Well, that did not take very long! Barely four days after I changed the rules for the Make Money Online reviews, I am on page 1 of Google.com for the term “make money online.”
If anything can demonstrate the power of anchoring you text links, this is it. Four days ago, this blog was ranked 158th place for make money online. Now it’s at the number 3 spot. Judging by the number of sponsored links, make money online is a highly prized key phase.
How does this translate in terms of traffic? The overture keyword tool says there were over 44,000 searches last month for make money online. Overture only reports on Yahoo! properties so you can expect Google to have at least twice that volume. If just 10% of searchers click my link, it could mean 8,000 or more Google visitors to this blog every month. And this is just for one search term!
Getting everyone to link to my blog with my anchor text was just part of the puzzle. I had to make some changes to the blog to speed my charge to page 1 of Google. The first thing I did was change the title of the blog home page from John Chow dot Com – The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Dot Com Mogul to Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com.
The second thing I had to do was to make sure some posts on the front page had the targeted keywords in them. Ideally, they should be in the blog post title because more weight is placed on that. Now you understand the evilness behind some of my post titles. In addition, the targeted keywords should be repeated a few times in the article.
Tips To Choosing Anchor Text
Sure, you may think “super cool dude” is a great anchor for your blog but if no one searches for it, then it’s worthless. The best way to find out what anchor texts to go after is by using a keyword tool like Overture or WordTracker.
Overture is free but doesn’t give you much information other than how many times that keyword was searched for over the previous month. WordTracker cost money but offers a ton more information. You enter some keywords, and WordTracker tells you how often people search for them and how many competing sites use those keywords. They also offer a free trial and 30-day money back guarantee if it doesn’t work out for you.
The other way to choose an anchor text is to look at what words searchers are using to get to your site now and try to rank for variations of it. For example, I could go after make money blogging or just make money. You just have to be creative. And being a little evil helps too. 
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{ 164 comments }
Hmmm… What do I want to be found by?
I gave it some thought and I am thinking “Pokemon”!!!
Might as well make it more cute and go with Pikachu
pokemon? Hummmm….are you sure?
by the way, john overture is overdated, is in slow death and there is better alternatives, like keyword avalanche or even the IBP keyword Tool.
I agree, Overture is far too slow. It times out pretty often too.
More good advice, thanks!
Why not Pokemon? I’m already on top for “get paid to surf websites”
http://www.google.com/search?q=get paid to surf websites&hl=en&start=20&sa=N
That should make your site look cuter. I wonder what the kids would say if they didn’t find what they wanted to.
They’d say “Pika… Pika… Pikachu!”
Steve, pick something that you’re already ranking for, it’ll be a lot easier
“Hmmm… What do I want to be found by?”
Buy Viagra Online perhaps?
Looks like there’s already a lot of comment spammers out there after that market
Did anyone else test this search w/ Google? I didn’t even get John returned on the first page.
Nevermind, I see. I decided to try Google.ca instead of Google.com. On Google.ca he actually came up as #2, so he’s rising.
It’s still spreading across the Google data centers. Not all centers have me on page 1 yet. One some centers I’m at #1 for Google.ca but the highest for Google.com is #3.
That’s it! This post alone deserves a second review. Thanks for sharing.
Congrats, you are number 4 after problogger.net in google.com.au
Being Evil is good how bout we make an Evil Clan?
If you want to join an evil clan check my blog for details
I’ve joined the evil clan!
At this rate, John’ll hit number one in no time.
For $250 dollars!!
He’s still playing around #3-5
John this speaks massive volumes to the influence you can swing online. Congrats. This is the most impressive bit of work you’ve done on this blog from my perspective.
Be sure to let us know what the actual traffic numbers look like.
Right you are sir. I’m now getting you on the .com site just as you described.
When, oh when, will Google be able to deliver me JohnChow.com faster?
You’re currently # 3 at google.sg and
# 4 at google.com
dunno why it showed # 29 earlier
still great work!!
Jeff – http://wallpapers.jeffreymunro.com
I saw it on google.com
Very cool
What could this evil mind think of next?
Michael
Selling JCDC and TTZ for $2 billions.
TTZ might be worth some value, but you’ve got to wonder who else but another John Chow would be interested in JCDC.
I’d buy it and add it to my Asian Name Domain Network!
Kumiko
All three or four letter domain names .com are off the street now! well, almost all of them.
To my knowledge, none of John’s sites are three or four letter domains. He has johnchow.com and thetechzone.com
Come on, $2 billion don’t be ridiculous. YouTube only went for 1.6. You have to set a fair and sensible price, something like $1 billion.
“What could this evil mind think of next?”
You wouldn’t wanna know…
Cool – congrats. I guess some of the Google datacenters haven’t updated to the same stats as the one you’re using – I’m seeing you at #31.
But I’m not sure you’re using the term “anchor text” correctly… “the anchor keywords should be repeated a few times in the article” — I think something like “targeted key phrase” would be more appropriate.
Anchor text is the text you use when you’re linking to website (or something else) – it’s the text enclosed by the “a href” tag.
You are correct and I’ve updated the article to reflect that.
Good catch Hannes. It’s a technicality, but one that had to be mentioned.
Is there an easy way to find your rank in a Google search? I was included in this review post for “Scion tC” and gave up looking after 300 results. I’m not surprised since my site is new but was curious how far back I was.
The only way is to sell your soul to the evil
BTW, what is Scion tC? Too many sites listed there with Scion tC. How can you differentiate yourself from others and make every one love to link to your site like we all here?
Scion tC is a sports coupe by Toyota. I think it’s only available in the United States.
On a side note, I wrote a review on The Number 23 (Jim Carrey movie) and I come up as the number three or four result for “paranoia 23″. In fact, it’s the second biggest keyword phrase that has directed traffic my way this month.
There’s no easy way, but if you’re pulling referrals in then you can use the referral string to see where your visitors were when they found you.
Otherwise set your Google preferences to 100 results and use the find command to try and find your domain.
This tool is worth looking at:
http://www.seochat.com/?option=com_seotools&tool=30
John,
What is your most fav. book on SEO that you recommend for us guys?
Congratulations on making the first page with that BTW.
The SEObook: http://www.johnchow.com/go/seobook.php
I did a review on it here: http://www.johnchow.com/seo-book-review/
Thanks buddy.
Evil at work. There be an affiliate link there
thanks for the reply, i’ll def. look into this book.
Well done, John. You are a true genius at internet marketing. What’s next on your agenda?
wow, only four days, you make it so easy don’t you John?
So how many links did you end up with? From Google a rough estimate is from 235 sites over 1000 pages with 52,700 links?
52,700 links with “make money online”? That can’t be right… can it?
Congrats John.
Okay John, your next challenge is to rank for in the top 5 for “I’m rich, bitch!”
haha, well he did decline a million dollar + deal for his other site
What a feat…
Sounds evil, sinister and brilliant. i’m sure everyone is thinking, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Answer: cause you’re not as evil!
No, Answer “because I dont have the readership”
If I offered a $250 dollar Wii, I would get a handful of reviews, but John having a large readership attracted many…
Yep,
I considered offering a big prize but I do not have the readership to make it profitable.
I gave a way a game last month and this month I’m giving away free reviews. Still less than 50 takers on the review contest…
Considering that John has well over 3,000 RSS subscribers, he has no problem pulling in the traffic. Even if a smalltime blog was giving away a Lamborghini, it would not have been as effective a campaign as John’s (unless the story got picked up and spread around the blogosphere).
It isn’t just the number of readers. It is the type of readers. Most people here have blogs and many of them are about making money on line, so it is easy to link to John. If everyone here was running blogs about hair dryers, the contests might not be quite as easy.
My contests take quite a bit longer to complete because my readers are coming coming for productivity tips, not all of them own blogs, and if they do they aren’t about productivity.
“because I don’t have the readership”
but you are as evil?
Interesting John… That nicely tips…
Congrats John, at the moment your numero 9 on google.com.my (malaysia).
another milestone for john chow…congrats! your sites not only just a money making blog but really an education to all of us how to make money online by giving us important tips. congrats again john!
45,000 searches on overture last month for make money online, so you will see a nice increase in traffic too
I wonder what the RSS feed# can hit?
John did say to not bet against him, so I’m going to say that he’ll break 5k by the end of the month
Mine can’t even hit 14
What A guy you are John What a guy. Taking Over the Web one day at a time
How many linkbacks do you think you got with that phrase as the anchor text?
Very impressive!
The Nintendo Wii contest has done wonders for 1234Pens, because they are now the #2 result for “promotional pens” on Google.com.
Its amazing how new updates can bring such a fresh boom to the SEO results eh.
Talked to a friend who is selling a special product for golf online. I mentioned about John’s way of advertising and asking him would he be willing to let me give his product for free to my blog readers the way John did it? He said sure if I only ask for one. The only trouble is, as of now, I still don’t have any idea on how am I going to set up the winner’s criterion? I will sleep with it for few more nights.
Or may be I just ask him to visit johnchow.com and read the 123pen or that vibrator’s story.
You could try, but I’m guessing that your blog doesn’t have as large of an audience as John’s. I posted up the contest on the 1234 pens blog, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have gained as much attention as it has if it weren’t for John mentioning (and endorsing) it.
They must be happy!!
4 days????????????????
Phew.. that’s coolness
Gotta think of a better anchor text for my other blogs before I make another review for ya
Yup its worth doing but there is always a conflict between writing for search engines and writing for humans!
If you are interested I am trying to put together a network of bloggers interested in improving SEO of their blogs, if you check my blog I have a post on it at the moment.
There are some other related posts also….
“there is always a conflict between writing for search engines and writing for humans!”
Only if you take it to extremes. There’s a massive grey area in the middle that makes for quality SEO fodder and is pleasant to read for humans. Though I don’t know how machine gun toting cats will react to it…
Ranked so high! Forget $7000/month…make that $70,000/month soon! Can I be your exclusive umbrella holder when your in the sun?
When he gets out of one of his two Pagani Zondas, no doubt.
Very cool! Yeah I see it on google.com. Excellent work John!
I just did a write up on Anchor Text, how it helps you and the people you’re linking to
I’ve been pitching SEO for blogs for the longest time haha.. also note to set the category slugs to reflect those terms you want to be picked up by.
“hot issues BC” on google returns my blog on #1.
That’s pretty good work there John. Now I just have one question … how many hits would I get on my site if I could get to number 1 with the anchor text “sex”?
wow congrats! I think it would be cool to see a follow up of how many people you drive to your site who actually type in “make money online”
I’m going to start making one anchor text for now on, I’m sure it’s better to have one anchor text then of bunch of random ones
It is often better to try and hit one keyword per post, then, if you get links to your posts use that same keyword.
The post title is the most important element, as this also becomes the page title and tags.
If you tightly theme a blog it is easier to get rank on your kewords.
My blog linked above does not do this, but another I have got PR4 with only a few posts on the site, and is starting to rank well for certain keywords = traffic.
What you also need a ONE WAY links into your site, i.e. not recirocal / exchanged links which merely cancel each other out.
I have a post on my blog where I am trying to get bloggers interested in SEO to triangulate links between themselves, so you exchange links through a networkd and get ONE WAY links to your blog, Like JC has done with his Wii competition.
Does this work?
Sorry for the newbie question but could you tell me how to change the title of the blog home page (the one that shows in the window title bar) without changing the title in the header of your blog (as you seem to have done?
Thanks for the help
Rahul
http://www.tradernirvana.com
You could just do it manually in the header.php file instead of having it pull up the blog description.
there is an
if ishome()
switch used in sidebar.php, you should be able to use that in header.php to change the title for the homepage only.
Awesome! Let us know how it works out traffic-wise
Yeah, I would like to see the traffic analysis as well. When you do your recap for this month, make sure to note any spikes around this time. I would love to see a day by day graph of uniques and overall page views for your site John.
You have not posted traffic stats in a while.
I just want to feel the Power of John Chow now…
Congrats John! I can’t wait to see the March Revenue Results!
Congrats on your success JC…..But remember what goes up,must come down. Then what?
Then you die.
Funny
actually… scary
Maybe sadistic is the word you’re looking for.
That’s only when gravity is at work. Search Engines aren’t affected by the laws of gravity
I’m the 2nd link for ‘invest in porn’!
of course, ‘make money online’ has more hits than ‘invest in porn’, but mine is cooler!
HAHA Nice. Or you could simply just use ‘porn’ lol.
That’s probably much more competitive.
You’re still at second. Where will you land if you change it to just “porn”?
Nice work. You even beat Problogger at it, John. Since many people typically type ‘make money online’, this should result in many visitors to the site in future.
Nice! Congrats! Seems to have worked out good for you. What will you try next?
sounds good but it’s wrong. Overtures keyword tool is practically useless. According to word trackers results a little over 1300 searches over the past 90 days for that term, so expect about 400 searches a month, more or probably less.
I have been documenting this climbing since March 15. As you may see from this picture at http://mysattrack.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/mmoneyonline4.gif you were already in page one as of last night. When I check it after reading your post around 3 hours ago, I couldn’t find your entry and I kept waiting to see it propagated. It wasn’t until almost midnight here that finally Google displayed your site in number 2 spot. Congratulations!
I have changed by anchor text as well to something that better describes my site. Call me a copycat.
Trae
http://www.wmdtalk.com
Copy cat is okay. The biggest copy cats in the world are the Japanese. They copied every thing but they make it better.
Good luck.
Haha! See my site for an example of that in action!
Kumiko
There goes your Japanese… hehehe
Hey there John – don’t know if you actually read these comments, but excellent job on the ranking. I am about to kick off some similar experiments at QuoteMyAuto.org – it will probably take me a couple of weeks to get the site updated, but I will be anxious to see how it goes.
Take Care!
Good job John. Now everyone will start copying your method.
If it works, why not?
It’s sound like John must prepare their new weapon
That was fast!
Congrats John
You are on #2
Truly Evil John
Hey your Top Search is getting down
How to make your web can be 10 Top Search ?
Great job John. I did the best job in Google Search was found in Page 2, but in Google Malaysia
God Bless!!
Want to be truly evil? Get the number one spot for someone else’s site! I won’t believe John Chow is truly the root of all evil until he ranks number one on a search for “problogger”!
kumiko
Now John, that was a brave challenge from kumiko. Challenge it John!!
Evil will always be with you!!
ohh, thats a good one!
As long as you dont try to rank for Million Dollar Blog we aight.
That would be interesting.
Wouldn’t be ‘problogger’ be mad at that? That would a Real face-off competition.
Hehe that would be funny.
Has John taken up Kumiko’s challenge yet?
330 searches a month for “problogger.” I don’t think that is worth the effort. If it had another zero at the end, then I would do it.
It would be interesting to try if only as an experiment and/or case study.
you get more and more bloggers jealous. Well done!
p/s : I am getting extremely jealous now
Congrats on page 1
That was fast.
I don’t see johnchow.com on the first page on google or yahoo for “make money online” search query. It’s ont the third page for Google.
I see him on #2 now. Strange. It could have something to do with Geographic locations…
How does that translate into monetary terms John? Did you see a dramatic increase in your daily income? You are a trendsetter John!
You are showing number 2 here in the results for me. Nice work!
As long as you don’t try to go for
John Chow bow down to the God of Internets
I think you are ok by me, and only a little evil.
–C8j
I am very impressed. That is evil.
Just checked, as to be honest I thought that was far too quick. Yep you’re Number 2 in Google out of 147 million search results.
Congratulations and respect to the evil one.
Just to be clear that’s 2nd position in Google.co.uk. Still bloody awesome though!
And 2nd in uk.yahoo.com
Congratulations. I never doubted this would happen quite quickly. The power of Chow.
I have also seen this tank a site that doesn’t have much authority to it. Do this on a newer site and say goodbye to your SERPs for a while
You can always go for mispellings too. A lot easier to rank for – just not quite so much traffic.
I guess most people will be going for generic words or terms. Misspellings aren’t going to get you much results from those that can spell properly!
Check out the google trends tool. THa’tll give you an idea of what search phrases are being used more.
Thanks for the info on Overture. As always I find something usefull here.
This is a little bit off topic, but I was just wondering. “Make money online” applies to your site, but “root of all evil” could be contested. Does Google ever look at this and perhaps modify your ranking?
I doubt it, but I could be wrong.
Thanks for sharing this, it was really useful! Lots of so called “SEO Specialists” will be angry at you for disclosing this secret.:smile:
now if you wanted to do this same thing but with other keywords could you do that…and still keep your “make money online?”
He should be able to. Especially if the other term is somewhat related.
could you do this process with your tech site?
“The second thing I had to do was to make sure some posts on the front page had the targeted keywords in them. Ideally, they should be in the blog post title because more weight is placed on that”
^I never knew it weighed more, thanks for the heads up
Also take a good look at what is in the H1, H2 tags. That will make a big difference as well.
Interesting to see the focus of this site change from different observations about financial things and how money was made to competing with ProBlogger .
I am also surprised no one above compared content on the two sites, and only focused on the results. You have done a good job so far, so keep it up! I was a regular reader on ProBlogger before JohnChow was born in its new form, and I will continue to read it. At the same time, JohnChow is also taking up a lot of time every week as I have to reread your posts to apply them to my situation.
Congrats John, and like I said, keep it up!
I think the links were important, but the onsite optimizations probably were important as well.
So how has this impacted your stats?
Awesome article. Teaches us on how to effectively use anchor text. Thanks very much. Let me try to adopt some of these learnings on my Online Presence Blog – http://onlinepresence.blogsailor.com/
I saw that you have jumped below Problogger again. It amazes me how dynamic search positions are. I go from being #1 to #10 in one day. Don’t we just love the google algorithm.
Another great tips on SEO … focus on optimizing the anchor text. A lot of people tends to overlook on this.
You can also try the KeywordDiscovery.com keyword research tool which offers a free trial and similar (monthly and yearly) subscription options like WordTracker. Key difference is that KeywordDiscovery has a much larger keyword database and provides historical data for the past 12 months for every keyword.
Cheers
Rob
I must say, John’s blog title is quite catchy and effective — got a lot of us hooked, didn’t it?