Step 1: Think of a niche
Ok, brainstorm a few ideas for things you are interested in. It doesn’t have to be a passion or anything, but you’ll get on with this whole thing a lot better if you can find something that you actually enjoy writing about. It is a good idea to come up with at least of couple of topics to explore.

Step 2: Collect keyword ideas
Head on over to Google’s keyword tool now. We need to find out what keywords are actually being searched for and how many people are searching for them. Make sure you select “Exact match” from the sidebar. Now put in the first keyword that springs to mind to do with your niche and click search. Now download the results in CSV format.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 a few times
Put in as many different, main terms as you can think of related to your niche. For instance, for this site I might have tried: adsense tips, affiliate marketing tips, ebay arbitrage, make money online, earn money online… etc… Download all the results. I generally aim for 10 to 15 searches.

Step 4: Filter data
This can be a bit time consuming, but it is worth the effort to do it right. First, combine all of your results into one spreadsheet, this should give you a list of 1,000 – 2,000 keywords. What we are interested in is the Global search volume – nothing else. So remove all other columns. Sort by keyword column and remove any duplicates. Now sort by volume, search down the list and remove any ideas with a volume of less than 500.

Step 5: Filter data some more
What you should be left with is a list of a few hundred keyword ideas. I tend to sort by volume for this bit – you need to manually read down the list and delete any keywords which are not directly relevant to whatever your site is going to be about. This can take a while, but you should eventually be left with anything from 50 to 500 keywords depending on your niche.

Step 6: Check competition
Now you need to check your competition. You should only be targeting keywords which will be relatively easy to rank for, so we need to find out which ones they are. Here is a reasonable keyword tool to try. Once you have the numbers, filter out any that are very competitive and any that are too competitive for the search volume. For instance, I would be happy to target a moderately competitive keyword phrase which is getting searched for 10,000 times a month, but not one that only gets 500. For an affiliate marketing business I might go a little more competitive, but for Adsense it is all about the low hanging fruit.

Step 7: Filter
If you still have a lot of keywords, you can start getting rid of the lower search volumes – or be even stricter on competitiveness. The trade off is simple. You can stick to really low competition and try for an easier niche but less profit potential, or you can go for decent traffic, if you are prepared to have to work harder and longer before seeing a return. For beginners I would recommend going for very low competition keywords.

Step 8: Sort and categorize
Each of the keyword ideas left will naturally fall into a subcategory within your niche. Try to group closely related phrases into categories and then further into pages. In doing this you are shaping the layout of your website. Each page should target 1-3 phrases and no more. You can see the categories I chose for this site by looking at the sidebar. Try to use your phrases to build a sensible structure with pages that make sense for your target audience. Be careful not to lose sight of your audience though, building a website that actually make sense for humans is priority.

Step 9: Build your site
Now that you have your blue print, you are ready to build your website. The actual process of web development is outside the scope of this post – it’s long enough already, but WordPress is probably a good starting point. Build each page outlined in your blueprint, and make sure each page answers any questions implied by the keywords you are optimizing for.

Step 10: Optimize
Once your site is up and running, go through each page and make sure it is optimized for the appropriate 1-3 keyword phrases you have selected. Check all of the obvious bits like H1 tags, Titles etc… again, basic SEO will be covered in other posts. Lastly make sure every page is as good as it can be for your visitors – if your content isn’t outstanding your site will never reach it’s potential, so this bit is worth spending some time on.

Step 11: Build links
Link building, is, like it or not a big part of SEO, this is where you are earning your money. I would recommend focusing on one page at a time and start building quality links right from the go. Keep going and eventually you will start to rank and generate some traffic.

Step 12: Adsense
Your Adsense earnings will grow as your traffic grows, but you may as well put it in place as soon as your website is ready. This step is the easy bit, and if you do the other 11 steps right and consistently then the money will eventually start to trickle in.

Step 13: Analytics
It’s amazing how few e-marketers make the most out of Google Analytics. You can do so much with it, such as finding new ways to retain more traffic, or finding ways to improve the performance of your Adsense. Keep testing and you will improve your website and your income.