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I first saw the name of Compete.com appearing on John Battelle's Search Blog, then it cropped up over on Micropersuasion and now even Matt Cutts is talking about it. Well, if you'd like a review of this premium web analytics tool for interactive marketers, head over to Cyber Notes.
I heard about Google's Custom Search Engine and thought it would be neat to create a mini (read: mini, mini!) search engine to search through the content of a few websites I have added.
Test drive it and see what you think!
Over the past few months I have been actively participating and browsing the SEM 2.0 Discussion on Google Groups. The moderator is Andrew Goodman, who wrote the book Winning Results with Google Adwords, and it discusses a number of topics of relevance to both Paid and Organic listings. Here are some of the more recent discussions taking place on this group:
Well worth a visit!
Practically every day I get emails from people asking for reciprocal links. They invariably start off with:
I recently found your site http://www.marketingtom.com and am very interested in exchanging links. I've gone ahead and posted a link to your site, on this page:
At which point I check and find that I am listed at the bottom of a long list of other websites. These emails always finish off with the folloiwng paragraph:
As you know, reciprocal linking benefits both of us by raising our search rankings and generating more traffic to both of our sites. Please post a link to my site as follows:
One thing that rankles me is that every time I use my Google Toolbar cached tool I find that these sites have not even been listed on Google. So, we have a situation where:
In this instance reciprocal linking only benefits the site that asks me to create a link to them.
What to do?
I just tend to add them to my Yahoo! email spam list (they are almost always bulk spammers).
Back in October I signed up for a cool, analytics service called MyBlogLog. Written by Eric Marcoullier, MyBlogLog allows site owners, and if you want visitors, the ability to see what people are clicking to leave your site. Prior to this I had no idea what the most popular links were on my Mad About Madrid site and really wanted to know where people were going. I could see, from my StatCounter package, the most popular keywords but had no idea whether people were clicking on any, or none, of the links within blog articles.
MyBlogLog shows me not just where people have come from but the top links. It displays on my website (for all to see), the top 50 outgoing links from the site. Hover over a link and it will display the ranking (out of 50) for that particular link.
This tool can give you an insight into what exactly appeals, or doesn't appeal to visitors.
Here's what I could do with the information on my Mad About Madrid website. Say I knew that a high percentage of visitors were clicking on a link to a well-known restaurant, I could use this information to approach the restaurant and ask them if they would be interested in sponsoring part of the site or even adding a banner. This could make sense to the restaurant as they would potentially be able to reach far more of their target audience through more visible placement on the site.
MyBlogLog also allows me to get into the minds of my visitors and see what really interests them. By knowing this I can create more articles which they will find of interest. I found that for December the most popular links were for "Air Madrid", a Spanish band called "Las Niñas", a "Madrid Restaurant Guide", "Madrid Metro" and "Tapas in Madrid". From this I can either look to approach people for revenue, write more articles on tapas or even think about creating an online Restaurant Guide for Madrid in English!
Here are the Top 5 Links Across the site:
Not sure how useful this would be for some people but I thought I'd write about it anyway. I was just loking for a book on Amazon - Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival - when my eye was drawn to Amazon's SIPS. For those who don't know (probably everyone!) Amazon's SIPS are:
Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program. To identify SIPs, our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside! program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside! books, that phrase is a SIP in that book.
They actually offer quite valuable information - let's call them "keywords" - from within a book. In the case of the book I mentioned above, the SIPS are:
belay seat, boot snagged, belay plate, snow stake, snow hole, cooking rock, corniced ridge, ice cliff, rock buttress, ice screws, snow cave, steep ice, ice bridge, ice wall, second lake, powder snow, dome tent
It would appear that these SIPS act as tags and, on clicking, you get taken to a list of other books where these SIPS appear:
14 references in Touching the Void: The Harrowing First Person Account Of One Man's Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson
Click on any one of these and you get presented with a new set of SIPS. Brilliant!
By methodically going through this process, it is quite possible to build up a highly relevant, set of keywords. Quite often in search engine marketing people will develop their keyword lists from 'within', that is they will either write down the keywords that they, or their closest colleagues, use. Using something like Amazon's SIPS ensures that you are, potentially, tapping into the words that the 'community' is using in relation to your subject.
Let's say that your subject is 'mountaineering', well the people that write the books that are listed above (and other ones you will discover from further research) may well come from a wide variety of backgrounds. They may be climbers, mountain rescue people, walkers, abseilers, journalists beginnes or pros; they may come from different countries or prefer rock climbing to ice climbing. The point is that SIPS allow you to see the different perspectives of other people and help you use the language (read keywords) that they may be using.
You will also come across CAPS which are:
"Capitalized Phrases, or "CAPs", are people, places, events, or important topics mentioned frequently in a book."
They are another important source of keyword information.
Try typing in keywords relevant to your business or your clients on Amazon's site and see what SIPS are being used.
If you're stuck for some stocking fillers this Christmas, here are some excellent Search Engine-related books you may want to consider. Or why not just indulge yourself?
The Google Story
David Vise
Winning Results with Google AdWords
Andrew Goodman
Search Engine Visibility
Shari Thurow
The Search
John Battelle
Search Advertising
Catherine Seda
Google Power
Chris Sherman
I got asked today about which were the best tools to use for keyword research. Here are some of the tools which will give you an idea of what, potentially, your target market is likely to be typing in to the search engines.
Overture Suggestion Tool (USA)- displays results from the previous month
Overture Suggestion Tool (UK) - as above but for UK
Word Tracker - you can use their free trial version (for a certain number of keywords) but need to pay £140.00 / $242.24 per year for the full version.
Google Adwords
is probably the best tool to use for keyword research (suggestions), though it doesn't exactly tel you the number of times a search word has been typed in to its search engine. To get started you will firstly need to set up an account, which is pretty
straighforward. Once you set up an account you will need to activate it (having received email notification). Once activated, you will be able to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which includes the NEW "Keyword Variation" and "Site-Related
Keywords" features. These tools are great for viewing the popularity of a search
term and the volume of advertisers for that term (I will include some screenshots and a more detailed overview in a folow-on article).
MIVA Keyword Tool (formerly eSpotting) offers a keyword generator which gives you an idea of the popularity of a keyword across its network (UK) over the past 30 days. This is actually quite a simple, yet neat tool and ideal for keyword research.
**Update**
Online Marketing Blog also points to these Keyword Research Tools:
Keyworddiscovery.com and Google Suggest - incidentally, the latter can be used with Google Toolbar within Firefox:
Related Article
SEOmoz has an interesting article on this subject: When Wordtracker is Not Enough - Some Alternative Tips for Keyword Suggestions and Traffic Estimations
Technorati Tags: google adwords | overture | wordtracker
Search Engine World has got a neat little tool for analyzing the keyword density on your website. It reports on the most frequently used 1, 2 and 3-word phrases on a given web page and is ideal for giving you a quick idea of whether you're using your keywords effectively.
I just picked up an interesting article at Future Now's A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect, which talks about a report done at Wordtracker. The report - Keyword Research Guide - offers an insight into how experts use Wordtracker to carry out their online keyword research. With a foreword by Andy and Mike Mindel, creators of Wordtracker, and with 'analysis' carried out by some of the key names in search engine marketing it makes for very good reading. Here's how it goes - Word Tracker decided to create a fictitional company:
We created a story around Virginia Veg, a fictional vegetable processing company that wants to sell vegetarian dog food online, and asked experts to tell us how they would use Wordtracker to offer advice to Susan Webster, the CEO of our fictional company.
and they then asked the search engine marketing experts to come up with some solutions for this fictitious CEO. Here were their tasks:
This FREE, 75-page pdf document offers some great advice for the selection of keywords for an online campaign. Here are some words of wisdom from Bryan Eisenberg:
Behind every search is a person. The terms typed into search engines reveal a surprising amount about visitor intent. Know as much as you can about your potential customers, and use keywords that reveal intent to purchase your dog food products.
Related Site
Keyword Discovery - which according to their site: "KeywordDiscovery compiles keyword search statistics from over 180 search engines world wide,
to create the most powerful Keyword Research tool".
Related Article
Keyword Research (Suggestion) Tools
Technorati Tags: wordtracker | keyword research
If you couldn't get to the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San José, or if you would just like to look at a resumen of the events (to prove to your boss that you actually did attend some seminars!), Search Engine Rountable has done an excellent job of making notes of practically every event that went on. You may be interested in the following:
Search Engine Q&A On Links - Tim Mayer from Yahoo, Matt Cutts from Google and Kaushal Kurapti from Ask Jeeves
Usability Clinic - Shari Thurow and Matthew Bailey
Why Using A Static IP Address is Benefical... Google Engineer Explains
Indexing Summit 2: Redirects, Titles & Descriptions
Landing Page Testing & Tuning
This is a great tool for letting you see how the search engines view your website. Just type in your website URL and Seo Browser will display the text that Google, et al see when spidering your site. For those flash, frames and graphic image-heavy sites, prepare yourself for a surprise.
Technorati Tags:search engines | internet marketing
I just came across this neat site - PageRank - with quite a few neat search engine tools.The notes in red are my own observations.
PageRank Checker
Check the PageRank of your website. This is quite neat and allows you to not only check your Page Rank (like the Google Page Rank) but also let's you download the code which will display your site's Page Rank to your visitors.
Keyword Density Analyzer
Analyze the keyword density of your website. Simply type in the URL you want analysed and the keyword density analyzer will let you know which words are used and how often they're used.
Link Popularity Checker
Measure the link popularity of your website. Links in to your site are important and are a critical element in your ranking position on search engines. This tool indicates the number of inbound links to your site across the following search engines Alltheweb, Altavista, Google/ AOL, HotBot, MSN and Yahoo!. This tool can also be used to analyse the links in to your competitors' web sites!
Meta Tag Generator
Create correct meta tags suitable for your website. This tool allows you to create Meta Tag Description and Meta Tag Keywords.
Search Engine Position Tool
Check your website's position for a specific keyword in the search engines. This tool will identify if your site appears in the top 50 search engine positions on Alltheweb, AltaVista, AOL, Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Search Engine Saturation
Check the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website. This is one I regularly check to make sure that the search engines are indexing my site and not dropping pages.
Search Engine Simulator
Simulated view of how your website would be 'seen' by the search engines.
Some of the tools are similar (the same?) to those found on Market Leap
Chris Sherman, Associate Editor of SearchEngineWatch, always has some good tips to offer search engine marketers. His article entitled Three Cool Search Gizmos is no exception and he lets readers know about 3 neat tools that marketers will find of use. The first, and by far my favourite, is called Jux2, which is a search engine that compares the results across (at present) 3 major search engines: Google, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. The search results are neatly displayed and can show which websites appeared on 3, 2 or 1 search engines. As the guys at Jux2 say:
Using jux2, we learned that search engines are more different than people think, typically sharing fewer than 3.5 of their top 10 results (see the other statistical data). We also found that a comparative tool like jux2 gives users far more control over their searches and, in many cases, better search results than from any single search engine.
The second tool comes from Whois Source which lets you know about: "domain ownership, server details and other information about web sites". The third is Printer Friendly, which is a bookmarkelt that scans a page for the "printer friendly" button and loads that into a new browser window - ideal for quite a few marketing sites!
For another year running Marketing Sherpa has compiled a list of real-life marketing stories in a FREE downloadble PDF, called Marketing Wisdom 2005. As the marketing blurb says, "[Marketing Wisdom 2005] Includes 105 real-life marketing lessons learned from MarketingSherpa readers including the folks at Timberland, Pacific Shaving, and ING Direct:
Haven't read it yet but if it's like last year's, it will make very good reading.
As you may be aware MSN launched its new look Beta Search Engine last week. Should you wish to find out if your site is listed on the search engine or to submit your site, check out the Getting your site indexed on MSN Search page of MSN.com.
Michael Fagan has come up with a neat tool which helps you get a whole load of information out of your website's URL. His URLinfo tool lets you type in your domain name and offers you up to 85 tools with which you can analyse it. You can check the number of pages listed on a host of search engines, the number of links, your website's cache, a Whois look up, keyword analyzer, bobby compliancy, speed report and much more.
Original Source: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About URL (Chris Sherman)
Thumbshot is a great tool which visually shows you how any 2 search engines rank sites differently for different keywords. Thumbshots is an improvement on the initial tool which was brought out by Langreiter. If you type in your own URL, it will indicate using a red dot how your site ranks on these search engines, too.
Here's an example of how my other site, Mad About Madrid, ranks for the search words "madrid bars" - the top row corresponds to Google, whilst the bottom line is Yahoo!
I just came across a nice tool for identifying your rankings on Google, called Google Rankings. Simply type in your selected keywords, input the domain name and Google Rankings will let you know where you are listed on Google. Here are some search results for 'Madrid Bars':
The same people have also created Yahoo Search Rankings which works in much the same way.
Article Source: SEO Book
Following a link from Seth Godin's site, Stick with me kid, I came across this interesting article on the Rugles blog regarding how Google can help people come up with appropriate search terms. The author explains how they were given a list of suggested/related words when looking for the word 'shoes'. The resulting suggestions included 'dc shoes', 'running shoes' and 'rockport shoes'; by further clicking on 'running shoes', they were presented with 'nike running shoes', 'brooks running shoes', etc.
The author noted that when they tried it out a second time, the results couldn't be replicated. I have just taken a look at Yahoo! and they do offer a similar option:
This tool could be quite useful in helping companies come up with suggestions on new keywords, for meta tags, page titles and for their site content. I would assume that the related words are generated from queries already carried out on Yahoo!
Related Article
Overture's Suggestion Tool for search keywords
Queryster is a great tool for searching multiple search engines. Simply type in your search term and select your preferred search engine; your search results will then be displayed on that search engine. The cool thing about Quersyster is that a floating graph, with a search box and list of search engines, appears as a layer on that same page - you can move the graph wherever you like. If you want to carry out another query on another search engine, just click your choice and hit return. The intitial selection is for 10 search engines, though you can customise this from a list of around 25. This is a neat tool for both searcch engine optimization and surfing the web. Queryster can also offer you a blog viewer which allows you to search blogs according to category and view and rate them in the form of a slide show.
Source: Thanks to A Fun Multi-Search Tool by Chris Sherman.
Google Smackdown is a tool that permits, in the words of its creators, "two words or phrases will go head-to-head in a terabyte tug-of-war". This means that you can type in two words/phrases and, through the interrogation of the Google database, it will tell you which is the most popular. This tool can be used for fun but it could also have more practical uses for search engine marketing as it can allow you to identify both the most popular search words for your site and the "niche" words that may attract a different audience. To get you started, try these out :
"search engine marketing" against "search engine optimisation"
"saddam hussein" against "osama bin laden"
"scotland" against "ireland"
Like most people, I'm sure you have come across emails that purport to "give you a top 5 ranking", "number 1 on Google" or "beat the search engines". However, many of the companies who send these emails, which you probably never asked for, will use unethical ways to get you ranked on the main search engines. This article offers advice on what is the correct way to optimize your site.
If you're one of the people who has recently experienced problems with Google, like losing your position in the rankings, then you should take a close look at Danny Sullivan's recent article on Search Engine Watch. Even if you don't fall into this category, I would still suggest you take a look as it makes good reading.
If you're looking to carry out any search engine marketing, then you need the Google Toolbar bolted into your web browser. It keeps a search history, blocks pop-ups and allows you to view the page rank of any website. In a word: essential.
A great little tool for monitoring the effectiveness of competitor sites comes from Alexa. Alexa offers a toolbar, similar to Google's, which bolts into your web browser. It will give you a great deal of information on the performance of competitor web sites, from their ranking (on Alexa) to sites that link in to them. Shouldn't be used in isolation but as one of many tools for analysing your competitors.
Wow! This is a really great tool. It allows you to find specific keywords for your search word, related keywords and even keywords for different countries and languages. Here's the URL:
Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions
Related Article
Overture's Suggestion Tool for search keywords
Like Overture’s Suggestion Tool, Word Tracker allows you to view words and, as importantly, related words that people have been typing in to the search engines over the past month. This should help you come up with a broader list of search words for your product, service or company.
Stuck for keywords for your site? Want to know what people are typing into search engines? Then, give the Overture Suggestion Tool a go. It is a great way to find out what search terms people have been typing into Overture. It can really help you find new keywords for use in your meta description and keywords, as well as the site content. You can either take a look at the .com suggestion toolor the UK one. A small number of other countries also have suggestion tools.
Want to know how many of your pages are listed on the search engines? Market Leap offers visitors a great tool which tells you how many of your web pages are listed on: Alltheweb, AltaVista, Google/AOL and HotBot/Inktomi
