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Keywords. Now, they have been a real stumbling block for me. I can generate lists of keywords. Even I know where to find the Google Keyword Tool and to enter terms in to find more terms. Making sense of keywords and how to use them, that has been my stumbling point.

I can’t just blow the concept off though. Keywords are the building blocks of search engines. When people enter terms in the search engines, those keywords determine what sites are going to be found and displayed for the person’s search. Their relevancy on each site determines which sites will be displayed first. Therein lies my stumbling block.

How do I move that list of keywords from list to relevancy?

I’ve read lots of material about keywords, much of it really well written yet, it seemed most writers just left it up to me to understand them so well, that I’d just know the right keywords to use. I’d know which ones I’d want to optimize for. I really had started to think I was a bit thick, I always seemed to hit the wall.

I often opted for throw a bunch of keywords at the wall and hope something stuck. Not a very effective use of time and resources.

Finally, Some Keyword Light!

Last week I stumbled across an article on the Clickbank blog which gave me a Eureka moment. The two part article, Moneywords, Your Key to the Keyword Kingdom, is one of the best laid out articles I’ve read. What really got me excited that I had found a guide I could understand and use was the moneyword matrix found in part two.

I’ve used that guide to create my keyword list for the project I’m currently working on putting together. I did the list manually, which took me most of a day to go through, find the number of competing sites and then apply the matrix to the list to find the moneywords.

Niche Profit Classroom

The author of the Moneywords article is Adam Short, the creator of the Niche Profit Classroom. Inside that membership site is an automated tool which would have cut my keyword search time to a fraction. Man, I was SOO tempted to spend the $1 for the two week trial just to get at that tool!!

Alas, one of the goals I laid out for myself was to not spend any more money on tools, books, software or even domains until I have used what I have to generate some actual income. I slowly put away my ‘buy’ urge and settled back to do the hard slugging until I can meet my goal.

I’ll be talking more about Niche Profit Classroom in a future post. It is definitely on my tool want list for when I get my first income from my efforts. You don’t have to wait, so go and visit there now and let me know what you think.

So, how are you with keywords? Do you have a handle on them? Are you using them?

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Those All Important Keywords

Just finished reading a neat article over at Search Engine Land on some search tools. The article is part of a series on PPC (Pay Per Click) they have been running. The article provides an overview of search engine tools; social monitoring platforms like Twitter, Technorati and Social Mention; SEO tools includes an overview of who SEOMoz’s tool suite can be used for paid search campaigns and industry intelligence sources like eMarketer, comScore and Marketing Sherpa.

Google Wonder Wheel

What really grabbed my attention was the pointer to the Google Wonder Wheel. All this time I’ve been using Google for search and never knew this little gem was there. The wonder wheel provides a visual display of some other search terms which your search results contains. A great way to drill down to more specific data when exploring for article ideas for example.

How Do you find the Wheel?

• Go to Google
• Do a search for a topic
• Click “Show Options”
• Scroll down to “wonder wheel” on the left hand menu
• go explore

You might also want to read through the article, never know what treasures you might find that I missed.

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Google Wonder Wheel & Other Search Fun

I love it when I read an article which actually leads me to learn something. Search Engine Land reports today that Google now includes page speed as a factor when ranking your site. How important a factor speed is, isn’t yet determined.

As much as possible, I’ve always tried to keep page speed as quick as possible. What you might not notice on a broadband connection, your visitors on dialup or slow satellite connections sure will.

I’ve done some web design in the past so I’m tend to remember to pay attention to things like optimising graphics or trying to keep them to a minimum. On most of the blogs I have, I avoid using pictures unless there is a value added element to them. I know, some of the gurus will tell you to use pictures on most of your posts.

So, how do you find out what your page speed is like? This article will point you to resources that Google offers in their webmasters toolkit which includes a plugin for Firefox which will analyse your page speed.

Even without page speed being a ranking factor. Think about your visitor’s experience. If they have to wait around too long for your site to load, they better really love you or they are going to move on to something they can get to sooner.

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Speed Matters With Google

Most people start blogging as a hobbies and a way to share their interest with friends and others on the web. Still others start their blogs as a source of income tight from the get go.

In order to generate income from your blog or website, you need to generate traffic. The greater the traffic, the greater effect your monetizing will have. You also need to approach monetizing with care. You want visitors drawn into the site for what you offer, not turned off by your monetizing.
When to Start Monetizing

Many are the debates online as to when to start monetizing your blog. Some feel you need to carry some authority as a blogger before you do so, others feel you should begin as you mean to go on.

Some believe if you start right off monetizing then your visitors wont stick around because they will think you are just an advertising blog. Others argue that providing good quality content will not only keep your visitors but will attract others.

Some argue that if you wait until later to monetize that your visitors will not be happy when you do introduce it and will leave you. If you are providing quality content, that shouldn’t make a difference. Others suggest waiting until you have developed a following gives you greater leverage in dealing with advertizing networks.

The bottom line is, the choice is yours.

Your Primary Focus Needs to Be Visitors

Regardless of the approach you take to monetizing your blog, you still need to focus on creating a good flow of visitors to your blog. You’ll want to be sure you have effectively engaged search engine optimization (SEO). Ideally, you should be shooting for a minimum of 500+ unique visitors per day.

As your traffic flow increases, the dollars will follow. Avoid purchasing traffic, it is usually short lived. You’ll be able to convert a few of those you’ve paid money for into regular visitors but the return on investment is usually pretty low.

Shoot for developing responsive traffic. Traffic that shows up when you post, engages in communication and responds to your message.

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When to Monetize Your Blog?

I’ve read articles and ebooks of all descriptions to try to get my head around doing effective keyword research. Somehow the sense of having a method that I could use, wash, rinse and repeat always seemed to allude me. I  was beginning to think it was just me and my wonderful mental block that was the problem.

Today I ran across Mark Jackson’s article over on Search Engine Watch laying out five fundamental questions to use for keyword research. Now there’s some questions which make sense:

1. What do I want to be known for?
2. What information, products, and services do I offer?
3. What keywords are my top ten competitors using?
4. What keyword phrases are people actually using when they search?
5. What types of actions are taken by people searching for each phrase?

His explanations of the questions are well worth the read for clarity.

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Five Fundamental Questions for Keyword Research

When it comes to making sales on the Internet, it seems that copywriters and search engine optimization experts are always at odds with each other.

You see, one group wants the sales letter to be absolutely perfect to make maximum sales, and the other group wants the page to be optimized perfectly for the search engines to send free traffic their way.

I remember my first experience with a search engine optimization firm. I had a site that was designed to sell sunglasses, and I’d just finished writing all the sales letter for the different types of sunglasses available. At the time pay per click advertising was a brand new concept, so I wasn’t using it. I wanted to get the free search engine traffic available from sites like Yahoo and Google, so I hired some SEO experts to make my site perform better in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). I gave them access to all my pages so they could optimize everything as necessary.

When they got done my website was properly optimized, but my well crafted sales letters were a complete mess. My writing no longer flowed nicely, my headlines now sucked, and there were a lot of erroneous words all over the place on my pages. However, the pages did perform better in the search engines.

However, I was not satisfied with better performing pages if it meant I couldn’t sell my visitors anything due to the fact that my sales letters weren’t very good. It was at this point that I fired the firm that I hired and vowed to learn how to do the search engine optimization myself, and I was going to make the search engines like my pages while still preserving the integrity of the salesletter.

The first thing I did was go back and redo the sales letters again. I looked at what the firm I hired tried to leave in certain keywords or phrases, but I made them seamlessly blend into the salesletter.

Then as I started to learn more about search engine optimization myself, I started to learn about the importance of having links pointing to my website. So I went out and started to find people who would link to my site.

I frequently tweaked my sales pages, but I always made sure that they made perfect sense to my visitors.

Good copywriting and well optimized pages do exist, especially these days. Here is my checklist for making both work together:

• Write your sales letter as you normally would.

• Get links to your sales letter with the links containing the anchor text you want your site to rank well for

• Make sure the key phrase is mentioned somewhere in the sales letter, but ignore ideas like keyword density.

• Make sure your title tag contains the keyword you want to rank well for.

• Update your sales letter frequently (you should always be testing your sales letter anyway)

• If your entire website is just the sales letter, add a blog to the site to give you site more content, as all the search engines like to see a website add new content over time.

The most important item on the list is the links. So if you’re not going to spend time getting quality links pointing to your website, then don’t waste your time optimizing your salesletter for the search engines.

About the Author:
Gary Ruplinger is an SEO expert and author of UltimateTrafficBlueprint.com. To get professional SEO consulting or to hire Gary’s link building services, visit us.

Read more articles by: Gary Ruplinger

Article Source: www.iSnare.com

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Making Copywriting And Seo Coexist