Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at
9:37 pm
A keyword SEO tool is a combination of a few tools. When you buy tools to research keywords that is what you often get just a keyword research tool. No many also give you the data you need to perform search engine optimization.
Well now there is such a tool. It is often overlooked because many of the lessor tools that are promoted are on review pages and promotional pages that have had a good chance to develop some good link juice or page rank.
If you have not already I would suggest buying a copy of Market Samurai. You can always try the trial version and I suggest you do that.
When I first got my hands on a copy of this i used it a few times but went but to my old familiar tools. The reason being is that Market Samurai provides so much data that is can be overwhelming and going back to a familiar keyword research tool can feel comfortable.
Well as I write this I have been using Market Samurai exclusively for the last 2 months. It is not only a keyword research tool but it does much much more than just analyze keywords.
It will analyze the back links of your site or competitors. It will do a page rank analysis tell you where you competitors back links are placed. It will also tell you what anchor text they are placing and how many links for that anchortext or keywords.
Market Samurai just got better. It does keyword tracking. Something that can take several hours a week now takes minutes. You tell it what keywords you want to track and for what sites and it will tell you where those keywaords are ranking for you sites on the major three search engines.
In a resent analysis and I hate to admit it but what was holding me back from placement on the first page of Google was the lack of a title tag. I rarely mess that one up but once it was discovered I was on the first page 2 days later.
Just go download Market Samuria and do the trial. You will be convinced that is is the best keyword reasearch tool available.
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at
7:47 pm
A headline like that is called link bait. Link bait can be a powerful tool for generating traffic.
I have been listening to Rush since the 80’s! Now just because I listen to someone does not mean I believe in their philosophy. Then again I use to be a Republican then now since then turned independent.
I listen to many commentators I like to know what is going on and try to understand the many difference views and opinions on political matters and world events.
Mr. Bouncy Bouncy use to makes sense to many but not to others. Keith Olbermann seems to have fun taking jabs at Rush but is it a love hate relationship?
I just want to know where I can get the Mr. Bouncy Bouncy icon or screen saver.
Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at
10:02 pm
Twitter is a waste of time … is something I see often in SEO or internet marketing forums!
Did I miss something or am I just a frikken’ idiot. I am not one for missing an opportunity and I often scrutinize so called guru techniques. You know the techniques that are often sold or regurgitated in a 47 or 97 last chance offer.
My observations have indicated that Web 2.0 is alive and well if you use it wisely and use a bit of common sense it will reward you very well.
I decided to start building my twitter followers based on this so called nonsense that some well respected people were claiming it does not work. I have to wonder if they like spent two hours on Twitter and gave up; as of this writing I have only 749 followers. Not much to write home about but it is a small following.
What has this small following done for me? Well I notice something suprising in only two weeks! A page rank on my own Twitter of 2. Nothing spectacular.
So I started digging around a little more. I found Twitter profiles of about the same following or less with a page rank 5!
Now if you are like me you are thinking wow a PR 5 and a possible link! This is where it get nice. In your bio on your Twitter page yes you can list your website link. Sweet and simple and free page rank.
Twitter is a very viral marketing tool for internet marketers, affiliate marketers and people who just want to get thier message out to the internet.
If you are not using the potential of web 2.0 and specifically a micro blogging platform such as Twitter to promote your business or spread your message you are really missing out on a lot.
Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at
11:53 am
Longtail keywords are more specific to a searchers results. As discussed in a earlier post Longtail Keywords Convert Better!.
You could always go for the most searched keywords and possibly generate some good traffic but conversions are much higher on picking longtail keywords with the correct phrases and a lot less competition.
If you know your niche is selling a product that is difficult to find or one that can not be found or bought in a brick and mortar store what are the best keywords you can add to your product to create the best converting longtail keywords!
I suggest appending the following and watch how well these convert.
- where do I find
- where can I find
- where do I buy
- where to buy
- where can I buy
If you are selling widgets start with ‘where do I find widgets’.
Once you start seeing organic traffic then add widgets to the beginning of the keyword phrase such as … ‘widgets where do I find’.
Most keyword research software will miss these keywords, examples or phrases.
Using those phrases along with my may keyword or phrase generates about 5-15% more traffic depending on the niche.
Give it a try and be ready for a nice suprise.
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at
9:01 pm
Latent Semantic Indexing also known as LSI where contextually words that are expected to be on a page due to the subject should have similar words or phrases that relate to the subject or topic being written about.
From my limited testing and observations it is not something to get all worried about. What is critical is writting on a subject and creating relevant content with around 300 words of content per article or post.
Now there are tools out there that will analise the top search results and return a list of LSI or terms that should be expected based on the subject being discussed and they are rather interesting. To date from using these tools have I notice any improvement in traffic.
What I will suggest though is that tools that will return a list of related keywords will also give you a list of words that may be more relevant to the subject you may write about and could make your article appear to be more polished or proffesionally written or written by a pro.
I believe from my observasions that latent semantic indexing is not something to get too concerned about and you time is better spent at creating longtail keyword lists. It would not hurt to take LSI into consideration providing all your other SEO efforts have been perfected and you are able to drive traffic to your web site.
In other words write the article focused around your keyword phrases and research and should you want to tweak it later to get more traffic once it is getting traffic consider adding LSI phrases and keywords.
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at
10:40 am
Keyword density is the number of times a certain keyword or keyword phrase is found throughout a page compared to the other words of text. A little will go a long way. There is a big difference though when working with very competitive keywords or niches and more on that later.
If you’re an avid writer it is usually a good idea to start with a keyword density of about 2-3%. There are free keyword density checking tools available but more on that later.
From my own observation and testing for most niches and article writing 2-3% is a good start when writing articles over 250-300 words.
If you are going to write without using a tool write naturally and if it is a 300 word article at most use the keyword phrase 6-9 times. I world always stay at 2% when writing an article without research so in this case 6-7 times would be my recommendation.
Always use the keyword phrase in your title and always lead off with your phrase within the first few words of your opening sentence. Then spread the rest through your article and save one for the last sentence.
Now when going after very competitive keywords or keyword phrases it is a good idea to check out density. I have seen keyword density on web pages on search engines first page of results up in the neighborhood of 9%!
Once aware of this higher density for certain competitive keyword phrases I started writing articles and sales pages with similar keyword densities that were commonly found on the front page of those search results and found that it was much easier to get on the first page of the search results.
The free keyword density tool I use can be found as a plug-in for Fire Fox and comes with a suite of other tools and is called SEOQuake. The keyword density tool built into SEOQuake will return all the keywords and phrases broken down into a percentage as a keyword density.
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at
11:09 am
Long tail keywords may not get you as much traffic but often the competition is a lot less. Long tail keyword phrases also convert better.
Why is this, well take the word widgets? People searching on the word widget are just in the information gathering mode. If your ad copy or sales page is compelling enough you may make your conversion or have your page or site bookmarked for a return visit but let’s face it most people do not come back unless your product or service is unique.
There are many tools out there that can help you create long tail keyword lists. One free ppc keyword tool that I like is PPC Web Spy. It is a plug in for your browser and will allow you to see what keywords are being bid on, how much and how many clicks the advertiser is getting.
You may be asking yourself if I am going for long tail natural search terms why it is I would need any free pay per click keyword tools. The best converting long tail keyword phrases are usually the ones that are being bid on and often they will be getting click throughs to the advertiser’s site.
Using this method to gather a free long tail keyword list will not only give you long tail keywords that people click through on but help you avoid the duds. If you are trying to develop converting traffic as fast as possible you will want to use the keywords that convert to develop articles, links and traffic then if time allows move onto the lesser converting keywords.
In many cases when using such a tool you will often discover phrases and possibly micro niches that you have not considered. Once you have a campaign of converting keywords and you know your conversion rates it is likely you can enter a PPC campaign with confidence that you have a winner.
Monday, May 18th, 2009 at
9:48 pm
Natural search is a no brainer. Pay per click can be worth chasing but it is best to develop your skills in ranking for natural search terms that have longtail phrases. There are some good tools available such as Micro Niche Finder by James Jones that will help you discover longtail keywords.
There are many gurus pitching copy selling their ebook making PPC look like child’s play. Just make sure you can take up on a worthy return policy.
Many of us have heard the argument that PPC will give us the knowledge to know what keywords are converting. Well it can also be an expensive lesson to find out what words are converting.
PPC is more expensive than ever and when I was cutting my teeth on learning how PPC worked I could get very competitive keywords and phrases for under .25 cents. Those days of cheap PPC clicks and keywords are over.
Many of those keyword phrases now are up over 2 dollars and even if your willing to loose a few hundred dollars trying to realize what converts you will still not have enough data to determine if you have an effective campaign.
With natural search you can still determine with a little logic and observation what keywords are converting.
There are even tools available that will track links or backlinks to help you determine what natural keyword phrases are converting. So yes unless you are willing to learn a hard lesson financially or have a lot of money to burn it would be best not to experiment determining how fast you can max out your credit card.
Monday, May 18th, 2009 at
9:14 pm
Does your title suck? Seriously! Now don’t get me wrong here but if you are not leading off with your strongest longtail keywords you are missing some serious opportunity … that is tail … I meant longtail keywords.
Once you develop a list of keyword phrases unless you got them for free you need a list of at least 30-40 phrases.
Make sure your most important keyword phrase is in your title or leading off your title.
If you are chasing a competitive niche you will just need to get more backlinks. Page rank and page one is no real big secret it is about on page SEO off page backlinks and the more backlinks you have the better. The higher the pagerank of those backlinks and the more relevant they are to your site the better.
In all what you are looking for as a new site is quantity of backlinks. I highly suggest not being too agressive on a link campaign at first start with about 10-20 links aday and then stay at about 50. If you do your own testing will help you avail playing in the sandbox.
Monday, May 18th, 2009 at
7:59 pm
That title may be a little dramatic but is it really? PR is something you should try to keep on site and you do not want to be giving it away or unknowingly create page rank bleed.
Page rank bleed is when you let page rank bleed through your links to other sites. This can be a good thing if that is what you want.
Now you have to ask are you knowingly giving page rank away? If you are giving it away then how will you keep yours up? It is best to reserve that page rank for your own pages and internal linking.
If you are linking to your merchant without a no follow tag then you are not only giving them a sale buy you are also giving them some ‘juice’ or page rank.
The only relationship you have between your merchant and you is you provide an affiliate sale and in return they give you the commission. You are not required as part of the deal to provide anything else. In a few cases the affiliate program TOS may require you to leave the affiliate link unaltered if it is a cut and paste link.
I have seen numerous times affiliates giving away hard earned page rank then having the merchant surpass them and end up in the top 5 spots of Google and guess what? Not only have their sales dried up but the merchant has decent page rank surpassing just about all their affiliates that were promoting them.
So get your page rank bandaids out and start patching those holes.
