Market Samurai can replace an entire team of SEO researchers.

I am a total, die-hard fan of this tool I used called Market Samurai. It is software that helps me analyze keywords. This tool gives you so much information, it is like having a huge team of SEO experts at your fingertips. I use it to get statistics about whether a keyword is good (in that it is actually searched for on the internet). I can also find out how good it is – such as, how often is it searched for and how many pages are already using it. Another awesome bit of detective work that Market Samurai does is it will show you the top 10 websites that rank for a keyword or keyword phrase. In other words, you can take a look at your competition before you even try to optimize for a phrase. This kind of research used to take hours or even days (and the results were still often vague). Now you can find your keywords quickly and the data associated with them (numbers of people, numbers of websites) is more accurate.

Spying on the competition in this way can alter your decision to use a particular phrase. You may find that the competition is too hard to beat – at least in the short term. Finding that out can make the difference between not having any traffic for a new site using a highly-competitive keyword phrase or getting some traffic by using less competitive phrases.

Don’t pay for keywords – Get some FREE!

Don’t let the cuteness of the samurai logo dissuade you from taking this software or these guys who created it seriously. They are at the cutting edge of the industry! I’ve told many friends about this tool – and that is because I think it rocks! Also, you can use it for a while for free and get free keywords. I honestly believe in this tool and have bragged on the creators many times in the past. Now I’m excited to have become an affiliate of theirs. I wanted to let you know about that and disclose it so that if you think my opinion is tainted by the fact that I might make a few dollars when someone uses the links on this page to purchase Market Samurai, then I can understand that. But I really want to assure you that just because I rave about it, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can try it for yourself. And there is no risk to try it, but you’ll  have access to tons of help with how to use the software. The training videos alone teach you good keyword research strategies and are worth watching.

Anyway, I could talk all day about why I love using a keyword research tool – and why I think Market Samurai is the best. But you can check it out for yourself and use their free trial.

A bit about the creators of Market Samurai: The company, Noble Samurai and their team have been into internet marketing for a while now. They actually developed their keyword research tool because they found the other products on the market hard to use and they felt there were too many gaps in the data – or the data was ambiguous and, therefore, not very helpful. I’ve heard them speak about how they created this and how to use Market Samurai and they are dedicated and smart. They actually understand the intricacies and importance of SEO and the use of keywords, as well as the frustrations of trying to get more traffic for websites.

Technorati Tags: keyword research, Market Samurai, search engine optimization, SEO, software, techniques

Stomperwhat, you might ask? Well, they are the most elite group for getting an  internet marketing education and learning about search engine optimization (SEO).

To get all the information as an early bird, go sign up here: Stompernet Early Bird. I remember 07/07/07 when I was first introduced to this organization, and my life will not be the same – I joined and the stuff I learned is awesome! The things I learned helped me know ways to make money online (the best part is I can make money while I am asleep). You might like learning all about Internet Marketing and SEO. If so, go check it out.

Just a note, this is not a membership that will teach you one “killer” technique for Internet marketing cash – it is a full education about many ways to increase your search engine results, make a better landing page or home page to your site, you get actual coaching, too - and basically you’ll learn how to build authority in your niche. It is not for someone who is just playing around with the internet – it is for serious internet business people. So, if that sounds like you, I can highly recommend this.

999 Update – There will be bonuses and the price for Stompernet is actually AFFORDABLE (gasp)! Don’t forget to to go to page with all the information: Stompernet Reopening.

Technorati Tags: 09/09/09, 999, Internet Marketing, join, membership, open, SEO, Stompernet

So, I was introduced to using article marketing. The articles are unique articles and sometimes they are “spinned” which means they are rewritten using different words. Articles are spinned so that they can be shared to several websites for the other websites to use them as content. Spinning helps to avoid their being seen as “duplicate content” by the search engines.

So, I signed up for AMA, wrote some articles and those articles have keyword phrases that are links to some of my websites. Now I am slowly getting links to my websites and the ranking for those sites is getting better and better.

Details about Article Marketing Automation – You can put in as many articles as you want to with 3 links on each article. You also have to put some of your blogs in the system to recieve articles from other members. There are settings you use to indicate what niche you are in or what kind of article topics you want for your websites.

There is a built in article spinner that is so easy to use – AMA helps you rewrite your article so that all the sites that post your content will have a different version (no duplicates).

Well, I could write more, but if you are interested you can try out Article Marketing Automation for a month for free!  This is a great no-risk offer. So, if you are frustrated with not having enough backlinks or you really hate the article spinner you currently use – go try Article Marketing Automation.

If you have any trouble using the service, please contact me. I will show you how to do it!

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing Automation, article spinner, backlinks, content links, ranking, review, search engine, SEO, spinning, tools

 If any of you know about getting your websites or blogs ranked in search engines (meaning they show up in the first pages of search engines when people search for specific search words or phrases), then you know you need to have links to your site to rank well. So, there are 2 main ways to get these links to your website.

1. Manual links
2. Leveraged links

Manual Links

Manual linking is done by adding your websites as favorites in social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon and others. In the past many people did link exchanges to get links. Link exchanges are not popular now – partly due to the fact that they are 2-way links (I link to you and you link to me) which tend to cancel out each other as far as the search engines see them. That means they have little value. More valuable links are 1-way links. They come from a site to yours but you don’t link back to that same website. Other manual links are internal links you can create from one page of your website to another page.

Leveraged Links

One definition of leverage is “exert power or influence on.”  That is what leveraged links do – the increase the power or influence of your website. The best links to get are 1-way links from other websites to your site or your blog. But the better 1-way links would be from sites with high authority (those that have earned search engine trust by having many backlinks, domain age and higher Google page rank or PR) – these are leveraged links and they pass some of the authority to your website.

In a nutshell, having a link from a website with high google PR is equal to many links from non-authority websites. So, the strategy should be to find ways to get those high authority websites to link to your website. 

Link Building Strategies

The link building strategies I am using include social bookmarking, posting to other people’s blogs (with valuable comments – not spammy ones), and using content to generate links – such as with Article Marketing Automation (read the review), which I still highly recommend.

Link building with leveraged links is hot topic right now and I’m sure that I’ll be adding more about this strategy in the future.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, leveraged, link building, links, manual, search engines, SEO

Not only are these fantastic and free, these WordPress plugins are from all over the world. I have never seen a concise list of recommendations on these, so I thought I would make my own list. I am not saying I am an expert at this point – but I’ll try to share what I have learned so far. Many of these developers have a donate button on their site – if you feel that their plugin has been useful, you may want to make a donation.

You can set up a WordPress blog and never use a plugin. But to do some of the cooler things, and to use the widget ready templates and themes, these plugins extend the capabilities of your blog.

Note: Be aware of the version of WordPress you are using to be sure you download the plugin that is compatible. See: WordPress Plugins Compatibility.

I am going to list the plugins that I use in this post. Future posts will include information about setting up a new WordPress blog and how to upgrade to the latest WordPress version. Another post: http://www.wordpressthemestudio.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-database-backup-and-maintenance is a list of WordPress management plugins (for database backups and maintenance).

First – the plugins I like to use and that I recommend you start with (I’ll make this a list of my top 7 plugins and below that I will explain their use and where to download them):

• All-in-one SEO Pack
• Ultimate Google Analytics
• WordPress Duplicate Content Cure
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Cforms (cformsII)
• Add This (button or drop down)
• Tags to Technorati
  

All in One SEO Pack - Described as “Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.” This plugin helps you add title tags, descriptions and keywords to your blog posts. There are more features you can read about, plus a video tutorial (and you can download it) at: WordPress All In One SEO Pack

Ultimate Google Analytics – Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.  Ultimate Google Analytics Plugin

WordPress Duplicate Content Cure – Whether you believe duplicate content will hurt you (or if such a thing exists) this plugin claims to be a very simple, yet effective SEO plugin that prevents search engines from indexing wordpress pages that contain duplicate content, like archives and category pages. Duplicate Content Cure.

WP-Sticky 1.40 – Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog. Modified from Adhesive by Owen Winkler.  http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/ (You won’t need this with running WP 2.7 and above because those versions have this “sticky” feature built in.)

*Cforms (cformsII) – cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. WordPress Google Site Map Generator

WP tags to Technorati – Simple plugin to convert WordPress 2.3’s tags to Technorati (’http://technorati.com’) links.  Wordpres Tags to Technorati

Add This (button) – A button that helps readers add your blog to social bookmarking sites. http://www.addthis.com/

Plugins for ads, adsense, and ad management – I doubt you need to use all of these. I’m going to use them one at a time to test them. A note about these ad managment plugins: I need to explore them more and write more about each in a later post.

Adsense Manager – Control and arrange your AdSense & Referral blocks on your WordPress blog. With Widget and inline post support, configurable colours.  http://www.mutube.com/

WP admanager – This new Plug-in enables you to make use of much improved Banner management features at WordPress blog. https://www.ohloh.net/p/wp-admanager/packages

Adserve - AdServe is the advertising server for WordPress. You could setup your banner campaigns using different sized banners, set available impressions and count resulting clicks! Optionally AdServe links ads to blog users so that one could check the campaign results within the Dashboard!  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adserve/

This is the basic list of plugins I like, but I’ll probably be adding to this list as I start learning about and using more of them.

*Note: Cforms II has a new update (version 10.5) but it requires that your server is running PHP5.

Technorati Tags: best wordpress plugins, blog help, SEO, WordPress Plugins