I don’t know about you but I have always been obsessed about finding THE keyword research tool that would make it possible to do proper keyword research without having to jump on to other kw tools. I know a lot of SEOs talk about how WordTracker and Keyword Discovery are amazing tools that one should live without, but there is no question that Google has put a lot of work into making their own keyword tool one of the best in the industry.

I don’t question the merits of tools such as WordTracker, Keyword Discovery, or even Wordze, but I firmly believe that the days of most people starting keyword research from scratch are truly over. It’s just not efficient enough to start your keyword process from scratch. If you are planning to enter a market that has 3 or more big players in it, you already have all you need to find your keyword list. These folks have put their time and effort to build up their site over the years, and one would be stupid to not use the efforts these guys have put in to create a comprehensive keyword list.

That’s where my favorite tool comes in. SpyFu has truly be a revelation for my business in the past few months. I admit that I never wanted to give SpyFu a chance. I thought it was a cool tool but overrated at best. But what I didn’t know was I was overestimating other tools and severely underestimating SpyFu’s capabilities.

The ability to look at a big player in your industry, and see all the keywords that they are ranking for effectively ends the need to start your keyword research from scratch. With tools such as SpyFu you can see what keywords you are ranking for, what keywords your competitors are ranking for, and where the gap is.

I am always about getting things done faster, and with SpyFu you can get things done faster than any tool available on the market. The tool is the not 100% perfect, which is why you should use Google Adwords tool to fill in the gaps. Who says keyword research has to be hard and time-consuming when you can outsource it to your competitors…

In recent months, I have become really disillusioned by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines out there for their inability to show useful content at the top. The good thing about having SEO professionals at hand is that you can get your good content to rank higher on major search engines. The bad thing is that you can use these guys to get your crappy content to the top. Think about it. You have taken time to write a piece about history of research and the best researchers in the world, and a guy gets ranked higher than you by writing crappy content that is optimized for the engines.

I am willing to concede that it’s very difficult to get ranked for general terms such as “research” but it’s not impossible, and I have seen way too many low quality sites ranked on various engines in the past few months. I have no doubt that search engines are trying their best to bring the best quality content to the front, but at the end of the day, any algorithm can be gamed.

A year ago, I talked about how getting searchers involved can help Google improve the quality of its SERPs. Google has finally taken steps towards adding the human factor to its ranking factors. I firmly believe that involving searchers is one way forward. Will there folks who will try create automated systems to manipulate the results? I am sure there will be, but content will be king again in the next few years. Only this time, it will be good content reigning supreme and not the crappy content we have all come to see in the past few years.

Text link ads have been around forever it seems. I am not really talking about the company as it you probably can’t even find them on Google anymore. But selling links to others on the Internet is nothing new. Now, Google started to go crazy on us a while back and penalize sites that were selling (and sometimes buying) ads. Text-Link-Ads got the worst of the situation as they completely disappeared from the face of the SERPs, and it seems anyone who so much dares to link to these guys disappears too (Which is why I am not linking to them).

Text-Link-Ads has been the most innovative text link marketplace, and they have continued innovative with odds stacked against them. They have now created inLinks (links inside posts), and adding to the fact that they allow you to buy post level links, you can get a serious bang for your buck.

I had hope Google would get tougher with this whole link policy. I always thought that the organic search allowed us who didn’t have that big of a budget to achieve great things in the organic search channel. But text links take away the somewhat level playing field and put the advantage back on the side of the rich. A financial company can buy 1000s of links due to their big budget and don’t even realize they have spent that kind of money. A small business simply can’t afford to pay thousands per month to maintain these links.

I love what Text Link Ads and LinkWorth are doing. Am I glad they have been penalized? Somewhat. But Google has been going about it the wrong way really. Google needs to focus on finding a way to hone its system to avoid getting gamed by link masters. At the end of the day, buying links is not the only way you can amass links and get brownie points on search engines. Google needs to stop looking the other way and address the issues head on.

Google may have made it hard for folks to buy links and taken away TLAs exposure, but I believe Text Link Ads deserves to show up on the SERPs. I have talked about the right to be found on this blog, and I believe any site has the right to be found, and it’s shameful that you can’t find TLA anywhere for their own brand name. I am not an advocate of Google’s bullying practices at all. Google has to find a way to get its act right. Sites such as TLA are not to blame for the holes in Google’s algorithm.

Should folks be able to buy text links? Absolutely. Should they get any benefit from bought text links? Not really. That’s partly due to the fact that the link-based ranking system is flawed, and the geniuses at Google know that as well. I have heard the argument that giving a lot of weight to links is the only way Google can rank sites appropriately. Well, I am shocked this sophisticated system provides so much low quality results. Parked sites and squeeze pages getting ranked high in the organic results is just distasteful and a testament to the incompetence that has been shown by Google in fixing their algorithm (I would put the level of incompetence as high as that shown by our Auto companies).

Google cannot stop folks from buying ads, and it seems they don’t intend to stop the practice with a real solution. Unfortunately, they have monopolized the search industry, and the consumers are worse of for Google’s hypocrisy. Can Google stop folks from buying text links one way or another? I don’t believe so. Will Google fix their algorithm to address this issue? Not likely.

That’s the question that many folks have asked me in the past. I remember when I used to work in the financial industry. I was ridiculed for suggesting that we could go after the long-tail phrases to get more folks to sign up for our products. Obviously, it always does help to talk to folks who know what they are talking about, but people were vetoing my suggestions, claiming that most search marketers use long-tailing for pay per click, and it is not a technique useful for SEO purposes.

That can’t be further from the truth. It’s true that if you are big established public corporation, you probably have been enough in business to have an authority site in your niche. That means you can get ranked for highly general terms and get a lot of leads for free. But it’s also true that general terms do not convert as well as long-tail terms.

Competition is also lower for long-tail terms. Think about all the possibilities. You can optimize for 100s and thousands of long-tail terms, and get high conversion rate on those terms. Now, some folks believe that going after long-tail terms is just not worth the effort. That’s actually better for us folks who are going for long-tail terms. The less competitive these terms stay, the better off the rest of us will be.

Google is finally allowing folks to customize their search results with the introduction of SearchWiki. There had been talks about Google working on custom and personal search, but now you can customize your search results with SearchWiki.

The feature is revolutionary as not only you can now help figure out what pages are actually more useful in regards to your search term, you can also remove results that are useless.

The first button will allow you to vote for listing on the SERPs. The second one allows you to get rid of spam or unrelated results. I think this is great news for us users and bad news for folks who use tricks to get their way to the top. I firmly believe that the introduction of this feature will allow content to be king again. I am sure marketers will again look for ways to abuse this system, but Google is a sophisticated system already and using user input to customize search results can only make things better.

Your take: will the personalized search revolutionize the way we search online?

Throwing big words around is often used by consultants to justify the big bucks that they are getting. Let’s say you have a meeting with a client, and you start throwing around acronyms and big words. There is a good chance that you can impress the individual if they are simple enough to get impressed by big words. KEI is one of those words that has been thrown around in the past. It’s true that more folks now know what KEI means, but it’s stil a big word for SEO newbies.

There are many definitions for KEI, but Wordtracker has the best definition for it:

The KEI compares the Count result (number of times a keyword has appeared in our data) with the number of competing web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are most effective for your campaign.

Credit to WordTracker for providing KEI for their keywords, but everybody does that now. KEI does look effective on the surface as you can find terms that are less competitive and easy to rank for. The problem is that KEI does not factor in the quality of each search term. For instance, KEI cannot predict if your keyword attracts shoppers, information seekers, or buyers. If you are in business to make a living, you want to convert folks to buyers, but KEI has no way of determining that.

KEI also does not take into account the quality of competition. You might find a keyword that looks effective according to KEI, but if you have 30 Yahoo’s or Google’s in that niche, you pretty much have not much of a chance for getting ranked in the top 30.

In essence, KEI is not a credible metric on its own. It can be helpful if you do your research to figure out the quality of keywords but by its own KEI is just a big empty word. Now, I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t use it. It’s just that it is not accurate enough to build an entire SEO campaign based on KEI numbers, unless you don’t like your job.

Everybody is jumping on the Search engine optimization bandwagon these days. With the cost of pay per click advertising going through the roof as the competition intensifies, many corporations are looking at Organic search as a way to diversify and reduce their overall cost per action. But the key to success in the SEO world is picking your battles. You can’t optimize for everything, which is why you should focus on the most important ranking factors first before trying anything unconventional.

By focusing on the most important factors first you can make sure that you get the biggest bang for your efforts:

Keyword Use in Title Tag: title tags are the single most important ranking factor. The first things that search engine notice about your pages are the titles. It’s only fair to assume that your page title will reveal what your page is about. You should always try to start your title with your most important keyword phrase. A lot of companies start their page titles with their brand names, but you will usually get the best result by ending your titles with your brand name.
Anchor Text of Inbound Link: getting links from other authority sites in your market is very important towards getting to the top of the search-engines. By asking your linking partners to link to you with your keyword phrases in the anchor text, you can make sure that you rank for those keyword phrases.
Link Weight: the more related incoming links you acquire for your pages, the better off you are. It’s true that you still benefit from links from non-related pages, but quality links from within your niche can help your rankings tremendously.
Age of your site: the sooner you register your domain and start optimizing it for search-engines, the better off you’ll be. There are instances that new sites have managed to rank well on Google, but it is often better to register sites early in the process and start optimizing them as soon as possible.
Keywords in content: you should not forget to use keywords in your content. By using your keyword phrases in your content, you can let engines know what keywords matter the most on your pages. Watch your keyword density. The max keyword density you should go for is 3-5%. You should also use your keywords in your header tags and bold tags to emphasize their importance.

Now nobody claims that these techniques can get you to the top of search engines. But if everyone else is doing them, you would put yourself in a huge competitive disadvantage by ignoring them.

Many folks spends hours a day to optimize their campaigns for Google and Yahoo by improving their title tags, and writing better content, but unless you know about the top negative organic search factors, you are not going to be able to avoid the pitfalls in the way.

Here are the top 5 negative search engine ranking factors:

1. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags: many folks use content manage systems that do not create optimized title and meta tags for each page. You should always try to keep you tags unique per page. Duplicate tags are the best way to end up in the supplementary index (the one people usually don’t see).
2. Duplicate Content: using duplicate content on your web page tells search engines that you have really no new value to add for your audience. So you shouldn’t be surprised if search-engines try to penalize you for using other people’s content on your site.
3. Linking to Banner Farms: linking to a site is similar to giving it a vote of confidence. If you link to a spam or link farm, you are going to lose your credibility with search engines. Always try to avoid linking to any site you don’t know or trust.
4. Selling Links: Google, specifically, hates folks who try to get unfair competitive advantage over their rivals and manipulate search results. Buying and selling links used to work for a while, but selling can get you penalized these days. Buyers are less likely to be penalized, but there have been cases that serial buyers have had their paid links discounted by engines.
5. Server errors: you should always try to adopt a hosting plan that is reliable and comes with 99.9% up-time. You simply can’t afford to have your site being down when Google agents come to go through your pages. That simply gets you penalized, and it may take a long time to get your ranking back.
Google and other engines are all about providing quality search results to searchers. You simply make them look bad by making the above mistakes. Focus on quality and value for your audience, and your organic results will come.

SEO has become a tools sport these days. People are constantly trying to outdo each other when it comes to SEO Tools. There are many tools out there that can help you find keywords or create .htaccess files for your websites, and you should use all these tools to become a more productive SEO. SEO domain tools are important as they tell you about ways you can optimize your on-page tactics to achieve better results on Google.

Here are the 5 tools that you can use to find out where you stand as far as organic search is concerned:

URL Redirect Checker: the type of HTTP redirect that you use on your site can affect your rankings on the SERPs significantly. HTTP 302 redirect tells search agents that your site is temporarily located at that address. HTTP 302 is in general not SEO friendly, and you can’t pass PR credit from an old site to a new site with a HTTP 302 redirect.

Google Banned Tool: This tool allows you to figure out if you have been banned by Google or put in a sandbox. You may have implemented a new SEO tactic that Google does not like, and that can often get you in trouble. Knowing whether you are banned can help you formulate a strategy to get out of Google’s banned list.

Broken Link Checker: broken links can seriously hurt your search engine rankings. Links allow search agents to get through your pages, and if you have a broken link, that does not bode well for your organic rankings. Besides, it is just not good user experience to have links that do not work on your website.

Website Speed Test: your site’s load can also affect your overall SEO rankings. A very slow site can lead to search bots abandoning your site. Having a slow site leads to terrible user experience for your audience as well. You should constantly test your website to figure out if it works with slower connections as well as very fast connections.

Class C checker: if you are hosting your websites on a shared hosting account, the chances are that all your domains are hosted on the same class c IP range. For linking and overall SEO purposes, it is always recommended to host your sites on different class c ranges. Class C checker allows you to find out if you are suffering from this issue.

Attention to details is often the difference between good and great SEOs. By using the above tools, you can find out the problem areas with your website to strategize ways to address them.

Google Analytics has finally gotten the makeover we have all been waiting for. Google had announced a while back that Google Analytics was going to get one, but until today, I had not seen the change with my own eyes. Well. It’s here today. While the changes may not sound that significant to you, believe me they are.

The new look is more convenient to business executives. Before, you used to see your site information, and you could go on and click on tabs that you liked. But now, you can also see the % change from previous week, or month, or even year. You can set the change variable to be the # of visits, the time spent on your site or completed goals, even the bounce rate.

That’s not all. You can also star a site and track it separately. This is an absolutely simple but brilliant change to the executive dashboard. Think about it. If you are running a business, you may not have time to go through every single site and figure out how each is doing everyday. Google Analytics’ new interface allows you to see the problem areas faster than before. Now here is the bad news: you don’t have any excuse whatsoever for not using Google Analytics (unless you can afford those more expensive solutions).