The Shoemoney System is slow, as I mentioned previously, and as a result I went in search of some real money making information. I came across Grizzly’s blog (http://makemoneyonlineforbeginners.blogspot.com – he doesn’t need me linking to him in every post) and began really learning what it takes to make money online. I then took some very basic SEO information I learned from reading his site and applied it to some dusty old blog I have that I haven’t touched in many months. It’s a PR 2 in a fairly competitive/high paying niche.
That blog gets several random Googlers a day. Every once in a while I check to see where they’re coming from and it’s almost always this one keyword phrase. The key phrase wasn’t something I targeted, but I do have two posts about this phrase and it seems to be searched for fairly frequently. Using the advice provided in Grizzly’s blog, I shuffled some words around, and sprinkled the keyword a little more liberally through the post, and then I linked the two posts. Low-and-behold the post jumped one spot in the SERPS. Big deal, one spot, right? Well that one spot was from 11 to 10. This key phrase has had me planted solidly in spot 11 for months on end and with a little SEO tweaking I was on the front page of Google for a major key phrase in my niche. I’ve already noticed a little upswing in the traffic. In addition, I received a couple long-tails related to this key phrase. I always check my long tails, and I’ve never been higher than position 5 or so. Then yesterday I see a pretty generic long-tail search for [key phrase] [different niche key phrase] landed me in position #1 on Google. I’ve never been in position 1 for anything but my blog title. It’s pretty damned exciting to me that such a small change could have a significant impact. Imagine what would happen if I really went at it with this site… I haven’t slept since I discovered this, by the way. This really sparked my thirst for more knowledge on the subject. I’m on hyper-focus overdrive. When I get into this mode I tend to ignore general animalistic needs (ie eating, showing, sleep, various bodily functions) until I arrive at some sort of conclusion, plateau, or just pass out. It’s quite unhealthy, really.
Anyway, back to the SEO rape of my old blog. Luckily my small readership has long since abandoned that blog much like I had. There will be no one to offend when I strip it of its pretty theme, change all the goofball reader-attracting titles, and bury the pictures deep into the posts, below the fold, if not remove them entirely. The bounce rate on my search traffic is a low 60% and I need to change that.
Now that I have some idea of what I’m doing I’m aiming for the biggest keyword in my niche; a keyword that I am certain will take at least a year to even get near page 1. But first things first. I need to rank that related key phrase at position 1 in Google. I’m going to pull it up from position 10 by getting backlinks. I’ll start by writing a new post that is perfectly optimized for this keyword and then I’ll modify the article a bit and submit it to GoArticles.com and link that back to my new article. I won’t have to do much to get this word into position 1. If that doesn’t do it, then I will work on getting links from Squido, Hubpages, etc. I’ll add new links sporadically for a week or two. That should do the trick. I don’t really know though, since this is my first time trying this. Once I get that keyword phrase to position 1, I will start tackling long-tails related to my main keyword. I don’t plan on putting much effort into that blog, but I do want to build it up as an authority for the profitable Adsense traffic.
What I really want to pour a bit of effort into is building new niche sites for adsense and affiliate sales. I actually had a real “Eureka” moment while in the shower this morning (I begrudgingly pulled myself away from my studies to do this). I had narrowed my ideas for a first attempt at niche blogging to a fairly broad niche. In the shower I got to thinking about whether or not I should start with the broad keyword, or go for specific products. Say, for example, golf. You could write a niche blog about golf, or golf gear, or better still (I think) golf balls, golf clubs, etc. I was listing the different possible type of products I could use and one hit me like lightning. I walked right out of the shower, mid-wash, dried my hands, and went to the laptop to do some research. I am pretty excited by what I found. I found that the keyword (product) I wanted to key in on had 100k searches a month according to Google. The plural, another 15k and a side keyword + main keyword, another few thousand. I checked Blogspot. Keyword, taken; plural keyword, taken; keyword + side keyword is available. Awesome. The side keyword also happens to start with “s” so you grab the plural in there too.
Upon searching the keyword in Google I get less than 300k websites. For 100k searches… Things are looking good. I take a look at my competition; wikipedia, a myspace band page that happens to use this product as their band name… and random joe-shmoe sites that happen to mention it in passing. No real backlinking anywhere to be seen. Good lord, this is looking too good to be true. I check the CPC, and it’s showing an average of about $.75 – not bad. I’m both excited and worried at this point. Why hasn’t anyone else noticed this? Am I reading the data wrong here? It looks like a huge imbalance to me and one I can easily capitalize on. It’s a pretty obscure product and the people who would know about it probably aren’t into SEO, but people are definitely searching for it. And people are willing to pay to find those searchers. I guess this is where I come in. We’ll see how it goes.
One a final note, Grizzly promotes a product on his site called Project Payday. It’s free to join and involves filling out incentivized freebie offers (people pay you to fill out free trial offers and what not so they can get cash or a prize). Not only is it free, they garauntee that if you follow their steps and don’t make $50 they will pay you $100. I’ll be getting my first $50 tomorrow, but I’ll talk more about that in another post.
Shoemoney talked about speeding up the system and it looks like he is – 4 videos coming out this week. Oddly enough, todays video actually talked about arbitrage and how incentivized freebie offers are a form of arbitrage. Weird timing again for a Shoemoney System video.
But for those keeping score at home: Shoemoney System – $1 ; Project Payday – $50.
