Mistakes that can kill you dream of having passive income and how to prevent it

Many times I have seen discussions between different people about what is important and how to do things in internet marketing and SEO. And there always is some struggle.

I've decided to give you my point of view on things that are important when you are starting your path to success.

It is NEVER a straight path, but if you avoid few mistakes that others did before you, it might take you less time to achieve your goals.

I'm not telling that I have all the answers, but I hope that well known experts in building niche websites business like Trent Dyrsmid and Spencer Haws would agree with me.

I also would like to know what is your point of view, so feel free to leave a comment



Chasing highest CPC value
If you are starting with AdSense websites (MFA) you are probably thinking: "I will find most profitable keywords and build sites for those keywords".
I will save you trouble, here is a list of keywords with highest CPC:
Insurance - CPC: 54,91 USD
Loans - CPC: 44,28 USD
Mortgage - CPC: 47,12 USD
It looks really nice, isn't it?
First of all there is a lot of competition for the most popular keyword phrases.
Secondly, this values show only how much advertises are willing to pay Google for clicks on the 1st page of SERP and it doesn't mean that you will get this kind of money when someone clicks on ad on your website. You will get just a fraction of this high paying CPCs.
Here is why: if you have AdSense on your website you are in Google Delivery Network which is a little bit different than Google SERP. Advertisers are paying much less for showing their ads in Delivery Network.


Ad competition vs. seo competition
If you are using for example Google Keyword Tool you might be confused with "competition" column. Many times people are confusing it with SEO competition and it makes a problem. When you start choosing keywords with lowest competition in Google AdWords you will hurt yourself. Here is why: this column is representing the competition between advertisers for your keywords. The higher advertiser competition, the better your AdSense ads will perform.
If you are building a website for AdSense you must be interested in finding keyword with highest advertiser competition because this means that ads on your website will be relevant to you content, which leads to more clicks and more money for you.
If you choose keywords with lowest ad competition you will end up with random ads that are not relevant to your content and do not convert into clicks.


BROAD, PHRASE and EXACT match
Always choose [EXACT] match type. Other two will just confuse you. [EXACT] shows you search volume for exactly your keyword phrase with exact order and without any other words in it.
For example if your keyword is "dog training":
[EXACT] match will show you number of searches done exactly the same way
"PHRASE" match will show you also searches like "best dog training", "dog training in NY"
BROAD match will show you also searches like "dog hunters training" and many other completely unrelated to your keyword.


PageRank
Domain PageRank or website PageRank
There is no such thing as "domain PageRank". PageRank is always assigned to a specific webPAGE. And if someone is telling you that he has "website with PageRank 4" it is not true. What he is actually telling you is that homepage of his website has PageRank 4, it does not say anything about PageRank on other pages of his website. Sometimes you might even get webpages with higher PageRank than its domain's homepage.
If you want to know what is an "average" popularity of all webpages on a single domain you must go for metric like "domain mozRank".

"Toolbar PageRank" vs. "real PageRank"
There are 2 types of PageRank

"Toolbar PageRank" with range from 1 to 10. All SEO tools in the world are showing you this kind of PageRank. Every time you see a webpage with PR4, PR3 or PR7 you see this PageRank.
It is updated randomly, sometimes once per month and sometimes updates can take much longer.
It is not used in ranking algorithms.

"The Real PageRank" from 0 to 1 - internal, and never revealed to the world. This PageRank is used by Google in their ranking algorithms. This one is updated even many times per day.

There are some consequences:
- even if webpage has high toolbar PR it doesn't mean that it really has any PageRank (because of delayed updates). This is especially dangerous when you want to buy website. If you are basing your decision only on PR value and don't know how PageRank really works you might end up with useless website without any real value.
- if you want to buy a website always check multiple metrics: check backlink profile, check backlink diversity (if backlinks are from the same IP it's not good), compare different metrics for example compare PageRank with mozRank, if the difference is to big (more than 1,5) it might be sign of something bad.


Backlinks from high PageRank websites vs. backlinks from high PageRank webpages
Many times you can see offers for high PR backlinks. For example "PR7 backlinks". You must be very careful what you are really buying. Always check what kind of backlink it really is. You can get two types of backlinks:
1. Backlink from webpage with PR 7
2. Backlink from some insignificant webpage on a domain with PR7 on its homepage.
This is very important distinction.
In type 1 you are getting really what you are paying for with real value. The second type brings you absolutely no value in comparison to type 1.



Strength of competition in SERP
This is very controversial topic. There are two types of people:

1. People who say that only strength of competition on the first page of SERP is important.
2. People who say that strength of competition is represented by the number of results and the lower number, the lower competition.

I'm totally rejecting second point of view. In my opinion number of results does not matter at all. The only thing that you should be concern is competition on the first page because you want to be right there on the top and not to win with the webpage from 70th page.
Let me give you an example: if you want to win a marathon do you consider all of the participants as your competitors or just the top few who might be better than you? Why would you be worried about person who is on the 1000th place? Same with SEO competition. The only thing that matters is to rank on the first page of SERP and preferably on the first place.


Searching the wrong Google
It happens for example if you are from Germany and you are trying to build website for US.
Depending on your location and other parameters you will see different SERP. Even if you would go to Google search page dedicated to specific country you still might see results that are personalized to you, because Google recognizes when you are logged in and can use your search history.
You have few solutions to avoid this problem:
1. Go to Google Adpreview - comes very handy when you are building AdSense websites and need to check advertisers competition for your keywords
2. Use "pws=0" at the end of the URL of your search - this will eliminate personalization of search results
3. Use Chrome extension called mozBar. One of the features of this tool is the ability to pre-configure SERP, which allows you to choose from what kind of results do you want to see in SERP.


EMD - Exact Match Domains
Many people are focusing only on getting EMDs for their keyword forgetting that this is only one of many factors determining your rankings. What would you do with keyword with good CPC, good search volume, and low competition in SERP but without EMD available? Many would have abandoned this opportunity. It's like refusing to go on a date with Miss America just because she has blue eyes and someone told you that this is a bad sign.
There are some solutions for having almost perfect domain name if EMD is taken for top TLDs (com, ort, net).
You can have keyword in domain by:
- going for partial EMD by adding letter/word at the beginning or at the end of it, e.g. if your keyword is "dog training" you might consider domain "dogtrainighq.com" or "bestdogtraining.com
- use other ccTLDs, I'm not using this method but I know that some people are successful using it. Check for EMD in .co, .cc, or other different extensions. There is high probability that full EMD is still available.


Kris