I read a very interesting post over at SEOProToolz about using Wikipedia and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find new niches. It’s great, and you will get ideas you never even thought of. Better yet, you can repeat it at different times and get completely new results, so you won’t run out of ideas too quickly.

That’s a nice, simple way to get a new niche. But sometimes what you really need is ideas to expand your own website.

It very quickly occurred to me that this could also be useful in expanding my own sites, so I used the same technique on a few of them. Got some great keywords too, which can be used as article topics.

You can also use this on affiliate programs you promote. Point the keyword tool at the relevant site, and you’ll get all kinds of relevant keywords.

This is one of those freebies that can keep you working for a very long time. I spent a little time last night just putting in sites and seeing what came up. It extracted keyword combinations I certainly hadn’t thought of, and I got plenty of new article ideas, which is always good. Read the rest of this entry »

When it’s time to use more than free advertising to drive traffic to your website, one of the most effective ways is to use pay per click through quality services.

Pay per click is quite different from other methods of getting your sites into the search engines. Results are quick. You can know within hours if a campaign is bringing you traffic and sales. You can make a tiny change and know if it’s making things better or worse.

Just as the name implies, you pay for every click on your ad, no matter what happens thereafter. This can be highly profitable or you can burn through a ton of money in very little time. Much depends on what you are willing to pay for a click, how many people are searching for the terms you use, how effective your ad is and how effective your landing page is.

All this means that you need to keep a sharp eye on your pay per click campaigns. When you find out that they aren’t bringing in profit, you need to quickly make changes. You can’t even turn your back once you have a quality campaign well established. Some times, for no reason at all, a campaign that was turning a profit will start losing money.

In many areas, pay per click has become quite expensive, and it is hard to make a profit. However, profits are still to be had, or no one would be paying those prices. Read the rest of this entry »