Make Money Online | Internet Marketing

The one area that most people get wrong is good keyword research. They think its just a matter of just entering some search terms into Google or the other search engines and bingo, they hit the mother load. If that is your approach, then this article is definitely for you. Understanding keyword research is the difference between making money or working for the next 30 plus years for that golden parachute, aka your pension. Its also about learning to look for and utilize software tools to increase your productivity like an article rewriter or what some call an article spinner. The main point here to succeeding in IM, is having a game plan and working your plan.

OK, you decided to jump into internet marketing to make some cash, fire your boss and take that nice vacation you have been dreaming about for years. Well, hold on because we first need to make some money. Where do you begin to generate some ideas on which keywords to go after? Below is a list of keywords suggestion on ways to generate some ideas.

Interest – what are you interested in? Its easier to write about something that you have an interest in – right?

How to – people are always searching “how to”. For example, how do you make money online or how do I do internet marketing are just a couple of examples.

Current trends – look at Google trends. That will give you a good idea on what’s hot and more importantly, what people are searching for. Keep in mind, it can be short term profit if you go after this type of keywords. But if you are quick, you can strike while the iron is hot for a few days.

Holidays – many people miss out on this opportunity because they are so focused on ranking for their keywords, they forget that during the year are prime ways to generate some nice extra money. For example, if I were planning to target the Christmas season, I would probably start doing my Keyword research in August/September and roll out my actual SEO plan in early September. You maybe able to make a years wage in a couple of months if done correctly.

Buyers – Look around the different areas that you are interested in. See what kinds of products are available to purchase in that particular niche market. You want to find products and/or services that people are likely to buy. This is one of the keys to making money.

Common Sense – We often times forget to use common sense when picking or researching keywords. Its not over rated (lol).

There are many tools out there to help you save time, energy and money like an article rewriter or article spinner as examples. The one that you can start with, is a freebie by Google. There are 2 different places you can go to research keywords via Google. You can either type in Google Keyword Tool or you can go to the alternate place, Googles Search Based Keyword Tool. The latter one, will give you more detailed results. However, both will give you overall results.

Google’s Keyword Tool

First – Type in your keyword term in the box and fill out the captcha form and click “Get Keyword Ideas”.

Second – After you get the initial results, there’s a drop down box that you need to change from what it shows and change it to “show the estimated/average CPC. The drop down box is just below “get keyword ideas”. Also, there’s a currency drop down box. It will default to where you live, so maybe change it to US currency.

Third – There’s one other drop down menu you should probably change. Its right below the drop down menu for showing CPC averages from above. Change it from broad results to exact results. This will give you more accurate results of your keyword phrase.

CPC – Cost Per Click

Remember, the search results are an estimation and could be off by 10 or 20% or more. Realize that you only get a small portion of that. It can range 10 to 20%. So if it shows like $3 for a click, you will get 10 or 20%, which is about 30 to 60 cents per click. From what I can tell, there seems to be a tiered system for Adsense. When first starting out, your website or Blog may only get the lower end, say 10%. But as your traffic goes up and you have a higher Click Thru Rate, you could move up to the higher click thru rates.

One other important piece to deciding on keywords, is what is the lowest CPC that you should consider? That is an individual choice. But, if it were me, I would only look at keywords that have higher than $1 per click. In fact, many times I will only look at CPC values that are above $2.

A minimum of 1000 searches per month is my base line and higher. I look for search results between 1000 to 10,000. I know its broad, but in reality its a decent amount of daily traffic because I am looking for the golden nuggets. Not looking to take over the make money online competition. Well, at least not yet (lol). If I want to make money, which should be your goal, then focus on long tail keywords that pay a reasonable amount and get a reasonable amount of daily searches. You enter the main keyword. Then drill down on the long tail keywords.

One nice feature of using something like Google’s free keyword tool is that you can export your results into an excel (.csv format) spread sheet. You can also add different colors to your excel spreadsheet on words that are a go or no go. For example, words that are a go, could be green like traffic lights. In fact, lets use that for are keyword color coding experiment. Red means, no, yellow is so so, and green means go.

Get the Edge on Your Competition

One way to save yourself some time and if you are not sure on which keywords, is to go and check out your competitors in the niche you are thinking about. Seriously, if you haven’t done that before, its time to start doing that. One of the key things I do is seeing what keywords my competition is going for.

For example, when you go to someone’s website, do a right click with your mouse and there will be some options to choose from. Select, edit/view source code. If you are using Firefox (which I recommend you do), the option will say, “view page source”. If using Internet Explorer, just click on the drop down or right click on the page to view the source code. You are looking for the meta description for keywords on the page. It will be in the upper 1/3 of the page normally.

This will give you an idea on what keywords your competitor is going after. You certainly don’t have to do the same keywords. This is only to give you some other ways to test and verify if you have picked the correct keywords.

Back Linking – A Brief Explanation

You also need to check your competition on page 1. A couple of things to keep in mind when comparing your results with the competition on page 1 is how many back links each site has and is it the home page or a sub page on page 1 for the results. First to find out the number of backlinks, you want to check Google and Yahoo.

Here’s the format: link:yourwebsitename.com

You don’t need to include the http or www part. However, place that in the actual search field. You may see no back links, a few or dozens. Again, it depends on the keyword you are trying to compete for. Also, do the same in Yahoo. You should notice different amounts of back links in each search engine. They are constantly changing and will never be 100% accurate. Check out my other article on back linking for detailed information.

How to Increase Your Productivity With An Article Rewriter

When you are just starting out, try to focus on 2 or 3 long tail keywords at a time. Attempting to go after too many, will only frustrate you. I rarely recommend too many SEO online tools, but, there is one that I found to work really well. You can triple your article marketing efforts and productivity by using a tool called article spinning software.

I have found there are many types of article spinning programs out there, but most don’t live up to what they promise. The article rewriter that I am recommending, I personally use and have found it very helpful to get unique versions of my content out to different article directories, Blogs, websites etc. for back links.

If you want more information, you can click on the following link (yes its my affiliate link) to get some more information….article spinning software.

No you don’t have to buy any software tools, but some can and will make your life much easier.

The reason I use some software tools, like an article rewriter is because my competitors are using them. Its a competition and those that can get the most out of each article, will have a better chance for more back links. That means a better chance to rank on page 1, which means a better chance to make more money.

I hope you have a better appreciation of the importance of keyword research because its really the foundation for anything you do with your Blog or Website. More importantly, it is the bread and butter for you to make money online. Remember, you will have failures and yes successes. However, if you do the necessary research up front, this will give you better odds that you may make some money. As well don’t forget to invest in other software tools to give you a competitive advantage in terms of leveraging your time like an article rewriter because you need to increase your productivity where ever possible.

OK, so you decided to tackle the internet marketing game. So, what’s next and where do you begin? It really depends on what you want to accomplish. Do you want to do Google Adsense via organic searches, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Designing your own Ebooks, or Coaching Programs etc.? What kind of software programs will you utilize to maximize your time and effort like an article rewriter or article spinner. In other words, there is so many options online, that it gets confusing and yes, frustrating at times.

My article today will be targeted on the essential areas that you should be focusing your time on how to build your site and rank it. That includes:

Keywords – The Basis of Making Money
Niche Marketing Strategies 3.0
Domains – How to Get the Most Value from a Name
Back linking – The Foundation to Ranking on Page 1
Article Rewriter – How to Triple Your Productivity

Grab a cup of coffee, site back and enjoy, as I reveal some insider techniques to ranking on page 1 of the search engines.

What do the search engines really want?

Primarily, the search engines want to provide the most relevant information for their customers – you, me, and their advertisers. That means, ideally in a perfect world, they want the best quality information on page 1. Most people don’t go surfing through pages and pages of search results. That is simply a fact. So the best real estate is on page 1 and if you want the best chance to make money online, you need to be on page 1.

What the hell is an Authority Site?

In my opinion, an authority sites, are those found on page 1 and position 1 of Google and the other search engines. Authority sites can be small, like 5 or 10 pages or the have hundreds of pages of content. It really depends on what you are doing with your website.

Keywords – Your Bread and Butter to Making Money Online

The vast majority of people are probably guilty of this at one time or another. The problem in the internet marketing game, most people keep getting it all wrong. That explains why most never make money. They start off competing for the mega keywords. What the hell were you thinking? When you start off and go up against the big dogs of the internet, you better have your A Game on, because they know exactly what they are doing. There is a much better approach to the whole keyword game.

Niche Marketing Approaches and Strategies

Laser targeted long tail keywords is where the money is. Get this wrong and you will get frustrated very quickly, but most importantly, you won’t be making any money. Here’s what I mean. Just stop going for the top keyword categories. Go for low searched keywords and low competition. The reason is simple. Less competition, means it will be easier to rank on page 1 sooner, rather than later.

Start by going to your favorite keyword tool. You can use Google’s Keyword. I prefer to use tools that save me hours and hours of work, so that’s why I would use something like, Micro Niche Finder. Its all about productivity.
The Process of Drilling for Gold

Begin with the primary keyword, drill down to find a long tail key phrase that you find has some decent amount of searches per month. After that, take that long tail keyword, pop it into your keyword tool and drill down further to find other long tail key phrases within your niche marketing areas. That’s where the gold is guys.

I recommend looking for month-to-month search results in the range of say, 1000 to 5000 or you could go higher depending on the level of competition. I am just trying to give an idea on where you can start at. Additionally, check on Google to see what your competition is actually going to be. To get the true results, place quotes around the phrase. Then repeat the process without quotes. What this gives you is a comparison of your real competition and your overall competitors.

How to Get the Most from Your Domain Name

Whenever possible, try and use your long tail keyword in your domain name. Yes, it can make a difference, especially in really low competitive keyword categories. However, you don’t have to and any website over time, you can rank for pretty much any keyword. It just helps tell Google and the other search engines what your website is about.

One other tip you can do to jump start your internet marketing experience is buying aged domains. Yes, they do matter to Google Google and the other search engines. Its primarily based on a trust issue if a site has been round for a number of years. Spam sites are usually registered for 1 year. At a minimum, you should be registering your sites for 2 years.

Building Back Links – Stop and Read this Section – Important

What is a back link?

Inbound links are the back bone to getting your site ranked on page 1. Backlinks can be external and internal. Getting external links pointing to various pages on your website is the most important part. However, many people fail to optimize their internal linking structure properly. Invest some time to get it organized properly and yes it will help you to rank your site. You can have a combination of some internal links pointing to the home page. As well, you should have some internal links pointing from one post to another post to give it some link juice.

When pointing links back to those individual pages and posts, they become stronger over time. What that means is your entire website gains in strength. Think of back links as the foundation, like building a house. You need to have a strong foundation or your house would cave in. Likewise, you want an overall strong website rank well.

Your Back Linking Strategy

To get one-way links, well at least quality ones, you’ll need to write a variety of content and submit it all over, remembering to point back to your site. Be sure you vary the text link and point it back to numerous internal pages and posts inside your site. I would suggest around 80 percent of your links, point to internal pages/posts. Only about 20 percent need to go to the home page.

There are literally hundreds of article directories, blogs etc that you can post content to for a one way back link. The key is of course one way back links. The ones that come to my mind, are Idea Marketers, Goarticles and of course the might Ezine Articles. They are the king of article directories in my opinion because of the authority and the mere fact they get about 14 to 15 million visitors a month to their website. Remember, the one with the best high quality links pointing back, will usually win the ranking game. That’s why you need to spend about 85% of your time posting your unique content for in bound links.

However, once I’ve submitted between 5 to 10 articles at each place, I move onto the other 20 or 30 top tier article directories. Just Google top tier directories and you will find all kinds. But make sure they are a “dofollow” Blog, article directory etc. Otherwise, when G comes to spider that article directory, they won’t follow your link back to your site, thus giving you any SEO link juice.

Commenting – How valuable is it really?

Some people like to make comments at blogs, website and numerous boards which is okay, however, most of these links will disappear over time because Google and the other search engines don’t give them too much value. If commenting is your main way of getting back links, I think you need to really consider your choices. There’s a couple of reasons. Think about this for a minute. If all that we had to do was make a simple comment at other blogs and websites, it would be way to easy to game the system.
The web master could easily remove your comments anytime they wish to, thus wasting your time. I guess any webmaster could remove your content. However, its less likely at article directories because they want content being posted, provided its reasonable.

Guest Posting

One over looked, but very effective method of getting high quality back links is doing guest posting (submitting an article) at websites on page 1 or even the top 3 pages of Google for that keyword category. Many are opening up their websites because it benefits them with fresh content and you with a quality one way link.

How to Triple Your Article Marketing and Back Linking Efforts

If you want to compete against the Big guys on the internet, then you need to leverage your time and productivity – period. There are a lot of useless products on the market. I have recently learned that you can get good quality content and triple your effectiveness using an article rewriter or what some call an article spinner. Its just 1 more tool to use to be competitive. What do you think your competition is doing? Yup, you can bet your ass they are using many software tools. If you don’t believe in them, then don’t use them. But, how much time and money is that costing you? If you want to triple your productivity, then take a look at using an article rewriter or article spinner. Enough said on this issue.

Ok, that sums up this monster post for today. I hope you got some valuable information. Just remember, stick to the basics, keep being consistent each day and following my advice above and you can achieve success and more importantly, make some money online. Look out for software programs that can assist you in leveraging your time and effort like using an article rewriter to get more article out there.

Make it a great day

P.S. In the coming weeks, I will be adding multiple posts on different topics including advanced linking methods, keyword research expanded and some other cool tools that I have come across.

The Anatomy of Keywords and Research

How to Build and Rank Your Website