What's in a Keyword?

If you are a first time visitor you probably won't even read this - what on Earth would a cheesy looking blog like this know about making money online. Most first timers take a quick look and then hit the back button and are gone. A percentage leave by clicking a link somewhere on the page. If you are still reading this then chances are you are one of my readers that has got past the cheese and knows that I actually have real content on these pages - the vast majority of it really does explain how I make money with this free no frills Blogspot blog.

In a nutshell I make money with this blog by explaining the SEO techniques I use to target terms like "make money online". I make money by simply ranking high in the serps for terms related to making money. That's it. I don't even need a single person to read a single word of a single post on this blog and I still make money. Good money too.

This blog will be a year old on December 23.

I have spent the past year writing posts that optimize various keywords that I have chosen based on the amount of traffic those keywords generate on the search engines. I built this blog without ever expecting or caring if I ever had a real audience of readers. My goal was simple - generate large amounts of search engine traffic and convert that traffic into Adsense clicks and affiliate sales.

I have had to modify my tactics somewhat from my initial plan due to the fact that I seem to have built up a small but growing readership and in deference to them I have had to shelve my affiliate sales pitches - you won't appreciate me hawking products designed to entice the unwary blogging newcomer. I haven't totally given up on this revenue stream yet it's just I haven't figured out a "Reader Alert" system to warn my regular readers when they should simply ignore a post logged for the purpose of affiliate sales. I will work it back into the mix at some point as there is just too much money sitting on the table with affiliate sales for me to ignore. I know because the first six months I made a decent buck from affiliate sales by optimizing this blog for those types of keywords.

The loss of affiliate sales has been mediated by the sharp increase in Adsense revenue as my main keywords have slowly climbed Google's search engine rankings.

For all of you that think Adsense is crap and doesn't pay much I have news for you... it is still the single easiest and best source of long term income online. If you haven't made money from Adsense it's because you don't know how - not because it doesn't work.

I now rank in the top 1-2 pages on Google for all the main "Make Money" keywords. This past week I finally hit page 1 for several highly searched terms and before I show you what this has meant I want to show you a few of those rankings.

I have yet to reach page 1 for my Prime keyword - "make money online" - but I am on page 2 of Google.com (The US region)

Note: I reached page 1 in February, 2008.

(click images to enlarge)



I have however hit page 1 for "make money online" in most of the smaller Google regions like this serp from a query originating in the Netherlands.



There are a couple of things I want to point out as you look at these and the following screenshots. A week ago there were about 170 million competing sites in Google's index. Today there are only about a 10th of this amount.

Google has just quietly cleaned house once again and eliminated millions of sites that are deemed irrelevant. Not just in this niche either - I have noticed this across all my niches. While this will have little effect on most of you, I point it out for interest sake as it is just one more step Google has taken recently to clean up its rankings. For those of us making money online this just means less competition and that's always welcome.

The other thing you should notice is the frequency of Blogspot.com blogs listed on the top search pages. People love bashing Blogger for all sorts of reasons but primarily because it doesn't look as professional or as nice as a self hosted wordpress blog or it is limited in many ways that wordpress blogs aren't. This is all true but when it comes to making money online all those nice looking Web 2.0 blogs aren't in the same ballpark.

Making money online and producing a reader friendly A-list style blog are not the same thing. Every time I hear a Web 2.0 blogger put down Blogger I cringe. People who haven't made a dime online are busy telling other people who haven't made a dime how to make money online by creating fancy looking social network friendly blogs. That is not how you make money online - that is how you try and make a name for yourself. Making a name doesn't mean you make any money. Ranking on top of the search pages does.

Keyword: "how to earn money online"

3 Blogspot blogs in top 10




Keyword: "how to make money"

3 Blogspot blogs in top 10



Keyword: "how to make money online"

4 Blogspot blogs in top 10



Keyword: "making money online"

2 Blogspot blogs in top 10



(BTW - how many A-List blogs did you see in the top ten?)

And...

What has making the first page meant in terms of earnings? Until last Saturday I was receiving 10-20 visitors a day each from Google for most of these terms. I was on page 2. Since Sunday I have seen up to 10 times the traffic for some of these keywords.

See my Feedburner search engine keyword stats up until mid afternoon today.



A week ago I was averaging $10-$15 per day in Adsense revenue.

Check out my earnings since Sunday.



Not a bad increase at all. Guess what? All my niches have gained traffic in the wake of Google's housecleaning. I mentioned a few weeks back that I had finally broke the $200 a day barrier for Adsense earnings.

Look at yesterday's total earnings for my entire network.



Kinda blew by the $300 a day barrier - almost anti-climactic.

A word to the wise for all of you Web 2.0 bloggers - keep your nice blogs and play with them to your hearts content but don't expect to make money with them. If you want to make money online do yourself a favor and learn two things; stop complaining about Google and learn why Google is important and then learn how to SEO.

Think about the fact that once you do the work it just keeps paying you day after day and you don't have to worry about readers and posting schedules or spending all day stumbling and digging. I haven't done a damn thing in three days and the money just rolls in.

There really is an easy way to make real money online and I have just shown you what it is.

Adsense.

In my next post I will tell you why there are so many high ranking Blogspot blogs and then go over some little known tricks and tweaks for optimizing both search rankings and Adsense.


Griz