If you use PayPerClick advertising campaigns on Search Engines, by now you have probably noticed how expensive it is compared to previous years. These days it seems as though every one knows about Google Adwords, Yahoo Search, and MSN Adcenter, and your competitive advantage has vanished due to the upsurge in competition. Your profits diminish while your advertising costs steadily increase. But hope is not lost! I’m going to share some secret keyword research strategies with you that will unleash a flood of cheap, profitable traffic from your PPC campaigns.

Secret #1: Amazon.com
Amazon.com is one of the largest retail sites in the world. They started out selling books and have morphed into a giant online retail mecca, where you can find almost anything you want, new or used. Although Amazon.com sells merchandise and is your competitor, they can also be a huge competitive advantage for you. This is thanks to the vast amount of data that can be collected from their site – if you know how to find it. There are two effective strategies that you can use to find hidden keyword gems.

The First Amazon Strategy
First, you will need to use Google’s External Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), though we’ll be utilizing a feature that many people ignore. Instead of the “Descriptive Words or Phrases” feature, select the radio button titled “Website Content”. This is a powerful feature that uses Google’s page analysis algorithm to determine what the specified URL content is all about. Here you will find various keywords and their search volume data, competition data, and the estimated bid prices that Google feels is relevant to that particular URL. This potent feature helps us uncover a goldmine of low competition keywords.

Next go to Amazon.com and click on any department displayed on the left hand side of the page. As an example I chose Electronics – TVs. Once that page has loaded, scroll down until you see the “Best Sellers” box on the right hand side. At the bottom of that box is a link that says “See all Bestsellers in Televisions”.

Click on it and you will be taken to the Televisions bestseller list. Copy the bestseller list page URL from your browser address bar and paste it into your Google Keyword Tool’s “Website Content Analyzer”, then click the “Get Keyword Ideas” button. In just a few seconds Google will produce a list of keywords – the jackpot of keyword research.

This list of keywords is typically much more of a “long tail” type of list. This is great because the competition for these is usually much lower, leaving the bid prices a lot cheaper. The long tail list is different because it’s generated from Amazon.com, a site that is specifically sales orientated, not wholly informational like Wikipedia.com. This means that people searching for these long tail terms are more interested in buying than the average searcher. You can apply this strategy to many sites on the Internet and uncover lots of low competition long tail phrases. Using Amazon.com is best for sales targeting and gets you the long tail “BUY” keywords, which will dramatically improve the ROI of your PPC Search Campaigns. Say hello to your new competitive advantage.

The Second Amazon Strategy
The second part of uncovering your untapped goldmine of keywords on Amazon.com, is to utilize their book search function for finding titles related to your products or services. To continue our example, I’ll do a search for Television books, specifically looking for book listings that have the “Look Inside” feature.

The “Look Inside” button is designed to give you a preview of the content and usually allows you to make an educated decision about the quality of the writing. For us however, it’s a goldmine of untapped keyword potential to use in our PPC Search Campaigns. Simply click on the “Index” of the book and you will see hundreds, even thousands of keywords that are related to your topic – most of them “Long Tail”.

This strategy alone can make your PPC Search Campaigns extremely profitable because of the amount, quality and availability of untapped keywords that you can use in your campaigns.

Secret #2: eBay.com
Ebay.com is arguably the largest virtual marketplace on the planet. Many of the buying and selling public start with a search on eBay to see how their prices compare. Here too is a competitive advantage, as we can simply utilize our first Amazon.com strategy on Ebay.com. Search your topic of interest on eBay in order to find relevant auction listings. For example, I’ll search for the keyword “Televisions” again. Once the list of auctions about Televisions is shown, I simply copy the URL from my browser address bar and enter it into the Google Keyword Tool “Website Content Section”. Finally I click the “Get Keyword Ideas” button. In just a few seconds, I have another list of great, long tail keywords, the “buy” kind that are so lucrative. As I said before, people who search these keywords are more likely looking to purchase something than merely find information on it. This is the perfect time to make sure that they see your PPC Search Ad!

Secret #3: Forums
This industry secret is more appropriate for people selling informational products than the retail kind that were the focus of the previous two secrets. It can however be extremely effective for all types of products if applied correctly. Look for forums focused on your specific topic by entering “Topic” Forum in the Google Search Engine. Continuing our existing example, I’ll enter “Television Forum” into Google. I then find forums that are focused on Televisions and explore the various forum topic threads. By entering these thread topic URLs into the Google Keyword Tool’s “Website Content Analyzer” and clicking the “Get Keyword Ideas” button I find more hidden keywords.

Hopefully, the select secrets revealed in this article will spark even more ideas for you to improve your PPC Search Campaigns. Using these exclusive methods of keyword research will help you discover a wealth of targeted keywords, and more importantly, uncover the ones that will give you the high ROI you are looking for. These untapped long tail buying keywords are the key to rediscovering your competitive edge in a flooded market. To be a serious player in today’s PPC Search game and enjoy lucrative traffic conversion rates, you must think outside the box and use every resource available to you to perform successful keyword research. If you aren’t using the Google Keyword Tool’s “Website Content Analyzer” then start using it today and watch your ROI grow!

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By Jon Shugart
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This article was originally featured in Mike Filsaime’s print newsletter, “MDC Monthly.” You can get a free trial copy shipped to your door by clicking here.
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Jon Shugart is a Software Engineer and Internet Marketing Professional who focuses on driving large amounts of traffic utilizing PPC. His powerful software application, Keyword Rockstar (www.keywordrockstar.com), is unmatched in the industry for both driving traffic and rapidly creating, winning PPC campaigns.

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