Posts

“KEYWORD research” If you want your site, blog, or other social media posts found online, you need an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. The first step in any SEO campaign begins with the keyword research.
In SEO and SEM world, profitable keywords are marketer’s best ally. When chosen wisely, these keywords you select can determine the success or failure of your online SEO campaign. To succeed, you need to gather a variety of different keywords, from generic to long-tail keywords, from branded and competitive to non-branded terms.
There are several excellent keyword research tools to help you build an extensive list of profitable keyword and the best part is that they are absolutely FREE! Sweet!
Note: Once you have created your list of keywords, just don’t start to write copies around those terms because what you think are profitable keywords may not be the same terms people are using to search.
Check your list of keywords with these online keyword tools to reach your target audience more effectively.

 

Here are our top 5 FREE keywords search tools:

1. Google Keyword Tool (now known as Keyword Planner) –

Although the Google Adwords tool was specifically meant as an invaluable tool for pay-per-click ads, you can still use it to research keywords to help your site rank better organically.
Just type a keyword or an URL of your site or your competitor’s, and Google will instantly display 100 relevant keyword phrases to choose from. You can export these keywords as an Excel (.CSV) format.
Alternately, if the results contains irrelevant keyword phrases, you can choose select the “more like this” option to find highly relevant keywords.

 

2. WordTracker’s Keyword Suggestion Tool –

Not like Google Keyword Planner tool, this keyword suggestion tool will give you only 10 keywords for FREE. Although WordTracker’s keyword tool is an excellent resource to find long tail keywords, nonetheless, you still have to pay to use their service.
At first, you can register for their 7 day trial and get 100 results for each search. After 7 days, the keyword research service will cost you $69 a month and will give you up to 2,000 keyword ideas for each search. Awesome, isn’t it?

 

3. KeywordDiscovery.com –

Like WordTracker tool, you will have to sign up at Keyword Discovery for a FREE trial account. The FREE version lets you perform at least 50 searches every day, but each time, you will only get only 10 results. The result will include trend, however, you cannot check domains.
Once you click the “analyze” button, the Keyword Discovery tool will display the percentage of searches that actually generated a click on search results. In order to get a full access to their keyword database, you will have to subscribe their basic plan for only $69.95 a month.
With this membership, you can perform at least 1,500 searches every day, and get up to 1,000 results, including 3 domain search results.

 

4. Microsoft Ad Intelligence Tool (Excel Add-on) –

You need a Bing Ads advertising account to use this tool. This is a PPC keyword research tool and an excellent add-on for Bing users.
Once you’ve installed Microsoft Ad Intelligence Tool, you can access the tool as a new tab in your Excel workbook. You can perform keyword research just by entering the website URL or a list of keywords.
The tool gives an estimate on traffic based on your keywords to help you determine the cost of advertise on Bing/Yahoo. In addition, the keyword research tool also provides you with interesting geographical as well as demographic information too.

 

5. SEOBook.com –

Unlike KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker, you can use SEOBook.com for FREE and indefinitely. The keyword result comes from WordTracker database as well as from Google, Bing, Yahoo, Google Trends, Keyword Discovery and WordStream.
Just like with other keyword tools above, you will receive more functionality when you register for their paid membership and is the most expensive – costs you $300/month.
In addition to the keyword research tool, you can gain access to over 100 training modules that cover keyword research, site optimization, pay per click marketing, member only training videos, and so on. However, there’s no contract you have to bind to, and you can always cancel it anytime.
Over to you! Which is your favorite keyword tool? Let us know by commenting below!

 

SEO is an important feature for any business to consider when creating their digital identity but it plays an even more crucial role for smaller businesses that are just starting out. SEO can play a major role in how local companies can get an advantage over their rivals on the web and guarantee success in their target market. But how can a small company use SEO to their advantage?

 

1)     Use your location as an advantage

The most reliable source business will come from the area from where you are based. It’s why using your location as a tool when implementing SEO techniques can provide a major help. It can be used as a way to create certain keywords (e.g. Melbourne writing firm) or submitted to localized listings on either Google or Yahoo. This will mean that online browsers in the area will come across your business first with special preference going to those who may live nearby as well as in other parts of the country. In addition to that, location tools such as Google Maps list give preferences to companies who can prove that they operate in a particular area. By placing just simple things such as an address in the contact us section of a page, Google can pick this up and list it on all of Google’s location tools and help solidify your business’ presence in your hometown.

 

2)     Create a website that is user friendly

One of the biggest draws to any popular website is that it’s easy to use. Rather than using fancy SEO tools to help make a site memorable, it’s the basics that keep traffic levels high on a website.  This means that the each page needs to be crisp and clean with all the content and links easy to find within a second or two. This way, browsers can see what the page is about and what products you may sell. Having the page well linked too will also benefit users who may want to make queries and purchases boosting the overall appeal of the company. Of course, it’s also a good idea to utilise more modern SEO content ideas such as videos and infographics which can impress new browsers but these ideas need to keep within the style and topics associated with the company so it doesn’t alienate the regular browsers of the site. If you do not have a website, read more about our website development for clients.

 

3)     Select several keywords

There is always an emphasis on keywords in SEO and this couldn’t be more important for a small business. These keywords will identify the main sector that the business deals in so two or three that will cover all aspect of the business. Before any terms are chosen to represent a company online, they need to be well researched to decide which the best phrase to use is. There are thousands o similar terms that could relate to one subject and naturally, some will be a lot more competitive than others and also put a website into potentially different categories  Having 2 or 3 terms will also give your firm greater chances of ranking high on search engines and maximising all opportunities of generating business online.  One of these terms should be a long tail keyword which will allow your business to use 1 or 2 details about your firm to be ranked on Google e.g computer manufacturers in Cambridge. This will increase the chances of landing a page 1 ranking on a search engine by eliminating substantial competition and still keep high levels of traffic reaching your site.

 

4)     Use Social Media

There isn’t a better way to expose a company to a wide audience than through social media. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are great places to promote a company through just one or two terms especially by tagging them in posts and tweets. By tweaking your profile page on these sites towards these key features, you can use SEO to boost your customer base significantly and take the next step into establishing the firm within the local area. Alongside that, social media sites often let plug-ins be linked directly into a site that has regularly published content online such as blogs and videos which is not only a quick way to directly create a link to social networks but also allows for browsers to promote content to their friends and increasing the amount of traffic to that site. If your business still needs to generate some more traffic to a site, then some social media sites such as Pinterest and LinkedIn are good ways to create incoming links to your site with other related sites and blogs in your area.

 

5)     Get your own blog up and running

One of the biggest but simplest ways for a small business to boost their online presence is by setting up their own blog. This means you only need to have basic articles on a chosen topic published every week to help keep visitors coming back to the site on a regular basis. By having regular content published on the site, it can maintain high traffic levels and help solidify a good ranking on an SERP. As blogs get more and more content on the site, it will also ensure a better reputation for your business in a particular subject or niche. This will help the site become a hub for anyone interested in that subject and help boost the number of links coming into your site.

 

6)     Plan with the SEO firm

Creating a relationship with an SEO is a great way for small businesses to really get to grips with their own content. Communicating with a reputable SEO designer will allow for you to recognise how they can adapt your website thank to using different practices and techniques. By doing this, it will be easy to know what is being done at each separate stage and then give you the chance to see the business grow online and become a  major online presence within the local community. But it’s important to be clear about what you want to get from the SEO firm and that they are able to match every single one of you needs. This will not only avoid any delays in getting the site ranked on a search engine but also help your business grow at a pace that suits you and your company.

 

7)       Look at Google

Google is the biggest search engine on the Internet and it is a dream platform for small business to carry out all of their SEO needs. One of the best platforms to use is Google+ which can let you sign a business up and directly link content from your site to Google’s own social network allowing for more viewers to see your site. On top of that, software such as Google Authorship can place all of your business’ content directly onto Google Plus boosting the online credibility and reputation of the company. With all your content now visible on Google, a smart SEO tactic is to get friends and trusted customers to give positive reviews for your business on Google. This way, your site is going to be given a higher value by the search engine and ranked within the first couple of pages on Google.

 

Summary

There are always going to be many different ways for companies to grow online and increase their digital presence. SEO can be adopted in many ways and not just focused on search engine rankings.  Both social media sites and the mobile markets are developing sectors where there is a huge audience for businesses to be exposed to.  By taking advantage of hashtags and more optimized webpages, it can be the perfect place for smaller businesses to get a leg up over bigger rivals and make their name known on all digital platforms.
By using SEO techniques wisely, small businesses will be able to establish their own presence online and gain exposure that will boost their online traffic and help generate business both through the web and physical sales.

 

A proper and wise selection of SEO toolkit is necessary for diagnosing any technical issues and proper optimization of your website. Selecting a proper toolkit can sometimes is very confusing tasking due to the presence of various SEO toolkits in the market.
Here we will provide you with a list of SEO toolkit that you can use to optimize your website and for developing and optimizing your newbie website. The toolkit on the list consists of both free and paid toolkits, you can choose what u think will suit your needs best.

 

Tracking your Backlinks or Backlinks from Other Sites:

  • Screaming Frog (paid and free)
    – You can easily download and install this toolkit on your computer. This toolkit is available in both free and paid version. This toolkit makes issues that need attention easily visible so you can fix them in time. A great feature about this toolkit is that it will allow you to export URL’s, page titles and other things to an excel spreadsheet so that you get a clearer and better view about your site.
  • Majestic SEO (paid and free)
    – This toolkit will provide you with set of link tools that will allow you to track and analyze any domain.
    The features of this toolkit:
    Site explorer – This feature will allow you to go deep down and explore any URL
    Keyword checker – This feature allows you to search for a keyword or phrases and track of how many times it appears on search engines, apart from providing you with information on search volumes based on primary organic data.
    Backlink history – This feature will allow any SEO professional to find information and the number of backlink present in a domain, sub domain and URL.
    Although Majestic SEO’s toolset have some free features, it will be much better if you opted for the paid version of this toolkit, as you will get more additional features.
  • Google Webmasters Tools
    – One of another free tools from Google, this is a highly recommended tool as this will show you how your site looks on Google and will make you aware if your site is infected with malware and of different issues on the site like 404.
  • IIS SEO Toolkit
    – This is a highly recommended SEO toolkit and it is free. This tool will help you analyze every SEO aspects of your site like the URL’s, contents and structure. IIS SEO toolkit will clearly show you the issues on your site that may affect your SEO standings like a broken link on a page or if a title of a page is too long. The main feature of this toolkit is that it will mark errors or the aspects of the site that need attention with a red X so that it will be easily noticed and corrected. Another reason to get this toolkit is that it is a Microsoft tool and can analyze up to 1 million pages at one time.

Finding Targeted Keywords:

  • Google free Adwords tool (free)
    – A great free tool from Google, it allows a user to find keyword ideas which will be best for their site and also phrases that can help direct traffic to your site. It can help you determine which keywords will be helpful for traffic increment.
  • KGen (free)
    This tool is a Firefox extension. The tool allows you to see the data of various strong keywords used in different sites. The Firefox extension plugin retrieves data from sites about the words which are used heavily on the content of various sites and allows you to make a correct selection relying on the data.
  • Keyword discovery (paid)
    if you are willing to pay some amount for your keyword search process then this site is one of the most popular keyword finding tools available. This tool will supply you with more than 1800 keyword and phrases to use for your site. Another feature of this tool is that it lets you search for specific keywords results and phrases for different countries.
  • SEMrush
    – This tool helps you with the keywords that drives traffics to your site and provides you with information on your competitor’s rankings, keyword searches and traffic data.

Web Analytics:

  • Google Analytic (free)
    – A free SEO tool from Google, this allows you to track on your website on a day-to-day or month-to-month basis so you can understand how your site is faring on the web. It will give you detailed information on where your visitors are coming from to visit your site. It is a great tool to keep a track on your website and to compare the results of the tracking to see where and how much your site has progressed.
  • Traffic Travis (free)
    A desktop application which offers a suite of free SEO tools. The analytic tool of this application will allow you to identify important information about your sites rankings, number of backlinks and various optimizations for important pages.

Live Tracking Tool:

  • Live tracking tool
    – is how you as a user grasp the knowledge and information you see on other sites like the content, page setups and keywords, and links. You can use your user experience to gather information from other sites to make your site better and SEO friendly.

 

Be sure to choose the right tools for your SEO and always be updated about any new tools coming out in the market. Some tools tend lose their effectiveness with time and in the technological world because nothing stays same for a long time. Keep yourself well informed and always be on the lookout for new tools that surface up on the market that might be the right one for you. If you have knowledge about some great SEO tools or are using one then do let us know about them so we can add them on this list to make it even more informative.

 

Google keeps updating their algorithm every now and then to ensure that webmasters are using the right SEO techniques to gain the rankings. If you got hit by Google Panda and Penguin, then you need to find what the “illness” is. When you know what Panda and Penguin targets when you violate their terms, you are in a better position to recover from penalties with great precision, effectively, and efficient.
Panda targets website and pages that have low-quality content, or “thin content.” But most importantly, they attack sites/users that publish the same low quality content on content farms “stuffed” with keywords and links but offer nothing in value for the reader.
On the other hand Google Penguin attacks sites that violate Google’s quality guidelines. Penguin would get a site in trouble that uses black hat SEO techniques, like keyword stuffing, or webspam, and cloaking. Other less suspicious tactics like inserting irrelevant links (link farming) going outside the page of the content would also force Penguin to block a site.

 

Hit by Google Panda?

 

If you were hit by the Google Panda, here are a couple of things you can do to recover from the slap.

 

Substitute thin content

Revisit your site and check for duplicated content on pages, particularly those pages that contain your main keywords and make it content rich. Read the whole content again as if you were a visitor to your site. The content must be easy to read, useful, fresh, and informative.
Warning: Don’t be tempted to use “spun” articles on your website. Instead, use only “original” and “fresh” content. You may save few bucks now but later run the risk of getting penalized, wasting more time, effort, and money.
Once you have identified thin content on your website, you can use Google’s Analytical tool to get more specific information of pages that usually get very few visitors each day. But the number may vary depending upon your website. For example, if your main pages usually have 100 visits a day, then you might want to consider the number below 20 a risk factor.
Likewise, use the ‘Disavow’ tool from the Google Webmaster tool to find unnatural links in a page and duplicate content and remove them. If you can’t do this yourself, hire a professional SEO expert.
Once you have identified these pages, immediately replace the existing content with a high quality – unique, fresh, and informative – content because many poorly written pages often get fewer visits.

 

Use Ads Sparingly

If your site does not contain any ads, then you are not likely to get hit by Panda. On the other hand, if your site has numerous ads, then you need to consider using them in an intelligent manner. Remember that the only reason a visitor wants to be on your website is to get useful information that solves their problems and not to get overwhelmed by looking ads promotions.

 

Add Quality Content and Avoid Shortcuts

As mentioned earlier, the only reason people come to your website is because of the content there and that’s what Google wants to happen. Nevertheless, you will find low quality sites ranking high with low quality information which leaves Google users disappointed. Since Google don’t want to tarnish their name, they introduced Panda. Shortcuts will only lead you to slap by Google. But if you are not sure if your content is high quality, or the links are broken, or basically contain blank pages, or if you don’t know how to do perform these tasks, then you may want to consult a trusted SEO expert to check your website and do a clean up. In this regard, the expert would be able to identify empty pages and broken links efficiently & effectively.

 

Hit By Penguin?

 

 Well, if you are hit by penguin, then there a couple of things that you will need to do in order to see yourself back at the top in rankings. Penguin has resurfaced again. Click here to read more about it.

 

Check and Clean Up your Backlinks

The first thing you need to do is remove any links that come from low quality sites. If you were buying links, then do away with them as sooner or later your site has a high chance of getting caught by Penguin.
 If you should buy links to get high rankings for your website and pages then make sure you know what you are buying. Ask your SEO expert to send you the list of websites your site will be linked to. These sites must be relevant to yours in terms of topic, and most importantly, have a high page ranking.

 

Don’t Over-Optimize!

Make sure that your website isn’t over-optimized with anchor text as links. While building links, try to use variety of keywords as anchor text for both internal and external links. Ensure the anchor text in the links fit naturally with the sentence and the context. If you don’t know how to do this, you may want to ask SEO personnel to your web pages. Web pages, after all, are meant for human readers.

 

Clean up both Internal and External Links

Make sure that all your links are working and there aren’t any broken links, and it doesn’t return a 404 error message after clicking. Although Google doesn’t penalize on this, nonetheless, it contributes to poor user experience and sooner or later will impact your website’s search engine performance.

 

Go Social

One way to increase your chances of evading penguin slap is by using the social networks especially Google +. Google always favors their own site and it’s good to work with them for your benefit. Google views links from social websites as natural and therefore will assume that people are happy with your website content. If your content is shared in social networks, then you are not at risk of being hit by Penguin. When you go social, you at least look more legitimate in the eyes of Google and not a fake enterprise or individual.

 

Summary of How to Recover from Panda & Penguin

In order to recover your website and pages from Panda and Penguin, you need to ensure providing good user experience, which includes publishing high quality content that are fresh, unique, and informative.
Likewise, avoid taking any shortcuts by publishing “duplicate” and “spammy” content that doesn’t add value to its readers and are only used for promotion. Never use black hat SEO technique to build links and influence the search engine rankings of your website. If Google suspects these activities, they’ll completely ban your site.
Instead, add quality content that adds value to its readers. Make the links inside each page natural and link them outside other sites that are relevant to your topics.

 

 

Google has done it again! It introduced Penguin 2.0, which only means that some SEO experts need to change their strategies. After announcing its release, head of Google’s search spam Matt Cutts assured hardworking internet marketers that the new release would be able to deal with spam in a better way because it uses an improved technology. Now, you may be one of the people who have been hit by the penguin 2.0 and don’t know where to begin. Well, here are some of the top things that you need to do in order for you to recover from as penguin 2.0 related slap by Google.
Google now employ human moderators rather than just search bots to scan and review websites that contains “thin content,” and uses black hat SEO techniques – link farming and cloaking – to unethically influence search engine rankings.
So, now “user experience” is the key!

 

Follow these simple steps to recover from Penguin 2.0:

 

Clean up your link profile

Regardless of the number of updates that Google introduces, you need to make sure that your link profile is clean. Since you may have been using different SEO skills for the last couple of years before the penguin updates, it’s likely that you may have a couple of ‘unnatural’ links in your website which is what Google is fighting. If you were using paid links and the like, it’s good to trash them before Google catches up with you. You can do this by using a couple of tools such as Google webmaster tools, open site explorer, and linkbuilder among others. These tools help you in analyzing all backlinks in your entire website. Use disavow tool, provided by Google to help webmasters, to identify and remove spammy links that infest your website and pages.

 

Manual Penalty and Submitting a reconsideration request from Google

 

If your website has received a manual penalty notice from Google, then you need to fix your site so that it complies with Google’s quality guidelines.
Look for unnatural links or artificial links those points to your site, via Google webmaster tool, that may be influencing the search engine rankings, make changes to your site.
Once you have made the changes, submit your site for reconsideration request from Google. If you find any unnatural links on your site that you cannot remove or control, submit those details in your reconsideration request, too.

 

What should you look out for?

Some of the main links that you should look out for are paid links. Links originating from irrelevant blogs or websites, links from directories, links from sites that have been de- indexed and sponsored posts among others that you may feel can’t be found by real human beings.
Some directories are good, though. For example, directories that are well established and have high PR and are relevant to your topic are best source to get backlinks to your site. Just be wary of link farms that seem like article directories. Link farm consist of links with “do-follow” tags. Most business or blog owners desperate for high search engine rankings turn to buy links from these link farms. However, getting a “do-follow” link back from irrelevant source just to influence search engine ranking is considered to unethical and Google penalize your site for this.
Make sure that all these links are removed and have a disavow document. After cleaning up the mess, you will need to come up with better link building strategies that should be in a position to adhere to future Google updates. There are many link building strategies available and all you have to do is look out for the most suitable. First of all, try to get as much relevant information as you can from reliable resources. There are webmasters who know good linkbuilding strategies and have published books on the topic. Make sure to read these kinds of books before settling for one link building method.

 

Use Social Media

Another thing that you will need to do in order for you to recover from penguin 2.0 is to become active on social media. It’s believed that in the near future links originating from social media will be more valuable than normal links. It’s probably something Goggle are working on considering their very own Google +. Depending on your business, you can use one or more of the major social networks. Make sure you engage your audience in these social media platforms. Finally, ensure that you provide high quality content on your website. Although keyword optimization is important for targeting audience, it is still important to write unique content meant for human and not just only for search engine bots. Put your effort in providing genuine content that adds value to people. With the above mentioned tips, you will be able to get back on your feet and even escape future slaps from Google.

 

Summary of how do you recover from Penguin 2.0

If your site has been the victim of the recent Penguin update, these are several steps that you can take to recover from it:
  1. Clean up your link profile removing ‘unnatural’ links using tools like Disavow tool
  2. If your site has received manual penalty from Google, clean up your site and submit a reconsideration request from Google
  3. Use social media to recover from Penguin attack as they are often considered more valuable than, let’s say, normal links
  4. While keyword optimization is important, make sure to write high quality content that adds value to readers.
  5. Last but most importantly, stay genuine!