The Wealth Gang

Probably the most frequent question I receive has to do with getting a new site listed in Google and getting more traffic. One way, to do this is with long tail keywords. Google has a complex algorithm, and the more competitive the keyword, the harder it is to rank your site or blog post for that keyword.

For one, the age and depth of your website is one of those factors. If you have a new site, you won’t be able to effectively get your site listed on the first page of Google. If you do, it will only be temporary. Some people will try to do this by building a lot of backlinks to their site, but this is only a strategy that is bound to fail — especially in competitive niches. Once a Google sees that a new site is receiving abnormally high backlinks, they will ban you site and leave you with no search engine traffic.

That’s coming from experience, unfortunately.

That’s not to say to focus the foundation of your site on competitive keywords, but you have to think long-term. Do everything in moderation, and build those keyword rich blog posts and meta tags now so 9 months from now you can rank for those highly desirable keywords. Start the aging process now.

Long Tail Keywords — The Key to Instant Search Engine Traffic

Typically, what are known as long-tail keywords are less desirable because there is less traffic. For instance, the keyword phrase, “credit score” probably gets millions of searches a month. If you are competing for that keyword, good luck. You are competing with major companies that have teams of SEO professionals and developers working on making sure they keep their rankings.

What you can do is rank for something like, “how to check your credit score online free.” While something like this may only get a few hundred searches a month, you are more likely to get your site noticed. The long tail typically has less competition and, therefore, Google has no option but to list your site closer to the top of the first page.

There’s something very powerful about long tail keywords that makes it desirable to rank for. Quality Traffic.

The long tail keywords are highly targeted, making those visitors highly qualified. If you are promoting something on that particular web page, you will increase your chances of a conversion because of the quality in traffic. These are people who are actively seeking for a very specific solution or product, and you are giving them exactly what they want.

Just because the long tail does not produce a lot of traffic doesn’t make it worthless. Those are more coveted visitors and, secondly, hundreds of blog posts with long tail keywords can mean thousands of visitors daily. Highly target visitors that you ultimately want. Think long-term as you build your sites to reap the most benefits.

If you have the initiative it takes to make a little extra money in your spare time, blogging for money is not only one of the best ways to make passive income online. It’s one of the best businesses to start, period. But that’s just my opinion.

I probably don’t need to go into the details as to why an online business is such as great business model, but let’s review some of the key biggest benefits:

• Passive Income: With the Internet, you do the work once, and you get paid for it over and over again.
• Residual Income: There are strategies and income methods that will pay you a referral fee. Often times these referral fees are for monthly membership programs, which will pay you over and over again, as long as that person remains a member.
• Make Money In Your Sleep: Regardless if you are working or not, once you have created your “system” it is producing profits for you 24 hours a day. The Internet is never closed for business.
• Part-Time Profits: This is something that anyone with any experience level can get involved with. Stay-at-home moms and high-income earners can spend 45 minutes a day or over the weekend to build their income empire.
• No-Risk: There are not many business that you can start without spending any money out of pocket. If you fail, who cares! You are that much closer to succeeding.

Now, as far as blogging for money goes… I believe it is one of the more powerful ways to make money online. The reason is two fold:

1. Content
2. Relationships

If you like free traffic like I do, then the best way to do that is to please Google with lots of unique content. There’s no better way to put hundreds of pages on the web than by sitting down every day and writing a new blog post. Google loves blogs. Blogs as they stand are Search Engine Friendly.

They are updated regularly, there is already an internal linking system in place, bloggers tend to write about interesting, valuable content, and help the Internet community find the information they need. That’s why Google loves blogs.

Secondly, the great thing about blogging for money is that there it has a loyalty aspect to your blog. Blogs tend to have loyal readers and followers that brings them back to the site regularly. Very few websites have that characteristic.

Loyal readers means you have the opportunity to build a relationship and trust with your readers, which means they are more likely to purchase or try out things you recommend. Secondly, because they are repeat visitors, you have an ability to profit off of them over and over again. Whether that simply means AdSense revenue, selling them your own product, or earning affiliate commissions.

In addition, you get to know who your readers are intimately. That means you can charge higher advertising rates because you know the demographic of your site and the type of things they respond to, and you can communicate with them to make your website better. What better way to make your blog more attractive by asking your readers exactly what kind of information they are looking for.

Which brings up one last point… your readers help create your content. They comments that are left are picked up by Google and may just include keywords that could attract more visitors. Remember that Google likes websites that are updated regularly? Each time someone leaves a comment, that single blog post is updated and Google has fresh information to put in its search results.

Having proper niche research tools at your disposal can not only allow you to make money fast online, but it can help you crush your competition. Without these essential Internet marketing tools, you are either just guessing or not paying any attention — in which case you can’t really call yourself a marketer.

Doing your homework ahead of time and preparing for success will save you a lot of wasted effort. I know because I was there. When I first attempted trying to make money on the Internet, the first thing I did was start a blog on a topic that I really enjoyed and knew a lot about. Every day, I added more content, spent way too much time crafting my blog posts, and waited… and waited.

I failed to do any niche research and simply assumed that since I had a big interest that other people must too. There’s only two problems with that:

1. Just because people are interested doesn’t mean there is money to be made
2. I didn’t do any keyword research to capture the minimal traffic that existed (nor did I even know what it was at the time)

There’s always the argument about how to build your online business… do you find a product to promote or service to sell first, or do you pick a niche and then fill it with products and advertising?

I’m a firm believer that you have to do your niche research first. Products come and go, advertising is up and down, but entire markets will always exist. If you pick the right category for your blog or website, there will be an endless amount of products and services to promote.

So how do you pick a niche?

It has to have at least the following qualifications for me to consider it:

1. Traffic: Is there an mass interest for this category and are they reachable online?
2. Competition: Competition is not a bad thing. It means it is a profitable area and there are opportunities to form partnerships
3. Products: Are there a lot of products and a wide range of different products and different price points
4. Buyers: Is the traffic full of free loaders or are they big spenders?

Here’s a hint… business owners and buyers for companies are big spenders. Things simply cost more in the business world, they’re used to spending money and capable of spending a lot of it.

One point about searching for products and wondering if they are buyers… Even if you don’t on selling products through your marketing, you still want a lot of product potential because that means there are a lot of advertisers and a lot of competition (making it more expensive to advertise online). If you’re not selling a product or service, then you’re running advertising on your site in order to produce revenue, and you want high competition there.

Okay, so on to the niche research tools I use.

Awareness: Have you ever bought a new car and then you suddenly realized how many people drive the same car? As a marketer, you need to develop an awareness of what is going on. Pay attention to what is constantly being advertised, what the media is talking about, etc. If you see a lot of it, it’s because something is working and some smart people are spending a lot of money on advertising.

Keyword Tracker: If you don’t have SEO Elite to do keyword research, then you’re stuck with a free keyword tool. That will work just fine, but you always have to test for accuracy. I can’t tell you the number of times I thought I found a gold mine, only to find out the free version was completely inaccurate. The free Keyword Tracker is not perfect, but it can give you a rough idea on search volume.

Google Trends: The trend is your friend, right? If you’re fast enough, you can easily get ahead of the competition and get your content on the top of Google for new trends. Think new albums, sporting events, and politics. Current events and trends can make you some serious money in a short amount of time, but realize that some trends can last a long time as well (such as a recession). Keep an eye on Google Trends to see what’s on most people’s mind.

eBay Pulse: This is a nice little niche research tool that will show you the most popular categories and products being purchased and/or searched for on eBay. Not a bad way to see what people are searching to spend their money on (hint hint).

Amazon: Same as above

About.com: Need some general ideas for broad topics and categories? Go to About.com and try to uncover some topics that are loaded with the most articles. This will help you brainstorm and see what areas About.com is benefiting from search traffic.

Yahoo Answers: If you’re looking for that hungry crowd that has problems they need resolved, there’s no better source than Yahoo Answers. Dig around to see what questions are being asked over and over again, and you might find a hidden gem of people eager to spend money online in order to get their issue resolved.

Put these tools to use and start making some money…