I have written an ebook on natural cancer treatments that people have
used to successfully treat their own cancer. I want to market it on
the internet.

Which title for the book will bring my ebook up most prominently and
most often on search engine requests?

"Cure for Cancer? Natural cancer treatments THAT WORK" or 

"Natural Cancer Cures THAT WORK" or

some other title.

The assumption is that the book title will be mentioned several times
on my sales letter webpage.

Hi there,

There are two factors to your question that are not necessarily related.


1. Name of the ebook
--------------------
Unless it is in .pdf format, search engines won't be indexing your
book, and will pay little attention to the link that directly
downloads it. The title of the book on the webpage won't be much of a
factor.

However, it is easier to do search engine optimization for a product
that already has useful keywords in the title. Overture have a tool
that lets us see how often a word was searched for last month - it
only covers searches done on Overture, but this still makes a
reasonable representation of search engines in general.

Variations on Cancer cure:

cancer cure, 5401
cure for lung cancer, 987
breast cancer cure, 740
natural cancer cure, 533
prostate cancer cure, 517
cancer cure dennis leary no, 322
cancer cure alternative, 310
colon cancer cure, 272
no cure for cancer, 249
skin cancer cure, 228
liver cancer cure, 205
pancreatic cancer cure, 203
herbal cancer cure, 170
new cancer cure, 169
ovarian cancer cure, 133
cervical cancer cure, 120
brain cancer cure, 95

Variations on  Cancer treatment:

cancer treatment, 15944
prostate cancer treatment 6116
breast cancer treatment, 4885
cancer treatment center of america, 4271
lung cancer treatment, 3838
alternative cancer treatment, 3557
colon cancer treatment, 2169
cancer treatment center, 2082
skin cancer and treatment, 1508
liver cancer treatment, 1119
alternative breast cancer treatment, 1109
cervical cancer treatment, 1090
pancreatic cancer treatment, 883
bladder cancer treatment, 860
ovarian cancer treatment, 854
alternative lung cancer treatment, 703
new cancer treatment, 591
cancer treatment radiation, 559
bone cancer treatment, 519
kidney cancer treatment, 477
brain cancer treatment, 451
prostrate cancer treatment, 420
prostate cancer alternative treatment, 393
cancer herbal treatment, 385
thyroid cancer treatment, 349
breast cancer radiation treatment, 339
stomach cancer treatment, 334
colon cancer alternative treatment, 315
cancer treatment of america, 279
testicular cancer treatment, 256
natural cancer treatment, 231
homeopathic cancer treatment, 216
holistic cancer treatment, 209
new lung cancer treatment, 207

Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?term=cancer

From the above figures I have three specific thoughts:

1) People search for cancer treatment more than cancer cure
2) People search for specific types of cancer
3) You should use one of the following keywords: natural, alternative,
herbal, homeopathic, holistic

If your product is actually a treatment, then consider calling it such
rather than a cure - it sounds less like quackery and gets more
searches. If your product is typically used to treat a particular type
of cancer, focus on that as well.

You also need a name - that way when your ideas spread by word of
mouth, people searching for your product's name will find the ebook.
So, if your real name is Karon, I'd suggest:

Karon's Natural Breast Cancer Treatment
Karon's Natural Cancer Cures
The Karon Technique for Curing Cancer
Natural Cancer Therapy by Dr. Bill Karon

... or the like. With the name, go recognisable rather than generic. 


2. Getting visitors via search engines
--------------------------------------
The most important factor (especially for Google, but applies across
the board) is links to your site. If your book gets results, folk will
link to your site because they want to. Otherwise you need to try the
following:

a) Get listed in Open Directory, Yahoo Directory and any site that
specializes in cancer links
b) Swap links with sites on similar or comlimentary topics. It is very
important that swapped links are less than a third of all links to
your site, and that the keywords used in the link text varies from
link to link.
c) Pay to be linked from a quality site 
d) Consider using an affiliate program - other sites link to yours in
exchange for sales commission. This is very common with ebooks, and
the best service would be ClickBank:
http://www.clickbank.com/overview.html

Your competition have a big headstart, because they have authorative
websites that many other sites link to. Doing searches for cancer
related keywords finds these types of sites dominating the results:

- foundations
- hospitals
- large sites that specialize in medical matters
- news services and newspapers

You will never rank above those sites from keywords alone, you need
links pointing to your site.

Regarding keywords, there is a simple rule: the more popular the
keyword, the more competition you have. If your product cures cancer
of the middle toe, getting in the top 10 for "middle toe cancer" would
be very easy.

If your product applies to many different types of cancer, then make a
sales page for each type, with each page focusing on terms related to
that type of cancer. You should have a main sales page, and aside from
the sales pitch, it should link to pages on how it deals with specific
types of cancer.

On the webpages, select one keyword or phrase per page, and put the
targeted keyword or phrase in the following places:

Title - the best title length is 3-7 words. Do not repeat keywords
H1 - a heading tag, once near the top of the page
General text - once per paragraph
File name - ie cure_cancer.html
Meta description tag

The title is the most important place. 


If you have confidence that your product will take off, and you just
need to get the ball rolling, consider advertising using Google
Adwords:
https://adwords.google.com/select/?hl=en


If any part of my answer is unclear, or you have further questions on
this topic, just ask for a clarification and I'll get back to you.

Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by karon-ga on 18 Mar 2004 19:04 PST

Thanks for that. I had already been to the Overture tool as I am a
current advertiser. I plan to market the ebook on Clickbank where I
already have an existing ebook that is marketed from affiliate sites.
So none of that is new to me, including your advice for site
optimisation.

My original question remains unanswered as to which title (assuming it
is used in the Title, and other places on the sales page) will rank my
book higher for the most common terms that people search out help with
cancer. I already list with Overture and their tool just turns
searched phrases like "cure for cancer" to "cancer cure".

I liked your point about people predominantly searching by 'cancer
treatment' rather than cure.

If I considered only Google and with everything else being equal,
which title would rank the book higher, please?

---

Request for Answer Clarification by karon-ga on 18 Mar 2004 19:11 PST

Hi

It's me again. Google drops out small words so if the title was "Cure
for Cancer", it would return sites based on "Cure Cancer".

Do people most search for "treatment for xxx cancer" or "xxx cancer
treatment". Overture can't provide a definitive answer here as they
switch things around. I am mainly interested in getting the name right
for Google. It may be that a better name is "Natural cancer treatments
THAT WORK" or "Natural treatments for cancer THAT WORK" depending on
the answer to the preceding question. Can you ask someone in Google
themselves, please?  Thanks, it's much appreciated.

---

Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 18 Mar 2004 21:36 PST

Unfortunately we researchers at Google Answers are independent
contractors - we have no special connections with the Google search
engineers, nor are we privy to any insider information regarding how
the Google search engine works.

There is no normal way of obtaining details of which keywords are
searched for the most on Google, except for Google Zeitgeist:
://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

Something that does work, in a roundabout way, is to open an account
with Google Adwords. Within their service is a tool that estimates the
number of times your ad will be clicked on. It lets you specify
phrases, and by doing so you can see Google's estimates on the
relative popularity of search terms. It isn't perfect, because the
click-through rates of other people's ads can affect the ranking - but
it works out better than using Overture's tool.

I use Google Adwords for my own search engine marketing purposes, and
in my unbiased opinion it is much better than Overture for PPC
advertising.

Google Adwords
https://adwords.google.com/select/?hl=en

Kanoodle have a similar tool to Overture, for advertisers only. Others
that are available to the public are:

7Search:
http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx

eSpotting:
http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp

The best paid service is WordTracker - they offer a free trial:
http://www.wordtracker.com/


The Title
---------
Regarding Google's "stop words" - it is best to ignore them. The
following titles will both rank equally, except in the very rare
instance of the searcher enclosing them within double quotes.

Natural treatments for cancer THAT WORK
Natural treatments cancer THAT WORK

So, if it reads better with a stop word like "for" in it, it's best to
have it there. Plurals tend to rank equally with non-plurals, but this
can vary due to Google's constant tweaking of stemming factors.

Regarding the ordering of the words, I used the Google tool I
mentioned above and here are the results:

1.8 "cancer cure"   -  3.0  
3.1 "cancer treatment"   -  18.0  
1.2 "cure cancer"   -  0.9  
2.7 "holistic cancer"   -  0.1 
5.0 "homeopathic cancer"   -  < 0.1  
1.0 "natural cancer cure"   -  < 0.1  
1.8 "natural cancer"   -  0.6  
1.0 "natural cure for cancer"   -  < 0.1  
1.3 "treat cancer"   -  0.3  
2.0 "treatment cancer"   -  0.5   
2.7 "treatment for cancer"   -  0.7 

The first number is the position it would receive for a 50 cent bid,
and the second is the number of click-throughs estimated per day.

By far the dominant term is "cancer treatment". 

When I tried some specific types of cancer, the preferred wording is "
X cancer treatment" rather than "treatment for X cancer"

4.7 "lung cancer treatment"  -  1.4   
3.5 "treatment for lung cancer"  -  0.3  
3.2 "skin cancer treatment"  -  0.7 
3.0 "treatment for skin cancer"  -  0.1 
5.1 "prostate cancer treatment" - 0.8
2.5 "treatment for prostate cancer " - 0.4


My recommendation
-----------------
To target the most possible searches with one keyphrase, I would have
"cancer treatment" in the title, such as:

Natural cancer treatments THAT WORK
Alternative cancer treatments THAT WORK
Herbal cancer treatments THAT WORK
Homeopathic cancer treatments THAT WORK
Holistic cancer treatments THAT WORK

Google only lists 5 web pages that have "natural cancer treatments" in
the title, so a well-optimized page should rank well for that
keyphrase.

I really appreciated your follow-up until my question was fully answered.

If your cures really work ...

Then the title is irrelevant:

The World will beat a path to your door.

You have to be joking.  In The Assault on Medical Freedom, author
Joseph Lisa cites previously secret documents to expose the nexus
among the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies and
the AMA to discredit natural medicine. He calls this collusion
"medlock."
The documents talk of the "Public Service Anti-Quackery Campaign" in
1983 by the FDA and the Pharmaceutical Advertising Council that sought
to project alternative remedies as ?useless snake oils?. The FDA was
acting as a tool of the drug industry to close down companies that
competed with pharmaceutical giants. The implication, Lisa says, is
the existence of "nothing less than an enforced totalitarian
medical-pharmaceutical police state."

Criminologist Elaine Feuer discovered that the FDA worked diligently
to protect the profits of big medicine. It prevented factual
information from reaching the public and worked to close the companies
that marketed alternatives. In her book, Innocent Casualities: The
FDA?s War Against Humanity, Feuer pointed out that the FDA seemed to
target companies that offered remedies for the big money-making
diseases, like cancer and AIDS.
The FDA keeps trying to bully non-drugs. In the 1970s, it tried to
turn vitamin supplements into prescription drugs. In 1990, it tried to
get a law passed that would have allowed summary seizures of products
and tapping of telephones without a court warrant. Public pressure
defeated these strong-arm tactics.

In 1993, the FDA tried to classify all amino acids and many minerals
as prescription drugs. Responding to protests by the public, Congress
passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act in 1994 that
somewhat clipped FDA's wings.

The FDA has been trying to go after Internet companies that sell herbs
and other non-monopoly treatments. It is charging that these companies
dispense drugs without a prescription. When attempts to control
failed, the FDA issued warnings about the ?untested? substances. 
Scientific, double-blind studies that proved their effectiveness were
conveniently ignored.

As he wrote in The Scientific Validation of Herbal Medicine,
Pharmacist Dr Daniel Mowrey found that thousands of scientific studies
proved the effectiveness of herbs and that they often worked as well
as their synthetic copies.

Journalist Richard Leviton puts it like this: "Alternative medicine
could bankrupt the pharmaceutical industry." As a result, he says,
"Freedom of choice is available in most areas of American life except
medicine."

One really needs to take responsibility for one's own health and
remain informed as broadly as possible. I appreciate your sentiment
though.

Hi, Karon

No ... I wasn't joking: if you have identified cures that really work
then the title of your book really is irrelevant.

I believe that natural medecines have a very important role to play in
health care and my own doctor (here in the UK) heartily recommends
those that she has found to be worthwhile. Most of the stuff out there
she dismisses as a waste of money.

If you would like to post a copy of your book somewhere for download,
I will be delighted to take a look at the claims that you are making.

If, indeed, you have discovered cures for some (not necessarily all)
cancers then you are to be applauded and encouraged.

For the present, I will keep an open mind. 

Regards

PB