If you are just joining me I have been demonstrating how to optimize blogs for certain keywords in order to drive search engine traffic. I use this type of traffic primarily for adsense revenue but my techniques will also work if you are selling affiliate products or advertising on your pages. The goal is to target the type of traffic that will respond to what you offer on your page.
I have chosen the term Payday Loans for a number of reasons.
It is a heavily searched term in the search engines which means that it could be profitable using Adsense or by selling ad space to payday loan companies who want to take advantage of the targeted traffic.
It is also a term that is not particularly relevant to my blog and while this is a no no in as far as Adsense is concerned I am experimenting to see if I can successfully pull off introducing an off topic niche into this blog. It may not work but if it does then the field is wide open for future keyword cherry picking.
Lastly it allows me to show my readers the step by step process I use to make money with my blogs. If you want to catch up you can read my previous posts on this topic;
Payday Loans
Payday Loans Review
Make Money with Payday Loans
Several readers have asked me about other marketer's techniques and I want to set something straight at the outset. My way of doing things is not the only way - there are other SEO methods out there and lot's of ebooks regarding Adsense. I am a trial and error type of person and while I have read other methods I find that most aren't kept up to date and in large part concentrate on short cuts. Short cuts are fine for short term projects and I will discuss this type of marketing in the future but for now I am interested in showing you how to create a steady long term income that works in the current search engine climate. Because I am always experimenting I find that my methods are always being tweaked and updated which keeps my blogs moving in the right direction without fear of running afoul of Google. Having said that, this current experiment could get me into trouble but I am a firm believer in taking things slow and being cautious - which is what todays post is about.
Knowing how to plan ahead and gauge your progress.
I'm just guessing but I bet 90% of all the blogs on the net are unplanned "off the top of the head" creations.
Most are not focused on any defined goal. The URL has nothing to do with the content, the blog title is usually a name or a general phrase ie. "My Lonely Life" and it has nothing to do with the content either. The content changes day to day and covers topics from one end of the spectrum to the other. The post titles don't reflect the post content and the content itself is not optimized for any particular keyword or topic. Did I miss anything?
I am aware that a lot of bloggers - certainly the majority are busy creating content that they think will interest people and they use lot's of snappy titles and tricks to lure traffic to the site - the Web 2.0 crowd. This has become the new dominant blogging scene and it is all geared to drawing traffic from the social networks in order to eventually become an A - Lister. Every day I read blogs that talk about which is better; Stumble Upon or Digg. Every day someone has a new way to gather hordes of traffic using these sites. When I read these blogs I always wait for someone to ask one important question. "What did you do with all that traffic?"
Appealing to the stumblers and diggers it seems most bloggers don't realize that they are only after traffic for traffic's sake. They don't have a plan on what to do with the visitors they do get. Visitors who usually just click in, click out and are never seen again. The general theory seems to be that this will lead to becoming recognized which in turn will lead to becoming an A-Lister. Why do they want to be an A-lister? I presume they think this will make them a lot of money or maybe they just want to be an A-lister for the sake of being an A-lister. If I had to guess I would say that most bloggers have at least considered the possibility of making money with their blog and true bloggers blogging only for the fun of it are a minority.
Here is the million dollar question - has anyone become an A-lister just from social traffic? All the ones I know of draw most of their traffic from search engines or at least they did until achieving enough notoriety to attract social traffic. What's more, they still need search engine traffic to make money from their sites. Someone has to click the ads they sell or no one will buy ads. Social network users don't click the ads - when was the last time you bought something on one of the A-listers sites? Did you even click an ad?
The point I am making is simple and all the Google haters out there will have to realize this sooner or later - you will not be successful online either as a marketer or as an A-lister without Google's traffic. Period.
If you know of anybody that makes money online who doesn't rely on search engine traffic to do it - please let me know.
I am not trying to dash your A-List dreams, just trying to outline the basic concepts of SEO that you can and should incorporate into your blog. To this end I have been explaining how to target the term "Payday Loan" using, so far, the most basic techniques that all optimized pages must have to rank well in the serp's.
These are;
Select a prime keyword or phrase as your ultimate target. Use that phrase or keyword in every post title that you can. Use it 2 to 3 times per hundred words of content. Always highlight it in the first paragraph a few times. Use it in the last paragraph as well.
Select a list of long tail keywords (related terms and phrases of the prime keyword) and use these terms liberally in your content.
Target each new post to a long tail and work at raising these related keywords towards the top of the serp's first. The more related keywords you target the higher your prime keyword will rank.
Use keywords and only keywords in your tags - prime and long tails.
This is basic SEO and has the effect of telling Google exactly what your pages are about.
Once you have posted your articles pay attention to your stats - specifically tracking the keywords people use to find your site. Keep a list of these keywords and use them in future posts or even go back and include them in prior ones. This will increase your index ranking for each of the terms.
This has confused a few people so I will show you what I am talking about using my Payday Loan posts.
The first Payday Loan post was a fishing expedition. I wrote a long rambling post that used all the main keywords for my target. I then sat back and waited for the first visitor to find my site using a payday loan related keyword. It wasn't long before Google sent me someone who had typed in the term "cashadvancelinkdirectory.com" and I quickly checked Google to find where I ranked for this term. It was 3 and still is. As each day passed a few more visitors showed up and I noted the keywords used and the ranking of each. I then wrote a new post and included all of the terms Google had sent me traffic for. The point of doing this is to reinforce those terms as relevant to my site and as this relevancy increases Google sends me even more long tail relevant keywords. Slowly and steadily I will incorporate all of the newest terms into my posts as well which will lead to getting more terms and so on...
This is the initial list of related keywords for Payday Loan that visitors had entered into Google's search box and where my blog ranked for each term in the result's pages.
payday loan industry competition - rank was 20
cashadvancelinkdirectory.com - rank was 3
make money online with payday loans - rank was 4 and 5
make money with payday loans - rank was 3
emergency cash - loan - rank was 110
pay day loan reviews - rank was 16
loan money online - rank was 26
how much does payday loans make - rank was 4
Since then I have added the following;
payday loan traffic ranked 8
payday loans + marketing ranked 17
marketing for payday loans ranked 5
make money payday loans ranked 5
i need a loan to make money ranked 10
how to make money with payday loans ranked 4 (first Yahoo visitor)
how to create your own online payday loan business ranked 2
keyword ideas payday loan ranked 1
reviews on payday day loans ranked 26
I have since entered all these terms into SEO Elite in order to track the rankings. In the chart below you can see each term and how the rankings move - up or down according to Google. (Click image to enlarge)
Most of these terms will never bring me much traffic but that's not what I am after. I simply want to make my site relevant for Payday loans in general and I do this by adding as much relevant content as possible. Normally I would be doing this on a blog set up for the target and would be posting lengthy articles covering every aspect of loans that I could think of. Because I am trying to incorporate payday loan relevancy into an existing non-related blog I will have to move slower and I do this by simply building up long tail phrases over a longer period of time.
The chart above is important not so much for showing me my rankings but for showing me how Google is ranking me. I will explain the difference in a minute but first the initial chart readings.
The first thing to notice is that I am not ranked at all for "Loans" and "Cash Loans Online". I added these to the list as one is the parent keyword of my prime keyword - "Loans" and the other is a highly searched related term - "Cash Loans Online". If I succeed with payday loans then I should begin to rank for these two terms as well and they will be future targets if I do. Just planning ahead.
The next thing of interest is that I am being ranked for my prime keyword - "Payday Loans". This is good news so soon in my quest. It tells me that Google has accepted my blog as being at least somewhat relevant to the term. Keep in mind that the keyword I have chosen is commonly referred to as one of the red flag keywords - terms that set off spam filters far and wide. It is a high paying adsense keyword and as such it attracts spammers trying to cash in on it. Usually Google will flag you instantly and never index your posts if it suspects that you are a spam site. Google has decided that I am not and I now have a huge lead on the spammers.
You will also notice that I went from a rank of over 200 for Payday Loans and I have climbed 49 spots in a few days without doing anything more than using the term in my post titles and content - a practice I am repeating in this post. I have not chased down any backlinks yet.
This increase in ranking tells me that I should have a legitimate shot at success.
You will also notice that I am slowly getting more traffic for more terms. This is directly related to the fact that as Google accepts your relevancy for one term it in effect boosts your relevancy for all the nearest related terms which in turn means ranking for more terms. It becomes a snowball rolling down hill. The more terms you rank for - the more terms you will get to rank for.
I said the chart was helpful for tracking my rankings and it is but the real story is that it shows me exactly how Google has me pigeon holed at the minute. If you look at the terms I have been ranked for you will notice 3 distinct levels of relevancy.
The terms that Google has ranked me high for are all quite relevant to my blog. I am telling people how to market and make money off of payday loans or at least the term.
The terms Google has ranked me 2 - 4 pages deep are terms that Google hasn't quite decided if I am totally relevant for yet. And they are right. I have used the term "Payday Loan Review" in my posts but I haven't really done a review of any payday loan companies or systems. I shouldn't rank on the front page for this and Google is able to figure this out. The algorithm is really quite amazing in a lot of ways.
Google is also accurate about the terms in which I rank out in the netherworld - "emergency cash loan", "I need a loan to make money" and "payday loans". I don't give out loans and Google knows it. My task will be to convince Google to put me on the front page for my term in spite of this. I will have to convince Google that a review or informational post deserves top billing along with the actual payday loan companies.
A note about Red Flag Keywords
I mentioned earlier that I would normally start a new blog if I wanted to target a new niche or keyword not related to any of my existing sites. If you are following along then I suggest you start a new blog and target a niche of your choice. The main reason I am experimenting with this niche on this blog is because it is increasingly difficult to target Red Flag keywords on sites devoted to the terms. If you want to target legal/law related keywords you had better be a law office. If you go after mortgage and loan traffic then you had better be a financial institution. If it's insurance related then you had better be selling insurance. If you can't show instant relevancy to Google then you won't get out of the water.
If you are picking a niche please stay away from all the spam keywords. Not because I don't want the competition but because you need to learn how to do this with a niche you can dominate before tackling one that I know will lead most of you to failure. I have no assurance that I will succeed so don't waste your time on keywords that will be almost impossible to succeed with. This doesn't mean you shouldn't go after highly competitive keywords - I always do as that is where the money is. Competition doesn't scare me and if you take my advice to heart and do what I do it won't scare you either. The more competitive the keyword the better just stay away from the spam keywords - you don't want to lose your Adsense account.
To reinforce this point I want to show you something which will also explain why I am going slow in my campaign for Payday Loans.
The moment you get involved with spam keywords you attract all the spammers. I mentioned in a recent post that one of the current methods that spammers are using to game Google is to scrape content off of legitimate sites and post links back to the source - they do this in order to get a trackback link returned to them. They are taking advantage of the fact that most bogs have yet to add the no-follow to trackbacks. In effect they are stealing PR from high ranking blogs.
No sooner did I post my first article on Payday Loans than I started receiving links from spammers. To date I have had 28 links to my first post. See the screenshot below.
Normally I wouldn't mind 28 new links all perfectly optimized for my post (notice the anchor text in BOLD) but not when they come from bad neighborhoods. If you try and go to most of these sites you will be re-directed to a different site. Spammers cloak their money sites and present Google one URL while actual clicks are sent elsewhere. I was worried about all these links showing up so fast and still am. I have no-follow on my comments and on Bloggers version of trackbacks - the "sites linking" widget. Hopefully this is enough to convince Google that I am not linking to them and that I shouldn't be punished for others linking to me. Remember that Google doesn't usually blame you for incoming links - you really can't control who links to you. You only get penalized for links leaving your site. This is why the people hurt most by the recent Google slap were the one's posting the paid reviews and not the one's buying the reviews.
Each post I have written has recieved a number of these spam links and for that reason I am going slow and have been reluctant to start adding my own links. Linking has to look natural - a few at first and then increasing over time with a variety of keywords used in the anchor text. Too many links too fast and all using the same anchor text will get you on the Google Bomb radar and as John Chow found out - this ain't a good thing.
Alright this has been long enough but as you can see I am making progress as far as targeting Payday Loans and I am seeing a little more traffic each day for related terms. Some of that traffic will start clicking the ads I have on the pages if they haven't already and I should slowly see an increase in my Adsense earnings. You will notice that I haven't done anything that you can't duplicate easily on your own blog. I will keep you posted on my results as this progresses.
Till next time,
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
How to SEO your Blogs
For the past few weeks I have been discussing ways in which you can optimize your blogs for search engine traffic - primarily Google. This is called search engine optimization or SEO for short. I have been targeting the keyword "Payday Loans" to show you the step by step methods I use to make money online.
Ultimately I will discuss how to further tweak your blogs in order to make money using Adsense but till now I have just been focusing on general techniques that everyone should use in order to draw search traffic to your blog. Whether you are interested in Adsense or not you should still focus some attention on acquiring SE traffic - social traffic is great in so many ways but if you monetize your site you will need SE traffic to convert visitors to sales.
Today I am going to jump around a bit as I want to clarify a few things that have popped up in my emails and comments.
Self Hosted Blogs, Blogspot and Wordpress
I still get - or I should say I am seeing more emails all the time wondering why I use a free Blogger blog on Blogspot. Invariably the assumption is that I don't know that "serious" marketers use their own domains. I have also had several readers ask me about what type of blog they should use.
I have answered the first question before but it's worth going over again. The whole point of this blog is to make money and show my readers how I do it. To that end I have focused my attention on beginners and I want to show them that you really can make money online and you don't have to spend money to do it. Hence the free Blogger blog - I prefer to do it by example. I have another reason for using Blogger as well; it has some distinct advantages over other blog platforms when it comes to making money with Adsense. I will get into this further when I turn my focus to Adsense.
In regards to what platform is best I agree that having your own domain is the standard way to go if you are intent on making the A-list. Web 2.0 is the new look and self hosted wordpress blogs are all the rage. In general I find Blogger to be a great way for beginners to cut their teeth. You can learn the ins and outs about blogging without spending money and it is incredibly easy to use. A free Wordpress blog is really not a good idea as it is next to impossible to monetize it. For a good synopsis of the differences between these platforms see Blogs: Self Hosting vs Free Hosting by Terry Didcott.
Some of you that already have an A-list style blog have been asking me if it can be optimized for Adsense. It can but to really go after Adsense properly you will end up losing your aesthetic appeal. The fact is the best performing Adsense sites aren't pretty. You have to set up the site in such a way as to capitalize clicks or you won't make enough to bother with it. In the simplest terms you have to display the ugly and in your face ad block just like I have above the fold on this blog. To make any serious money you will have to do the same - most of you don't want that on your "nice" blogs so I suggest starting a new blog specifically aimed at Adsense and just tweak your A-list blogs in order to capture search engine traffic. If you are monetizing with paid ads then you'll need the SE visitors.
One question I was asked was, "Why is search engine traffic better for making money than social traffic?".
The obvious answer is because social traffic is comprised of internet marketers for the most part and they don't typically click ads or buy stuff. Perhaps the better answer is to skip ahead in my Payday Loan lessons and actually show you a completed campaign where I set out to target a keyword in order to rank high on Google's listings and how I have made money from it.
In January I wrote a review of a program I had tried out called "Project Payday". The program deals with making money by buying and selling referrals on IFW's (incentivized freebie websites). While there are things I don't like about the program (the type of work mostly - boring) the end result is that it is a legitimate way of earning some money online. It actually works which is something you can't say to often online. At the time I suspected this might get popular but in truth I was only guessing. Shortly after I posted the review someone linked to me from the whydowork forum citing my post in regards to a question some one had asked. Before long there was a steady stream of visitors coming to my blog because of that link. They weren't making me any money but it led me to believe that there was interest in the program. I decided to target the keyword for Google to see if there was interest in the non IM world.
To do this I wrote several more articles optimized for the keyword "Project Payday" as well as for all the relevant long tail terms. I then submitted some to article directories to get some optimized links back to my posts. I managed to climb to 5 and 6 on Google's index and haven't bothered going any higher - I don't need to.
Look at the screenshot below;
With the exception of the Project Payday site all the top results point to my blog - the answer on Yahoo Answers has a link to me and of course the whydowork forum has the link I mentioned earlier. Aside from those going directly to the Project Payday site I get most of the search traffic for that term. In fact Google tells me in webmaster tools that I get 61% of all the people searching for the term. I was able to generate a lot of backlinks in the beginning using articles that other's published on their sites - each article had a link using the anchor text "project payday" or "project payday review" and it didn't take long to get to 5th on the serp. Remember when you target a term that has little to no competition you can rank well with no backlinks at all if you have enough relevant content. If there is a bit of competition you can overcome it with a few decent backlinks - you usually don't need many. How many others were seriously targeting my term? Probably only a few at most and how hard would they work at it? Not that hard - I had only 2-3 links and was a PR0 at the time I landed 5th spot.
I want to interrupt the flow for a second and deal with some confusion over the issue of backlinks vs content. One of my readers left a comment the other day that addresses this concern...Jasa said...
ok i just had information overload for two things. Both related to SEO though. Thought you might be able to clarify.
Brad Callen, the creator of SEO elite wrote in his huge Ebook, that the important part in SEO is the off page optimization (though on page is still important but not as important). Which basically refers to backlinking.
On the other hand, your experiments are starting to show that its more the other way round.
Hmm, do you mind clarifying on this? Thx! :)
My personal thoughts are that off page optimization are important to get crawled and ranked well in G's index but on page is the one that gets you on the page(SERPs) that you want. Is that true to any extent?
Notwithstanding the fact that Brad Callen is selling a product designed to get backlinks it is not surprising that he would push for their importance. In truth he is right to a certain extent but not in every circumstance. The easiest way to explain this is to think in terms of competition.
If two blogs write a post on the same topic Google will rank them in order of relevance, backlinks, PR and then by a host of other measures like age, monetization, purpose (is one selling the product and the other not?), Video (does on offer more choices for the reader) and so on.
I have mentioned this before but take a look at the top ten sites on most search queries and you can see a pattern.
Google does not just list the ten sites with the highest PR on any given topic.They strive to give the reader choices. If a reader wants to know what others think about a particular product then Google will present them with a list of the top sites reviewing the product. If all the sites are selling the product then Google will drop some and find the most relevant site that isn't and include it in the list - higher than it would normally have ranked. If there is a video available on another site not listed then it will get bumped up as well. If there is a non monetized site that is relevant it will also get bumped up. Google presents a list of what it thinks is most relevant to your search - if you want a review of something then you don't just want sites selling the product - you probably want to hear other opinions about it or maybe see a video or find out what a site that isn't monetized and has nothing to gain from the review might have to say.
Of course different queries will get different results but Google tries to read your "intent" when compiling it's index. To this end they do not just present PR (read backlinks) dominant sites. They present the most relevant (read content) first even if it has less PR than 20 others. PR does not play a factor until competition increases to a point that all other factors are equal. In general you will need a higher PR to rank better than another site that is equal to you in all other aspects.
To sum this up you need content first and then backlinks. Without the content optimized for the right keywords you can have all the PR you want and not get listed well. In truth you use both in tandem to dominate the serp's but backlinks are not as important until you are up against stiff competition.
The interesting thing is that you can make money without going after highly competitive terms and this brings me back to the Project Payday example. My review didn't include an affiliate link and this had several consequences. Instead of trying to sell Project Payday I explained what the system was about and gave my readers a bunch of links and instructions that they could use to get started without paying the membership to Project Payday. This curried favor with lot's of readers and soon a number of sites were linking to me and telling their readers to check me out regarding Project Payday. Traffic started coming from both the whydowork forum and from other blogs and soon I was getting 100-200 visitors a day. Some of you are probably wondering why I didn't have an affiliate link and the reason was simple; my traffic was comprised of internet marketers and they wouldn't have used my link anyways. I was after Adsense clicks and that's why I wanted to rank well on Google.
The end result is that there is now barely a trickle of traffic coming from whydowork which never converted to Adsense clicks as the thread has grown cold. But, no sooner did I get ranked on the front page on the serp's than traffic started rolling in from the general public and this blog started making Adsense revenue. Ten months later I still get lots of daily traffic and on top of it all Project Payday recently started paying for leads which has meant more earnings for me.
This screenshot shows my earnings from sending leads to Project Payday
This is a prime example of how a small blog can make money in less competitive niches. I have targeted lots of other keywords as well; "Roadmap to Riches", "Two Minute profits", "Yahoo Answers" etc and even well known Guru names - basically anything that I think people will search for in sufficient quantities to click my ads. Remember also that in the process of optimizing my pages for the serps for these terms I have also optimized my pages for the best Adsense ads as well. When someone visits me looking for info on my new keyword "Payday Loans" I will have payday loan ads on my page for them to click as soon as they realize that I am not what they were looking for.
I just took a screenshot of the last half hours worth of traffic to my site according to my statcounter. Check it out,
These are all the recent terms people have used to find my site and the search engine they used. Every term on that list has been optimized for and I didn't just get the traffic by luck. (You'll notice that I am already getting traffic for Payday Loans and I just started that Campaign) Because most of my traffic is search related I know that everyday I will make about $10 with Adsense per 100 SE visitors. This ratio varies from site to site on my network but after 11 months this seems to be the norm for this blog. My goal is simple - increase my search traffic by adding new keywords to this blog and by tweaking my existing keywords so that they reach top billing.
The importance of the top search listing.
I mentioned previously that I have a blog that makes about half of all my Adsense Income by itself. It is in the Fishing niche but only arm's length. It regularly makes $60 - $80 a day in Adsense and I have had some incredible 4 digit affiliate sales days as well. I first came across the main keyword by accident - I had used the term a few times in a post that was loosely related and Google picked it up and sent me traffic. I didn't think much about it but soon noticed that there was a steady if small stream of traffic coming daily. I checked my rank and saw I was listed on page two of the serps.
Here is a big tip - if you start getting steady traffic for any term not listed on the first page of the serp's then you might want to tweak it. This usually tells you the demand is decent. I tweaked my post and wrote a couple of more that highlighted the keyword and within a day I was in 6th spot. Traffic tripled and on top of it Google placed some ideal ads on my page. Overnight I went from a $2 a day Adsense site to $15 a day site. All this took was a couple of new posts and no backlinks. Like an idiot I stopped tweaking and walked around with a smug grin on my face thinking how clever I was. I was an idiot because two months later the traffic hadn't died off but had actually increased and it wasn't until then that I wondered just how much traffic the number 1 position got. I tweaked away and this time had to round up a posse of backlinks but I got to number 1 and now I make $80 a day on a good day. Money I could have been making for the two months I thought I was so clever. I guess I am trying to tell you not to stop until you reach number 1.
This in a nutshell is how you drive search engine traffic to your site. Whether you use Adsense or not - you still need traffic from Google. It doesn't matter what your blog is about - you can and should concentrate on optimizing your posts so that you highlight all the terms that are relevant to you and then tweak those that you receive traffic for. As you build up these keywords your search traffic will steadily increase. As this increases you will notice that your blog will see more clicks and sign ups. More traffic more money - it's not rocket science.
On a parting note I have been asked about optimizing for yahoo and other engines. I used to spend time with my websites trying to go after the Yahoo and MSN market but haven't bothered with my blogs. The main reason is part lazy and part cautious. Yahoo and others still attach relevance to Meta Tags which Google ignores. Blogger doesn't use Meta Tags (go figure - Google owns Blogger) so there would be work involved in modifying the template to include them and aside from being lazy I am worried that this might bugger up Google's love of the Blogger template. I alluded to this earlier but one of the things I like about Blogger is that it is perfectly optimized for Google and Adsense. A blogger blog is easy for a bot to read and categorize. I will discuss this more in future.
Having said that I would encourage wordpress users to definately go after Yahoo et al, but Google is still the priority. They easily send the most traffic so don't appease Yahoo by sacrificing Google. I should point out that since each has it's own priorities you can lower your ranking on one engine by trying to raise it on another. If you don't know what you are doing best to just target Google.
I will be updating my progress with "Payday Loans" next post for those that have been following along and getting into more details on how to fine tune your on page optimization.
Until then,
Griz
Alexa's traffic stats are all the rage especially among the social network crowd or perhaps I should say only with the social crowd. As a niche marketer I have known for a long time that Alexa stats are not worth looking at as they can only tell you how many Alexa toolbar users dropped in - not how many actual visitors you received. The vast majority of people online do not use the Alexa toolbar and hence don't get counted.
I have one niche site that gets over a thousand unique visits a day and it ranks over 2 million on Alexa. It is not a Internet Marketing related site or a tech site. IM'ers and techies tend to be the biggest users of the toolbar and social networkng sites. If you don't draw them to your site you will not have a very good Alexa ranking in spite of having a lot of search engine traffic.
I thought I would post my stats for this blog to show you just how misleading your Alexa ranking is.
This blog normally gets between 350 to 450 unique visits a day. Until recently most of my traffic came from the search engines - 95% from Google. Some of my traffic has come from sites linking to me and these visitors tend to be Alexa toolbar users. This has given me an Alexa ranking of about 180,000 +/- for the past several months.
I have always been curious as to just how few alexa users you needed to get a high ranking. I am only guessing as it is hard to know for sure but I would say that I would not have had more than 50 alexa user visits a day and probably a lot less to get me a ranking of 180,000.
I drive traffic to this site by adding a link to it from a number of my other non-related sites. You would be surprised how a "Would you like to know how to make money online" link can generate clicks even on a shoe or fishing site. Lots of people are a bit curious to say the least. In general these links send this blog roughly 100 visitors a day but it can vary wildly.
Last week I removed all of these links and my traffic for this blog dropped off fast.
The image below (click to enlarge) is my traffic from two weeks ago. You will notice the drop off on Sunday - the day I disabled my links from my other sites.
The next image is my traffic stats for this past week. 
The most obvious thing you will notice is that my overall traffic dropped. Not as much as it should have though and there are a number of reasons. This past week all my articles were zoomed on Blogging Zoom which generated some visits. A friend of mine (Monika at The Writers Manifesto) gave me a nod on an article she wrote on a high traffic site which brought in quite a bit of traffic I wouldn't normally see and I had a few stumblers drop in that I usually don't get. Most of the new traffic probably had the Alexa toolbar judging from the following results.
If anything you would expect my Alexa rankings to drop right - I did get less traffic than usual. So what happened...
My Alexa reach has been increasing steadily for the past month or so because I have become involved in the social network scene and have started gaining visitors who use the toolbar.
The image below is Feedburners stats for this blog for the past week - it isn't the most accurate compiler either but it will serve to make my point.
You will notice that according to Feedburner I had 947 visitors from the search engines and 456 visitors from other sites. A rough average of 2 search visitors for every 1 visitor sent by another site. For my purposes let's assume that all the domain visitors have the toolbar and the search traffic doesn't. This isn't accurate but it won't be far off the mark either.
If I divide the results by 7 days I can roughly say that I have been averaging 65 Alexa toolbar users a day for the past week.
Here is the question - what rank do you think you would have on Alexa if you only had 65 visitors (with Alexa Toolbar installed) a day to your site.
Look below for the answer...
A one week average rank of 71,000 from a measly 65 visitors a day.
Granted I could be off the mark plus or minus a few visitors but even if I said I got a hundred toolbar visitors a day that's not really a lot is it to get such a relatively high ranking. How many visitors do you think you need to rank 40,000 on Alexa? Well twice last week I hit that mark and total visitors to the site on the two days were as follows 330 visits and 307 visits. If we take out the 2/3 that I averaged in search traffic this tells us that you could average 40,000 on Alexa with as few as 100 - 120 visitors a day if they all used the Alexa Toolbar.
Just thought this was interesting as I am sure a lot of you are wondering just how much traffic you need to get a good Alexa rank. It also shows you how misleading Alexa really is - remember I have a site with over 1000 visits a day and it ranks over 2 million.
Oh, one last thing. I verified something again this week. When your search traffic drops off your adsense revenues do decline. My adsense earnings dropped by a whopping 50% this week without the extra traffic my other sites provide. The increased social traffic is great but it doesn't pay the bills. Needless to say I have put the links back.
Griz
When it comes to making money with Adsense I don't tell Google what I'm relevant for in terms of content - I let Google tell me. If this is confusing then hear me out.
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
A pre-amble to Making Money with Adsense
There is no doubt that Google has created a dominant search engine and the brains behind the funny name deserve credit. But it could be said that the blackhatters deserve a lot of credit as well. Without the blackhatters Google would never have developed into the engine that it has become.
Relevance is everything when it comes to search engines. When someone asks a question your results had better be relevant or no one will use your service. Next - you have to be able to provide the relevant information in order of "most" relevant to "least" relevant. Users will leave never to return if you keep giving them articles that mention their keyword in passing. Users want exact information and search engines have to provide it. Google is the best at doing this, hands down.
Google's strength and it's weakness is the pagerank system. By counting links pointing to a site, assessing the relevancy of the links and then the authority of the links Google is able to decide which site is the most relevant for any given keyword. In practice this system is fairly reliable when dealing with small/medium sites in niches with low to no advertising. There is little incentive to game the system in these niches. The accuracy of pagerank begins to breakdown as you get into niches that have a lot of advertising dollars to go around. If a person can make money doing something then there is immediate incentive to maximize ones earnings. In some cases this can be done by legitimate means and in some cases not. One could argue that the moment anyone does anything to maximize earnings - legitimate or otherwise - that the person has just gamed the system.
By using PR Google created a successful system for ranking pages on it's index. They also laid out the game plan for creating a successful site in the process. To get high rankings in the serp's you need backlinks. You now need to meet other factors as well but PR is still a major asset to have in order to climb the serp's. By this very fact Google created the Black-hatters.
From the moment PR was introduced Black-hatters have been manipulating it in order to make money online. Adsense income has always been a favorite target for them as it is easy to earn and at one point, early on, it was incredibly profitable.
The Golden Age of Adsense
In the beginning all you needed to rank well in Google was to have the most backlinks. A few quick thinkers realized that the quickest way to do this was to create thousands of sites and send a link from each over to your adsense site with the "consolidated student loan" ads plastered on it. These guys had the field to themselves and made a lot of money. Eventually greed and competition took over and woke Google up. Suddenly all the popular searches were ranking really crappy irrelevant sites and Google had a problem.
To fix this Google devises PR and gives more weight to older sites with higher PR.
The black-hatters changed stride and created thousands of sites to send backlinks to hundreds of other sites who's new PR ranking was then used to send hundreds of links to the adsense sites and the money kept rolling in. No problem. Google what else ya got?
Google replied - Links must be from relevant sites. No problem. The black-hatters just created thousands of spammy relevant keyword stuffed sites. The game was back on.
Google pulling out it's hair countered with relevant anchor text and only 1 vote per C-class IP. Ah ha... take that.
"Child's play" said the black-hatter revving up his comment spam generator, "I can have a thousand links by noon".
Fortunately for Google site owners came to their rescue on this one and deleted the spam and started using captchas and filter programs. Who knew people actually hated spam?
For the first time black-hatters realized they were up against more than just Google. The citizenry was catching on and getting tired of their tricks.
The path to accessing free usable links has now become narrow indeed. Some hearty souls are still fishing for them with the aid of trackback spamming software. At the moment most blogs that allow trackbacks don't have the no-follow tag on them. This will change but it's the reason there are so many scraping sites online sending trackbacks. The black-hatters are taking advantage of the trackback weakness and have resorted to snippet scraping to put Google in a bind.
Google has a problem. While the official word is that duplicate content is a no no and will be penalized the reality is that this has been hard to put into practice.
Who are the biggest scraper sites? The "news and Information services" are. How many newspapers pull the same story off of the wire services? Where does CNN and it's cohorts get their news? All the media giants have huge scrapper sites and their posts are all over the place. So is Google going to call the "New York Times" a spammer?
Nope and this is why scraper sites are so prevalent now. If the major news outlets can list story snippets linking back to the source then why can't everybody. Why isn't my small site allowed to post snippets of information the same way? The answer is you are. Google has no way of knowing if you are legitimately providing your readers with useful info or if you are just a spam site scraping content.
This practice will continue until the community comes to Googles aid again and adds the no-follow to trackbacks.
Most black-hatters have taken a different approach. The days of a free lunch with adsense is over but there is still money to be made. Enough in fact to cause them to bite the bullet and just buy links. This is Google's Achilles heel.
As long as Google relies on backlinks to rank PR they can be manipulated by people willing to simply pay high PR sites for a link. The recent crackdown on paid links has not stopped this practice - it has simply pushed it underground. Visit the Link sales page on Digital Point and you can see what a booming business this is. The people who were buying the ads and reviews with textlinkads and PPP were black-hatters buying your PR. Google's latest slap was to put a stop to that - they weren't trying to take away a source of income from people - they just wanted you to use the no-follow tag. By using the no-follow you would eliminate the black-hats and be left with buyers who really want to place an ad on your site or have you review them. We will see how many legitimate buyers there really are - I'm guessing not so many.
Another thing the black-hat community has done is set up and join Blog networks. These are set up by purchasing expired domains that still have PR. You can join these networks and gain access to hundreds of real blogs with existing PR and post your own content on them. This allows you to send highly optimized anchor text links to your main sites. Gaming the system - you bet.
Google has not met this problem yet and faces a challenge in trying to eliminate it. They can't do away with pagerank as they need a way to rank relevancy. Pagerank depends on links and links can be bought without a trail. They can't insist that all links be no-followed or their system will fail - they need do follow links in order to rank pages.
How Google will handle this is anyones guess but I suspect that the days of site wide links are numbered. Google uses Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to determine just how relevant content links embedded in articles are and now place the most weight on these links. This doesn't negate paid links it just causes people to do more work for them. From Google's point of view site wide links that do-follow can be paid links although blogrolls usually aren't. It's doubtful that penalties will be handed out for these type of links but it's assured that they won't have much weight in the future and will probably be eliminated. If you want to send PR to a friend it's best to do it in a relevant article - relevant to both sites that is.
This brings us up to date as far as the Goggle/Black-hatter tug of war goes but I just want to touch on the effect this history has had on Adsense.
There may still be people who are making outrageous sums of money with it but no where near as many people or as much money as two years ago. Most serious Adsense sites can still make a good dollar but you need a small army of them to approach large earnings. In my case I have been able to cut down on the number of blogs needed by creating blogs that are multi-niche relevant and can target more keywords from the same blog.
The good news is that there are a lot less serious players in the game now. Sure you see the ads all over the net but in reality only a very small amount of sites really know what they are doing and actively pursue Adsense. Most of you just slapped it somewhere on your site and wonder why it doesn't make you more than a few cents a day - if that.
Those that have pursued Adsense have learned to use Google's rules to their advantage. Give Google exactly what they want and they respond by giving you high listings in the search results. The decrease in competition has meant that there are less people vying for the high paying keywords and what's more it's a fairer fight as everybody has to play by the same rules. To rank well you can't just have the most relevant high PR links. You also have to have the most relevant content and not just on one page but your whole site has to show relevancy. LSI has allowed people who can provide relevant useful content to out rank the people who have deep pockets and buy links. There are a lot of low PR sites dominating popular keyword listings - something that didn't happen in the past. You still need links but not as many if your content rocks. Just look at wikipedia.
I have written this post to highlight the fact that Adsense is wide open to those who want to pursue it. It is more accessible to everyone now than it has been in the past. The black-hatters don't dominate the scene anymore primarily due to the work involved, the cost and the fact that they have found other easier methods to make money - primarily in the social network arena.
In my next post I will outline the basic system for earning revenue with Adsense. I want to say up front that there is work involved. You won't be getting rich quick and there are a few ethical hurdles you may have to get over. In my last post I mentioned that I finally had a $200 day but you shouldn't expect this. It has taken me a good year of learning and the best part of another year to implement my system to get to this stage. It has been work. In reality I should only be making half the amount but I got lucky with one keyword. I have yet to find a second one of this calibre. You should expect to create a site that can generate about $10 a day. Once done you work on another and again and again. No tricks (well maybe a few) - just repetition. I will also show you how to create a multi-niche site.
It has taken me two years to make a decent income with this. For me it has been worth the work. I can't promise you anything but if you can stick to something and aren't afraid of a little work then you should be able to accomplish similar results. The best thing about Adsense is that eventually there is little work to do and the money just keeps coming in.
I love it.
Cheers,
In the adsense world your journey is one of milestones. How long until you make your first dollar? Your first $10 day. Your first $100 day and for me lately - when would I hit the $200 adsense earnings in one day. Well that finally happened after two weeks of hovering around the mark... yesterday.
This screenshot shows the combined earnings of my best performing blogs (22) and websites (3). I won't mislead you though as the majority of the income comes from just 3 blogs and even then my top blog brings in almost half the earnings by itself.
My adsense revenue has steadily increased over the past few weeks largely because the effects of the recent Google slap are starting to filter down to the serp's. A lot of people noticed that while they lost pagerank they still held their positions in the search results. This is now starting to change as I have noticed a number of my pages moving up in the results while quite a few of the pages I have been chasing are disappearing from the top listings.
It is only recently that I started using social networks and while I have enjoyed meeting lots of new people online I have noticed that the community as a whole operates from a framework diametrically opposed to me. I blog to make money - the community blogs to gain acceptance, recognition, notoriety and above all readers. The community also complains a lot - usually about not making money and how it's Google's fault for taking away what little income they did make.
I find it ironic that most people want to find an alternative to Google whereas I make money because of Google. My earnings all come from serp traffic - 95% from Google. I love them.
Contrary to popular opinion, adsense is not dead and it just got better. There are less people competing for profitable keywords today than there was two weeks ago. If you know what to do making money from adsense is like a kid in a candy store. I will be outlining my exact methods in upcoming posts for those who want to try their hand at it. I am not selling anything so you don't have to worry if I am legit or not.
Why would I tell you this for free?
Most of you won't actually act on the info.
Those who do act won't be competing with my keywords.
I intend on building up a huge network of trusting readers so that one day I can sell you all a completely useless ebook which will make me so rich that I can finally settle down and develop a celebrity sized drug problem. This will of course get me into one of those posh rehabs where I can live out my final days rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. I know, I know - lofty goals but I think I'm just the man for the job.
Stay Tuned,
Grizzly
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This post is not going to go well with a large segment of the blogging community.
Sites that have been using the services of payperpost have been seeing their pagerank dropping like flies for the past few days. It appears that most are dropping all way back down to a PR0. Needless to say there is a new round of Google bashing going on and you can check out the payperpost forum ( I'm not linking to it with a ten foot pole ) for a sense of what the populace thinks. I also noticed several posts on Blogging Zoom this morning that touch on this new round of woes.
The general concensus seems to be that everyone wants to stick their head in the sand and pout.
Here are a few of the comments I've read this morning;
"Really, I don't care about PR. I'll sell links and reviews on my blog even if it remains a PR 0 for the rest of its life..."
"It's all about networking. That's where 95% of my traffic comes from anyway."
"I think you have the right idea. We can't worry too much about something we have no control over. Besides, if we crawl back out of this hole they'll probably just smack us back down again."
These are completely natural reactions - a lot of small blogs have just lost their main source of income. I sympathize with them and I know one day I will do something to get slammed by Google as well. When it happens I will lose a big chunk of my income. I will be mad too - the only difference is that I will be mad at myself and not Google.
People are trying to convince themselves that Google is a big heartless monster out to take away income from the people who need it most. They act like this was unexpected and Google is only doing it to reduce competition in the advertising market. They are convinced that Google is going to get sued for anti-trust violations and it serves them right.
People are mad and want revenge.
People are also saying that they don't care about PR, it's meaningless and they will keep on doing what they have been doing.
This is great news to you if you are smart.
A different viewpoint on Google.
First let me say that my opinion is based on my motives online. I am online to make money. So are most of you or you probably wouldn't be reading an article on a blog that exists for the purpose of explaining how to make money online. I have no view on the moral/ethical questions posed about Google. People can debate whether Google is evil until the cows come home - I don't care. I only care about how Google works because knowing this allows you to make money while all the competition drowns in their sorrows.
Google was not wrong in what they did. It is true that they have effectively eliminated a source of competition but the competition wasn't really selling advertising - it was selling paid links for the purpose of passing PR on to buyers.
Google states very clearly that you can sell paid reviews and advertising on your site. You just have to add the no-follow tag. They aren't eliminating the competition, you can have all the paid ads you want and you won't be penalized. You are not allowed to sell your pagerank. This is the simplest way to put it. Selling pagerank is gaming the system - lesser sites can buy their way to the top of the serp's. Do you want Google to start spitting out crappy, spammy sites on the front page of the listings again? If they hadn't put a stop to paid links this is what would eventually happen. Believe me when I say you don't want this to happen because honest bloggers like you will never make it to the top of the serp's - the black hatters would take over, again.
I'm not a lawyer but as far as anti-trust goes Google isn't violating my understanding of it. They own a proprietary software and can use it and tinker with it all they want. They aren't stopping competition. If you want to be listed on their index then you have to follow the rules. They have the right to make the rules and you have the right not to use them or care about them.
I have the right to make rules on my own blog. If I run a contest I can say that only 1 vote will count and you will be eliminated if you vote more than once. Oh and you are not allowed to pay someone for their vote. This would make the votes meaningless as the biggest spender will win. If I catch you selling votes you will be banned.
This is what Google is doing. They offer a search engine. They rank sites on the basis of who is most relevant to your query. They use a system of votes to help determine who the most relevant site is for each query. Each vote you get from others increases your authority. You are not allowed to buy those votes or sell your votes.
If you sell or buy votes (links) then Google has the right to drop your PR or even de-index you. They can list who they want for any reason they want. They can ignore anyone they want too. You can ignore them too and not care if they index you.
So, did Google do anything wrong? Nope. They warned people not to sell links. They warn people not to game the system. Payperpost exists solely to broker link sales between buyers and sellers. The higher your PR the more money you get for a link. This was all disguised (poorly) by claiming that the buyer was getting paid advertising for his money and that a link would be included so the reader could click through to the source. The only problem with this is that PPP wouldn't allow users to use the no-follow tag on the links. This wouldn't be a problem for PPP if the buyers were actually just buying advertising. They wouldn't allow the no-follow tag used because they knew that the only way they could get buyers was by offering the passing of pagerank. No one will pay for a review on a PR5 blog that has no traffic unless they get a link out of the deal.
For everyone that is upset with Google you should really think about this. You only made money by taking advantage of a system that was set up to game Google. Google caught you and the system gaming them and stopped you from doing more of it. They weren't in the wrong and have once again offered the rest of us a less competitive playing field.
If you say that you don't care about Google then you are a noble soul but you are going to have a hard time making money online. Sure you can turn to the social sites and work on getting traffic. This traffic won't make you money but it will increase your alexa ranking and as flawed as alexa is it will be the new measurement used to determine who can sell paid reviews. PPP will be unveiling a new ratings system shortly based entirely on traffic. Instead of PR you will be offered better paying reviews based on how much traffic you have. This will mean that most low traffic sites won't make a dime. It will also mean that people will start Gaming Alexa to increase their traffic stats - it's easy to do. Advertisers will quickly complain that they aren't getting their money's worth and stop buying. Depending on this type of model to make money online is unsustainable and a waste of your time.
You should care about Google because if you follow the rules you do get rewarded. PR is far from dead. PR is necessary in order to drive search engine traffic to your site. Search engine traffic is more profitable than social network traffic. If people really do stop caring about pleasing Google then the rest of us have a lot less competition to worry about.
For the past week I have been posting on ways you can make money with adsense. I have talked about how content and learning how to target keywords can increase your adsense earnings. I may have downplayed the importance of PR but make no mistake - the higher your PR the more you can make. You don't need a lot of PR to make money with Adsense but the more you get the better. You should concern yourself with PR - follow Googles rules and you will get it.
Grizzly