SEO Review

Rigid, unchanging procedures threaten any business activity. With Internet-enabled and -related enterprises, keeping up with technological progress is absolutely essential to survival. As opposed to static (unchanging) websites that are not looking to strengthen or raise their industry share, any dynamic (changing) website will have new copy, even new strategies, on an ongoing basis. Regular, extensive, ongoing keyword research is not a luxury, but a basic survival tactic.

Understanding how people actually use words, and the relationships these words have in the context of an Internet search, is key to threading these words and phrases through the fabric of your site. Because the Internet is so very dynamic, with word relationships changing seemingly by the minute, this is a huge and growing challenge for more and more people and companies. After all, the Internet is growing into the major commercial and communication hub of the world. Accurate and useful keyword suggestion tools – and their intelligent implantation into business and marketing strategy, are a major part of the solution.

There are a plethora of keyword suggestion tools available, from free to cost-based, including NicheBot, Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, SEOBook, and the various Google keyword tools. In this two-part article, we will consider these tools and the differences among them. Part one will cover the first three on the líst, while part two will cover the Google tools and SEOBook’s Keyword Suggestion Tool.

Most importantly, perhaps, these tools help you estimate the relative (rather than absolute) size of the search referral "market" produced by particular words and phrases. You will develop a better understanding of what terms appear how often in search queries, and what other terms are correlated with them, and how many times they are searched compared to those other terms. The analytics you develop with the tools will also give you a good idea of how their suggestions will fare, and provide a means of understanding "competition levels" for specific words and phrases.

Naturally, there are differences both large and small among these keyword analysis/suggestion tools. Google, of course, compiles its tool data from its own search network of sites and offers tremendous functionality at low or zero cost. The subscription-based services, such as Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery, take advantage of databases of multiple sites and data that can be assembled, broken down, repurposed and presented in myriad ways.

Specific Tool Functionality

Wordtracker aggregates its keyword data from the leading meta search engines, primarily Dogpile but with input from MetaCrawler and others. In Wordtracker’s attempts to mine keyword gold, it will discover how many times a certain term or phrase shows up in its database of over 316 million words. This is quite a trick in itself, as English (according to linguists) has between 600,000 and two million words, depending upon how we define a "word." It is clear that Wordtracker leaves no permutation or word-form uncounted, which is a distinct benefit

Wordtracker’s brain trust asserts that metacrawlers process the queries of the leading search engines with some precision, and that the software robots that continuously check site rankings and such do not interfere with the count. In a different approach, KeywordDiscovery relies on its global "premium database" of some 4.5 billion searches based solely on user data, thus diminishing the distortions inherent in some other strategies.

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If you are considering which tool to use, you can still get free trials of most tools, except that you usually need to provide contact information, with phone numbers and e-mail addresses required. There are few ways to use and compare the tools anonymously, so the next best approach is "meta-analysis," in which we look at various published third-party reports on the actual use of these tools.

In a study published last year, one technology writer performed keyword forecasts for "dog food" with KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker and several other programs. Despite using different original data sets, all of these tools try to supply reliable estimates of the available search referral traffic without "data inflation." There are numerous ways to analyze and present the results.

On average, KeywordDiscovery predicted there would be some 1,088 searches for "dog food" daily, while Wordtracker calculated the probable search referral market for "dog food" to be about double that. KeywordDiscovery does have a unique and quite useful algorithm that considers "seasonality" in its results, letting you review the seasonality of terms historically, as monthly estimates or even as a component of annual trends. Search engine market share is developed, as well.

KeywordDiscovery and Wordtracker results can both be repurposed to estimate just Google referral traffic or that of any other major engine. In the tech columnist’s example, the Wordtracker daily estimate for Google’s "dog food" search was 1,043, or almost half of all the "Daily Prediction" information. KeywordDiscovery had Google accounting for 67 percent of its "Average Daily" results, thus suggesting that 738 "dog food" searches would be made in Google every day

Perhaps this does not seem to be much of an absolute difference, but when considered over a 30-day period, the difference scaled up considerably in this particular test. KeywordDiscovery estimated some 22,000+ "dog food" searches that month, but Wordtracker projected over 31,000 "dog food" searches for that same period.

A ‘Niche’ Player

Nichebot came on the scene with some degree of fanfare. It is a complex program, with a tightly specified methodology that lacks flexibility in some important ways. On the other hand, it gathers data from more sources than Wordtracker – leveraging the results from KeywordDiscovery and Google – and provides a great selection of explanatory videos, instructive screenshots and excellent "Help" functions.

However, Nichebot recommends a five-step system, which can be time-consuming and confusing, even for veterans. There are, of course, some free "quick-dig" tools, including, oddly enough, Wordtracker and its thesaurus. While it is free to search Wordtracker via Nichebot, you get only basic counts, and must pay for a premium search if you wish to see competition data and the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI).

You can dig a bit "deeper" without additional cost by clicking on a term or phrase in the results, which provides a líst of associated phrases. One savvy forum poster declared that the primary purpose for using Nichebot is "to find as many keywords from multiple sources to cover as much territory for the maximum traffic for your website." In practice, he explained, one can start "from a broad search and just keep refining, merging, narrowing in."

The proliferation of "niche" tools and functions would seem to be a sensible development given Nichebot’s name, but the added functionality comes at a price. For instance, you can get the addresses of the sites that have the greatest number of backlinks for a particular term, but the learning curve involved with this program makes the more arcane data difficult to develop.

Generally speaking, Nichebot results are excellent, and it allows better organization of projects and searches via its folder hierarchy. Further, the program checks your site for keyword density "red flags" that Google may note (and disapprove of). As premium search charges kick in a bit early compared to others, the question for users has to be: Do the premium charges return enough value to offset the time and money spent to obtain it

Time and Tide

While meta-analysis of user comments at a random selection of forums discloses that they don’t find Nichebot particularly intuitive, it is considered an impressive software achievement.
Even its appearance gives Nichebot the impression that using it takes time and discipline. While KeywordDiscovery and Wordtracker can be used in a stream-of-consciousness manner at times, Nichebot does not lend itself to brainstorming or "fluid" search styles. This is a direct result, of course, of its having the power it does. Despite that power, it does have a number of anomalies that are commonly reported. For one thing, it applies its vaunted "Jackpot" rating to keywords for which it finds no competition, even if that is the case because of error or anomaly.

Finally, a number of users report that advanced searches can get stuck in a "holding pattern" (in a queue) and take from 15-20 minutes to generate results. With the tide of the Internet forever washing new waves onto the shore, time is of the essence. Even though advanced keyword research searches can return valuable data, it is no stretch to say that many marketers might consider 20 minutes per keyword tool inquiry to be a barrier to frequent or consistent use.

Rating the Tools

Wordtracker is easier to use for most people, but the possibilities are certainly expanded with Nichebot. Doing random or unassociated searches "by the seat of your pants" is among Wordtracker’s great strengths, but Nichebot works well to focus your work and helps you take a step-by-step, measured approach. It can be said that Nichebot can not only return search terms and numbers, but can actually sub as your defacto keyword research process. As one user commented at a KEI forum, Nichebot "takes a lot of the guesswork out [but] getting there is somewhat painful."

KeywordDiscovery’s "9-in-1 tool" approach (check their site, it’s even divided up this way) is popular with many users. It goes some 10,000 keywords deep and the more you pay the deeper you can go. Nichebot does provide more information, but it has that steep learning curve and much harder to learn than the more "friendly" Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery.

What works best for you will most likely be a product of trial and error – and for many will be a combination of the tools. Because you have to give up more and more personal data to get the "free trials," however, you may want to let other people’s fingers "do the walking" and continue to do meta-analyses of others’ results. There is a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from multiple opinions, yet there is nothing like running your research your way. Trust the judgment of tech columnists and meta-analysts, or acquiesce to giving up some personal information to find out for yourself.

Remember, because of the many search engines and the multitudes of sources the keyword tools get their numbers from, all of the results are relative. For starters, check out the most important, relevant and highly "trafficked" keywords and terms already associated with your site’s content. As we move to Part Two and consider the Google tools and SEOBook’s program, don’t forget that ongoing study, research and testing are the most fruitful ways to stay abreast of an ever-changing universe of words – and all their relatives, too.

About The Author

AdGooroo is a leader in online competition analysis. With a cutting edge keyword research tool and providing free keyword research, AdGooroo is a must-have for any search marketer or agency.

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions, perpetuated by industry SEO experts, is that a website must follow perfect SEO strategies to get top rankings. While adhering to simple common SEO standards does help the search engines both find and index your site more quickly, it doesn’t guarantee by any stretch of the imagination that following those SEO guidelines will propel your site to the top of the rankings.

If only search engine optimization was that easy!

No doubt, there are some SEO faux pas that will do harm to your site’s rankings, especially in Google, the ultimate hall-monitor all puffed up and ready to pounce on any misbehaving webmaster. Things such as keyword stuffing, keyword spamming or linking out to bad neighborhoods such as link farms, pharmaceutical or gambling sites may get you blacklisted.

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But how much SEO do you need? How much search engine optimization do you need to get top rankings? Do you need a whole lot or do you need very little SEO?

Actually, after 10 years of marketing online, the answer to that question varies depending upon what you’re trying to accomplish with your SEO efforts? If you’re operating an online business in a very competitive (read lucrative) market, SEO will be high on your agenda as you go about annihilating your competition.

Even if you’re an ordinary webmaster or website owner you’re probably fussing over your rankings in the search engines. The higher the rankings you achieve for your chosen keywords; the more traffíc you will get. Good quality traffic that converts well into loyal subscribers and fans of your site.

Many webmasters and companies spend thousands of dollars each month in order to get their keywords and sites up to the top of the líst. If you’re into affiliate marketing, your daily income will rise and fall almost parallel to your rankings. Now, if my earnings go up, I know automatically my rankings have gone up, usually in Google. If my earnings go down, I know my rankings have gone south. Some times even a drop or rise of one place on the first page SERPs will affect how much you earn.

Obviously, because of this fact, SEO or how well I am optimized for the search engines is extremely important to me. I am constantly building quality links and quality content for my sites. Some keyword battles you win, some battles you lose. I have been fighting some keyword battles for over 3 or 4 years now!

But how much SEO is enough? How much SEO should you do with your sites? Many webmasters make sure all their on page set-up or lay-out is done exactly to what the SEO experts say you should do. This is not a bad idea. Make sure your Title, URL, Headlines, Keyword Density… are all laid out right. These are things we can control and adjust to meet the SEO standards.

Other SEO or ranking factors are much harder to predict, many of them are simply out of our control. How other sites link to us, what they put in the anchor text, what they say about us… simply things we can’t control.

I believe the over-riding reason why your site is listed at the top of any rankings has to do with the number, the quality and the quantity of sites linking back to your page. The higher the number of related quality one-way links you have flowing back to your site, the higher it will perform in the rankings. Your anchor text is very important (underlined part of a link); it must contain your keywords or variations of it. The content on the linking page should also be related to your chosen keywords.

Get this part right and you will get high rankings.

Or at least this has been my experience – all the other ranking factors do count but this is the over-riding factor in my opinion.

Another major ranking factor lately, has been the importance Google is placing on social media links. Get your content to the first page of Digg with lots of diggs and it will rank high in Google. This is not surprising when you consider the nature of these social bookmarking sites… it really is an actual "vote" for the quality of your content. Getting Delicious bookmarks has a similar positive effect.

Another prominent factor, from my observations, is having your major keyword in your Domain Name. Use hyphens if you want but having those keywords in there, does help rather than hinder your rankings.

Now if you’re wondering about how Google ranks pages or your keywords…. Google has around 200 ranking factors (with filters and penalties thrown in to make all our lives interesting) which it uses to rank your keywords/pages. This is still the best online resource that lists all of Google’s ranking factors: www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm

Now the question still remains, how much SEO do you need? How much time should you spend at optimizing, building links, worrying your head off over the latest Google Itch?

The answer always comes back to quality content. Create a site that has quality content and the SEO will take care of itself. People will link to your site, you will get bookmarks in all the social media sites, Google will find your content and rank it. Your SEO will grow naturally as your site grows. Keep building more pages, keep targeting more and more related keywords in your niche or subject area and you will get higher rankings.

Now, of course, some webmasters are a little more aggressive in how quickly they want their rankings to rise to the top of the search engines. Here’s something you can do if you want to go into the SEO battle full-force.

1. Download SEOquake and place this free SEO toolbar plug-in on your Firefox (or I.E.) browser.

2. Go to Google and type in the keyword or keyword phrase you’re targeting with your site or content.

3. Select the number one ranking and observe how many pages it has indexed, PageRank, how many backlinks it has, age of the site… and so on.

4. Then use the page info button and study all the on-page factors this site has and notice what it’s doing with its page and keyword density lay-out.

5. Check all the backlinks this site has in the different search engines. Copy or try to get the same backlinks for your site that your competitor has acquired. Then get more backlinks and/or higher quality backlinks than your competitor.

6. Watch your rankings rise…

Just a few more words of wisdom and we’re done. Some battles will be too tough to fight, the competition will be so stiff you just can’t compete. Other battles will take a long time; months, even years before you rise to the top. Your best bet is to choose long-tail (multi-worded) keywords that have little or no competition. You can rise to the top within days, even hours. The sweet thing is this: long-tail keywords are often the most lucrative and bring in the most sales. For in the final analysis, you just don’t want SEO, you want smart SEO. And you will quickly learn, most times you can often out-smart your competition, even if you can’t out-rank them

About The Author
These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily: SEO Tips To learn more Internet Marketing Tactics try: Marketing Tools Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

You’ve seen countless articles and e-books written about it, but do you know how to market online with Twitter? If you don’t, you’re not alone. Most marketers are still boggled when it comes to using Twitter in their promotíon efforts. The main reason is because marketers don’t realize the sheer ingenuity of our favorite microblog’s 140-character limit communication. The reality is that the internet is information overload for most people. The genius of Twitter is that communication is forced into small chunks of information which most people can willingly digest. Presented with the option, people are more inclined to read a sentence or two as opposed to a long, involved blog entry or email! In this article, I will demonstrate how Twitter can not only be used by your business for marketing purposes, but also for customer service, product development, free publicity, and valuable access to experts!

Twitter for Marketing

If marketing entails everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers, including all communication, relationship building, and brand recognition – Twitter makes it instant.

For this reason, it is the perfect social networking platform for announcing sales, specials, and promotions. Many larger companies, such as Dell, have a Twitter account to announce sales as soon as they become available. As a small business owner, you can harness the power of Twitter this way too!

If you can get hundreds, or even thousands of people interested in your niche to follow your company’s tweets, you have a targeted líst of prospects at your fingertips. Simply tweet a brief detail or two about the special, and include your link. It’s that simple!

A líst of businesses on Twitter:

http://www.twibs.com

As a marketer, you know that the speed at which you can get your message out to your potential clients before your competition can reach them essentially determines your success. Twitter affords marketers the advantage of communicating with thousands of new prospects at the speed of light, and allows them to see your offer in real time.

Twitter for Customer Service

Many companies are designating human resources and time exclusively to enhance their customer service via social networking. Companies can find out the challenges, questions, and troubles that their clients are facing by reading their tweets to others.

Customer service representatives or public relations liaisons can immediately resolve any problems by engaging themselves in the conversation. Customer service representatives who engage their clientele via Twitter improve their company’s transparency, and show that they not only are concerned about their customers, but they also care about their brand.

Twitter for Product Development

Twitter can be used as an instant survey tool for product development. You can simply ask the likes and dislikes of others with a simple tweet and can incorporate or improve your current products or services.

It’s catching on. In fact, software development corporation Eclipse is working on a Twitter plug-in called Twitterclipse, which will tweet announcements, findings and questions within their development team. It is faster and more convenient than email, and also avails an RSS feed for posting their development updates within the Eclipse website.

Twitter for Free Publicity and Brand Awareness

As you know, free publicity is priceless – and it can be difficult for a small business to get access to the media. Companies regularly pay millions of dollars to imprint their brand in the minds of prospective clients.

With Twitter’s personalization features you can place your brand or company logo on your Twitter page. Because of the viral nature of Twitter, traffic and publicity comes for free.

About The Author

Abe Cherian is the founder and CEO of AdClickMedia.com, an online advertising network and a subsidiary of Multiple Stream Media.

To get visitors to your webpage you really need to know what keywords people will type into the search engines to find the service or product your specific site or webpage offers.

Before you say "Oh no, not another keyword research article", let me just say you will learn exactly how to quickly and easily do keyword research and even create SEO friendly pages based on keywords you find

Clearly one of the most beneficial ways to generate more traffíc to your site is to create backlinks to it. Backlinks from relevant sites helps to boost your page rank and can even get your website, or a particular webpage, showing on the first pages of a Google search for that keyword.

Now you don’t want just any old backlinks but ones that contain specific keywords you have optimized a particular page, blog or website for.

Lets say your website is about "dog training". A common and highly sought after keyword, but one that a new or even established site is going to find hard to be ranked high for

Now we all know that trying to get a webpage ranked in Google for one of the primary search terms is a real challenge. Those keywords are in effect, out of the range of most marketers, both in time and money resources to try to rank for

So the best possible way to raise search results and rank in your niche is to select secondary keywords that still get a lot of searches but don’t eliminate you from the possibility for ranking for them.

Stick with me here because this isn’t as hard as you were perhaps ** lead ** to believe

Now the first thing you should do is to narrow down the keyword(s) that you want to build or optimize a webpage for. You can do this very easily by going to the following website SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool and typing in a primary keyword in the search box

In the results that show, you are going to get a good líst of the highest searched for keywords related to the primary keyword you entered in the search box. You will also find a lot more information presented that can really help you narrow down your selection. You are looking for phrases that contain part or all of the primary keyword that you started your search with

The next thing you must do is determine what keywords are being used successfully to market products, services or websites online. To do this, I suggest you use the Google Adwords search term tool.

You can simply copy and paste a keyword from the líst into the form, hit enter and get a listing of keywords based on the one you input and also provide a líst of additional keywords to consider that expands the possibilities even further

Most importantly you will see a listing of keywords followed by a box filled in with the color green

At this point, my suggestion to you is that you choose a keyword that has good monthly search quantity but whose box [colored in green] is only about half or less green. Less green means there is less competition for that particular keyword phrase

Now we want to measure the link building competition for a keyword in Google’s search engine by selecting a keyword from the above líst and placing the phrase in the Google search box using the specific search operator: inanchor:"your keyword goes here"

Being that we are narrowing our keyword to a specific one you want to be sure to include the quotation marks before and after the keyword. If you use the inanchor operator without the quotation marks, it will give results for every page that contains every word in the phrase you entered individually or together, instead of the specific phrase, and doesn’t narrow the pages down to relevant ones that you would be directly competing for on that particular keyword phrase

Using the inanchor operator with the quotation marks will show the results (pages or links) shown (at top right of page) that contain the exact keyword phrase. These are sites already using that "keyword search term" on their webpages

Note: you can find a full description of all google search operators at: GoogleGuide.com

After you find a suitable keyword with good search volume and minimal competition and build a webpage around it, you can begin creating backlinks to that page using several resources. Your backlinks should be from high traffic sites because they usually get spidered for new information regularly by the search engines looking for new content and link

Here are some suggestions

• Post to forums with your sig file containing the link to your webpage
• Leave a comment on blogs
• Write and submit articles

Be sure that somewhere you include the specific search term that you have optimized your webpage for and the link to that specific page.

Is there an easier way to create backlinks without having to spend hours and hours of your time doing it

Yes, there are automated sites and systems to help with creating backlinks. Just be sure the systems mesh with your needs and don’t send up red flags to the search engines.

About The Autho

Creating quality permanent backlinks is easier and quicker than you think. www.cashway.com/d/backlinks.htm . Reprint OK with resource box as is.