Search Engine Optimization

Once you have your blog established and are working to get the most
traffic to visit it as possible, you will invariably hear about search
engine optimization, or as it is commonly referred to - SEO. While
search engine optimization sounds pretty daunting, it really is a pretty
simple process to understand. Being mindful of SEO can bring your
blog more visitors, and thus generate more income for you by those
visitors clicking on your AdSense ads.


This eBook will cover the basics on SEO, but know that just like the
actual workings of a search engine; entire books can be written on the
topic! And, as an added frustration, the search engines do not release
exactly how they process their information and index. This means that
everyone trying to optimize their sites for the search engines is doing
a fair amount of guessing and trial and error to see what works for
them.


When looking for something specific online you invariably go to your
favorite search engine and put in the keywords to search for whatever
it is you are looking for. For example, if you want to buy a new golf
club you would likely go to www.google.com and type in “golf club” in
the search box.


Google, the search engine, would then return you a listing of probably
a million or more pages of possibilities. The first website you see on
the search results page is the page ranked #1 with Google; the second
result has the #2 ranking, and so on down the list. With search
engine optimization your main goal is to get to as near the top as
possible of the results pages when someone searches on the keywords
for your blog topic. You want to be on that first page of search engine
results.


When a visitor does a search through a search engine and then clicks
through to your site from there they are referred to as “natural” or
“organic” visitors. They got to your website by a “natural” search
engine search and not through another form of advertising you have
done. Search engine optimization is all about getting you the most
natural visitors to your site as possible. Why? Because these natural
visitors come to you without you doing any work and then click on
your AdSense ads. This gives you the best form of passive income
possible!


The key to good search engine optimization is getting the highest
ranking possible with the least amount of extra work on your part.
When someone searches Google for the keyword which is the topic of
your blog, you want your blog to show up on that first page of results,
nearest to the top as possible. While the search engines use very
complicated and secret algorithms to create their rankings, there are
some simple things you can do to help get your blog up nearer to the
top. You should be posting on your topic and often, building links,
using good keywords and keyword density, tagging your posts and
pinging regularly. Let’s take a moment and look at each of these
suggestions in more detail.

Search Engine Optimization

How Does a Search Engine Work?

Before we can talk about search engine optimization you need to know
and understand the very basics of how a search engine works. While
the process is very mathematical and way more complex than most
people care to know about, I will try and give you a very simple
explanation.


A search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc… sends a “spider”
to a new website. This spider is simply a bit of code, or a program if
you will, which “crawls” the website. Crawling the website is simply a
matter of copying the pages and then downloading a copy of them to
the search engine’s web server.


Once the site has been crawled by the spider, the search engine then
indexes the information from the pages it now has copies of. The
indexing is all about keywords, tags, and what the site itself is all
about.


When you go to www.google.com and put in a keyword to search for,
your “search results” page is based in the indexed pages from this
process.

So, a search engine basically sends a spider to your pages, crawls
them, copies them down to their own server, indexes the information
on them, and then uses their index when someone does a search. It’s
not really that simplistic of a process, but as far as what most of us
need to know that is basically what happens.

Using AdSense for Monetization

Many websites and blogs use AdSense to monetize their sites.
AdSense is good for monetization because it tailors the ads to your site
content. AdSense also allows you to sell space on your site by setting
it up once and then not having think much about it ever again, other
than tweaking a bit the location and side of the AdSense ad blocks
themselves on your site. Passive income is always the best form of
income to have because it frees you up to be working on other things
and sits there in the background making you money.


If you spend a bit of time placing the AdSense ad boxes on your site
when you build it, and then keep your titles and content inline with the
topic of your blog, you can make money with AdSense without much
further thought. AdSense is a great source of passive income. Passive
income is very important and valuable. Passive income is money
which you receive without having to do daily work for it. It is simply
something you set-up once and then sit back and collect your money
from it over time.


One way to publish a successful monetized blog is to find a blog topic
which is fairly unique. Find a unique topic means you do not have a
lot of websites to compete with in the search engines. By doing this
you can generate a lot of natural visitors through search engine
listings and then from those visitors a lot of clicks on your AdSense
ads as well.


There are entire books written on how to find “the” topic to publish the
best monetized blog. However, the easiest way is to simply search for
topics that interest you and see how many page hits sites like Google
return; the lower the number, the better the topic. Understand
however, that everything you search will have a ton of hits. Any
search with results lower than about a two million is probably a great
option for a blog topic. Any search over about ten million is probably
not the best topic to choose.


Trying to get good search engine rankings with a topic like chickens is
much easier than trying to get a high ranking with a topic like
computers. With a topic of computers there are literally millions of
websites; some are very large sites, dedicated to the topic. All of
whom you will have to compete with for rankings! Why try and
compete with IBM and Dell when you can simply find something easier
to blog on? It just doesn’t make sense to try. Stick to the lesser
keywords and you will see better traffic and AdSense income.