Using Google to Target Bloggers & the Mainstream Media with Search Queries

Just how one does market research to see how competitive a marketplace is, you can also do market research to view how important some ideas have been historically.

Google Trends shows historical search trends and Google's experimental history search will show published pages based on associated reference time. Google News also allows you to search by timeframe.

Services such as the Yahoo! Buzz Index show what is hot right now. Social bookmarking sites, social news sites, and meme trackers show what stories are hot right now, and were hot in the recent past. When you want to gain access to the media, use the above sources to research what they thought was important in the past. Either look at your exact field, or look to a more mature market to predict what issues will become important in your market. You are basically going to target an idea to create what some people term as link bait. Link baiting background available here.

Once you get an idea, spend whatever is necessary to create a piece of content (text, video, whatever) that is the best piece of content on that topic. It can be history of x, don't get scammed by y, or z do it yourself tips. Heavily integrate that content into your site's internal link structure, and make no attempt to directly profit from it...simply make it easy to link at or want to reference. Consider this content as a cheap marketing cost.

Ask a few friends what they think of your content's title. Ensure it sounds authoritative and/or buzz-worthy (one or both, depending on your target market and story idea). Promote your article to friends, email a few popular bloggers who might like the story, and if you know someone with powerful social media accounts ping them too.

Ensure your site appears credible.

If you are in a new field or have a trusted domain doing all the above might be enough to garner top rankings. If you have a new site in an old field there still is hope, but you may need to create video content that you can post on sites like YouTube or venture into PPC ads. :)

If you buy PPC ads use my keyword list generator or a similar tool to generate a list of various permutations of the targeted phrase. Create an ad campaign with ad groups and ad copy for each relevant keyword basket.

I did this for an affiliate site that is less than a year old, and bid 50 cents a click on AdWords. I was the only advertiser for most of the targeted keywords, got a 25% ctr for high volume search terms at 8 cents a click.

AdWords Bids.

Some members of the media also contacted us wanting face time for television and national radio exposure. As the site ages and gets more exposure we will get a lot more of that.

One could use the same idea to target key bloggers by using AdSense's site targeting function on their blogs.

Published: May 17, 2007 by Aaron Wall in marketing

Comments

Abdul Rahman
May 17, 2007 - 8:02am

Nice refresh there, Aaron. Although the last tips have been repeated many times before (if I remember it correctly, it's on this blog).

Urrgh, to find a friend to look for the contents is hard in internet marketing field. They might use the contents for their own benefits.

Seoidiot
May 17, 2007 - 2:16pm

So if I was to put the keyword on my page loads of times you'd say thats SEO?

blake
May 17, 2007 - 3:38pm

You can't repeat this type of thing too much for the linkbait-retarded like myself. These are complex ideas.

May 17, 2007 - 5:49pm

So if I was to put the keyword on my page loads of times you'd say thats SEO

That might be YOUR version of SEO :)

Justin Anderson
May 17, 2007 - 7:30pm

Wow! Nice CTR! Can I ask what the keyword group was pertaining to that you listed the Adword stats for?

About the rest of the post... very interesting point that looking at the past can help you in the future ;) I know that applies to life in general, but didn't make the connection to use that algon with the tools you linked to in the post to see what a specific market might be doing based off of historical trends from similiar markets.

Great post, Aaron!

May 17, 2007 - 9:32pm

Can I ask what the keyword group was pertaining to that you listed the Adword stats for?

You can ask, but I can't answer. That site has partners who would be displeased if I gave away the vertical.

feedthebot
May 18, 2007 - 7:49am

Great article, and very timely for a few things spinning around in my mind. You have been posting like a monster, thanks.

Abel
May 18, 2007 - 12:54pm

Aaron, what's the Adwords landing page for the said affiliate site?

kid disco
May 22, 2007 - 11:37pm

Thanks for giving us step-by-step actionable stuff like this. I'd love to see more posts like this... (or you can just email me all your secrets) :P

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