Mark continues his deep dive into niche selection by explaining the specific criteria for evaluating keywords. He covers search volume thresholds, competition analysis, profitability estimates, and the four-part test he uses to decide whether a keyword is worth pursuing. Along the way, he updates the snoring niche site experiment, shares corn sheller site earnings, and discusses Nicole Dean's Expert Briefs book on credibility and blogging for profit.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- The four-part test for evaluating whether a niche keyword is worth targeting
- What search volume range to look for in exact match keywords
- How to check if people are making money with a keyword by looking for Google ads
- Why Mark's snoring niche site experiment failed and what he learned from it
- How to add product-focused affiliate pages to an existing niche site
Episode Summary
Credibility in Online Business
Mark shares his contribution to Nicole Dean's book Expert Briefs: Blogging for Profit, where he was asked what he does to establish credibility online. His answer: credibility is 100% about honesty, integrity, and transparency. Honesty means telling the truth even when it is uncomfortable. Integrity is what you do when no one is watching. Transparency means letting people know what you are doing and why. Master those three things and expert status follows naturally.
The Snoring Site Post-Mortem
Mark reveals why his automated snoring niche site produced zero traffic: the domain had been previously registered and trashed by a spammy marketer who generated thousands of low-quality backlinks. Google had already penalized the domain before Mark ever touched it. The lesson: always check a domain's registration history and backlink profile before purchasing. He plans to retry the experiment with a brand-new, never-registered domain.
The Four-Part Keyword Evaluation Test
Mark lays out his framework for deciding whether to pursue a keyword. First, are people searching for it? He looks for exact match searches in the thousands per month — not hundreds, not tens of thousands. Second, are people making money with this keyword? The quick test is whether Google shows ads in the search results. Third, how tough is the competition? He analyzes the first page of Google to determine whether he is competing against authority sites like Wikipedia and CNN or smaller sites he could realistically outrank. Fourth, what is the economic payoff? If he wins the keyword, will the combination of traffic volume, conversion rate, and commission size justify the work?
Mark emphasizes that keyword evaluation is not a simple go/no-go decision. It is a relative comparison: this keyword is harder but more profitable than that one, and you choose based on your goals, timeline, and willingness to invest effort.
Key Takeaways
- Credibility online comes from honesty, integrity, and transparency — expert status follows from those three qualities
- Always check domain history before purchasing — a penalized domain can doom a site before you start
- Target exact match keywords with thousands of monthly searches, not hundreds or tens of thousands
- Ads in Google search results indicate that people are making money with that keyword
- Keyword evaluation is relative, not absolute — compare opportunities against each other based on effort, competition, and potential payoff
What's Changed Since This Episode
Domain history checking is now standard practice. Tools like Wayback Machine, Ahrefs, and expired domain databases make it easy to investigate a domain's past. Mark's painful lesson with the snoring site domain was a common trap in 2013 that modern marketers know to avoid.
The Google Keyword Tool Mark references was replaced by Google Keyword Planner. Modern keyword research tools provide far more accurate search volume data, keyword difficulty scores, and click-through rate estimates. The “look for ads” test Mark describes remains a valid quick indicator of commercial intent.
Exact match keyword targeting has evolved significantly. Google's algorithms now understand semantic relationships and topical clusters, which means ranking for one exact keyword often brings traffic from hundreds of related long-tail queries. Modern SEO strategy focuses on topical authority rather than individual keyword optimization.
Article Builder and automated content tools have been superseded by AI writing assistants. However, Google's Helpful Content Update explicitly targets AI-generated content that lacks genuine expertise, making the auto-generated content strategy even less viable than it was in 2013.
Resources Mentioned
- Ahrefs Keyword Explorer — modern keyword research and competition analysis
- Wayback Machine — check domain history before purchasing
- Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast
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