SEO Tools of the Trade.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 09-10-2009

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Before you start optimizing your site for search engines, there are some tools that you should arm yourself with. These tools can become your best friends when it comes to SEO, especially when youre just starting out. The first and most important step in any search engine position campaign is recognizing which keywords you should optimize your site for, and there are several pieces of software that are useful for this, including Wordtracker, Optilink, Zeus, and Agent Web Ranking.

WordTracker’s keyword research service is the only one on the Internet that provides a comprehensive database of the most popular keywords in a particular industry. It can help you recognize associated keywords that you may have never thought of. One of the differences between WordTracker and other tools is that it can spot subtle differences, for example singular and plural keywords, or often-misspelled ones, and tell you which versions are more popular.

Optilink has become very popular in a short period of time because of the power it gives you over search engines. Every site that links to you boosts your ranking, especially if its content is relevant to yours. Optilink helps you to come up with strategies to improve your link structure and get a better ranking. Here are some of the things it does:

1. Analyzes the link structures of your top-ranking competitors.

2. Tells you why your competitors rank well, so you can try to copy what theyre doing.

3. Tells you what kind of rankings you can expect if you adopt similar linking strategies.

4. Helps to monitor sites youve exchanged links with, to ensure that theyre still linking to you.

Zeus has an excellent way of increasing the link popularity of your site — by exchanging with other sites that are related to yours, giving you a head start on your SEO. Zeus does the work for you, identifying sites that it thinks you should try to exchange links with. If you look for the sites yourself youll often find its not worth the time, but an SEO tool like Zeus lets you do it instantly. Once youve got links, you can manage and maintain them automatically.

Agent Web Ranking helps you to check your sites rankings this is good to see how your SEO efforts are working. Many people just optimize and submit, thinking the work is done, but theyre wrong. You need to continuously check your site’s rankings, and Agent Web Ranking is a reliable and quick tool for doing this.

The only real problem you might have with any of this software is that search engines can change the way they display their results, breaking the tools until their authors update them. This means that most position reporting software gets outdated very quickly. Its not that much of an issue, though, as most software is provided on a subscription basis with updates included, rather than bought only once.

If you really want to stay ahead in the SEO industry, you should try as many different tools as you can. By paying attention to what tools others are using and learning how they work, you will have the edge in the SEO market. So get out there, and download these SEO tools of the trade!

SEO Tools Poem

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 01-10-2009

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I am in my cave, and looking out kind of furtive,
The reason being, psychologically, I am low assertive,
It seems to me with dinosaurs just outside the cave,
Its entirely reasonable now, to be anything but brave,
But the tribal psychiatrist insists that I must face my fears,
And he issued me with stones, and little wooden spears,
And so I went out bravely, into the land of fools,
And got quickly eaten because I lacked the proper tools.

You see things havent changed much, the tutor whispered sage,
Psychiatry still screws up, no matter what millennium or age,
He pauses for best effect, and to let the chuckles die,
What was needed was a plan, and the means to try.
So they tried all sorts of weapons, all sorts of cunning ruse,
But they always ended up, as just amusing little chews,
And just when they were despondent, try as they might,
Along came Dinosaur disaster, in a great big meteorite.

So theres a lesson in the parable, of your cavemen of old,
Dont listen to the shrinks and to anything you are told,
For if you are to triumph, over the odds against the rules,
You will need a bigger club, or ideally 21st century tools,
We dont have dinosaurs now with which to fight,
But PCs and internets where things have to be right,
So ignore your Psychiatrist when problems rear their head,
Just go and see your Guru, and use his tools instead.

The poem you just heard and wondered at in awe,
Is a totally new creation and not cribbed from one before,
And the Tutor is a Fowler, mentioned on the training pages,
Who uses methods slightly more in tune to current ages,
There may not be any dinosaurs lurking on your drive,
But these days a super virus may be all too much alive,
And though Google isnt Pterodactyl proof, it avoids bad links,
And dodgy linking areas, and your ranking quickly sinks.

So crawl out of your cave and click on the link to tools,
That validate bad html and make your website cool,
That check your viability and show you where you are,
And put you back in charge, instead of watching from afar,
Google will love you, the more you do right and sound,
And these tools will pare away all that is not allowed,
And should you need an expert we are here never doubt,
Not with psychiatric counseling, but with proper technical clout.

One day I stepped outside my cave, and the creatures were in shock,
For I hadnt brought a little spear, hadnt primed up my flintlock,
Hadnt sharpened up my arrows, with my trusty longbow in tow,
Hadnt brought a big pistol or a nasty grenade to throw,
No I had brought a massive tank, and though it was overkill,
I flattened all the bloody creatures that ever wished me ill,
And so instead of cowering, like me come out clanking,
And visit the Gurus tools site, and develop your prime ranking.

How to Choose the Right Keywords.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 23-09-2009

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Many SEO experts will tell you that they have specific ways of choosing the right keywords for a website. Some do it using SEO tools software that compares possible keywords to see which are used the most. Some will give you DIY methods with spreadsheets. We say, however, that you should try every method you can in the search for keywords. Here are some steps that might help:

Identify and create a list of keywords from meta tags, research on your competitors, your highest-converting products and biggest current traffic sources. For each term (typically between 30 and 50 terms overall), narrow the field down to about 15 or 20, choosing the terms you feel are most relevant to your website. Your higher ranked competitors are probably up there for a reason so take a look at what they are providing. Make sure that everything is directly relevant and try to stretch yourself out into some unchartered water. The less common that your key words are, the more likely you are to get the search engine results for these key words.

We would recommend a piece of software called WordTracker to find out how many searches have been done on a certain term. You can choose to work with this information however you want spreadsheets are good, but you can use anything that will make it easy reasonably easy for you to track these keywords. Youre trying to find a popular word that has a low competition rate. Although this is easier said than done, its very rewarding to find an area where your site can succeed because of the lack of competition. You should remember, though, that these search databases are relatively small, and should be used for comparing keywords against one another rather than for estimating their true market sizes.

This keyword selection research should then be compared with client experience of which keywords may be most profitably optimized, as well as any current ranking on the target keywords. Data from PPC campaigns can be helpful for this. The outcome should be a focused list of, say, 15-20 keywords that are both strong performers in terms of search volume, as well as solid candidates for successful optimization.

When determining how profitable your key words are you should look into your web sites statistics and see what key words were used for what number of sales. This is called your conversion rate. The more sales that are associated with a certain key word, the more valuable that key word is. It is important to account for all of the variables, however. If ten people come across your site through a certain key word but only one of them buys an item this key word isnt as profitable as a key word that one person finds your site through and still orders a product. It is important to work percentages into your decision of worth of a key word. Your conversion rate is the number of sales divided by the number of visitors.

You probably know who your competitors are, so go to their site and open the source code of a few of their pages (select View Source from your browsers menu). Look for the tag to see which keywords theyre aiming for. Their keywords are often garbage, but if you look around at a few sites then you can often find keywords you hadnt thought of. It is not good practice to simply copy and paste a list of key words. It would even be concievable that you would be charged with copyright infringement for such activities. Whether or not you get charged, it is morally wrong. Looking through and coming across a few extra relevant key words is one thing. Steeling an entire list is something else completely.

Another approach is to type in the keywords you have in mind and look at the current top results. Analyze their pages for keywords, descriptions and content this will give you some idea of what kind of keyword density you should be looking at for your keywords. If the sites that come up are a different kind of business to you altogether then youve probably chosen a dodgy keyword remember that youre trying to get relevant traffic, not just any traffic.

The general rules that you need to keep in mind when selecting key words are:

1. Try to select unique key words that your competitors have not thought of.

2. Optimize for your most profitable key words. How many sales does the key word generate? How much profit is made for each of these sales?

3. Make sure that the key words are very relevant to your site so that people who find your site through your key words will not immediately leave.

4. Try to assemble a list of key words that covers your site very will so that you arent leaving anyone or anything out.

SEO Tools Of The Trade

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 16-09-2009

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Before you start optimizing your site for search engines, there are some tools that you should arm yourself with. These tools can become your best friends when it comes to SEO, especially when youre just starting out. The first and most important step in any search engine position campaign is recognizing which keywords you should optimize your site for, and there are several pieces of software that are useful for this, including Wordtracker, Optilink, Zeus, and Agent Web Ranking.

WordTracker’s keyword research service is the only one on the Internet that provides a comprehensive database of the most popular keywords in a particular industry. It can help you recognize associated keywords that you may have never thought of. One of the differences between WordTracker and other tools is that it can spot subtle differences, for example singular and plural keywords, or often-misspelled ones, and tell you which versions are more popular.

Optilink has become very popular in a short period of time because of the power it gives you over search engines. Every site that links to you boosts your ranking, especially if its content is relevant to yours. Optilink helps you to come up with strategies to improve your link structure and get a better ranking. Here are some of the things it does:

1. Analyzes the link structures of your top-ranking competitors.

2. Tells you why your competitors rank well, so you can try to copy what theyre doing.

3. Tells you what kind of rankings you can expect if you adopt similar linking strategies.

4. Helps to monitor sites youve exchanged links with, to ensure that theyre still linking to you.

Zeus has an excellent way of increasing the link popularity of your site — by exchanging with other sites that are related to yours, giving you a head start on your SEO. Zeus does the work for you, identifying sites that it thinks you should try to exchange links with. If you look for the sites yourself youll often find its not worth the time, but an SEO tool like Zeus lets you do it instantly. Once youve got links, you can manage and maintain them automatically.

Agent Web Ranking helps you to check your sites rankings this is good to see how your SEO efforts are working. Many people just optimize and submit, thinking the work is done, but theyre wrong. You need to continuously check your site’s rankings, and Agent Web Ranking is a reliable and quick tool for doing this.

The only real problem you might have with any of this software is that search engines can change the way they display their results, breaking the tools until their authors update them. This means that most position reporting software gets outdated very quickly. Its not that much of an issue, though, as most software is provided on a subscription basis with updates included, rather than bought only once.

If you really want to stay ahead in the SEO industry, you should try as many different tools as you can. By paying attention to what tools others are using and learning how they work, you will have the edge in the SEO market. So get out there, and download these SEO tools of the trade!

A Guide to SEO Resources and Discussion Groups.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 10-09-2009

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Finding the right SEO tools and resources can be challenging but were here to make it a little easier on you. SEO forums and newsgroups can be very confusing to a person with no SEO experience. These forums and newsgroups are just so heavily populated that they can intimidate many new users.

The first rule regarding these situations is to just slowly try to integrate yourself into the community. Follow these rules closely and concisely so that you do not offend anybody:

1. Do not spam the forum with your problems. If you have a few things that you would like to discuss you will probably get help, but do not try to hog all of the assistance for yourself. For one thing, most of your questions have already been answered, believe it or not. There is generally a search option. Always use this before posting your problem.

2. Do not Flame. Flaming is a term used among forum dwellers to describe the behavior of yelling at people via the forum. This is generally associated with cursing, constant argument, typing in all caps to try to convey anger, and dismissing other peoples posts in an undignified fashion. There are other problems that are included in flaming, but I have given you the jist of it.

3. Never take a post off topic. If there is something that you would like to discuss that was inspired by a post on another topic, post a new topic in the appropriate board and explain where the topic was conceived. You may still want to reply to the post just to let people know that the topic has been created so that somebody else doesnt take it off topic.

4. Do not bump your thread (or post). Bumping a post is when you reply to your own post in hopes of getting a response sooner. The only time that this is acceptable is if your thread has laid dormant for about a week. Bumped threads are very annoying to most forum users. Bumping posts on a regular basis will probably lead to a lack of interest in your posts and will probably contribute to a lack of support in your ventures.

5. Be friendly. There is no reason that you cant be completely polite when posting on a forum. You will get very good response if you are simply polite in your post. Politeness in the world of forums includes making sure that you have communicated your problem carefully so that people attempting to help you can understand and provide answers to the best of their abilities.

6. Join in on the community favorites. Many forums now include games which are occasionally pretty fun. They are pretty much just there for if you are bored and waiting for a response to your other posts, but they are enjoyable if you keep up with them as many forum dwellers are quite articulate and witty.

Heres a list of resources that you can use when you need help but you dont want to pay for it.

Finding Groups.

Google makes discussion groups easy to find with their Google Groups tool (groups.google.com). Go there and type in seo to see whats on offer. Two popular groups are alt.internet.search-engines and alt.www.webmaster. If you dont like Googles groups, try Yahoos instead (groups.yahoo.com). Either of these sources will provide you with a pretty substantial list. Remember, regular search engine listings seem to apply here so generally you will see the best results towards the top of the listing.

dmoz.org is a good place to start: from their home page, you can browse down to any subject you want, and you should find at least one mailing list, discussion forum or message board in the listing.

There are several forums out there on the web that focus on SEO, and you can learn a lot from all of them, even if some of the discussions are over your head at first. Even ordinary searchers can learn a lot from following these discussions, as they tell you a lot about how search engines work.

Here are some useful forums: WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch Forums, ThreadWatch, Best Practices Search Engine Forums, cre8asite forums and the High Rankings Forum. Check them out.