If you have been doing SEO for a while, you are probably familiar with all the web-based SEO tools that help you conduct your keyword research and build more effective SEO campaigns. Keyword tool such as WordTracker, Keyword Discovery, and SpyFu have been used by SEO professionals around the globe to conduct keyword research and develop massive keyword lists. What all these services have in common? They all ask you to sign up for a monthly or annual plan to take advantage of their data. There is nothing wrong with that. Paying $30-50 a month for a data service with one of the above services is not much and well worth it. But what if you are a niche SEO marketer who doesn’t need those advanced features offered by the above packages? Maybe you are just looking for a package that provides you with the capability to find new niches to tackle and find more ways to promote your existing websites.

Market Samurai is one of the best desktop SEO applications around that helps you conduct your keyword research, analyze markets, find new niches to enter to, find content for your portals, and promote your existing websites. It helps you find Yes-Follow websites to get links from. The SEO analysis features offered with Market Samurai are very helpful as well as they allow you to analyze niches and find the ones that are worth taking advantage of. (more…)

If you have been involved in the SEO business, you have probably heard of Trellian software. These folks are responsible for some of the best SEO tools on the market. Does Keyword Discovery ring a bell? Keyword Discovery is certainly one of the best keyword research tools around. But there is more to Trellian software than Keyword Discovery. You can get a lot of useful information from Trellian’s Competitive Intelligence tools as well. Sometimes, it’s just not enough to have the right keywords. Knowing what your competitors are up to can help big time.

Unfortunately, there are no tools that would give you 100% accurate competitive information. It’s just not going to happen (unless some insider spills the beans). At the same time, CI services such as that of Trellian’s allow you to find out what your competitors are putting their focus on. Trellian Competitive Intelligence offers you 6 services to help you find out what links are driving traffic to your competitor’s, what search terms your competitors are using to run advertisements on major search engines, and who their affiliate partners are.

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Have you ever wondered how important your domain name is towards your SEO efforts? There are a lot of small businesses who do not have too much flexibility when it comes to choosing a keyword rich domain. They in general discount the power of domains when it comes to ranking for top search engines. You would think that a sophisticated search engine such as Google wouldn’t pay too much attention just to a domain name. After all, if the content is not there, why even bother ranking a generic web page.

In reality, search engines (especially Google) do pay a lot of attention to your domain and the words in it. It would depend on the market that you want to be involved in as well. For instance, you can’t expect to rank in the top 10 for the word “best credit cards” with the domain bestcreditcards.com. Not unless you go through the extra trouble of optimizing your content and getting links to your domain. The credit card market is so competitive for your domain to pull the weight. But how about “Best HDTVs?” Let’s take a look:

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Many publishers focus on search engine optimization to drive traffic to their website, gain impressions for their sponsors, and sell their traffic affiliate products. There are plenty of networks that you can sign up for to add banners to your website and hope for others to click on your ads. The better way is to use a service such as Chitika to maximize your traffic. I am in general not a big fan of intrusive ads, and everybody knows that banners are not as effective as they used to be. But with Chitika, you get an interactive set of ad units that will only show up to your SEO traffic (unless you are using Linx but that’s a whole other story).

Let’s say you have a website with 1,000 pages optimized for the search engines. You can always put Google Adsense on your website and try to make money that way. It’s actually not a bad way of doing it. Unless you, too, are not a big fan of the look and feel that you get with Adsense ads. Even though you have some control over what shows up on your site and the look and feel of your ads, Google is the one in control. Google Adsense units do make your site feel cheap. Chitika ads are interactive and can’t be seen by your non-SEO traffic. And Chitika does allow you to show only Adsense or your own ads to your non-SEO traffic. So you can mix your Chitika and Adsense ads and make even more money (read the instructions here).

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