Search Engine Optimization for Blogs

How to SEO your Blogs For the past few weeks I have been discussing ways in which you can optimize your blogs for search engine traffic - primarily Google. This is called search engine optimization or SEO for short. I have been targeting the keyword "Payday Loans" to show you the step by step methods I use to make money online. Ultimately I will discuss how to further tweak your blogs in order to make money using Adsense but till now I have just been focusing on general techniques that everyone should use in order to draw search traffic to your blog. Whether you are interested in Adsense or not you should still focus some attention on acquiring SE traffic - social traffic is great in so many ways but if you monetize your site you will need SE traffic to convert visitors to sales. Today I am going to jump around a bit as I want to clarify a few things that have popped up in my emails and comments. Self Hosted Blogs, Blogspot and Wordpress I still get - or I should say I am seeing more emails all the time wondering why I use a free Blogger blog on Blogspot. Invariably the assumption is that I don't know that "serious" marketers use their own domains. I have also had several readers ask me about what type of blog they should use. I have answered the first question before but it's worth going over again. The whole point of this blog is to make money and show my readers how I do it. To that end I have focused my attention on beginners and I want to show them that you really can make money online and you don't have to spend money to do it. Hence the free Blogger blog - I prefer to do it by example. I have another reason for using Blogger as well; it has some distinct advantages over other blog platforms when it comes to making money with Adsense. I will get into this further when I turn my focus to Adsense. In regards to what platform is best I agree that having your own domain is the standard way to go if you are intent on making the A-list. Web 2.0 is the new look and self hosted wordpress blogs are all the rage. In general I find Blogger to be a great way for beginners to cut their teeth. You can learn the ins and outs about blogging without spending money and it is incredibly easy to use. A free Wordpress blog is really not a good idea as it is next to impossible to monetize it. For a good synopsis of the differences between these platforms see Blogs: Self Hosting vs Free Hosting by Terry Didcott. Some of you that already have an A-list style blog have been asking me if it can be optimized for Adsense. It can but to really go after Adsense properly you will end up losing your aesthetic appeal. The fact is the best performing Adsense sites aren't pretty. You have to set up the site in such a way as to capitalize clicks or you won't make enough to bother with it. In the simplest terms you have to display the ugly and in your face ad block just like I have above the fold on this blog. To make any serious money you will have to do the same - most of you don't want that on your "nice" blogs so I suggest starting a new blog specifically aimed at Adsense and just tweak your A-list blogs in order to capture search engine traffic. If you are monetizing with paid ads then you'll need the SE visitors. One question I was asked was, "Why is search engine traffic better for making money than social traffic?". The obvious answer is because social traffic is comprised of internet marketers for the most part and they don't typically click ads or buy stuff. Perhaps the better answer is to skip ahead in my Payday Loan lessons and actually show you a completed campaign where I set out to target a keyword in order to rank high on Google's listings and how I have made money from it. In January I wrote a review of a program I had tried out called "Project Payday". The program deals with making money by buying and selling referrals on IFW's (incentivized freebie websites). While there are things I don't like about the program (the type of work mostly - boring) the end result is that it is a legitimate way of earning some money online. It actually works which is something you can't say to often online. At the time I suspected this might get popular but in truth I was only guessing. Shortly after I posted the review someone linked to me from the whydowork forum citing my post in regards to a question some one had asked. Before long there was a steady stream of visitors coming to my blog because of that link. They weren't making me any money but it led me to believe that there was interest in the program. I decided to target the keyword for Google to see if there was interest in the non IM world. Source: makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com