Finding best of's with special features
There's something that's becoming clear to me - a lot of people know about the "best of strategy."
It's getting harder and harder to rank for these terms and it's going to take more effort to do so. It's going to take more and more words to rank for the more competitive keywords.
Does this mean to quit on them? Nope.
In fact, I'd like to share a strategy I've come up with that's profitable and will help you rank for best of posts. I like to call it the special feature strategy. Here's how I came up with it:
As a lot of you know I sold my last website for $40,000.
I wrote probably 50 best of's and got most on the first page with the year and some on page 1 without the year.
Probably 60% to 70% of the website's profit came from 5 posts, though. These keywords all shared something in common. They had the same special feature. I'm not going to tell you what this special feature is because I'm making an entire niche around it now.
I will tell you without this special feautre this product would cost between $20 to $50. With the speical feature the products cost between $100 to $500. When I first tried out the keyword I never though anyone would pay that price but they hit and hit often.
So here's some examples of "special features" on ordinary products.
Best drawer microwaves 2018
best drawer dishwashers 2018
best robotic lawn mowers
best video doorbells 2018
best smart thermostats 2018
Do you see what I mean with special feature? Best dishwashers 2018 is extremely competitive and you may have a very hard time ranking for it. Best drawer dishwashers 2018, though, you can definitely rank for.
Look for yourself on Google: On the first page of Google there's only two articles that focus on drawer dishwashers!
This keyword gets traffic for:
best drawer dishwashers 2018
best drawer dishwashers
best double drawer dishwashers
I know what you might be thinking; "This keyword doesn't get enough traffic"
My most profitable best of post, which probably made $1000 a month and only took 2 days to write, only gets 309 traffic according to the keyword research tool. In reality, it got me around 5,000 clicks a month.
You end up ranking for a million different terms. Also, when you're one of the first and most comprehisve pieces of content for a keyword you end up ranking for just the term without the word "best." So you have a good chance of ranking for just "drawer dishwashers," which gets a ton of traffic.
This is the kind of keyword that can get you a 100 clicks a day with when done right.
So that's my advice. Do I think ranking for best dishwashers will get you more traffic and more money? Of course.
Do I think you have a realistic chance of ranking for that term? Not any time soon.
So think of ordinary products and find a new, cutting edge special feature. If it gets traffic I would write it.
It would look like this: Best "special feature" "ordinary prodcut"
These keywords get a lot traffic, tend to be very expensive and usually aren't available in regular stores. The only option may be to order it online.
Also, look for best of posts with "for" in them. An exmaple would be best walking shoes for wide feet or something like that.
Hope this helps anyone struggling!
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There's A LOT of products like this, especially with new technology getting incorporated into everyday products.
Great idea - thanks for sharing it and well done again with your website sale for 40k - that it truly awesome and inspirational!
best dishwashers 2018: 3148 536 44
best drawer dishwashers 2018: 48 9 30
So the first phrase is not extremely competitive.
As for "for" - this is stop word and it is ignored by search engines. The true key-phrase is what you have without it.
Try ranking for best dishwashers 2018 and let me know how you do. What I'm saying is based on years of testing best of lists, not just punching a few words into the keyword tool
And you're wrong about for also. Best mountain bikes FOR kids would be an example. It just helps narrow things down
"Punching" keywords in a keyword tool is the way to find competition for the exact match, how you would know otherwise that it is "extremely" competitive. After that, you check it incognito without quotes and get some idea about true competition. Your example was simply not the best, to say the least.
Note, you are not the only person around 'testing best of lists' for years. My first articles of that type are from 2015 and they were performing badly. But one from 2016 was driving 1/3 of all traffic in one of my sites so I learned something from it. Those from 2018 are almost all on the top position. This is what I have to say about my own testing.
Stop words are ignored by search engines, the true competition is what you get without them, regardless of any particular example. This is why you may not rank sometimes although the keyword may look non-competitive. Take this as a fact or ignore, it is up to you, I was just trying to help because people are reading what you write, my bad.
Sure he is relating back to his own experience, but stop words may result in a bad ranking if you are not aware of how they work.
Keyword tools will give you one value for competition, but search engines see the key-phrase completely differently and this can result in a bad ranking and you will not know what happened. His advise for using "for" is harmful. He says he had bad ranking experience and could not explain it; this is probably one of the reasons.
Interesting post by Yoast on the topic, seems optimizing for both may be the answer.
https://yoast.com/handling-stopwords/
It takes more than just punching a keyword into the keyword tool. Look at the results for best dishwashers 2018. There's websites with traffic in the millions on page 3. You won't sniff page 1 for that keyword.
And what you're saying about stop words is just going to confuse people. It's the word after "for" that matters and I think any reasonable person would know that's what I was talking about.
It helps narrow a post down and I don't see how anyone could have take it any other way.
I don't mind criticism or people questioning things but I honestly feel like you comment on my posts either just to argue or nit pick things that don't matter. It's just not helping anyone.
I remember in our earlier discussion about the date in 'best of' posts you mentioned that I was 'overthinking things' when I said it would be good to remove the date. But later, I noticed you removed dates from your posts. I myself did not manage to remove the dates, unfortunately. Have yet to find the right way to do so in my theme.
The issue of stop words deals with competition and ranking and it is essential for SEO. You will do what you think is the best for you of course. I am sure you are too intelligent to think that my comments here are because I am "jealous" as mentioned by somebody.
I might have to start a new website with this resourceful information you've provided Dylan.
Thanks for the heads up on these "special feature"
Congratulations by the way on the sale of your website!
Your next one will be even better!
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Excellent Dylan.
As always, you come through with great info!
Thanks!