Website Content Development

Website content development involves doing research to discover if your favorite topic has the potential to be profitable.

In our last lesson on how to find an idea for a website, we talked about using supply and demand as a way to measure the potential of your website concept. Demand is measured by how often people search for a specific topic, and supply is measured by how many websites supply information on that topic. Dividing demand by supply gives you an idea of the potential for that particular keyword or phrase.

After determining the potential for your various ideas, you probably discovered one topic that really excites you and seems to have a lot of potential. Before you make the final decision on this, you'll need more information to determine whether this will be the most profitable topic for your website content development. You can do this by expanding your keyword list and checking out the competition.

Expanding your keyword list is important because it allows you to focus your website content development on a very specific topic. To do this, you will need to use the keyword suggestion tool supplied by the Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool to brainstorm more keywords for your topic. When the search box loads, type in your main keyword and click "Hit Me".

The keyword suggestion tool will return the results for your specific keyword, plus keyword phrases that are related to that term. Write down the keyword phrases that target your specific keyword phrase, plus the number of times that each was searched for.

Copy the results, deleting any keywords that aren't relevant to your topic. Continue using the search feature for your other keywords, and also record the results. You will want to build a list of at least 50 or more keywords, which may take some further investigation.

Think of terms that are closely related to your main topic to find other keywords. For example, in our last lesson we determined that the topic "cats" had a good potential. Related keywords that you could expand on might include cat supplies, cat food, cat books, etc.

Once you have run a search on your main keywords, sort your list from the highest number down. A high number of searches for your keywords indicates that there are a lot of people searching for information about your topic.

If the results are low (less than 20), this means that there isn't a lot of interest in this particular topic. Low interest will make it hard to generate enough traffic to make your website profitable. (Note: Keywords under you main topic can have a lower number if there isn't a lot of competition for that keyword.)

Using the previous example on the subject of "cats" for out website content development, the final results would look like this (deleting irrelevant keywords and low search numbers):

COUNT

56899
21823
15400
1407
1151
800
731
673
671
657
550
543
446
395
379
358
349
322

SEARCH TERM

pictures of cats
cats
cat
cat names
cat breeds
cat pictures
cat health
funny cat pictures
cat furniture
cat art
cat behavior
cat house
cat toys
cat houses
cat tree
cat carriers
cat food
cat supplies

Judging from the number of searches done on this topic, "cats" has good potential for website content development.

Now you will need to check out the competition for your concept. To do this, take the 5 to 10 most searched keywords from your list. You can do this research using the Search It tool again. Once the page loads, follow these steps to find the competition for your keywords:

This will give you the results from Google.com for your specific keyword. You need to click on each of the top 10 websites listed to see what each website is about. If the top 10 sites don't offer information that is relevant to your topic, maybe you have picked a wrong keyword for your website content development.

Using the "cat" example, even though "Artic cat" was searched for 43433 times, the top ten websites focus on a specific snowmobile, and not the type of cats that people have as pets. If you find similar results with some of your keywords, you may need to delete the off-topic keyword from your keyword list.

Make a list of the top ten websites that focus specifically on your topic. You can learn a lot from your competition. High ranking websites get to the top by focusing their website content development on a specific topic. They probably also make a profit off of their sites, so it's important to investigate their website content development methods.

Write down how your competitors generate money off their websites and how their websites are organized into different sections. You'll also want to find out what keywords they are targeting for their website.

To do this, look at the top of your computer screen. You should see the words "File", "Edit", "View", etc. Click on "View", and then choose "Source" from the drop-down menu. This will open notepad, which will display the html code for that particular website page.

You will need to concentrate on the description and meta keywords tags. Don't get frustrated if some websites don't use Meta Tags for their description and keywords. Just use the information from the websites that do.

The first thing that you will write down is the description, which tells you what this particular page is about. To find the description, look for <META NAME="description" CONTENT="whatever their description is".

For our "cat" example, the most on-target website listed the description as <META NAME="description" CONTENT="All about cats: cat health, cat names, cat care, choosing cat food, cat behavior, kitten care, getting a new cat, and all the aspects of living with a cat."

Next, you need to take note of the keywords that are being used on this page. To find the keywords, look for <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="......".

For the "cat" example the keywords listed are: "cats lovers cat behavioral problems scratching marking spraying cat litter box habits felines cat fancy kitty kitties feline breed standards breeders literature gifts animal health issues pet loss grief kittens, kitten care nutrition food veterinary, purr claws ferals homeless cats advocates advocacy".

If your competitor is using relevant keywords that you haven't considered, add them to your list of keywords.

While you are on your competitors website, you'll also want to see if they offer an affiliate program. When a website has an affiliate program, it means that they offer services or products for sale in which they will pay a commission for referrals. This can be important if you're considering making money using affiliate programs as part of your website content development.

To find out if a website has an affiliate program, look for the words "affiliate", "affiliate program", "make money with your website", etc. If the website does offer an affiliate program, check it out and make a note of commission paid for referrals.

You can also see if a particular website is an affiliate for another company. To do this, click on some of the recommended products that they feature. If this takes you to a new website, write down that website's information and check out their affiliate program.

Another way to check out the profit potential of your website concept is to find out how much your competitors they are willing to pay for your top keywords. To do this, use Search It. Once the page loads, follow these steps to find the competition for your keywords:

When the Google Keyword Tool loads, enter your keyword into the keyword variation box and choose "Show All" under choose columns to display. Type in the security code that is shown and click "Get Keyword Ideas" button. The results will show you the relative amount of advertisers bidding on that keyword. A solid green bars indicates that there are a large number of businesses bidding on that specific term, which can give you an indication that the profit potential for that keyword is probably high.

This has been a lot of work for one lesson. You need to review your results to determine whether you have picked the best topic for your website content development.

Ask yourself if the topic has a good number of searches per month. Are the competitors willing to bid on this topic? You also want to be sure that you have enough keywords to build a website around this topic. The final concept will form the foundation of your website success.

I know this seems like a lot to go through just to build a website, but you are building more than a website.

Think about it. Would you open an actual business on Main Street without thinking about who your customers might be and what your competitors doing? Of course not! The same reasoning applies to building a website; your research at this stage is the most important part of your website content development.

In our next lesson, you will work on expanding and refining your keyword list, which will help you further refine your website concept.