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How to Get People to Find Your Blog or Etsy Shop in Google

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get found in google
The basic idea of keyword research is that you want to find what people are searching for and write about that.

I should state right up front that I will be including my affiliate link to my favorite keyword tool out there, Long Tail Pro in this post. While it is no extra cost to you, I get a little kickback (and appreciate it very much) if you use the links in this post.

Why do keyword research?
Keyword research is important because it can help you reach a larger audience. Keyword research is especially important for bloggers who do not have a huge following yet. Even without regular readers, you can still get great traffic numbers by getting found through search engines.

Keyword research can help you find certain “low competition keywords” that people are using in Google searches and write your blog posts around them. So let’s say you are writing a post about an HP printer. You wouldn’t want to focus on the keyword “HP printer” because the competition is incredibly high. You’d be competing with major stores like Best Buy and would have slim chance of ranking well. Now, what if you said you had found the “best HP printer under $100” in your post? You could focus on that key phrase and probably rank a lot higher. While it is true that it does not get the same search volume that “HP printers” does, 20% of 1,000 is more than 0% of 1,000,000.

Ok, so how do you do keyword research?
Well, there’s a more difficult free way and then there’s some software you can buy to make the whole process very easy. The one thing you need to remember throughout the whole process of keyword research is that you are looking for keywords that have a decent amount of monthly searches and not much competition.

Since I’m in the business of efficiency and getting things one quickly, I am going to be showing you how to use a keyword tool to assist you in quickly doing keyword research.

Long Tail Pro is the best keyword research tool around and one of the best investments you can make for your blog and your business. It can literally do an hour’s worth of keyword research in about 3 minutes.

My absolute favorite part of this tool is the ability it has to accurately analyze keyword competition. This feature alone has saved me hours of research. I also like that it tells me the average AdSense CPC (Cost per click aka how much you make per click) for each keyword. If AdSense earnings are your #1 goal, this is a hugely important feature.

Here’s what keyword research looks like with Long Tail Pro:

keyword toolYou’ll first add a few (or one) seed keywords. Once you click generate, this screen will come up:
keyword research tool big

Click the image to make it bigger and you’ll see all of the great info that this tool provides.

Here’s another cool feature. Click on any of the results and you’ll be brought to a page with the top 10 results for that keyword and crucial information for each one.
top 10 results
Some of the info on the page includes MOZ rank (site’s rank according to Moz.com, which takes into account page authority, domain age, domain authority and many other factors), domain authority and site age. A quick look at this page and you’ll get the same information that would probably take 60-90 minutes to compile using the method described above.

Long Tail Pro can make your keyword research a LOT easier and I encourage you to at least try it out and see if you like it. Get a 10 day free trial here.

It can basically turn 3-4 hours of keyword research into a 10 minute task. I got this tool with the idea of trying to help me rank my sites as a whole, but I now use it before I publish almost every blog post! Having my posts be seen in a Google search is so great!

We now have people finding posts that are months, even years old in Google. The affiliate links in those posts generate a nice amount of passive income and new site traffic.

One note: keyword research should not change a ton about what you write. It’s just about choosing the write wording to use in your posts, titles and meta data. Just a simple change like using “what I think is the best hairspray” instead of “my favorite hairspray” can mean the difference between a ton of pageviews and not much. You won’t know which keywords and phrases are the best to go after unless you do a little research though.

Your keyword research is done, so now what?
I have written on this blog about proper SEO techniques in the past, so feel free to browse the SEO section for more info. I pulled this guide to on-page SEO (which means SEO that you should use in every blog post) from my course, which you can find here.
On Page SEO Post Sample
You don’t have to follow everything on the above image exactly, but I recommend you get as close as you can with still sounding natural in your post.

Whatever method of keyword research you do, just make sure you are being thorough and accurate. The last thing you want to do is try and try to rank for a keyword that is dominated by companies with million dollar SEO budgets. You’ll never get closer than page 3 for some keywords, and it’s best to know what those are before starting a blog post. Keyword research can help you get your blog out there to more searchers and is an excellent way to build traffic to your blog. No matter how you choose to do keyword research, the important thing is that you do it. If you’re writing evergreen content (content that is timeless) and not doing keyword research, you are missing an opportunity for traffic and possibly even passive income!

Filed Under: Blog, Get Noticed, SEO

More Low Competition Keywords for YOU!

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low competition keyword ideas

It’s been a while since I posted my original low competition niche site ideas post and I figured it was time for some more!

The only thing I asked before is that if you use any of these keywords and need hosting, consider using HostGator. It’s no extra cost to you and helps me out a bit. You can actually save 25% when you use coupon code EASYKEYWORDS at checkout.

I should also note that if you plan on adding a niche site to your portfolio and are going to use your existing sites to help build links to the new site, it’s best to get a separate hosting account. Google has recently picked up on people boosting their own sites by including a “sniffer” in their algorithm that dings sites on the same hosting IP linking to each other.

What does this mean? If you plan on doing a niche site, go all in and spend the $5 or so a month to get a separate HostGator account for the new site. Remember EASYKEYWORDS saves you 25%.

Ok, onto the keywords. First of all, I use Long Tail Pro to quickly and easily find awesome keywords that have high search volume and low competition. The keywords you see below were found by me in about 15 minutes of searching. Each of them, with a little work, can turn into a nice money-making site.

Long Tail Pro makes finding keywords a breeze. Pretty much every time I have an idea for a blog post, I spend 10-15 minutes in LTP doing some light keyword research. Countless times, I have modified the wording to avoid going after an impossible-to-rank-for keyword. I definitely recommend checking it out today.

Ok, below are the keywords. I’m not going to lay it all out for you, because I think it’s fairly clear how each site idea would make money. Ones revolving around products could make money on Amazon and through other affiliate programs. Relationship based words can make a killing on the extremely high CPC dating affiliate sites. These methods are all in addition to AdSense, which is always an idea for passive income.

I have pasted these as an image, so as to not increase any competition for these keywords.

low competition keywords

There you go!

I really think there are some great niches there. Take the stroller keyword for example. Double strollers average about $150 on Amazon, so you’re looking at about $8-$10 per sale depending on your commission level. Those commissions can add up quickly!

Remember, it’s a good idea to separate the hosting plans (in addition to Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools/AdSense) if you’re going to be linking to your niche sites with your other sites.

Good luck!

Filed Under: SEO

Google PageRank Update – December 2013

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Google Pagerank 2013
There was question as to whether Google would update their PageRank again in 2013. You see, they used to do it about every quarter, but had not done it since February.

Well, this morning, Google has updated their PageRank.

To check yours, go here: (annoying captcha will commence): http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

I won’t get too much into what went into this ranking change, as it will take some time to figure out what their focus was.

I can say this: This site went from a 0 to a 2, which was great news. Our other sites did not fare so well. We dropped from a 3 to a 2 on a couple of our other sites. A few other major sites that I know of also inexplicably dropped. Needless to say, it’s time to start digging into why this was the case.

While I don’t have specifics on THIS particular update yet, I can say that PageRank will always take these things into account:
– does your site have quality, fresh content?
– do you have a solid backlink and internal link profile?
– how old is your domain?
– do you follow on-page SEO best practices?
– do you have a good social profile and are you connected to Google+?

So…. what is YOUR PageRank?

Filed Under: Blog, Get Noticed, SEO

How to Use SEO in Your Blog Posts ~ for Beginners

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how to use seo in your blog posts
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very important part of most blog success plans. Good SEO will help you show up higher in a Google search results page. Being at or near the top of Google for a decent keyword can provide your blog with hundreds, even thousands of visitors every day.

SEO is a complex beast to conquer, so let’s start with some basics. A lot of SEO gurus seem to forget about the small stuff. Truth be told, most pages have no chance of ranking if they are not doing the things I discuss in the video.

Watch the video below and use the links under the video to expand on specific points covered in the video. If you found the video helpful at all, please leave a comment below! 🙂

Here are some links to other posts that I mentioned in the video:

To learn how to add a meta description to each blog post, see this post.

For a detailed post on optimization of posts and alt tags explained, see this post.

If you are interested in delving into advanced keyword research, see this post.

To use H-tags, simply put the text of your choice inside of h tags, like this:h tag shownReplace the #1 with any number from 1 through 5.
h tag picAs you can see, most themes in WordPress reserve the H1 tag for posts titles, so you probably don’t want to use that one within the post.

I hope this post taught you a little more about on-page SEO, which is so very important when learning to use SEO in your blog posts! If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to comment below or email me!

Filed Under: Blog, Get Noticed, SEO

Why You Are Doing Your Keyword Research All Wrong

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keyword research all wrong


It seems that just about every week, I come across an article on keyword research. Most of them are giving very inaccurate advice when it comes to keyword research that could cost you a ton of time and effort. It kinda drives me crazy actually, to think of the number of people who are relying on this incorrect method.

Let me start by explaining what keyword research is and why you would want to do it. Keyword research is the process of finding keywords for your post or website that you think would be easy to rank for in a Google search. For example, an easy keyword/phrase to rank for would probably be “how to style yellow pants with chambray” while a difficult keyword would be “chambray” by itself. The idea is that if you find keywords that get a decent amount of monthly searches and have low keyword competition, you should have an easier time ranking for them. While “chambray” probably gets 50x the searches that “how to style yellow pants with chambray” does, you will probably not even rank high enough to get ANY visitors from that search. 20% of 1,000 is better than 0% of 10,000. Keyword research can lead to people finding your site through Google, which can be an amazing thing.

When doing keyword research, there are 3 main focuses: the word/phrase itself, monthly searches and keyword competition.

So where are people being steered in the wrong direction?

I’ll say this: if you are using Google AdWords as your only keyword research tool, you are probably doing it wrong.

You cannot determine the proper competition of a keyword with the Google AdWords tool.
You see, the Google AdWords keyword tool is made for people interested in using Google AdWords to purchase ads through Google, not for people trying to find good keywords to go after.
A typical query using the Googel AdWords tool looks like this:
keyword researchThis is where many people go wrong. They think that the competition they see here represents the competition of the keyword with regard to them using it. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

If you click on “about this data” and then click “competition”, you’ll see this: “The Competition column gives you a sense of how many advertisers are bidding for a particular keyword. This data can help you determine how competitive the ad placement is.”

So as you can see, that “competition” column represents how many advertisers are placing bids with an AdWords campaign for that particular keyword/phrase. That has nothing to do with how easy that keyword is to rank as a website owner. I will repeat that. The “Competition” shown by the Google AdWords keyword tool has NOTHING to do with how competitive it will be for you to rank your website for that keyword.

One example of the inaccuracy of using this method is with the result above. The AdWords tool has the competition as medium. By now we know that means the advertiser competition is medium, but if we thought that meant that the difficulty to rank the keyword is medium, we’d be in for a big surprise. The reality is “keyword research” is one of the toughest keyword phrases to rank for in the world. The top 10 sites are so highly regarded in Google’s mind that you would stand no chance whatsoever of ranking. Saying that the actual keyword competition for that phrase was “high” would be an understatement.

There are keyword tools out there made for website owners who are looking for good keywords to go after. To get a good keyword tool, you’re going to have to spend a little money. The best tool I have found is Long Tail Pro. It’s well worth the money. With Long Tail Pro, you can properly check the competition for keywords. You can also get suggestions for other similar keywords, see the average payout for Google AdSense per click based on that keyword and get all sorts of other data. My favorite feature of LTP is that you can quickly and easily see key elements for the top 10 results of a certain keyword. This way you will be able to tell how easy ranking on the first page of Google will be. This is huge because let’s face it, who actually ever goes to the 2nd page of Google?!

You can also do your keyword research manually, but that will take a ton of time.
Here’s how you would do it – Use the AdWords tool to determine how many monthly searches a keyword has and to get ideas for similar words/phrases, but again, don’t use it to check competition. Once you have your keywords, head to Google and punch them in. Analyze the top 10 results to see if your keyword is in the URL, title and description of each result. If it’s not, you may have some room to work with there. You can also check the site’s Page Rank and Moz Rank. Moz Rank takes a lot of important SEO factors into account to provide a rank between 1-10. Anything over 4 is going to be difficult to top. Once you have analyzed the top 10 results, you’ll have a good idea of how easy it will be to get on that first page of Google with your selected keyword(s).

So the moral of the story is: you don’t need to buy a fancy keyword tool, but it will save you a ton of time.
Whatever you do, stop relying on the Google AdWords keyword tool to determine keyword competition, because that is not what it does.

Filed Under: Blog, Get Noticed, SEO

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