Every now and then I think up a really good keyword for a product or service...one that none of the competitors have started using, so it costs little to buy ranking on the paid searches, and it bumps up real quick on the natural results.

But the problem is that the benefit is always short-lived, as other people start to 'get it'.

Google's keyword suggestion tool and sites like Spyfu and keywordspy are making it difficult to run a campaign without letting your competition know how you're attracting users.

Any ideas on how to keep your 'good' keyword list from becoming the next fad?

I'm thinking for the keyword spies, you'd almost have to have a whole new domain for each goldmine phrase. But for Adwords, I don't know if just starting a new campaign would do it, or if you would have to start a whole new account.

To give you an example:

When I first started writing, I was selling a lot of content articles. Sites like elance were just getting big, but I wanted to get my own set of clients. After setting up my site, I found that the obvious keyphrase "articles for sale" and "prewritten articles for sale" had zero competitors.

I don't know how many clients I gained off that one. I think that was back when the Adwords minimum price was 10 cents per click. But there were weeks when I got hundreds of clicks at 12% conversion rate (the conversion was the prospect filling out a form to contact me, asking me to write articles for them).

But now...just google the phrase and you can see that it caught on.

This is just one of many examples. There's got to be a way to protect your campaign ideas.

Not really.

As long as the search engines are text-based anyone can write a script that scrapes search results and reverse engineers campaigns.

And of course it's in Google's best interests for everyone to know all your best keywords so that they bid on them and drive the prices up.

Well, they'd have to know the search keyphrase in order to do that, right? I mean if they're using a bot to scrape results, then they have to start with the right words.

I know that eventually people are gonna' catch on to good keywords. I guess I'm just trying to figure out how to prolong it.

Unless there is some Google API code that lets you plug in a domain and get all their campaigns, then yes you'd need the search phrase to begin with.

But you're dealing with bots... you don't need the "right" words, you just plug in a million keywords and index the results.

Dude, I think you're SOL. Spy programs like Affiliate Elite grab your entire keyword list, somehow. I don't know how they do it, and perhaps they really don't get EVERY keyword, but they sure get a lot.

It sucks, but it's just business. Nature abhors a vacuum. This is why niche marketers protect their niches so carefully.

Even an average joe can learn a hell of a lot using reverse IP if you don't.

Yeah, but if you have a real jem, you can create a whole new domain and website, using only that keyword...and have it lead to your regular site when the user clicks on the buy button.

Yep, most niche marketers run their niches off a different server, or at least using a different IP, which you can usually get for $1-2 a month.

Nebulousx- What exactly do you mean? I'm trying from a technical standpoint to get what you're saying.

And Eric, I have found that once I get the keyword, it sticks and I get top position organically. Are you mainly referring to the way it drives up the keyword cost in google ppc campaign?

Bruce is saying that you would put your niche ad on a totally different site, and even give the site a different IP address to keep the campaign hidden from competitors...which makes sense. I didn't even think of the IP.

That's part of what I'm talking about. But it spreads into everything else as well. If you suddenly find a really good market for something you sell...one that is untouched by your competitors, you want to keep other people from noticing it...not just in SERPs but in PPC and even in DM and other offline ads. You want time to position yourself in that specific niche before the other brands see what you did.

Erice