SEO Tools

Recently I talked about Wordstream a new “kick-ass” keyword tool for PPC management. I just been told today that they recently launched a free version of the keyword tool: http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/

It seems better than wordtracker, and it is free.

And here’s a 1-minute video that shows how it works: http://www.youtube.com/v/gV-VB3P7frU

Try it out and comment back here if you like it.

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I recently got a demo from a product called WordStream, a search marketing tool that can be used for a range of keyword and PPC management processes, and I was really impressed by its capabilities. I just want to share a few thoughts here to invite people to check it out. Where the tool sounds really helpful is in keyword grouping and organization, which is a crucial elements of PPC account categorization. Larry Kim, founder of Wordstream, claims this is the most overlooked process in both paid and organic search.

Like most search marketers I know, I use Excel for organizing my keywords. WordStream is meant to replace Excel, but it’s not a spreadsheet. It’s a dynamic, Web-based database that lets you not just group related keywords but also set rules so the software can automatically sort new keywords into the right groups as you expand your research.

Here’s how it works. First you upload your keywords into a private database.  The product offers a few options on how to do this:

* Use the keyword suggestion tool
* Paste keywords into a text block or upload a file
* Use the “advanced” options which pull keywords from your log files and Web analytics.

Next you segment your keywords down from one big list into high-level groups and then smaller subgroups to get a branching tree structure (what Larry calls “a keyword taxonomy"). Yes, you can do this in Excel but the cool thing about WordStream is that it has tools that suggest groupings based on keyword frequency/traffic volume. In the screenshot below, you can see that you can create multiple groups at once. When you create a “bird food” group for example, the software instantly groups together all the keywords that contain both “bird” and “food” including plurals, misspellings, etc. I can see this being a huge timesaver.

WordStream also includes a JavaScript tracker (like the Google Analytics tracker code) that adds new keywords to your database as visitors find your site. (It also tracks conversions.) The idea is to continuously expand your keyword research while refining your organization by creating more specific groups and subgroups.

The point of creating these tightly related groups is two-fold:

* To turn keyword groups into ad groups for PPC:  Larry’s theory is that starting out with a highly organized keyword structure makes your ad groups more likely to get high Quality Scores, because you can better target more closely-related keywords with more relevant ads and landing pages.
* To create SEO-focused content pages: Using WordStream you can easily break down the lists of keywords you want to rank for into specific groupings, and target those terms by authoring one themed content page for each group.

And WordStream provides integrated tools for doing this work: just select a group and do something with it, like publishing an ad group or creating Web content.

There are a few other features of note including a negative keyword tool for scrubbing your keyword lists and workflow tools to help diagnose possible problem areas and suggest optimization approaches. I think the main selling point for search marketers will be the ease of creating keyword groups from very large keyword lists, as well as the continuous expansion capabilities.

Anyway, here are a few links to learn more about WordStream!

* Free Trial
* Request a Demo
* Online Video Tutorial

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Rachel from SEO Site Checkup sent me an email this morning to check her new SEO tool which provides all kinds of recommendations on how to improve the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your site. As such, I suggest you check it out when you have a minute. It does provide some great tips on how to make your site more search engine friendly.

Here is more on SEO Site Checkup:
SEO Site Checkup can analyze your site and give recommendations so that your site will load faster, rank higher for your search terms, and get more visitors.

Please visit SEO Site Checkup for additional information.
or email Rachel at:

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Compete.com is a new Web Analytics tool that I really like which allows you to measure your competitors traffic. Until recently though, I was not aware of its limitations for Canadian websites. I think you will be as disappointed as I am to learn that compete.com is not capable of evaluating site’s traffic for multi-level domains, such as .bc.ca or qc.ca, which we are all familiar with in Canada. I have also been informed from a Company rep that the tool only tracks traffic from U.S. internet browser population, which is also a major drawback.

Therefore, if you try to assess a Canadian site’s traffic with most of the traffic naturally coming Canada, the results might be distorted. Apparently, they are aware of the issue of reporting on multi-level domains and they are working towards a solution. I am hoping they will include Canadian users population in the next version as well. Don’t you worry, I will keep you in the loop as soon as I hear more about it.

Here is an international example between HelloBC.com and BonjourQuebec.com, 2 similar sites in scope and purpose

More on Compete.com
Compete.com allows you to compare your site’s traffic against your competitors. Get competitive metrics (ie. traffic) for every site on the web - powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry (but no Canadian). Compete.com considers themselves the best in the industry.

For more information on Compete.com, please contact Andy Kazeniac:

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It has been brought to my attention this week that 25% of all search queries conducted on Google per month are NEW. For years, it has always been easier for Google to refine their algorithm & determine rank for repetitive & common search queries. They now find themselves in front of the daunting task of refining the algorithm for brand new search queries, composed of obscure or longer strings of text that no one has searched for before. This is quite an interesting challenge for everyone in this industry, including you, a website owner.

This information is coming from Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering, in a speech that he gave recently on Search is a Hard Problem. He explained that with an audience like Supernova, he imagines we understand to some extent how difficult a problem it is, but it’s probably a harder problem then we even appreciate. He laid out three reasons why this is the case:

* Scale and diversity are almost beyond comprehension
* Expectations and needs will continue to grow
* 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before

What does this mean to you?
Since searchers are clearly becoming more sophisticated at refining their queries, the opportunity contained within the tail of search queries is greater than ever. We all know that blog is a great way to tap into this opportunity. If you do not consider starting a blog in 2008, please do so. It also means that your SEO plan as well as your PPC management might get a little more sophisticated this year than it used to. Break your site in smaller units of content. Break your Google adgroups the same way in order to dig deeper within the tail of search queries. You may want to try an SEO tool that is called HitTail.com that will allow you to find keywords your potential customers are searching for that you have not thought of before. That might guide some future SEO planning and you may win big in the process. First come, first serve.

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Most Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics provides anonymous web traffic information. You know where your visitors are coming from, what kind of keywords they use, how much time they spent on your site, which search engines they used and so on. This information is useful and you can keep track of your traffic progression over time. That’s great. But, what if you would know which companies are visiting your site? Your site traffic would then become a fantastic lead generator and you would be able to phone the people who just visited your website, in real time. I (We) just found that company (thanks to James Sherrett for the find). They are DomoDomain.com.

Here is the DomoDomain tool description:
Domodomain turns your Ad Campaigns and your website into a lead generation machine by automatically capturing detailed information about business visitors, in real time and without visitor registration. Domodomain transforms otherwise “invisible” website clicks into actionable sales and marketing intelligence with no software to install. Domodomain transforms the concept of Web Analytics, from a statistical analysis tool into a window onto visitor browsing experience, generating intuitive and useful information for sales and marketing teams.

I signed up for a 30-day free trial this morning and I must say that I am really impressed about the quality of the information I received so far. If you are already engaged in any form of web promotion, I highly recommend that you try this tool. Yesterday, I knew there were between 50-100 people who visited my site. Now I know who these people are. A picture is worth a thousands words

Here are my leads for today:

DomoDomain also provides a dashboard with similar information that you would find in a typical Web Analytics software. The implementation of the tool is a very easy and short process. Give it a try. If you want more information on how you can turn your site into a lead generator machine, feel free to communicate with Joshua M. Gold, Esq. at joshua{at}domodomain.com. He is a really nice guy who speaks French and English.

Here are all his contact details:

Joshua M. Gold
Co-Founder/Director Corporate Development
DomoDomain, Inc.
51 Jefferson Blvd, 5th Fl.
Warwick, RI 02888 USA
Tel: +1-888-590-9773
Mobile: +1-401-864-4471
Fax: +1-401-633-7200
email:
url: http://www.domodomain.com

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Clients always want to know how much it would cost them to implement a Search Marketing plan involving Pay per Click (PPC) Investment Whereas it is a simple question, it is not as easy to answer it. I usually give them ballpark figures and I hope it makes sense for them. When you think about it, it is the equivalent of asking a web designer or a web developer on how much it would cost to build a website? It varies a lot. In terms of Search Marketing though, we are fortunate enough to have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools that can help us define the search volume for your targeted search terms. The relationship between search volume and your targeted geographic area will help us come up with Cost (investment) estimates. Google Trends is one of them.

Simply put, Google Trends gives us a snapshot of the search volume for a given search term (or terms), over time. It provides seasonality search volume information which help us understand how we should spread your Pay Per Click (PPC) budget over a 12 month period and therefore get the most out of your investment.

For example, as we all know, Whistler is both a winter and a summer destination. More people would go to Whistler in the winter of course, but the question remains: if you would get the traffic during the winter months anyway, when the search volume is at its peak, wouldn’t you get a better return on your PPC advertising investment during the summer months, when the online competition (and average cost per click) is at its lowest? Wouldn’t make more sense? This decision is in relation to your yearly PPC budget. You would be surprised how important it is to run a summer and a winter PPC campaigns year-round in order to capitalize on this seasonality factor. See the graph below, showing the search volume for the search term “whistler”:

As you can see, the search volume drops in summer months but not as much as you might think. Use it for your own search terms and define peaks and valleys to help you spread your PPC budget over time and get the most out of your PPC investment.

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I seriously did not think I would see this kind of information available for free anytime soon. And yet, it is here. Get competitive metrics (ie. traffic) for every site on the web - powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry. Compete.com considers themselves the best in the industry and I believe it. This is competitive intelligence 2.0. I played with the tool for an hour yesterday and I can tell you that the numbers are pretty accurate, actually far more accurate than anything I have seen from a free tool such as Alexa Ranking. Sure, you can buy Hitwise which provides the full meal deal on competitors data for $30,000 a year but the bottom line is, how do you measure up on the sheer volume of traffic against your competitors. It is an awesome tool and you should use it. Here is a screenshot based on major tourism sites (BC vs Quebec):

During summer months, we usually see an increase in traffic, which we don’t in this case with BonjourQuebec.com compare to HelloBC.com. It is even better (for BC) when we compare it with Ontario Tourism. Try Compete.com today and beat your competitors.

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People love tools. It saves you time. Some think it does the job for you. One thing for sure, the best tool of all is your brain. Here is a lowdown of the most important SEO Tools you may want to consider when developing and monitoring a Search Engine Marketing plan. This was taken from a meeting last week regrouping Top SEOs Experts. I find this list very comprehensive.

Last week, the Dallas / Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association held its quarterly standing-room-only meet-up. Rob Garner from iCrossing.com presented “51 Essential Tools for Search Engine Marketing,” in which Christine Churchill (Key Relevance), Jeff Martin (CardsDirect.com), Tony Wright (Wright IMC) and himself ran through a list of tools that DFWSEM board member agencies and in-house marketers use to assist their own paid and natural search marketing campaigns. Each slide covered the utility, cost and location of the tool. Here they are:

Jim Gilbert of Key Relevance pointed out the best tool of the night: your brain. This tool should also come in handy as you decide on which of the following (excerpted from the master list) best fits your needs and strategy.

Advanced Link Manager - Performs deep crawl analysis of links for any site by crawling all linking sites and providing analysis of links by domain and gains/losses over time as well as PageRank. Also, fully manages extensive reciprocal linking through one tool.

Advanced Web Ranking - Keeps track of all your rankings and competitor sites at the page level, and maintains historical results for performance analysis. Also, generates numerous reports at the keyword or URL level, and compares the results over time and against competing sites.

Agent Web Ranking - Rankings checker; simulates a browser approach.

Archive.org - Historical Web page archive.

ClickTracks - Search analytics and PPC management.

Combine Words - Free keyword list expansion tool.

Deep Link Ratio checker - Analyzes how the deep link ratio of a site affects its rank in search engines. DLR is the proportion of inbound links into all pages of your Web site, compared to inbound links pointed at the homepage.

Domain Age Checker Tool - It is widely accepted by most SEOs that domain age factors into the trustworthiness of a site. The longer the domain has had a positive history with the engines, the better.

Domain Stats - Quick hit site stats.

Elixir Link Quality Tool - Another nice tool that gives a quick overview of search elements for a given domain.

Firefox add-ons - Too many to list here, they include SEO For Firefox Live HTTP headers and Searchstatus.

Google Analytics - Free in-depth Web Analytics tool

Google Adwords Editor - Allow you to download your AdWords account to your computer, make your changes, and then upload your revised campaigns. Work off line, copy and paste, do bulk changes, then upload all at once.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool - Provides new keyword ideas.

Google Cheat Sheet - Two-page quick reference guide to Google search products and useful operators.

Google Suggests - As you type into the search box, Google guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time.

Google Toolbar - Checks PageRank, provides shortcuts to various Google properties—though some SEMs choose not to use it, citing the amount of personal data it captures.

Google Traffic Estimator - Tool provides quick traffic estimates of keywords

Google Trends - Shows trends in search popularity.

Google Webmaster Central - One-stop shop for Webmaster resources.

Google Website Optimizer - Google’s free multivariate and A/B testing tool, helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of site content (text and images).

Hitwise - Provides competitive insights on keywords.

ISAPI Rewrite - Rewrites URLs at the server level for IIS (similar to mod rewrite for Apache).

KW Density/Frequency Analyzer - Most keyword “density” tools don’t really show density or weighted terms - they show frequency.  Still, they can be handy for educating copywriters, or analyzing longer documents.

Marketleap Search Engine Saturation Tool - Comprehensive backlink and page saturation tool.  One of the first free tools of its kind that was publicly available to anyone who wanted to use it.

MSN adCenter Tools - Toolbox of advertising and keyword research tools including clickstream analysis and more.

Non-Personalized Google Search Plugin - If you are logged in to any Google service - Adwords, Gmail, etc., then Google takes the liberty of showing you personalized results, which are different from the “objective” results that the rest of the world sees.  This tool allows you to remain logged in to Google Services while viewing nonpersonalized search results.

Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool - Provides popularity numbers from Yahoo.  Good for keyword brainstorming.  It’s a little bit like search engine Groundhog Day, because all of the results are stuck in January 2007.

Quintura - Visual search navigation tool that extracts keywords from Yahoo! search results, and builds a word cloud.  Good for keyword brainstorming.

Search Engine Relationship Chart - Visual diagram of search engine distribution relationships.

SEODigger.com - Competitive ranking report tool, shows ranking history in Google.

Server Header Checker - Allows you to check the HTTP status returned by a server.  Useful for checking redirect status (301, 302, etc.).  One example of many other tools that perform a similar function.

Site Explorer - Yahoo!’s back link and indexed page count tool.

TouchGraph.com - Free link node mapping and visualization tool, good for educating clients on how link networks work.

Trellian/KeywordDiscovery.com - Provides keyword ideas and aids in brainstorming.  The group agreed that most SEMs have chosen this tool as a standard for directional keyword search frequency.

VeriClix - A free pay-per-click auditing and click fraud monitoring tool. (Disclosure:  DFWSEM board member Jeff Martin operates VeriClix).

WatchFire WebXact - Site diagnostics tool.  Assesses broken links, checks meta tags, code validation, etc.

We Build Pages’ Toolset - Free SEO Toolset, including back link and anchor text checker, class C back link analyzer, keyword density (frequency) analysis tool, spider viewer and many more.

Web Position Gold - Checks natural search engines rankings.

WordTracker - Provides new keyword ideas; helpful for brainstorming and discovering new keyword ideas.

Certainly there are many more truly great search tools out there, but hopefully you found a few new ones in this list. For a PDF copy of the full presentation and all 51+ tools, click here. 

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