Hello ALL! I am George Pierce. One of my first online adventures was to create review sites (20 years ago). I was new, and my Internet Marketing skills were almost at zero, so my success was nearly zero. If you are considering making money online or struggling to make money online, I invite you to keep reading. Review sites not only work, they work better than ever!
Since my initial review site results were terrible (and they were!), allow me to share some of what I have learned that helped to turn that around.
I believe that my first review site was about Web Hosting. I had done a lot of research regarding Web Hosts before making a choice, so I felt that I had useful information about Web Hosting and comparing Web Hosts that I could share. I checked out my competition. I found that they were comparison sites, I found that there seemed to be no review sites, and I found that none of the sites included free hosting. AHA!
So I set up a TOP TEN "Review" site and included two bonus reviews. which were free web hosting sites.
I had unknowingly discovered three superb ingredients for my creating a review site
#1 Top Ten Create a top five or top ten
#2 Review rather than compare
#3 include free options
But it did not work!
WHY?
Mainly because I did not know SEO, my site did not flow, and my site was essentially a 'sales' site. Even though it was supposed to be a 'review' site, it was unintentionally more about selling, rather than helping. My visitors were being sold, not helped, and they felt it, and, therefore, my results suffered.
One of the reasons why review sites work better than ever is that today, most people are going to look at reviews before making a purchase. What this means to you, is that most people are going to be interested in your review...in addition, this also means that most people are in the last stage of making a buying decision! They are ready to buy. We need to get them to visit our site and SEO is a fast and free way to generate quality traffic.
#SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO revolves around what are called KEYWORDS which are the words that your potential visitors would use to find your content. SEO will benefit us in generating traffic and it will help us to find the niches and keywords that have good traffic or great traffic with less competition.
What I knew as a beginner about SEO was the definition and a vague overview of how it worked. What I did not know was the part about LESS COMPETITION. I believe that is a common SEO mistake. The result, however, is that most newbies find keywords that have high search volume, but also have high competition. This renders our SEO ineffective! It also might make us doubt that review sites work and doubt that SEO works.
What is so fantastic about SEO today is that there are tools that will help us with our SEO, and they are FREE. We can evaluate a niche and find keywords with less competition in a matter of seconds.
Above is an example of a free tool called Keyword Explorer, which evaluates our keywords giving them an Overall Score, as well as suggesting additional keywords. I have the paid version, which is what you see, the free version provides 3 suggested keywords.
The thing to remember is to find keywords with less competition, for a newbie, I suggest keywords that score in the GREEN.
#5 Help your visitors rather than sell.
Of course, you and I want to make sales, but when visitors feel as if they are being sold, they often leave our site for good. If they feel that our content is of value, they are much more likely to stay, to read our reviews, as well as to 'Click Through" to our affiliate web hosts. Click-throughs result in sales!
Create reviews that are actual reviews rather than a comparison. I use comparison sites, but web hosting and many products and services are going to do better with a review. Reviews are meant to give the reader a look at the good and the bad along with an opinion, evaluation, and/or recommendation. I am not a fan of negative reviews but including one or more products that you are NOT recommending can help your credibility, and boost your trust. n
For Example, Above is a web host that I used to recommend, unfortunately, they have cut their storage and reduced their free version to free for one year. It will be a part of a BONUS of several hosts that are NOT RECOMMENDED. BUT...the hosting is excellent as well as the service, so that info will be included. On a review site, You and I want to provide value, value that visitors might not find elsewhere, and value that will help them build trust and be more comfortable when considering clicking through to an affiliate.
What you and I want is for our visitors to find value in our reviews. This may take a little research, but it will produce real value that you can pass on, which will be appreciated and help get more clicks.
#6 CONTINUE
One of my favorite words for helping to get click-throughs is CONTINUE. Even more important than the word is the concept. HUH? You and I want our visitors to continue...to click through to our affiliate, so let's do our best to make that click-through, a natural next step. The idea is that we set up a path for our visitors to follow and when they reach the point where it is time to click, it is simply to continue.
#7 VIDEO
Also, make short videos based on keywords such as Go Daddy, keywords that score well. If you will notice above,
there are an unbelievable 5.62 MILLION searches per month on YT for 'Go Daddy'!
Post your short videos on YT, also on TikTok, IGTV, Pinterest, and FB. This is an easy way to generate a ton of free traffic which adds up to more sales. Include a CTA in your videos which sends your viewers to your review site.
I can attest that review sites work, and, I know from experience that when those sites are not done right, they do not work. Add the ingredients above, and top it off with videos.
Thank you for reading.
Much success,
George Pierce
PS. Videos are incredibly easy to create and you can create them for free. You can legally use already-made video clips from sites such as Pixabay and Pexels, and you can use sites such as Clipchamp for a free online editor with no watermark and no limits. You can also create cartoon-like videos on sites such as Renderforest and Powtoons. The amount of traffic will surprise you, and videos are not just easy, they are fun.
Comments
Pooch, mutt, hound, tyke, sea dog, under dog, top dog, shaggy dog, dog of war, dog's breakfast, sick as a dog, in the dog house, dog eat dog, dog days - been, seen, done George, they all work for me! You're not barking up the wrong tree :-)
As always George, your online world mirrors elite real world practices - Present the pros and cons of several options as reviews with no prefered bias .. close with, "If you were to choose one which would it be?" ... "Why?" Same principle with keywords - I used slightly unusual words which stuck in the mind ... such as elite rather than best, solid rather than good etc.
I sense a sales dog that can sit on the porch with the best. I became a natural after many years, I believe that you are one of the true naturals. Your keyword strategy is "stellar"! Thank you, Tom. Just in case, a sales dog is meant as a true compliment.