A week or two ago I wrote a couple of posts on the topic of payday loans. Now most of you would agree that a make money online blog has little relevance to Payday Loan sites. For the most part, this is true. I am in the midst of an experiment to see if I can't make the two relevant. Why I would want to do this and how it is done is the key for making money with Adsense.
A search engine isn't smart. It simply gathers as much information as it can and then presents it's findings in the order stipulated by the human brains that programmed it. It can't tell you who the greatest author in the English language is but it can tell you who others think the greatest author is. Most people who know what a dangling participle is would say Shakespeare. What does Google say?
Close but no cigar.
If Google was smart it would have got this right and it almost did but the fact that it was wrong highlights the priorities of the programmers and the limitations on how far you can tweak an algorithm.
You can learn much from this query.
Of all the keywords presented it chose "author" as the prime search term. Not "greatest" or "English".
It ranked the sites according to who has the most relevance to "Author" and then by which site has the most authority on the subject.
It chose time.com over the correct answer because it is more relevant to the term "author" and the time article covers authors from 1923 to present. Google defaults to a "most current" status when indexing pages and since I didn't specify "of all time" it decided that a list of authors from 1923 to present would be the more likely choice of what I wanted. Wrong - see it's dumb. You knew that I wanted to know who the all time greatest author was without specifying "all time". In fact "all time" is a given - if I was asking a person this question I would only specify a time period if I didn't want an "all time" answer. A brain can intuit a meaning from an incomplete array of words - a search engine can only sort words and attach a value to each one.
So what happens if I add "of all time" to the query?
The results are now worse as old Willy got knocked down a couple of pegs. Google has now decided that the prime keyword is "All Time Greatest" and presents a list of authors, novels, films and so on. Boy is it stupid.
But... this is good.
If you understand this then you can use it to rank well in the search engines - let me clarify that - you will rank well in Google. When I refer to search engines understand that I am only concerned with Google as that's where the money is.
There is a correlation between high page rankings and Adsense optimization. If you have one you have the other. To put it another way - if your pages are optimized for the best Adsense ads then you are also optimized for high search results and failure to capture them rests with the quality of your backlinks. I mention this for those of you who aren't interested in Adsense but do want to know how to target search engine traffic. For the most part the tweaks used to optimize your blog for Adsense also optimize your blog for the serp's so follow along if you will.
I said earlier that I let Google tell me what I am relevant to. I do this by writing huge rambling posts covering everything I can think of for a topic. In the process I use my prime keyword and as many related terms as I can while still keeping the post readable. Am I stuffing keywords - yes but not in a spammy way and always within limits.
If you go back and read my opening sentence and the first paragraph below it you will find I mention "making money", "Payday Loan" and "Adsense" twice each. I didn't force their use and the writing isn't dismal to read. ( It might be but that is only due to my deficiencies as a writer and not on purpose.)
Moreover I actually used the term "making money with Adsense" twice and I even got my blogs numero uno keyword "make money online" into the mix.
and...
I used all three of todays keywords in my post Title and they will be in the tags (labels on blogger) at the end. I have also just used all the terms again in the preceding paragraph and I will probably fit them in again a few times before I am done with this post.
A human reading this post knows what it is about. Some guy is telling you how to optimize your blog for Adsense and search engine rankings. Google's little bot will know that this post has something to do with Adsense, Payday loans, SEO, Google, relevancy, search engines and a bunch of stuff I haven't thought of. By later today or tomorrow Google will tell me what it thinks this page is relevant to. I'll check my stats and see which keywords are used to bring visitors to my blog. Those keywords are what Google has pegged this page for.
After completing the first two "payday loan" posts I waited for the hit results to start showing up. Using notepad I keep track of what terms are used to find my loan posts. They were all long tail searches which I have listed below;
payday loan industry competition - rank is 20
cashadvancelinkdirectory.com - rank is 3
make money online with payday loans - rank is 4 and 5
make money with payday loans - rank is 3
emergency cash - loan - rank is 110
pay day loan reviews - rank is 16
loan money online - rank is 26
how much does payday loans make - rank is 4
Each term above was used at least twice by searchers and originated from different IP's. Terms that are really obscure are rarely used more than once and I ignore them when making my short list.
This list tells me that Google thinks my post(s) is relevant to these terms or it wouldn't have listed me for them. It only lists my post pages and not my home page. This tells me that Google hasn't listed my blog as relevant (or it has and it is so far down in the serps that I won't see it.) just a couple of pages are and only for some minor long tails. The one exception is the term "Emergency Cash Loans" which is one of the money making prime keywords related to Payday Loans. This is good as it gives me something to work with and serves as a barometer for how well I succeed. I will work at getting on page 1 from a starting position of page 11. As I see movement downward I will know my strategies are working.
The Game Plan for Payday Loans
I don't want to recap the whole concept of "latent semantic indexing' suffice to say that it is a method used by Google to determine relevance. In brief LSI can take your posts and determine what the subject matter is and how much of your post relates to the subject at hand. It also compares each post with your blog as a whole and can tell if the post is relevant to the rest of your site. My apologies if this is overly simplistic but it gets the main point across. This goes to the whole concept of why content is now king and not just backlinks when it comes to getting listed in Google.
To dominate the search engines you have to do four things.
1) Know what your blog is about. What are the handful of words that you can use to describe your blog most accurately? These words are your main keywords.
2) Each and every post that you write must contain some or all of these keywords regardless of the specific topic.
3) Each topic you write about should relate to your blogs overall theme or purpose. Each topic should ideally cover a "long tail" keyword related to your main keywords.
4) Know how to backlink.
I know most of you are aware of these factors but very few bloggers actually follow through on the specifics. If you comb through my blog you will find that just about every post has all my main keywords in it and each topic relates to a long tail.
My method is as simple and formulaic as it gets. Here it is,
My main goal is to rank number 1 on Google for "make money online". If you use a keyword search tool and query this term you will find a huge list of related terms as well. The related terms are my long tails. I target every relevant long tail I can find and try and dominate it in the listings - at least page 1 but ideally top spot. I am now on the first page in the serps for several dozen of these long tails and as each goal has been reached I keep getting closer to the first page of my prime keyword "make money online". I am currently 21 out of 150 million pages. I was 45 two weeks ago. (results will vary depending on your search region)
The point is this, Google also uses it's own results to determine how it ranks your blog. If you rank well for a hundred different but related terms then you will also rank well for the common denominator - the term that they are all related to.
I want to show you an example of this and it happens to be in my own niche.
In most regions a free blogspot blog sits atop the "make money online" search listings. This blog is called moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com and is remarkably only a PR3. How has this blog managed to do this considering most people have never heard of it or know anything about the author Alan Liew. If he is well known I don't see him mentioned much in my travels. You can't get through a day without someone mentioning John Chow or Darren Rowse. So what gives.
The fact is that this blog is ranked on the first page and usually in the top 3 spots for just about every long tail keyword related to making money online. You probably think so what - all the big names are. Well actually they aren't. Problogger and Dosh Dosh do show up fairly frequently in the top listings but that's about it for the A-listers. Carl Ocab's blog does show up everywhere and has gained him a front page listing for the main term.
Targeting one or two keywords may get you results for those keywords but they won't get you listed for related terms. Getting listed for lots of related terms will get you listed for the main term even if you didn't target it. The biggest mistake people make with SEO is to focus almost soley on a few main keywords and neglect the supporting cast. Wait - I know you have heard this before - long tails, long tails, and you are going to tell me you have written lots of posts related to long tails but you still don't rank well. If you have done all these things then all that is missing is knowing how to backlink.
Everything you Need to Know about Backlinks.
Backlinks are completely useless if you don't use them right. Period.
If you are a blogger involved in the social network scene then pay attention as this is such a common problem with most sites trying to increase readership. First off, the community is a great place to get backlinks. The "Social" crowd hands them out all the time. The problem is and forgive me for repeating myself - most of the links are useless. Everyday I read an article by someone who sends some link love out to others by way of a link. This is so nice and makes me all warm and fuzzy except that the link is always sent to "john" or "jane" - sorry generation gap - I mean sent to "Justin" or "Britney" and points to the home page.
The Home Page
Everyday "Britney" checks her links and says Wow! I have 200 backlinks now. Why isn't my site showing in the listings for my keywords "work at home mom and drug addict bimbo"? If her friends had used the preceding term in the link (anchor text) her blog would get listed but as is it's listed under "Britney". No one searching for drug addicted bimbo's would ever use the term Brit... wait that wasn't a good example. Well, you get my point.
Besides anchor text used there is the little problem of sending all your links to someone's homepage or vice versa - all your incoming links are to your homepage.
Yes, you might get a good PR for the homepage but this is almost as useless as all the "Britney" links. It will give your blog some authority when handing out link love but a PR5 that was gained from 200 "Britney" links still doesn't get your page indexed for your main keywords. Your PR authority stems from the terms used in your backlinks and the quality of the sites sending you the links. You will have PR authority for the term "Britney" and none for anything else.
If I send you a link using "make money online" in the anchor text then you will get a great link. If I use "work at home mom" as an anchor you will get some authority from me but not the full effect as I am not a PR authority for that term. If I use "Britney" then you get nothing from my PR5 because I am not a Britney authority and nobody is searching your site using that term anyways.
Now if your sites are not relevant your link doesn't do much good but still worth having. More is better than less as long as there are no bad neighbor links. If your sites are in any way relevant to each other then use links with the right keywords for the site you are linking to and then link to the actual page the post is on and not the homepage.
I want to show you something;
This is the current list of backlinks to this blog according to Google's Webmaster Tools. You will notice than only half my links point to my homepage and the rest are spread out to my post pages. In most cases the pages with the most links are on top of the serp's for the main keywords used in the post titles. If you get backlinks to your secondary pages they will get indexed on their own. Instead of just having your homepage listed for a few queries you want every page on your site listed and ranked high. These long tail listings bring you targeted traffic and promote your main page to the top of your main keyword.
How you get the right backlinks is a topic I have covered before but for those of you who share link love just ask the person linking to you if they wouldn't mind setting the link up properly - this will have a huge impact on your rankings and the terms you start ranking for.
I will get into more detail next time but to recap let's look at what you need to do to gain high page rankings in the serp's.
I am using the term Payday Loans as an example of what I do to target a keyword - in this case I am targeting it as a likely winner for adsense clicks. To get those clicks I need traffic looking for payday loans. To do this I have to convince Google that I have relevant posts and whats more, I have to convince them that my site as a whole is relevant.
So far this will make 3 posts in which I have introduced Payday Loans into this blog. I have used the main keyword in all three post titles and thrown in a number of related long tail loan keywords. I have also begun building backlinks to the payday loan pages (see above) using long tail keywords in the anchor text of the backlinks. I intend to target all the terms used in the search queries until I reach top ranking for each.
This is the list,
payday loan industry competition - rank is 20
cashadvancelinkdirectory.com - rank is 3
make money online with payday loans - rank is 4 and 5
make money with payday loans - rank is 3
emergency cash - loan - rank is 110
pay day loan reviews - rank is 16
loan money online - rank is 26
how much does payday loans make - rank is 4
In some cases I am almost at the top - some will take work.
How do I target these terms? I just have by listing them twice in this post. I will also send backlinks to these three "payday Loan" pages using these terms in the link.
Over a period of time I will keep introducing more relevant long tails as they appear in search queries and then target them as well. Eventually I will dominate each long tail and my site's relevancy for the main term will increase. Now some of you out there will be wondering about smart pricing and how I am going to get around the fact that this blog is not relevant to payday loans. I will discuss smart pricing when I get into the nitty gritty of adsense but in general if you have ads that aren't relevant to your site as a whole you will get the poorer converting and paying ads and will be penalized across all your ads. For now let me say this doesn't happen if you do what Google wants.
This brings me back to the beginning of this post. I said I don't tell Google what I'm relevant to - I let them tell me.
By only targeting or reinforcing keywords that Google has listed me for in the serp's I already know that Google deems me relevant. As more and more terms come up in the index I add them as targets. Sure I started things by throwing out a few general terms in my blog ie. Payday Loan, but I throw out hundreds of terms all the time. If Google decides to index me for a term who am I to say I'm not relevant.
Unlike most people I don't list out all the long tails and go after them. I only go after the ones Google gives me and as each is optimized a dozen more show up in the serp's until all the main keywords start popping up. I go after them in the order Google gives them to me and at each step Google is the one telling me I am relevant for each term. In as far a Adsense goes my pages are always relevant and optimized and smart pricing is not a factor.
OK this is long enough but one last thing for today.
Some of you are thinking it's easy for me to just go out and get backlinks to optimize my pages with. And you are right - I have a lot of resources at my disposal that a beginner doesn't. However I started this blog 11 months ago from scratch and had to do things the slow and hard way regarding backlinks. It does take work in the beginning but becomes easier as you go.
A couple of tricks
If you are starting out with a PR0 blog with no backlinks. Do This...
Figure out your main keyword and then write a series (10 or so)of huge posts about it. Don't worry how well it reads either - no one will read it. Just include every possible important keyword (will people search for it?) you can think of in every post. Use the keywords several times but make sure the main ones are in the post title, the first paragraph a couple of times and even bold them once for good measure. Use them again in your last paragraph. Make the posts looooooooooong! The longer they are the more terms you give Google to index you for.
Wait to get indexed or speed up the process by writing an article and submitting it to a high PR article directory, use squidoo or answer a question on Yahoo. The point is to get a link on a frequently crawled website which will send the Google bot your way. This will get you indexed fast. Do not submit your blog to Google - let them find you.
Do not monetize your blog in any way when starting out. I will speak more on this when I get to optimizing for adsense but for now don't do it.
Be patient. Eventually a few visitors will find your site. Whatever keywords they used to find you become your new long tail and the next post will highlight that term. Get a backlink or two using that term and point it at the page it is on - not the homepage.
Keep repeating this. You will build up ranking in lots of really low searched terms and this will lead to seeing your pages indexed in higher searched terms. As you target each new one you will keep ranking higher for all the relevant terms and eventually you can dominate an entire niche doing this.
Besides targeting your pages with relevant backlinks you can further optimize them by rewriting them. Huh?
I don't mean a full scale re-draft - just a few tweaks.
Simply add a few more related terms to your original post once you get a gist of what Google has ranked you for. If you got a couple of visitors for a term and it is listed on page two in the serp's you might be surprised at how many visitors you would get on page one. To do this change your original post title to include the search term that found you. Then add it a few more times in the first paragraph. Re-publish the post and watch what happens when you get crawled again.
Think of it this way. You got second page ranking for a long tail term that just happened to be in your post. Make it your title and reinforce it in your post and Google will rank it higher if for no other reason than it always ranks sites that use the search term in their title higher than sites who just happen to have it on the page somewhere.
If this doesn't get you to the top of the search results then use the term or variant again in the next post title and optimize the content in the article for it. Write as many posts as it takes to get the top spot. Enough content will get you there without a single backlink.
The more competition there is for a term the more content it will take and eventually you will need backlinks but when starting out simply go after all the less competitive terms and build them up one by one.
This is how you can create traffic and dominate the search engines as a beginner. In that vain I now have to add a little blurb about Emergency Cash Loans here at the bottom of this post as it will be the main keyword I will target for the time being in so far as my assault on the Payday Loan market goes. See how nicely I fit those into the last paragraph.
More to come,
Grizzly
Update Below
Follow along with me step by step as I show you how I pick a target and then optimize my blog in order to make money with Adsense.
I outline my "Payday Loans" experiment in sequential order below.
Payday Loans
Payday Loans Review
Payday Loans and Adsense
Payday Loans - Adsense Update
Payday Loans Update
- Griz
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