Maximize Your Sales Online With These Ten Tips

These ten steps will help you to make more sales online. Use some or all of them, depending on the type of Web business you operate.

1. Increase your page rank in Google (SEO) Search Engine Optimization

To do this, it is important to know how to write clear, concise articles and page content that will draw fresh visitors. Write interesting, informative articles, and post them in the article submission sites. Include in the article a link back to your site. Hyperlinks are best, for when they click these, they will create incoming links. This will create back links. They will serve to help increase your sites visibility to search engines, and help improve your sites overall optimization.

Website Speed Penalty - Google is Testing Your Load Time!

After Google started using website speed as a parameter in their ranking algorithms every webmaster has a good reason to keep an eye on the page load speed of their website. Google's bending over backwards to spread the word about this new speed penalty is proof in itself since big G is usually very secretive about pending algorithm changes.

From the announcement we learn that the speed penalty was introduced following experiments by Google that revealed the impact website speed has on Internet users.

How to Get Top SEO and Placement Results with Google Caffeine

Since its debut in 1996, Google's search engine has experienced countless updates and revisions. But none of those revisions have fundamentally changed the architecture of the Google search algorithm as much as Google's latest update, codenamed Caffeine.

While recent reports put Google's market share at around 65 percent, a massive update to its search engine technology makes sense at this point. Microsoft's new Bing search engine showed some resiliency in late 2009, while Web 2.0 services like Facebook and Twitter have done a lot to change the way people search for content on the Internet.

Top 10 Google Search Features for Your Business

The people at Google are truly inspired! They are evolving their search engine into something that can be an incredibly powerful tool for business. There are a zillion things that Google can do for different parts of your business and in this post, I will highlight the top 10 Google search tools that will help your supply chain.

Since Google is just a click away, I think it's a very useful for everybody involved in the supply chain to be aware of how much easier it can make their lives. Everybody from traffic managers, to purchasing people, to accounting people and customer service will likely need to reference what Google can do during the course of the week. There are a lot of people who don't even know all of Google's capabilities. So without further ado, here is your:

12 Favorite and Little Known Tips for LinkedIn

Most business professionals are on LinkedIn at this point. LinkedIn tells us that:

• LinkedIn has over 70 million members in over 200 countries.

• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and
about half of our members are outside the U.S.

• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

To me that states clearly that if you have almost ANY kind of business and are prospecting, LI will be a good resource for you. But just setting up a profile and dabbling once a week or so is not going to do much for your prospecting efforts. Below are a few tips that not many folks know about, but are powerful techniques for increasing your visibility and maximizing that "inbound marketing" that Social Media is known for.

1. Create 3 saved searches. If you are doing a search on a company, person, industry or whatever, save your searches. At the top where you see the number of records in your search you'll see a "save this search" button - you get 3 if you are at the basic level. LI will send you a weekly email, if you want, to get updates to your search.

2. Recommendations are important, so ask for them. But make it easy. I first call or email my contact and ask if they will recommend me. If so, write the recommendatíon yourself - so you are sure that you are sending the right message. Be sure to talk about the problems you solved - that's really the point, isn't it?

3. Use the Question and Answer area to gain more visibility on the Internet. On the question that you answer you will see a "share this" with a drop down menu. You can email your network, Digg it, Bookmark the question on Delicious, or use the link provided in your answer and link to one of your blog posts, or somewhere else on your site to pull in traffic.

4. Join groups that are in line with your business, your objectives or your hoped for job. Fish where the fish are. The more "on target" the group, the more valuable the content they provide, and the networking opportunities will be.

5. Use groups to expand your network, but be selective. In the groups tabs, you will see "Groups Directory". Select that and on the next page use Search Groups, selecting "other" from the drop down categories menu. Join the groups that interest you. Once you are a member, you will have access to the members in that group. Try connecting with the ones that make sense. You might evaluate based on the size of their network, the type of company or industry they are in or how much interaction they have had with the group.

6. Did you know you can export your connections? Go to "Contacts." Then "Connections. " At the bottom of your Connections box is "Export Connections. " Export the connections and import them into your preferred address book. Do this frequently so you are consolidating all of your contacts in one spot (might be Outlook, Act, Salesforce).

7. Refer to both the LinkedIn Learning Center and their blog. The Learning Center is full of great tutorials and the blog has info on updated and new features with full explanations.

8. For better and more valued networking, when you invite someone to join your network, don't use the canned LinkedIn message. Say something about who you are and why you want to connect with that person.

9. To really maximize your profile, find one or two LinkedIn specialists (Google that phrase, or check Amazon for authors) and look up their profile. Study carefully and learn by example.

10. Be creative about how you use the Answers section. It can be used to ask for solutions to problems, for resources, for vendors, for processes. But it can also be used to find good connections, or find other groups you may want to join, to deliver information on your products or services, IF it provides an answer to the question. Sometimes you've got the perfect solution!

11. You can share a group with your connections - more value added to your community. When you are in a specific group, on the Overview tab you will see an option to "share group" and you can send an email to 50 of your connections.

12. Don't hop over the "People You May Know" suggestions that appears in the upper right corner of your home page. Expand the box and start connecting with people on an ongoing basis. This is a great way to widen your circle.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for almost any social media objective - branding, lead generation, or job searching. Invest some time in learning the finer points - you will be glad you did.

By Elyse Tager

SEO Tips to Double Rankings, Traffic and Conversion

The only thing better than one search result in the top 3 positions in Google is two search results from a double ranking. This SEO tip works by pushing a competitor off the first page, broadening your websites keyword funnel and thereby doubling traffic and conversions.

Two Results are Better than One

I read somewhere that 87% of search engine traffic for a given keyword is allocated from occupying the Number 1 position in the search engine results page. If you understand SEO, then this post will share a quick method to double your SERP positions and to improve the likelihood of keyword conversions - once you have reached the Mecca for a specific search term.

SEO is predicated on one simple premise, rankings; in order for SEO to be effective, it must produce ranking on the first page in search engines.

Not only is this the crowning achievement of search engine optimization, but once you achieve a top 10 position, then you can pull other keywords into the spotlight as a result of strategic linking. We often refer to this as the buddy system for lateral linking.

Search engine algorithms pay particular attention to individual pages capable of offsetting all of the other inconsistencies of a competitor's web pages and deem one page worthy above all others for any given search term.

Obviously the metrics are unique for each market, keyword or niche, but the reality is the same, once a top 3 or more importantly Number 1 or Number 1, 2 and 3 positions are present in Google. I have mentioned before, the fastest way to get a top 10 position in Google is to get a link from a website already ranking in the top 10 for that keyword.

It does not matter if that link is provided from your website or another website, rankings are by the page and there is a daisy-chain effect of linking pages together that fuses the pages through a dynamic give and take relationship (based on citation). This citation can provide the algorithmic equivalents of trust needed for the newly linked page to jump in line past others duking it out for that keyword.

Depending on the competitiveness of the keyword or key phrase and the thresholds inherent to the barrier to entry; the time required to initiate a campaign, create all of the necessary content, inbound links and citation from other web 2.0 properties, RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites divided by the amount of time you invest managing or outsourcing the various components involved determine your profitability and return on investment.

With this in mind, from a tactical perspective, it's better to leverage the SERP positioning you already have than to look outside of your website for off page ranking factors. If you understand the power of a Number 1 position, then you can replicate this next simple SEO tip.

Identify all current Number 1 positions in Google for keywords.

Validate they still exist.

Use Keyword Research to find "related keywords" based on the Number 1 ranking Link from the page that ranks to a new page (using similar anchor text or overlapping keywords to promote the new page).

Let the new page get indexed, then check the SERPs.

Identify: My favorite tool for this is SEM Rush, but if you don't want to use this, there are other programs out there, or even Google webmaster tools can show you your website's top ranking SERP positions when you log in.

Either way, this is your base, so, identify the keywords which could represent hub status for your SEO campaign and pass along the power of ranking to other pages in your website.

Validate: Check to see if you still hold the Number 1 position, even a top 3 will do, but this tactic works better if you are at the helm of a particular search phrase.

Keyword Research: You should be able to gauge whether or not the keyword is profitable for you based on the frequency of hits and the type of traffic you garner as a result. You can always look through Google Analytics or whichever analytics package you have to assess the keywords that represent the highest percentage of traffic to your website.

Once you know what those keywords are, then use keyword research to find stemmed semantic variations that also fall under the same category or keyword cluster. Those related keywords will become the new focal point for step 4 - linking.

Linking: The closer the shingles (groups of keywords) the more effective this technique is. You can call this padding the search results (if you use similar exact match titles, tags or content), or you can pass this ranking factor along to help synonymous terms.

Simply go back and edit the page ranking in the Number 1 position and add a link to the new target page (with the keyword you intend the target page to rank for as the anchor text). Then, the authority from the page in the Number 1 position will gróup the new page under its umbrella and pull that page into the spotlight.

When the new page gets crawled and the old page reveals the connectivity between the two, typically a double SERP position occurs or a double position accompanied by jump links, breadcrumbs or the [+] with additional search results for that keyword appear in Google to showcase the degree of relevance your website has for the said term.

You can then build additional deep links from other sites or addition internal links to the newly dubbed page. As a result, you should see buoyancy for other pages for multiple keyword variations related to the parent keyword cluster.

With this simple tip you can double your conversions by increasing your website's semantic array of keywords. Obviously you will know which keywords and traffic is most lucrative for your business model, but this technique is priceless for creating controlled keyword stemming if you understand the implications underlying its premise.

10 Business Blogging Tips to Improve Your Blog Performance

Business blogging is a different kettle of fish to blogging for money and that, in turn, is entirely different to blogging socially. The type of blog you manage will determine the voice, design, and style of your blog as well as the efforts you're likely to put into promoting it.

A business blog needs to be professional as well as appear it. Regular posting on topics that your readers will genuinely find interesting can promote you as an expert in your field. A blog can keep the line of communication between you and potential customers open. It enables you to post relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage new traffic and help build your client base.

It's far from an exhaustive list but below are ten tips to remember when blogging for business:

1 - Set Your Goals Early

In just about every guide you ever read it says "set your goals"; it might be a cliché but it's true. With a business blog your most likely goal is to incréase sales but other worthy goals can include:

• Communicating with your existing or potential clients
• Relaying company news
• Answering queries and questions
• Providing guides for current customers
• Providing a portal to everything useful related to your industry

The design of your site, type of content to include, whether or not to include ads, and numerous other decisions will be governed by the reason that you start blogging. The sooner you realize what it is that you want to achieve, the sooner you'll achieve it.

2 - Use SEO Friendly URLs and SEO Plugins

WordPress is an invaluable SEO tool. It is a dedicated Content Management System but, more than that, it has a team of frighteningly dedicated users that create themes, plugins, widgets, and more and then provide them free of charge to other users. Among these tools are a great number of SEO related tools that can be used to determine your meta description and title tags.

A simple but potentially effective SEO fix is to change the format of permalinks or URLs so that they dispense with the default page id to be replaced with an easier to read and keyword optimized page URL. You can do this through the Wordpress dashboard.

3 - Consider Your Media Placement

Adding photos and illustrations, logos, videos, and other forms of media are great for reader engagement, but you should consider each of your blog assets and place the most valuable and useful in the most prominent position. The quicker you can grab a reader's attention, the more likely you will be to keep it for longer.

Certain themes allow you to easily embed video and slideshows into the sidebar of your blog and this can be a very useful tool to make your pages appear more attractive while relaying genuinely useful information.

4 - Consider Your Ad Placement

The primary target of a business blog is not usually to make money directly through the blog itself. Therefore, the placing of third party ads is not necessarily a good choice. However, you can add ads for your company or service as well as associate websites. You can even add banners to specific categories, tags, or pages in your blog. Don't overdo the number of banner ads and other distracting advertisements though and try to keep the interface clean and professional.

5 - Offer Your Readers the Chance to Pass You Around

Add me, share this, retweet, and email this functions should be provided to your users. When you post something useful and one of your readers shares it, it has the potential to go viral and create a lot of exposure for your blog and therefore your website and your business. This works especially well with highly unique content and can be text, audio, video...

Some themes have these functionalities built into them, but do ensure that they're enabled. Alternatively find a sidebar widget or a social bookmarking plug-in that offers the same features and install this. Many blog readers read a number of blogs regularly and by enabling them to add you to social bookmarking and social networking sites you may well develop a long term relationship with them while also letting them inform others of what you provide.

6 - Keep Quality Content Coming

Try to set yourself a regular schedule but remember that it can be broken and it can be added to when necessary. If news breaks, then post your commentary on it. If you intersperse product reviews and articles that relate to your business then try to schedule these. Make sure you post regularly, at the very least once a week, and spend some time getting involved in the community that builds up around your blog.

7 - Not Every Post Need Be an Advert

As long as you fill your blog with relevant, interesting, and well written posts then visitors will take the time to look around, read a few posts, and even clíck the ads to your site in order to see exactly what you have to offér. Not every single post needs to include multiple links to your website pages.

You can download plugins that further the likelihood of users reading more posts. Some add a list of related posts to the bottom of each entry while many themes provide the chance to show "most popular" and "most commented" posts to further direct the flow of traffic around your blog.

8 - Respond Where Responses are Expected or Deserved

Managing a blog is more than posting a missive of the week's news every Friday. No matter how often you post you should spend some time interacting with the community that develops around your blog. Answer questions and queries, provide insight, and give a response where one is requested.

A business blog should always be professional, which means keeping posts and messages that are too personal away. Similarly, spam comments can prove extremely damaging for your SEO as well as the trust your readers place in your business. There's decent spam settings in Wordpress and you can further extend these.

9 - Stuck for Inspiration? Immerse Yourself in Web 2.0

More specifically read forums and blogs, wikis and news sites related to your industry. Look for those news stories, articles, and videos that you like the most and are relevant to your blog and write about them. Read the comments in your blog and look through your analytics to determine the pages that are most popular with readers.

Look at emerging keywords and news topics and try to act quickly. Slant the resulting article in favor of your business, if possible, and then post this to your blog too. There's plenty of online portals and sites for news in your industry and you can use email updates, RSS readers, and browser or home page plugins to display them regularly and in an orderly and comprehensible way.

10 - Blogging is Great for Business But Business is Also Great for Business

Getting stuck into a blog and truly developing your blog community can be a great way to build traffic to your website and develop clients for your business. Reading related blogs and becoming an active member in social networks can help you find out what your readers want and deliver it frequently.

Blogging and Web 2.0 in general can quickly become addictive. It should be treated as a tool to assist in managing your online business, which means that you need to concentrate on the other aspects of your business. Outsource your blog development and content creation if necessary and enjoy the results.

Your Meta Descriptions Now Affect Your Google Rankings Again

Meta descriptions (the text snippets of the web page you see in search results) used to be an important ranking factor. Until not too long ago both Google and Yahoo! officially announced they no longer used Meta-descriptions in their search algorithms. But recent developments in Google's search also bring Meta description back to life as a ranking factor.

No, Google did not back out of their decision to discount Meta descriptions as a ranking factor. However your site's search snippet can now significantly affect your rankings. Here's the deal.

Google and Personalized Search

Early this month Google announced that they would be tailoring everyone's search results based on their search history even when users are not signed into Google. Personalized results are nothing new on Google. The search giant has been customizing peoples SERPs (search engine results pages) for quite a while already, but until now it only happened when you searched while signed into your Google account. Today, signed in or not everybody gets personal results.

Here's How It Works

Whether you're signed in or not, all the searches you run on Google are stored in your browser cookies. This data is referred to as your 'Web History' and Google uses it to customize your search results. If you're not signed in, your Web History is stored for 180 days, then old data is replaced with new searches. If you're signed in, there's no time limit and you can manage you Web History. Either way the searches you run and sites you visit will affect your future search experience.

The sites you visit more often will be pushed higher in the search results on related queries. For example if you search for 'cat food' and visit www.petfood.com, next time when you search for 'dog food' you may see www.petfood.com in top 10 results even if it doesn't rank there in the general impersonalized search. You can tell that your search results have been personalized by the 'View customization' link in the upper right hand corner.

The personalized search results can differ significantly from the general SERPs. I ran a couple of tests searching for related keywords and clicking the same site each time. I also checked this site's rankings with a rank checker to get a list of impersonalized rankings. In one of the tests a few click-throughs to a site pushed it 26 positions up on a highly competitive keyword. That is from the 31 position on page 4 straight to the 5th spot on the first page in personalized search results (I was signed out).

How Meta Descriptions Can Affect Your Google Rankings

Although Meta descriptions are no longer part of the ranking algorithm they can affect your site's positions in the personalized search results. Your Meta description is a crucial factor that determines the CTR (click-through-rate) of your site in search results. The more compelling your description is, the more searchers will click it. When they click through to your site from search results this is recorded in their Web History. Next time they search for a product or service related to your site, it may appear high up in their personalized search results.

Since everybody now gets personalized results, the scope of the effect your Meta descriptions have on your rankings can get really huge. That's another reason why you should invest some time into testing and optimizing your Meta descriptions.

Meta Description Optimization

There's plenty of advice out there on writing compelling titles and descriptions, so I won't go there. Just keep in mind one thing. Google doesn't always show the Meta description you provide. Sometimes it just compiles a random text snippet from your page that contains the keywords used in the query. But you can easily locate the keywords where your Meta description shows up by searching for them on Google.

In Conclusion

There's been a lot of criticism coming down on Google for introducing personal search to everybody. Some people are worried about privacy issues. Others don't like it because the whole concept will help the rich get richer and keep the small guy out of the game. And some SEOs are just whining that this makes SEO success harder to measure.

Although I don't think it is the best idea Google had either, I prefer to embrace it and run with it. And I suggest that you take this news as a call to action. A strong motivation to actually do something that's going to help your SEO, your sales and your business. And that is to take a look at your Meta descriptions. Go and see how your website appears in the search results and find ways to improve it. With personalized search or without it, having a catchy compelling text in your search results snippet will get you more clicks, more traffíc and more customers.

By Richard Gilmore

10 Tips for Launching your Business Blog

Are you thinking about launching your business blog? You're not alone. A recent study by GuideWireGroup revealed that approximately 89 percent of businesses polled use blogs as a way to communicate with their customers. In another survey, Burson-Marsteller found that 15% of Fortune 500 companies have blogs. A successful business blog can generate tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each year, with figures for large corporations typically much higher.

So, business blogging is becoming a mainstream marketing tool. That does not mean, however, that blogging comes easily or naturally for many companies, their owners and employees. Blogging, like any form of content, is a commitment of time and resources - namely, you have to know how to write (or have access to good writers) and you have to maintain your blogs with fresh, original and insightful new material on a regular basis.

This should not scare you away. It should, though, inspire you to learn the basics of business blogging before you turn your baby loose on the world. Planning out your blogging strategy first is a wise move, because it gives your blog a greater chance of success. Here are 10 tips for launching your business blog:

1. Identify your readers.
Before you start writing anything, make sure you understand who your target market is. This is also known as your "buyer persona", which marketing guru David Meerman Scott defines as "...a distinct group of potential customers, an archetypal person whom you want your marketing to reach." Basically, you want to tailor your topics to the groups of people who are most interested in your company. Otherwise, you're missing the mark and losing out on potential leads and sales. To identify these buyer personas, there are 3 questions you should ask yourself--

Where do your customers come from?

What type of content will be useful to them?

Where do your customers hang out online?

2. Create social media accounts.
If you haven't already done this, register accounts with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Start with these and expand later. This is important because you need places to post links to each new blog, so that your groups, fans, and followers can read them. Posting on social media also encourages people to subscribe to your RSS feed, another great way to promote your blog.

3. Establish your social media presence.
Lay the groundwork for later blog promotion by establishing relationships with your target markets. One of the best ways to do this is through social media. Now that you have accounts started, you can go in and join forums, listen to conversations and hear what people are saying about your industry. Add thoughtful and insightful comments whenever possible. Hire employees to do this if you don't have time, but try to contribute every once in a while if you can.

4. Determine where to place your blog.
You can either put your blog on a page within your website or give it its own domain. Your choice depends largely on your goals. Do you want the blog to be part of your site, and linked to it directly? Or do you have plans to use your blog for other purposes, such as to earn revenue through ads or creating a secondary business from it?

A blog can help your website to rank higher, and it can also rank highly on its own. So, think about your long-term objectives when deciding where to place it.

5. Use the right keywords.
If you're placing your business blog on a page within your site, most likely you'll be using the same keywords for your blog that you are using for your site. If you've done good keyword research, then these are the keywords that reflect your business and are the search terms that people are using to find you. If your blog is separate, consider if any keyword changes need to be made. You may want to take your blog site in a different direction from your site. Again, this depends on your goals for your blog.

Incidentally, if your blog does have its own domain, you'll want the domain name to be brandable, easy for consumers to recognize and search engine-friendly.

6. Choose a blogging platform.
You have options here. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform, but you can also check out Joomla, Blogger, TypePad and others.

7. Plan your posts.
Think about the direction you want your blog posts to go in. A good way to stay on track is to start with one main topic and draft a few blogs in advance. Post them on a regular schedule and you'll have a supply of targeted blogs that add fresh content to your site and point back to your company each week. Coming up with topics can be a challenge, but there are a lot of helpful resources on the Web if you get stuck.

8. Network with influencers.
Once you've got your blog started, it's a good idea to look around at other bloggers in your industry. See what they're doing, what they have to say, and leave insightful comments on their blogs. This kind of web networking will help you establish relationships with these people, which in turn will prompt them to help spread the word about your blog and your company. This kind of free advertising is invaluable. It connects you to credible and respected individuals within the blogosphere and markets your business for you.

9. Promote your blog.
As mentioned earlier, offering a blog subscription through an RSS feed is an effective way to promote your blog. There are other ways to get the word out, as well. Write an optimized press release, submít articles to directories that link to your blog page, submit your blogs to social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg (or set up an account with Ping.fm and have it done automatically). Make sure that you link to your blogs in your social media posts.

10. Measure results.
If you're going to take the time to blog for marketing purposes, you'll want to know how well you're doing, right? Since it relies primarily on the building of human relationships over time, blog ROI can be tricky to measure. But, you do have many tools at your disposal to help you determine how much or how little your blog is contributing to the bottom line.

Free online tools like Google Analytics and Google Alerts provide you with information about how your customers are finding you online, and can tell you a lot about your blog page, in particular. Facebook Insights is a way to track activity on your Facebook account. Other tools are available, so look into them.

Launching your business blog is, like any project, all about preparation. If you do your homework and lay a solid foundation, your blog will produce results. Keep in mind that blogging is a form of content marketing and, as such, is primarily about building relationships with customers. So, be patient, follow these tips, and watch your business grow!

By Beth Hrusch

Google Social Search – Choose Your Friends Wisely

Refusing to sit still long enough for anyone to catch up, Google has rolled out another Labs experiment to the public. Google Social Search Beta launched last October, hard on the heels of Personalized Search. But this week, Google graduated Social Search out of Labs and into the public sphere.

What Is Google Social Search?

As we become increasingly connected online, we start to build around ourselves a community of people that we have regular contact with and websites where we spend much of our time. This is called our social network. Now Google has worked out a way to measure and leverage these individual social networks so they influence the search results we see. Those results therefore become more relevant to us and more influential over time.

Google determines your social network based on the connections found in your public Google profile. Connections are classed as either direct connections or secondary connections. Your Gmail chat buddies and contacts are direct connections, as are connections from links listed in your Google profile (e.g. people you follow on Twitter, LinkedIn or FriendFeed ). Secondary connections are those publicly associated with your direct connections (e.g. the people that your friends follow on Twitter).

To see your social profile on Google, login to your Google account and visit the social dashboard. The first time you do this, Google will collect all the social data it has stored about you, based on your Google Profile and public content, and build what they call your *social circle*.

After Google builds your social circle, whenever Google's algorithm determines that your search experience will be improved, it annotates regular web index data with social data customized from your social circle and adds this information to the bottom of your search results.

You MUST be signed in to Google to see this. If you're not happy with the results, say from Twitter, you can delete your Twitter account from your Google profile to prevent published info from your Twitter connections being added to your social circle.

You can also add or block Google contacts so you don't see information from them in your social circle. In the reverse, you can choose what content you want to make public, based on your published Google profile.

How Does Social Search Work?

Google Social Search has been in experimental mode since October, but this week it's been rolled out to full public Beta, meaning you should now see social content in your search results on Google.com. Google hasn't rolled Social Search out to their regional sites at this stage, but this is expected soon.

To see social search results in action, login to your Google account, then run a search. You'll see the heading *Results from people in your social circle* towards the bottom of the search results page. For example, if I run a search for *music blogs* on Google.com, I get the following social circle suggestions:

Because Matt Burgess and Tim Burrowes are in my social circle and have blogged about music, I see their content at the top of my social circle results.

If you want to see more social results, click on the *Show Options* link at the top left of the page and click on the *Social* link in the side menu under *All Results*. This will bring up search results sourced entirely from your social network. You'll also see a list of your friends and connections under the menu heading *All People*. You can click on a particular name in the list to bring up more results from their public content.

Next to your social circle results are two links that are new additions to the service added to coincide with the public rollout: my social circle and my social content (pictured). These take you to your social circle dashboard that I linked to earlier.

The *my social circle* tab displays your extended network of online contacts, as well as the pathways that connect you. Clicking on the *my social content* tab brings up your public social media profiles, taken from your Google profile, that might appear in other people's social results (pictured).

Apart from this social dashboard, the other major difference between the original Social Search experiment and the new public rollout is the addition of Google Images into the mix. If anyone in your social circle has shared images on Flickr or Picasa and Google determines they are relevant to your search query, you may see these in your search results as well.

Judging by my social search experiments to date, I believe Google has been collating social results for some time. A key observation is that relevance seems to win over freshness in the social influenced search results - some of the top results in my social circle were from 2008.

How Do You Take Advantage of Social Search?

1. If you haven't already done so, create a Gmail account and create and flesh out your Google Profile immediately.

2. Join more social sites if you want your content to appear in the SERPs of your direct and secondary social circle networks, particularly the primary ones Twitter, Flickr and FriendFeed.

3. Optimize your social media content (tweets, FB and LinkedIn status updates, blog feeds, etc.) for target keywords to ensure your social content is shown in a wider number of social circle SERPs.

4. Gmail and Chat contacts get top billing in your social circle so choose your Gmail buddies wisely or drop them from your profile altogether.

5. Consider the type of social content that is popular and most often shared within your networks. Concentrate on building similar content in your public social media profiles to ensure it gets syndicated via your social circle.

6. If Universal Search wasn't enough of a punch in the gut to convince you to optimize your multimedia content, consider Social Search to be that punch placed a little lower. Your shared photos just became another content channel.

7. Become more picky about who you follow and what social feeds you subscribe to. They have just become influencers in your every day search results.

What if I Don't Like It?

If your particular social circle seems a little lightweight or top heavy, you can control what results you do and don't see under your social search results. You can choose to either delete a social network from your Google profile (such as Twitter or Facebook), or drop a specific contact from your network.

You can ignore the social results at the bottom of the page when signed in, or if you don't wish to see any social search results at all, simply conduct your searches while signed out of your Google account.

How Much SEO Do You Need To Get Top Rankings?

Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions, perpetuated by industry SEO experts, is that a website must follow perfect SEO strategies to get top rankings. While adhering to simple common SEO standards does help the search engines both find and index your site more quickly, it doesn't guarantee by any stretch of the imagination that following those SEO guidelines will propel your site to the top of the rankings.

If only search engine optimization was that easy!

No doubt, there are some SEO faux pas that will do harm to your site's rankings, especially in Google, the ultimate hall-monitor all puffed up and ready to pounce on any misbehaving webmaster. Things such as keyword stuffing, keyword spamming or linking out to bad neighborhoods such as link farms, pharmaceutical or gambling sites may get you blacklisted.

But how much SEO do you need? How much search engine optimization do you need to get top rankings? Do you need a whole lot or do you need very little SEO?

Actually, after 10 years of marketing online, the answer to that question varies depending upon what you're trying to accomplish with your SEO efforts? If you're operating an online business in a very competitive (read lucrative) market, SEO will be high on your agenda as you go about annihilating your competition.

Even if you're an ordinary webmaster or website owner you're probably fussing over your rankings in the search engines. The higher the rankings you achieve for your chosen keywords; the more traffíc you will get. Good quality traffic that converts well into loyal subscribers and fans of your site.

Many webmasters and companies spend thousands of dollars each month in order to get their keywords and sites up to the top of the líst. If you're into affiliate marketing, your daily income will rise and fall almost parallel to your rankings. Now, if my earnings go up, I know automatically my rankings have gone up, usually in Google. If my earnings go down, I know my rankings have gone south. Some times even a drop or rise of one place on the first page SERPs will affect how much you earn.

Obviously, because of this fact, SEO or how well I am optimized for the search engines is extremely important to me. I am constantly building quality links and quality content for my sites. Some keyword battles you win, some battles you lose. I have been fighting some keyword battles for over 3 or 4 years now!

But how much SEO is enough? How much SEO should you do with your sites? Many webmasters make sure all their on page set-up or lay-out is done exactly to what the SEO experts say you should do. This is not a bad idea. Make sure your Title, URL, Headlines, Keyword Density... are all laid out right. These are things we can control and adjust to meet the SEO standards.

Other SEO or ranking factors are much harder to predict, many of them are simply out of our control. How other sites link to us, what they put in the anchor text, what they say about us... simply things we can't control.

I believe the over-riding reason why your site is listed at the top of any rankings has to do with the number, the quality and the quantity of sites linking back to your page. The higher the number of related quality one-way links you have flowing back to your site, the higher it will perform in the rankings. Your anchor text is very important (underlined part of a link); it must contain your keywords or variations of it. The content on the linking page should also be related to your chosen keywords.

Get this part right and you will get high rankings.

Or at least this has been my experience - all the other ranking factors do count but this is the over-riding factor in my opinion.

Another major ranking factor lately, has been the importance Google is placing on social media links. Get your content to the first page of Digg with lots of diggs and it will rank high in Google. This is not surprising when you consider the nature of these social bookmarking sites... it really is an actual "vote" for the quality of your content. Getting Delicious bookmarks has a similar positive effect.

Another prominent factor, from my observations, is having your major keyword in your Domain Name. Use hyphens if you want but having those keywords in there, does help rather than hinder your rankings.

Now if you're wondering about how Google ranks pages or your keywords.... Google has around 200 ranking factors (with filters and penalties thrown in to make all our lives interesting) which it uses to rank your keywords/pages. This is still the best online resource that lists all of Google's ranking factors: www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm

Now the question still remains, how much SEO do you need? How much time should you spend at optimizing, building links, worrying your head off over the latest Google Itch?

The answer always comes back to quality content. Create a site that has quality content and the SEO will take care of itself. People will link to your site, you will get bookmarks in all the social media sites, Google will find your content and rank it. Your SEO will grow naturally as your site grows. Keep building more pages, keep targeting more and more related keywords in your niche or subject area and you will get higher rankings.

Now, of course, some webmasters are a little more aggressive in how quickly they want their rankings to rise to the top of the search engines. Here's something you can do if you want to go into the SEO battle full-force.

1. Download SEOquake and place this free SEO toolbar plug-in on your Firefox (or I.E.) browser.


2. Go to Google and type in the keyword or keyword phrase you're targeting with your site or content.


3. Select the number one ranking and observe how many pages it has indexed, PageRank, how many backlinks it has, age of the site... and so on.


4. Then use the page info button and study all the on-page factors this site has and notice what it's doing with its page and keyword density lay-out.


5. Check all the backlinks this site has in the different search engines. Copy or try to get the same backlinks for your site that your competitor has acquired. Then get more backlinks and/or higher quality backlinks than your competitor.


6. Watch your rankings rise...

Just a few more words of wisdom and we're done. Some battles will be too tough to fight, the competition will be so stiff you just can't compete. Other battles will take a long time; months, even years before you rise to the top. Your best bet is to choose long-tail (multi-worded) keywords that have little or no competition. You can rise to the top within days, even hours. The sweet thing is this: long-tail keywords are often the most lucrative and bring in the most sales. For in the final analysis, you just don't want SEO, you want smart SEO. And you will quickly learn, most times you can often out-smart your competition, even if you can't out-rank them.

By Titus Hoskins

Small Business SEO Checklist: The Do’s

1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn't a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.

2. Be patient. SEO isn't about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.

3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It's your job to know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so forth.

4. Become a student of SEO. If you're taking the do-it-yourself route, you'll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can. Luckily for you, there are plenty of great Web resources (like Search Engine Land) and several terrific books you can read. Aaron Wall's SEO Book, Jennifer Laycock's Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin are three I've read and recommend.

5. Have web analytics in place at the start. You should have clearly defined goals for your SEO efforts, and you'll need web analytics software in place so you can track what's working and what's not.

6. Build a great web site. I'm sure you want to show up on the first page of results. Ask yourself, "Is my site really one of the 10 best sites in the world on this topic?" Be honest. If it's not, make it better.

7. Include a site map page. Spiders can't index pages that can't be crawled. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your site, and help the spider understand your site's hierarchy. This is especially helpful if your site has a hard-to-crawl navigation menu. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links. I tell clients 75 is the max to be safe.

8. Make SEO-friendly URLs. Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such as yourdomain.com/red-widgets.html. Don't overdo it, though. A file with 3+ hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it. Related bonus tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a "space", while underscores are not.

9. Do keyword research at the start of the project. If you're on a tight budget, use the free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, both of which also have more powerful paid versions. Ignore the numbers these tools show; what's important is the relative volume of one keyword to another. Another good free tool is Google's AdWords Keyword Tool, which doesn't show exact numbers.

10. Open up a PPC account. Whether it's Google's AdWords or Yahoo's Search Marketing or something else, this is a great way to get actual search volume for your keywords. Yes, it costs money, but if you have the budget it's worth the investment. It's also the solution if you didn't like the "Be patient suggestion above and are looking for instant visibility.

11. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on every page. The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor. It's rare to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without that term being part of the page title. The meta description tag won't help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should include the relevant keyword(s) and be written so as to encourage searchers to click on your listing. Related bonus tip: You can ignore the Keywords meta altogether if you'd like; it's close to inconsequential. If you use it, put misspellings in there, and any related keywords that don't appear on the page.

12. Write for users first. Google, Yahoo, etc., have pretty powerful bots crawling the web, but to my knowledge these bots have never bought anything online, signed up for a newsletter, or picked up the phone to call about your services. Humans do those things, so write your page copy with humans in mind. Yes, you need keywords in the text, but don't stuff each page like a Thanksgiving turkey. Keep it readable.

13. Create great, unique content. This is important for everyone, but it's a particular challenge for online retailers. If you're selling the same widget that 50 other retailers are selling, and everyone is using the boilerplate descriptions from the manufacturer, this is a great opportunity. Write your own product descriptions, using the keyword research you did earlier (see #9 above) to target actual words searchers use, and make product pages that blow the competition away. Plus, retailer or not, great content is a great way to get inbound links.

14. Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally. Anchor text helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about. Links that say "click here" do nothing for your search engine visibility.

15. Build links intelligently. Submit your site to quality, trusted directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ, Business.com, Aviva, and Best of the web. Seek links from authority sites in your industry. If local search matters to you (more on that coming up), seek links from trusted sites in your geographic area—the Chamber of Commerce, etc. Analyze the inbound links to your competitors to find links you can acquire, too.

16. Use press releases wisely. Developing a relationship with media covering your industry or your local region can be a great source of exposure, including getting links from trusted media web sites. Distributing releases online can be an effective link building tactic, and opens the door for exposure in news search sites. Related bonus tip: Only issue a release when you have something newsworthy to report. Don't waste journalists time.

17. Start a blog and participate with other related blogs. Search engines, Google especially, love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured data. Beyond that, there's no better way to join the conversations that are already taking place about your industry and/or company. Reading and commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links. Related bonus tip: Put your blog at yourdomain.com/blog so your main domain gets the benefit of any links to your blog posts. If that's not possible, use blog.yourdomain.com.

18. Use social media marketing wisely. If your small business has a visual element, join the appropriate communities on Flickr and post high-quality photos there. If you're a service-oriented business, use Yahoo Answers to position yourself as an expert in your industry. With any social media site you use, the first rule is don't spam! Be an active, contributing member of the site. The idea is to interact with potential customers, not annoy them.

19. Take advantage of local search opportunities. Online research for offline buying is a growing trend. Optimize your site to catch local traffic by showing your address and local phone number prominently. Write a detailed Directions/Location page using neighborhoods and landmarks in the page text. Submit your site to the free local listings services that the major search engines offer. Make sure your site is listed in local/social directories such as CitySearch, Yelp, Local.com, etc., and encourage customers to leave reviews of your business on these sites, too.

20. Take advantage of the tools the search engines give you. Sign up for Google's webmaster Central and Yahoo's Site Explorer to learn more about how the search engines see your site, including how many inbound links they're aware of.

21. Diversify your traffic sources. Google may bring you 70% of your traffic today, but what if the next big algorithm update hits you hard? What if your Google visibility goes away tomorrow? Newsletters and other subscriber-based content can help you hold on to traffic/customers no matter what the search engines do. In fact, many of the DOs on this list—creating great content, starting a blog, using social media and local search, etc.—will help you grow an audience of loyal prospects and customers that may help you survive the whims of search engines.

Your additions are welcome in the comments.

5 Google Tools For Researching Your Market

Internet marketers and webmasters have always had a love/ hate relationship with Google. Whatever you think of them they do provide website owners with some great market research tools.

No matter what market you are in or plan to be in, you will find these free tools provided by Google very useful when researching your market. You should be researching your market constantly, NOT just when setting up your site. The internet is ever changing and, if you're not keeping up with those changes, you will be left behind.

Market Research Tool 1 - Related Searches And Wonder Wheel

When you start typing in the main Google search box you should see a drop down box appear giving you some alternative search terms related to the word you typed. Note these phrases down in a notepad file or write them on a piece of paper. They will be useful as part of your keyword list used in the next tool. You will also see more related search phrases after you click search. Scroll to the bottom of the results page and you will see "searches related to:" Note down any new phrases shown there.

Recently Google has released Wonder Wheel which is also a related keywords tool but is shown in a mind map format. You can also click on the related phrases to find more useful search terms. To access wonder wheel: enter your keyword in the standard search screen, then at the top of the results on the left you should see a show options link. Select that and it will reveal a menu. Near the bottom of the menu you should see wonder wheel.

Market Research Tool 2 - Adwords Keyword Tool

We all know how important keywords and search phrases are. Let's face it, it's what drives the internet. Google has provided us with a tool that tells you what keywords and phrases people are using to find what they are looking for. You are able to search an individual country, more than one if you hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard as you select, or all countries.

The adwords tool is now more valuable due to the fact it shows actual search numbers. Previously you only had a green bar to indicate how much traffic the search term receíved. You can also see how competitive each keyword is amongst adword advertisers, showing us which keywords are commercially viable.

Market Research Tool 3 - Google Trends

Now that you have an idea what keywords your market is using you can use the trends tool to check the history of that keyword / phrase. Google Trends supplies data for the last 5 years, giving you an idea if the search term is consistent. You can also see if the search term is popular at certain times of the year, also known as a seasonal keywords.

Another important function of Trends is the section that tells you the popularity of a keyword by country, city and language - very useful if you are targeting particular countries or even cities.

Market Research Tool 4 - Google Alerts

Alerts is underused by webmasters. If you want to stay in touch with what's hot in your market, you can by using Google Alerts. All you have to do is enter the most popular phrases in your market. Google will then send you links via email depending on what type you select.

The types are news, web, blogs, video and groups. If you would like a mix of all, you can select comprehensive. You can decide how often you want to be updated by selecting either: as it happens, once a day or once a week. I hope you can see how powerful this is if you want to be seen as an authority in your market.

Market Research Tool 5 - Google Web Search

Finally, we have Google's standard web search which is not standard in my eyes. It provides a lot of information if you know what to look for. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of running a website. By performing a search of your market keywords, Google will tell you what type of content it sees as important.

If you see videos, blogs or images this gives you another way to reach the top 10 of Google. If you see Web 2.0 style sites such as Digg, that could be another avenue. If there are adword ads on the right side of the screen, that tells you the market is commercially viable and more importantly that the keyword you entered is good enough to pay for, especially if there are 10 ads or more.

As you can see, even if you don't have money to buy the latest tools, I have shown you there is a way to get some very important information using free tools from Google. Are you starting to love them now?

By Pete Moore

The SEO's Toolkit Part Three: Resources

Welcome to part three of this three part series on SEO tools and resources. In the last two articles we discussed the variety of Firefox extensions used for SEO as well as an assortment of other free or affordable SEO tools. In this article we'll discuss some of the resources you'll want to access on a regular basis to keep up to date and informed on the goings-on in the search engine and SEO realm.

We're going to cover a few different types of resources below and I'm going to try to keep this article to a reasonable length so let's begin ...

Media

When there's a breaking story or you want an expert opinion on a subject, a good first place to hit are the media sources in that industry. The SEO industry is no different and there are some impressive albeit often unconventional media sources. Some of my favorites are:

Webmaster Radio

Webmaster Radio is an Internet-based radio station with some great programing ranging from affiliate marketing to PPC to organic optimization and much more. With shows hosted by experts in their fields from Danny Sullivan (Search News) to Dave Szetela (PPC) you'll find solid information that is well-rounded. I'd list my favorite shows but what I like may be different than you and what I need to know may be different than what you need to know, so look through their programming and either listen through your work day as I often do or download the podcasts for later listening.

WebProNews

WebProNews offers up-to-the-minute information on virtually every event. They have reporters writing constantly and have other scoring SEO blogs and other news sources, compiling the information in one place for easy access. They also have great articles by third-party writers and a very active readership that is proactive in their commenting. Definitely near the top of my go-to list when I'm looking for news and current feedback.

Addme

This site is difficult to classify as it fits into a couple categories but I decided to include it under media as that's my primary use. They include tools, resources, a directory and much more on their site. My primary use of this site is for the articles and newsletter.

Search Engine Watch

No list of SEO resources would be complete without including Search Engine Watch. This site is the one that started it all. Search Engine Watch provides everything from fantastic articles and breaking news to search engine stats and an awesome forum. A definite bookmark.

Blogs

As with many industries - blogs are a great way to keep informed on the latest goings-on in the SEO realm. The trick, however, is figuring out which blogs are worth reading and which authors are truly knowledgeable. Over the years I've read many blogs and to be honest - I still do. Below are some of the key blogs I reference on a regular basis.

SEO Book Blog

Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has an excellent blog worth reading on a regular basis. I have yet to visit his blog and not find some tid-bit of information that was worth reading either because of the information itself or because often he's just entertaining. Another to add to your weekly reading list.

Matt Cutts Blog

It's nice to get it from the horse's mouth. For those who don't know - Matt Cutts is the head of Google's Webspam team. He blogs about Google, technology and occasionally his cat. One has to read what he writes knowing that he's a Google employee and as such can't really give away the farm, BUT he gives tons of great advice, insight and tips. The perk being that you don't have to ask if following his advice will get you banned. :)

SEO By The Sea

Bill Slawski (the author) focuses his attention on the more technical side of things with tales of patents, algorithmic possibilities, statistics and functionalities. For many, his would be one of the more dry blogs if not for his gift with words and ability to make even the most bland of subjects palatable. You don't need to visit his blog daily but adding it to your weekly journey through the web is recommended.

SEOmoz Blog

What blog list would be complete without the inclusion of the SEOmoz blog. Rand Fishkin and crew keep their visitors up-to-date on some great research, news and SEO tips. From opinion pieces to months-long whitepapers, you'll find useful information. Again - not necessary to visit every day but a weekly pass is always worthwhile.

Forums

Forums are a great place to gather information, especially on current events such as ranking updates. That said, reading forums can be a risky thing. Almost anyone can join a forum and post their thoughts. While this format allows us to capture a wide range of information and knowledge - it also results in less qualified people giving advice as well. So while I recommend reading forums, I also recommend taking things with a grain of salt - at least until you figure out who's who.

SEO Chat Forums

The SEO chat forums are easily one of the largest and most popular of the SEO forums. They cover a HUGE array of issues from Google and social media to Alexa rankings and (hold your hats) Ask Jeeves (that's right - the forum's been around for THAT long). Users worth noting are rustybrick, fathom, and randfish.

DigitalPoint Forums

DigitalPoint is also an ancient forum (2000 - ancient by web standards at least). It covers a wide range of topics from SEO to PPC and affiliate programs. Some users worth noting there are shoemoney, daven, and, of course, digitalpoint. A great place to ask your questions. Heavily visited and they have a ranking system for their users so you can get a decent feel as to whether they're reliable.

SitePoint Forums

There are a variety of reasons I like SitePoint and I own a number of their books. Their forums focus on design and development (not SEO), but every SEO needs resources on the design and development side.

Newsletters & Other Resources

Of course there are other resources that every SEO or webmaster needs to be able to get their hands on. Here they are:

Google Webmaster Guidelines

These are the guidelines set out by Google telling you what you can and can't do and what tactics to look out for. Worth a look over periodically as they do change from time-to-time. If you're heading into the forums for advice, you'll definitely want to take a gander at the guidelines first to make sure that if you get led astray - at least you'll know what can get you banned or penalized.

By Dave Davies

The SEO's Toolkit Part Two of Three: Tools

Welcome to part two of this three part series on SEO tools and resources. In the last article we discussed the variety of Firefox extensions used for SEO. In this article we'll discuss some of the free and affordable tools you can use to better your organic optimization efforts. By affordable I mean for virtually everybody so I'm going to set the bar at $100/yr or ownership. Admittedly, we use tools that cost more than this but many of those tools will be out of some people's price range.

Here are some of the key tools you need to use to help insure the successful optimization of your website.

Google Keyword Tool

Many of you are likely familiar with Google's keyword tool, but it needs to be noted. This is a great resource for researching keywords. As with all keyword tools, it has its limitations and most would agree that it seems to overestimate search volume but nonetheless it is probably the best of the keyword tools out there, especially at the price.

Keyword Discovery

No individual set of data is perfect and no stage of the SEO process is more important than keyword research and selection. Keyword Discovery is a great tool to compare with the Google keyword data. Where you find commonalities you know that 2 independent sets of data agree. With a free tríal that may itself work for many - it's certainly worth looking into.

Keyword Spy

While the paid version of this tool is more than the $100/yr. max I noted previously - the free version provides some great data. Simply enter a competitor URL and you'll find out some valuable data about the keywords they rank for both organically and in AdWords. This is great for competitor analysis as well as for finding keywords you might not have thought of.

Xenu Link Sleuth

A fantastic free tool that crawls websites, reporting back all the broken links. Over time, almost all sites get broken links. Running this tool periodically will help you find them so you can fix them.

Google Webmaster Tools

Arguably one of the most important of the SEO tools. Google Webmaster Tools allows webmasters (and SEO's of course) to see their website the way Google does. With this tool you'll get to see what your site is appearing for in the results, what pages on your site are linked to but don't exist, and a wide array of errors and statistics.

With this information you can repair a number of issues. If your site is appearing for phrases that you're not getting traffic from, you can review your titles and descriptions to see if you can improve your clickthrough rate. Xenu won't show you the links from other sites that are pointing to pages that don't exist - Google Webmaster Tools will. You'll also find good backlink information for your site as well as a lot more.

Page Prowler

Page Prowler is a backlink research tool that allows the user to collect large amounts of potential backlink information, sort that data by site strength, and then proceed to pursue those backlinks. The value of this tool is primarily in the time it saves. It has no function that could not be done manually, but it can compile data that would otherwise take a person hours or days to collect quickly and easily.

Full disclosure – Shawn (the developer) asked me to advise on the development of this link building tool and I'm also assisting in it's marketing. I was extremely impressed with Shawn's first version of PR Prowler which includes some great functions and information. I felt the need to note this, but I'll also note that we at Beanstalk use this tool regularly. I would not include it here if it didn't deserve to be and I'd include it here if I had nothing to do with it other than my using it.

Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking is probably the most affordable of the better rank checking software programs. It has a ton of great features including scheduling and auto-report generation. You can set the searches to take place slowly to reduce the impact on the search engines. I still recommend to run it in the evening to further minimize your impact during high-volume search periods.

Multiple Keyword Rack-Checking Tool

This is probably one of the most popular tools on the Beanstalk site. One of the pet peeves I always had with online rank checking tools was checking rankings one-at-a-time. This tool allows you to check your rankings on Google ten at a time. Apparently others agree as it's the most used tool of our set.

136 SEO Tools

While we've tried to include a solid set of very affordable tools in this article, you might find value in tools we don't use. The "136 SEO Tools" page is regularly updated and includes some very interesting (though not part of my daily arsenal) tools. Highly recommended to visit at least once. I have it in my bookmarks and check back every couple months to see what new tools have been added.

Written by Dave Davies

The SEO's Toolkit Part One of Three: Firefox

Every SEO uses different tools and resources. Some tools are paid, some are free and some are internally developed tools that we use for ourselves and our clients - but we all use them. Very often I get asked what tools people should use if they're looking to optimize their own sites and what resources they should use to keep up with the latest going's on. While telling people how to optimize their own sites and what the tools we use isn't generally the best of business practices - I just can't help myself. If your budget doesn't allow for the hiring of a professional SEO company - trying it yourself may be the only option. I also try to remember that once-upon-a-time I was optimizing my own sites and was new to SEO and without the open advice of others already involved in the community - I wouldn't be running a successful SEO company today. To this end, it only seems right to provide a list of some of the main tools we use on virtually every site.

When I initially started writing this article I was going to cram a slew of various tools and resources into one article, but the article was going to end up running WAY too long to hold your attention (or mine) so I've cut it into three EZ parts (as opposed to three EZ payments which you'll be familiar with if you too watch late night TV with a laptop in front of you writing things like SEO articles). But let's get to the meat of this article shall we? The series will be divided into three parts:

• Firefox


• Free & Affordable Tools


• Resources

So let's begin with Firefox. Let me first say, I don't know if Firefox is officially the browser of SEO's, but if not - it should be. You can download it at Mozilla.com. And now the extensions that make this browser invaluable to SEO's...

SEO Quake

If I had to lose all but one of my SEO tools - this would be the one I'd keep which is why it gets listed first. This little tool allows me to quickly look at the top 10 results in the SERPs and within seconds see all the PageRank, indexed page numbers, backlinks to that page, domain backlinks, the age of the site and much, much more.

This tool doesn't provide any revolutionary information in that it's all data that can be accessed directly. However, it reduces the time taken for tasks that would take minutes to seconds. It then provides easy links to more detailed information. A fantastic tool.

Oh, and it also adds a line through all nofollowed links. Very handy when link building.

SEO for Firefox

Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has added a great tool to the mix that duplicates a lot of functions of SEO Quake but which has enough additional features to be very useful. Basically - neither is a replacement for the other.

Like most tools - it provides information that can be accessed in other ways, BUT with this Tool Aaron allows users to find tons of relevant site and keyword information quickly and painlessly. From keyword traffic to keyword trends, from backlink counts to social media mentions - this tools gives quick access to tons of information.

Admittedly, I prefer the layout of SEO Quake and some of the easier functionality.

SEO Link Analysis

A HUGE thumbs way up (two of them in fact) to Joost de Valk who made all our lives simpler when this tool launched. What this tool does is display the PageRank and anchor text of every link when you perform a backlink check on one of the major engines. I suppose you could visit every single site and get this information yourself and there's value in that to be sure, but when you need a quick analysis of a site's backlinks - this tool is invaluable.

As a sidenote – it works VERY well with SEO Quake.

Web Developer

With this tool we're getting a bit more advanced. For those of you who understand coding or are learning (and you should be), this tool is incredible. It allows for quick testing and viewing of a site's structure including, image info, table and cell information, W3C compliance, CSS details and MUCH, MUCH more.

I can't possibly list off all the functions this tool offers and admittedly I don't use them all but I use enough of them regularly for this tool to make my top 10 list.

IE Tab

This is an odd tool to add and it's purely a convenience tool but like adding a second monitor to your system - once you have it and realize that it saves you just a few seconds dozens of times per day you quickly realize that your productivity relies on it.

With a simple click of a button, this tool loads Internet Explorer into your Firefox tab so you don't have to go back-and-forth between browsers when testing. I could survive without it, but since you have Firefox anyways...

Search Status

This is another tool with many uses. On the surface it simply displays PageRank, Alexa and Compete rank and mozRank data but with a right-click of the icon you get access to a whole slew of additional information, including fast links to whois, the robots and sitemap files, keyword density information, Archive.org info, and it will even highlight nofollow links.

A lot of these features overlap other tools noted above, but I will say - I have it installed and so should you.

These are the main extensions I have installed for Firefox (read: the ones I use virtually every day). This isn't to say that's all there are, and I can't stress enough the benefits of visiting addons.mozilla.org and looking for more useful extensions specific to your needs (RSS, Twitter, coding, etc.) I have about a dozen more installed than are listed here, but those above are the main Firefox SEO tools I use daily.

In the next article, we'll be taking a look at free and affordable tools that you can use to help improve your website rankings. Be sure to keep your eyes open as there will be many invaluable tools listed there too.