Make Money Online with your Business Blog: How to Pick Your Blog Topic
I have been doing an experiment to find out just how some of my fellow bloggers, especially in the "Make Money Online" blogging field, are doing so well and just how I can also rank high on Google and get search engine traffic to my blogs.
I have been reading all kinds of blogs about making money online and trying to piece together what it takes to have a successful and high ranking blog on the search engines. What I have found are that they are some common steps you need to take to have a successful blog - that is, if you are considering success to be ranking high on Google, Yahoo and other search engines.
So, I did an experiment by creating a new blog and using some of the key components I am going to share with you. While I am no expert I do feel that some of the things I am going to share are valuable to someone who might read this so I figure, why not share it anyway. I have been a software and computer consultant since 1993 and I have always been able to explain technology subjects in a way that people can understand them even if they aren't "techies".
When I started blogging I had no clue what I was doing but after reading and researching I think I finally have learned some of the key elements for making a blog successful. Although I am constantly learning I have already been able to put some of these simple steps into practice and make them work. I hope to give you a step-by-step outline you can use from the things I have been learning to help you create a successful blog.
Once I have the articles written I will put together the outline so you can see the steps it takes to create a successful blog. Eventually I may put them in an eBook so you can download it all at once. For now, I am just going to write the articles and go from there.
The Experiment:
On 11/10/08 I setup a new blog and added the first post. By 11/12/08, after only 3 days, my new blog came up number 6 on the Google search engine for my keyword phrase and I started receiving traffic from Google. While it did not receive an avalanche of traffic it still did get visitors and it is continuing to grow. I already have people linking to it one week later and visitors continue to come in each day. I am still amazed and it proved to me that the pieces of the puzzle had finally come together.
I have to say that I couldn't have done it without reading other blogger's sites and learning from them so I have give a big shout out and thanks to Griz, Problogger, and Courtney Tuttle.
In this article I am going to talk about picking your blog's topic and your blog's keyword or keyword phrase.
First, I did some research to find out what my keyword or keyword phrase should be. This is the most important first step I think you should take if you are creating a blog. I have many blogs and some of them just don't get the high ranking, search engine traffic I am looking for. I have worked hard and done a lot of promotion for these blogs but still they don't get search engine traffic.
My new blog experiment taught me that the keyword or keyword phrase I am using for my blog is the most important thing I should focus on when creating my blog along with some other key components. When I started I did not know that so my first blogs, while they are somewhat successful, have some major hurdles to overcome to compete with my new "test" blog. But, before we get into all of the specifics let's just focus on the topic of your blog.
How do you pick the topic and keyword or keyword phrase for your blog?
There are a lot of factors when picking your keyword or keyword phrase. You are basically picking the topic your blog will be about and you should ask yourself some of these questions:
What I am passionate about? What would I write about even if I didn't get paid to write about my blog's topic or even make money online with my blog?
Everyone has something they just love to do. It could be a job, a hobby, a club, family, craft, or sport. When you go to a party, family gathering, or get together with friends you find yourself bringing up your favorite topic over and over again.
It might be that you love watching football, basketball, baseball or hockey. You know all about the teams, the players, how the game is played, and love discussing and even debating about it.
You might be a Mom or Dad and loving talking to people about your kids. If they aren't with you then your brag book of photos is always closeby. You can sit with friends for hours and share stories about your kids, their adventure and misadventures, your whoas and thrills of being a parent.
You love crocheting, sewing, knitting, woodworking, decorating, cooking, scrapbooking, playing video or role-playing games, birdwatching, hiking, traveling, making beer or wine at home, and so many other hobbies to mention.
Maybe you belong to a club, church, non-profit organization, business group, or enjoy volunteering.
You love to travel and have great stories to tell about our adventures and the people you meet.
When I started my first blog I had no idea what I should write about. That blank, white screen was staring me in the face and I had writer's block. There was no one around to help me so I muddled through until it finally came together. I want to save you the aggravation of figuring it out as you go and help you come up with your topic before you really get involved with the blog design, layout, URL, and content.
I realized that I have always loved talking about what is new and cool in the world of technology. I can talk for hours about Twitter, blogging, or the latest software or computer gadget for hours on end. I have been known to talk so much that the person listening to me eventually will roll their eyes in the back of their head. I guess not everyone understand my passion but that is okay.
What is your passion??
What I am saying is that EVERYONE has something to blog about! You just need to think about your life, your personality and figure out what makes you tick!
Basically, what would you talk about or write about even if you didn't get paid or had no intention of making money online with your blog.
Think about the ideas I just gave you and it should help you come up with your blog's topic and from there your blog's keyword or keyword phrase.
Suggestion: Don't start your first blog on Making Money Online. Yes, that might be your ultimate goal but you will probably get either burned out or discouraged when it doesn't do well right off. And, if you haven't made money online how can you teach people about it? Pick a topic you enjoy. You can always start another blog once you get your first one off of the ground and successful.
Does my keyword or keyword phrase have a very small audience or niche? Is my keyword or keyword phrase too broad? Does it have too wide of an audience or niche?
We might as well talk about these two questions at the same time because they are related.
Some topics might be too broad to be successful without a lot of hard work, determination and patience. Yes, overtime, you have the potential to get any keyword or keyword phrase to rank high on search engines but it is better, as I have found, to pick more of a specific topic to start with.
Within each main topic, there will always be sub topics and that is what you need to find for your blog's topic.
If you visit the Google Directory (www.google.com/dirhp) you can see a breakdown of popular topics. Click on a main topic like Internet and from there you will find all kinds of sub-categories. I clicked On the Web and then Weblogs. You can see that there are lots of blog sub-categories like arts, cooking, photos, science and more.
Using a directory like this one you can easily start with the top level category and work your way down until you find a good sub-category you like.
Some other Directories:
You can also use Google's query suggestion feature on main Google.com search engine. The query suggestion feature automatically gives you some keyword or keyword phrase suggestions as you type. You should use this query suggestion feature to your advantage. You can see how many searches are made on average for a specific topic as Google brings up the results. This will also help you decide if your topic has too broad of an audience.
You will have to experiment by using Google and other search engines to see what is popular in the topic level keyword you choose to write about on your blog. Pick a phrase or sub-keyword to your topic that has a narrower audience and a better potential for you to reach the top of the search engine without a lot of working or taking years to achieve.
You don't have to write about making money online to get to the top of the search engine and have a successful blog and make money. As I mentioned you should write about a topic that you are passionate about which brings us to the last set of questions.
Will I have enough to write about my blog's topic over time or will I run out of material? Will I get bored with my blog's topic?
These two question can be lumped together because they talk about the longevity of your blog and the topic you pick.
If you start a blog of any kind with dollar signs in your eyes, and your only purpose for starting a blog is to make money then eventually you will get burned out and quit before your blog becomes successful.
Why? Because you are chasing money and not what you are passionate about or what you enjoy doing. As I mentioned, you can have your cake and eat it too when it comes to blogging but you need to start out with a good topic to write about. Even if you are just setting up a business blog to drive traffic to your business website you still have a focus and a topic and making money is secondary.
Think about the topic you plan on writing about and ask yourself this question - will there be enough material to sustain a blog and fill it with content overtime or is my topic limited? Some topics do have a limited amount of information that can be written about it.
You don't want to get bored by your blog's topic because that will also cause you to give up on it before you are successful with it.
If you go back to the top of this post and read again what I said you will find that if you write about what you know, what you are good at, or what you are passionate about you will not, or should not, get bored because it will be something you would talk to someone about if they were sitting in front of them face to face. It will be something that comes natural to you.
What are your keyword or keyword phrases?
Now that you know your blog's topic you should do a bit more research to figure out what keywords you can use to go with your topic.
Let's go back to the Google Directory and go a bit deeper into the sub-categories for Internet.
After clicking on Weblogs I am going to click on Music. Now I can see a list of the top sites that are about music. Scroll through this list and see if you find some common keyword or keyword phrases that are used.
Another way of picking keywords is to actually visit the sites that are going to be your competition and look through their text to see common keywords or keyword phrases.
You can also go into the Page Source of a webpage on a site and sometimes lines of meta tags will show the keywords. You will find the Page Source under the View menu at the top of the browser window. Clicking on that will open up the HTML source in Notepad. Meta tags are usually at the top of the HTML code in the area but they are not always used.
In future articles I am going to write about:
If you have any suggetions, ideas, or other ways of doing the same thing I would love to hear it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Business Blogging Guide has been designed for the beginner "newbie" to intermediate blogger. I mainly focus on blogs using Blogger.com. If you are looking for help with WordPress try Lorelle on WordPress.
Check out the Blogging Basics 101 site for more comprehensive help with your blog.
New here? Subscribe to the Business Blogging Guide through an RSS Reader or have it delivered via Email.
I have been reading all kinds of blogs about making money online and trying to piece together what it takes to have a successful and high ranking blog on the search engines. What I have found are that they are some common steps you need to take to have a successful blog - that is, if you are considering success to be ranking high on Google, Yahoo and other search engines.
So, I did an experiment by creating a new blog and using some of the key components I am going to share with you. While I am no expert I do feel that some of the things I am going to share are valuable to someone who might read this so I figure, why not share it anyway. I have been a software and computer consultant since 1993 and I have always been able to explain technology subjects in a way that people can understand them even if they aren't "techies".
When I started blogging I had no clue what I was doing but after reading and researching I think I finally have learned some of the key elements for making a blog successful. Although I am constantly learning I have already been able to put some of these simple steps into practice and make them work. I hope to give you a step-by-step outline you can use from the things I have been learning to help you create a successful blog.
Once I have the articles written I will put together the outline so you can see the steps it takes to create a successful blog. Eventually I may put them in an eBook so you can download it all at once. For now, I am just going to write the articles and go from there.
The Experiment:
On 11/10/08 I setup a new blog and added the first post. By 11/12/08, after only 3 days, my new blog came up number 6 on the Google search engine for my keyword phrase and I started receiving traffic from Google. While it did not receive an avalanche of traffic it still did get visitors and it is continuing to grow. I already have people linking to it one week later and visitors continue to come in each day. I am still amazed and it proved to me that the pieces of the puzzle had finally come together.
I have to say that I couldn't have done it without reading other blogger's sites and learning from them so I have give a big shout out and thanks to Griz, Problogger, and Courtney Tuttle.
In this article I am going to talk about picking your blog's topic and your blog's keyword or keyword phrase.
First, I did some research to find out what my keyword or keyword phrase should be. This is the most important first step I think you should take if you are creating a blog. I have many blogs and some of them just don't get the high ranking, search engine traffic I am looking for. I have worked hard and done a lot of promotion for these blogs but still they don't get search engine traffic.My new blog experiment taught me that the keyword or keyword phrase I am using for my blog is the most important thing I should focus on when creating my blog along with some other key components. When I started I did not know that so my first blogs, while they are somewhat successful, have some major hurdles to overcome to compete with my new "test" blog. But, before we get into all of the specifics let's just focus on the topic of your blog.
How do you pick the topic and keyword or keyword phrase for your blog?
There are a lot of factors when picking your keyword or keyword phrase. You are basically picking the topic your blog will be about and you should ask yourself some of these questions:
- What am I passionate about?
- What would I write about even if I didn't get paid to write about my blog's topic or even make money online with my blog?
- Does my keyword or keyword phrase have a very small audience or niche?
- Is my keyword or keyword phrase too broad? Does it have too wide of an audience or niche?
- Will I have enough to write about my blog's topic over time or will I run out of material?
- Will I get bored with my blog's topic?
What I am passionate about? What would I write about even if I didn't get paid to write about my blog's topic or even make money online with my blog?
Everyone has something they just love to do. It could be a job, a hobby, a club, family, craft, or sport. When you go to a party, family gathering, or get together with friends you find yourself bringing up your favorite topic over and over again.
It might be that you love watching football, basketball, baseball or hockey. You know all about the teams, the players, how the game is played, and love discussing and even debating about it.
You might be a Mom or Dad and loving talking to people about your kids. If they aren't with you then your brag book of photos is always closeby. You can sit with friends for hours and share stories about your kids, their adventure and misadventures, your whoas and thrills of being a parent.
You love crocheting, sewing, knitting, woodworking, decorating, cooking, scrapbooking, playing video or role-playing games, birdwatching, hiking, traveling, making beer or wine at home, and so many other hobbies to mention.
Maybe you belong to a club, church, non-profit organization, business group, or enjoy volunteering.
You love to travel and have great stories to tell about our adventures and the people you meet.
When I started my first blog I had no idea what I should write about. That blank, white screen was staring me in the face and I had writer's block. There was no one around to help me so I muddled through until it finally came together. I want to save you the aggravation of figuring it out as you go and help you come up with your topic before you really get involved with the blog design, layout, URL, and content.
I realized that I have always loved talking about what is new and cool in the world of technology. I can talk for hours about Twitter, blogging, or the latest software or computer gadget for hours on end. I have been known to talk so much that the person listening to me eventually will roll their eyes in the back of their head. I guess not everyone understand my passion but that is okay.
What is your passion??
What I am saying is that EVERYONE has something to blog about! You just need to think about your life, your personality and figure out what makes you tick!
Basically, what would you talk about or write about even if you didn't get paid or had no intention of making money online with your blog.
Think about the ideas I just gave you and it should help you come up with your blog's topic and from there your blog's keyword or keyword phrase.
Suggestion: Don't start your first blog on Making Money Online. Yes, that might be your ultimate goal but you will probably get either burned out or discouraged when it doesn't do well right off. And, if you haven't made money online how can you teach people about it? Pick a topic you enjoy. You can always start another blog once you get your first one off of the ground and successful.
Does my keyword or keyword phrase have a very small audience or niche? Is my keyword or keyword phrase too broad? Does it have too wide of an audience or niche?
We might as well talk about these two questions at the same time because they are related.
Some topics might be too broad to be successful without a lot of hard work, determination and patience. Yes, overtime, you have the potential to get any keyword or keyword phrase to rank high on search engines but it is better, as I have found, to pick more of a specific topic to start with.
Within each main topic, there will always be sub topics and that is what you need to find for your blog's topic.
If you visit the Google Directory (www.google.com/dirhp) you can see a breakdown of popular topics. Click on a main topic like Internet and from there you will find all kinds of sub-categories. I clicked On the Web and then Weblogs. You can see that there are lots of blog sub-categories like arts, cooking, photos, science and more.
Using a directory like this one you can easily start with the top level category and work your way down until you find a good sub-category you like.Some other Directories:
You can also use Google's query suggestion feature on main Google.com search engine. The query suggestion feature automatically gives you some keyword or keyword phrase suggestions as you type. You should use this query suggestion feature to your advantage. You can see how many searches are made on average for a specific topic as Google brings up the results. This will also help you decide if your topic has too broad of an audience.
You will have to experiment by using Google and other search engines to see what is popular in the topic level keyword you choose to write about on your blog. Pick a phrase or sub-keyword to your topic that has a narrower audience and a better potential for you to reach the top of the search engine without a lot of working or taking years to achieve.You don't have to write about making money online to get to the top of the search engine and have a successful blog and make money. As I mentioned you should write about a topic that you are passionate about which brings us to the last set of questions.
Will I have enough to write about my blog's topic over time or will I run out of material? Will I get bored with my blog's topic?
These two question can be lumped together because they talk about the longevity of your blog and the topic you pick.
If you start a blog of any kind with dollar signs in your eyes, and your only purpose for starting a blog is to make money then eventually you will get burned out and quit before your blog becomes successful.Why? Because you are chasing money and not what you are passionate about or what you enjoy doing. As I mentioned, you can have your cake and eat it too when it comes to blogging but you need to start out with a good topic to write about. Even if you are just setting up a business blog to drive traffic to your business website you still have a focus and a topic and making money is secondary.
Think about the topic you plan on writing about and ask yourself this question - will there be enough material to sustain a blog and fill it with content overtime or is my topic limited? Some topics do have a limited amount of information that can be written about it.
You don't want to get bored by your blog's topic because that will also cause you to give up on it before you are successful with it.
If you go back to the top of this post and read again what I said you will find that if you write about what you know, what you are good at, or what you are passionate about you will not, or should not, get bored because it will be something you would talk to someone about if they were sitting in front of them face to face. It will be something that comes natural to you.
What are your keyword or keyword phrases?
Now that you know your blog's topic you should do a bit more research to figure out what keywords you can use to go with your topic.
Let's go back to the Google Directory and go a bit deeper into the sub-categories for Internet.
After clicking on Weblogs I am going to click on Music. Now I can see a list of the top sites that are about music. Scroll through this list and see if you find some common keyword or keyword phrases that are used.
Another way of picking keywords is to actually visit the sites that are going to be your competition and look through their text to see common keywords or keyword phrases.You can also go into the Page Source of a webpage on a site and sometimes lines of meta tags will show the keywords. You will find the Page Source under the View menu at the top of the browser window. Clicking on that will open up the HTML source in Notepad. Meta tags are usually at the top of the HTML code in the area but they are not always used.
In future articles I am going to write about:
- the difference in creating a social blog versus creating a blog that is strictly written for search engine traffic
- does my blog have to be pretty
- does the URL matter
- does it matter if I use Blogger, WordPress, Typepad or other blog systems
- how to write titles and content
If you have any suggetions, ideas, or other ways of doing the same thing I would love to hear it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Business Blogging Guide has been designed for the beginner "newbie" to intermediate blogger. I mainly focus on blogs using Blogger.com. If you are looking for help with WordPress try Lorelle on WordPress.
Check out the Blogging Basics 101 site for more comprehensive help with your blog.
New here? Subscribe to the Business Blogging Guide through an RSS Reader or have it delivered via Email.
