I’ve noticed an interesting change in the way that Google gives results when searching with quotes. In the past it was not necessary to close your quotes to get an exact match search. You could use an opening quote only and then type in your search query and the SERP page would appear exactly the same as if you had used both opening and ending quotes like the search pictured above. But now, an open quoted search looks like this:

It’s gone from 1 match to 400,000 matches. While the exact match for this particular search still ranks at the top of the SERPs, note that Google lists many other results as if the query was entered without quotes at all. What’s interesting is that on a particular search I just did (not pictured), the exact match DID NOT appear first in the SERPs.

What does this mean? Well I’m not sure how many people use the no ending quotes shortcut to search in Google (or if there’s even a way to find out) but it’s no longer a viable way to research anything. Any users who do search in that way, will no longer be getting the exact match results they are expecting. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to pursue any strategies to take advantage of it in any way other than to increase your rankings in general (since I’m assuming the percentage of users who are affected is small) but it’s something you should definitely be aware of for your own research if you had been using this shortcut.

A standard niche marketing routine would involve finding an interesting product or a niche you can promote or get into, followed by further market research, website/landing page construction and promotion. On of such promotion methods is article submission. I personally think that there are other seo methods that can work much better, therefore whenever I see somebody concentrating on article submissions I assume that I can almost certainly overtake them at SERPs. Obviously this depends on outsourcing and other factors. This is what makes backward niche marketing work.

Because articles tend to be the final stage for many marketeers I can backtrack their niche, keywords, products as well as the landing page. Lets head on to Ezine articles. Our mission is to find recent articles that look like they have been stuffed with keywords or were written by amateur authors in order for them to promote their niche landing page. Preferably something related to an actual product you could sell.

Here is an interesting article I have just found on the front page of EA.

Looks like they guy who wrote this article is selling some sort of Ebook.

Lets go to the articles and see what keywords he is targeting. If you run firefox hit Ctrl+U to view the source code. Can you see meta name="keywords" content="how to get your ex back"> at the top of the page? Looks like he is targeting a particular long tail keyword/phrase. Google keyword tools tell me that this is actually quite a competitive niche to get into. However if you scroll down a little bit you will be able to see some more related keyphrases people search for. For example “getting ex back”. 8100 searches per month and relatively little competition.

But what does he actually sell? Let’s go to his page by clicking on the link at the bottom of the article. As you can see it is a free blogspot blog acting as a landing page. Hover your mouse over the link he posts in his blog post. That’s right! Its a clickbank product. In fact he earns $24.09 from every sale. If we were to get into his niche and target smaller “getting ex back” keyword then we would realistically be able to generate around 10.000 monthly uniques considering other search engines and keyphrases. Now lets say we set up a professional landing page and convert every 50 visitors… 10.000 / 50 = 200 x $24.09 = $4980/month. This is being realistic and not pulling number out of my ass like “make $10.000 a day” people do.

Tips: Find low competition niches if your not too comfortable with seo, take your time with research and don’t expect results the same day.

PS: I did not want to write an essay so I understand if some aspects of this method remain unclear. Drop me a comment and I will be more than happy to fill in the blanks. Good luck!