WizzerSays

A very quick update on this Blogging For Profit series of posts.

Just 10 days ago I wrote this post:

http://wizzersays.com/blogging-for-profit/blogging-for-profit-and-why-there-isnt-any/

and used the techniques I’ve been talking about in this series regarding the use of keyword categories, tags and titles.

Today for the keyword string “blogging for profit” you can see the post has reached position 68 out of 1.4 million in the Google search engine.

Blogging For Profit Results - Click To Enlarge

I anticipate the post moving further up the ranking over the next few days.

As you write your posts today thinking carefully about the keywords you are hoping to be found for and give this blogging for profit strategy a go.

I’d love to hear from you with details of your successes.

Following on from my Blogging For Profit & Why There Isn’t Any post I’m going to use an example from this blog to highlight how to get your post title, categories and tags aligned for maximum search engine exposure.

Before I talk about the method I used to get top positions in both Google & Yahoo for the term “blogging instructions” out of over 3 million competitive instances of that term I need to go back to when I started out.

Frankly I had no idea what I was doing!

To say keyword research bored me is an understatement. To be honest it still does but now I know what I’m looking for and why it is so much quicker and easier.

I used to write a post on something that came to mind, put it in a category that I thought was OK with no thought to the fact that categories are important to the search engines. In fact I didn’t even know that at the time.

I’d then add as many tags as I could think of hoping to get the post ranked for everything and anything. The tags were all over the place – there was no “theme” and worse still they were not focused on the keywords I was trying to rank for.

In fact, I don’t think I ever wrote posts focused on the keywords I wanted to rank for. I think the common term my kids would use would be along the lines “Dad, you’re so random!”

Like countless others I started to lose my way – frustrated at the lack of visitors and the work I was putting in for no reward.

I’m not a quitter so decided I had better find out what I was doing wrong and I stumbled on another minor issue.

There are millions of people bleating on about search engine optimisation and yet so few of them had actually any proof they’d ever got a post listed let alone on page 1 of Google for a competitive search term.

So I decided to find an expert.

Now you need to promise to keep this under your hat. If he finds out I learnt almost everything I know about SEO from him he have me redecorating his cave or something! Yes, you know it was Randy. The guy is not only a SEO genius (read geek) he is so open and helpful (it’s why I jumped at the chance of working with him on Blogging Beginners).

Back to the plot.

Several years later when we first started Blogging Beginners and were in the process of recording videos and testing everything I thought I’d see if I could beat the master to the top of page one of Google.

He had a blog listed in position 2 for the term blogging instructions. I decided “that term WILL be mine” (Sorry, I have these little phrases in my head from films I’ve seen and I just have to use them. A peanut to anyone who can tell me the film that phrase came from. CLUE, it was a “guitar” and not a “term”)

The post I wrote was http://wizzersays.com/blogging-instructions/blogging-instructions/

It’s still in position 2 or 3 of both Google & Yahoo 6 months later.

You’ll see from the URL that the category I used was blogging instructions and so too was the title of the post

If you’re not familiar with permalinks – to do this you need to set up your blogs custom permalinks to use the category and post title – this results in the url: BLOGNAME/CATEGORY/TITLE

I used only one tag – not a whole series of blog, seo, instructions, blogging, search engine etc etc JUST:

blogging instructions

You’ll appreciate from this that the term “blogging instructions” was important in all of this.

It was:

1. The category

2. The title

3. The tag

4. It was the first 2 words of the post. If you read through the post you’ll see the term is not only the first two words but they are bold.

5. In the final paragraph

Within 2 or 3 days I found the post on about page 3. A few bookmarking favours from some of the members at Blogging Beginners had the desired effect and within a week I had Randy looking over his shoulder. Since then our respective posts have switched between positions 1 and 3 but clearly the strategy works.

Just type in the search term blogging instructions into Google or Yahoo and you’ll see we each have a number of posts and links on the first page. (In fact as I write this between us we have 5 positions out of the top 10 in Google).

Now, we’ve got to page one but that doesn’t mean we are blogging for profit yet.

We now need to convert our visitors into paying guests. That could be an affiliate product, Adverts or our own product.

The issue now is that the “offer” has to be associated and relevant to the blog post. I visit so many sites where frankly I’m confused. The site is called one thing, the post is about something unrelated and the “product” is something else again. Result – no sale.

The process is therefore:

1. Have a “product” to sell

2. Target your post to potential purchasers of that “product”

3. Follow the tips above for getting a high ranking for your keyword(s)

4. Ensure your blog isn’t confusing (ie don’t try to sell iphones on a gardening blog)

5. Make it clear the action you’d like your visitor to take (sign up to list / buy product etc)

I hope that helps in your quest to go blogging for profit and in the spirit of point 5 – we’re giving away an established, profit making, high ranking blog for free at Blogging Beginners. There are numerous links on this page – you know what I’d like you to do!

Blogging for profit is the target of many but the domain of very few.

That sounded a little “Churchillian” – I only wish I had the ability with words that he did! The issue is, however, that for most people there isn’t any. Profit that is.

If you do any keyword research around the terms blogs, blogging, bloggers you’ll find so many searches being conducted each day on terms that also include words such as money, make money, profit, business opportunity. It seems there is a massive movement towards using blogs to make a profit rather than the original use – which was really little more than an online diary.

I guess places like Facebook, MySpace and services like Twitter have taken the place of blogs in the main for updates of what people did last night. “No, no, that’s really too much information thank you all the same!!“

But, despite the number of people clearly interested in making money from their blogs it is fair to say that it is still only an extremely low percentage of all blogs that actually generate any money for their owners – let alone enough to make a living.

Now here’s the revelation. Are you sitting on your chair properly – we don’t want any accidents…

Build It And They Won’t Come

There I’ve said it.

And what an utter waste of time energy and a killer of dreams that is!

Without finding a way of attracting visitors to your site you may as well give up now. I’m serious. If your objective is to make a profit with your site if you don’t find a method of driving “targeted” traffic to your blog then you are wasting your time. Yes, it may look great. Yes, it may satisfy your ego and yes your granny may be proud of you.

But “it won’t pay the mortgage or make you rich”

I’m sure you’ve seen all of the hype and promises of “avalanches” of visitors, “tsunamis” of credit card wielding hungry buyers guaranteed, only to be disappointed when there’s no substance to the claims.

Like you I’ve probably tried them all – and yes, some of them do get traffic but!

Here’s my definition of madness…

Spending an hour a day clicking on sites I have no interest in to earn credits so I can get my site put in front of people all round the world who are not interested in my site but are clicking on it to get credits so I can go to their site!!!

Perhaps, you already realise that the secret to profitting from blogging is a little deeper than just getting traffic to your site!

Your formula for making money has to be thought out in advance. Your whole business strategy needs to be co-ordinated with what you are writing about.

There are guys talking about massive sales by using Pay Per Click to generate the traffic. It’s all very well talking about the gross profits being huge but from where I’m sitting I’m not interested in turnover. Never have been. The only thing that matters is the after costs profit. The money you put in your bank account. The cash available to you to spend.

Of course, Pay Per Click works for many people and I’m not suggesting it isn’t a worthwhile method but you have to have thought it through properly and made a business decision that it is right for your particular niche or market.

Now here’s the issue for the vast majority of people looking to make money online. In fact there are two points.

1. They are not treating it like a business

2. They have little to no money available for advertising

The only way to overcome those two hurdles is to set up a repeatable “process” (a business method) that will attract interested, genuine potential purchasers of your product or service to your site for free.

1. Is that possible?

2. Is that possible when you know little to nothing about search engine optimisation?

3. Is there any way you can shorten the learning curve to search engine dominance without becoming a technical geek and spending time babbling about LSI, algorithms yawn, yawn…

The answer to all 3 of those questions is a resounding YES.

Over the next few days I’ll be talking about using categories, tags and titles and how to use your keywords in your posts to get high search engine rankings.

If you can’t wait join us now at Blogging Beginners. We’ll soon have you blogging for profit!