How to select good keywords for niche blogs

To make money online, there is two main things you need to do: picking good keywords and using keyword anchored links to get your site rank high in Google. This is as basic as it gets and anybody that follows this strategy will be able to make money within 2 months.As an illustration, let me show you a niche of mine that I started in November. Using the tip to get index fast, I manage to get the blog to be indexed within 1 day. After which, it is a matter of selecting long tail keywords that are contains your main keyword and getting them ranked by using keyword anchored backlinks. Because I was able to rank for long tails, traffic begin to...

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Find good keywords from long niche articles

I have mentioned previously in my post on selecting keywords for online income that the best keywords are always 'hidden'. You cannot find them through keyword tools such as the latest Niche Horde or from any other tools. You need to fish them by writing long articles so that Google can show what these hidden keywords are.Think about it for a moment. When you are looking at Google's search, you will realise it will combine words from your entire post to try and give users what they are looking for. So, it make sense that the more words you have, the more options you are giving the search engine to combine different keywords that will bring targeted traffic to your site. If you are lucky,one of these keywords will be something that very few have thought and it is all yours as these typically...

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SEO tips: selecting keywords for online income

Getting good keywords is the first step to generate online income. There have been many articles around the Web that teaches you how to do it. For me, I have developed my own system for gatehring these good keywords that are targeted at helping me earn a passive online income. These are my methods. They are not a sure fire way to get rich but they helped me a lot to spot keywords.The common method people used is to go to places like Google keyword tool and type in a keyword like iphone for example. The tool will then give you a list of long tail keywords and their associated CPCs, search volume, etc. While useful, almost every internet marketing guy is using the same method so you can be assured that most of the good keywords are already saturated with competition. That is why I don't use...

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SEO tips: money making gurus

In all my SEO tips posts, I had forgotten to pay my dues to these money making gurus. People who are masters of everything I have said including SEO, keyword research, building backlinks, the use of anchored text etc. I learn everything from these guys and I think a thank you post is needed. Below are the people who not only knows how to make money online, but are people who are helpful and have given me either direct advice or good lessons through their posts. In no particular order, here they are:Gizz: The one who started me on this path. Ignore this 'ugly' blog at your peril. The articles he puts out and the free advices he gives are nuggets of wisdom that you can't get anywhere. He single handedly disapproves everything about making money online. It is not about pretty blogs, continuously...

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SEO tips: select keywords for your blogs

In my last SEO tips, I have mentioned about the benefit of search traffic over social traffic. Basically, search traffic is more desirable because it (i) is more stable, (ii) increases over time and (iii) requires less efforts to maintain. However, many of you have blogs that are more social than search traffic driven. How do you turn the former into the later? It all starts with keyword research. I am going to talk about how to select good keywords for your blogs and using them to optimise your blogs so that they can benefit from some search traffic.Before moving on, I want to say that this blog is a living example of how to turn a blog that...

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SEO tips: search traffic vs social traffic

The SEO tip for today will on why you want search traffic, rather than social traffic. I have intentionally stop posting to see what happens to this site, which is primarily based on social traffic. I used to get traffic from ycombinator, facebook, twitter, commenting etc. All these are social traffic. The diagram below shows the results.From a daily visitorship of 100 readers, my blog went to almost zero when I stopped posting. That is the greatest disadvantage of social traffic. You need to post everyday just to keep the traffic coming.Some of you might notice the spike I had experienced towards the past few days. This is because of the new...

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SEO tips: anchored backlinks

There is a universal SEO tip for those who really understand what search engine optimisation is all about: it all about anchored backlinks. On-site optimization like including your keyword in your header, blog title, url etc accounts for maybe less than 20% of your ranking in Google's front page. The rest is dependent on anchored backlinks. That is the SEO tip.What are anchored backlinks? They are like normal backlinks, but anchored with your keywords, like this:baseball strength trainingNotice how the keywords are used in the links and how it is related to the niche of strength training? That is a anchored backlink.We all know that links are what drive Google's pagerank. The more links you have, the higher you will get in the Google's result page. You don't need SEO tips to know about this....

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SEO tips: "for beginner" keywords

The SEO tip I like a lot is choosing the keywords which contains "for beginners". Why is that important? Well, it is simple: beginners are ad clickers. That is the SEO tip.When you are a beginner, you are open to learning things. Your mind is in state of search for information. I was in this state when I first began my niche blogging. I was always looking out to what SEO tips to learn. In fact, I often googled for these terms:best seo tipstop seo tips etcWhen I was in this state, anything I saw that was evenly remotely interesting, even if it is an ad, I would click it to find out more. That is how beginners are. This is why they make a great niche to target for ads.However, I am not saying we should just focus on beginners only. In fact, the next SEO tip is this: use the "for beginners"...

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The new trick worked

My friends, the trick I pulled in my previous posts work. In less than 15 mins, my brand new blog has been indexed:http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=site%3Amodularoffices.blogspot.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-aThis just shows that knowing what works in terms of making money online is really important. Without this knowledge, you can on and on without truly achieving anything.It will be damm interesting when I starting to apply these techniques to real startups. I would have solved the most difficult problem facing most of them: getting traffic.I don't know whether any of this sounds interesting to you. If it is, just drop a comment. If not, I will just keep my mouth shut.Take Ca...

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A new trick to get index fast

My plan of building a niche blog empire is going smoothly. Some of them have started making money, which is much earlier than I thought. Most of them are ranking well. My biggest gain from this exercise is learning all the wonderful SEO tricks that I never know.One of the tricks I am trying now to get your site index fast by using long keywords that has no results. Example of such a keyword is: ews modular office partitions There are currently no exact google result for this keyword so it is likely to be indexed fast since Google is always looking for information it doesn't have. Through this link I have embedded above, Google can trace from this blog to this site I have just created 5 minutes ago and indexed it. I will be rank #1 since there is no other competing terms.What is the point,...

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Tools and tips for keyword research

I have been relatively quiet these part weeks, focusing on building my niche blogs and learning all the SEO tricks I can find. I am quite surprise at some of the creative ways and useful tools that one can use in their SEO. So, rather than keeping it to myself, I thought of sharing it here in case you are interested in such things.Before moving to the tools and tips, I want to put on record saying my first niche blog is a complete failure. If you google for fish oil effects, you can see that one of my niche site for this keyword (fish oil effects) is on page one of Google. That might seem like something to celebrate, given my short stink at SEO but closer examinations reveal otherwise.At first, it seems strange to me that after following the SEO techniques and achieving what I set out to do,...

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How much traffic does each rank on Google's top page gives you?

I always wanted to know how much traffic does Google gives you if you are ranked on the first page on a certain keyword. While I couldn't find the exact percentage, I pull together information from different sites to derive a rough percentage.The first piece of crucial information is what percentage of traffic does the top link on a Google page gives you. From different online marketers, the general assumption is that around 40-50% of the monthly traffic will click on the first link.The second thing to know is the percentage differences between different rankings on the same top page. This article gives us exactly that information. It is found,...

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3 learning points from online marketing

As I continue to explore the 'underbelly' of the Internet, looking at both real and scam-like affiliate programmes, I realise these learning points are interesting (to me at least) and I want to share them here.Demand drivenOne of the traits of a great online marketer is a total focus on demand. When they talk about generating niche ideas or new affiliate products, they will scan and research on demand indicators like Amazon Best Seller, Ebay Pulse, Google Keywords and Trends, Yahoo Buzz etc. They want to create something that solves someone's pain. Compared that to most geeky 2.0 launches that are more on the cool factor, rather than genuinely solving the market's pain points.The downside of such demand driven focus is of course foregoing the ability to create Twitter like success. Using...

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SEO tips to select good keywords

SEO tips for selecting keywords is the topic for today's post. One of the starting points of any online marketing efforts is selecting good keywords. My venture into niche blogs is no different. As I tried different methodologies for selecting good keywords, I developed 4 SEO tips for doing so.SEO tip 1: Pick keywords with desperate demandGoogle Keyword Tools allow you to see monthly search volume for any keyword which is a good proxy for demand. I have learned however that high demand is not sufficient. The SEO tip is to pick what I called high desperate demand. This refers to people who needs a solution now, rather than just browsing for information....

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SEO Tips to create profitable niche blogs

I am going to talk about using SEO tips to build niche blogs. Each of these element has much more meat to it, which i will go into for my future posts on SEO tips. Now, I want to simply sketch out what I am doing to give you guys a broad picture first.SEO tip 1: Keyword researchOne of the most element in using SEO tips for niche blogs is in picking out a niche. Rather than thinking of random ideas, there is actually a well defined methodology using keyword analysis. To understand this, you can imagine the Web as a constant flow of information. People are always looking for something on the Web. These keywords not only help you identify what are people looking for, but also serve as funnels to channel these flows to you. A good keyword research is like building a blueprint for a good funnel...

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Starting from basic

I have been very quiet for the past week as I am embarking on something new. For the past 2 years, I have been talking about abstract concepts and new ideas that need lots of experiments to get right. After 2 such years, I feel that I am getting out of touch with what is real. It is easy to sit here and blog about wonderful opportunities but another thing to realise them. With that in mind, I decide to go back to basic.The web has its own set of business rules and engagement. I want to do something simple that lets me relearn these rules, both in theory and in execution. I don't want to spend time developing technology or products. I want to go right into business. That is why I decided to go into niche marketing.There is nothing breakthrough about this. It is simply discovering unique niches...

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Can we use the GasBuddy model to create efficient economies for other industries?

I just finished reading "Content Nation" and it is a nice book that summarises a lot of what we know. I particularly like the rules that encapsulates the spirit of what each section is about. One such rule states that:Empowering anyone to understand supply and demand builds efficient economies that benefit the most peopleThis is a thoughtful statement and the example given is GasBuddy, which is a website that enables users to learn about gas prices in US and Canada. It is a simple and powerful illustration of the kind of information that reveals demand and supply. Umair Haque talks about creating more markets. Revealing demand and supply is the...

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The next generation of edge feeders

Fred Wilson talked about edge feeders in 2005:Flickr is an edge feeder and the best one I know of. I could take my photos and simply post them to my blog. But I don't do that. I put them on Flickr and then from Flickr, I post them to my blog. Flickr makes that dead simple. But they also give me a badge to show aggregated photos. And they let me post other's photos to my blog. They are the photo feeder of the blog world.Blip.tv, vimeo, and youtube are the video feeders. I could post a video directly to my blog, but I don't. I post it to vimeo, youtube, or blip.tv, and then from there I post it to my blog. These services are rolling out lots of video specific blog integration techniques that will make it even easier to be a video content creator living on the edge.Delicious is a link...

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Simple idea: A personalised techmeme based on blogrolls

As an fund administrator, I need to keep up with the latest developments in the industries that I am responsible for. Hence, I always on the lookout for good blogs to follow as well as new ways to keep myself updated. Recently, because of helping a team in the ebook sector, I have been following on the developments in the book publishing sector. Yesterday, I stumbled upon a book publicity blog that has these relevant links on its blogroll. Currently, I need to read those links, one at a time, to assess whether I should follow them. There are a host of problems with this approach. Firstly, it is too time consuming. Imagine I have to repeat...

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The context for real time search

Vertical search used to be a hot topic in 2006-07, with search being applied to horizontal industries like travel, B2B (see this article for a big list of such search engines), products, health, people etc. Read this 2006 readwriteweb article for a good refresher. In 2009, many of these vertical search sites are still around and are in fact, prospering.Now, with real time expanding the perimeters of search, will we see similar verticals being pop up? That was the question I kept asking myself after talking to a couple of entrepreneurs who want to build alternatives to Twitter search. They argued that real time search shouldn't be confine to what Twitter provides. There is room for different forms of search that build on real time conversations.This sounds reasonable to me and is worth supporting...

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Quick riches versus long term value

Creating real value for the long term has been the basis for the ideas I have talked about in this blog. This is of course large influenced by the likes of Umair Haque, Taylor Davidson etc. However, this post by one of our incubators has let me wondering about the merits of such thinking:take a winning formula and adopt it to a new platform. Almost seems like a cookie cutter formula for success, provided you can execute well.The key for me is the definition of success. If your business is solely in it for the purpose of making money, then I think what Kenneth is saying makes sense. Don't be too fanciful. Take something proven, adapt it for the new platform or markets, and launch it well. Scott Rafer (during his unconfernce speech in Singapore) mentions similar things as well. Don't try to...

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Thanks for all your comments

I am finally back home after a wonderful break. Lots of new perspectives and stuff to share. Greece is really a beautiful country. I intend to upload some of my photos here once I got them sorted.I wanted to return back to blogging again but a bad news greeted my arrival yesterday. My wife's grandma just passed away yesterday morning so I had to rush back to Malaysia to settle the funeral arrangement. It wasn't a pleasant return but it did get me thinking about lots of stuff.Before I end, just wanted to thank everyone for their comments on my last post. Wasn't really expecting so many responses but they made all the difference in the wor...

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Taking a break from blogging and from everyday life

In recent weeks, I have found blogging to be quite tiring. I have not any new thoughts or inspirations to share and forcing myself to write for writing sake is quite painful. I have decided to take a 2 weeks break from blogging and spend them in the lovely country of Greece to reflect upon the future direction of this blog.This is reflective of what I am experiencing from my everyday life as well. I felt that I have hit the limit of what I can learn and contribute in my current job. Maybe it is time to move on. Time to seek new learning experiences and to 'unlearn' what I have been thinking upon.This blog hasn't got many readers but for those who bother to check it out regularly, I thank you for your attention. Your attention and your comments are what made blogging worth it. If you have ideas...

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6 examples of mobile applications to enhance reality

One of the exciting things about mobile is its ability to enhance our understanding of the physical world by drawing in information from the online space. We are now just beginning to explore the possibilities but the early signs are already encouraging. Here are some of these interesting applications: Sky MapEkinWikiTude Oedo YokdiTotal ImmersionInvizimals Sky MapA new program called Sky Map uses not only GPS signals to tell users what stars and planets are visible in the sky at their location, but actually shows what celestial objects the phone is pointed at. Because it doesn't need to see anything, the program works if you point your phone...

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Thoughts on hacking finance (continued)

There is just such a HUGE opportunity to reinvent this stale, corrupt, end of empire business we call finance.In response to the NYtimes article on the crooked behaviors of financial planners, Sean Park made this wonderful comment. He should know since he has been at the forefront of the financial sector for many years.In the traditional of this blog, let me continue on my ideas of how to hack finance. If you have further ideas to add on, please leave them in the comments section. We all need better discussions and ideas on how to reinvent this industry.Covestor for financial planningFinancial planning really isn't all that hard. We can make it easier through online tools. More importantly, if we allow people to start sharing their financial plans, there might be less need for the so call...

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Types of entrepreneurs I have met

Inspired by this story about how a cashier has written a book on her perspectives of the shoppers she serves, I decided to tell my perspective of the type of entrepreneurs I have met. As part of my job, I have met hundreds of entrepreneurs in Singapore and they are a mixed bunch. I thought it would be interesting to pick out a few categories and talk about them.The Know-It-AllHands down, the most irritating of the bunch. They assumed they know everything, even in the face of strong evidence. What are their characteristics? They counter every point you made, they interupt you even before you finish, their arguments are illogical, they are too absorbed in their views etc. When I encounter such people, I count that day as an unlucky one. Fortunately, they are not many of them around.The CluelessThese...

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Super distribution may be upon us

The concept of distribution has been around. Umair Haque termed it as viral revenue chains in 2005 and deem it as one of the important models for content distribution:viral revenue streams are almost a foregone conclusion, because they are a dominant solution for the public goods problems the radically decentralized and open economics of the www creates. They're, pretty simply, the most rational and efficient solution to what people think is a messy problem - dealing with digital property rights.This was echoed by Fred Wilson in 2007 when he wrote about how superdistribution will become a new model for content and revenue distribution:Superdistribution...

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