How to Make Money on eHow Utilizing SEO Tools to Optimize Article Income

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Step 1

Using Google Suggest
When you have the light bulb moment, you immediately sit down and begin to write, and that is great. However you do not want to stop there. When you think of a topic, jot down your ideas, but then head over to Google Suggest. Start putting in "How to" phrases that have to do with your topic. Look at the amount of people that are looking for that specific topic. If millions are searching, that is great. Put in your idea for a title and click Google Search. Now, look at the Results in the upper right of the next page that opens. Are there millions of people who have written about the topic as well? This is where you want to play around with your wording a little. For instance if you start with, "How to Cook," and you have 77,000,000 people who have written about this, try "How to Cook Like a Gourmet Chef." Now you have about 3,000,000 people who have written on the topic, but the base phrase, "How to Cook," which is what brings in the traffic, is the same. If you put in, "How to Cook Like a Gourmet Chef on a Budget," there are only about 700,000 people who have written about that topic. Now try putting that whole title in quotation marks and you will find that no-one has used that exact title. That is one way to use Google Suggest. Get a title that has a good base phrase, but not many others have used exactly and you will have a pretty good title.
Step 2

SEO Tools
Google Adwords and Wordtracker are also useful to get some high traffic keywords into articles and some higher paying ads. You can take your existing articles and increase your income. One way to check your article and see what kinds of keywords are already there and see what you can put in is to go to Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and click the button that says website checker. You copy paste the link to your articles (one at a time) in the box that says http:// (just delete that and put your whole article address from the address bar into the box). Then click "Get Keyword Ideas." Once your keyword ideas are there, click on the drop down menu that says, "Choose Columns to Display." (It says show/hide columns by default). Click on the arrow, and then click, "Show Estimated Avg. CPC). You will see a bunch of numbers come up next to the keywords. These numbers are the dollar amounts that advertisers pay per click.
Step 3

Sort by Earnings
If you want to sort by highest dollar amount, click on "Earnings" twice. This will sort high to low. You want to slip some keyword phrases into your articles that pay the most. Keyword phrases are phrases that are three words or more. You also just want to slip in high paying keywords. You can check all your existing articles this way. You do it a little differently to find keywords before you write. When you put keywords in, you want a couple of high paying ad phrases in your intro, along with your main keywords. You also want to slip keywords and phrases that pay well at least 9-10 times throughout your article. It can be a challenge, but it is worth it in the end. You want your articles to bring in $3-$4 a month per article if possible. (Not all will pay that amount, but the vast majority should.)
Step 4

Search for Keywords
If you want to search a topic before you write, go to Google Adwords and put in a keyword or phrase by leaving the "Descriptive Words or Phrases" box checked and put your keywords or phrases in the box. Click on "Get Keyword Ideas" (you might have to fill in the word that shows you are a human once in awhile), and then click on the drop down menu to bring up the "Show Estimated Avg. CPC" and then double click "Earnings" again to show high to low. Choose your keywords and title based on how much people are paying and put them into your article before you write.
Step 5

Wordtracker
Another tool to bring in traffic is wordtracker(http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/) Before you write an article, you search the term or topic on Wordtracker and see how many people are searching it. Wordtracker shows how many people have searched a topic in 24 hours. If it is not 200 or more you probably want to find a different topic, unless you know they will be searching the topic soon. (something new). It is best to use both tools, and Google Suggest, but I know it is hard to find the time. Keywords are the "key" to making money on eHow.
Step 6

Keep Writing
It can get very tiring to research each article for higher traffic and keywords, and you might be tempted to just write without taking advantage of the SEO tools, however it you really want to make money on eHow it is not advisable to write and hope for the best. Keywords in your articles will bring traffic, but they have to be properly placed as well. Your introduction should contain keywords that are meant to bring visitors who are looking for your information, and also optimized to get the highest paying advertisers on your article page. There is no reason you should not have good quality writing and good keywords on your articles. Just remember, do not sacrifice the writing for SEO purposes. In the end, the writing is what really brings in the readers. Look in Resources below for direct links to the search engine optimization tools.