If you are reading this then the chance is that you are looking to earn money online. Regardless of the product or service that you are looking to make money from, whether you succeed or fail will often simply come down to whether you rank well on the search engines or not.
For any given search, the websites showing on page one of Google take as much as 95% of all clicks and the top three positions take almost 60-70% of that, meaning that if you manage to dominate Google results for certain relevant keywords, you can earn money online without any problem whatsoever!
The thing that you really need to think of is keywords. I personally believe that too many people don’t give their keywords enough thought and believe that choosing keywords is “obvious” and “easy”. However, people don’t seem to remember that people search in a different way than they speak and so if you are not doing proper keyword research, you can be missing the opportunity of ranking at the top of Google for keywords you haven’t even considered!
I had a client recently who sells fireworks for weddings in London. When I told him to do some keyword research, he said he didn’t need to, he just wanted to rank for the keyword “fireworks”. This, at first glance, can make perfect sense to people and seem like the perfect keyword to rank for. However, in reality, the keyword “fireworks” is going to be incredibly high in competition, making it very hard to rank well on Google, and at the same time it is such a generic search that even if you did rank well for that keyword, it is unlikely that you would earn money online anywhere as much as you would think you would.
The problem here is common. People who want to earn money online think that ranking for the most obvious keyword with the biggest amount of traffic is the simple way forward. The fact is that by using keyword research and certain keyword tools such as Market Samurai, you can find keywords that you would never even have considered that have much less competition but relevant traffic.
Let’s take the fireworks scenario again. People may well search for “fireworks”. However, if they live in Yorkshire, then a London firework company is of no use to them. Therefore, although “fireworks” may have loads of traffic, only a fraction of that is actually relevant to this client.
So, people then refine their searches. Users regularly refine their search three or four times until they actually find a site to click through to. This normally starts with something generic and then gets more specific. That means if you research the specific, longtail keywords, this is where the money is at. So, a much easier keyword to rank for could provide much better quality traffic. Let’s look at a typical user searching for fireworks, it could go something like this:
“Fireworks” – User finds too many companies in the wrong areas, so refines…
“Fireworks London” – User sees companies in her area, but specifically wants wedding fireworks..
“Fireworks London Weddings” – User sees relevant listings but they look above her budget…
“Cheap Fireworks London Weddings” – User sees much more relevant results but notices one advertises pink love heart fireworks which she always dreamed of…
“Cheap Fireworks London Weddings Pink Love Heart” – User sees a selection of websites that really appeals, clicks through and registers her interest.
Without using keyword research tools it is highly unlikely that you will ever find the keywords that are really generating actual business rather than just searches. Therefore, if you want to earn money online, it is essential that you start using keyword research tools right away!
Filed under Keyword Research, Traffic 
To know how to make money online using keywords as your base, you need to know them properly. This is one of the most tried and tested laws of marketing on the Internet. If you know the buzzwords that will send the customers flocking to your site, your ability to make money online is pretty much guaranteed. Researching on your keywords helps you in:
• You need to find a market that is niche hungry.
• You also need to come up with a product to sell to them.
• You need to come up with a sales copy which is great enough to convince them to buy your product.
• You need to optimize your website for the search engines in such a way so that the visitors can easily find your site.
• You can come up with new ideas for products that will help you expand your current customer base.
However, searching and using keywords can be a gamble. People can be unpredictable at all times and their choice of keywords can be an endless riddle. For instance, if you are planning to earn money online by selling an e-Book on “how to shoot”, more often than not “how to shoot” may not be the most appropriate keywords. Instead, using keywords such as “learning how to hold a gun” can work wonders.
There are numerous Keyword tools that you can use for generating good revenue. Some of them are listed as below:
• Market Samurai- This is my favourite keyword tool of them all. It works fast and is as accurate as anything else I’ve seen out there. It also includes numerous other modules to help with your site rankings, including a rank checker and content finder. The Samurai guys are constanly upgrading the software and making improvements.
• BeBiz- This is another one of the most opted for keyword tools amongst webmasters. It is capable of automatically integrating the keyword research results into all aspects of the business. This makes it easier for the person to earn money online.
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool- The best part about this tool is it is free and plus it is hosted by Google. There you go! Two reasons right there! One more reason to use Google Adwords includes the information from the Pay Per Click and comes into Google’s own real-time database.
Once the list of keywords has been accumulated, that is not the end of the story. Listed below are some points that you can use to help your keywords survive in the jungle of keywords:
• Start off with a word that describes an interest or a passion
• You need to create a list of synonyms to supplement that word
• Combining the synonyms with the word “how” to generate a problematic statement
• Analyzing the demand for a particular keyword using the keyword tools
• Accumulating the similar keywords according to the purpose of the web master
• Looking for phrases as keywords, as in complete sentences that can double up as keywords.
Filed under Business Advice, Internet Marketing, Keyword Research, Pay per Click, Traffic Generation
There are number of options when it comes to making money. But most of these get rich quick methods usually turn out to be scams or just not as easy as claimed. So, the question that eventually arises: is there any opportunity to make money online in a short period of time? Well here are a few honest methods of earning a quick buck over the Internet.
1) Blogging- The most common form of writing over the Internet that can be viewed and shared by people across the world irrespective of their geographical locations. However, there are some sites such as Seopher.com where you can blog and get paid for it. This site in collaboration with Google Adsense is a pretty good way of earning some extra cash. If you do not like too many invasive advertisements, you can manipulate Adsense accordingly. Tweaking social networking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit can bring in large amount of traffic and consequently generate a decent income.
2) Viral fads- Small ideas that catch the fancy of people are a good way of making money online. If the web master has the capacity of developing something cool and make sure it lasts for over a period of time, it is a great way of earning bucks- big or small. Viral videos are particularly good for this, if you have captured something humorous on your camcorder it could easily go viral on YouTube, just remember to monetise your YouTube channel in some way.
3) Expertise- One thing people will pay for is expert opinions and experience. If you have several blog posts that are relevant to your line of work, there are very good chances sooner or later you will be asked to write on subjects that you are familiar with. If all goes well you will have a decent fan following over the Internet as well as have a steady income dribbling into your account.
4) Write a Book- For most people, writing a book may not come under the quick methods of making money; nonetheless it is an option for people who have time on their hands and are creative enough to pen their thoughts down on paper.
5) Invention- This option is for people who are innovative and brave enough to make a go of it over the Internet. These days people seldom have time to invent a product and go door-to-door and convince people to buy it. The Internet has made everything so transparent that it is difficult to fool potential customers. Also, it is way easier to put up the product and count on people’s curiosity as a basis of a sale.
Filed under Blogging, Business Advice, Internet Marketing
A prospect coming in to your website from a long-tail keyword is often more valuable than someone searching for something generic, because:
• They are further down the buying cycle and have done adequate research.
• The customer knows exactly what he’s looking for.
• Conversion rates are typically better with long-tail keywords.
It is typically very hard to locate long-tail keywords that have search traffic in order to optimize your website to rank for them.
None of the popular keyword research tools including Wordtracker, Google Adwords Tool provide in-depth analysis on long tail terms with traffic.
In this post, I’ll be showing you five easy ways to locate long-tail keywords that have search traffic and can help you become more profitable:
1. Google Suggest Scrape
Google provides keyword suggestions when you type in a key phrase into the search box, the suggestions that you see on top are typically keywords that have more search traffic than the ones down below.
A great way to find long-tail traffic that converts is using the google suggest scraper tool developed by thinkpragmatic.com
This tool scrapes the suggestions provided by Google for a root keyword and also appends the alphabets ‘a to z’ for that keyword to scrape more useful long-tail terms.
2. Books and Magazines
It’s always useful to read popular industry books and magazines and scoop out new articles. These articles often contain popular jargon, terms and concepts that you can use to optimize for.
Since these terms are published in industry books and magazines, they already have search traffic that you can exploit. If you’re the first to optimize for these terms as soon as they’re published, you have a better chance of dominating the first spot in the search engines.
3. Google Blog Search
Google Blog Search is a great way to save time on research by using other people’s long-tail research as references. If you enter a keyword into Google Blog Search, it shows you the latest related blog posts that have been published across the world wide web.
Using this tool, you can find out what long-tails other people in your industry are going after and optimize for them.
4. Large Ecommerce Sites
If you’re trying to find long-tail keywords for your ecommerce sites, a large ecommerce site will be a great source of long-tail product terms to optimize.
Sites like eBay and Amazon have a huge catalog of items that you could browse to come up with long-tail product keywords as well as topics for articles to write and optimize.
5. SpyFu, Market Samurai and other competitive research tools
Tools like SpyFu and Market Samurai allow you to search for a domain or keyword and see what other keywords users are advertising relevant to the domain or keyword.
These usually contain plenty of long-tails that you can use for your campaigns.
More than selecting these long-tail terms, its also important to track these using a powerful analytics tool to see if they’re generating positive return on investment.
It is advisable and easier to optimize a keyword that generates revenue to rank better rather than try and research a new one which may or may not produce positive results.
Filed under Keyword Research
I’ve been having a look at the free reports and software that Ryan Diess has been giving out this week in the build up to the launch of his Perpetual Traffic Formula. I didn’t bother downloading his Cherry Picker software as I already have the full version of market samurai which does everything and more that Cherry Picker does. I’ve read people saying that these two software programs give different results, and asking which is most accurate but seeing as you can’t get fully accurate results for this kind of thing anywhere anyway, it seems a bit pointless to worry about that.
The two reports that have come out contain a few interesting stats and some solid bits of content, but most of it wasn’t new to me and won’t be news to anyone who’s done much search engine optimization. He starts with the ‘Perpetual Traffic Report’ showing some stats on the decline of pay per click traffic and a switch back to organic traffic which was (if true) pretty interesting, I have to admit I didn’t realise that sponsered ads got such a small percentage of clicks these days although I don’t do much PPC so that’s not surprising.
Getting to the meat of the first report, he claims that a combination of content, backlinks and activity will boost your rankings but that you MUST do all three and most people just concentrate on the first two. He emphasises that if google doesn’t see activity on your site in the form of comments, feed subscriptions and changing content then they will not rank your site highly. I’m not sure whether this is true, he talks about a google algorithm shift but seeing as google never realeases information like this I am currently taking his claim with a pinch of salt. It seems his course will teach you how to use google tools like feedburner to make it look like your site has a lot of activity, although he’s making the assumption that google uses these tools in it’s website search engine rankings.
Of course, results are king in my book. I’m looking forward to seeing what he comes up with in his course next week and if implementing it shows the massive gain in traffic that he is claiming it will then he obviously knows what he’s talking about!
The second report, the authority codes, is useful if you don’t know them but they’re not really secret codes they’re just search expressions to find high PR blogs that you can comment on to get links. If you don’t know how to do this then download them by all means.
Filed under Traffic