Welcome to aaron chua make money blog

Hi, welcome to my blog. In this part of my world, I talked about how to achieve financial freedom by learning how to make money online through creating sites and earning from them.

Below are some current and past make money projects that details my learning journey.

My current experiment in making 50 amazon site niches. If you have not been following this challenge, best place to start is this resource page for the amazon challenge, that lists all the articles that I have written so far.

My experiment in making 1000 a month through adsense in 9 months.

If you came here looking for low cost startup ideas, here are 140 startup ideas that you can browse through.


Wednesday, 24 February 2010

Buying keywords for beginners

I have not updated this blog because I am been working hard at building my niche blogs and making money. It has been a very rewarding experience to apply all the SEO tips that I have learned to make a real living. However, this is not instant wealth. Don't expect to create one blog and expect to quit your job. It wouldn't happen that way. Making money online using niche blogs is a long process. Give yourself a year and tw0(plus constant hard work) and you will have a passive income stream that can then allow you to quit your job and do what you really.

A year or two of hardwork is not actually that long. Most of us have worked for 5 years or more and we are still stuck in the same 9-5 working conditions. However, we don't complain about working for 5 years. Relative to that, 1-2 years is nothing because the rewards at the end of the day is so much richer. My plan is to have enough passive income to travel the world for almost everyday of my life. Because I can work anywhere with my niche blogs, I can practically work from any country. Even if I don't work at all, it will be ok because I have the passive income coming in. That is my end goal and that is why I am motivated to do this.

When you first start out as I have, the beginning is always the most difficult. The income you get is so small that you will think whether this is worth it. My first month adsense earning is only $15. Well, that wouldn't get anybody excited and this is why most people will fail. They can't see the long term potential of that USD$15. My second month is around USD$50. Again, not exciting but the growth is there. I break theUSD $100 mark in my third month and things got really interesting. I am now at the 6th month and I am on track to break the USD$1000 a month mark. That is my aim for this year and to break the USD$5000 a month by next year. Based on my current progress, this is certainty doable if you put enough hard work into it.

Making money using adsense is not rocket science. You just need to

(i) select good keywords which can produce profits,
(ii) create keyword relevant content on free platforms such as Blogspot, Blogetery, Blogpico or your own self hosted blogs, and
(iii) the most important part, getting anchored backlinks to your site using a variety of varied phases relating to your keywords.

If you do the above, your site will be ranked on the first page of Google and you will received targeted traffic that will click on your adsense because they are relevant to the searcher. Once that happens, you make money.

However, getting the anchored backlinks is the most difficult because as a beginner, we don't have a lot of resources to place our links. Therefore, we need to think of out the box and figure out niches that our site can get to the top page without that many backlinks. To do that, I have 2 tips for you.

The first is to buy domains containing the exact keyword phase. Domains carry quite a bit of SEO juice so they can rank out of the box if the competition is not strong. If you select keywords that are typically three letter long and the result pages in Google showing 100,000 or less, the chances of that domain ranking for its keyword is very high. This is my current strategy and I am using it to create 100 micro sites. I called this my microsite challenge and I intend to finish it by end of May. With 100 microsites making roughly $10-$40 per month, you are looking at USD$1000-USD$4000 a month, a full time income right there.

I will detailing this challenge in my future posts. So far, the learnings have been great from creating these sites and I can't wait to share them here.

The second tip is to look for keywords that have no authority sites for them. What are authority sites? These are sites that Google trust and you will find that there will be 1-2 for these for any 2 word common keywords. Take window blinds for example. There will be ecommerce store selling blinds that have around since 2000 and these site, due to the age, will have a lot of trust in Google's eyes. Trying to outrank them is possible if they don't have a lot of anchored backlinks but it will take a while and most beginners don't have patience or confidence for this.

The tip is then is to look for new keywords that have no authority sites. Where to find them? Look for trends and events. One good example is movies. There are always new movies so the title of the movies are new keywords that have no authority sites. A personal example is New Moon. This is the title for the second saga for the popular Twilight series. This word is new and there were no authority for it. I created a blog around a merchandise item around New Moon and got ranked on the first page within 3 weeks with only 3 backlinks. This 2 post blog made me a few hundred dollars a month during Nov and Dec.

While the earnings have tailored off, it still gets a constant traffic. Even if the earnings stopped, so wait., I have earned the money and I now have a blog ranking on page one of Google for its keyword that I can use for backlinking.

So, look for trends and spot keywords because they are easy to rank for beginners. However, do try to pick out buying keywords. Going back to the Twilight example. Ranking for something New Moon trailer might get you lots of traffic but the clicks will have low paying ads because the searchers do not really want to buy anything. When going back such niches, think of the product side. What kind of merchandise will fans of the movies looking for. These product related keywords are definitely buying keywords and will tend to have more clicks and higher paying ads.

If we continue the movie example, I will then look for what will be the hottest say, kids animation movies for 2010. I will do a little research to see which one of these titles have an existing fan base and will then select my keywords accordingly. For kids animation, things like coloring book, songtrack, toys, action figures etc are good buying keywords that you can tag below the name of the movie like this example: diary of a wimpy kid coloring book, or how to train your dragon toys.

Of course, besides movies, there are other types of niches that has new keywords with no authority. Look out for new product launches. Products can be in home applicanes like the new bladeless electric fan or they can be services like new type of cosmestic surgery. All these type of niches are easy to rank for. Of course, some will turn out to be duds but if you build on free blogspots, where is the cost?

I hope this post on selecting buying keywords for beginners has been useful.

Monday, 21 December 2009

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 come in after one week. I slapped on Adsense after 2 weeks and in the month of November, this is my income for this new blog.













Earning around $5 is no big deal. What I did then was to look at the keywords that were bringing me traffic. I then create a post that targets each of the long tail keyword and build a couple of backlinks to each post. After a month, these long tail keywords begin to rank and my traffic increase. As a result, my income for December for this blog increase as well.














The best thing about this niche is the CTR. I got around 20% , meaning out of every 10 visitors, 2 would click on an ad. The price of the ad is also high, ranging from 80 cents to over a dollar. I will definitely break the $15 a month while my main keywords is not even on page one on Google yet. I can imagine that if my main keyword goes on to page one, my income for this blog will across a hundred bucks a month. Not bad for a free hosted blog.

$15 a month of course is not something to brag about. However imagine if I multiple this blog by 100 or 200. That would bring me about $1500 to $3000 per month of passive income. That, my friend, is what making money online is all about. You pick niches that you can rank given your current resources and you duplicate your success by 100 or 200 blogs.

So, what kind of keywords are good for beginners? This is my general guideline. I pick buying keywords. These keywords contain buying intentions such as affordable, cheap, inexpensive. They signal a strong buying intend from the searcher. Next, I choose ncihes that don't have much competition. I pick niches that have less than 100,000 competing sites. I also look out for niches that have lots of ezine articles or other article directories in the top 10 results. This means you can easily take the page one position with a few anchored backlinks.

When I say anchored backlinks, I doesn't mean links from commenting or bookmarking. I mean links that are found within the content of an relevant article. This is the best form of backlinks and is the hardest to get. As a beginner, if you pick a low competition keyword, you can do the following:

- set up a few hosted blogs on blogger, wordpress, typepad, squidoo that are long tails of your your niche. Make sure they are indexed and then point a link back to your main site
- submit a few articles to high PR article directories such as Ezine, Info barrel, Hub pages etc again point a few links back to your site.

Make sure you vary your anchor text. For example, if you are trying to rank for the keyword: used electric wheelchairs, you should embed the following as your long tail keyword:
- where to buy used electric wheelchair
- used electric wheelchair under $500
- acorn used electric wheelstair

These will ensure that your long tails will start to rank and you will see long tail traffic coming in. From my experience, it is almost impossible to rank for your main keyword. It is the long tail keywords that will bring in traffic first. Also, ranking well for your long tails will help your main keywords to rank if your long tail contains your main keyword.

In summary, to make money online, you need to pick buying keywords for niches that have low competition. Then, source for some anchored backlinks using means that any beginner can get. Within a few weeks, you can start to see income coming in.

This is all I have for how to select good keywords for niche blogs.

Friday, 13 November 2009

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 cannot be found using tools.

For a more detail and interested take on how this works, I refer you to the master of adsense, Griz, with this post on his making money blog. As an experiment, I will be post a long article here about grilling and see if I can pick out any keywords. I will let you know the results 2 weeks from now.

*****

This is part one of how to grill for beginners. It is basically a step by step guide on how to grill some of my favourite food, especially grilled fish. If you are just learning how to grill, this is a good place to start.

For beginner, I suggest using an electric outdoor grills rather than setting out your own charcoal based grill. The latter requires some skills in getting up a fire, which is not easy and is difficult to set right. In a charcoal grill, if your fire is not right, your food will be cooked on the outside and still raw in the inside. This is what we want to avoid. Hence, for a beginner, I suggest using an electric grill to hone your grilling skills first before venturing out to learn how to set up a fire.

How to grill asparagus
I love eating asparagus since young and the best way to eat them is to grill them! Asparagus have a naturally crunchy taste and if you grilled it correctly, you get a slight burnt aftertaste which adds to its tastiness. So, if you want to learn how to grill asparagus, read on to find out more:

Well, you need to buy the materials first and here I will show you how to select the best asparagus for grilling. Like all vegetables, go for fresh ones if you can. Look for bright green, firm spears with closed tips. Generally, asparagus comes in either thick or thin form. The latter is much more easier to grill so this is what I will be recommending you to buy.

Once you have your asparagus, we need to prepare them for the grill. First you need to wash them thoroughly just like for any other vegetables. Once that is done, we need to cut off about ¼ to ½ inch off the bottom of the spears. That is all we need to do if you follow my advice and bought the thin asparagus. If you have bought the thicker one instead, you need to further slice them the outer skin using some form of peeler. The final step of the preparation is to season it with the right dose of favourings. What you need to do is just apply some olive oil, followed by a sprinkle of sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Then you need to roll the spears around to even out the seasonings so they get evenly coated with the oil.

Now we can do the proper grilling. Take note that we don't need a lot of grilling time with asparagus. So, this can either be the first item to get everyone started or should be the last where most of the meat has been grilled. The average time you need to cook the asparagus is about 5 to 8 minutes. When grilling, remember to roll the asparagus around to achieve the evenness.

How to grill artichokes
Artichokes are a type of plants that is only available in the market during late spring and early summer. There are many ways to cook them but grilling is definitely one of best ways in my personal opinion. Artichokes are not too tough to work but you need to put in some preparation work. Here are a simple guide for you to follow:

You need to first prepare the artichokes after buying them from the market. Trim the leaves from the plant but cut the top as well as all the pointed leaves off. This will make handling the plant much easier. Then, you need to clean the artichokes. Simply cut them in half and remove the hairy part of the artichokes. If you want to preserve the colour of the plant, just apply lemon juice over its surface. Once that is done, the final preparation step is to drop the cleaned artichokes in boiling salted water so that they become nice and soft for the grills. Timing wise, soak the artichokes in the boiling water for about 7-10 minutes to achieve the desired results.

During the actual grilling, you need only about 1o minutes. Remember to roll them once every minute to achieve that balanced grill. You can also apply some lemon during this if you like the taste. Once done, simply serve with either butter or mustard.

How to drill boneless chicken meat
Chicken breast meat needs some efforts for it to taste well. Most of the time, I am sure you have chieck breast meat that is dry and tough. With some proper tips, you can actually grill a juicy and delicious breast meat. Here is how to do it.

The first step is to make sure you have plenty of time to defrost the chicken if you are buying fresh ones. If your chicken meat is not defrosted properly, that is already a step towards eating a tough chicken meat. The average length of time needed is around 45 mins to an hours, depending on the size of the chicken.

Once the meat is defrosted, you need to marinate it to achieve that great favor. We are going to create little slits in the chicken breast meant so that whatever we used as marinade can slip through the chicken and adds to its favor. You can accomplish this via cutting thin crosswise slits in the chicken breast of the entire length of the chicken.

How to grill catfish
Catfish is a health food. It contains high protein and many minerals and vitamins. Catfish get their name because the barbels, or whiskers, resemble cat whiskers. Grill catfish taste great. They don't lose their original favour and if you do the grilling right, it will retain the moisture as well.

When cooking any fish or meat in general, one good method is to wrap a tin foil around the fish and use that as a way to cook the fish. In this way, the meat will not stick to the grate and the tin foil also helps to lock in the favour. Before the actual grilling, you will want to marinate the fish first to boast its favour. Simply run the catfish with some seasoning. Personally, I used a bit of salt as well as some curry spices I bought from Chinatown. You will be creative in your seasoning. Just choose whatever you like and experiment.

When doing the actual grilling, just put the foil on the grilling set and set it cooked for about 8-10 minutes. You should constantly rotate the tin foil so that the fish will be cooked evenly. You might also consider oiling the tin foil when grilling to avoid it sticking onto the grates.

How to grill Tilapia
You might not heard of this fish before but it sure is delicious. Tilapia is a mild-flavored, fresh water fish. The meat is very tender and has a delicate flavor to it. Tilapia is great for grilling because it is thinner than other fish like tuna but it would nto fall apart on the grill plate, which is the important thing. This fish has a tender favour and goes well with other things. This means you can exercise some creativity to try out different ways to grilling Tilapia.

When grilling, you have the choice of using the tin foil method outlined above or you can grill the fish directly on the plate. To avoid any sticking, you need to grease the grill with a thin layer of oil. If you health conscious, choose either vegetable or corn oil. Once that is done, you can prepare the grill by firing it out to 300 degrees. If you like your fish to be darken and have a burnt taste, you can heat the grill up to 400 degrees.

One last step before grilling is to season the Tilapia. I recommend light seasoning like salt and pepper. Alternatively, you can use some lemon pepper or cayenne. My suggestion is to keep the seasoning to one type so that you can still taste the favour of the fish.

Finally, you can throw the fish onto the grill. The average time it needs to cook is about eight to ten minutes, depending on the strength of the flames. Usually, I placed the fish not in direct contact with the flame to avoid overcooking the skin. Instead, I let it sit just outside the flame so that it is cooked evenly.

How to grill salmon fillets
Salmon and salmon fillets are a common grilling item. They are easy to prepare and taste great. Salmon can be found in many supermarkets including Walmart so buying them would not be an issue at all.

You need to wash the salmon fillets, remove their mositure and seasoned them. In terms of seasoning, again I recommend something light such as pepper or salt. Then, wrapped the fish in a tin foil and let is marginate for a couple of hours. Salmon has thick meat so you need more time to let the favour of the seasoning slip through.

When it is time for the grilling, you need to first heat up the grills. The typical temperature you should is about 300 to 325 degrees. Once that is done, need to oil the tin foil to prevent the fish from sticking to the grill. You should coat the other side with some oil before turning.

When you are grilling the salmon fillet, you need to constantly turn over the salmon after three to five minutes. The thicker the fillet, the longer you need to cook. Once cooked on both sides, get ready to serve.

How to grill ribs
Ribs , along with steaks, are one of the most popular grilling item. The challenge in grilling ribs is to get the smoked taste, which can be obtained through a process of slow and careful grilling. Unlike fish, grilling ribs takes some practice before you get it right so don't be disappointed if your first bbq rib doesn't taste as good as you want it to be.

In terms of choosing the type of ribs, I typically go for baby spare ribs because the meat is more tender and juicer. They are easier to grill.After buying the ribs, you need to do some preparation work to make the ribs taste good. The first step is to remove the membrane from the rack because they will taste tough if you leave them there. Simply use a blunt knife and slip it under the membrane along the end bone. You need to first loosen the membrane with some slow knife movement before being able to cut if off in one single slice.

Next, you need to favoured the ribs. For this, I recommend buying some ribs rub to add more taste. You should prepare teh surface of the ribs so that after the bbq, it turns into a crispy light crust that taste great with the meat. When applying the ribs rub, take care to spread it out evenly, from the side to the front and the back. This will give it an even taste.

Now, onto the real grilling. This will be a bit complicated. What you will need is to first control your grill's temperature at around 225 degrees. In terms of cooking time, you need about 4 hours in total. During these two hours, you need to constantly rotate the ribs as they cook to keep the heat even. My advice is to continue flipping and switching them every 1 1/2 hours. The key here is slow and steady. Very often, people want fast results and cook their ribs in high temperature. Usually, the end result is not pleasant. The meat will typically be hard and the taste is flat.

One final note. As you are about to finish the grilling, you need to apply some bbq sauce to seal in the favour. Start by putting a layer on the ribs and turn the over and coat the other side. Let is seat for about 5 minutes and then repeat. Do this for about five times should give you a nice, juicer ribs at the end of 4 hours.

In my next post, I will talk about how to grill steak, tuna, corn and other unique food that you might not have heard of. Hope you like this part one on how to grill for beginners.

Sunday, 4 October 2009

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 this method solely.

Here is the one other method that I used. I will talk about the rest in future posts.

Letting Google tell you how to select keywords for your blog.

First, you need to select a keyword that has tons of traffic. Go to google keyword tool and just type in your keyword. Under the 'match type' category, go for 'broad'. This will tell you the total search volume that contains your keyword. Basically it is a sumed total of all phases that people search for that has the word iphone. People can type in iphone accessories, iphone jailbreak, iphone api, iphone games, etc. It doesn't really matter. Google will sum it all up and tell you the total if you used the 'board' category. For this, you are going for keywords with high search volume, preferably beyond a million.

Next, change your 'match type' settings to 'exact'. This will then give you the search volume for for that exact keyword. For example, if you use the 'exact' option on the keyword 'iphone', the search volume result that the tool gives you is only for searches that use the exact word 'iphone' and not other things like 'iphone API' etc. The nice thing about the Google keyword tool is that it will also give the exact search volume for the related keywords. Say, you type in iPhone into the Google keyword tool and choose the exact option. The result will not only show you the exact search volume for iPhone but also for related keyword like 'iPhone games', ' iPhone APIs', 'How to jailbreak iPhone' etc. What you need to do next is then sum up the exact search volume for your main keyword and all the related keywords that the tool is showing you. You can do this by importing the result page into an excel sheet. There is option at the end of the result page where you will see an import function.

So, what you have now are 2 things: (i) the broad search volume for your main keyword and (ii) the exact search volume for your main as well as related keywords. If there is a big difference between the 2, then it means there might be keywords which the tool is not giving you but has significant search volume. For example, let's say the broad search volume for iPhone is 20 million but the sum of all the exact search is only 18 million. That means there is about 2 million searches being done for iphone related keywords that the tool is not telling you. Among these, there might be gems that are bring in 10,000 or 20,000 unique searches per month. What you need to do is to fish them out. How?

This is can be accomplished by writing super long articles. They should be at least 4000-10,000 words. For example, in the iPhone example, I would write a long articles about iPhone that rambles about everything I could think of about the device. It can be iphone batteries, how to maintain iphone, how to clean iphone earplugs, where to buy iphone accessories, etc. The important thing is to keep it long and put in as many related iPhone keywords within the post as you can. I don't mean keyword stuffing until it becomes unreadable but do it in such a way that it is natural. In this article, I have already included so many iPhone related keywords, does it feel keyword stuffed to you?

Then you publish the blog post and wait for a few days (I assumed your site is already indexed). There should be long tail traffic that Google will start sending you. Keep an eye out for these long tail keywords because they will point you to those gem keyword that I talk about. This is how I discovered keywords. Typically these keywords will not have much competition because you cannot find them appearing in Google keyword tool when you do a broad category search like iPhone.

Once I have these keywords then the fun begins. I first decide on my monetisation methods to beginning making online income. Typically, I like Adsense but some keywords doesn't have advertisers (because the Google keyword tool doesn't show these advertisers what to bid for as well LOL). Then, I will look for affiliate products. If it is information based, you can try Clickbank where there are tons of information products (You can also create your own information product btw if it is not available in the market). If it is physical, then Amazon will be my first store. I then build my income generating site according to the type of monetisation method I used.

In summary, that is how I select keywords to make online income.

Saturday, 26 September 2009

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 posting, getting social traffic. It is all about finding the right keywords, writing relevant content and getting relevant backlinks. Here is a BIG thank you to his make money blog.

Working on the Go: Michael has been providing personal advices to me on how to write relevant content that targets keywords and how to take things slow and easy. He is also just starting out but is way more successful than what I have achieved in either money making or SEO. I wish him success in his working on the go venture.

Make money online with SEO: Ben has to be the most hardworking man in this business. He creates niches blogs as fast as a hot knife cuts through butter. His money making and SEO posts are relevant and provide a step by step guide for beginners. As a newcomer, I am not only learning his techniques but his work ethic as well. If you don't believe hard work can pay off in this online business, check out his make money with SEO blog. You will be amazed. (PS: Check out the forum there. The people there are all very helpful folks that I have greatly benefit from).

If you want to learn how to make money online and leave your day job, there are no better places than the site mentioned above. As a tip, don't just read what they say, watch what they do. I know I did and that is how I learning all the different SEO tips.

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

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 used to get social traffic into one that has search traffic. Below is the traffic chart for the past 2 weeks.







Notice how with no posting, the traffic doesn't drop to zero? All these traffic came from search engines and in particular from longtail keywords that involves SEO, keyword research, how to index fast etc. All keywords that were missing before I started to SEO this blog. I haven't seen massive traffic because I didn't build any backlinks for these keywords yet. Once I do, the traffic will be much higher and more consistent.

Now, how can your blog benefit from search traffic as well. As I said, it all starts with doing the right keyword research and selecting the right keyword. As an example, I am going to use one of my favourite blogs, unstructured thoughts by Taylor Davidson, to show how this can be done.

Now, Taylor is one of the most gifted bloggers I have seen. He writes beautifully and his articles are full of insights that can really benefit the readers. That is why he has a PageRank 3 blog, backed by 2,ooo backlinks. For those of you unfamilar with SEO, 2000 backlinks is a LOT of linkjuice and his blog should be ranking well for his keywords. Unfortunately that is not so. The reason is because he has not optimised his site for the keywords relevant to this site.

First of all, what should be the keywords Taylor should be using? Based on his homepage, my guess would be the following:

landscape photography
documentary photography
financial modeling
business consulting

If all his 2,000 backlinks contain these words, his site would gain keyword authority and be ranked on page one of Google's results. Unfortunately, Taylor didn't do so. Instead, most of this backlinks either contain his name or the name of his blog or the article titles, of which none are optimised for his keywords. This is because most people don't know how to use the right keywords to link and simply use the author's name, the blog title or the article title. That is why it is important for us to make it easy for them by using our keywords in these areas.

The URL is hard for us to change so I don't recommend changing it. The blog title however can be changed. If you look at my blog title, I have changed it from "Wild Illusions" to "SEO tips for niche blogs". Just by simply doing that, the big G immediately ranks me for the former and start sending me traffic that is relevant for this keyword. I strengthen that by using keywords in all my articles titles. In addition, if anybody is to link me using my blog title or article title, these links will now contain the right keywords and I will be gaining keyword authority.

For Taylor, I can't imagine him changing his blog title but simply modifying the article titles would give him incredible keyword authority. In addition, he can also asked his readers who have linked to him to use the right keywords. Doing both things can immediately send him more search traffic.

How much traffic would that be? I did a simple keyword research and below are the monthly search volume for his keywords:

landscape photography - 27100
documentary photography - 8100
financial modeling - 8100
business consulting - 49500

Add together, there is quite a bit of search traffic there. Not only that, these are targeted traffic so the probability of engaging Taylor to do a bit of work in these areas is much higher than people like me, who reaches his blog through social means.

So, to summarise this post, what you need to do for your blog to tap into search traffic is the following:
- Do some keyword research and figure out the keywords you want to use
- Change your blog title to include your keywords
- Change your article title to include your keywords
- Ask your read to give you the right type of links i.e. those containing your keywords, rather than your name.

That is all the SEO you need.

Saturday, 12 September 2009

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 posts I have created on SEO tips. That is when I started to SEO this blog. I begin to select the keywords I used very carefully (i.e SEO tips, keyword research, backlinks etc). All these are keywords that I am trying to rank for.

It has taken a couple of weeks but I think the big G has finally begin to recognise this shift and has begin ranking me for many of these new keywords. Here is a sample of the keywords that I am ranking for i.e. in the top page of Google. Just type these in to see if I am on the top page.

anchored keywords
percentage of traffic in top 3 of google pages
good keywords for seo
how to get new post indexed fast

These are the keywords that bought me traffic for the past few days even though I have not been posting. This is search traffic.

Finally, good to see that I am ranking for my blog's title as well. : )

seo for niche blogs

I have not been building backlinks so the ranking must come from the authority that this site has accrued over the years and the fact that I am doing on page SEO. However, if any of you wanted to help me rank higher, I will appreciate if you can linked to this blog using the following keywords, rather than my name : )

keyword
keyword research
SEO

Before I go, one last evidence to proof that search traffic is much more desirable than social traffic. The diagram below shows one of my niche blogs that I have not posted in months.






Even if no posting, the traffic is slowly but surely increasing. That is the power of search traffic. If you build enough backlinks, these backlinks will aged over time and give you more authority on the keyword you are trying to rank for. The older the site, the more search traffic you will get if you do your SEO right.

PS: I will not be showing my niche blogs in this site anymore. Some bastards have been flagging them and causing me headaches. My intention was to show how SEO can be done by examples but it is not worth the effort.