Posts Tagged ‘Content’

Make Money With 100 Blog Posts Final Stats and Recap

September 22nd, 2009  |  by Court  |  Published in Content  |  60 Comments

On July 27th, I started a very interesting experiment. I decided to find 100 keywords that weren’t super competitive, write blog posts about them on one of my blogs, and track the results. I believed that if I chose the right keywords, I could create a lot of extra income.

The experiment produced great results:

  • During the first week, the experiment produced $371.98.
  • During the second week, the experiment produced $678.62.
  • During the third week, the experiment produced $780.40.
  • During the last 9 days, the experiment produced $848.59.

That means that the grand total of the 30 days was $2,679.59:

Obviously I’m pretty happy about how well the experiment went. It goes to show that know which keywords to post about can go a long way.

Now that this experiment is said and done, I can offer some advice for people who are thinking about taking on a project like this. There are a few things that come to mind:

  • Spend enough time on the research phase. Choosing the right keywords is key. If you have keywords that are too difficult, it will be pretty difficult to get amazing results. If you have worthless keywords, they won’t produce any income, even if they produce traffic (You can use the Adwords Tool to look at the prices advertisers are buying traffic for).
  • Learn how to write well. I’m not saying that I’m a world class writer. I know that I’m not. However, I try hard to write posts that will give people the information that they are looking for. I can tell you that I get a lot of natural links because of that and it makes all the difference in the world. If you can learn how to write what people are looking for, you’ll be better off in the long run.
  • Consider keywords when you write. I would still focus on writing what people are looking for, but it would be completely stupid to not include your keyword(s) in your writing. I try not to think about keyword density and that stuff – I simply make sure that my keywords can be found within my blog posts.
  • Stretch yourself. Doing a lot of writing is difficult for anyone. However, volume is a key aspect of the game and the more content you have, the easier it is to get traffic.
  • Continue to develop your sites. There are a lot of people out there who jump from site to site to site and there are some fundamental problems with that. In order to really get a site to perform well you have to continue to develop it over time. As time passes it starts to work in your favor, as long as you continue to develop. People usually quit before they get that far but if you can get there, you can make some pretty crazy things happen.

The biggest lesson that I learned through this experiment is that volume matters. It isn’t the only thing that matters, but it matters. It seems that most of us don’t push ourselves as much as we should to accomplish more and sometimes it takes a challenge or an experiment like this to get us to actually perform.

Day 6 – Add Content

May 4th, 2009  |  by Court  |  Published in SEO  |  5 Comments

This step of the 30 Days To Better SEO isn’t ground breaking, in fact I’m guessing that you already know that this will help. The point here is that we don’t always do the things that we know will help, and I want all of us to get better today. If you want your site to rank better, making it bigger is a no brainer.

This exercise is simple. I want you to think about the keyword you’re trying to rank for. Try to get inside the mind of the person that’s searching for that keyword. What information do they actually want to find? Take the topic that you think they want to find and write a simple article that explains that topic in detail.

Add this article to your site, and link to it from the page you’re trying to get ranked. You can link from within the post itself (if it’s a post that you’re trying to get ranked), you can link from the sidebar, or you can link from anywhere else on the page.

The size of your site matters. Sure, sometimes you can get a one page site to rank for a particular keyword, but you could get a 5 page site to rank easier. Sometimes, for a harder keyword, you can get a 10 page site to rank. This would be easier with a 20 page site.

If you want to know how big Google thinks your site is, do a site search in Google, for example site:yoururlhere.com. Google will return the amount of pages they have for your site. Add to that number and you’ll have a more rankable site.

Day 2 – 6 Ways To Improve The Usefulness Of Your Web Pages

April 29th, 2009  |  by Court  |  Published in SEO  |  8 Comments

Do you want to be outstanding at search engine optimization? If you do, I want you to read the following statement. Please try to take it in because it might be the most important thing you ever learn about this business:

Don’t try to make a career out of making Google look stupid.

Google needs to return useful information to searchers to stay in business. The better they become at that, the more profitable they will be. Google will continue to get better and better at getting rid of the junk so if you want to continue to rank well long term, you will need to align yourself with Google. In other words, you’ll need to give searchers what they’re looking for.

Learning to make your web pages more useful will have a great effect on your search engine optimization, in a lot of different ways:

  • It protects you long-term from spam complaints
  • It creates natural links, in the short term and the long term
  • It creates a positive branding effect
  • It protects you from being penalized after visual inspections

If you’re competing against a web page that’s getting more natural links than you, it’s going to be tough to complete. You need to get it switched around so that you are getting the natural links.

Additionally, sooner or later, you will have a Google search engineer on your site, especially if you rank well. I want to help you to get ready for that day by showing you a few ways you can improve the usefulness of your web pages. I’m going to challenge you to implement at least one of them, as part of the 30 Days To Better SEO.

#1 – Provide A More Complete Resource On Your Subject

Take a look at the other sites that currently rank in the top 10 of Google for your keyword. Are they providing information that you aren’t? If so, I would highly recommend improving the quality of information you’re providing. This might be as simple as adding a few additional sentences or paragraphs to your informational article.

If you’re selling a product on your web page, you can provide user reviews, or a video of the product being used.

If you’re selling your own product, you may have to improve your product to be the most useful.

#2 – Add Links To Relevant Content Within Your Site

There are tons of cases where a user could benefit from being pushed to another page of your site. Let’s say for example purposes that a user came to my site searching for ’search engine optimization’. It would be very useful to that user to find what I have about ‘link building’, ‘keyword research’, and many other topics. That means that I can add to the usefulness of my web page by creating links that a searcher might find helpful.

#3 – Add The Ability To Leave Comments

Many of you have blogs, some of you do not. Allowing users to comment can really add to the usefulness of a webpage. Not only will you get free content for your page, you will also get insight into what the searcher was originally looking for. This can help you to make the resource more complete (#1). You will not only get questions in your comments, you will also get answers. In some cases this aspect can be covered by adding a forum to your site.

#4 – Add Images To Your Web Page

Images can often really add to the presentation. No, you don’t need to use images on every web page you create. However, you may be able to add to the usefulness of a web page if you do. In some cases, graphs or charts may make your page more useful.

#5 – Apply Formatting

No one wants to read a huge block of text. You may have the greatest resource in the history of mankind (for your keyword), but if it looks terrible, people will think it’s terrible. Adding some bullets, headings, and some bolded text might change the feel significantly.

#6 – Add Video

I’ve found that explaning things with video or with a screen cast is about 100 times easier for me than typing it out. Videos also take less time for me to make than writing posts does. I wouldn’t recommend going solely with video on a web page but it can really add to the presentation if you include a video or screencast on your web page.

It’s All Relative Folks

Google’s job is to list the best resource first. Sometimes the best resource on a given keyword isn’t that great. Sometimes it’s amazing. Take a look at your competition and provide people with something better than is currently being provided. This might take a lot of work if your competition is solid and it might be a piece of cake if your competition is weak.

Challenge

Make your web page a little better today. Apply at least one of these techniques, or apply all of them.

« Older Entries