Ideas To Make Money Online

Happy Winter to Everyone!

As I sit here, I'm staying home from work due to yet another snow storm. At lest that gives me time to write about how to make money from home. This is a topic that I am endlessly interested in since I am hoping not just to make extra money, but to completely earn a living from it.

If you've read any of my other posts, you may know that I'm a Griz follower. In my opinion, he's the master of MMO. Very basically, his strategy is to write long rambling posts that would naturally accumulate all manner of long tail keywords by the search engines (SEs), most notably Google. He advocates posts that reach into the thousands of words. Loooong.

The second part of his method is to get the best backlinks using proper anchor text that you can get. If you can't get good backlinks (meaning high Page Rank and from your niche), then focus on getting as many other backlinks as possible. Always with good anchor text.

This is also the method taught at The Keyword Academy. I'm a member and I encourage anyone that wants to make money blogging or any other online venture to join as well. They're good people.

In fact, there is a competing theory over there that indicates you should strictly focus on writing content for your own site. But the trick is to write about extremely long tail keywords with almost no competition. You will thus rank very quickly for these obscure keywords.

I'm thinking of experimenting with this second theory as I'm not a prolific writer and writing such long posts does not appeal to me AT ALL.

Cheers!

MJ

More SEO Strategies

A few ideas for more SEO strategies, folks.

Once you have your site up and running, start analyzing your Google Analytics. If you are getting search traffic to your site for keywords that you don't rank on page 1 in the SERPs, then you may have found an under-served keyword.

Check scroogle.org to see what keywords you rank for. Scroogle scrapes the results from Google while not counting your own searches. This is good. You don't want google seeing you searching for your own topics and throwing off their data.

This is called low-hanging fruit. Build a link-net to further pump up your ranking for this keyword. A link net can come in a couple of different forms. You could create 5 posts that all point at the original post with varying forms of the keyword.

You can also use a plug-in like SmartLinks that will automatically link keywords that you select to specific pages every time you use them. Over time, as you build more and more posts with different keywords, your posts automatically link more and more.

I've read that internal posts are just as valuable as external posts pointing towards your page. If this is true, you are wasting valuable links on your own site! Using SmartLinks is awesome.

Either of these methods will help to build your authority for a given keyword. Of course, if a link-net post is getting traffic, then make it its own post and build another link-net around it, too.

Some general hings to keep in mind as you write and link...

-As you write your posts, ensure that your exact keyword naturally appears twice in the article. I follow Griz's advice and try to put the keyword in the first and last sentence of the article. Sometimes that's too awkward and I just make the best of it.

-Writing is the name of the game, here. Write lots of different articles using variations of keywords.

-Always keep pushing to beat the sites in front of you... even if they have higher PR. Internal linking and keyword density, etc can work for you. Keep building links and you will beat them.

-Should you be in competition with someone who you are linking to, or who is linking to you? Yes! You are both helping each other. This makes good strong links for each of your pages and sites.

-Link old posts and new posts to strengthen your link-net.

-I use google analytics. This gives google acess that may be unwelcome, but adsense knows everything anyway, so they already have your info, and analytics is good for users.

-Whenever possible add a new post to the site to achieve a double listing. If you are getting traffic... 100 - 200 visitors per day, this will greatly increase your income per site.

-Build authority by building more and more links to your site.

Is there a minimum search target for low hanging fruit? Don't bother unless you are getting 50 visitors per day, but consider your top 10 keywords for bringing search traffic to your site...

-Focus on what is working and always be prospecting on what might work...

-Higher PR sites are worth much, much more than lower PR sites. Finding such sites are the hard part. One place to find sites like this is TKA.

I hope all of you are beginning to put some of this stuff in to practice and see some results. I'm trying to do all the research on SEO strategies so you don't have to.

Cheers!

MJ

Search Engine Optimization Strategy

Hey there, folks!

Another week of learning about SEO and Internet marketing strategies, another week of me passing along the SEO strategies and IM strategies that I've learned!

This one comes from another member over at TheKeywordAcademy.com (TKA). There's a total genius over there that is willing to offer everything he learns to the masses. Half of his advice flies straight over my head. But the things that I do understand are pretty awesome.

So here's a tip from an SEO expert, someone that does this for a living...

It helps to rank well for a root keyword if you use a qualifier. So if you wanted to rank for "boats", unless you have boats.com locked up, or a bajillion links pointing at your site, it will be very difficult to rank for your term. Very difficult.


However,  you could create an article named "What Are Boats" - then externally and internally link to it using "boats" as the anchor text. Write a bunch of articles and submit them to the various directories, and you can rise very quickly using this process.


Consider reviewing the articles on your site with the view of writing some "explanatory articles" along the lines of "what are boats". Any qualifier should work. You could do this with "used X", "X for free", "where are X", "X in California", etc. Use your imagination. Don't fear the tough keywords. But be prepared for a fight.

If this works for a guy who uses this strategy to make money from home, and that's all he does -  it's probably pretty sound advice!

SEO Techniques

Here for your perusal, Dear Reader, are some SEO techniques for performing well in the search engines. There any number of ways to improve your performance.

SEO, or if you prefer the tongue-tying Search Engine Optimization, is all about getting search engines (SEs) to find you. If folks type in a keyword or phrase and don't find you, you may as well not have a website at all. Really.

Ideally you should employ SEO techniques before you even set up your site. If you already have a site, you probably should go back and fix some things. Make it a priority.

Some methods cost money. Some methods cost time. Only you can decide what is your priority. My belief is that you can always earn cash, you can't earn or make more time. So I'm willing to spend a little to help further my goal to make money online.

There are a lot of keyword experts out there, but you don't need an SEO expert for everything. There are some things you should do on your own. But remember, its not like flipping a switch. Performing a few of these SEO techniques won't make your site jump to the top of the list overnight. Everything about the search engines (SEs) takes time.

For one thing, brand new sites haven't been indexed yet, so the SEs don't even know you're there. But even after that its not so quick. For one thing the SEs prefer older sites over new sites. Age is an indicator of a known, responsible site. Think of it like kids. As they grow older they become more trustworthy. The SEs are all about trustworthiness.

• Niche Keywords - Or long tail keywords if you prefer. But ranking for the keyword 'cars' is next to impossible. But 'used cars', or 'used cars in Atlanta', or 'really awesome cars that are also cheap' would be easier. But you're keywords also need to have value so don't pick something that no one ever searches for. I'll write more about keyword selection later.
• Localize Your Keywords - If you are selling a product or service that sells to the general public on the local level, your keywords should reflect that. Savvy SE users search that way. If I'm not familiar with flowers, I might type "flower shops in Detroit" to get a list that I can actually use rather than just "flower shops" which would return results that are less useful to me.
• Don't ignore metadata - Metadata is the part of the html of your site that tells the SEs what your site is about. The keywords you're targeting, your description of each page, and the title of your page.
• Put Your Main Keyword(s) In Your Domain Name - Even if it is a long, clunky name, its better than a domain name that doesn't tell the SEs or your potential customers/readers what your site is about.
• Sign Up For Google Analytics - Its free and its the best. Learn where your web page visitors are coming from and how long they stay. There is, quite literally, more information here than anyone needs, but you do need some of it.
• Placement Of Keywords - Use your targeted keyword for each page in the first and last sentence of the page. The SEs give special importance to the beginning and end of a page.
• Be Aware Of Keyword Density - Too few and the SEs don't know what your page is about. Too many and its barely readable. Don't keyword stuff. Just write naturally and sprinkle keywords throughout.
• Register With The SEs - This one is controversial. The major SEs have a very simple way to let them know that you've got a new site. After all, they can't be expected to find all of the millions of pages that are created every day. But many SEO experts insist that registering with the SEs somehow increase the length of time it will take to be found... Go figure.

That'll do for now. I'll have another list of SEO techniques that you're sure to love soon...

Cheers

MJ