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
Performing search engine optimisation to rank your website in the search engines on certain keywords is a long and often expensive task. This is why it’s imperative that when you are finally ranked on the first page of google that those keywords are bringing in revenue for you, otherwise you have wasted a lot of time and effort for very little monetary return.
So how do you know which keywords are better to rank on than others? Or, more specifically, which keywords are going to have more commercial value to you if you rank well on them? Well, I recently purchased an SEO and keyword research tool called Market Samurai that has loads of really cool features that most of the other tools out there don’t have. Take a look at the video below where it is explained how you can compare similar keywords to find which one has the most commercial value. Using this you can concentrate your efforts on ranking for keywords that will bring in more revenue to your website.
Filed under Keyword Research
Paid traffic can be a great way to test an affiliate product before launching a full sales campaign. Being able to turn traffic on and off like a tap allows you to quickly test different keywords for leads and conversions. I have been using an adwords campaign to help drive traffic to my list building report, with some success.
I will quickly go through how I set up my campaign. I am not using the google content network at the moment as that needs to be set up in a different way.
At this point you should already have your keywords, I showed you how I found keywords to target in this post.
Each keyword should go in it’s own adgroup. And within that adgroup I will have all 3 match types, broad, phrase and exact, for that keyword phrase.
Each adgroup runs 2 different ads so that you can continually split test the ads in your campaign as it runs.
When writing your ads, it’s a good idea to include your keyword in the ad. It can help with your quality score and it also shows up in bold in the ad, which will naturally draw the eye of the person searching.
If your domain name is short enough you can also put the keyword in front of the display URL in this format: KeywordPhrase.YourDomain.com so your keyword will appear again and be bolded.
You should also capitalize the first letter of every word in your ad. There has been much testing on this topic and although some people disagree, most will tell you that it helps to draw the eye to the ad. Another way of drawing the eye is using symbols like ?, %, TM symbol, and numbers.
Emotional response words are good to use in your ads, like ‘free’, ‘tips’, ‘tricks’, ‘secret’, ‘facts’, ‘learn’ and many more.
During my keyword research I came up with an estimate of cost per click to get in the top 3 positions. I typically set my broad match keyword bid to 50-100% of this estimate, depending on how low the estimate was. This is because the broad match is typically less targeted so I want to pay less for my clicks. I will then set exact and phrase match to 2x my original estimate. I prefer to start higher and reduce the bids than the other way around.
Other settings I use are to show the ads as quickly as possible, and rotate the 2 ads evenly so you can split test them properly.
Finally I set up conversion tracking within adwords. I’m not going to go in to detail here how I set all that up, it’s pretty straight forward if you look at it in adwords. But it is very important to know which keywords are getting clicks, sign-ups and sales.
Filed under Traffic Generation