Here are some tips on leveraging the new “Sell this card” feature on your blog or webpage:
CHOOSE YOUR TARGET TERMS
Start by searching for keywords to target by going to the Reports & Analysis section of the Administrative Settings page, and click on the “Traffic Analytics” link. Ah, the power of information.
For this purpose change a couple of the report settings. Change the report type to “Google Search Keywords” because Google is by far the most widely used search engine. Next to focus your efforts on what will likely be selling 3 - 6 months from now look at last year’s data for that date range. For example, in March set the date range from June 21st 2009 to September 21st 2009. Also consider setting the bounce rate field to 0% and setting the max rows to 100. Click the “Refresh Report” button.
Now, for the fun part, interpreting the data. This will be different for everyone and is well worth the investment of time. Here are three ways to focus on this information:
1) Out of these keyword phrases which ones are reflective of your work or most resonate with you? When creating content for a blog or webpage, it is always easier to create content on a subject that you have an affinity for and are passionate about! Your goal is to find a keyword phrase that relates to a topic that you would enjoy writing about... The content we are going to put together and publish is not to sell cards... It is to teach your readers something, and make sure they know that GCU has cards related to that topic, too!
2) Low bounce rate and/or high number of pages per visit. These indicate that users who find our content like our content – they stay for a while (don’t “bounce” away) and browse (visit many pages) thus have found something of interest. Users who find content they like are obviously more likely to buy!
3) Which keywords have low competition and high search volume? This method requires doing additional research on the keyword phrases by running them through Google’s free keyword research tool,
http://www.google.com/sktool or some other keyword research tool to find niches with low competition.
No matter how you come to the conclusion of your keyword phrase you are going to focus on the key is to pick ONE keyword phrase before moving on to the next step.
CREATING CONTENT
Now you have the keyword phrase you are going to target, great! The next step is to create 300 - 500 words of UNIQUE, keyword rich content to inform people about your keyword phrase. I can’t stress enough how important it is to create unique content here. Google is the all-seeing, all-knowing gatekeeper. If someone simply copies content from one webpage to another webpage, like Wikipedia, or uses the same content on multiple blog posts, Google can and will actually penalize both the blog or page that the content was placed on, as well as the website that the links on that page point to. To truly play this game, you need to follow the rules, and the rule is… Unique Content Only!
The goal with your content is to offer unique content that will inform users about something related to the keyword you selected. What can you teach your readers? What are you an expert on? What do you love to share with others??? The content you create can explain everything from art techniques, quilting, planning a birthday party, soccer, or anything else that is of interest to you. After you create this unique content, let the cards simply be a related item, not the main focus of the piece! Include a few links to some cards that match your content and keyword phrase, to make sure that the users who were attracted to read your unique article know that there are greeting cards available that match that topic, too! Again, the goal here is to educate your readers!
The other important element of the content is to make sure it is keyword rich. What does that mean? Let’s just say that you want to repeat the phrase a bit more than your high-school English teacher would have appreciated without going overboard of course. Your content should be natural to read and not have awkwardly repetitive placements of your keywords. Using the keyword phrase you select in the title of the blog page and post, if possible, as well as using it one or two times in each paragraph is going to help Google’s search engines know that your webpage is about that specific keyword phrase, and will make Google more likely to want to return your page when that phrase is searched versus content that only has the keyword phrase in it once. Also, you can use semantically related versions of your keywords–it does not have to be the exact keyword repeated over and over again. For example: race cars, racing cars, race car gear, how to race a car, etc.
Next, find 4 - 8 GCU cards that you want to promote in your content that best exemplify your keyword phrase. These could be your cards or even other GCU artists’ cards. To do this simply go to GCU and search for cards that you think are fitting and click on the “$” Sell This Card icon below the card thumbnail image. Copy the link for each card to a notepad as you will be pasting these links into your webpage or blog post. You can either use the text only links or the image links. I think your best bet is to use both, but keep in mind, people love pictures! I would personally post 2 image links for every 1 text link.
Let’s look at how far you’ve come:
1. You have identified a keyword phrase to target that relates to a popular search term that increases in the next 3 - 6 months.
2. You have created a 300 - 500 word, keyword rich article with 100% unique content and have identified 4 - 8 relevant cards that you will be directly promoting within this content.
Now, it is time to publish your content!
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