SEO is a must when hoping to rank high in the SERPS

This is a quick update on my efforts on getting this blog to rank better in search engine result pages. It all started a few weeks back when I decided to do an experiment. I tried to get as many legitimate and ‘legal’ in the eyes of Google backlinks, pointing back to this site with the keyword “make money blogging”.

Although this is not a high traffic keyword, it is a keyword with a lot f competition. Many blog behemoths are ranked in the first page for make money blogging and I wanted to see, if me, a noob, can get there. I briefly made it a few months back, I stayed on the first page enough time for me to get a screen shot that you can see here: 1st page on Google

I don’t deserve a medal for it because I think it might have been due to what they call the ‘sandbox effect’.

After that brief little stay on the first pages, then my blog plummeted back to the dark depths of the SERPS. I drew out a plan, I stuck to it, I even surpassed my backlink goals, and as a result I am staging a comeback. Ideas and money is currently on SERP 2 for make money blogging. It has been there for almost one week. I am hoping that as more of the links I created get indexed I will rank higher.

If you are interested in SEO and curious to see what I have done to get here read the following

Blog SEO Backlinks
Climbing the SERPS
Blog SEO

Part of my recent plan is to create as many one way links pointing back to this blog with the keyword “make money blogging”. The easiest way to do so is by submitting articles in article databases. My goal was and still is to submit a total of 45 articles that relate to the topic making money blogging. Every article points back to my homepage with the keyword make money blogging and every 15 will point back to different posts with different keywords in different categories. This allows building link popularity for both the home page and internal pages of this site; having more than two links might discourage webmasters from re-publishing those articles, so I stick to two. A few articles I published a couple of months ago have been republished dozens of times giving a series of very valuable backlinks. If you are going about doing some article marketing yourself, try to out together helpful but basic short articles that other webmasters will like and take for their sites. Some SEO experts say that it is better to have the second link with no keyword and advise to only include the URL. I have read conflicting advice regarding this practice, so I am sticking to links with keywords. In terms of length, I am going for 450-500 words per article and in terms of topics I am writing ‘how to’ or ‘tips’ or introductory articles and hoping for the best. You can read a post I wrote about Blogging Tips that will give you a better understanding of how you can structure a similar article.

To get the most out of this process you need to be focused and put a plan together. Have a few topics ready, do the necessary research and decide how to go about writing. One thing to keep in mind is that search engines do not like duplicate content. Therefore, avoid submitting the same article twice. Try to write it in a way that allows changing the paragraphs around, then re-submit it. There are countless tips out there about article marketing. Do some research and expand your horizons, or just stick to the basics outlined here. If you are interested you can read more about my make money blog seo goals. Stay tuned for more updates by subscribing to the feed. I would I also like to know if you have been actie with article marketing and whether there is something else should keep in mind when following the above steps. Feel free to comment.

This is just an update on the whole SEO thing I have been working on. I managed to get this blog on the 1^st page of Google results for the keyword “Make Money Blogging”. Here is the screen shot from earlier today:
It appears on the 5^th spot of the page.

I observed that the results vary when using google.ca and goggle.com but only by a page. I don’t think that my blog will stay on the first page for too long…thousands of sites are competing for those same spots. What is nice to know is that what I have been doing is somehow working. All this has been achieved with a few daily tasks of plain and very simple SEO.

The SERP journey is a hard one. Achieving your goals, getting to where you want to be, can be a difficult and gruelling task that takes time and effort. The destination is to climb as high as possible on the SERP ladder, from one SERP to the next and until page one is reached. This post is an update on a previous one I wrote about the same topic, titled Simple SEO is Paying Off.

The SERP, or in words…search engine result page is where a list of websites is returned after a search query. To start your own SERP journey you need to pick a vehicle, a set of keywords, and do what it takes to keep pushing, climbing, keep that vehicle oiled up and gassed up to keep moving. If you decide not to pay any money to climb this ladder, you will have to make sure that you constantly optimize. I didn’t pay anything, but it is up to you to decide what you are going to do.

I have been working on getting this blog rank well in two sets of keywords. Make Money Blogging and Make Money with Entrecard, both ‘make money’ keywords. One is highly competitive and the other one…not so much. When searching for the keyword ‘make money blogging’ Google returns about 100 pages of results and ranks the list of 1000 websites based on their popularity.

For the keyword ‘make money blogging’ Google returns 1000 results from about 14,600,000. This means that there are 14,600,000 other websites that also have articles or posts about this topic and have these particular words appear within their pages. As a result I have to rank better than a lot of pages to actually get to the top. The competition is fierce. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out that every blog out there has a post or a paragraph with these keywords. I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a blog about making money blogging too. Or if you don’t you have probably thought about it.

Almost a week ago I was impressed when I discovered that this blog was the 5^th result on page 4 for the particular search (You can see what I mean by reading Simple SEO). This means 35^th from the top. It got there after floating anywhere between pages 12 and 18.

Today, I noticed this:

It is second on page 3. So in a week it has climbed a few steps and now is one whole page higher. It climbed from page 4 to 3, from being result 35 to being result 22, in less than a week.

Aside from working on the ‘Make Money Blogging’ keyword I have been working on a similar one but less competitive.

Searching for ‘Make Money with Entrecard’ will only return 140,000 pages. This means that there is only 140,000 pages where these words appear in, in one way or an other.

This blog has continuously been on the first SERP for a while now and holding the number 1 spot strong.

Aside from the number one spot, indirectly I hold a few more. It is my hubpage, my bloggingzoom page and my digg page. It all helps…

I am not getting that much traffic from being number one for this keyword, but I am hoping that as Entrecard becomes more popular the number of people searching for ways to monetize will increase.

I am not going to get in the details on how you can rank well in SERPS, I have already written a ton on the topic. Here are a few things you can do, some…

Simple tips:

1. Get backlinks from indexed and well ranked pages
2. Write a lot
3. Place keywords in Title, in post, in blog
4. Interlink your posts with keywords

You can read more about SEO and how to rank better in SERP’s in the following posts:

Optimize with Webmaster tools

SEO-Keywords and Backlinks

Submit Articles

Or if you are part of Entrecard and you don’t really care for search engine traffic you can always read about ways you can Make Money with Entrecard.

At this point, the only thing left to do is to encourage you to help me keep you posted! Subscribe to my make money blogging feed.

Happy March 8^th!

In this post I will set out to examine the results of my recent optimizations for search engines and show you that what I have been doing actually works. I have put together a one hour daily routine, of writing, optimizing, posting, networking and then some more optimizing and I have managed to climb up the Google ladder quite a bit. I admit that some days, on weekends, I spend a little bit more time….when averaging it out…lets say 1 and ½ hours to two hours to be fair. Anyway, my efforts have been focused primarily on two sets of keywords:

Make Money Blogging, and

Make Money with Entrecard

Not even a month ago I started making my first optimization efforts. The post from February 5 titled “Search Engine Optimization” demonstrates those efforts. Following that post, I wrote a second one on the same topic about Keywords and Backlinks. Then, last week I posted a few tips about Optimizing with Webmaster tools; tips that I had been following as well.

I did not do anything more or anything less. I did what I wrote on the above posts; as much as I could, day in and day out. The tips are simple, straight forward and easy to follow. The most important thing is that they produced results.

How many blogs about making money blogging do you think are out there? An example, there is a total of 5,000 blogs on Entrecard and 398 of them are about making money online, that is almost 10%. I think it is safe to assume that 10% of all blogs out there are about how to make money online or blogging. When searching for the particular set of keywords on Google, you are presented with almost 100 pages of sites. 96 to be exact, I went through them earlier. 100 result pages and 10 results per page, that is a total of 1000. A month ago, I noticed that this blog was hovering between pages 13 and 15. Then after a month of doing these simple but very important little things, my blog shows up at page 4. Take a look:

It is the 5^th result on page 4 which means 35^th from the top. Not page 1, but still way better than page 13.

If you have been reading this blog, then you will know by now that I like Entrecard. I like Entrecard because it brings in traffic and makes me money at the same time. On average about $10 dollars a day. Not a lot but it is a steady source of income. I am not going to get in the specifics here but you can get a better idea by reading the post Make money with Entrecard. After writing that post, it appeared on page one then disappeared and then reappeared on page 4 of Google for the particular search. Then today I noticed this:

Both my posts on Entrecard, Make money with Entrecard and Entrecard Tips are results number 1 and 2. I don’t know how these results will fluctuate over the next few days but what I do know is that I will continue to do what I am doing, as well as learn more on search engine optimization.

Let me keep you posted. Subscribe to my feed.

Simple SEO- Google Webmaster Tools

One day I would like this blog to get the majority of its visitors through search engines rather than social networking and bookmarking sites. There are a few reasons for that:

Number one reason is that if a site is well set up for search engines then I can ‘set it and forget it’; meaning that visitors will keep coming in, months even years down the line. If I optimize this blog in the best possible way then I don’t necessarily have to be active in social networking sites for example. I can leave things alone and focus on other things, other ways to make or spend money or have some more free time to just relax.

To read up on other reasons why optimizing your site/blog for search engines is a good idea you can read an older post regarding The Good Kind of Traffic.

So today I am going to write about something I have been meaning to write about for a few weeks. I am not going to present a secret or the most helpful advice regarding SEO (Search Engine Optimization)….I am just going to write about a few things anyone can do to get better results.

Simple, ‘dummy proof’ advice

Google Webmaster Tools

To activate this tool you need to have a gmail account. Then after you sign in, search for the tools in the try something new section. Sign up for Webmaster Tools and you are ready to go. Unfortunately this will not be an interactive tutorial where you can follow certain steps and, do a few things and see results right away. If you are signing up for the service now, it might take a few days for you to see what I will be talking about here.

Once you sign up and set up your site start by getting in your Dashboard, then select the site you want. You will then be taken to the next page, the overview:

You can see various statistics here like HTTP errors, how many times your page was not found, and how many of your URLS where restricted by robots.txt….All great information but for someone who knows more about this stuff. I said earlier that this post will present a few simple tips. I want to focus on the Statistics tab. Once clicking on this tab you will be redirected to the following page.

Then click on ‘Top Search queries’

This ‘magic’ page is full of great advice. It is like a palm ready to be read by a palm reader…. It is great because it shows you the most popular search queries that list your site as a result.

On the left side you can find the top search queries in which your blog, in this case my blog, appeared. The # ranks the results based on frequency, the %....yes you guessed right, the percentage those searches represent from the total amount of searches, the Query is the keyword used, and the position is the position your page had in that particular search. Have in mind that Google presents results in batches of ten. So if the page is positioned at 11 it means it is at the second page of results.

On the right side you can see on which searches your results got clicked in, at what position they where when that happened and how many times did that happen.

So what?

Well there are many potential uses for this information.

Why is this information so important?

It is important because you can learn:

1. All the keywords your site does well in
2. How well it does for each corresponding keyword
3. Which ones get clicked more
4. Which post shows up for the particular search
5. Which post gets on the front page of a search more often

Another thing you can learn is that your blog can rank high for typos…

Anyway, after I found out that I had results in the first page for certain Google searches for a particular keyword 3 weeks ago, I tried a few things got those posts ranked higher and got more hits from Google!

Three weeks ago I noticed that my blog appeared in a search for a phrase that had the word Entrecard, you can see that the exact phrase was: “Entrecard code won’t validate”.

The post that showed up for that search was a post I had written about Entrecard a while back titled Entrecard Tips. So I went back to that post, made it longer, added the particular keyword a few more times, changed the title to Entrecard tips, linked to it from other posts on my blog, submitted a few articles in databases linking back to this post with the keyword Entrecard Tips and two weeks later I got the post about Entrecard Tips on the first page. That post gets me the most visitors from Google. It is not that many hits, but it is still something better than before and way better than nothing.

So to get more traffic from Google you have to

1. Find which posts or articles do better
2. Go back and make them longer, add more content. Spruce them up, write more in every paragraph, edit them, make them helpful and informative
3. Increase the frequency of the particular keyword that got you there in the first place. Don’t over do it though, keep a maximum of 5-7 keywords for every 100.
4. Revamp the title, make it simple and catchy. Add the keyword there as well, if you haven’t already
5. Add a few links on some of your other posts with the desired keyword pointing back to that post. (Keywords and Backlinks)
6. Write a new post about a similar topic with links to the target
7. Submit articles in databases with links pointing back to the one you want to get to rank higher

Do this for a few

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Number 1 on Google!

A couple of days ago I wrote an article on how to make money with Entrecard. One or two days later I used Google to search for those keywords and voila:

Result number 1, on page 1.

I was impressed. My post was the number one result! Then a few days later, my post is nowhere to be found. I clicked through a few pages of results, 1,2,3,4….nothing, it had disappeared. I can’t explain the reasons why this happened but it might be because Google penalized me for something. No sweat!

The point I am trying to make is that even if your post or blog does not necessarily show up on the first page of the results for a particular keyword, there are a few ways to get it out there. To at least get some visitors to your particular article through search engines without it, the article, showing up.

The way to do so is by submitting your article in databases and having your articles with your links show up.

When you submit and article in one of these databases you can embed your links. These articles will be stored in the database, usually ranking high because they are trusted sites by Google. In addition to that there are tons of webmasters out there that are constantly searching for new content to publish. If your article is well written and they take it and post it on their site, you will get an awesome extra backlink. Just think about it, if you write and publish 5 good articles and they get picked-up by 2 webmasters each that is a total of:

5 backlinks from the article database

10 more from the publishers, for a total of 15!

Some databases take time to publish an article, up to two weeks, so don’t expect immediate results. It could take a bit of time. I don’t care; I see it as investing some time for the future of this blog.

If you focus your efforts in writing articles around a particular set of keywords pointing back to a particular relative post of yours then that post will rank higher and higher. There is no rocket science here; just posting….You can get automated software to do this, but I prefer the good old painful and free way.

Article Databases

There are tons of content/article databases out there. Take a post of yours, change it around a bit and submit it. What do you have to gain? Well backlinks that will down the line result in higher rankings. To get a better idea on how the process works you can read more on the topic by checking out an older post of mine on Keywords and Backlinks.

You can start doing so right away. Fit it in your weekle blogging routine. Save copies of your post in a word file, once a week take every post, enhance it with your links and keywords, make it a bit shorter and submit it. Cutting it up a bit is a good way to go because you don’t want to give out all the information in the article you want to submit, adda link to your blog or particular post and submit it.

Some of the databases allow 1 link, some allow more. Depends. For some you will need some basic knowledge of HTML. It is not that hard, just see how I do it, I have and example written out at the same older post, keywords and backlinks.

Once you have your articles ready then you’re off to submit.

Here are some databases I submit articles to:

goarticles.com

ezinearticles.com

articlecity.com

amazines.com

webarticles.com

article-directory.net

articledashboard.com

In most of the above you will need to create an account. It is advised to have all your info handy…your e-mail, a name, your website address as well as information regarding your article (keywords, title, categories). Visit the first one and create an account. You will get the idea. Write everything on a text file so you can just copy paste for the next one.

Hub Pages

From the hubpages about page:

“HubPages is the leading online publishing ecosystem with easy-to-use publishing tools, a vibrant author community and underlying revenue-maximizing infrastructure. Hubbers (HubPages authors) earn money by publishing their Hubs (content-rich Internet pages) on topics they know and love, and earn recognition among fellow Hubbers through the community-wide HubScore ranking system. The HubPages ecosystem provides a search-friendly infrastructure which drives traffic to Hubs from search engines such as Google and Yahoo, and enables Hubbers to earn revenue from industry-standard advertising vehicles such as Google AdSense, Commission Junction and the Amazon Affiliates program.”

To learn more just check out my two articles on Hubpages:

Make Money with Entrecard

Your own domain

Yes I have published articles that point back to my blog. They are teaser articles for the bigger versions that ‘reside’ here. These rank high in search results,(not the first one, it was published today….it takes some time), and potentially can get you a steady stream of traffic. Hubpages is a search engine favourite so any sites you create, any articles you post (called Hubs) are quickly crawled by search engines. There is no limit on how many Hubs you can create. Don’t miss out on Hubpages because, as you probably read from the quote they can be monetized! If you start getting into article submission, you should start submitting articles through hubpages, because it is easy and it will help you get a better idea of how things work. Hubpages is an article submission database that gives incentives to the writers. The only downside is that for every article you publish you will only get one backlink because they can’t be republished.

Don’t forget to check out my hubs.

Make Money with Entrecard

Your own domain

In addition to Hubpages there is BloggingZoom…

BloggingZoom

BloggingZoom not a mainstream content publishing medium. It is geared primarily towards bloggers. Bloggingzoom publishes content on its first page. In order for something to get on the first page it has to collect enough votes from other bloggers. For an article of yours to get on the first page and be “showcased to the masses” as the about page specifies, it has to collect votes. So other blogger decide if your post is worthy of being showcased and the extra traffic. The feature I like the most about Bloggingzoom is that you don’t have to rewrite your post, write an article or anything like that. Once you become a member you can just bookmark your existing post on your blog and it automatically gets featured. All you need to do is write a short description, tag it and you are ready to go. Once submitted your post will sit in the upcoming section. Personally, I haven enjoyed much traffic from bloggingzoom. Mind you I haven’t submitted may posts. What I enjoy most about this service however is the fact that every submitted article/post gets ranked well on Google and I get some indirect search engine traffic which I can’t complain about.

If you are still concerned about getting visitors to yoru blog, or even which kind of traffic is better, social media or search engine traffic you might find my other post helpful. The one that raises the question:

Money Making Traffic.

So there you go…

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This is the first post with a photo on this blog. I took this photo when I was in France…I think it is quite funny, to say the least. The reason why I am posting this photo, is that I am arriving at a cross road, a “blogging cross road” to be exact.

The reason for all this blabbering is the dilemma I am facing; a “traffic effectiveness dilemma”. The number of visits has been increasing, the number of clicks have been increasing, the income has been increasing (I am still in same tax bracket unfortunately…) but it is still not enough, should I keep doing what I am doing or should I change my course of action?

To some extent I am happy with the traffic this blog is getting, 100-150 daily unique visitors is not that bad. Ideally, I would like traffic to increase. I shouldn’t say traffic but readers, i.e. visitors that actually read my content, people who actually find these posts helpful. Even when it comes to the visitors that read this blog, they are not all the same. By that I mean, that some visitors keep coming back, they write comments, participate, link to my posts, point out their posts so I can link to them and so on. Then, there is the other kind of visitors, people who are new to blogging. When they visit they read and possibly learn from what I have done, what I do, how I do it and possibly their blogging endeavours their firsts steps in making money blogging are made a bit easier.

The main source of traffic for this blog has been, and is, Social Networking and Bookmarking sites. Although, my main source of traffic at this moment is social networking and bookmarking sites, eventually I would like that to change. My goal is to get more and more search engine traffic. Think about it…Entrecard for example, is where most of the visitors come from. I get 50 to 100 visits a day from Entrecard, at least. Some stay a second, some 2 and some spend more time, up to 15 minutes reading my posts. Overall, the average time spent on this blog is less than a minute, around 45 seconds. The bounce rate is over 85%. Which means easy come easy go. That’s fine…I am not complaining about Entrecard traffic. Traffic is traffic, Entrecard brings in visitors, but it does not bring that many readers, search engines do.

Search engine visitors came here because they where actually looking, searching for the information offered. Although the number of visits have been considerably lower, these visitors are readers. They spend over 10 minutes here, they view at least 2-3 pages and they don’t bounce that much. Search engine traffic bounces at a rate of 25%. And when they do, they don’t bounce to the next Entrecard blog….They click on other things. Do you see what I mean?

If I was the only person in the world that wrote about making money online, or making money blogging, I wouldn’t have a problem. I would write what I had to write; slap on a few ads, optimized the site for search engine traffic, sit back and watch the visitors and the pennies roll in.

Sadly, this is not the case. There are countless ‘make money blogs’ out there. I bet you have one too!

So how can I, how can you get a bigger piece of the pie?

Think about it….I can easily get 100 hits a day just from Entrecard. I can climb the ranks of the Make Money Online blogs with just 30 minutes of “work” a day at the most. If I can do it, you can do it, anyone can. I have written an Entrecard tips post in the past. Climbing the ranks, means more credits which translates in more advertising, and results in even more Entrecard traffic. Ok that’s fine. But what are we achieving here? There are 4,000 blogs on Entrecard, that’s great. At most 4,000 members, which I doubt because some people have a few blogs, but still… that’s only 4,000 potential visitors. Even if you are one of the top 10 blogs, what cut of the 4,000 members/visitors or readers would you be getting? Don’t get me wrong I like Entrecard, what I am trying to say is that there are thousands more if not millions of bloggers out there, who are not part of Entrecard or other social networking sites that could be visiting your ‘make money online’ or any other kind of blog and are not.

I am not dropping Entrecard, and I am not suggesting that either. My conclusion and suggestion is not to focus all your efforts in getting traffic from Entrecard or other similar sites. Keep writing, optimize your content and always have in mind that even all of the social networking sites combined will help you approach a tiny fraction of the number of possible readers out there.

Since my last posts about search engines and keywords, the position of this blog has moved slightly upward and it is now floating between page 8 and 9 when searching for Make Money Blogging on Google. It was on 8 then 9 and perhaps 10 by now. It is at page 10 or 11 for Yahoo. Either way, it has moved up quite a few pages, from page 21 a few weeks ago. Make money blogging is a pretty tough keyword to rank high in, so I shouldn’t complain. Eventually I would like this blog to be at least on the 5^th page for ‘make money blogging’ searches. Then I will proceed to optimize for the next one, the next key word. Moving up in search result pages should be pursued with as much effort, if not more, as getting known in any other social networking sites/communities. Because as days and weeks go by, the number of search result pages poor saps looking for advice on how to make money blogging keeps decreasing the number of new readers will keep increasing. Till then I will try and maintain a balance in my efforts. I will keep being active in the blogging communities, but at the same time keep writing and optimizing.

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Keywords

The term keyword refers to words that relate to your topic, words that are ‘keys’ for getting to your blog. If you need to find flowers then you type “flowers” in Google and you are presented with relative results. If you have a blog about flowers then you have to write about flowers, have the word appear at least a few times, so Google or other search engines, can assume that your blog is about flowers. In my case, my blog is about how to make money blogging, so you will see these words appear over and over in my posts, titles, links and so on. It is advised that your keywords should be 5% of the words in every article or post. You can also use your keywords in your tags; use them to label your categories and widgets.

There is also an argument to be made on how more content helps your blog rank better in searches. The more content search engines have to crawl the more pages you will end up having featured for a particular search. More content means more keywords and so on…

In a nutshell, fill your blog with desired keywords, have links from other sites/blogs pointing to your blog with the desired keywords, search engines crawl and search engine visitors will follow.

Links

I want this blog to rank higher for Make Money Blogging searches, so when I do a link-trade, or buy a link on another website or blog, I ask too have make money blogging as the keywords.

The link looks something like this in html,

<*a href="http://www.ideasandmoney.info”/>Make Money Blogging <*/a>

Replace the ideasandmoney.info with your address and “Make Money Blogging” with your keyword and you are good to go. Don’t forget to take the * in the begging and in the end. I placed them so the code shows up as code and not as a link.

It is recommended that you do your own linking as well, link to older posts of your in your archives. Links to your achieved posts will help get more of your pages indexed. As search engines crawl your site, they will inevitably visit your older posts and consequently have these pages indexed.

Since blogs are free to set up and it is relatively easy to do so you should set up other blogs yourself and have keywords pointing back to your main blog. I have done this by setting up one through blogger. I haven’t been posting much, but it is there and there is a link pointing to this one. I won’t bother linking to it because I want to keep the link as a one way link.

You can also find sound advice on building back links at jtpratt.com

I found this tool to check your link popularity at this Adsense blog

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In the past month this blog has received approximately 4% of its total visits from search engines. I am not complaining, this is my first blogging attempt….

Nevertheless, I am not satisfied, at all.

Ideally, I want search engines to bring in the most traffic. The higher it’s ranked in search engine searches and as it moves up in the searches, the easier it will be for potential visitors, readers to get to this blog. Although I haven’t been focused on moving up in the search results, I must be doing something right…

When I started, (two months ago) this blog did not appear in search engine searches. I added my URL to Google’s list, Goggle crawled my pages and I started turning up in searches. Initially, I tried searching for keywords in my posts and titles, but this blog was nowhere to be found. The only way to find it by searching was to search for my URL: www.ideasandmoney.info.

About a month into my blogging experience, I noticed that out of nowhere this blog started turning up in searches. Searched for certain keywords that I believe are relevant, keywords that I think people who might find my posts interesting might search for. Two weeks ago I searched for Make Money Blogging in Google. This blog was at page 21. This means that in order for someone to get to this blog, they had to go through 210 websites/blogs that are about making money blogging. That is not that bad considering that there are far more websites and blogs out there about making money blogging. In Entrecard alone there are over 300.

A week later, last week I searched for “make money blogging” again. This time my blog was just barely on page 15. It was the last entry in that page. In the last few days it has moved up a few spots and is the third one on page 15. You can check for yourself:

Make money blogging

A day later I was at page 14.

Today it is at page 13. Click here

Ideally I would like to be on page one.

In the following post I will outline what I have done and what I will continue to do to move up and closer to the top. Over the past few months I have been taking a few baby steps here, and a few there. The next post will have sound advice, a list of things I have done and things I will continue to do to get on page 1 of Google’s results for Make Money Blogging.

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I just searched using Google. I wrote the title of one of my articles and it was listed on number one, number two and number 3.

In order to achieve this you must post articles in different databases with your back link. It is not that hard and if you fit it in your daily routine you are guaranteed long term results. As the number of links to your blog increases, down the line visits will increase.

Hub Pages

There are many benefits to joining Hubpages.
Hubpages is a search engine favorite so any sites you create, any articles you post (called Hubs) are quickly crawled by search engines. There is no limit on how many Hubs you can create. You can even link back to your blog for increased traffic ;).
Aside from the hub rankings and the social networking features on Hubpages there is also some money to be made. You receive a % of all ads shown on your Hubpages. They use 3 Affiliate programs. Adsense, Ebay and Amazon. If your not an affiliate of any of these programs you can sign up right through Hubpages. If you create several hubs, post several articles, traffic and revenue can start to add up.

I posted an article on Search Engine Submission on Hubpages.

Submit Articles on Databases

Another thing you can do is to submit your articles on databases. Enhancing a post of yours, adding more words, optimizing the keywords, adding a link to your blog and then submitting it to databases regularly can and will increase visits to your blog. The more links that are out there pointing to your blog the better your search engine rankings will be. Also, submitting articles makes them available to other bloggers to post on their blogs increasing your back links.

Here are some databases I submitted articles to:

goarticles.com
ezinearticles.com
articlecity.com
amazines.com
webarticles.com
article-directory.net
articledashboard.com

In most of the above you will need to create an account. So have all your info handy and the information regarding your article (keywords, title, categories). Once you submit you will have to wait until it gets approved.

To read up on what other things I have done to increase traffic to this blog click here.

Let me keep you posted! Feel free to subscribe to my feed.

Submitting your blog to different search engines can, in the long run, get your site featured in searches for particular keywords in your text. Optimizing your blog for better results is a science in itself and is not a topic that I know a lot about. So at this point, I will just post about which search engines I have submitted this blog at.

Although manual submission can be a grueling task, not having to pay anything in the end, makes doing it a bit more pleasant.

Before proceeding on submitting I would suggest you write down all the information relating to your blog, i.e. URL, Title, Description, Keywords and just copy paste accordingly. Some ask for them and some don’t. Some require you create an account, and some need your e-mail.

Aside from the big boys Yahoo and Google I have submitted this blog to a few other smaller search engines:

icerocket.com
Aaspaas.com
Abacho.at
Abacho.ch
Abacho.co.uk
Abacho.com
Abacho.de
Abacho.es
Abacho.fr
Abacho.it
Accoona.com
Accoona.eu
Amfibi.com
Amidalla.com
Anoox.com
ATSearch.at
Eudip.com
Exalead.com
FreshLinks.net
HotLaunch.com
MixCat.com
JDGO.com
Megaglobe.com
InfoTiger.com
IntelSeek.com
Jayde.com

There are tools out there that will submit your URL for free. You can use those services to submit your blog at no cost.

For submitting in blog-specific directories you might want to read up on my previous post:

Let the world you have a blog

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