There are a lot of ways to zone in on being there to entice people who are looking to buy what you’re selling online. By choosing the right keyword phrasing, you could entice a potential customer to your website, where you can woo them into buying your product and earning you some profit. Targeting negative keywords is one way to get some extra online traffic.
Why Target Negative Keywords
When you use target keywords to attract organic search engine traffic, it’s a good idea to target those who are ready to buy versus those who are just browsing.
It can be lucrative to target everyone, especially since browsers may buy eventually, but targeting negative keywords often helps you find people who are on the fence about buying, but need to know whether the product is worth their money. One such way to attract them is to use the word “scam”.
Sad but true… you know that there are scammers online. Online consumers know this as well and many will search for product reviews to see what other people say about a product before they’re willing to take the chance of buying it. Many will search specifically for a scam notice related to what they think they’d like to buy first. That way they can find out if anyone has said that the product is a scam.
Hopefully you’ve done your due diligence in making sure you’re promoting a product that gets good reviews. If possible, you should review it yourself rather than blindly promoting something you don’t know much about. Maybe you should do a “scam” search before you decide to promote something. By targeting the “scam” suffix or prefix of a keyword phrase, you’re going to have an opportunity to help people decide whether or not something they’re thinking about buying is considered, by others, to be valid and valuable or not.
Some people target the word “review” with their product. Some people target the word “best” so that they can promote their brand as best-in-class. Some people target the word “scam” so they can help convince people that are ready to buy that a product really does do what it advertises.
How To Use The Word “Scam” To Your Advantage
By choosing keyword phrases that are commonly used and putting the word “scam” in front of them, you can find people who are interested in buying a product and work to convince them that the product is not a scam, then attempt to win the sale. (Beware that some affiliate programs build in cookies so that if the visitor on your site has already visited the product sales page through another hoplink or affiliate link you may not get the credit even if they buy from your page.)
Tips include:
• Asking the question in the intro, meta description, and article titles of blogs and web 2.0 pages: “Is ___ a scam? And “Does ____ really work?” ( Tip: A lot of marketers know to use the word “scam”. Make sure you’re not targeting an overused phrase. Try rephrasing to “does it work, etc.”)
• Using the words scam and “does it work” as anchor text links in article directories pointing to your review or landing page.
• Dispel the scam question in a paragraph or two of your sales copy and use the naysayer keywords in an H2 or H3 heading.
• Regularly look to your “scam” keyword statistics to see if you’re getting traffic and whether or not that traffic is converting. That way you can tweak your copy to improve those results OR replicate what is working well.
There are a lot of different keyword phrase approaches you can take and targeting negative keywords can work well if used correctly. Dispelling myths, answering the “does it really work” question, and helping people determine something isn’t out to scam them can help you turn sceptics into customers.
About Sean Rasmussen
These are very true words, Sean. There are many jaded, cynical people here in the world, and helping them find great, honourable and helpful info by using words well can serve all of us. Thanks for this post.
My pleasure Jo. I will take this opportunity to thank you for your words
It would be a little uncomfortable for me to use the word “scam” in the same sentence as the names of products that I hold in high regard. But, I think this approach is a valid one and believe it works. Excellent point to raise about knowing where people are in the buying decision-making process.
It is an interesting realization that negative approaches often reap more results than the positive ones. I know that this is true. I see examples of it all the time. However, I do find that my nature of being positive takes a whipping when I decide to approach things from the negative.
It reminds me of one of my favorite songs, particularly as sung by Barbara Cook, Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative. It’s a great song, but obviously is not going to make me a rich internet marketer.
So, I will have to ask Barbara to find another song which accentuates the negative!
I agree with you Lina it is uncomfortable. Could be there are some things we may have to modify.
I would prefer the other option rather than using the word scam
Its a clever idea to make the question a skeptical person might have into your keyword. But I also am apprehensive to use the word “scam” together with a good quality product.
Hi Sean,
I’m with everyone else on this. I’m not really comfortable targeting negative keywords. I think if I have to write an article addressing the negative feedback, then that isn’t the product for me.
I expect that for every affiliate product there will be some negative feedback but I’d rather promote the ones that have a stellar record. I’m sorry Sean but I’m not really feeling this one.
It is a strategy that many people use effectively guys. Never do anything you feel uncomfortable with. I think what you may be missing, is that people are searching these keywords to find out if a product is in fact a scam or not.
My problem with Targeting Negative Keywords To Attract Traffic is that I have frequently seen it done poorly. Being someone who does read up about a product before buying I have seen many of the scam type reviews that are obviously written by the same person who is selling the product, it leaves me distrusting the person and the product. I am not averse to using this technique, but I would want to make sure I was doing it in a way that didn’t arouse bad feelings for me or my product.
If you feel comfortable using this strategy, it can work well Wal. If you have nothing but honest information to provide, hopefully it will come across that way to other readers.
Hi Sean,
Even if we are targeting negative keywords the article will be positive about the product so I do not see a problem.
Hi Sean
While I can understand how this method of advertising can work for some people who think differently than I do, for me personally I would never use ‘scam’ to try and attract people.
I have seen this done so many times now that I wonder why people want to “trick” browsers to click on their sites and find that it isn’t even about a scam. I feel this is false advertising and out of integrity. The first thing that I think is “why does this person need to sensationalise his/her website to suck people in?, they must have a very sus product’ and I am out of there.
As I said, I like to be up front and honest. If a product is good, it shouldn’t be too hard to get positive attention. Just my opinion.:)
I never considered targeting negative keywords to attract traffic. Amazing! This old dog can still learn new tricks. This article is definitely going in my Learn and Earn notebook.
Does this really work or is it a scam? LOL
I have seen these before, and they always are just lead ins to a positive review of a product. This then begs the question, is the review independant or or a scam written by the originator of the product – oh, what a tangle web we weave.