So you may wonder why I would state categorically that keyword research is the first step to creating a blog for money.

The answer is simple.

Keyword research is the corner stone to creating a money-making blog, when your goal is to blog for money.

Let me illustrate this with a simple example.

You have heard of a friend’s friend, who created a website on “how to blog for money” and made a killing by selling the website for $ 1 million dollars. You have met this guy briefly. You know he is an ordinary fellow. Understandably, you are convinced that you can do what he did.

Hence you start the process of setting up your million-dollar website.

You begin your keyword research.

You google for the term “blog”, then “blog for money” and finally “how to blog for money” with the intent of understanding how people name their blogs.

The searches results are uninspiring. It seems people don’t know how to name their blogs!

So you consult a few friends, family members and meet your mentor, who has overseen your professional growth over the years. You think the name “Mindsport” sounds good. Hence you try the name out on a few friends. They hink it is great.

You decide on the blog title: “How to blog for Money” sounds good.

You check out the domains available for registration. You celebrate when you find that mindsport is available though with a dot info tag. You think about it. Your friends think that since your aim is to create an informative site, a dot info site would actually work best for you.

You agree. You register the domain name and you are set to go.

You read up books and ebooks on SEO keywords and SEO optimization. You even hire a SEO specialist to help you find good keywords using the best keyword tools available in the market. You turn to friends for keyword suggestion and they share their keyword research findings with you.

Armed with this list of keywords, you write out the content. You now bring in a friend whose website gets 1,000 hits a day and get him to go over your content. He checks double checks your keyword research method and cross verifies the keyword density in your copy. He feels satisfied. Everything seems hunky-dory.

You publish the content, add a few ads and wait for the money to flow in…

You feel disappointed when that does not happen.

Now truly anxious, you key in the name of your website into the Google search box and feel crestfallen when your website is not on page 1 on any of the search engines for any of the search terms, “blog”, “blog for money” or “how to blog for money”.

Now terribly anxious, you manually start checking the search results, clicking page by page to discovery where your site is buried in the search pages. You cross the 1000 page mark and give up. Despite your very best attempts, neither your domain nor the urls on your page have made it to even the top 1000 pages.

You haul up your SEO expert. You curse your friends. You wonder what went wrong.

The answer is that your keyword research was poor. You didn’t do keyword research the right way before you set up your website.