Rats supposedly have such a fantastic sense of smell that they can detect unexploded landmines and the early development of tuberculosis.

The show mentioned an official website and I checked it out. I really liked the idea and I liked the rats.

The official site HeroRat.org allows you to donate by a single donation or by “adopting” a rat for the donation of 5 EUR per month payable by Paypal.

I chose the rat Ziko for adoption and yesterday received an official certificate of adoption which you can see above and a letter from Ziko saying thanks and explaining what he does.

I find this a great idea and I invite you to check the HeroRat.org website and consider helping Bart out with his amazing project that saves lives.

Most people believe that Google can read their mind.

Well, it cannot; and Google doesn’t think that your page is optimized for the same keyword (s) as YOU think it’s being optimized for.

Most people think the first keyword in their META Keywords tag is the keyword that they are optimizing their article for.

And that adding a few keywords as secondary keywords will help them in some way.

So first, follow the link to see for yourself that Google doesn’t read the meta keywords field.

Whatever you write in there doesn’t matter to Google.

So What Does Matter to Google?

It is the keywords in the title and the link text of incoming links that matter.

Your page is actually optimized for ALL keywords in the title.

The keywords that you use in the title of the page are the main “filter” that will tell Google for which keywords to rank your page.

Other ranking factors will then determine how well that pages ranks against the competition – like link popularity, page rank, website authority, etc.

So the answer to the question whether to optimize the page for “green widget” or for “green widget accessories” is this:

If your title will say: Green Widget Accessories – Coolest Gadgets In Town

Then your article is optimized for:
- Green Widget Accessories – Coolest Gadgets In Town
- Green Widget Accessories – Coolest Gadgets In
- Green Widget Accessories – Coolest Gadgets
- Green Widget Accessories – Coolest
- Green Widget Accessories
- Green Widget
- Green

And it’s also optimized (not perfectly, but still) for:
- Green Widget Accessories – Gadgets In Town
- Green Widget – Coolest Gadgets In Town
- Green Accessories – Coolest Gadgets In Town
- Green Town
- and all the zillion other word combos for every  keyword in that title.

Your article is optimized for ALL these keywords and keyword combos; and Google WILL rank it for all of these searches.

The difference in ranking of course comes from competition!

You’ll probably rank #1 for the keyword search “Green Widget Accessories – Coolest Gadgets In Town”, maybe #5 for “Green Widget Accessories – Coolest Gadgets”, maybe #30 for “Green Widget Accessories” and maybe around 9,876,486 for “Green”. 

If you then get more links to your page (external and / or internal) with the link text that includes “Green Widget Accessories – Coolest Gadgets In Town” and other combos of these keywords, you will start to rank better and better.

Are There Important And Not So Important Keywords In The Title?

One more example to help you understand this:

A lady asked me whether she should optimize the page for “Green Widget” or “Green Widget Accessories.”

I asked her what the title of her article would be if she optimized just for “Green Widget.”

She replied: “Green Widget – Finding The Right Widget For Your PC.”

And if she would have optimized for “Green Widget Accessories” her title would say:

“Green Widget Accessories – Coolest Gadgets In Town”

Her assumption is that Google will know and rank her article optimized for “Green Widget” for that keyword (green widget) and that the rest of the keywords in the title are just some kind of fill – and that Google will disregard those words.

Then her assumption is that if she optimizes for “Green Widget Accessories,” Google will rank her for that keyword (but not Green Widget!) and won’t pay much attention to the rest of the keywords – since Google can read her mind and knows which keyword is really important to the lady and which keywords are not that important to her.

Funny, isn’t it? And yet most of us think that way – at least I did for some time until I figured this out.

The fact is simple: Google ranks your page according to ALL KEYWORDS in the title and doesn’t know which keywords are important to you.

Remember the title: “Green Widget – Finding The Right Widget For Your PC?”

You may think that Google will know and rank you for “Green Widget” but not really for “Finding The Right?”

If you do a search for “Finding The Right” you’ll see that sites rank accordingly to their keywords in the title, link popularity and all other factors that affect the ranking.

No one searches just for “Finding The Right” keyword and yet Google has a ranking for that search and of course for any keyword search you type.

It’s a computer algorithm and not a smart human.

This tells you that Google doesn’t know for which keywords you want to rank. It WILL rank you for ALL keywords in the title.

The competition and links and other factors will then determines how HIGH you will rank.

The Importance Of Keywords In The Title

One more thing: let’s say that you don’t use “Finding The Right” keyword in the title but you use it on the page in content.

Will you rank for this keyword? Yes, but not in the main index. You’ll almost surely be dumped into the secondary index and will never get found for this keyword search.

(See my previous post about the real competition to understand what I mean by main and secondary index.)

If you look at your keyword stats for a page (for which keywords that page was found in the last month for example), you’ll see that almost all searches for which your page was found include one or more keywords that you used in the title.

It is almost impossible to be found for a keyword search when NONE of the searched keywords is in the title!

In other words, your page can only be found for keywords that you used in the title. (Not 100%, but very close.)

This includes correct order of words, inverted order or some keywords missing or added in between.

Example: My page on where to book hotels and flights with PayPal is being found quite often.

Look at the top keywords:

They ALWAYS include a few keywords that were used in the title.

And if I check the keywords that brought just an occasional visitor, you can still see that at least one of the keywords from the title (Book Cheap Flights and Hotels With Paypal) is always used.

That article has quite a lot of other words but it gets found ONLY for keywords when one or more were used in the title!

For example, there’s a sentence with “If you’re travelling in the USA” – but I will NEVER be found for “travelling in the USA” or any other keyword combos.

That’s because I theoretically rank for that keyword search but since none of the keywords is in the title, I probably rank on page 98754.

You can also test this claim by simply doing a search on Google for something; and then checking on which page of results do you see the first site ranked that DOESN’T HAVE AT LEAST ONE KEYWORD in the title.

If I do this for “Finding The Right”, I find the first site without any of the keywords in the title at #48 – and even that site has a keyword “right” in the domain name.

And as you probably know, most of the clicks on search results happen on the first page.

How To Efficiently Optimize Your Articles

The next time you wonder which keyword to optimize for your article, know that in reality you will optimize your article for ALL keywords that are in the title.

Google will not read your mind and know that some are important to you and that some aren’t.

So how can you use this knowledge to your advantage?

Always optimize the page for multiple keywords that you know are being searched.

Optimize for long tail – and you will automatically optimize for “short tail” too.

If you optimize the article for “Green Widget Accessories” (and all these keywords are in the title), you will automatically optimize it for “Green Widget.”

The difference in rankings between “Green Widget Accessories” and “Green Widget” is because of the competition. (there are more pages writing just about green widgets than there are pages writing about green widget accessories!)

You’ll need more links (to the page and / or to the whole website) to rank high for a shorter keyword than you will need for a longer keyword.

And if you cannot decide between two keywords that you’d like to use and are not sure which one is better (Green Widget or Coolest Gadgets), then use BOTH in the title.

Then just make sure that incoming links to that page have these keywords in the link text and you’ll rank better for all keywords that are included in the title and link text.

You can link to the page with “Green Widget – One of The Coolest Gadgets” in the link text and it will help both keywords. Or you can sometimes just link with “Green Widget” and sometimes with “Coolest Gadgets” in the link text.

One more thing: if you look closely at Google’s results, you’ll see that the searched keyword is typically at the beginning of the title for highest ranked sites.

So the keywords near the beginning of the title have more weight than those later in the title.

I’ve experienced a small crisis on my website with Google slashing the PR of site. Until yesterday my homepage had a PR of 4 and most of the other pages had PR 3s and 2s.

Yesterday I tweaked a few things on my homepage and when uploaded through SBI the google PR had been slashed site wide! I’m panicking that maybe I’ve experimented and done too much stuff on my own now, and have done something to piss off the google algorithm.

Now i’m desperately going over all the recent changes I’ve made and trying to work if I can undo it. I was just wondering if you had any advice on this minor catastrophe and if you could offer any other pearls of wisdom on what i’m doing wrong on ________.com.

Thank you for all your advice on your freedomideas.com blog it has been very useful and will continue to be an important resource for me in the future.

————————————–

Google updates Pagerank every few months. So whatever you did yesterday or a few days ago has nothing to do with the PR you see right now.

PR is simply the sum of all links coming to your site. So tweaking your homepage has nothing to do with PR.

It’s just a coincidence. Also, I bet that nothing has changed with your traffic.

PR of your site changed because the PR of incoming links changed. Other websites lost PR and consequently your site lost PR.

But this is out of your control. So no point obsessing about it.

PR doesn’t bring money. Traffic does.

Build page and links – it’s as simple as that. Let the PR do whatever it wants to do.

“thanks Tomaz, when you send out emails for link exchanges, is your subject line: regarding link exchange and what is your version of value exchanges email?”

I personally think that asking for such specific examples is just too much. Here’s my reply:

Don’t you think you could come up with something that would eventually work? Do you really feel satisfied and fulfilled by copying EVERYTHING?

I don’t have an exact email because I come up with something. I don’t have a copy / paste system neither for the email and neither for the subject line.

Sometimes I used “Hi from freedomideas.com” as a subject. I introduced myself and simply suggested a link exchange. Sometimes I used something else.

Try googling “link exchange email” and you’ll surely find some good suggestions.

But to build some confidence you NEED to do things YOURSELF. Otherwise you’ll ALWAYS feel that you don’t know stuff.

You know stuff when you come up with something and it works – maybe not the first time but eventually you learn and adapt.

Now you really know. You have results.

Results build confidence – especially results when you did something on your own. Copying stuff will NOT build confidence – you’ll always feel insecure. (regardless of how much money you earn!)

How do you want to feel in the future? Do you even realize that you have a choice about that?

You have a choice. Get ideas from some people who know stuff, then add your own ideas, modify stuff and come up with something creative and new.

Play with it, adapt and eventually it will work.

As Morpheus said to Neo: “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

If I tell you something, you might “know” something about it.

But you need to walk the path. You need to do stuff on your own and then you’ll become the One.

You’ll be able to create money out of thin air using just your brain, a laptop and an internet connection.

I rarely buy anything internet marketing related lately because I have bought quite a lot of ebooks and courses in the past and in the 90% of the cases the information was crap or just a rehashed information from someone else.

The Adsense Masters Course has a few different views and approaches to earning money with Google Adsense and online business in general.

I first came across the author, John Xfactor at warriorforum.com where he openly shared lots of his tips and ideas on how he earns over $300 per day with Adsense. (you’ll find a link to that thread on the sales letter)

There were tons of questions and eventually John decided to compile an ebook (and a few videos) based on his system and the Q&A he shared.

What The Adsense Masters Course Is About

John has developed a system of building very small and very tight niche sites that primarily target just one keyword which he uses in the domain name.

He may add 5 more pages to the site with related keywords and build a few links to it and that’s about it.

The key to his system and his success is:

• how to find high paying Adsense keywords with some demand and low competition
• how to design the site to get highest CTR on Adsense
• how to get links to those sites

That’s the core of the Adsense Masters Course and it works well for John.

How I Benefited From The Course

I don’t build sites like John and I don’t intend to.

I learned an interesting thing about getting links with article submissions. John doesn’t give you any new secret article submission sites but he has a different approach to writing articles for those sites.

I can see the logic of that and while I haven’t tested this approach I definitely will in the future.

I also learned something about site design that produces high CTR for Adsense and I have already modified a template on one of my test sites which shows promising results.

The Adsense Masters Course ebook is 95 pages long and 93 pages for me were really not something new, but the 2 tips that I got from the book are something really refreshing in the area of Internet marketing which just bombards you with fancy and “awesome” new products which don’t add anything new to the online business knowledge.

Whether a few tips are worth $77 is your call. If you follow through and don’t just read the ebook and earn at least $77 by applying new ideas, then the ebook is worth the money.

If you don’t follow through, then it’s not.

My Thoughts On The System

John’s approach is different than mine in two major ways.

1. I build just a few large sites that eventually become the authority in that niche. That has several advantages:

a) Every page posted on the authority site gets a boost in the rankings and quickly ranks well in the search engines.

b) Every link acquired for that site helps ALL the articles on the site rank better through more link juice. John has to acquire links for each of his small websites and one new link helps only one of his websites. (or maybe a few just a little bit if he interlinks them)

John’s sites will almost never get any organic links in the future because they are really bad looking (he knows exactly why but that’s the fact most people will agree on) and they don’t suggest authority on the topic. My sites get organic links because they eventually become the top dog in that niche and are very large with lots of visitor interaction thanks to C2 module of SBI.

So they are talked about and linked here and there from other top sites in that niche. That gives them even more ranking power and even less chance that they will be penalized or lose rankings for one or another factor in the future.

2. I don’t focus that aggressively on getting the highest CTR by throwing the Adsense block directly in the face of the visitor. I think there are probably 90% of websites on the Internet that use Adsense and I and probably many others are frankly sick of these Adsense ads.

I give visitors the choice of reading the text or clicking on the ad and while the site’s main objective is similar, I am quite content with lower CTR while at the same time providing the visitor with something useful.

You have to realize something: most people (I dare to say over 90%) have no idea what Adsense ads are and how they work.

They don’t really make a choice whether to click on an ad because they know it’s an advertiser offering something or to keep reading below (or beside) the ad because the main gist of the article is still ahead.

No, actually they just click on something that is aligned with the intention they have mind – and that is usually the Adsense ad that stands out in their face.

They click on it almost instinctively without really knowing what will happen – and voila, you’re earning money because people don’t know how this Internet things works.

Most people don’t even know what a browser is, can you imagine? Do you think they know what Google Adsense ads are, how they look like and how the whole system works?

It doesn’t really give me great pleasure earning money tricking people. While I know that Adsense above the fold is a must if you want to get at least a decent CTR, I wrap text around it to give people a choice of a click or reading the text.

I’ve talked to many friends about Internet marketing and Adsense and when I surfed around the net showing the examples of Adsense ads they had no idea whatsoever that those were Adsense ads AND that the owner of the site earns money through clicks.

So while I don’t recommend John’s strategy of slapping Adsense ads right in the face of unsuspecting visitors, I did learn a few tips on how to improve the CTR which I will adapt to my sites and still give people the chance of another action besides just clicking on that ad.

Final Words

I recommend John Xfactor’s Adsense Masters Course because there are a few good tips and ideas that I haven’t read before (and I read a lot ) which you can use and implement into your existing sites.

But I definitely do not recommend you build sites like John because they are maximized for best earnings with Google Adsense and do not have the visitor’s satisfaction in mind.

There is no emphasis on the quality of articles or how to write them in order to provide easy-to-follow tips or advice or reviews for someone who is looking for info on the Web.

In fact, there are tips on how to write as fast as possible rewriting the existing info on the web.

I also don’t think this system can work in the long term with Google. Getting your main keyword in the domain name and taking advantage of Google’s algorithm flaw that currently allows those domains to rank realy well cannot last in my opinion.

It’s easily exploitable and you need just a few poor links to get that keyword focused domain into the top 10. I personally think this won’t work in the next few years…

The sites also look bad (because that gets the highest CTR) but if all sites on the Web looked like that, it would be really a nightmare.

I personally recommend you build nicer looking sites, give the visitors a chance or reading the text or clicking the ad and build interesting and informative websites with lots of videos, pictures and ways of interaction (C2) for visitors.

One more things that I really liked from John’s ebook is his mindset and his approach to work. You can see that I even quoted him (with his permission) at the top right of this blog.

John has the right attitude to success and you can also learn from that even if you don’t apply any of his tips and tricks to your site.

The ideas from the Adsense Masters Course can add to your overall knowledge of Internet marketing but I really recommend you just adapt them to your websites and stick to large content sites and develop them into authorities on the topic.

I’ve been following Wiep.net for quite some time and I strongly recommend you subscribe to their feed if you’re serious about your online business.

I hope that by now you know that getting good rankings in Google and therefore lots of free search engine traffic requires quality content + quality links.

And while you can outsource content and get quite good articles written for a good price, it’s very difficult to get quality links by outsourcing the work.

In fact, that has never happened to me and I’ve tried 5 or 6 times in the past.

So while you’re checking out Wiet.net make sure to read the latest post on What if link requests were honest?

You might bookmark that post and send a link as a reply to the next crappy link exchange request you’ll get in the future…

Hi Tomaz,

I just wanted to ask a question regarding affiliate links in a product review site. I’ve started my second site on _______ and have about 50 pages plus 20-30 C2 pages. At this point I do not have any affiliate links or any links to Amazon or any other product sellers.

Of course I would prefer to have 100-200 unique visitors daily before adding any affiliate links, but it seems odd to have reviews without leading the visitor to a purchase site. So when is the most appropriate time to add affiliate links?

Or do you recommend adding links without affiliate coding first? Or should I add Google ads first? That at least gives them a click option.

———————————————————–

Hi R…,

The “it seems odd to have reviews without leading the visitor to a purchase site.” shouldn’t bother you so much.

Visitors come and go and they come again. It’s an endless supply – in fact it keeps growing. More people use internet every day.

So yes, some people will find your site at the beginning and it won’t be of much use to them. So what?

They will find another site. It’s like some people will find a place in the town where a new restaurant is being built – but there are cranes and workers all around.

What should I do? I’ll find another place – for now.

But there is endless supply of people coming into this town and once the restaurant is done, they will keep coming in.

Same with your site. It is still being built and there are just “foundations” and “walls” there.

Build your content and build your links so that you get more traffic. Then you can monetize.

Do affiliate links hurt a new site with almost no incoming links?

I am not 100% sure because I don’t know Google’s algorithm.

I did have one bad experience though when I added Amazon aff. links very early to a site. Here’s how the traffic was going up and how it went up as I continued to build pages and automatically include Amazon aff. links (the last column on the right are unique visitors):

I thought that this was just a Google dance at first so I didn’t do anything. But my average traffic in the next month was 12 daily visitors.

Eventually I removed aff. links and kept building content and an occasional link and the site now gets over 200 daily visitors – which is normal for the amount of pages and links that it has.

In my personal view I think that the site needs to have some authority to be able to withstand linking out often through affiliate links. Especially those which are easily recognizable by Google with an algorithm. (Amazon, Clickbank, …)

On another note, I also think that adding Google Adsense early to the site won’t bring the site down. Again, this is just my feeling based on my experience and some stuff I read.

Another Reason to Delay Monetization

As most of us have found out, there is a strong emotion that affects people when it comes to money – jealousy.

Simply put, people prefer to link to young sites (with poor pagerank and Alexa and simple layouts) if there are no ads and aff. links present. They might be willing to link to a site if it’s just useful content that they are linking to and not a way for another webmaster to make money.

So if you put ads and aff. links to your site immediately, it will be much tougher to get quality links. And the links are hard to get anyway.

The SBI Action Guide suggests adding monetization to your site once it reaches at least 100 daily visitors. But that number is just an indication of how much content + links you have!

It’s an indication that you probably have enough incoming links and authority which can convince Google to keep your site well ranked despite your obvious attempts to make money from those rankings and high traffic.

I personally now do not monetize a site until it has around 400 or 500 daily visitors. (It took me a year with a site to reach that for example.)

That amount of daily visitors suggests enough high quality links and that will on average earn me $400 to $500 per month extra – which is something tangible.

So when should you monetize?

Realize that on average, you will earn around $100 per month from 100 daily visitors. Again, you can earn 3x more and 3x less with 100 daily visitors but in my experience that’s about the average.

If you badly need those $100 per month, monetize with 100 daily visitors. Know that you will now have more problems getting quality links.

Again, there are always exceptions and your site’s design may persuade people to link to you more or your site’s extremely interesting topic may be more “linkable” than a boring product review.

But in general, the earlier you monetize, the harder it is to get links.

When the Game Changes

I found that usually the game changes once my site gets to pagerank 3 or more. Then the link that I offer in return from one of my internal pages is typically a PR2 or a PR1.

That is a good enough value for people to put jealousy in second place because their self-interest is now in the first place.

Most webmasters know that a PR2 in-content link is very valuable to their site and they are willing to return the favor and help you get better rankings and traffic and make more money – but that right now doesn’t matter to them anymore.

They want their better rankings, their traffic and their extra income and your quality link will help them achieve that.

Dear Tomaz,

I am going to order SBI  this week-end and as I am a very beginner  in this field of internet business I have no idea how much extra costs will involve this business? Will you be so kind to give me an idea about this topic? Kind regards, V…

—————————————————-

Hi V…,

There are no mandatory extra costs with SBI 2.0. You can purchase the yearly subscription for $299 or monthly for $29.99.

There is only one optional cost and that is ordering extra brainstorming credits. When you buy Site Build It, you get 25 credits for brainstorming.

A brainstorm is a process, where you enter a seed word and the Brainstormer will return up to 800 keywords based on that keyword with their demand (how many people are looking for that keyword) and supply (with how many websites you compete) numbers. (See my Site Build It review for better understanding of brainstorming.)

You can do that 25 times but after that you would need to purchase more. They are very cheap actually: 100 new credits cost $20 and 500 credits cost only $50.

In reality, you probably won’t need more than 10 to 20 credits to complete your brainstorm because you can use the free brainstorming tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ to gauge the demand of various seed words and their long tail keywords.

Once you have a better idea which niche has enough demand and good keywords, you can then do a full analysis with SBI Brainstormer which will show you the demand and supply of all those keywords.

So in summary, there are no extra costs with SBI 2.0.

Sitesell.com offers various services like coaching and link building but you don’t need to buy them – they are purely optional and they are actually new additions to the Sitesell.com services.

99% of the SBI-ers have not used those services since they didn’t exist in the past and still built very successful websites.

Here’s a question I got from a friend and I’ll use it as an example to explain a slightly more advanced on-page SEO:

> I’m still learning how to use the brain stormer and figuring out the best pages to write. I would like to write a check list page and want to hear your thoughts about which page is best.
>
>                                                   Supply    Demand    Profitability
>
>
> Free Planner                               1081        567            2332
>
> Wedding Planning Checklist         6069       1136            5342
>
> Free Wedding Checklist                918        59              15559
>
> Free Organizer                            1101       181                6083
>
> The profitability is higher for the Free Wedding Checklist, but is it better to go with the Wedding Planning Checklist because they have a higher supply even though the profitability is less?

The profitability is a waste of time. NEVER look at profitability. This is not financial profitability. It’s just a computer number.

If the demand is not high enough, you won’t get people on your site. Your profitability can be 10000000 but so what if no ones comes to the site!

You need DEMAND. Then you need a  chance to rank well. That’s LOW SUPPLY.

Second, you can optimize pages for MANY keywords, not just one. Google HAS NO IDEA for which keyword you have optimized the page.

You probably think that because you have put your keyword in the meta keywords field, you somehow tell Google to rank your page for that keyword.

Google doesn’t look at keyword meta fields!

It doesn’t matter!

This is ONLY for your Analyze It so that it knows what is the main keyword for the article and then makes sure you include it in all places which ARE important for Google: title, first sentence, in text links, etc.

But Google sees hundreds of keywords on your page and the keywords in your title (you probably use 4 to 8 or something like that).

How does Google decide for WHICH of these hundreds of keywords to rank your page?

MOSTLY by the keywords in the title + the link text of incoming links – which can be external (from other sites) and internal (from your own site).

So you have up to 8 keywords that you can use in the title of your article and it will be “optimized” for ALL these keywords in Google’s eyes as long as you include them in the title of the article and in the link text of the incoming links.

You’ll very likely include those keywords automatically in your article a few times so I wouldn’t really worry about that.

Now – you can use this approach when you have two or three VERY SIMILAR keywords that talk about the same thing – like in the example above. You can optimize the article for most of your keywords.

You DON’T use this strategy for VERY DIFFERENT keywords like – wedding planning checklist and free wedding graphics or something like that.

When you brainstorm your niche you will find hundreds of keywords based on which you’ll write pages. But some are very similar and that where you can optimize your article for most of them and not stay stuck and wonder which one is a better one.

So in your case, you have these keywords:

Free Planner                               1081        567            2332

Wedding Planning Checklist         6069       1136            5342

Free Wedding Checklist                918        59              15559

Free Organizer                            1101       181                6083

And you wonder whether to optimize for Free Wedding Checklist or Wedding Planning Checklist?

BOTH!

Now it also depends whether this is a T2 or a T3 page.

If you can expand it with 5 or more articles, then you can make it a T2 page. In that case, I’d choose Wedding Planning checklist as my primary keyword and optimize the article for it, but would include free wedding checklist in the title and in the text.

Even if you do it like this: Free Wedding Planning Checklist Google can see that the keyword Free Wedding Planning Checklist is in there and you’ll rank well.

But your title can also say: Wedding Planning Checklist – Free Wedding Checklist Ideas

And you now have optimized your article for both keywords!

Sure, I would still suggest you to write a T3 page for Free Wedding Checklist and then link back to your T2 page. It will strengthen both and you might even get a double listing in Google.

As for Free Planer and Free Organizer – these are not really wedding keywords. They can be about business planning. I’d look for wedding keywords since your site is focused on this theme.

You can of course include free planner and free organizer in the article and you may well end up getting some traffic for them.

But back to the topic of this post; you don’t have to EXCLUDE other keywords from an article if you choose to optimize it for one keyword.

On the contrary, you SHOULD optimize your articles for MULTIPLE VERY SIMILAR keywords.

The key are keywords in the title and in the incoming links.

That’s what Google understands and that’s what helps you get ranked higher for a certain keyword and NOT what you put into your meta keywords field.

Hi Tomaz,

My name is S….. and I am a former SBI owner who is considering signing up again. I had a travel website that I did not follow through on because I got stuck on and frustrated with the technical aspects of building a website but I am willing to try again and push through the pain so to speak because I want financial independence.

I was also not sure how I would effectively monetize a travel website. I contacted SBI but the advisor I spoke to didn’t have concrete suggestions but I checked the results.sitesell.com page per our conversation and contacted the owner of ________.com since that is a travel website about the town of ___ at _____ island and my website would be about the island of ______.

Long story short he doesn’t endorse SBI per say and he doesn’t endorse doing a travel website either. He knows who you are from your postings in the forums and says you are a straight shooter. You guys started at the same time but you are a success and he is not.

I’m trying to figure out what went wrong for him. He did everything right from what I can tell. He followed the Action Guide, has lots of pages, did a video, has 500 unique visitors a day and yet he is not profitable. I find it hard to believe that it is impossible for him to make money with a travel website, especially about ______. He is considering a different topic.

I don’t want to sign up for SBI, do ALL OF THAT WORK only to get nowhere. Can you please weigh in on this.

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Hi S…………..,

I checked the website from your friend. 500 visitors is nice but that earns very little even on max profitable sites. On average, you earn the amount of dollars per month for the amount of visitors you have per day.

So 500 visitors a day -> $500 a month

Of course, this can be 3x less and also 3x more – depending on the market and your monetization skills.

To replace a normal job you probably need over 5000 daily visitors. Of course, you can build 10 sites with 500 daily and that will do it.

Also, if the site gets 500 daily after a few years, then OBVIOUSLY the demand is too low. (or there are just not enough pages and / or not enough links)

Find a niche with greater demand.

It’s very logical to me. Instead of blaming SBI and STAYING a victim, you need to learn from your mistakes and IMPROVE the next time.

The site is profitable it it earns $1 per day. You earn more than you pay for SBI.

To earn enough for a living, you need to go for it and not just try.

Most people try. That’s why most people don’t make it.

They do stuff halfheartedly because they already believe that this won’t work so they are not willing to put the effort into something that won’t work.

So now they don’t put in the effort and prove themselves right – but the reason why stuff doesn’t work is EXACTLY because they didn’t put in the effort and not because internet marketing or SBI philosophy (or many other) doesn’t work.

There is NO way someone can fail IF they put in the work AND learn and improve their skills.

But if you stay hard headed and keep doing the same wrong thing, don’t learn from, don’t ask anyone WHY this doesn’t work (cause maybe your ego is too big and you don’t want to admit mistakes), then yes, you may get 500 visitors per day after 4 years.

The reason why the site you gave as an example doesn’t get more visitors (I did a quick analysis) is because the keywords they chose don’t have enough demand. The site has enough pages but also not many links.

But the main problem is the demand. Imagine how many people want to go to that island that the site is about and how many want to play tennis or buy a vacuum cleaner.

Or how many want to visit that island and how many want to visit New York or Paris. Simply, the niche doesn’t have enough demand.

The SBI Action Guide DOESN’T tell you that with one website you will become financially free if you follow their guidelines.

But it does tell you how to make a profitable site – and earning $500 per month is definitely very nice.

The person who built that site followed the AG but chose the numbers on the low side. The site IS profitable – it definitely doesn’t lose money. In fact, it earns money without any work involved now!

And with 500 daily visitors smart monetization SHOULD earn you around $500 per month – doing nothing!

If that person is disappointed by earning $500 per month doing nothing, then maybe they should go to Haiti (writing this a few days after the earthquake 2010) and see what life can look like.

All you need to do is to learn from your experience, find smarter ways to get content up quicker and make more sites. $500 per month is in my opinion the average of what a typical SBI earns after 2 years.

Again, I am quite sure that that’s because the average person puts in the average effort and doesn’t really commit. Most people don’t think big enough and self-sabotage themselves so that the reality conforms to their beliefs.

It’s not SBI, it’s not Action Guide, it’s not internet marketing – it’s their average thinking, average work habits, average organizational habits and their half-hearted approach that creates average results.

Perhaps one example; I met Mike and his wife from Ireland at the SBI Barcelona conference. They asked me for advice about their site.

I was explaining to them for about an hour all the things they needed to do and they were SHOCKED at the amount of work I suggested. All that?

Earning money online is magical ONCE you establish your site(s). You don’t do anything and the money keeps coming in.

BUT…

Before that happens, the work involved in getting the site up is no different than any offline job and there’s no magic. There need to be hours of hours of work and there needs to be an intelligent choice of niche and keywords.

It’s VERY unlikely that you’ll earn thousands of dollars with your first site – as it is very unlikely that you’ll earn fortunes with your first restaurant that you set up or any other offline business.

80% of business fail in the first 5 years. And that’s the offline world statistics.

Is now a normal business to blame or the people?

So if many people fail with online business or SBI for that matter is it SBI or people? You know my answer.

I look to provide additional (hopefully smart and logical and simple) information on my blog to help people become smarter doing their online businesses.

The system works incredibly well, but you need to become very good at it. And the way to become really good at anything is to keep doing it and keep improving.

If you’re building your site in the same way this year that you did last year, you have not improved.

How can I make this better and more efficient is the key question that has to be in your mind day after day.

That’s how you become better at anything what you do and eventually become above average in anything you do.

If you want above average earnings, you need to become above average in doing this online business.

I really don’t think you need above average IQ, but you need above average commitment and put in above average effort.