How to Carry out an Initial though Comprehensive Keyword Research

Follow the steps listed below to perform a keyword research, which is essential for a start of any SEO campaign.

Keywords

  1. Brainstorm. If you are a business owner yourself or if you know what products and services you offer, to make a primary list of keywords won’t take you long. It doesn’t matter how largely they are searched for – just put down everything that occurs to you (in terms of products and services you sell). Examine the structure and content of your website to enrich your list.
  2. To further expand the list of ideas, use Google Instant search, enter basic keywords and check what suggestions pop-up.
  3. Use Thesaurus to look for synonyms. Enter the keyword and then check “Synonyms:” entry.
  4. Use Übersuggest
  5. Google trends is another free valuable tool for not only tracking seasonality and search volumes projections, but for adding keywords from the “Related terms” section.
  6. If you have Google Analytics installed, examine top visits driving keywords. Use site search data as well, because if a user performs an internal search, that’s a pretty good signal, that the term is relevant and that the user is likely to convert.
  7. It’s high time you examine your anchor texts (if you haven’t done it yet after the Penguin update) because if someone is already linking to you using the anchor matching your keyword, your site is probably relevant for that term, and thus it will be easier to rank for it.
  8. Check your competitors’ websites. Pay special attention to the title, meta description and landing pages content. Although Meta keywords are no longer a ranking factor, they are still used on many websites and may let you see what keywords are targeted by your competitors.

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5 Common Google’s Panda and Penguin Myths Dispelled

There are quite a few myths plaguing the SEO community right now. But no topics have longer trails of myths and rumors following them than Google’s Panda and Penguin updates.

Are you sure you’re not a firm believer in one of these myths? Read this to find out. Let’s start with the most wide-spread one. Continue reading

11 Free and Easy-To-Implement SEO Tactics for Business Owners

No need to mention, the link building strategy should be diverse. However, easy to say, hard to do. To help business owners diversify their SEO and link building strategies, I’ve selected some tactics which do not require additional design or technical skills and will not be a burden for their budget. So, if you are a business owner and do not want to spend extra money and resources on SEO, try the following:

  • If you are a member of any online communities, leave links in your profiles to raise awareness and get some traffic.
  • If there are happy customers or partners who own a website, do not hesitate to ask them for a link or at least to leave a feedback with the brand mention.
  • Don’t miss out the branded e-mails you send out. Inserting a link in your signature will take a second, but can bring some traffic and value.
  • Reverse engineering. This method is more time-consuming and requires the use of some SEO tools and basic Excel skills.

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Top 5 SEO Pitfalls to still Avoid in 2013

After such updates as Panda and Penguin, business owners and SEOs had to suddenly become more sophisticated and delicate in their SEO activities, which previously led them to success and lots of traffic and links. However, the most common result after these updates was a penalization and, consequently, huge traffic and money damages.

Red Card

Below is the list of the most common issues for penalization, which you can (hopefully) avoid. Continue reading

Making Money with Affiliate Programs Part 3: Comparison of SEO Affiliate Programs

In my previous posts:

We already discussed the basics of affiliate marketing. In this post we are going to compare the affiliate programs on major SEO software providers. Why SEO software? (Ok, let’s put aside that this is a search engine marketing blog)

  • The SEO software market is growing all the time. Just think about thousands of new websites that appear in WWW daily. Their owners potentially need SEO software.
  • Most SEO tools are rather pricy and you are getting a substantial commission from each sale.
  • Top SEO software brands like Raven or Link-Assistant.Com are well known, they have great reputation and convert pretty well.

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