Do you want to drive maximum traffic to your site? Do you strive for search engine domination? Do you want to rank on page one for as many relevant keywords as humanly possible in your niche?

Well, sure – who doesn’t? If your answer is yes (and I really have no doubt it is), then you need to learn how to find profitable keywords. Finding keywords will not come easy to you at first. But practice makes perfect, and the more you try your hand at finding keywords to build your blog around, the better you will get at coming up with the most profitable keywords in your niche.

In finding hot keywords, there are three things you need to keep in mind.

1. The keywords you find must be one that people search for, to ensure that your site will get traffic. It doesn’t do you any good to optimize for a search phrase that no one is looking for!

2. The keywords you find should not be very heavily targeted, so you will get a better chance to rank highly in the search engines for it. (Tip: Keyword phrases often easier to rank for than single keywords. We call these long tail keywords.)

3. The keyword (or keyword phrase) that you use should be a problem-solving or solution-offering keyword. Most people who search on the internet are looking for a solution to a problem.  Keywords of this type are known as ‘money’ keywords. They are searched for by people who are already in a buying mindset. They are looking for solutions; they are willing to pay for it; and they are simply using the search engines to consider their options.

For instance, if you are thinking of entering the acne niche, you might want to look for keywords like, ‘how to treat acne’ or ‘acne cure’ or ‘treatment for acne’.  That way, you will be targeting traffic that is already in a buying mindset.

Now, there are many keyword tools available. Some of them can be used for  free, and others cost money to use. Despite what you may have read somewhere, many gurus continue to use Google’s keyword tool. It’s a great tool, and it’s 100% free: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. This tool was designed to assist advertisers with Google Adwords (pay-per-click) promotions, but you can use it simply for your research.

Here is how you use it.

1. Type in your niche’s most general keywords and then hit the ‘Get keyword ideas’ button. The tool will then churn out different keywords and show you useful data relating to them – the number of times a certain keyword was searched in Google last month (left column), for example, or the approximate average of searches on the keyword monthly (right column).

2. Take a look at the column on the right that I’ve circled. It’s a good rule of thumb to focus on finding keywords with a minimum of 1,500 searches monthly. Pick out the keywords you think show promise.

3. Make a Google search of all the keywords you found. Add an ” on each side of the keyword you will be searching. This will narrow your search results to include just the entire keyword phrase “google adwords”, not just “google” or “adwords”.

The results that Google gives you will show you the level of competition that you will have to fight for top search engine ranking for. It’s always a good idea to aim for keywords with 50,000 results or less. Do not be too cocky about taking on competition. The heavier the competition, the more difficult it will be for you to move to Google’s first page.

It’s not difficult to search for top keywords. It just takes a little time and focus.

Of course, if you intend to make money through an Adsense campaign, you may also want to take a look at the Estimated Average Cost Per Click of the keywords that you find. The average CPC gives you an estimate how much you can expect to be paid for the keywords that you use in your campaign.

Now you know how to find profitable keywords. Use what you know to start searching. Good luck!

P.S. If you’d like to get into more advanced SEO training, Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Training Program recently re-opened to new members. Aaron Wall is highly respected in the industry, and his SEO Training Program has tons of loyal followers. It’s an investment, but a worthy one if you’re serious about doing your own SEO work. It also comes with a money-back guarantee. I’ve been wanting to join for some time, so I’m psyched that the doors are open again! Check out SEO Book here. (this is an affiliate link, so if you join through my link you’ll help me be able join too!)

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In the online world, you hear a lot about search engines. If you’re new to the internet you may be wondering what a search engine is and how it works. This post is a quick introduction to search to make it easy to understand.

A search engine is a tool for us to use when we’re trying to find something online. It’s like an index in the back of a book. We use it to find something specific, like a particular website or an answer to a problem.

Here’s how a search engine works:

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. No, not real, creepy-crawly spiders. In search engine world, a spider is an automated program that is run by the search engine. A spider visits a website, reads the content on the site, makes note of the links that the site contains, then returns all that information back to a central data hub, where the data is indexed. Spiders visit sites frequently, sometimes daily, to check to see if anything has changed or if new information has been added.  A spider has the capability of indexing millions of pages each day. That’s a lot of information to keep track of! Do you get the connection between a spider and “the web”?

So what search engines do we use? Well, there’s a few, but the most popular search engine, by far, is Google. It’s simple to use, and pretty accurate.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page. A search engine such as Google has a complicated algorithm that determines which information is most important for a particular keyword search. The most important results of a search show up first in the search results.  Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

That’s the quick explanation of what a search engine is and how it works. Companies spend billions of dollars every year trying to optimize their websites to manipulate the search engines so that they show up at the top of the search results list. They also spend just as much money for paid placement, which is the act of actually paying Google for top placement.

It’s big business, for sure. But if you’re a business owner, and you don’t show up in a Google search, you’re not going to get much business on the web.

I hope you found this post helpful! 

If you liked this, you might like these too:

1. What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
2. How to Find Profitable Keywords for your Niche
3. What is SBI and Does it Really Work?

Simply put, Search Engine Optimization helps search engines find you on the web. Good search engine optimization ensures that your site ranks high in search results. Why is that important? Because it’s the top results that get the most traffic. If you’re not being found at least on the first page, you won’t see the traffic you want. It’s better to be in the top 10 results, and if you can secure a number one or two spot, you’re in terrific shape.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, involves a few different things:

• Keyword research. This involves researching and choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site.

• Well-written, targeted content. You’ll use your keywords in your page title, meta description, meta tags, navigation, and in your content.

• Link Building. Google loves links, so you’ll want to develop a strategy to get quality inbound links to your site.

How do these elements help search engines find you?

Search engines use complicated formulas called algorithms to determine what comes up in search results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings. Algorithms differ between search engines, as well. You may find a web page that ranks #1 in a particular search engine but #200 in another search engine.

By the way – these algorithms are kept top secret, and they change frequently. It’s the search engine’s job to provide visitors with accurate search results, so by keeping this information secret it keeps things real, and spammers can’t clog those results.

Tip: Don’t pay someone to submit your sites to search engines.

A common misconception is that you need to submit a new website to the search engines. This is simply not true, so don’t ever pay anyone money when they offer to do this for you. Search engines have “spiders” who crawl the web regularly and will find your site on their own. It typically takes a few days to a few weeks for the search engine “spiders” to completely crawl your site.  If you want to speed things up a bit, a few quality inbound links from a well established site will help the spiders find you a little quicker.

How can I do SEO if I don’t know how?

You can do the research yourself and make the changes to your site, or you can hire someone to do it for you. It really depends on your goals and your budget. SEO can take up a lot of your time, but it’s also expensive to hire someone to do it for you.

A good search engine marketing and promotion company will review your site’s plan and make recommendations on how to improve your traffic and rankings. It’s not uncommon for your search engine optimization expert to work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time. Some firms also provide ongoing consultation and traffic monitoring. By monitoring your traffic you can see what’s working and what’s not.

P.S. – If you’d like some help with your website and don’t want to pay a fortune, contact me!

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1. What is a Search Engine and How Does it Work?
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SEO for Firefox is an extension for the Firefox browser, developed and provided by SEOBook.com.  It provides super-useful marketing data which makes it easy to see what your competition is up to.  This is a great tool for developing SEO strategy and tactics to improve your page ranking with both Google and Yahoo search engines, and it won’t cost you a dime.

First things first, if you’re not using Firefox as your browser, download and install it.  Once that’s done, the next step is to visit the SEO for Firefox plug-in page and follow the directions to install.  You’ll have to be using Firefox to install SEO for Firefox correctly.

Most likely Firefox will ask you if you want to allow the installation by dropping down a little bar at the top of the page.  Click allow and continue.  A menu will pop up in the middle of the page – click Install Now.

Next, it will ask you to restart Firefox.  Go ahead and do that.  Once Firefox restarts do a quick Google or Yahoo search on anything that pops into your mind.  Search snowboarding, for example.  If SEO for Firefox is working, you’ll see a menu of information under each search result.  The information will contain the following for each site:

• Page Rank
• Google Cache Date
• Age
• del.icio.us
• Links
• .edu Links
• .gov Links
• Page Links
• .edu Page Links
• Technorati
• Alexa
• Compete.com Rank
• Compete.com Uniques
• Trends
• Cached
• DMOZ
• Bloglines
• dir.yahoo.com
• Botw
• Whois

Now what if you’re not doing competitive research?  What if you’re just browsing online?  With one click you can turn off SEO Firefox and that very long list of data points is gone.  How?  At the bottom of your browser page, in the far right hand corner youíll see the SEO Firefox button. To turn it on click it and it’ll show up in full color.  To turn it off, click it and it’ll turn black and white.

SEO Firefox also offers a bit of customization.  You can choose:

• Auto – which automatically pulls in all the data points whenever you search with Google or Yahoo
• On-Demand – which shows you the available data categories but not the results unless you click on them.
• Hidden – which enables you to hide data you do not fine useful. For example if the Whois information is irrelevant to you then you can hide that date when you search.

To change your settings (they’re automatically set for On-Demand), simply visit the Tools menu on your Firefox toolbar.  Click on it and in the drop down menu choose SEO for Firefox Options. Youíll then see another drop down menu where you can choose your settings.

Bottom Line: SEO Firefox is a terrific tool for internet marketers looking to stay ahead of their competition. Check it out!

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1. What is a Search Engine and How Does it Work?
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