I got a little better as time went on and I learned what meta tags were. So, I started putting keywords in my meta tags thinking that the search engines will see it for sure and I should rank for some of my keywords. Well it didn't take long to figure out that that wasn't working. At this point I started to wonder what exactly do you have to do to rank for your keywords and are they even good keywords.

After much reading and suffering information overload I finally realized how important it was to do your keyword research first before you create a new blog. I had finally learned that less competitive keywords were easier to rank for... a lot easier. I wrote a post one day and about a week later, just for the hell of it I copied my post title and pasted it in to the google search bar. Click. Well what do you know? My page was in the number one spot. So this was real proof to me that you can rank for less competitive and long tail keywords.

For those that don't know a long tail keyword is actually more like a keyphrase of 3 or more words. The longer the phrase the easier it is to rank number one for the term.

Anyhow, I came to realize that keywords searched less than 300 times a day were relatively easy to start ranking for. The problem was that I would rank well for a keyword at first, when I first published my post but soon my ranking would drop off. That's when I learned how important links were. I read that if you get links featuring your keyword (anchor text) then it should help you rank for that keyword. But how many links do I need? I had no idea. A thousand maybe? No idea. So this is what I did.

I found a page with a page rank of 4 and left a comment on it with an anchored link back to my post page. I immediatley went to google and typed in my keyword...nothing. OK, I will wait a while I figured. So I went and got another 10 or so anchored links.

I noticed that my links wouldn't show up right away when I checked for them in yahoo explorer. But once they did start showing I noticed I would move up in the results bit by bit. It took me months but I finally started ranking on page one for my keyword. Too bad it wasn't a buying keyword! No wonder I had traffic but no conversions!

At this point I stopped getting links for my main keyword. I realized it wasn't a buying keyword. It wasn't the kind of search phrase that a BUYER would use. It was more of a browsers search term. I decided to pick up Keyword Elite so that I could have a professional level keyword tool. This sure helped me out a lot. Keyword Elite will generate tons of keywords with the search data and just a whole lot of information. Now I could see buying terms right in front of me...I didn't have to guess anymore.

Now my keywords were including words like "cheap" and "discount" and "used", things like that. I started over with the links and started promoting my buying keywords. In the meantime I remembered how when I first started out, my posts would rank well for a few days before dropping off. Could it be that google likes fresh content? I think so. I had a great idea!

I started posting fresh content every other day or maybe every 3 days. At the same time I was getting my "buying" anchored links. I started getting new traffic related to my new keywords. As a bonus, when I check my stats in Google analytics I saw that there were a few surprize key phrases that people were using to find my site. Right away I went and wrote some posts featuring these newly discovered little gems.

Next thing you know I start getting traffic from those phrases. Just a little bit of traffic but it was something. I now added those new keywords to my old posts. I just edited the posts and weaved the keywords in. I then expanded my link campaign to include these new keywords.

It dawned on me that I had written a lot of posts early in my blogs life. These posts had nothing to do with my current keywords, in fact these old posts featured the worthless no money keywords. I deleted the posts thus streamlining my blog considerably. This had a positive effect on my rankings. I guess google now had a clearer picture of exactly what my blog was about. I even went and changed the blogs title to fit my new "buyers" keywords. Wow! I actually started to make money!

I have basically been duplicating this ever since and what can I say...I make money doing it. Nowadays though I do my keyword research first including checking my competitors links with SEO Elite. This way I know exactly how many links I need from the start and whether or not it is something I want to go after. I like easy targets but easy targets don't usually have lots of searches hence less money is to be made. This is why I started building lots of mini sites around niches. Low maintenance sites in quantity! It's impossible to promote a number of sites effectively without software.

I use Bookmarking Demon to get hundreds of links from bookmarking sites. I use an article submitter that autosubmits my articles to about 250 directories, which is totally incredible. I use a Directory Submitter with over 2000 directories in it. And I use Comment Demon to find high Pr blogs to comment on.