Ranking for the search engines is a huge topic because it is universally the best place to get organic traffic, traffic that is targeted as well as being valuable. The reason why search engine traffic is such a great source to get new visitors is because it delivers constant streams of targeted traffic that you can monetize easily. How the traffic is targeted is because since search engines like Google allow users to type what ever query they want, chances are, if someone searches up how to make money, they are looking for just that. You can think of the search engines as a funnel and what comes out of the funnel, is direct targeted visitors who are interested in whatever relates to their query.

If you are just beginning Google SEO, you probably hear a lot of webmasters say start with a long tail keyword. What is a long tail keyword? A long tail keyword is more lengthier search query that is generally easier to rank for than the general broader keywords. For example, if you wanted to rank for Make Money Online, it is generally better to start with How to Make Money Online because not only is it easier to rank for the longer one, it is more directed and targeted than the broader keyword Make Money Online. This definitely means that if you rank for a longer tail keyword, the visitors are generally of more quality and are more specific of what they are interested in. As for the broad keyword, Make Money Online, it may be harder to depict.

Also, another bonus to ranking for longer tail keywords is that since they generally have much lower competition, meaning less competing sites that want to also rank for that keyword, you are more likely to see traffic sooner than lets say trying to rank for Make Money Online. Because it could take months, even years but as for longer tail ones, it could just be weeks or even days to see results.

There are many bonuses to targeting the long tail keyword. Generally because it takes less time to get actual results with long tail keywords than the broad keywords, you are most likely to feel at ease and see progress. As for the ranking for the broad keyword, progression may be slow and the competition may be stiff because remember there are only 10 search results on the front page of Google. And if you are trying to rank for a general keyword like money, there could be weeks without any improvement in the search results because it is that competitive!

In no means do I mean that you should target only long tail keywords. After you have conquered a few long tail keywords and you think your website has become more of an authority in the search engines and you are seeing that you out rank most posts you write about, you can then trail off to ranking for the more competitive terms. In my eyes, it is all about consistency and trust to gain authority in the search engines. Stick to what you do best and commit. Regardless of what most experienced webmasters say, I see a lot of new webmasters fall for the same mistake over and over trying to rank for a broad keyword that would take months, even years to rank for.

An overview is to take it easy with broad keywords and target long tail keywords until you believe that you may have a chance. The first keyword MoolaDays tried to rank for was Ways to Make Money Online, then we jumped to Make Money Online and other relatively hard, money related keywords. One thing I can say is that once you have taken down a longer tail keyword, it becomes much easier to rank for a broad keyword. Take it step-by-step because you will not only see results faster, it is a good practice overall for your mind (a lot of webmasters give up or go crazy when they take the opposite direction going broad to long). It just takes patience as well as commitment to succeed in ranking for these terms. A lot of people overlook these values.