Building My Website Concept: Keywords

Learn how I decided on a website concept and created a list of hundreds of keywords.

The first day of building an affiliate website has nothing to do with the actual website, so I stayed away from all that cool software and nifty logo design tools and such.

The first day's work happened in my brain.

I started by thinking about all the things I'm interested in and that I have experience in. My list looks something like this:

reading novels, knitting spinning, dyeing natural fibers, online marketing/search engine optimization, raising animals (cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, goats, rabbits), growing a garden (flowers, vegetables, herbs), landscaping, permaculture, cooking, canning, drying and freezing fresh produce, cleaning with natural products, natural healing with herbs, writing

These are what I will refer to as keywords.

I decided to focus on knitting. I've been knitting for over 40 years, and I've done some pattern design. I wanted to do more, eventually putting my patterns into a book. I ran an online custom hand knitting website for a few years, and didn't want to go that route again. Selling knitted products is limited by how quickly I can knit. I really wanted to challenge myself to design my own patterns more.

As I say right at the top of my website, I'd rather be knitting! So why even start building an affiliate website, if I'd really rather just be knitting? Because we all need money: a roof over the head, food in the belly, and yarn close at hand...lots of yarn. The idea of creating a website quickly and easily that pulls in some spending money WHILE I'M KNITTING is an awesome concept.

An affiliate website is absolutely the easiest and fastest way to get into business online. It's a system that's been working for years, and it still works. Publisher-for-You simply provides the tools so you can concentrate on what you like to do and on doing what makes you money.

The whole process is fun. I'm all about fun.

It all starts with brainstorming your ideas. I used the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool and the Google Keyword Tool to expand on my own brainstormed keyword list and make note of how many searches were done in the last month for those terms.

Sometimes the Google Suggest Labs are helpful too.

Then I took some of those terms to the search engines and looked at the content meta tags of some of the top websites that are found by searches for those words. Those webmasters did a lot of my work for me, it's amazing how many words I'd overlooked.

My goal was to come up with a list of hundreds of words and phrases. It's a lot of work but my result is the backbone of the website concept I'm developing.

The last step to finding all the possible keywords is I put myself in the minds of my customers. What are they looking for, what do they need, what are their problems? I just kept writing down all my ideas. I came up with patterns, instructions, yarn, needles, knitting bags, knitters gloves, magnifiers, nifty tools for holding your pattern book, learning how to knit, teaching children to knit, and the titles of specific knitting books and dvds. Knitters need to find time for knitting, they may want to turn their craft into a business, they need simple fast nutritious meal menu ideas so they can knit more. They may want to raise their own sheep or rabbits, they may want to spin and dye their own wool.

I even wrote down misspellings and phrases written as one word, like nitting and knittingbooks. I won't use these in any content I write, but they come in handy if I decide to run any Adwords campaigns.

I also added variations such as knit, knits and knitted.

What do I mean when I say that this list is the backbone of my business and website concept? I'll use this keyword list to find related affiliate programs, forums, blogs, advertising partners, link partners, ideas for content, and appropriate Adwords campaigns if I decide to use them.

Just coming up with a huge list is at least one day's work; it took me a week, since I've got lots of other stuff going on too, and I found it difficult to have at this task for more than 2 hours at a time. It's a great cure for insomnia.

I'll find the best keywords and prioritize my list another day. If you're comfortable with spreadsheets, they help in the next step.

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