The Basics of Keyword Sniping

Keyword sniping is something I’ve been doing for close to a year now, but only recently has it truly turned profitable. Therefore, I figure I’ve finally got enough experience doing this to be comfortable sharing what I’ve learned about it over this year with my readers.

For those unfamiliar with the term “keyword sniping“, this is one of a few terms used by webmasters who create a website or blog specifically to fill a void left by an under-represented search engine keyword. In order for it to be truly effective, you’ll want to find situations where there are 2,000 or more searches a month and only a small amount of competition for that specific keyword you are targeting.

Find a Good Keyword to Target

When attempting to find a new keyword to snipe, you’ll need to use a tool to figure out which keyword you intend to target. You’ll need to try to find a keyword that is really specific, and preferably receives 2,000+ searches a month, while having only a small amount of competition (usually 400,000 or less search results). There are several tools that help you accomplish this, but you are probably going to have to invest a little money up front. When I’m doing this, I use Micro Niche Finder to locate under-represented keywords.

Getting A Good Domain Name

Once you’ve found the keyword you are going to go after, the next step is to find the best domain available for that keyword. Some people get caught up in old habits and spend time trying to find a good dot com domain. Remember that your site will not be after natural traffic, so any top-level domain will work just as well. I personally will buy dot info domains because they are only $3.00 right now at GoDaddy for the first year. If it doesn’t work out after a year, I’m only out the $3.00. If you insist upon having a dot com domain, you’ll want to grab domains with hyphens in them as this helps search engines separate keywords. If your domain is blogtips.com, search engines don’t know if this is supposed to be “blo gtips”, “b logtips”, or “blog tips.” You get the idea. Having a domain like blog-tips.com tells search engines exactly what your keywords are for your website.

Getting Your Website Started

This may take awhile the first time you set up your website, but once you’ve gotten the first one done you can reuse that template for any future attempted keyword snipes. Here are some things to keep in mind when getting setup:

• You’ll want to place banner advertisements on across the top of your page (usually below the title) and also on the left side of the page. This means either use a theme with a left sidebar or setup your theme to display ads within your posts on the left side. People read from left to right, so this way people are at least seeing your advertisements.
• Remove dates from your posts. Search engine traffic does not need to see the published date of your posts.
• Display recent posts towards the top of your sidebar (generally below your sidebar advertisements at the top). This helps the search engines to crawl your website.
• In the menu at the top, I like to display affiliate links where pages normally go. This could be affiliate programs related to your niche or something like Amazon Associates links to related content.

Starting Your Keyword Snipe

Once your website is all setup the way you want, the last step is to feed the search engines some traffic. You’ll want to write 10-20 posts related to the keyword you are targeting. In each post, I recommend linking to your blog’s homepage with select anchor text of your choice, though you’ll want to vary it a little bit to avoid setting off any alarms with search engines. Once done, just sit back and relax (or move on to your next keyword snipe). While it isn’t necessarily needed, you may want to add a new post once or twice a month to keep feeding the search engines more content. You may get some traffic early on, but it usually takes close to 6 months before your blog will truly start to bring in traffic. This is because your domain name is brand new and gets an automatic penalty from search engines.

Planning Ahead

Depending on the keyword you intend to snipe, you may want to plan ahead. As mentioned above, it can take 4-6 months before your snipe truly starts to pay off. This means if you decide to create a blog that is targeting a season keyword (Easter items, fireworks, turkey sales, black Friday, select Christmas items, etc.) you’ll want to finish getting your site setup 4-6 months ahead of time.

Tomorrow I’ll get into the mindset needed to be a keyword sniper. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the above, let me know in the comments below!