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I don't want to recap the whole concept of "latent semantic indexing' suffice to say that it is a method used by Google to determine relevance. In brief LSI can take your posts and determine what the subject matter is and how much of your post relates to the subject at hand. It also compares each post with your blog as a whole and can tell if the post is relevant to the rest of your site. My apologies if this is overly simplistic but it gets the main point across. This goes to the whole concept of why content is now king and not just backlinks when it comes to getting listed in Google.
To dominate the search engines you have to do four things.
1) Know what your blog is about. What are the handful of words that you can use to describe your blog most accurately? These words are your main keywords.
2) Each and every post that you write must contain some or all of these keywords regardless of the specific topic.
3) Each topic you write about should relate to your blogs overall theme or purpose. Each topic should ideally cover a "long tail" keyword related to your main keywords.
4) Know how to backlink.
I know most of you are aware of these factors but very few bloggers actually follow through on the specifics. If you comb through my blog you will find that just about every post has all my main keywords in it and each topic relates to a long tail.
My method is as simple and formulaic as it gets. Here it is,
My main goal is to rank number 1 on Google for "make money online". If you use a keyword search tool and query this term you will find a huge list of related terms as well. The related terms are my long tails. I target every relevant long tail I can find and try and dominate it in the listings - at least page 1 but ideally top spot. I am now on the first page in the serps for several dozen of these long tails and as each goal has been reached I keep getting closer to the first page of my prime keyword "make money online". I am currently 21 out of 150 million pages. I was 45 two weeks ago. (results will vary depending on your search region)
The point is this, Google also uses it's own results to determine how it ranks your blog. If you rank well for a hundred different but related terms then you will also rank well for the common denominator - the term that they are all related to.
I want to show you an example of this and it happens to be in my own niche.
In most regions a free blogspot blog sits atop the "make money online" search listings. This blog is called moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com and is remarkably only a PR3. How has this blog managed to do this considering most people have never heard of it or know anything about the author Alan Liew. If he is well known I don't see him mentioned much in my travels. You can't get through a day without someone mentioning John Chow or Darren Rowse. So what gives.
The fact is that this blog is ranked on the first page and usually in the top 3 spots for just about every long tail keyword related to making money online. You probably think so what - all the big names are. Well actually they aren't. Problogger and Dosh Dosh do show up fairly frequently in the top listings but that's about it for the A-listers. Carl Ocab's blog does show up everywhere and has gained him a front page listing for the main term.
Targeting one or two keywords may get you results for those keywords but they won't get you listed for related terms. Getting listed for lots of related terms will get you listed for the main term even if you didn't target it. The biggest mistake people make with SEO is to focus almost soley on a few main keywords and neglect the supporting cast. Wait - I know you have heard this before - long tails, long tails, and you are going to tell me you have written lots of posts related to long tails but you still don't rank well. If you have done all these things then all that is missing is knowing how to backlink.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Payday Loans, Adsense and a Money Making Strategy
When it comes to making money with Adsense I don't tell Google what I'm relevant for in terms of content - I let Google tell me. If this is confusing then hear me out.
A week or two ago I wrote a couple of posts on the topic of payday loans. Now most of you would agree that a make money online blog has little relevance to Payday Loan sites. For the most part, this is true. I am in the midst of an experiment to see if I can't make the two relevant. Why I would want to do this and how it is done is the key for making money with Adsense.
A search engine isn't smart. It simply gathers as much information as it can and then presents it's findings in the order stipulated by the human brains that programmed it. It can't tell you who the greatest author in the English language is but it can tell you who others think the greatest author is. Most people who know what a dangling participle is would say Shakespeare. What does Google say?
Close but no cigar.
If Google was smart it would have got this right and it almost did but the fact that it was wrong highlights the priorities of the programmers and the limitations on how far you can tweak an algorithm.
You can learn much from this query.
Of all the keywords presented it chose "author" as the prime search term. Not "greatest" or "English".
It ranked the sites according to who has the most relevance to "Author" and then by which site has the most authority on the subject.
It chose time.com over the correct answer because it is more relevant to the term "author" and the time article covers authors from 1923 to present. Google defaults to a "most current" status when indexing pages and since I didn't specify "of all time" it decided that a list of authors from 1923 to present would be the more likely choice of what I wanted. Wrong - see it's dumb. You knew that I wanted to know who the all time greatest author was without specifying "all time". In fact "all time" is a given - if I was asking a person this question I would only specify a time period if I didn't want an "all time" answer. A brain can intuit a meaning from an incomplete array of words - a search engine can only sort words and attach a value to each one.
So what happens if I add "of all time" to the query?
The results are now worse as old Willy got knocked down a couple of pegs. Google has now decided that the prime keyword is "All Time Greatest" and presents a list of authors, novels, films and so on. Boy is it stupid.
But... this is good.
If you understand this then you can use it to rank well in the search engines - let me clarify that - you will rank well in Google. When I refer to search engines understand that I am only concerned with Google as that's where the money is.
There is a correlation between high page rankings and Adsense optimization. If you have one you have the other. To put it another way - if your pages are optimized for the best Adsense ads then you are also optimized for high search results and failure to capture them rests with the quality of your backlinks. I mention this for those of you who aren't interested in Adsense but do want to know how to target search engine traffic. For the most part the tweaks used to optimize your blog for Adsense also optimize your blog for the serp's so follow along if you will.
I said earlier that I let Google tell me what I am relevant to. I do this by writing huge rambling posts covering everything I can think of for a topic. In the process I use my prime keyword and as many related terms as I can while still keeping the post readable. Am I stuffing keywords - yes but not in a spammy way and always within limits.
If you go back and read my opening sentence and the first paragraph below it you will find I mention "making money", "Payday Loan" and "Adsense" twice each. I didn't force their use and the writing isn't dismal to read. ( It might be but that is only due to my deficiencies as a writer and not on purpose.)
Moreover I actually used the term "making money with Adsense" twice and I even got my blogs numero uno keyword "make money online" into the mix.
and...
I used all three of todays keywords in my post Title and they will be in the tags (labels on blogger) at the end. I have also just used all the terms again in the preceding paragraph and I will probably fit them in again a few times before I am done with this post.
A human reading this post knows what it is about. Some guy is telling you how to optimize your blog for Adsense and search engine rankings. Google's little bot will know that this post has something to do with Adsense, Payday loans, SEO, Google, relevancy, search engines and a bunch of stuff I haven't thought of. By later today or tomorrow Google will tell me what it thinks this page is relevant to. I'll check my stats and see which keywords are used to bring visitors to my blog. Those keywords are what Google has pegged this page for.
After completing the first two "payday loan" posts I waited for the hit results to start showing up. Using notepad I keep track of what terms are used to find my loan posts. They were all long tail searches which I have listed below;
payday loan industry competition - rank is 20
cashadvancelinkdirectory.com - rank is 3
make money online with payday loans - rank is 4 and 5
make money with payday loans - rank is 3
emergency cash - loan - rank is 110
pay day loan reviews - rank is 16
loan money online - rank is 26
how much does payday loans make - rank is 4
Each term above was used at least twice by searchers and originated from different IP's. Terms that are really obscure are rarely used more than once and I ignore them when making my short list.
This list tells me that Google thinks my post(s) is relevant to these terms or it wouldn't have listed me for them. It only lists my post pages and not my home page. This tells me that Google hasn't listed my blog as relevant (or it has and it is so far down in the serps that I won't see it.) just a couple of pages are and only for some minor long tails. The one exception is the term "Emergency Cash Loans" which is one of the money making prime keywords related to Payday Loans. This is good as it gives me something to work with and serves as a barometer for how well I succeed. I will work at getting on page 1 from a starting position of page 11. As I see movement downward I will know my strategies are working.
A week or two ago I wrote a couple of posts on the topic of payday loans. Now most of you would agree that a make money online blog has little relevance to Payday Loan sites. For the most part, this is true. I am in the midst of an experiment to see if I can't make the two relevant. Why I would want to do this and how it is done is the key for making money with Adsense.
A search engine isn't smart. It simply gathers as much information as it can and then presents it's findings in the order stipulated by the human brains that programmed it. It can't tell you who the greatest author in the English language is but it can tell you who others think the greatest author is. Most people who know what a dangling participle is would say Shakespeare. What does Google say?
Close but no cigar.
If Google was smart it would have got this right and it almost did but the fact that it was wrong highlights the priorities of the programmers and the limitations on how far you can tweak an algorithm.
You can learn much from this query.
Of all the keywords presented it chose "author" as the prime search term. Not "greatest" or "English".
It ranked the sites according to who has the most relevance to "Author" and then by which site has the most authority on the subject.
It chose time.com over the correct answer because it is more relevant to the term "author" and the time article covers authors from 1923 to present. Google defaults to a "most current" status when indexing pages and since I didn't specify "of all time" it decided that a list of authors from 1923 to present would be the more likely choice of what I wanted. Wrong - see it's dumb. You knew that I wanted to know who the all time greatest author was without specifying "all time". In fact "all time" is a given - if I was asking a person this question I would only specify a time period if I didn't want an "all time" answer. A brain can intuit a meaning from an incomplete array of words - a search engine can only sort words and attach a value to each one.
So what happens if I add "of all time" to the query?
The results are now worse as old Willy got knocked down a couple of pegs. Google has now decided that the prime keyword is "All Time Greatest" and presents a list of authors, novels, films and so on. Boy is it stupid.
But... this is good.
If you understand this then you can use it to rank well in the search engines - let me clarify that - you will rank well in Google. When I refer to search engines understand that I am only concerned with Google as that's where the money is.
There is a correlation between high page rankings and Adsense optimization. If you have one you have the other. To put it another way - if your pages are optimized for the best Adsense ads then you are also optimized for high search results and failure to capture them rests with the quality of your backlinks. I mention this for those of you who aren't interested in Adsense but do want to know how to target search engine traffic. For the most part the tweaks used to optimize your blog for Adsense also optimize your blog for the serp's so follow along if you will.
I said earlier that I let Google tell me what I am relevant to. I do this by writing huge rambling posts covering everything I can think of for a topic. In the process I use my prime keyword and as many related terms as I can while still keeping the post readable. Am I stuffing keywords - yes but not in a spammy way and always within limits.
If you go back and read my opening sentence and the first paragraph below it you will find I mention "making money", "Payday Loan" and "Adsense" twice each. I didn't force their use and the writing isn't dismal to read. ( It might be but that is only due to my deficiencies as a writer and not on purpose.)
Moreover I actually used the term "making money with Adsense" twice and I even got my blogs numero uno keyword "make money online" into the mix.
and...
I used all three of todays keywords in my post Title and they will be in the tags (labels on blogger) at the end. I have also just used all the terms again in the preceding paragraph and I will probably fit them in again a few times before I am done with this post.
A human reading this post knows what it is about. Some guy is telling you how to optimize your blog for Adsense and search engine rankings. Google's little bot will know that this post has something to do with Adsense, Payday loans, SEO, Google, relevancy, search engines and a bunch of stuff I haven't thought of. By later today or tomorrow Google will tell me what it thinks this page is relevant to. I'll check my stats and see which keywords are used to bring visitors to my blog. Those keywords are what Google has pegged this page for.
After completing the first two "payday loan" posts I waited for the hit results to start showing up. Using notepad I keep track of what terms are used to find my loan posts. They were all long tail searches which I have listed below;
payday loan industry competition - rank is 20
cashadvancelinkdirectory.com - rank is 3
make money online with payday loans - rank is 4 and 5
make money with payday loans - rank is 3
emergency cash - loan - rank is 110
pay day loan reviews - rank is 16
loan money online - rank is 26
how much does payday loans make - rank is 4
Each term above was used at least twice by searchers and originated from different IP's. Terms that are really obscure are rarely used more than once and I ignore them when making my short list.
This list tells me that Google thinks my post(s) is relevant to these terms or it wouldn't have listed me for them. It only lists my post pages and not my home page. This tells me that Google hasn't listed my blog as relevant (or it has and it is so far down in the serps that I won't see it.) just a couple of pages are and only for some minor long tails. The one exception is the term "Emergency Cash Loans" which is one of the money making prime keywords related to Payday Loans. This is good as it gives me something to work with and serves as a barometer for how well I succeed. I will work at getting on page 1 from a starting position of page 11. As I see movement downward I will know my strategies are working.
You will also notice that I went from a rank of over 200 for Payday Loans and I have climbed 49 spots in a few days without doing anything more than using the term in my post titles and content - a practice I am repeating in this post. I have not chased down any backlinks yet.
This increase in ranking tells me that I should have a legitimate shot at success.
You will also notice that I am slowly getting more traffic for more terms. This is directly related to the fact that as Google accepts your relevancy for one term it in effect boosts your relevancy for all the nearest related terms which in turn means ranking for more terms. It becomes a snowball rolling down hill. The more terms you rank for - the more terms you will get to rank for.
I said the chart was helpful for tracking my rankings and it is but the real story is that it shows me exactly how Google has me pigeon holed at the minute. If you look at the terms I have been ranked for you will notice 3 distinct levels of relevancy.
The terms that Google has ranked me high for are all quite relevant to my blog. I am telling people how to market and make money off of payday loans or at least the term.
The terms Google has ranked me 2 - 4 pages deep are terms that Google hasn't quite decided if I am totally relevant for yet. And they are right. I have used the term "Payday Loan Review" in my posts but I haven't really done a review of any payday loan companies or systems. I shouldn't rank on the front page for this and Google is able to figure this out. The algorithm is really quite amazing in a lot of ways.
Google is also accurate about the terms in which I rank out in the netherworld - "emergency cash loan", "I need a loan to make money" and "payday loans". I don't give out loans and Google knows it. My task will be to convince Google to put me on the front page for my term in spite of this. I will have to convince Google that a review or informational post deserves top billing along with the actual payday loan companies.
A note about Red Flag Keywords
I mentioned earlier that I would normally start a new blog if I wanted to target a new niche or keyword not related to any of my existing sites. If you are following along then I suggest you start a new blog and target a niche of your choice. The main reason I am experimenting with this niche on this blog is because it is increasingly difficult to target Red Flag keywords on sites devoted to the terms. If you want to target legal/law related keywords you had better be a law office. If you go after mortgage and loan traffic then you had better be a financial institution. If it's insurance related then you had better be selling insurance. If you can't show instant relevancy to Google then you won't get out of the water.
If you are picking a niche please stay away from all the spam keywords. Not because I don't want the competition but because you need to learn how to do this with a niche you can dominate before tackling one that I know will lead most of you to failure. I have no assurance that I will succeed so don't waste your time on keywords that will be almost impossible to succeed with. This doesn't mean you shouldn't go after highly competitive keywords - I always do as that is where the money is. Competition doesn't scare me and if you take my advice to heart and do what I do it won't scare you either. The more competitive the keyword the better just stay away from the spam keywords - you don't want to lose your Adsense account.
To reinforce this point I want to show you something which will also explain why I am going slow in my campaign for Payday Loans.
The moment you get involved with spam keywords you attract all the spammers. I mentioned in a recent post that one of the current methods that spammers are using to game Google is to scrape content off of legitimate sites and post links back to the source - they do this in order to get a trackback link returned to them. They are taking advantage of the fact that most bogs have yet to add the no-follow to trackbacks. In effect they are stealing PR from high ranking blogs.
No sooner did I post my first article on Payday Loans than I started receiving links from spammers. To date I have had 28 links to my first post. See the screenshot below.
This increase in ranking tells me that I should have a legitimate shot at success.
You will also notice that I am slowly getting more traffic for more terms. This is directly related to the fact that as Google accepts your relevancy for one term it in effect boosts your relevancy for all the nearest related terms which in turn means ranking for more terms. It becomes a snowball rolling down hill. The more terms you rank for - the more terms you will get to rank for.
I said the chart was helpful for tracking my rankings and it is but the real story is that it shows me exactly how Google has me pigeon holed at the minute. If you look at the terms I have been ranked for you will notice 3 distinct levels of relevancy.
The terms that Google has ranked me high for are all quite relevant to my blog. I am telling people how to market and make money off of payday loans or at least the term.
The terms Google has ranked me 2 - 4 pages deep are terms that Google hasn't quite decided if I am totally relevant for yet. And they are right. I have used the term "Payday Loan Review" in my posts but I haven't really done a review of any payday loan companies or systems. I shouldn't rank on the front page for this and Google is able to figure this out. The algorithm is really quite amazing in a lot of ways.
Google is also accurate about the terms in which I rank out in the netherworld - "emergency cash loan", "I need a loan to make money" and "payday loans". I don't give out loans and Google knows it. My task will be to convince Google to put me on the front page for my term in spite of this. I will have to convince Google that a review or informational post deserves top billing along with the actual payday loan companies.
A note about Red Flag Keywords
I mentioned earlier that I would normally start a new blog if I wanted to target a new niche or keyword not related to any of my existing sites. If you are following along then I suggest you start a new blog and target a niche of your choice. The main reason I am experimenting with this niche on this blog is because it is increasingly difficult to target Red Flag keywords on sites devoted to the terms. If you want to target legal/law related keywords you had better be a law office. If you go after mortgage and loan traffic then you had better be a financial institution. If it's insurance related then you had better be selling insurance. If you can't show instant relevancy to Google then you won't get out of the water.
If you are picking a niche please stay away from all the spam keywords. Not because I don't want the competition but because you need to learn how to do this with a niche you can dominate before tackling one that I know will lead most of you to failure. I have no assurance that I will succeed so don't waste your time on keywords that will be almost impossible to succeed with. This doesn't mean you shouldn't go after highly competitive keywords - I always do as that is where the money is. Competition doesn't scare me and if you take my advice to heart and do what I do it won't scare you either. The more competitive the keyword the better just stay away from the spam keywords - you don't want to lose your Adsense account.
To reinforce this point I want to show you something which will also explain why I am going slow in my campaign for Payday Loans.
The moment you get involved with spam keywords you attract all the spammers. I mentioned in a recent post that one of the current methods that spammers are using to game Google is to scrape content off of legitimate sites and post links back to the source - they do this in order to get a trackback link returned to them. They are taking advantage of the fact that most bogs have yet to add the no-follow to trackbacks. In effect they are stealing PR from high ranking blogs.
No sooner did I post my first article on Payday Loans than I started receiving links from spammers. To date I have had 28 links to my first post. See the screenshot below.
Most of these terms will never bring me much traffic but that's not what I am after. I simply want to make my site relevant for Payday loans in general and I do this by adding as much relevant content as possible. Normally I would be doing this on a blog set up for the target and would be posting lengthy articles covering every aspect of loans that I could think of. Because I am trying to incorporate payday loan relevancy into an existing non-related blog I will have to move slower and I do this by simply building up long tail phrases over a longer period of time.
The chart above is important not so much for showing me my rankings but for showing me how Google is ranking me. I will explain the difference in a minute but first the initial chart readings.
The first thing to notice is that I am not ranked at all for "Loans" and "Cash Loans Online". I added these to the list as one is the parent keyword of my prime keyword - "Loans" and the other is a highly searched related term - "Cash Loans Online". If I succeed with payday loans then I should begin to rank for these two terms as well and they will be future targets if I do. Just planning ahead.
The next thing of interest is that I am being ranked for my prime keyword - "Payday Loans". This is good news so soon in my quest. It tells me that Google has accepted my blog as being at least somewhat relevant to the term. Keep in mind that the keyword I have chosen is commonly referred to as one of the red flag keywords - terms that set off spam filters far and wide. It is a high paying adsense keyword and as such it attracts spammers trying to cash in on it. Usually Google will flag you instantly and never index your posts if it suspects that you are a spam site. Google has decided that I am not and I now have a huge lead on the spammers.
The chart above is important not so much for showing me my rankings but for showing me how Google is ranking me. I will explain the difference in a minute but first the initial chart readings.
The first thing to notice is that I am not ranked at all for "Loans" and "Cash Loans Online". I added these to the list as one is the parent keyword of my prime keyword - "Loans" and the other is a highly searched related term - "Cash Loans Online". If I succeed with payday loans then I should begin to rank for these two terms as well and they will be future targets if I do. Just planning ahead.
The next thing of interest is that I am being ranked for my prime keyword - "Payday Loans". This is good news so soon in my quest. It tells me that Google has accepted my blog as being at least somewhat relevant to the term. Keep in mind that the keyword I have chosen is commonly referred to as one of the red flag keywords - terms that set off spam filters far and wide. It is a high paying adsense keyword and as such it attracts spammers trying to cash in on it. Usually Google will flag you instantly and never index your posts if it suspects that you are a spam site. Google has decided that I am not and I now have a huge lead on the spammers.
Payday Loans - Adsense Update
If you are just joining me I have been demonstrating how to optimize blogs for certain keywords in order to drive search engine traffic. I use this type of traffic primarily for adsense revenue but my techniques will also work if you are selling affiliate products or advertising on your pages. The goal is to target the type of traffic that will respond to what you offer on your page.
I have chosen the term Payday Loans for a number of reasons.
It is a heavily searched term in the search engines which means that it could be profitable using Adsense or by selling ad space to payday loan companies who want to take advantage of the targeted traffic.
It is also a term that is not particularly relevant to my blog and while this is a no no in as far as Adsense is concerned I am experimenting to see if I can successfully pull off introducing an off topic niche into this blog. It may not work but if it does then the field is wide open for future keyword cherry picking.
Lastly it allows me to show my readers the step by step process I use to make money with my blogs. If you want to catch up you can read my previous posts on this topic;
Payday Loans
Payday Loans Review
Make Money with Payday Loans
Several readers have asked me about other marketer's techniques and I want to set something straight at the outset. My way of doing things is not the only way - there are other SEO methods out there and lot's of ebooks regarding Adsense. I am a trial and error type of person and while I have read other methods I find that most aren't kept up to date and in large part concentrate on short cuts. Short cuts are fine for short term projects and I will discuss this type of marketing in the future but for now I am interested in showing you how to create a steady long term income that works in the current search engine climate. Because I am always experimenting I find that my methods are always being tweaked and updated which keeps my blogs moving in the right direction without fear of running afoul of Google. Having said that, this current experiment could get me into trouble but I am a firm believer in taking things slow and being cautious - which is what todays post is about.
Knowing how to plan ahead and gauge your progress.
I'm just guessing but I bet 90% of all the blogs on the net are unplanned "off the top of the head" creations.
Most are not focused on any defined goal. The URL has nothing to do with the content, the blog title is usually a name or a general phrase ie. "My Lonely Life" and it has nothing to do with the content either. The content changes day to day and covers topics from one end of the spectrum to the other. The post titles don't reflect the post content and the content itself is not optimized for any particular keyword or topic. Did I miss anything?
I am aware that a lot of bloggers - certainly the majority are busy creating content that they think will interest people and they use lot's of snappy titles and tricks to lure traffic to the site - the Web 2.0 crowd. This has become the new dominant blogging scene and it is all geared to drawing traffic from the social networks in order to eventually become an A - Lister. Every day I read blogs that talk about which is better; Stumble Upon or Digg. Every day someone has a new way to gather hordes of traffic using these sites. When I read these blogs I always wait for someone to ask one important question. "What did you do with all that traffic?"
Appealing to the stumblers and diggers it seems most bloggers don't realize that they are only after traffic for traffic's sake. They don't have a plan on what to do with the visitors they do get. Visitors who usually just click in, click out and are never seen again. The general theory seems to be that this will lead to becoming recognized which in turn will lead to becoming an A-Lister. Why do they want to be an A-lister? I presume they think this will make them a lot of money or maybe they just want to be an A-lister for the sake of being an A-lister. If I had to guess I would say that most bloggers have at least considered the possibility of making money with their blog and true bloggers blogging only for the fun of it are a minority.
Here is the million dollar question - has anyone become an A-lister just from social traffic? All the ones I know of draw most of their traffic from search engines or at least they did until achieving enough notoriety to attract social traffic. What's more, they still need search engine traffic to make money from their sites. Someone has to click the ads they sell or no one will buy ads. Social network users don't click the ads - when was the last time you bought something on one of the A-listers sites? Did you even click an ad?
The point I am making is simple and all the Google haters out there will have to realize this sooner or later - you will not be successful online either as a marketer or as an A-lister without Google's traffic. Period.
If you know of anybody that makes money online who doesn't rely on search engine traffic to do it - please let me know.
I am not trying to dash your A-List dreams, just trying to outline the basic concepts of SEO that you can and should incorporate into your blog. To this end I have been explaining how to target the term "Payday Loan" using, so far, the most basic techniques that all optimized pages must have to rank well in the serp's.
These are;
Select a prime keyword or phrase as your ultimate target. Use that phrase or keyword in every post title that you can. Use it 2 to 3 times per hundred words of content. Always highlight it in the first paragraph a few times. Use it in the last paragraph as well.
Select a list of long tail keywords (related terms and phrases of the prime keyword) and use these terms liberally in your content.
Target each new post to a long tail and work at raising these related keywords towards the top of the serp's first. The more related keywords you target the higher your prime keyword will rank.
Use keywords and only keywords in your tags - prime and long tails.
This is basic SEO and has the effect of telling Google exactly what your pages are about.
Once you have posted your articles pay attention to your stats - specifically tracking the keywords people use to find your site. Keep a list of these keywords and use them in future posts or even go back and include them in prior ones. This will increase your index ranking for each of the terms.
This has confused a few people so I will show you what I am talking about using my Payday Loan posts.
The first Payday Loan post was a fishing expedition. I wrote a long rambling post that used all the main keywords for my target. I then sat back and waited for the first visitor to find my site using a payday loan related keyword. It wasn't long before Google sent me someone who had typed in the term "cashadvancelinkdirectory.com" and I quickly checked Google to find where I ranked for this term. It was 3 and still is. As each day passed a few more visitors showed up and I noted the keywords used and the ranking of each. I then wrote a new post and included all of the terms Google had sent me traffic for. The point of doing this is to reinforce those terms as relevant to my site and as this relevancy increases Google sends me even more long tail relevant keywords. Slowly and steadily I will incorporate all of the newest terms into my posts as well which will lead to getting more terms and so on...
This is the initial list of related keywords for Payday Loan that visitors had entered into Google's search box and where my blog ranked for each term in the result's pages.
payday loan industry competition - rank was 20
cashadvancelinkdirectory.com - rank was 3
make money online with payday loans - rank was 4 and 5
make money with payday loans - rank was 3
emergency cash - loan - rank was 110
pay day loan reviews - rank was 16
loan money online - rank was 26
how much does payday loans make - rank was 4
Since then I have added the following;
payday loan traffic ranked 8
payday loans + marketing ranked 17
marketing for payday loans ranked 5
make money payday loans ranked 5
i need a loan to make money ranked 10
how to make money with payday loans ranked 4 (first Yahoo visitor)
how to create your own online payday loan business ranked 2
keyword ideas payday loan ranked 1
reviews on payday day loans ranked 26
I have since entered all these terms into SEO Elite in order to track the rankings. In the chart below you can see each term and how the rankings move - up or down according to Google. (Click image to enlarge)
I have chosen the term Payday Loans for a number of reasons.
It is a heavily searched term in the search engines which means that it could be profitable using Adsense or by selling ad space to payday loan companies who want to take advantage of the targeted traffic.
It is also a term that is not particularly relevant to my blog and while this is a no no in as far as Adsense is concerned I am experimenting to see if I can successfully pull off introducing an off topic niche into this blog. It may not work but if it does then the field is wide open for future keyword cherry picking.
Lastly it allows me to show my readers the step by step process I use to make money with my blogs. If you want to catch up you can read my previous posts on this topic;
Payday Loans
Payday Loans Review
Make Money with Payday Loans
Several readers have asked me about other marketer's techniques and I want to set something straight at the outset. My way of doing things is not the only way - there are other SEO methods out there and lot's of ebooks regarding Adsense. I am a trial and error type of person and while I have read other methods I find that most aren't kept up to date and in large part concentrate on short cuts. Short cuts are fine for short term projects and I will discuss this type of marketing in the future but for now I am interested in showing you how to create a steady long term income that works in the current search engine climate. Because I am always experimenting I find that my methods are always being tweaked and updated which keeps my blogs moving in the right direction without fear of running afoul of Google. Having said that, this current experiment could get me into trouble but I am a firm believer in taking things slow and being cautious - which is what todays post is about.
Knowing how to plan ahead and gauge your progress.
I'm just guessing but I bet 90% of all the blogs on the net are unplanned "off the top of the head" creations.
Most are not focused on any defined goal. The URL has nothing to do with the content, the blog title is usually a name or a general phrase ie. "My Lonely Life" and it has nothing to do with the content either. The content changes day to day and covers topics from one end of the spectrum to the other. The post titles don't reflect the post content and the content itself is not optimized for any particular keyword or topic. Did I miss anything?
I am aware that a lot of bloggers - certainly the majority are busy creating content that they think will interest people and they use lot's of snappy titles and tricks to lure traffic to the site - the Web 2.0 crowd. This has become the new dominant blogging scene and it is all geared to drawing traffic from the social networks in order to eventually become an A - Lister. Every day I read blogs that talk about which is better; Stumble Upon or Digg. Every day someone has a new way to gather hordes of traffic using these sites. When I read these blogs I always wait for someone to ask one important question. "What did you do with all that traffic?"
Appealing to the stumblers and diggers it seems most bloggers don't realize that they are only after traffic for traffic's sake. They don't have a plan on what to do with the visitors they do get. Visitors who usually just click in, click out and are never seen again. The general theory seems to be that this will lead to becoming recognized which in turn will lead to becoming an A-Lister. Why do they want to be an A-lister? I presume they think this will make them a lot of money or maybe they just want to be an A-lister for the sake of being an A-lister. If I had to guess I would say that most bloggers have at least considered the possibility of making money with their blog and true bloggers blogging only for the fun of it are a minority.
Here is the million dollar question - has anyone become an A-lister just from social traffic? All the ones I know of draw most of their traffic from search engines or at least they did until achieving enough notoriety to attract social traffic. What's more, they still need search engine traffic to make money from their sites. Someone has to click the ads they sell or no one will buy ads. Social network users don't click the ads - when was the last time you bought something on one of the A-listers sites? Did you even click an ad?
The point I am making is simple and all the Google haters out there will have to realize this sooner or later - you will not be successful online either as a marketer or as an A-lister without Google's traffic. Period.
If you know of anybody that makes money online who doesn't rely on search engine traffic to do it - please let me know.
I am not trying to dash your A-List dreams, just trying to outline the basic concepts of SEO that you can and should incorporate into your blog. To this end I have been explaining how to target the term "Payday Loan" using, so far, the most basic techniques that all optimized pages must have to rank well in the serp's.
These are;
Select a prime keyword or phrase as your ultimate target. Use that phrase or keyword in every post title that you can. Use it 2 to 3 times per hundred words of content. Always highlight it in the first paragraph a few times. Use it in the last paragraph as well.
Select a list of long tail keywords (related terms and phrases of the prime keyword) and use these terms liberally in your content.
Target each new post to a long tail and work at raising these related keywords towards the top of the serp's first. The more related keywords you target the higher your prime keyword will rank.
Use keywords and only keywords in your tags - prime and long tails.
This is basic SEO and has the effect of telling Google exactly what your pages are about.
Once you have posted your articles pay attention to your stats - specifically tracking the keywords people use to find your site. Keep a list of these keywords and use them in future posts or even go back and include them in prior ones. This will increase your index ranking for each of the terms.
This has confused a few people so I will show you what I am talking about using my Payday Loan posts.
The first Payday Loan post was a fishing expedition. I wrote a long rambling post that used all the main keywords for my target. I then sat back and waited for the first visitor to find my site using a payday loan related keyword. It wasn't long before Google sent me someone who had typed in the term "cashadvancelinkdirectory.com" and I quickly checked Google to find where I ranked for this term. It was 3 and still is. As each day passed a few more visitors showed up and I noted the keywords used and the ranking of each. I then wrote a new post and included all of the terms Google had sent me traffic for. The point of doing this is to reinforce those terms as relevant to my site and as this relevancy increases Google sends me even more long tail relevant keywords. Slowly and steadily I will incorporate all of the newest terms into my posts as well which will lead to getting more terms and so on...
This is the initial list of related keywords for Payday Loan that visitors had entered into Google's search box and where my blog ranked for each term in the result's pages.
payday loan industry competition - rank was 20
cashadvancelinkdirectory.com - rank was 3
make money online with payday loans - rank was 4 and 5
make money with payday loans - rank was 3
emergency cash - loan - rank was 110
pay day loan reviews - rank was 16
loan money online - rank was 26
how much does payday loans make - rank was 4
Since then I have added the following;
payday loan traffic ranked 8
payday loans + marketing ranked 17
marketing for payday loans ranked 5
make money payday loans ranked 5
i need a loan to make money ranked 10
how to make money with payday loans ranked 4 (first Yahoo visitor)
how to create your own online payday loan business ranked 2
keyword ideas payday loan ranked 1
reviews on payday day loans ranked 26
I have since entered all these terms into SEO Elite in order to track the rankings. In the chart below you can see each term and how the rankings move - up or down according to Google. (Click image to enlarge)
In essence I know exactly who my visitors are and what they are looking for - and so does Google.
Because I have optimized all my posts for specific keywords Google sends me highly targeted traffic and then puts highly targeted (the best converting) ads on my blog for the visitors to click on. I am not smart priced and get the better paying clicks. This is the reason that page optimization is so important - your content and how you optimize it determines how targeted your traffic is. If you can't provide targeted traffic then you can't make money either with Adsense or with Affiliate sales. Selling ads is also hard if your traffic while large, is diffuse. To make money online you have to provide the people paying you what they want - converting traffic.
To summarize the "Payday Loan" campaign I have been tracking my index rankings for all the keywords I have collected and have made good progress in climbing the serp's but my main keyword has stalled out at a rank of 36. This appears to be as high as content and my PR5 can take me. From here on in I will be adding backlinks with highly targeted anchor text to boost my rankings.
It is at this point that many of you can't do what I do. I have access to a lot of sites that I can use to link to my pages. If you are just starting out then you will find getting backlinks more of a challenge and you won't have enough PR to target the competitive niches. This is why I have recommended starting out by targeting niches that you can overcome with content and a few backlinks that you can get using articles and services like Yahoo Answers and Squidoo. As your PR and content increases you will be able to target better keywords and build a successful Adsense site over time.
At some point you will be faced with the "ethical" dilemma of whether you should or would cheat. By cheating I am referring to the practice of buying links. I am not advocating anything but I will tell you that every successful niche marketer buys links - they have to. If you want to make any serious money online then you will be faced with this decision at some point. Just thought I would mention it now.
Before I leave you I want to address an comment I received recently. The writer mentioned that she had read that it wasn't a good idea to rely on Adsense for all your income online as Google can take it all away in an instant. This is true and I should mention that this is not the only way I earn an income online - it is just one of the ways. I have found that some niches are ideal for Adsense and others are better suited to affiliate sales. Lead generation has become my main focus lately and I have found learning how to make money with Adsense is a great way to hone the skills needed in generating leads. At the moment lead generation is dominated by the Black Hatters and you may find the article below illuminating if you are wondering just how far you can take a niche like "Payday Loans" and make money from it.
This article will give you a good idea of the kinds of people you are competing with online and the tactics experienced marketers use to make money. I have not used hypertext as I don't want to link to this site - black hats don't make good link partners.
http://oooff.com/php-affiliate-seo-blog/affiliate-marketing/
making-big-easy-money-with-google-local-search/
(I have broken the URL to fit the page - cut and paste both lines as one long URL)
Thanks to Paul for bringing this article to my attention unfortunately he didn't leave a link. The only thing missing in the article is how the lead generation sites managed to rank high for the Payday Loan terms they targeted. The answer is using the same optimization techniques that are used for Adsense.
Now that I know there are profitable clicks in this niche I will continue to add links over time - slowly - and work my way up the "Payday Loan" serp pages. I am already adding income to my bottom line and I'm not even ranking that well yet. I will update you when I get enough payday loan traffic to have a significant effect on my daily bottom line. At the moment my daily earnings on this blog fluctuate between $10 and $15 - when I start seeing higher earnings I will know that the payday loan clicks have started to accumulate.
Cheers,
Grizzly
Update Below
Follow along with me step by step as I show you how I pick a target and then optimize my blog in order to make money with Adsense.
I outline my "Payday Loans" experiment in sequential order below.
Payday Loans
Payday Loans Review
Payday Loans and Adsense
Payday Loans - Adsense Update
Payday Loans Update
Because I have optimized all my posts for specific keywords Google sends me highly targeted traffic and then puts highly targeted (the best converting) ads on my blog for the visitors to click on. I am not smart priced and get the better paying clicks. This is the reason that page optimization is so important - your content and how you optimize it determines how targeted your traffic is. If you can't provide targeted traffic then you can't make money either with Adsense or with Affiliate sales. Selling ads is also hard if your traffic while large, is diffuse. To make money online you have to provide the people paying you what they want - converting traffic.
To summarize the "Payday Loan" campaign I have been tracking my index rankings for all the keywords I have collected and have made good progress in climbing the serp's but my main keyword has stalled out at a rank of 36. This appears to be as high as content and my PR5 can take me. From here on in I will be adding backlinks with highly targeted anchor text to boost my rankings.
It is at this point that many of you can't do what I do. I have access to a lot of sites that I can use to link to my pages. If you are just starting out then you will find getting backlinks more of a challenge and you won't have enough PR to target the competitive niches. This is why I have recommended starting out by targeting niches that you can overcome with content and a few backlinks that you can get using articles and services like Yahoo Answers and Squidoo. As your PR and content increases you will be able to target better keywords and build a successful Adsense site over time.
At some point you will be faced with the "ethical" dilemma of whether you should or would cheat. By cheating I am referring to the practice of buying links. I am not advocating anything but I will tell you that every successful niche marketer buys links - they have to. If you want to make any serious money online then you will be faced with this decision at some point. Just thought I would mention it now.
Before I leave you I want to address an comment I received recently. The writer mentioned that she had read that it wasn't a good idea to rely on Adsense for all your income online as Google can take it all away in an instant. This is true and I should mention that this is not the only way I earn an income online - it is just one of the ways. I have found that some niches are ideal for Adsense and others are better suited to affiliate sales. Lead generation has become my main focus lately and I have found learning how to make money with Adsense is a great way to hone the skills needed in generating leads. At the moment lead generation is dominated by the Black Hatters and you may find the article below illuminating if you are wondering just how far you can take a niche like "Payday Loans" and make money from it.
This article will give you a good idea of the kinds of people you are competing with online and the tactics experienced marketers use to make money. I have not used hypertext as I don't want to link to this site - black hats don't make good link partners.
http://oooff.com/php-affiliate-seo-blog/affiliate-marketing/
making-big-easy-money-with-google-local-search/
(I have broken the URL to fit the page - cut and paste both lines as one long URL)
Thanks to Paul for bringing this article to my attention unfortunately he didn't leave a link. The only thing missing in the article is how the lead generation sites managed to rank high for the Payday Loan terms they targeted. The answer is using the same optimization techniques that are used for Adsense.
Now that I know there are profitable clicks in this niche I will continue to add links over time - slowly - and work my way up the "Payday Loan" serp pages. I am already adding income to my bottom line and I'm not even ranking that well yet. I will update you when I get enough payday loan traffic to have a significant effect on my daily bottom line. At the moment my daily earnings on this blog fluctuate between $10 and $15 - when I start seeing higher earnings I will know that the payday loan clicks have started to accumulate.
Cheers,
Grizzly
Update Below
Follow along with me step by step as I show you how I pick a target and then optimize my blog in order to make money with Adsense.
I outline my "Payday Loans" experiment in sequential order below.
Payday Loans
Payday Loans Review
Payday Loans and Adsense
Payday Loans - Adsense Update
Payday Loans Update
Now it is possible that the targeted traffic didn't click the ads and someone else did but not likely. To get better paying clicks you have to meet a few Google guidlines which are best understood by explaining how Adwords works.
An advertiser using Adwords allows Google to manage what sites it displays the advertisers ads on. An advertiser wants conversions and doesn't want an ad appearing and getting clicked on a bunch of sites that aren't likely to convert. To increase the advertisers ROI Google instituted smart pricing which basically states that they will charge less for clicks that are less likely to convert and more for highly targeted clicks.
A crude and simplified example of how this works.
If someone queries Google and finds my site using the term "make money online" and then clicks a Payday Loan ad, is this targeted? From Googles point of view this click would be considered less likely to convert as there is no connection between what the visitor was searching for and what they chose. In short if one of my "make money" searchers had clicked the payday loan ad I wouldn't have received the high payouts. Conversely you can see direct relevancy and how a searcher looking for "payday loans" would be more likely to convert for the advertiser. In this case Google charges the advertiser full price and I get top CPC by providing a highly targeted visitor to the advertisers site.
If this is confusing just think in terms of a relevancy trail. If everything is relevant then you get paid more and if you have people dropping in from stumbleupon and clicking the odd ad you will get paid pennies because that type of traffic is not targeted and is not relevant to the ads clicked. Large amounts of social traffic also bugger up your CTR and invariably if you draw social traffic you will be "smart priced" by Google and only paid pennies for all the Adsense ads. This is the reason most web 2.0 or A-List style blogs don't make any money with Adsense - they don't draw the right type of traffic and draw lots of the wrong type of traffic (from a money making standpoint only).
To make money with Adsense you only want large amounts of "targeted" traffic and basically nothing else.
The shot below lists the latest keywords or queries used to find my blog on the search engines. 90% of my total traffic comes from Google and these are the typical terms used to find me.
An advertiser using Adwords allows Google to manage what sites it displays the advertisers ads on. An advertiser wants conversions and doesn't want an ad appearing and getting clicked on a bunch of sites that aren't likely to convert. To increase the advertisers ROI Google instituted smart pricing which basically states that they will charge less for clicks that are less likely to convert and more for highly targeted clicks.
A crude and simplified example of how this works.
If someone queries Google and finds my site using the term "make money online" and then clicks a Payday Loan ad, is this targeted? From Googles point of view this click would be considered less likely to convert as there is no connection between what the visitor was searching for and what they chose. In short if one of my "make money" searchers had clicked the payday loan ad I wouldn't have received the high payouts. Conversely you can see direct relevancy and how a searcher looking for "payday loans" would be more likely to convert for the advertiser. In this case Google charges the advertiser full price and I get top CPC by providing a highly targeted visitor to the advertisers site.
If this is confusing just think in terms of a relevancy trail. If everything is relevant then you get paid more and if you have people dropping in from stumbleupon and clicking the odd ad you will get paid pennies because that type of traffic is not targeted and is not relevant to the ads clicked. Large amounts of social traffic also bugger up your CTR and invariably if you draw social traffic you will be "smart priced" by Google and only paid pennies for all the Adsense ads. This is the reason most web 2.0 or A-List style blogs don't make any money with Adsense - they don't draw the right type of traffic and draw lots of the wrong type of traffic (from a money making standpoint only).
To make money with Adsense you only want large amounts of "targeted" traffic and basically nothing else.
The shot below lists the latest keywords or queries used to find my blog on the search engines. 90% of my total traffic comes from Google and these are the typical terms used to find me.
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