This is the article #2 in my “Affiliate Marketing News” series, in which we will discuss the second step on the way to lucrative affiliate marketing. The first step is deciding on the best products to promote, and I gave you a few ideas on how to do it. Now you need to find the right keywords for your promotion.

You have probably already heard of what they call “long tail keywords.” These are phrases of at least 3 words or even more. Let me give you a simple example, which will make it very clear.

Let’s say your hobby is sewing and you found a great sewing patterns product. Google the key phrase “sewing patterns” and you will discover there are over 1,300,000 results to your search! In no way do you want to enter into this kind of competition. But if you search for the exact phrase “sewing patterns online,” Google will return only 10,600 results. When you are done reading this series of articles you will see that you could dominate this niche.

I have a tool that also tells me how many sites are actually optimized for this phrase. I can tell you right now that only 4 (that’s a four!) out of these 10,600 are optimized for “sewing patterns online.” True, the same wonderful tool tells me that “sewing patterns” is searched 176,000 times a month, while “sewing patterns online” is searched only 4,500 times a month.

However, this is not a bad search volume, and if you also use another phrase, like “sewing patterns costumes,” which receives over 2,000 searches a month and has zero web sites optimized for it; and if you also master the next steps of the plan - you will be able to set up a promotion for your sewing product and get high search engine results.

Keywords research is the single most important step on your way to success. It is the spinal column of marketing on the Internet. You can find a lot of help online: various tools and other resources that will make your research much easier.

You should always begin with the broadest term: “gardening,” “credit,” “weight loss,” “cars,” and you go from there to the long tail keyword: “online gardening tools,” “fast weight loss programs,” etc. Keep checking your findings on all the search engines and watch the results, finally you will discover 3-4 phrases of 3-5 words which are the least competitive and still have some search volume.

As I said, keywords research is the main step in our plan to reach success affiliate marketing. It would be wise if you invest your utmost in this stage. You can find many helpful resources online, free or relatively cheap, which will save you time and efforts.

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