In every blogger’s epic journey, there is a point where the blogger needs to consider a variety of blog topics that make money. After all, the objective of the blog is to provide value to the readership and a source of income for the blogger.
This means that the blogger must decide on a series of blog topics that are commercial in nature where they have the opportunity to match the traffic with the offer they present. This can often be the difference between targeting “information keywords” or targeting “buyer keywords”.
A person using Google searching for “how do I cure my headache?” has a totally different objective from the search from someone else who is searching for “cheapest iPhone 4 provider in Dallas.”
To decide upon a keyword to target that has a reasonable level of competition and a degree of commerciality, then you may need to consider the competitiveness of your market. For example, in the Internet Marketing niche, many keywords are very competitive since there are many bloggers with the skill to do proper keyword research and optimise their blog posts accordingly. Many even have a good link building strategy to build their blog’s authority and traffic sources over the long term.
If you want a competitive advantage, it’s definitely a good idea to learn how to strategically target keywords, optimise your content and build links to your web pages and website. This will help you to build your traffic and blog authority over time.
There are certain tools and training online that can certainly help you to learn SEO and build a blog around a targeted set of keywords. Many of these are free WordPress plugins and others are premium WordPress plugins.
Short Tail v Long Tail Keywords
To decide upon keywords, you’ll need to understand the concept of “short tail” and “long tail” keywords and then use a tool such as Market Samurai to investigate your keyword targeting more thoroughly. I go over this in detail in The Profit Share Membership Area. I’ll let a great blogger, Gideon Shalwick, explain the concepts in the video below.
I’m sure you’ll agree, there’s some great content there to help you to determine how competitive and commercial your target keywords are.
You simply shouldn’t need to guess and hope that your keywords are going to generate traffic and sales. With comprehensive and smart keyword research using a powerful software product and top quality SEO training like Market Samurai, WordPress plugins such as WordPress SEO, SEO Pressor and SEO Smart Links, you can build a series of blog topics that make money with much less effort and a greater level of predictability and comfort. There’s definitely a way of yielding better results for each blog post you create.
Take action and let me know what you think in the comments. What smart ways do you have to create blog topics that make money?
To Your Online Success,
The Profit Share
The mutt's nuts or the dog's drivel? I double dare you to leave a comment! :-)
That video is great, and it makes perfect sense. I am currently concentrating on the business/technology niche and my longtail kewywords are things like “brand model number”. These are reasonably easy to rank for. I tried targeting a mainstream niche some time ago and failed miserably!
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Hi Matt,
Mainstream niches can be difficult to rank for when you’re up against a heavyweight that’s been established for years with a customer base and authority already in place.
For competitive topics, it’s best to go for the long tail keywords which can often be more commercial anyway. You can do so much research with the Google Keyword tool, but Market Samurai is the tool you’re after to make things so much easier.
The Samurai dojo is all the SEO and keyword research training that you’ll ever need.
Keep at it dude. Measure, monitor and adjust. :-)
Wayne
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Hi,Wayne Lambert thanks you,!!!WOW WOW WOW what an incredible list. I am new to blogging and have wanted to find fellow bloggers exploring the human potential, blog.I wish you a wonderful day!
Welcome to my blog John. :-)
Thanks for your comment and kind words.
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I’ve been in a keyword research study this past few days through different blog post. Will there be an instance that all long tailed keywords be occupied and owned by authority sites. I guess the starters will be dead.
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Hi Emman,
Long tail keywords won’t always be the answer to getting traffic from search engines.
Eventually new factors will feature in search algorithms such as social status and longevity of content.
It’s up to you to get backlinks from some of these authority sites to get some much needed pagerank.
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Hi Wayne,
Helpful article. I think that targeting long-tail words is a great idea, but my question is – don’t you want to also go after some short tail words? Eventually I’d like to be on the first page for some of the “big” words in my niche…
Kyle
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Hi Kyle,
Welcome to my blog.
Yes, the less competitive your niche is, then the sooner you can move onto shorter tail keywords.
It depends upon how tightly focused the content on your blog is really.
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Comprehensive list, nice to bookmark for tips. My only concern is that if too many of these tactics are used at once, the site may start to look like cluttered spam. This was very helpful and timely, as I am researching more long tail keywords for a specific niche blog.
Cheers!
Welcome to my blog Andy. :)
Not sure why a blog might look like cluttered spam from using targeted keywords. You can use short and long tail keywords on your blog to build for the long term.
In a competitive niche, use long tail keywords for fast traffic and short tail keywords for longevity once the blog has authority with Google and other search engines.
In a less competitive market, you might own long tail keywords for the future but be able to get a good slice of traffic from shorter tail keywords.
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Various software have been developed for distinguishing between short tail and long tail keywords to ease out the job.
Hi Anshuman,
Welcome to my blog. :)
What software would that be then?
Wayne Lambert invites you to read Blogging Strategy: How to Blog Strategically
Good recommendation of the book The Long Tail. Thanks for the video.
I salute your honesty here Wayne that blog is created mainly to make money online. But in order to have sales, the topics must be the ones needed by the buyers and most searched. Tools are really helpful especially Market Samurai. Also, you can put yourself in the shoes of the buyers/researchers. What keywords would you type if you are in their shoes?
Keep these awesome posts coming Wayne!
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No worries Andrew. I hope you read the book.
There are plenty of really great tools out there. I have plenty of them. See what I mean in the post below. :)
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