First, a brief introduction. My name is Matthew Allen. Some of you may remember me from about a year ago when I was a Yakezie challenger with my former blog, RamblingFever Money. At the time, I was brand new to blogging. I stubbornly left my site on the free-hosted Blogger platform, despite all the advice within the Yakezie forums to move to WordPress. I am forever grateful, by the way, for all of the help I got within the Yakezie forums when I was a total newbie. Every time I asked a blog related question in there, all of the fine folks from Yakezie were more than happy to flood the thread with answers.
It is for this reason that I now want to give back to the Yakezie community by sharing a strategy that I kind of stumbled into recently. Here is how I got to where I am…
I quit RamblingFever Money in May 2012 in order to pursue a more passive income stream from my online ventures. I had been bitten by the blogging bug, so I started another blog at the same time – Dumb Passive Income. The purpose of the new blog was to document what I was doing to try to create passive income online and possibly help others with my findings.
I started learning how to build niche sites that were to be monetized mostly by Adsense. I already knew a little bit about SEO, but learned a great deal more as I delved into niche site strategies. It was here that I learned the massive importance of doing proper keyword research. I heard it over and over again, from all of the successful niche site builders, that keyword research is the most important step.
It took me some time, but I eventually realized how valuable this concept of keyword research could be to bloggers. If done right, a blogger could use proper keyword research to effectively drive all kinds of new traffic to their site.
Keyword Research and Some Common Misconceptions
I know there are some bloggers who already use keyword research as a strategy. There are also very many who don’t. I know that for me, during my entire eight months of PF blogging, I didn’t even know what keyword research was. I’m finding that there is some talk about it now in the blogosphere, but there are some common misconceptions.
While searching for topics to write about, some bloggers will use the Google auto-fill strategy. They type one or two words into Google then see what the auto-fill comes up with. These results get a lot of searches, so they think this will be a good topic to write about. More advanced bloggers might even go to the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool to see exactly how many searches a keyword (or phrase) gets. Even with the simplistic free tool from Google, it is easy to make mistakes if you don’t know what you are doing. I know I made plenty of mistakes with keyword research when I was a beginner.
Using the Google auto-fill method and/or the Adwords Keyword Tool are both good ways to find keywords that get lots of searches. The only problem being that you have no way of knowing the chances that any of those searchers will end up on your post. You see, nearly all search clicks come from results that are found on the first page of Google (or any other search engine). If your site, or your blog post, isn’t #1 thru #10 for that search term, then you will likely get no search traffic from that keyword.
Analyzing the top 10 search results in Google, I quickly learned, is the most important part of keyword research. It is also the part I struggled with the most and wasn’t very good at. The gist of it is that you need to be able to look at the current top ten results for your keyword and then analyze whether or not you think you can beat any of them. You do this by examining how well you think they are optimized along with other statistics, such as: PR, site age, authority and other rankings. This was very difficult for me to do manually and with free tools that were available.
I finally saw the light and purchased a keyword research tool – Long Tail Pro. Without going into details here, I’ll just say that this tool has made a world of difference for me. The new version of the tool – Long Tail Platinum (released Dec. 11, 2012) has a feature that completely takes all of the guesswork out of Google first page analysis. This feature has enabled a total beginner like me to be able to analyze the top ten results just like the pros. Simply put, I only need to look at a number and compare it to a scale. I explain everything here, on Dumb Passive Income, in my first post after buying Long Tail Pro.
Why Should You Care About Keywords and SEO?
Is this whole concept of keyword research and SEO something that you should even care about? Are you content with your current traffic numbers? Are you like many bloggers and think your traffic is doing just fine?
Maybe you are doing okay. You’re here in Yakezie, so you probably get a lot of return traffic and referral traffic from other PF bloggers. You have your other regular readers and subscribers as well. And you even get a decent amount of search traffic. The search traffic is key to what I am trying to lay out here.
The people who reach your blog via search are the people who are most likely to convert. Think about it. Other PF bloggers or regular readers of your blog are visiting frequently because they want to see what you write about. They don’t care about your Adsense ads or affiliate links. They just want to read the content and maybe leave a comment. Targeted search traffic, on the other hand, brings in people who are looking for specific information and might even be looking for something specific to buy. Targeted search traffic is more likely to click on ads, click on affiliate links, or even buy your own product (if you have one).
I recently used Sam’s site, Financial Samurai, as an example for how to pick the right keyword. By using my keyword research tool, Long Tail Platinum, I was able to find a good keyword that Sam could target. A keyword that gets lots of searches, has low competition in the search results, and can be used to drive traffic to a post that will contain one of his affiliate links.
Using Keyword Research to Create Passive Income
The way you use keyword research will vary depending on your method of monetization. If most of your income comes from things like sponsored posts or paid links, then this might not do a whole lot for you. Remember, passive income is the objective. You want to be able to write a post with a targeted keyword that might get traffic for months, or even years, from now and will still be able to make money for you.
Here is how to use keyword research if your main monetization method is contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Media.net. In this case, you are focusing on shear numbers. Click through rates are usually pretty low for these types of ads, so you want as many people as possible to come through. While doing keyword research for this you want to focus on high search volume, high CPC (cost per click), high advertiser competition and of course – low search competition.
Your keyword research strategy can vary if your focus is on selling your own product or affiliate products. In this case, you don’t care about CPC or advertiser competition. You just want to find good keywords that have low search competition that will drive traffic to your post. If your payout is lower, you’ll want to focus on higher volume keywords. If you have a product with a high payout, you may want to look for lower volume keywords that are much easier to rank for.
I personally like the last strategy of high payout/easier to rank kewyords the best. As an example, I could find an affiliate product with a high payout. Say, something like a credit card offer that pays out $100 each time somebody signs up through one of my links. I could then look for “low hanging fruit,” keywords with lower search volume. Say I find a keyword that gets only 200 searches per month, but has virtually no competition in the search results. I write a killer post that is completely optimized properly (examples from PF blogs within this post) and get it to rank at #1 for that keyword. Say I get about 50% of the 200 searchers to click through to my site, because I am sitting in the top spot. Even at a 1% conversion rate, I could make $100 per month just for finding this great keyword!
Maintaining Your Passive Income Machine
This all sounds great, doesn’t it? You should be able to find a few sweet keywords, write and publish some optimized posts, then sit back and watch all the money pour in, right? Not exactly. Even after you have success using this strategy, it doesn’t mean that your post will always rank well in the search engines and will always bring traffic to your site.
Things happen. Other keyword searchers might find the same keyword that you found and go after it. If they have higher rankings sites, and/or a better optimized post, they might outrank you. Also, Google has a knack for changing their algorithms and jumbling up all of the search results. They seem to do this on a whim and never clue anybody in as to what exactly they are doing. Google’s random algorithm changes don’t really affect how we do keyword research though. All data used in keyword research is based on current search results, current rankings and other current statistics.
There are things you can do to keep your passive income machine well oiled. You can build links to your well optimized posts. This can help them keep their current rankings and even climb up in the rankings. By building links, I am not talking about shady black-hat tactics. I mean all of the stuff you normally do with your blog anyway. Things like: Inter-link your own posts on your blog, write guest posts for other blogs, submit to carnivals, participate in blog swaps, etc.
You don’t have to use a keyword research method like this on every post, or even worry about SEO. It would be a good idea though to try to link to your optimized posts whenever you can, from your non-optimized posts. Doing this helps to keep your older posts alive, both by giving it a boost in the rankings, as well as by driving traffic to the post directly. If you let your old posts die, the income they create will also fade away. But, if you keep your passive income machine well oiled, you could continue to earn from it month after month, or even year after year.
-Matt
START A BLOG FOR PASSIVE INCOME
It’s been six years since I started Financial Samurai and I’m actually earning a good passive income stream online now. The top 1% of all posts on Financial Samurai generates 31% of all traffic. The average age of the top 1% posts is 2.3 years old. In other words, after putting in the hours to write some very meaty content over two years ago, 10 posts consistently generate a monthly recurring income stream that’s completely passive.
I never thought I’d be able to quit my job in 2012 just three years after starting Financial Samurai. But by starting one financial crisis day in 2009, Financial Samurai actually makes more than my entire passive income total that took 15 years to build. If you enjoy writing, connecting with people online, and enjoying more freedom, see how you can set up a WordPress blog in 15 minutes with Bluehost. Who knows where your new adventure will take you in 2015 and beyond?
Photo: Pug Life. Dominating for keywords “Captain Meatball,” by SD.
Thanks for sharing what I’m assuming is just a portion of what you’ve learned along the way. It’s a lot of great info and a lot to take in. I’ve been doing this for over four years and I finally realize that I was missing even the basics, on probably 99% of my posts! The fact that I’ve had any traffic and any search traffic is in spite of my own actions. So, this is great information. For now I’m just working on getting back to where I should be had I been doing even the basic things right. With four years of posts (and me being obsessive enough to want to look at virtually all of them), this is a process that will take a couple of months. Then, I’ll take a peek back at this post and see about taking things to the next level.
Yeah, no problem MoneyBeagle. I peeked back at my RamblingFever Money blog and, like you, realized how much better I could have been doing things. It’s really been very recent that I’ve realized how beneficial keyword research can be to bloggers. I’m somewhat obsessed right now with getting the word out. My last several posts on Dumb Passive Income have been about this and I have several more planned!
I’m in the same boat as Money Beagle: nearly four years of posts that I have not optimized in the least. Right now I am trying to figure out how to move forward and come up with a system to go into the posts and at least change from to H2 tags and add a keyword or two. It’s overwhelming, especially since I do not know where to start. Thank you for your timely post! I’ll be checking out your site.
My pleasure Amanda. It is a shame to have all of that great content buried deep in the archives where nobody reads it anymore. While you’re in there re-optimizing, it couldn’t hurt to throw in a few affiliate links if you have something relevant. Even something as simple as an Amazon product. You just never know. Good luck with it.
My pleasure Amanda. It’s a shame when all of those great posts we write get lost and forgotten deep in the archives. I hope you have success trying to re-optimize some of them. While you’re at it, why not throw in an affiliate link if you have a relevant one? Maybe something as simple as an Amazon product. You just never know. Good luck with it.
Matt, you mention that “This feature has enabled a total beginner like me to be able to analyze the top ten results just like the pros.” Are you worried that since the difficulty has been taken out of this process it will quickly become competitive again when people on the margins begin to use the tools in the way that you described?
I do, of course, also think about Google algorithm changes when people describe these methods. What if Google has a bad day and changes how their first page of search works, making the software you purchased superfluous? I just don’t see how a tool released on a large scale can deliver results on a long time line – it just seems like there is a limited window.
Valid concerns PK. I’m personally not real worried about the if too many people start using this tool and method. There are so many millions of keywords. I think there’s enough to go around for everybody. Besides, the guy who built this tool (Spencer) is a niche site guy. He built it for his own purposes and for other niche site builders. Not a lot of bloggers know about, or are willing to take the time to figure out keyword research. Unless my outreach efforts to bloggers really pays off, there won’t be that much competition.
As far as Google – they’re always making changes. LTP creator Spencer has been able to keep up with the changes. The parameters within the tool are changeable and he keeps it constantly updated. In the recent Google EMD update, some niche site builders were completely wiped out. Spencer lost only 13% of his income. We have to remember that Google is nothing more than a robot and an algorithm. SEI is
SEO is always going to be around in some way, shape or form. I’ll go with the tools that work now and adapt later if I need to.
Thanks for your constructive concerns PK!
PK, that is a great point. Well done!
I think one of the things is that competitors can count on other competitor’s laziness to not do as much thorough due diligence as possible.
I don’t do keyword research, but those who are in that space are highly into the nuances, so maybe there are inefficiencies to exploit.
Yeah Sam. I like this response. Counting on competitor’s laziness. By doing things that others aren’t, we can have a step up in the game.
I learned a lot in this article…Only recently have I started to care more about search results…yah at first i did…but then i got caught up trying to keep up with everyone else that I just wrote and didn’t really care…Now that I can just drive traffic to a post and share with more on something that I am already going to write about is great…thanks for the wealth of information…i will incorporate this into my workings now..
I never used to care much about search results either. It wasn’t until somewhat recently that I learned that searchers are the ones who are the most likely to convert. You start caring more about this kind of stuff when your focus is on click through rates or affiliate conversions.
I’m glad you liked the information. Good luck with your attempts at incorporating it.
Howdy Matt!
Thanks for sharing your article. I’m sure it is helpful for many bloggers out there who are looking to optimize their sites. As I warned you earlier, I have some questions to ask! (Don’t respond while driving the truck OK?! You have to refresh the browser to respond to multiple comments too btw, sorry, bug).
* I have spent exactly 0 minutes doing keyword research since I started in the summer of 2009, yet I’ve managed to survive, and some say even do OK with Financial Samurai. What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think FS has been able to grow without doing any keyword research?
* If Google’s goal is to make it easier for webmasters to produce content, and people to find relevant, highest quality content, is doing keyword research becoming marginalized? Google says that besides the basics of writing good headlines and good content, there’s not much more one needs to do.
* What are your thoughts on the viable of niche sites after the EMD slaughtering of so many a couple months ago? Is it not better to focus on building “PRIME SITES” as I call it, since SEO/niche folks use the word “authority sites” instead? What am I missing here? Why doesn’t everybody focus on making their one or two or maybe three sites the most content rich site around and dominate their niche? Why bother having 100 sites that require so much maintenance and constant URL registration?
I’ll stop here from now. I’ve got lots more!
Thanks,
Sam
Thanks for your thoughts and questions Sam.
Financial Samurai minus keyword research equals success – I would say because of great writing, consistency and building relationships. I’m not saying this keyword research method is necessary for success with blogging, but it can help bloggers have more success.
If Google says write good headlines and good content, that clues me in to the importance of having the keyword in the title. Think of keyword research and SEO like counting cards in blackjack. It’s a method of gaining a small advantage by using the information that is given to us and making an educated guess as to the results or outcome.
Niche sites – many of the big name niche site builders that I’ve been following have done exactly what you’ve suggested. I don’t think niche sites are dead, they’re just not as easy to get ranked as they used to be. My one micro niche site that had any success was ranked at #1 for its primary keyword. The EMD update dropped it down to something like 65 in the search results. About a week later, it recovered and stayed around 12 to 16 for awhile. And now it is back to #1, and has been there for nearly 2 solid months. It is an EMD with only 5 pages of content, built around a keyword that gets 880 global monthly searches. So, the viability for small niche sites is still there, as long as they are built right, are useful, have good content and don’t have shady link profiles. Thinking about it logically, there are some topics that a site could be built around that would be nearly impossible to come up with more than 5 pages of content.
As for me, I was only able to get 1 of my 5 niche sites that I built to rank and make consistent money. As you know, I took my efforts in a different direction and am currently working on something I call a niche blog.
Thanks for your comments Sam. Looking forward to the rest of your questions.
I like that analogy of counting cards to give yourself an edge.
One follow up question I have is regards to the state of the SEO industry. If Google is making it easier for good content to rise to the top, and is demystifying search, is it safe to say that the SEO industry will see a structural decline to the point of irrelevance?
For example, Dooce.com is a large sight. I highly doubt Heather Armstrong was conducting keyword research when writing her site to become what it is. Zen Habits is also another huge site. I know for sure Leo isn’t doing any keyword research. All the writing is from the heart.
Hence, why would someone want to get into the SEO business?
Sam, I don’t think SEO will ever be completely irrelevant… until Google gets big enough that they can hire enough actual people with brains to manually rank sites for all specific search terms. We all know that is never going to happen. Search engines are just robots and algorithms, and there will always be a way to manipulate them. They key is figuring out how, and try to keep up or stay ahead of the game.
Sites like you listed, or even your FS site are large sites that were built over a long period of time. Things like avg time on site, bounce rate, engagement, etc. all matter to Google. Sites that have good stats in this regard (like the ones you listed, and yours) get a boost in search results.
I’m not familiar myself with those other 2 sites, and wonder if they are focused on selling a product (affiliate or otherwise) or on advertising income? If not, SEO and keyword research might be irrelevant for them, just like it was for you for a long time. But as you start to move into affiliate marketing, you want that targeted search traffic because it is the most likely to convert.
There are a couple things I want to address in your response. Your use of the term “manipulation” and the point about longevity.
I assume we can manipulate Google to try and rank higher for a short period of time, but in the end, everything normalizes as we’ve seen with Google’s consistent punishing of sites that try and OVER manipulate their algorithms. Hence, wouldn’t it be better not to try and overly manipulate and just do your own thing like build a brand and good content?
Second, as you said, it’s about longevity. Do something long enough online, and good things happen. I firmly believe this is more than 50% of the reason for success, sticking with something.
I get plenty of traffic from search engine results that aren’t on the first page. If the Google Analytics information is to be trusted, 77% of my search visits last month came from page 2 or later.
Less than 50% of the time for my own searches do I find what I’m looking for in the first 5 results. And probably 25% of the time, I don’t find it until the second page.
Interesting state Edward. What’s the link or tab in GA that says what percentage of results come from the various pages?
I guess I’m lazy, b/c I click to page 2 of Google Search maybe 5% of the time. 95% is all found on page 1 for me.
I exported the data from Standard Reporting -> Traffic Sources -> Search Engine Optimization -> Landing Pages into Excel and did some sorting.
If I can’t find what I’m looking for on the first page, I’ll try page 2 and 3. I will rarely go to page 4. If I still can’t find what I’m looking for, I will try adjusting my query.
I only know what I’ve learned and read. It’s been studied and stated over and over that the 1st position in Google gets about 50% of the clicks, 2nd about 15% and 3rd about 9%… and the remaining majority of clicks come from the rest of the results on the first page. I don’t know why your site gets an unusual number of clicks from page 2 or later.
Personally, I’m like Sam and only look past page 1 maybe 5% of the time. Like when I searched on this topic and found this article sitting in position number 3 for my search query – http://www.receptional.com/blogs/seo/1st-position-google-receives-53-clicks
I think the first few search engine results get a lot of clicks because people expect to find their answer there. I click on a lot of #1,2,3 ranked results too. But unless I’m looking for something pretty generic, the answer is never there. Those top results are usualy useless eHow pages. Or outdated information; Google loves older content but for technolgy information, older content is usually outdated and useless Funny how a tutorial for Ubuntu 9.10 will rank in a search for Ubuntu 12.4. Or worse, google frequently ranks support forum pages that are behind a paywall!
Another reason the first result gets 50% of clicks? Because people are too lazy to type out .com My mother still goes to Facebook every day by typing it into the search bar. The same with her email.
At the end of the day, it all depends on the quality of the pages that are ranked. If I can find what I’m looking for in the first page, I’m not going to go to the second page. But if it isn’t there, I’m not going to not go to the second page.
Excellent points Edward. I never thought about the people who use the search bar like the URL bar. Like your mom, for example, who types Facebook into the search bar to get to Facebook. (the search bar being the same one that is used for the URL bar, of course)
Also, when I’m searching for technology related stuff, like recent statistics, I look at the dates because I know all that stuff gets outdated quickly.
Thank you for the tips, Matthew, so far I rely mostly on sponsored posts and paid links but want to go into more details with SEO optimized posts.
Monetizing aside, I find that many people end up on my blog with completely random searches, proving the need to optimize keywords to attract relevant traffic.
Hi Pauline. I’ve had a few paid link posts on my old blog, but decided that wasn’t the way I wanted to go forward with monetization for my sites. Affiliate marketing is my favorite. It just feels good when you make an affiliate sale because you know you helped convince somebody to buy something that they were looking to buy anyway, or something that can help them in some way.
I hear ya on the random searches. People who end up on your site that way probably aren’t the people who are going to click on ads or buy any products. Keyword research is great for attracting targeted and relevant traffic that converts.
SEO is something that I need to work on. Most of my traffic is through referrals/twitter and maybe 10% from Google. I do believe that the keywords I am trying for are far too difficult for me to get ranked. They receive high searches, but the bigger sites get top rank on them.
It is possible for smaller sites to outrank bigger sites, depending on the keyword you are going after and how well your post/site is optimized for it. The key is finding those “gold nugget” keywords that nobody else is purposely going after. That is the fun part of keyword research for me. It’s like panning for gold, which I like to actually do on occasion.
What’s your opinion about Market Samurai? How it handles long tail keywords compare to the tool you’ve suggested? Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I only used Market Samurai for the free 10-day trial back in May 2012. For me, it was a little more complicated. There seems to be a lot more data to digest, and a bunch of the settings were more customizeable by the user. In my opinion, Market Samurai is for the more advanced keyword searcher. Oh, and it is WAY slower. You can only do one seed keyword at a time with Market Samurai and for some reason it takes forever to come up with results… as compared to Long Tail Pro.
I read a lot about both programs, listened to what others had to say, heard them talked about on podcasts and even watched several videos before I decided to make a purchase. I picked the one that I thought was the best choice, based on simplicity and speed.
Thanks for your question – glad to give my opinion.
I can barely keep up with writing the posts and running the site. I really need a simple way to do keyword research and Long Tail Pro might be the ticket for me. Thanks for the article.
Come on Joe, you’re retired! You got plenty of time! :)
I know what ya mean Joe – I used to waste a LOT of time trying to do keyword research the “dumb” way (free Google Adwords tool). It was mostly ineffective because I wasn’t very good at it.
Have your tried Market Samurai? They make it quite easy to find keywords with or without a lot of competition. It takes some time to find but can be very very fruitful. It has helped me make $5000 plus in one video. I wish I could brag more but my stubbornness with wanting to do things my way sometimes hurts me.
Yes Jai, I have tried Market Samurai. But only for the free trial period and this was quite a few months ago. Thank you for sharing one of your success stories as a result of doing keyword research.
Hi Matthew, I think SEO is a minefield. From what I’ve read the techniques can be extremely complex. The age of a website and the authority seem to make such a huge difference that even the best pages can be missed out. For me, persistence seems to be key.
Thanks for the comment John. You’re right, SEO can be complex. The stuff I talk about though isn’t complex at all, as far as doing some simple on-page SEO. The age of a website and authority do help in rankings, but I think Google is actually rewarding recent and fresh content lately. I don’t know this for sure – but how else do you explain the fact that my site, Dumb Passive Income, is/was ranking on the first page for “Financial Samurai”? I only mentioned it, in a well optimized way, in one blog post recently! And that is a fairly competitive keyword.
wow Matt, you seem to be everywhere lately. I hope to use your methods of keyword research on my blog. I know the importance of it on niche sites. but I dont know what I was hoping would happen on my blog.. maybe that people would automatically find it and start reading? haha.. time to join you all in the real world and work for it.
The easiest way to help people ‘automatically’ find your blog is to optimize for the keywords that they are searching for anyway.
Matt,
In response to your follow up comment:
There are a couple things I want to address in your response. Your use of the term “manipulation” and the point about longevity.
I assume we can manipulate Google to try and rank higher for a short period of time, but in the end, everything normalizes as we’ve seen with Google’s consistent punishing of sites that try and OVER manipulate their algorithms. Hence, wouldn’t it be better not to try and overly manipulate and just do your own thing like build a brand and good content?
Second, as you said, it’s about longevity. Do something long enough online, and good things happen. I firmly believe this is more than 50% of the reason for success, sticking with something.
Good point Sam about building a brand and concentrating on good content. I think this can be done while at the same time using SEO tactics to ‘manipulate’ the search engines. In no way am I suggesting that anybody OVER manipulate just for short term search result success. But, if you properly manipulate within your good content and the building of your brand, all kinds of free targeted traffic will flow to your site through the search engines. This type of SEO will tend to stick and be less temporary.
I understand your argument that this can be accomplished without SEO or keyword research – and you have proof to support your argument. But, that doesn’t mean that these tactics can’t work. Even for well established sites like yours that already have great traffic, I still think keyword research and a little SEO will help bring you more targeted traffic that is likely to convert.
I’m not the best at SEO although my search traffic has been growing. I never really though about using the auto complete feature but that makes sense. Sometimes I’ll type in a keyword phrase and compare the number of search results between the two and decide which to go with that way.
Keep in mind Sydney that the auto complete feature in Google only shows you what is searched for a lot. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you should target that keyword because it doesn’t give you any indication of whether or not you could get one of your articles to rank well for it.
I just started a new blog and tried Market Samurai. I didn’t particularly care for it and am using Micro Niche Finder. I never heard of Long Tail Pro, but am going to check it out. You said above that good content gets you good ranking. Do you do the usual linking that Google looks for as well?
I personally don’t do any manual link-building. I just don’t have the time for it. Besides, sites that have done this are the ones that always tank in Googles updates. Natural link profiles are always better and will stand the test of time. This is why I love doing good keyword research. You can find the “low hanging fruit” keywords that don’t require a lot of links in order to rank! Long Tail Platinum definitely makes this type of research very easy.
I just purchased Long Tail Pro by Spencer Haws for keyword phrase generation. I have only been using it for a couple of days but like it so far. I am sure there are better programs out there but he was running a special discount on it.
This is an awesome post! As someone who just started my first blog I definitely have a lot to learn. This is the first I have come across an article stressing the importance of keywords. Thanks for cluing me in.
[…] of hundreds of personal finance bloggers. I wrote what I thought was a killer post and titled it, How to Turn Your Blog Into a Passive Income Machine. This site got a lot of attention as a result of these efforts, but I only sold one stinking copy […]
I actually started using the product after checking out Matt’s blog. I must say the product is very user friendly and cant wait to see the result in the future
Hi Matt!
Great post about the importance of keyword research. If you want to monetize, it’s a waste to spend time writing about topics that no one will ever search for or the monthly search volume is too low.
I currently use Google Keyword Tool and always on the lookout for tools to make the keyword research task easier and more efficient. I am not familiar with Long Tail Pro but it looks worthwhile to explore further.
thanks again for your insights.
Lisa
Awesome post Matthew, extensive Keyword research is really important I’ve tried several tools but I settled with Jaaxy it makes the research much easier with all the added features in one convenient place that otherwise would require a lot more time to research.