, you can go ahead and do your SEO.

    Joe
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  • Profile picture of the author mnonline
    The higher the keywords search per month, the more traffic you can get. It is best that you optimize your keywords in the title and texts. Use keywords that people usually search for. One of the SEO method.

    Repeat it several times in your texts to trigger the search engine. I believe that you still get decent traffic even though if you can't beat your competitions. One of my articles did get decent traffic for very competitive keywords. More articles will add it up in the long term.

    Just make sure that you can capture your visitor within your signature lines or you will lose those valuable traffic for good

    Good luck,
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  • Profile picture of the author Dave d
    I agree with wht Jeremy has to say. There are so many systems and forumlas that just give you the easier way to do something because it makes them look good.

    They dont go into detail because it would probably raise to many questions.

    I never look at the numbers of competing sites just the strength of competition on the first page.
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  • Profile picture of the author JackTriggs
    Just see what sites are ranking on the first page, if the competition is weak there than that's all that matters, coz the other million pages below thme will be just as weak
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  • Profile picture of the author ADukes81
    I look for 1,000 - 20,000. I wrote two articles yesterday and am on Google's first page for both with one of them in the 4th spot. I'm impressed and am sold of the power of Article Marketing.
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