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).

There are plenty of ways to combine Chitika ads with ads from other systems to make the most money from your traffic. But the biggest plus with Chitika is the fact that these ads are not intrusive ads. They are pretty targeted as well, so your users may find some value in your ads.

I still believe that publishers should focus more on the quality of their content and less on how much they are going to make from Adsense and other third-party ad systems. Sure, it’s nice to be able to make a few more bucks per each page of content that you write. But if you can increase your traffic by gaining the trust of your readers, other things fall into place faster. But if you must have ads on your website, Chitika is a great way to target your search traffic.

Have you ever wondered why some folks get to dominate the search engines while others keep banging their heads against the wall trying to get ranked for terms like “credit cards?” If you go pro with SEOmoz PRO, you won’t have to keep doing the same thing. I know a lot of SEO purists are going to jump at me here and claim that they could get ranked for highly competitive terms. I don’t question that. But I rather pick my spots for my own websites. Let’s see exactly why a term such as credit cards is hard to get ranked for.

Once you run the Keyword Difficulty tool available with your SEOmoz membership, you are provided with a grade that helps you gauge how difficult it is to get ranked for your term. In case of the term “credit cards,” Keyword Difficulty returns the difficulty score of 70%. That means you are going to have to heavily optimize on-page and off-page to get ranked for that term. Not only that, you need to have a well-established history to break into the top 10. I have tracked the top 10 results for this term for a year now, and the top 10 lists hasn’t changed significantly in a year. The number of players in this market is too large, but the top guys are well-established and well optimized.

But you shouldn’t just dismiss a keyword phrase based on the difficulty number that you receive from this tool. Thankfully, Keyword Difficulty provides you with a list of numbers that can give you a good indication whether a term is right for you. Here is what to look out for:

• Number of “” (phrase) matches on Google
• Number of allintitle results on Google
• Number of allintitle/inanchor search at Google
• Pages in top 10 that are root URLs
• Average Page Strength to get in top 3
• Average Page Strength from position 4 to 10
• Average Page Strength of top 1o results at Google & Yahoo

And there are a lot of numbers here, but what I would really pay attention to are:

• .edu, .gov links
• domains links
• URL links
• domain age
• DMOZ links
• Technorati Links

If you look at the numbers, it’s not really that hard to figure out how much work you have in front of you if you want to get ranked in this market. Most of the sites here are highly optimized and most top 10 guys have links from .edu and .gov websites. Now, you have to get much deeper than that to figure out why position No. 2 is beating all others even though it doesn’t have as many links or is not as old as the other ones.

Keyword Difficulty is not be the only tool you use to conduct your SEO analysis, but it is a very good place to start.

I have talked about in the past how top SEO professionals use as many tools as possible to gain a competitive edge over their competitors. The problem is, when you get into this game, you may not be able to stop. A couple of years ago, I started experimenting with other tools besides WordTracker and KWD. I first got Wordze, then jumped to SEO Elite, and even tried Keyword Spy. Then there was KeyCompete. And Nichebot was nice too! The problem is, you’ve got to know when to quit or you are going to spend more time playing around with tools and less actually doing some work.

STDD is a disease and should be treated as such. Before trying new tools, you should try to figure out what is it that you are hoping to get with those tools. If WordTracker does everything you need it to do, why would you want to switch to Wordze. And owning both does not make sense either. Now, if you have a podcast about keyword research tools, it makes sense to buy all these tools and review them. But if you are doing actual SEO work, you should pick your tools as fast as you can and avoid the temptation of trying new cool tools that add no real value. STDD can be difficult to shake off, but by keeping your eyes on the ball you can avoid the temptation of buying new tools, that add no real value.

Are you suffering from STDD?

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.