I'd already been thinking about the topic of my site for a couple of weeks before I received Site Build It! I have interests such as DJing and music production and so I had been considering building a site on one of those topics.
The Site Build It! Action Guide recommends that you choose a topic for your web site that you are interested in. I wholeheartedly agree with this.
I analyzed all three topics using the research tools that come with Site Build It! to find which one was the most profitable. I was happy to find that the Site Build It! research tool came up with about 50 or 60 related keywords and ranked them in order of profitability.
I found that Site Build It! would allow me to do a full Site Build It! brainstorm and research session only once a week. Thus it took me about four weeks using the research tools before all the profitable keywords were identified for possible site topics.
[UPDATE: Things have improved hugely since this was written. Now, with Brainstorm It!, you use the Google API key, which allows you 1,000 supply queries per day (no one ever hits the 1,000 queries per day limit. It is much much more than 1,000 key phrases). Also, you get 25 Wordtracker use credits, which also last a long time. If there are several hundred key phrases in your list and you do a Wordtracker request for demand, it will use only one credit for all those demands at the same time.To sum up, you can do really serious keyword research, which is essential for anyone building a website.]
I decided that a DJing site was profitable enough to pursue and since I DJ for fun, writing about it was easy and enjoyable. DJing is pretty low key, you get free booze and a good hourly rate to hang around in bars and play music. I found creating the web site was a nice opportunity to write anything I liked about one of my favorite topics. As a bonus I get email every day from people who share the same interests as me.
The research tool gave me a list of keywords that I could "win" in the search engines. These keywords became the topics for my first few articles. These "winnable" keywords are search terms that lots of people enter into search engines but are terms that don't throw up many good pages. In other words, high demand, low supply - a perfect opportunity.
The research tool works automatically after you enter a possible site topic keyword such as "DJ tips". Site Build It! looks on the Internet and finds keywords that are continually associated with the keyword you entered. It then builds a list of the most relevant keywords as well as giving you an indication of which keywords are popular searches in the search engines.
You create a list like this from the Site Build It! manager by using the brainstorm and research tool. In Site Build It! speak, this page is called your "master keyword list".
I printed out this list and kept it next to my computer while I was writing each articles. It is basically the plan for my entire site. The Site Build It! Action Guide tells you to do more detailed planning than this but I'm just not that organized!
This page was taken as a screen shot from the Site Build It! manager (and then printed out). Site Build It! automatically searches the Internet for keywords that relate to your site's theme. The numbers to the right of the keyword list indicate the demand (number of people entering that word in a search), the supply (number of web pages containing that keyword, in other words your competition) and profitability (rough guide to what keywords will be most successful at getting you traffic).
To produce the keyword list above, I clicked a button and ranked the keywords in order of profitability (keywords most likely to get traffic at the top). The idea is to write articles including keywords that many people are searching for so you can get lots of traffic.
Remember that when these people reach your site they will want to read something interesting which relates to the keyword they entered. As a general rule people search for information, not to buy things.
Number 17 on the list is the keyword "DJ equipment". You can see it has very high demand. This means it would be a good keyword to optimize the site for because a high ranking in the search engines for the search term "DJ equipment" should receive lots of traffic. In fact the index page of my site is optimized for this keyword.
On my DJ site I also used the keyword "technics turntables" for two of my articles. One article is titled "How to use technics turntables for DJing". I think this topic is a pretty good match for someone who types in those keywords. If my page comes up in the top 10 results then there's a good chance of getting the click to my site and a chance to make a sale.
Writing several good articles optimized to attract people from the search engines is a MUST. I've also written several articles on topics that only a few people search for. In the rest of the articles I tried to squeeze in as many profitable keywords as possible without making the articles sound unnatural. Choose one or two keywords for each page and concentrate on them.
If any of this doesn't make sense, don't worry. Site Build It! gives you good, clear instructions and comprehensive advice on search engine optimization.
