Is it worth setting up this site if it's to be monetized by AdSense?

Hey,


I hope I posted this in the right category - it's about AdSense at the end.
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I just came across a keyphrase that had 90,000 searched in March 2006, according to the Overture keyword selector tool.

WordTracker gave me a KEI of 131 for the keyword.

I did a search on Google and it returned 17,000,000 results. The top 10 sites don't have the keyword in their domain name (but in their page url), and their PR & link pop for the pages on the SERP are as follows:

1. A University - . . . .PR2 . . . Link Pop=106
2. A University - . . . .PR4 . . . Link Pop=415
3. A University - . . . .PR5 . . . Link Pop=336
4. A University - . . . .PR5 . . . Link Pop=444
5. A University - . . . .PR4 . . . Link Pop=583
6. A University - . . . .PR5 . . . Link Pop=124
7. A University - . . . .PR5 . . . Link Pop=516
8. Article on MSNBC - PR0 . . . Link Pop=707
9. Yahoo Directory - . PR5 . . . Link Pop= . 6
10. Medicine Site - . . PR4 . . . Link Pop=114

Obviously all of these sites have high PRs for their top domains. But to me it seems like the competition is low.

I could get a domain called "keyword.info" (others weren't available).

The site would be an information source and there is a very limited amount you can write about. So I would guess 10 pages max...

If I do decide to build this site I would monetize it using AdSense. The problem is the cost of click is very low, i.e. probably 3~5c.


So I was wondering, is this a worth while keyphrase to go for at all (supposing a CTR of 3~5%)? I just wanted other peoples' opinions on this.

Any opinions would be appreciated!


Thanks

 

I would not go after this niche if the click payouts are only going to be 3 to 5c.

 

If overture says 90K searches a month, how much is that roughly in total on the net?

Also even with high traffic you don't think this is worth it?

Sorry about these questions - I've never been good at looking for niche phrases etc...

 

I would!

Let's assume this: Let's assume that you can get into the top 10 results in Google. IMO, if the Overture tool says 90,000 searches then searches on Google could be as much as ten times that. Even if there are 500,000 searches on Google in a month (Say) and if we assume that all sites in the top 10 get an equal number of hits, that's around 50,000 visitors to your site!!

Visitors: 50,000
Page Views per visit (say 3) -> 150,000 page views
One ad per page -> 150,000 impressions
CTR (3% say) -> 4500 clicks
CPC (3c say) -> $135 per month

As you can see, these are very humble estimates. The higher end of this calculation could be something like this:

Total search traffic: 900,000
20% visit your site if it's in the top 3 -> 180,000 visitors
5 Pageviews per visitor -> 900,000 pageviews
3 ads per page -> 2,700,000 ad impressions
5% CTR -> 135,000 clicks
5c CPC -> $6,750 per month

For an info site with 10 - 20 static pages you can easily get a hosting package for a buck or two a month. The rest is pure profit!! This is certainly worth the effort imo. If you still decide not to do it, PM me the keyphrase and I will!

Regards,
dfsweb

 

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=1
This graph shows the market shares of various SEs. The top 4 Googles (US, UK etc.) alone have a 65% market share. Then, you have all the little ones. I have a feeling that these stats are not very new though as I remember reading somewhere (recently) that Google now had around 90% of the market share in this order:
Google
Yahoo
MSN
Others

But anyway, I think it's quite safe to say that Google's search traffic would be at least 5 times (if not more) than Overture's network imo.

 

Thanks dfsweb that was a really useful! I still want to see other people's views on this though.

Also how competitive is this in your opinion? Websites run by Universitys' don't have any advantage do they? I ask because they're more likely to provide informative and accurate information and just thought Google might have noticed that fact...

 

The competition that you face will depend on the sites that appear in the search results when you search for this keyphrase. I see that you have mentioned 17 million results. IMO that doesn't sound overly competitive. My best effort till date was achieving a #2 for a keyphrase that gave 188 million results. I am sure there are SEOs here who have achived #1s for search terms 10 times more competitive. Anyway, 17mil isn't a lot and if you focus on the site and devote some time you should be able to get there at some stage.

I feel Universities have a huge advantage. All .edu, .govt etc. sites are considered to be very important resources by Google. So, if you only see .edu sites in the top 10 .... it might be very difficult competing against them. In fact, I think during one of the updates in 2005 or late 2004 it was public knowledge that govt run sites and .edu and .ac sites will get a bump in the SERPs as they are seen as "reliable sources" by Google.

Anyway, I still think you should give it a shot. You can create and have a 10 page content site up and running in a few hours for a very low monthly fee. You don't have a lot to use, you know!

 

Yeah I see where you're coming from. I'm still pretty new to all this so I dunno if I'll be able to out do the other sites in the top 10 as most are .edu sites etc... but I suppose it's worth a shot.

Still - it'll have to wait though coz I've got university exams coming up in a week! I haven't revised at all because I've been surfing DP, researching keywords etc...!

 

How do you know that CPC is that low?

 

I used the overture max bid tool to check how much people are paying to advertise on overture. I found that they have very low competition (max bid $0.10) so guessed that it'd be around 3~5c on AdSense...

I dunno if that's a reliable way to calculate it so if there's a better way please tell me.

 

One more thing actually.

Overture keyword selector tool always seems to give singular words, such as "guitar lesson", "baby crib", "love poem". When choosing keywords/phrases to target should you go for singular or plural? So for "love poem" should you try and target "love poem" or "love poems"?

 

I'd say it also depends on how much effort are you ready to put into it.
Just building website with keyword.info will not get you in top10.
Actually, you may not see any of your pages in top100 for 2-3 months because of sandbox. So if you are serious about it, i would suggest upload "placeholder" page and point with some high PR links on it - so that
your sandbox time will start ticking.

 

In everything , efforts is needed.

 

Eh? Did I ever say it was going to be easy??

Annnyway do you think the returns on the site will be worth the effort that I will have to put in?

 

This is incorrect, the top 3 ranked sites get a much larger percentage of traffic. The worthiness of the keyword relies on whether you think its possible to rank in the top 3 otherwise you will end up spending time building the site to get low traffic and low cpc.

 

How possible is it to get in the top 3 in your opinion? I've only been building sites for a year...

 

For relatively competitive sites I would build the site first and then get a few hundred links to it. After that I would foget about it and let it age. Then whilst waiting repeat the same process for another site and repeat. After a year go back to the first site and get more links, maybe 500 more links, and 10 more pages of content, allow it to age and move onto next site.

 

Hi, as some one who was naive enough to start his first site up against entire university departments, I'd say go for it.
As long as you do SEO (odds on the universities are not that bothered on the SEO of their internal pages within departments (I'd guess that a pr2 page from a university must be pretty deep).
Anyway from my experience I have been number 1 or there abouts on MSN for as long as I remember and top 40 (only once in the top 10) in Google. But like I say I'm going up against university departments (many PR7) for my main term, and I am less experienced than you, so I am pretty sure that you can make the top 10 on google with a little effort.
Hopefully MSN alone should give you lots of visitors until you get to the top of google.

 

I know! I was assuming percentages to give hime some stats just as an idea. Have a look at the best case (Calculated in the same post for top 3). I have mentioned there that the top 3 get more traffic.

 

Lol - how can you be so sure you're less experienced than me? Just out of curiosity (now you said that ), how long have you been building sites for? I think it's 8 months for me...

Anyway thanks for the input guys! I need to consider this one quite carefully because I already have 3 other brand spanking new projects at hand... That plus 2 other existing sites I want to do major improvements to.

I've also decided to try setting up a wiki. Major promotion plans, which is all really exciting. We'll see if it takes off or not though Can't wait till I get my university exams out the way so I can actually have some time to do that!!