February 3, 2012

Is content alone enough to get your site ranking shoot up?

Is content alone enough to get your site ranking shoot up

You must have heard thousand times that content is king in search engine optimization. But is it truly that important? And even if content is important, how far articles and words can push your page ranking up in search result pages.

First of all, we must face that SEO marketers can do almost nothing without content. But we don’t also deny that simple bulk-generated articles with vanilla words won’t take you anywhere. Let’s face it. All major search engines – Google, Yahoo and Bing – are assigning more weight to contents, which carry value for target audiences. If you are eager to know how a compelling content should in post-panda search engine optimization follow this article.

1. To begin with, cut down on bulk small size articles. Search engines are giving less importance to these articles. In fact, as a site owner or webmaster, we also realize that it is not always easy to make justice to topics within 500 words. According to Gorank.com, right now average page size of any Google search result stands at 943 words. The same stands at 1305 words for Yahoo search results. So, you must go for 750 words onwards articles. If budget limits, opt for less number of article but never compromise on quality.

2. Search engines can’t do away with keywords. But too much, of keywords, is not desirable. In fact, in post-panda world, Google assumes even 2% keyword density as spamming. Isn’t it a fix? However, there is a way-out. You can bypass direct keywords with synonymous keywords without distorting idea of your article. Search engines love this.

3. Search engines like authority sites. It is an open secret. But for you it won’t be easy to earn authority tag from search giants. This is even tougher for competitive keywords. We thought to have a solution.

Don’t start with industry standard keywords. Do some research and find out specific keywords. Try to make them as specific as possible. It is true that they won’t bring in heavy traffic. But if you manage to deliver top-quality articles then visitors would share them on social networks. This will earn your site authority status for those keywords and topics. And once you have authority tag for lesser known and specific keywords, no body stops you venturing into more popular keywords.

4. We often mean written articles only when talk about SEO content. But content can be information in any form – images, video, graphics, charts or audio narration. As an internet marketer, you cannot avoid them. Complement your articles with charts, images, videos and other informative pieces. Your content will be more crispy and user friendly. Besides, search engines also prefer good mix of written words along with other visual, graphical and narrative pieces.

The take away from this article is, value added SEO content never misses the bull’s eye. Understand what search engines are asking for and adjust the content style accordingly without any compromise on value.

About the author: Alyssa Clerke is a blogger who also happens to be a tech freak. She is always on a look out for latest gadgets and apps and right now hunting for some new Android apps. She is a hardcore biker as well and her dream machine is the dyson air multiplier, a futuristic bike.

Google PPC Automation Unveiled

Google PPC Automation Unveiled

In the last couple months Google has been hard at work rolling out its new automated bidding platform to allow for advertisers to further optimize their paid search marketing campaigns. They have done this by allowing for automation to their Ad Groups, Ads, Keywords and Campaigns all within the AdWords interface.  You are probably wondering how this is going to change the search marketing landscape?  Allow me to explain.

Most users pause an ad or a keyword when it has spent its allocated budget; with the new automated tools you will be able to take the manual work out of the equation by setting a simple rule that allows you to pause a keyword or ad when it reaches a set limit.  The automation doesn’t stop there, you will also be able to automate the bid changes and budget changes by raising or lowering them incrementally when the conversion rate drops or raise or lower budgets based on a particular day of the week.  This means that for your internet marketing you will have much more optimized campaigns but at the same time will mean that you might end up paying more than you would have needed to otherwise for a certain keyword or ad.

So is it worthwhile to use Google’s built in automation tools, or would you be better suited to use an enterprise level software the likes of Marin, Kenshoo, or Acquisio?  The answer to that relies on a number of factors, namely your budget, but also the depth in which you want to be able to control the automation.  It will definitely be suitable for smaller businesses that have simple campaigns and are just measuring performance based on clicks, impressions and conversions.  If your business doesn’t have the in-house resources to manage a full scale PPC campaign it would also prove more than worthy. The percentage of profit margins may also be a determining factor. If you have small profit margins, going over your budget may have you losing money. In which case you don’t want to enable this automation.

While the paid PPC bidding platforms may be affected by Google rolling out their own built in automation, I don’t think they will take that much of a hit simply due to the fact that Google’s tool is still in its infancy, but also due to the fact that it isn’t very robust in terms of creating complex algorithms or customized bidding rules.  Most of Google’s PPC bidding rules are fairly simplistic in nature, and having access to much more powerful rules and automated tools is still valuable in the space.

So how does it work you might be wondering?  When creating a rule you simply set an automatic action that is triggered when the preset requirements are met.  They can be day-parted as a one-time run rule or you can have them run daily, bi-weekly or even monthly at your own discretion.  An example of a rule one might use to optimize their campaign’s keywords would be to increase the max. CPC when the keyword falls below a certain threshold (like being on the top page)

All in all Google’s automated rules allow for much more sophisticated PPC campaigns and will allows marketers and businesses alike to further optimize their search campaigns which in the end will only be a better result for their marketing initiatives.  So get out there any optimize your campaigns, automation awaits you!

 

 

Signature:

Lorne Fade is an Internet search marketer for 9th sphere a local Toronto SEO, web design & marketing firm.

 

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After Nailing Down a Niche You Need to Tackle Keywords

After you’ve picked your niche, you need to do some keyword research in order to get the word out about your site. Many beginning entrepreneurs make the mistake of choosing their niche and then launching a website shortly after that with no thought to keyword research.

But entrepreneurs that grasp the benefits of well-chosen keywords take the time to research because they understand the relationship between traffic and keywords. Proper keyword research will allow you to know which words get your target audience’s attention because those are the words they use themselves in a search engine.

Keyword research will position your website or blog at the top of search engine results so that your site receives plenty of traffic. When you’re targeting keywords, even subtle things like the plural form of a word make a difference.

For instance if your niche is pet training then it’s important to know that the word ‘dog’ receives forty five million searches a month while the word ‘dogs’ receives only sixteen million.

Your goal is to select keywords that will garner you the most searches per words. What you’re looking for is something with little competition but a lot of searches. You can shell out money to pay for fancy keyword tools like Market Samurai to help you in your quest, but there are free alternative tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tool where you still get the information you need to get the traffic you want.

Using the wrong keywords means you’re missing out on important traffic and missing out on the sales you could be making. You can use the wrong keywords and bring people to your site, but it’ll be those people who are not interested in what you’re selling. You want your keywords to be relevant to your audience.

When you build your site, you also want to make sure that you not only use keywords in your paragraphs, but you also want to make sure that you use keywords in your titles. When you pick a name for your website, select one with a keyword or keywords in the URL.

Remember the better you use SEO on your site, the higher it will rank when search engines display the results. One of the mistakes entrepreneurs make is naming their pages incorrectly in general.

Be specific. Don’t have an ‘About’ page. Going back to the earlier example about pet training, have an ‘About Pet Training’ page. When you put up a contact page or box, use a keyword phrase there as well. Such as, “Contact me for more information on pet training.” This nets you additional keywords.

Click here to download a trial copy (included discount if you choose to purchase it) of Market Samurai which is the keyword research tool  I personally chose, and love.

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The Difference Between a Long and Short Tail

Search Engine Optimization

Long tail is a big buzzword in marketing these days.  The term “Long Tail” was initially coined in 2004 by Chris Anderson in an article in Wired magazine.  The term was initially used to describe the niche business strategy that is used by companies like Amazon.

Marketers are now using the term to describe the phenomenon that “long tail keywords” could get more traffic combined than the broader, more general keywords.  For example, let’s say the keyword “dog training” gets approximately 2,420 searches per day.

Then you start looking at the long-tail keyword phrases for that niche – dog training collars, dog potty training, dog training careers, and so on. When you add up all of the long-tail keywords, which are easier to dominate in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), it equals more traffic than if you simply went after Dog Training.

If you have 10,000,000 websites competing for the term “dog training,” but only 361,000 competing for “dog training DVD,” then you have a far greater chance of reaching the first page than you would if you were competing against 10 million pages.

Being ranked number one for a broad term like “mp3” would probably take a truly exceptional SEO expert many months of very hard work and a very large budget for buying backlinks to accomplish.

Ranking for a term like “1970s rock mp3s” might be much easier – because it’s a long tail.  If the term gets 50 searches per day, and you rank number three, then you might get 20 or 30 hits to your website per day.

If you rank number 30,714 for the term “mp3,” you won’t get any traffic from that at all.  Finding good long tail keywords is very important, because you need those long tail phrases to bring in traffic.

While some marketers shun long-tail keywords, believing they have to rank well for the prime keyword phrases, others are using it to reach a demographic that has money in hand.  Would you rather get traffic from people searching the word “golf” or from someone who types this into Google: “Taylor Made R580XD Titanium Driver?”

The person who gets more specific with their searches is usually someone who’s ready to buy – someone who knows what they want. The person typing in golf may want to know its history for a project, might want to take a golf vacation, or could be interested in attending a local tournament. That won’t do you any good if your site sells golf clubs, but the long tail phrase will cater to that crowd.

Pick your keywords and phrases carefully.  Separate your broad, generic terms from your long-tail phrases so that you can monitor your Google SERP positioning and see how your keyword list is performing for you.

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Webmaster Tools

Search Engine Optimization Tools

As a blog or website owner, you have an amazing resource available to you, and despite the powerful nature of this particular tool, it remains free for us to use. Free is good right?

When you first log in, you’ll be given the opportunity to add a site, looking at this image, you can see it right above my sites I’ve already added; here you can easily manage multiple blogs, or websites.

webmaster tools

You should add both versions of your site the www. Version as well as the http:// without the www part. This will allow you to set the canonical settings allowing you to choose which you prefer to use going forward.

To verify your site you can do any one of the following:

1.       Upload an HTML file to your web server.

2.       Add a DNS record to your Domain Configuration

3.       Link to your Google Analytics account

4.       Add a meta tag to your homepage

Of the above options the easiest is either number 1, or number 4, and the whole process should take you just a few moments. (If you need any help, feel free to contact me on Twitter and I’ll be happy to help)

Once you’ve verified that you do in fact own that particular website, Google will start amassing some very valuable information that they will then share with you in the next screen. This process can take a couple of weeks depending on the level of traffic you’re website receives, etc.

Before we jump to the next screen I thought I’d touch base with the one in the image above quickly. If you click the image it will grow larger if you’re having trouble seeing it. Under messages, you can see that I submitted a change of address with Google to let them know that I would be changing the location of my forum to point toward WWW.PLRInternetmarketing.com. Along with this, I also made sure to redirect my old domain to point toward the new domain in such a way that when someone searches for a particular thread, they are then redirected to the same thread, just on the new domain. This helps with both my search engine optimization, as well as to ensure that I don’t lose any of my visitors, while also keeping Google in the loop.

There is also a quick help menu along the left side of the page regarding content you might find on the right side of the page.

Clicking on one of the websites you’ve verified will then bring you to the next screen.

webmaster tools

On this page, you have two columns. On the left side at the top you have the search queries box which will show you exactly which key words or key phrases are being displayed for your website, as well as the resulting clicks that you’re getting from them. It is important to note, that I’ve noticed approximately a two week lag between actual data and what shows up here. If you click the more tab you’ll be able to see all the terms rather than just the top 10 their displayed in this image.

Below that, you’ll deal to see the links to your website or blog and exactly where they’re coming from. Again in order to see all of them. You’ll have to click the more tab.

On the right side at the top, you see any crawl errors that the Googlebot experienced while visiting your website, as well as where they came from.

Next, use you call him title keywords. These are typically the keywords that Google found most often on your website.

Next, you can see the heading for sitemaps; it is highly recommended that you submit a sitemap for your website whenever possible. As you can see here, this one hasn’t had a sitemap submitted; therefore it will have to be something I do manually. Adding a site map is not hard especially if you’re running WordPress; it’s a simple matter of installing the site map plug-in, and then telling Google where to find your site.

Again on the left side, you’ll find your help menu, as well as a more in-depth menu where you’ll discover even more features which I won’t go into in detail, but feel free to poke around and discover them on your own. Most are fairly self-explanatory, and deal with sections you’ve already seen. However, others, such as site performance will go in to things like the speed at which your webpages load.

-          Dashboard

-          Messages

-          Site Configuration

-          —Sitemaps

-          —Crawler Access

-          —Site links

-          —Change of address

-          —Settings

-          Your site on the web

-          —Search queries

-          —Links to your site

-          —Keywords

-          —Internal links

-          —Subscriber stats

-          Diagnostics

-          —Malware

-          —Crawl errors

-          —Crawl stats

-          —Fetch as Googlebot

-          —HTML suggestions

-          Labs

-          —Site performance

-          Video sitemaps

If you aren’t already using Google’s Webmaster Tools, it should be the next thing on your to-do list. This is easily one of the most powerful SEO tools in my toolbox, and is one that should be used often, and tracked constantly. Even if you just login once per day to make sure everything is all right, and there are no errors cropping up that you aren’t yet aware of.

Ideally, you’ll want lots of key phrases directing search traffic toward your website, and the highest number of clicks as possible taking place. You’ll also want as few crawl errors as possible, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the value of having a large number of websites pointing toward your own through the use of links coming from various sources.

Last but not least always add you’re sitemap in to let Google know just what to expect from you’re website. If you have a blog with 100 posts, you’ll want to see each of those posts reflected in the sitemap.

 

 

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The Importance of Keyword Research

Blog

When you start up your blog there are a million things to worry about, choosing a quality domain name that is both memorable and carries some SEO benefit with it. Wondering which CMS platform you should choose, and then which framework and perhaps theme. There are so many variables going in that you might overlook one of the most important steps in the process, and live to regret it later on down the road when you realize it’s been a year, and you’re only getting a handful of visitors to your blog still.

Proper keyword research isn’t just choosing the five top keywords you think people will type in to find sites like yours and hoping for the best. Instead invest the time and energy into locating all the words surrounding those five words, and delving in further to see just how much traffic they actually can be expected to bring you if you do manage a first place ranking. For example I rank #1 for Twitter Marketing.

I knew before I started ranking for this keyword that the competition was fairly high (they recommend you look for sites with less than 100,000 competing pages) at 1.1 million competing pages, but I also know Google views my site with some level of authority and I could probably pull it off. Now Market Samurai shows the maximum potential traffic I could expect with a #1 ranked site is 75 visitors a day for that keyword. Now that I’ve ranked that one, I can move on to another keyword that can be expected to bring in visitors to my site, and over time I’ll have the five or so thousand visitors a day I’m looking for.

Do you know what you currently rank for? Are you tracking those keywords? Improving them so they move up in ranks, and so provide you with a higher volume of traffic? The difference in the traffic you’ll receive between ranking on page two, and ranking on page one can be considerable. The difference between ranking first and ranking third can also be huge. It’s hard to toss numbers about with any type of accuracy since there are just too many variables, but a guideline you could use is this.

Keyword CTR Chart

So as you can see here if a search term is getting 1000 searches a day the first ranked site is getting approximately 350 visitors to his website for that one keyword.  Chances are he isn’t targeting just one keyword, and even if he ranks higher up for some of his other keywords, you can see how the cumulative traffic would start to add up.

If you’re looking to increase the level of traffic you are currently receiving on your blog, one of the simplest ways is to improve the position of a bunch of the keywords you currently rank for. Let’s use an example; we’ll take a website that is getting 100 visitors a day off of just 5 keywords. Ranking on those keywords hasn’t been his focus so he’s further down the page so there is lots of room for improvement.

Example’s Current Situation

Keyword 1 – Ranked 11 (1200 searches a day so he is getting approx. 12 visitors for this)
Keyword 2 – Ranked 10 (2000 Searches for this so about 27 visitors)
Keyword 3 – Ranked 9 (300 daily searches so 3 visitors)
Keyword 4 – Ranked 8 (600 Daily Searches so about 34 visitors)
Keyword 5 – Ranked 7 (600 Daily Searches so about 24 visits per day)

The total of his 5 keywords are bringing in 100 visitors to his blog each and every day (Chances are there would be additional traffic coming in from social networking sites, direct, bookmarks, etc.)

Now he could try ranking his site for additional keywords, or try building up a huge Twitter following to drive more traffic to his blog, or he could simply work at beefing up the positions he already has. Now in this example we are only dealing with 5 to keep things simple and to use solely as a demonstration, but in real life you’d likely have hundreds here you could choose from.

If the above client were to work hard and improve his positioning’s on just these five keywords here is what would happen.

Example’s Improved Situation

Keyword 1 – Ranked 2 (1200 searches a day so he is getting approx. 204 visitors for this)
Keyword 2 – Ranked 1 (2000 Searches for this so about 680 visitors)
Keyword 3 – Ranked 5 (300 daily searches so 18 visitors)
Keyword 4 – Ranked 3 (600 Daily Searches so about 68 visitors)
Keyword 5 – Ranked 4 (600 Daily Searches so about 46 visits per day)

Now instead of getting 100 visitors to his blog, he’s enjoying over ten times that amount and has over 1000 visitors daily coming in. (Are you starting to see the importance of keyword research and implementing a keyword strategy?

We each have our own pool of keywords that are unique to our blog or website, and that we can start spending time improving and tweaking until we are able to squeeze out more traffic from them. Google already has the people searching for those keywords, it’s up to you to ensure that your site is there and able to be found when they do and has the type of content that can be expected to serve their purpose and yours.

Try Market Samurai now for free!

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Keyword Research with Market Samurai

Market Samurai

I just picked up a copy of Market Samurai of which I’d used it before and was super impressed with and I have to tell you, if you’re serious about traffic and keyword research you have got to try it out for yourself and see what it can do.

Traffic isn’t a mystery, and I am continually helping people to drive more and more traffic to their sites, and it’s just like anything else, if you apply a few of the rules that surround traffic techniques, you’ll be able to increase it to the levels you’re looking for.

Just imagine 1 keyword surrounding your business that gets 300 visitors each day (for a number one ranking) that means that by spending a portion of each day moving that particular keyword up through the ranks, which we do by writing an article using that keyword as our focus topic, and then building backlinks to it using the anchor text we are trying to rank for.

Example:

I want to rank for “internet marketing for small business” which is a long tail keyword without too much competition. Now I could only expect a maximum of 91 visitors if I held the number one spot. But since there isn’t too much competition for this vague search term it wouldn’t be too hard to optimize my next post for it, and then build some backlinks to it using social bookmarking, and internal linking etc. Maybe I’m terrible at SEO and only manage a ranking of third and get 12 visits a day? Would that be so terrible?

I can hear you all now saying what the heck am I going to do with twelve visitors? Invite them over for dinner? J No, you’re going to make a list of 100 keywords just like this one, as well as some harder to rank for ones and when you add them all together…. Ahh, light bulb goes on! 100×12 is 1200, but no worries,  I’m sure you’ll manage a few first place rankings, and over time you’ll become better and better at keyword research and optimization which will only drive your traffic levels even higher!

Market Samurai should be an integral part of your traffic driving techniques, and by learning how to use it, and applying that knowledge toward your blogs and websites you’ll have a measure of control over the level of traffic you receive and you won’t be dependent on PPC for getting those visitors to your offer.

A few of the Highlights:

Keyword Research

This module allows you to research the different keywords that might be relevant to the theme and topic of your blog or website so that you can make informed decisions on whether or not to try and tackle it. You can see how much traffic a number one ranking could potentially receive as well as the daily number of searches for that particular keyword. It will even show you how much competition there is for that word so you can then go and do some competitor research and see exactly what you need to do in order to outrank them.

Competitor Research

This module allows you to research the top ten competitors for a given keyword (or any site you choose) in order to see what you’re up against. It will show you how old they are, how many backlinks, Page Rank, and a whole slew of other information that can help you decide which step to take next. Knowing where the competition gets their backlinks from allows you the opportunity to see about getting them from the same place. I have a backlink from Harvard University that my competitors could then locate and create one of their own. Without this software my backlinks could stay hidden and go undetected allowing me to outrank them just a little bit longer. Having this tool is like having that “extra” edge you’ve been looking for.

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker allows you to track your progress on all the keywords you are trying to target, and lets you see at a glance how you are doing with each keyword. It shows you which page is ranking for that keyword, how many links are pointing toward it, and even the PageRank of the page. It’s then a simple matter to either add some more backlinks to shore it up and move it up the ranks, or perhaps you can tweak the on page settings a little to improve its SEO score. It will even keep track of where you rank on the different search engines, in case you find that one is sending you more traffic than another.

Click to enlarge.

market samurai screenshot

Getting a discount on the software:

The purchase price on Market Samurai is normally $149.00 and  well worth every penny when you consider the value of traffic, but you can also get a 35% discount simply by signing up for the trial version first. This gives you 12 days to try it out and then make your decision. If you decide this software is for you I’d recommend taking advantage of the discount they offer to their trial members which gives it to you at $97.00 even.

If you are serious about traffic, and SEO including keyword research this one is a no-brainer! This is absolutely one of my favourite tools in my arsenal!

Click here to get your discounted Trial Version of Market Samurai

Ps. Good for both PC and Mac users!!!

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Doing your Research

Research

No matter which aspect of your business you are focusing on at the moment, you can be assured that by doing a little bit of research into the areas that affect it, you can increase the potential for success regarding it. Too often we tend to jump right into the fray, and forego the simple yet effective step that should come prior to moving forward.

In the beginning you probably chose a domain name, or perhaps you are just now at that point, by investing time and research into choosing a domain, you can gain valuable visitors to your site, and minimize the number that are lost due to incorrect spellings, or hard to remember names with hyphens. Taking advantage of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits are just one of many benefits you’ll get to enjoy by investing your time in choosing the absolute best possible name.

Next you invariably went with a website, possibly WordPress and the many themes that are available, by doing your research into the different layouts and frameworks you can be assured of choosing the fastest loading one, with the layout and SEO features that are important to you. If you’d like a recommendation on a framework, I’d say go with the Genesis Framework, and then choose whichever of their child themes appeals to you. Like many of the other big names in blogging recently have done, I’ve switched my site over to it, and can’t say enough good things about it. If you are interested there is a link and banner in the footer of my site. (affiliate link)

Next finding a home for your website is crucial, because as I’m sure you can imagine, having a website that is only available part of the time just isn’t going to do! Choosing a reputable hosting company that has a great support team, and is willing to go the extra mile to see that your website stays online and running in top shape is crucial. Generally when you choose a hosting company, you plan to be there for quite a few years to come, so being happy with your choice is important. This website uses Hostgator hosting and they have competitive prices as well as a 24/7 support team that is quite likely the best in the industry.

Researching your competitors is something that can help you in so many ways, not just to show you where they all stand, but also which keywords they have chosen, and how profitable those keywords appear to be for them. There is a good chance that if twelve of your top competitors chose similar keywords there was a very good reason. This will also be a great time to see just what is needed in the way of backlinks in order to out rank them, and even where they currently have those backlinks from. Quite often people, and businesses fail to do their competitor research prior to launch, and find themselves wasting valuable time spinning their wheels in no discernable direction until they finally come to realize their mistake. Then of course there are many who never do, but chances are you haven’t heard of any of them.

Unless you have a team of in house professionals you are going to need to outsource certain tasks. If you know up front that you have no SEO, or perhaps web design experience, you should make a list of people who you can reach when you need to, and who aren’t going to treat you as someone in desperate need. Chances are if you reach out to a freelancer right from the beginning and let him know that you will be using him when your site requires, he’ll be expecting your call/email when something does happen. There are about a million people online you can poll for a referral on people to work with. By filling your outsource team in the beginning, you’ll have them when you need them most, and you’ll already have an idea about who they are, and what they are capable of.

Research your allies, those who are already moving upward within your chosen niche, and who are willing to help, or simply offer advice along the way. These individuals can save you wasted time, and energy, and might even make you some money along the way. I’ve personally received information that equated to a direct profit for me and my website from people who were already making it.

And last but not least, research the path that you intend to take to get you to where you wish to be. If you are planning to achieve certain goals you are going to need a roadmap detailing how exactly to get yourself there, and what to do when faced with certain obstacles.

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Competitive Research

competitive research

Competitive research is a crucial aspect of developing any business structure, whether it is yours, mine, or Coca Cola’s the goal is usually the same. For this article I’m going to cover more of the things you might look at when researching a competitor’s site and ways you can improve your own in order to outrank, or outperform him or her.

There are two basic questions that you’re asking here.

1.       What are they doing?

2.       What are you doing?

Why do competitive research?
Well if you happen to be the guy sitting at the top of your niche looking down at the way you’ve come, then it’s always a good idea to watch out for whoever happens to be number two, because chances are he didn’t plan to stop when he got to the second spot. Also, you never know who might be rising in the ranks to overthrow you and your site, like they say when your number one, there’s nowhere to go but down!

Now whether or not your number two, or the new guy (or gal) on the net, then it’s probably safe to assume you’d like to increase your positioning in your field whether that means ranking your site for your best keyword, or beating your competitor in the sales area, or any other aspect that you deem to be of importance.

There are merits to both positions, if you’re at the top of your game, and have been there for any length of time, you have experience on your side, you’ve got connections to people, and companies that you’ve met along the way, and you’re probably financially better off than when you first started the climb.

Now if you’re the new guy on the block, then you probably aren’t financially set, you haven’t yet made those connections, and your experience is all in front of you. But what you do have is drive and determination right? Couple that with a willingness to take action, and your all set!

I’m going to share with you my own version of competitive research, and what it means to me, as well as the part it plays in my site planning, growth, and development.

Before we get started, here are a few things you’ll need.

-          A Clear Goal: Before you even attempt to do any competitive research, you need to know exactly what it is you’re trying to achieve with your site/business. Are you wanting to rank higher than them in the search engines, do you want to have more content than they do, do you want to be more of an expert in your field. What’s the purpose behind doing the research?

-          A list of your competitors: If you don’t know who they are it’s going to be a little more difficult to research them don’t you think?

-          A box of brains: No, wait… that wasn’t it. A “Thinking outside of the box” mentality will help you in your research, there is a ton of information out there, but sometimes finding it requires some creative thought.

-          A spreadsheet: I use Microsoft Excel to track my competitor’s information, and Microsoft word to make wanted posters with the top ten people/sites on it! (Just kidding…)

-          Research Tools: There are a number of tools out there that can help you in your quest, some are free, and other’s paid. I’ll get more into which one’s I use further down.

Ok, now on to the good stuff!
What can I find out about my competitors and what can they find out about me?

First and foremost is the obvious, but often overlooked. Spend some time on their site, read their content, see what they offer to their readers. Opt in to their list to see how they build a relationship with the people on their list and what sort of offers or information they send them, as well as how often. Often times you will see things that they are doing better than you, and you can then improve upon or others that don’t agree with, and can avoid doing to YOUR readers or clients.

1.       Next list the stats for both your sites, here are a few things to get you started.

-          Domain age

-          How long is the domain registered for

-          PageRank of the site as well as future PageRank prediction

-          Moz ranking

-          Domain and page authority

-          What is there SEO Score

-          How many backlinks do they have in the different search engines

-          Where are those backlinks, and who is linking to them

-          What is there Alexa rank, compete rank

-          What are their sales figures annually

-          How much do they spend on marketing

-          How much content do they have?

-          What keywords are they targeting

-          Where do they rank for those keywords

-          What products or services do they offer

-          How many employees do they have

-          How is their image or brand, is it glowing and wonderful, or damaged

-          Social media – do they have a Twitter account, how many followers do they have, when is the last time they tweeted? How about a Facebook fan page?

-          How big is their subscriber list

-          How many websites do they own

-          What are their strengths/weaknesses

-          What resources do they have available to them financially etc.

Whichever items you chose to keep track of is up to you, these are just some of my own things I look at when doing competitive research on my competition.

Where can you find this information? Well, like I said you may have to think outside of the box for some, but others are readily available to you, I’ll list the resources I personally use, and you can try those, or find some of your own.

  • Note for many of these I use Market Samurai, so will place a (MS) for those that apply as well as including a free resource where I can

Domain age – (MS) Google “Whois” and you’ll find sites that will tell you age and expiry dates

Domain registered for – Any domain lookup tool or website

PageRank – (MS) can use the PR Toolbar, or try www.linkvendor.com

Moz Rank – http://www.check-domains.com/ (use the website analyzer)

Authority – http://www.check-domains.com/

SEO Score – Linkvendor.com (under SEO Challenge)

Backlinks – (MS) Linkvendor.com (Link popularity)

Who links to them – (MS) you can also Google “link popularity tool” to find a ton of sites, try several to see which gives you the most accurate results

Alexa – Either install the Toolbar, or you can visit them directly www.alexa.com

Sales – Look for pages like “investor relations” some sites will guard this information, other’s will have it available publicly

Advertising budget – www.spyfu.com will tell you a company’s keywords and AdWords budget

Content and indexed pages – (MS) You can take a look at their sitemap, or  many site will show you how much content Google has indexed for a particular site

What keywords are they targeting – (MS) Take a look at what they put in their keyword Meta description as well as take a look to see what they are talking about on their site.

Where do they rank – (MS) for this one, it’s probably easiest if you go with a paid program like Market Samurai, or Internet Business Promoter

What products or services do they sell – Their website, their email list

Employee count – Just call and ask them!

How is their brand or reputation? – www.Google.com because people talk!

Social media – If they are utilizing it, they will be advertising it via their website

Subscriber list – Sometimes you can get an estimate if they show their Feedburner stats

How many websites do they own? – If you do a Whois search on the domain, it will show how many others they also have registered

Strengths & weaknesses – you can get an idea by observing, or from the data you’ve already collected

Resources available to them – Can usually be determined by using the data collected above

Remember to update your files monthly or at least on a regular basis so you know who is on the move, and in what direction

.And there you have it, you would now have a pretty clear picture of who exactly this company or website was after spending a few hours doing some good old fashioned competitive research

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Keyword Research

Keyword Research

Keyword research is a crucial aspect of SEO, or search engine optimization, and is used in order to determine the best keywords to use on a given optimization project. If you work from home, such as if you operate an e-business or make money blogging, then you can benefit by doing a little keyword research of your own. Knowing which keywords you want to use in a search engine optimization project will allow you to get the best results for your money, and here we’ll go over a simple way to do some research on the subject, as well as how it can benefit you.

Perhaps the easiest way for someone wanting to do keyword research is through the use of Google AdWords. Google AdWords is an internet marketing tool that allows you to put in a key phrase or search term, and provides you with a report on how many people are searching for that exact term and similar or related terms each day, each month, and so on. It also provides information on the number of websites in competition for search results on that term, which translates roughly to how difficult it would be for you to appear early on in the search results page.

For example, suppose you run an e-business that sells women’s clothing. You might use Google AdWords to find out how many people search for terms like “women’s fashion,” “trendy clothing,” “cheap women’s clothing,” and so on. By comparing the number of searches to the competition for a given key phrase, you can choose target key words to optimize for that will give you the best results. For example, suppose “women’s fashion” has fifty thousand searches per day, but has a high level of competition. In contrast, suppose “trendy clothing” has forty thousand searches per day, but has less competition. In this case, it might be worth it to take the less popular search in exchange for a higher chance of appearing in the search results.

SEO can help your website, business, or blog increase the amount of incoming traffic. Because almost every online business and blog relies on traffic in order to turn a profit, search engine optimization can help many people increase the success and the efficiency of their websites. If you are looking for a way to give your site or blog a boost, then starting a search engine optimization project is a good start.

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