This isnt a post about finding a niche for your blog, I am going to assume you already have a blog up and running and are looking for some high demand low competition keywords and keyword phrases.

Note: Before you begin, if you’re NOT 100% serious about getting your website to the top of Google, Yahoo, and MSN, don’t read another word. Only read on if you plan to put everything I will be teaching you into action.

If you’re anything like I was when I first began blogging, you’ve probably created a brand new Blog.  And then You did what everyonelse did: submitted it to a few search engines and hoped that people would auto-magically show up at your site and buy whatever it is you were selling. WRONG huh !!!

So typically what happens is this:
A little time passes maybe a few weeks and only a few stray searchers pop into your Blog, you decide to try and “optimize” your website around your main keyword in hopes that you just might rank well in 1 of the millions of search engines. Another couple of weeks go by and still no luck.

At this point you probably give up and decide to either build another website around a different target market or just lose all hope and quit. Well, news flash, as you’ve probably figured out by now, this is not the way to go about doing things.

Let me give you a specific example of what your very first steps MUST be when creating any website… no matter what the subject matter is. And this is something I wish I had of known or had someone show me. One of my first ideas was to do a weight loss blog, my girlfriend was struggling at the time with her weight, (it’s a chick thing I know). So I figured I had a very real insight and could get content via her torment with losing wieght, get her insights and all the rest.

Know what , why don’t we just do that our example, let’s create a weight loss related blog live right here on this blog anyone who wants to participate can. ( I get all the money though, hey its my idea so I get all the moolah)

Before we start creating and collecting content for the website, we need to do a little keyword research. This is VERY important and should not be skipped. To do our keyword research we need to visit a few websites.

The first of which should be:
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php?keyword=weight%20loss#results

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

They have a very good keyword tool, and best of all it’s free! Once we are there, we can enter the most generic keyword for our website into the keyword selector tool. In our example, our keyword would be “weight loss”. We get  85,100,000 for “weight loss“ searches for the month of June 2006.

Now that’s a lot of demand for weight loss just on the past month of June 2008! But that’s not all. What about the supply for that hungry demand of people looking for weight loss information, pills, programs, etc?

Well, the way to do that, and by the way this is called finding your competition. Go to Google and type the following (without the quote marks “”) “allinanchor:weight loss”.

Now notice on google where is says Results 78,200,000 for allinanchor:weight loss. Now this is what I call, some SERIOUS competition for the weight loss. If you are just starting and want to use this keyword to optimize your website, forget it! Yes, demand is high, but your supply, or competition, is so high that you can’t even consider optimizing your website for that particular keyword.

This is one of those keywords and niches that is very lucrative but might take for ever to rank for. Using the primary keyword phrase weight loss

So whats the answer then? How do I search for high demand but at the same time less competitive keywords? Very simple. I can give you some off hand data but I have to tell you that now a day SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) got even easier with a new tool.

You can take a keyword with a demand of about 500 to 30,000 searches a month using the seo book keyword tool mentioned above.

Yes you could take one which has over 30,000 searches if you have an unusual supply or competition which is lower than the requirement.

Using allinanchor:keyword on Google you expect to have a search result of 15,000 or less in order to say that you are on safe ground to optimize your website and rank higher, faster and easier.

Let’s review this next example, look on wordtracker down to weight loss foods with 99 searches last month, nice demand!, now lets see our supply or competition for this particular keyword using allinanchor:dotties weight loss zone on Google. Now you can see what we get: 58,700 for allinanchor:weight loss foods So what does this mean? You got it! GO FOR IT! 58 thousand is a bit on the competitive side but certainly we could rank high and fast doing proper use of that keyword on your website.

Looking at another term I find interesting is Weight loss spa:

Heres some information for you to consider adding in to your weight loss blog.

Keyword                                  searches

weight loss spa                      162
spa weight loss                        37
istanbul spa weight loss          18
mexico weight loss spa             8
spa and weight loss vacations   8
weight loss spa arizona             8
weight loss fitness spa              7
dance, fitness, spa, weight loss 6
weight loss body wrap spa        5
weight loss spa in san diego     5
weight loss spa farms               5
weight loss spa spain                5

florida weight loss spa michael moore attended     4
weight loss health spa              4
weight loss spa vacation          4
weight loss body wrap spa in maryland     3
weight loss spa colorado            3
weight loss spa                           3
weight loss spa dubai                 3
weight loss spa in tennessee      3
rated spa weight loss program    3
adult weight loss spa, new england     2
are there any weight loss spa in virginia beach area     2
florida weight loss spa                2
loss weight health spa                 2
lotus med spa weight loss           2
spa and weight loss vacations, orlando     2
spa and weight loss vacations, pittsburgh     2
spa belts rollers saunas and whirlpool for weight loss     2
spa wrap for weight loss               2
weight loss health spa for kids     2
weight loss spa camp, tn              2
weight loss spa egypt                   2
weight loss spa greenville ave dallas tx     2
weight loss spa in mumbay          2
weight loss, spa’s                         2
women’s weight loss spa              2
arizona loss spa weight                1
bay area spa treatment for weight loss     1
bay area weight loss spa treatment     1
dance, fitness, spa, weight loss, yoga, wellness     1
duke university weight loss spa     1
fitness weight loss spa     1
loss spa vacations weight     1
loss weight health spa usa     1
new leaf weight loss wellness and day spa     1
new leaf weight loss wellness and day spa winchester     1
quick weight loss spa diets     1
spa diets weight loss plans     1
spa finder, weight loss spa, florida     1
spa resort weight loss san francisco     1
spa weight loss cincinnati     1
weight loss destination spa arizona     1
weight loss destination spa peoria arizona     1
weight loss health spa     1
weight loss holistic destination spa arizona     1
weight loss medic health spa     1
weight loss obesity spa     1
weight loss spa and vermont     1
weight loss spa for adults     1
weight loss spa help with free stay     1
weight loss spa in maryland     1
weight loss spa north carolina     1
weight loss spa’s     1
weight loss spa thailand     1
weight loss spa treatments     1
weight loss spa treatments nashville, tn     1
weight loss spa vacation close to michigan     1
weight loss spa vacation in wyoming     1
wellnees weight loss spa in new jersey     1
women boomers weight loss spa     1

So there you have it. Always do Step 1 and if it is a pass, move to step 2 and if that is a pass, use it, if it doesn’t pass, go back to step 1 and find another keyword with proper demand and move on to step 2 again. Meet those two very important requirements and you will be able to start the right way.

In the next few days I’ll be back with other means and ways of finding High Demand Low Competition Keywords for Your Blog

Continuing the post about how to find blog niche

I’m still toying with the idea of going into the best fat burner market as a niche blog. I haven’t yet decided if I want to do this with an AdSense blog or an affiliate niche blog or actually produce a report, capture emails to then promote affiliate products. These are all blog monetization methods which I’ll consider once I have done some blog niche research.

So here is how my thinking is going with this none the less. For the past couple of weeks this fat burning niche keeps cropping up in my head and so I thought I would share with you what I have determined about this and perhaps why I think it’s a good health sub-niche. My last post gave you a basic and I mean a very look into this. Read How to find a blog niche

I did a little more keyword research using variations of fat, fat burner, best fat burner on word tracker and using the umbrella phrase finder I mentioned earlier.

Some other tools worth mentioning in doing adequate keyword research are:

SEO Book keyword research tool

Keyword Discovery

Fat burner is just a gargantuan phrase and a huge niche. When that phrase is dropped into Wordtracker the top 100 phrases bring about 1,536 total searches. The top level phrase (fat burner) alone brings in the lions share at 257 searches. So there’s potentially loads of traffic. Though I suspect that this is largely seasonal traffic. I’d have to check this on Google trends to see if it is true or not

The top three results are, 2 and 3 word phrases, which is sort alright but Ideally I’d want to target longer phrases ie; 3 and 4 word phrases. The majority of people make the error of targeting 1 and 2 word phrases.

"such as how do fat burners work"

"best fat burners to lose weight fast"

"most effective fat burner"

so on and so forth.

Heres two good posts to shed some light on these ideas.

One is probloggers: How to herd Organic search traffic to your blog

The other is Jonathan Leger’s: Is it worth ranking for single-term keywords?

There’s two minds on this sort of thing, some say go huge. That is go into a huge market, there’s more profit in a huge market.

And the other side is to go into a sub-niche, or smaller off shoot of the market.

Here are some of my thoughts on this blog niche and perhaps something you may need to consider when choosing a niche for your blog. Along with a few criteria from Dosh Dosh on choosing the right blog niche

DO I have a personal interest in this market? :From my point of view I do because of the fact that I see Child obesity as well as adult obesity as a problem and a big problem at that. I’ve never been obese or over weight so I don’t really have a common ground on this. NOR has my kid been obese or over weight. I do how ever have friends who struggle with weight problems and yo-yo diets,and the health problems that go along with this. SO I have something at least to draw upon and someplace to go to get a personal view point, weight loss tips and excercise plans. (which might also be some keywords I could do research on)

DO I have passion to sustain me to continue writing on this topic. hmm I could say yes for the reason mentioned above.

It just occurred to me that my real focus in this arena is on child, or childhood obesity. See how the research process and refining your area interest works out. I wonder If or how I can work these two niches in as one or meld them together some how.

I’ll continue this post in a few days. In the mean time I’d appreciate any Ideas you might have? discuss below and subscribe to my feed if you can’t make it back in a few days. Don’t forget your free copy FEED POWER.

Are you having a tough time trying to optimize your article content for the search engines?

I have the same or similar problems on an on going basis.

So this morning I have a few quick links to some articles containing some of the better information about getting your articles and blog posts ranked in the search engines with some optimization tips for your blogs and article content.

I often check to see how my this blog ranks on the search engines and then try to figure out from there how to get it to rank better. Lately I have been trying to figure out how to do it by content optimization. So I plugged my main keyword into google to see what the top ten results are.

On the top of page 1 in Google is steve pavlinas blog post how to make money from your blog with Probloggers blog post How bloggers make money from blogs occupying the number 2 position

For my main keyword: make money blogging

How am I ranked by google? Currently on page 4 for the broad term make money blogging

Page 3 for “make money blogging”

Page 1 for “how to make money blogging”

Page 2 for how to make money blogging

When I typed in the primary keyword make money blogging I found as I said steve pavlinas article on top. I clicked through to see what he was doing with the article itself. I found a HUGE post over 7,000 words.

And probloggers article post is 1,359 words.

So just looking at those two criteria for article optimization we can see that article length is an on page SEO factor that influences the search engine placement for your blog post.

Dr Andy Williams of Ezseo has a great newsletter post with a few case studies in PDF format (free download by the way) about google ranking case studies.

The two reports he gives you lay out some interesting conclusions about article optimization for the search engines. Which seem to hold true for both the pavlina and problogger posts.

When you’re writing blog posts or articles for that matter I know you have read and been quoted that they should be between 350 and 800 words. The reason for this is apparent upon close examination. The longer the article or blog (not that longer is neccesarily better - depends on the context of course) the more opportunity you will have to theme the content for your keywords.

It’s not that longer is necessarily better, its just that longer

articles can contain more relevant content.

Again if you follow this conclusion and read the pavlina and problogger posts you find this:

That the longer articles do better in more competitive markets because there is more opportunity on the page to theme your content with your keywords. Andy Williams theory about this is that google just finds these long well themed articles more relevant. He backs up his claim in the case studies.

This is a screen capture of the problogger post, Ive highlighted in

Yellow the keyword term make money

in blue the term Blog and blogging related terms

and in other colours terms related (synonyms) to money ie: earn money, revenue, interest(s), eggs, basket, options, income. There are others that could be considered as synonym terms for example advertise(ing)

If you aren’t listed well on the search engines, you probably will not do well online in general.

Most people don’t know how to get their sites listed on the engines (while others, unfortunately, know too well!). This is a problem for both the merchant or in your case the blogger and customer or the reader. Like me You’ve had the experience of searching for something, finding what looks like a good relevant website/blog on Google, and clicking it - to find a huge article or blog post as good content squatting.

Why do they get ranked high instead of you? Because they know the secrets of search engine placement.

Search engines look for keywords.

These keywords are placed in strategic spots on your page that tell the search engines what your web site is all about. Google and other major search engines are seeking out content on your website/blog relevant to the searches that their customers enter.

For instance, if you sell or blog about Rubik’s cubes, your keyword would be “Rubik’s cube” (okay, it’s sort of a a phrase, but I think you get the idea).

You want people looking for “Rubik’s Cube” to come to your blog.

So does Google. Google makes their money on people being able to find what they’re seeking. And what they’ve found is that most people selling “Rubik’s Cubes” have that phrase sprinkled liberally throughout their home page, and often on subsequent pages of the site.

If you ensure that “Rubik’s Cube” shows up on your page frequently and in appropriate places, Google will rank you higher than your competitor who doesn’t do this.

They would place those keywords everywhere - having perhaps a 50% usage of the keywords. It turned out to be text like: “The Rubik’s cube of the Rubik’s cube go through Rubik’s cube to Rubik’s cube .” Ok that is a bit overblown, but no doubt you have seen BS keyword stuffing done that way.

GO deep or wide with your keywords? 

SO when considering keyword optimization for a blog post or a website should you go deep or wide?

“A broad keyword list is one that has lots of related and lateral keywords, and not just variations of one root keyword”

“it’s so important to go wide FIRST before you go deep, it will assure that you get the maximum amount of traffic and allow you to identify the most profitable sub niches in the market you’re in For this reason, search engines have learned that a really high keyword mention is a sure sign of search engine spam, and they won’t list these sites. Don’t do it.”

Amits post is more tailored to PPC marketing and campaigns but the same applies to writing blog posts and optimizing your content in those blog posts.

So follow the above steps read the linked posts and start thinking more about optimizing your blog posts and website for the search engines and watch your blog or website move up the pages. Hopefully and with a little more attention to detail and some extra work you’ll find your self at number one !!


make money blogging