One of the biggest hurdles you will face when trying to learn to make money online focuses on keywords. If you are new to blogging, you might not realize the importance of how keywords work, but hopefully this post will help you learn more about what keywords are, how to find good keywords with little competition and finding the right affiliate program or highest paying Adsense ads for your keywords that you choose.
So, you might be wondering what they hype about keywords are and why are they really important to making money online?
Well, if you found this site by a Google search or other search engine, what words did you type in to find this site? Those are keywords. Keywords are basically the words that people type into the search engines to find what they are looking for. Some keywords pay more than others of course, so this is where learning about keywords can really pay off (no pun intended).
When you first started looking into what to blog about to make money online chances are you have probably read some blogs that talk about how you should buy this ebook, or sign up for that program. Guarantees are often made that if you follow this or that method, you will make money.
Don’t believe it all! There is no real easy way to make money online. Only some time and persistence will pay off, so lets talk keywords!
With so many different things to blog about, I am going to write this post to be generic, not focused on any one keyword or topic, so follow along with the basic example and you will learn.
Once you have a topic that you are interested in, whether it is a hobby or passion that you like, or part of your job that you are knowledgeable about, there are tons of keywords for that topic. There are some really good paid programs that you can buy to help you research keywords, but lets focus on some free ones.
The first keyword tool that I use and recommend is the Google Adwords tool. Why not go right to the source of the traffic that you seek! Go ahead and open the Google Keywords Tool in another tab or page. You might need to log into your Google account, so if you don’t have one, take a minute and sign up for one.
Ok, back? Good, let’s keep going.
You will notice the box on the page that will let you select either to enter words or you can select for Google to scan a site and see what keywords it finds that relate to the site. Let’s focus on you entering some keywords that you know. For this example I will use “Lasik” to show you screen shots and explain what the results mean. You will have to enter a CAPTCHA to begin your search, so enter your keyword, or follow along with me by using “Lasik” without the quotes.
Now after you click enter the good ol’ Google will reveal some information to us to look at, but we will want to click on the “Choose Columns to Display:” button and select “Show All” and the results are what you can see below.
Now I didn’t copy the entire page in a screenshot because I want to explain a few things to help you understand about what the results mean. One of the first things you will notice is that the keywords are on the left in no particular order. The estimated Ad position is what Google is estimating the position for your ad if you paid the estimated average CPC (cost per click). We aren’t worried about what it will cost you, but what you could potentially make per click. While Google won’t come out and say, you can expect to make around 25% of what the Google Adwords tool says the Average Cost Per Click is worth.
The Advertiser competition is just what it says. If you were looking to buy ads using these keywords, this bar is just an indication of what the competition is for the keyword. More competition equals usually more costs.
The Average Search Volume, monthly search volume and search volume trend show estimations of the amounts of searches. While Google won’t reveal exact search numbers, these are a pretty good indication of what to look for. You don’t want to target a keyword that only gets 100 searches a month because the search volume really isn’t very high. However, some argue that those are perfect keywords to target generally because they have lower competition, are easier to overtake in the search results and are generally a long tail keyword that you can use to target the larger, main keyword.
One extremely important aspect of using the Google Adword Tool is to select the right “Match” type. While it automatically defaults to phrase, you will want to look for and select the “Exact” selection here. Why? Thanks for asking!
When you return the results for the “Lasik” keyword and it shows “Broad”, it is returning those words that appeared in any order. There is not any rhyme or reason for which order the words were searched for. For example, the keyword “lasik surgery” when returned in a “Broad” match means that someone could have searched for “Lasik Surgery in Texas” or “How can I find cheap lasik surgery”. The term “lasik surgery” still appears and is counted in the “Broad” search results.
When you select “Phrase” from the match, you are pretty much getting the same thing as you did from the “Broad” search, however it is a little more exacting to phrases that we showed as an example when talking about the broad search results.
The best selection to make is the “Exact” search match. This returns the exact words, in the exact order that they appear. So, “lasik surgery” as an exact match means that the two words “lasik surgery” were searched for in that order with nothing else. While these results are usually less than a “Broad” match, they are more accurate for what we want to do with keywords.
While I don’t want to drone on about the Google Adwords tool, it is a good one and it is free. If you are just getting started, work with it some and learn about it. Read some of the help files and things associated with it too as there is some good information there to help explain things a little more.
I will stop this post now, but will discuss another good free keyword tool in the next post for you to learn and try out. Keywords are a pain in the neck, but can also be fun when you find something that is high paying and low competition. After the next post we will put them together into what you really should do with your keywords and things will become a little more clear at that point.
