Rockin’ SEO Blog - SEO Tools

SEO as a Search Engine Scamming device, according to Fox News

This week, Fox News which is one of the most well-known news and television broadcasters around, reported that SEO is being used as a tool to scam search engines which resulted to many SEO practitioners vehemently defending themselves against being called scammers. The controversial news article appeared online last August 17 in an article titled “Top Online Marketing Jobs To Leave You Friendless”. A lot of rebuttals to the text were made and the most dominant of all was the fact that the term which was being described in the article is not SEO but typo-domaining.

Viral SEO storms created by one woman

Who could have ever thought that one woman who has a one page website has the ability to create SEO storms on a daily basis? Sounds impossible right? But if you look at the background and context of this story, you will soon get rid of all your second guessing. Brenda Piddy is a spy photographer who stands at the side of Death Valley every single day in hopes of getting shots of new vehicles before anybody else gets them much to the dismay of the auto manufacturers.

SEO + SMO = Perfect marriage

It’s quite obvious that if you’re reading this weekly update that you’re already familiar with SEO or Search Engine Optimization. On the other hand, SMO stands for Social Media Optimization which is a new tool being used to make your site adaptable to be viewed on Social Media sites. The combination of both tools will definitely bring your website to a whole new level because you will be taking advantage of two platforms which are search engines and social media.

The importance of website validation

One of the most overlooked angles to SEO is website validation which is basically an evaluation of your website to make sure that it doesn’t have any errors. Some SEO practitioners are too caught up with the thought of making their website fare better in the rankings that they don’t care whether or not their website is filled with errors. This article argues that website validation is very important. The bulk of website evaluation comes from the website design itself which is a very important component of SEO.

Seven reasons why Twitter would work for any business

The majority of people usually think that Twitter’s only purpose is for socialization purposes only and for keeping up with your network of friends. But Twitter can also be used to help out your business. In this article, seven reasons are given out as to how Twitter can work for your business. These seven reasons include: building and expanding your network so that you will have the ability to build more relationships, top of mind awareness with customers and prospects, to learn more about anything and everything, listening to what people are saying about you, learning more about the competition, transforming your customers into raving fans and developing your customer service to be lightning fast.

Updating your social media profile

Most of us just create our social media profiles at the beginning where we become members of the site and most of us usually forget about it and leave it as it is. But let me tell you that updating your social media profile is very important especially if you want to attract more people to your profile. There are many ways wherein you can add fresh content to your website and one of them is to use Hellotxt to do it for you. Hellotxt is a free tool that you can use to help you in updating your profile in social media sites.

How to build a vibrant online community?

WordCampDallas 2009 was formed to be a venue for SEO and SEM practitioners and hopefully would serve as an aid to make things easier and take advantage of different tools that will make SEO and SEM more effective. The 7 rules for creating a vibrant online community is given out by Cali Lewis and her audio visual presentation can be viewed from the link provided above.

Getting to know the social media platforms

The highlights of this article are building your own social media platform by evaluating the success of the existing platforms, creating a plan in three key steps and understanding the whole picture of social media platforms so that you will have a better grasp of working your way around them. The six steps that you should undertake are: understanding the benefits of social media, incorporating the social media success factors, developing and utilizing a 2MCE process and identifying the different platforms.

Increasing your landing page conversion in 7 easy steps

There might be a million and one reasons why your landing page conversion is not improving but the main one that you should look into is the quality of your landing page itself. Most of us are guilty of incorporating every data and information in our landing pages that it looks way too cluttered which would definitely diver the attention of our potential customers. In this article, seven easy steps are given out in order to increase landing page conversion. These steps are: calling actions to matter, having digestable content, minimizing choices, keeping it simple, avoiding lengthy texts, envoking trust and avoiding too much marketing speak.

Determining if your business model is in line with Google

In every SEO campaign, various Google tools undeniably takes on a huge chunk on the project’s implementation and execution. But this does not mean that the tools that Google offers when it comes to SEO is free for all. Contrary to this popular belief, Google actually has a lot of strict rules and regulations that you have to follow in order to use their tools. One wrong move can possibly have you banned from doing business again with the famous search engine. This is the main reason why determining if your own business model is in accordance to what Google sees as acceptable is an important thing to consider. One of the main pet peeves that Google has is towards affiliates, especially those in AdWords.

Reasons why journalists will write about your website

The author of this article is speaking from his own personal experience after his website had been featured in the New York Times which is a great feat for someone who is considered as a small business owner who owns a little known website. He gives out different reasons why journalists will write about your website and the reasons are as follows: the need to create a list, the need for a seasonal story, making a follow up on a big story, writing about a competitor, writing about a particular group, citing an example for a nationwide trend, example to illustrate federal legislation, the need for expert comment and featuring an award winning person.

Tools for Google Caffeine

In this blog post, different tools that you can use for Caffeine are give out. These tools include: Google Caffeine Bookmarklet, Plug Caffeine into Firefox Extension, Ranking Checker, Google vs. Google Caffeine and Google.ie and Google.de vs. Caffeine.

Knowing the basics of SEO before trying out the fancy stuff

Most newbies in SEO will want to try on the fancy stuff at first before learning the basics. This is a kind of thing wherein you leap first before you learn but you always have to keep in mind that sticking to the basics is important especially if you’re just starting out with SEO. This article gives out different tips that you can use in order to master the basics first before you turn it up a notch. The following tips given out are: avoiding JavaScript or Flash navigation, keeping your site’s architecture as flat as possible, staying away from the parameter’s URL, using internal links and treating sitemaps as your friends.

IYP SEO Rankings Report for 2009

The Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) is a common source for SEO rankings and the author tried to lift the top ranking SEO sites for 2009 in this article. His methodology for extracting the results are as follows: searching Google, querying in a specific format, each of the top 10 ranking was in reverse order and the points for each site are added up. The results of this ranking test yielded the following sites in the top 5: Superpages, Citysearch, Yelp, Yahoo Local and InsiderPages.

Are search engines spying on SEOs?

One of the most controversial issues to bombard SEOs is the possibility that search engines are spying on SEOs by lurking in SEO forums. In these SEO forums, the SEO practitioners can initiate link buying or link exchange with other people. Spam is also being monitored in these forums.

Headlining your Social Media campaigns and articles

It all starts with your title or headline. More often than not, if you have a headline which is truly eye catching and easy to read, you will have an easier time attracting and luring people to go into your site. In this article, there is a total of 102 proven ideas that you can use for this purpose.

Link baiting 101

Link baiting is probably the most famous and most used link building technique. Compared to other link building techniques, link baiting is probably the most ethical and accepted way of gathering links for your website. In this article, links to 45 link baiting resources are given out in hopes that people will have an easier time doing this process.

Steps in creating an authority blog

In this article, a total of 10 steps are given out as a guide in building an authority blog. The steps are as follows: creating a winning difference, teaching people, having a pillar content, using headlines and hooks, making friends, putting money in your list, never neglecting SEO, giving Google a helping hand, investing in a high quality blog theme and looking after your followers.

Social Media questions that you need to know the answers to

The author of this blog post being a facilitator for Social Media seminars and presentations have a lot of knowledge when it comes to the most common questions that people have in terms of social media. Some of the most common questions being asked are: if we open up to comments, won’t people criticize us?; what different sites should we participate in?; how many interns do we need to carry out the project?; and what is the exact return of investment in social media?

Backlink research and checking will surely pay off

Backlink research especially if done with your primary competitors will surely yield results that you can use to your own advantage. In this article, three issues are being discussed which are: practical uses for competitive intelligence, research methodology and fun data points for your niche research. In doing competitive research, you are doing the following things: comparing yourself with your competitor in a quantitative way, finding out if the domain that you are in is worth the price that your paying for, finding out which of your competitors have a strong sense of brand management and assessing the relationships of your competitors.

Guide to creating effective title tags

The title tags are probably regarded as the most overlooked part of your SEO campaign. Every SEO practitioner should know that title tags are also important in SEO and in this article, several ideas and guidelines are given so that title tags can also be effective in implementing SEO. Some of the benefits of title tags are keeping SERP listings in the website, simplifying things for networks and reinforces the branding component. The steps that you should take in creating effective title tags are adding keywords first, using action words and using keyword variations.

Reporting your competitors

In a recent SEO conference, one main question that was raised by someone in the audience was what to do if ever your competitors are buying links and taking an unfair advantage over you. Well, the solution is simple, you can report them to the search engines. The key thing that is being stressed in this article is the fact that search engines are not your friends. Search engines are businesses and they do every act that they can to earn more money. Basically, in the SEO world, nobody would like a rat and karma will be out to get you if you do tell on someone. Like the famous saying goes, to each his own.

Things that you should know about the Bing and Yahoo merger

Just last week, the news that the search engine segment of Yahoo will be powered by Microsoft hit the social media air waves. The main things that are being discussed and are in the process of being finalized include the following: the deal will last for 10 years, Bing (Microsoft’s search engine arm) will be the source of all Yahoo searches both organic and paid and the whole deal is expected to be finalized in a 24-month period. In turn, the biggest changes that are in store for SEO include: focusing on Google, acting on Yahoo services now or switching to another search engine and optimizing for Bing so that you will be ready once the project enters its implementation phase.

The consequences of ignoring social media

This article basically talks about the different things that companies should realize when it comes to social media. It all boils down to the fact that ignoring social media makes you mute. Without social media, companies are better fitted for the long run. Everything that we do on the internet is concerned with social media, if you are one company or website who does not use this tool, you will surely get behind from the rest of the pack.

Site architecture is important too

Everyone who knows something about SEO will surely know that content is considered king in SEO. But a new ideology is now being employed by practitioners and that is the fact that site architecture is also an important component in any campaign. Site architecture is the more technical side of SEO and it surely helps with the overall layout and design of not only SEO but the whole website as well. In improving site architecture, the first step that you can do is to get to know the different problem areas in your site and find ways on how to improve them.

Evaluating link building

The first line of this article says it all, link building is considered as the most important and at the same time most misunderstood part of SEO. Different tips are being given by the author so that link building will be an easier task for SEO people. Some of these ideas include: making sure that the high quality links are a passing variation of valuable key items, using Yahoo’s site explorer to investigate links, using SEOMoz’s linkscape to test links, and never ever chase a page which has more than 50 links.

Clicking and Linking in Twitter

In Twitter, the main trend is to follow different persons around in this social media site, but the main question lies, why should you follow someone on Twitter? Following someone on Twitter is a good tool that you can use especially if you want to increase the traffic in your site. This article offers the best thing that can be done in order to do this and that is to offer something that is value added to your potential followers.

Google’s knowledge of the different websites you own

This article discusses the possibility that Google might know the different websites that you own even if you don’t register all these sites with this specific search engine. With all the different tools and programs that Google has, it certainly has the power to know which owns what in cyberspace but this is one issue that the company is pretty mum about.

Using Press Releases to get quality backlinks

The primary intention of press releases is to disseminate fresh information about your company or website, but now it is also being used as a tool to increase back links in order for your site to gain more popularity and traffic. With press releases, you reach a wider audience than what you typically have. If you don’t have anything new to write about when it comes to your company, focus on writing about new information in the industry that you are in. If you still can’t think of what to write about, you can come up with a good story and then spinoff a press release about it.

Using Online PR to build links

In connection to the first article, in this blog post using online public relations in order to build links for your site is the main topic. This is especially important for small businesses who do not have the right amount of resources to spend for their advertising and promotions. In this blog post, small businesses are being encouraged to use the internet in order to promote their site and business and gain more links which would increase their site’s ranking.

Dissecting your link intentions

More often that not, people who are building links for their site are lost in the main intention, or worse, do not have any intention why they are doing such. In the SEO game, it is easy to think that the more links you have the better and you will be sucked in to that mentality especially if you want to get ahead of the SEO game for the wrong reasons. This blog post dissects the main intent on why people want to gain more links. Ultimately, the blog digresses saying that the intention would be left to the best interest of the main engineer of the SEO but the search engine who only looks for the algorithm in any website would turn a blind eye on the intention of link building whatever it may be.

Yahoo and Microsoft search deal?

This weekend we saw the possibility of Yahoo scraping off its own search engine technique and possibly leasing off its main rival’s technique. Many people are asking for the main reasons why Yahoo is doing such a thing. Evidently, the people from Yahoo said that using their own technology costs a lot of money and they decided that leasing off from another power search engine will be a more feasible option for their company. The deal has not been closed yet but both companies are looking at early 2010 as the time line for inking the deal.

Vince Update

It’s been almost a month since Google has submitted its Vince update to its UK users. In the Vince update, it is stated that Google will be looking at these four different factors which are: trust, authority, reputation and pagerank when it comes to looking at websites. This actually squashes the belief that Google also looks for the brand popularity that comes with the website and that this factor can greatly affect the ranking that a webpage will have.

Getting technical with SEO

Most SEO practitioners will try to shy away from the technical side of SEO arguing that this job can better fit the computer scientists or engineers who have more knowledge about it than them. In this blog post, different technical tips that you might find useful are given out. These tips include: ensuring that the site has a reliable hosting platform, using geo-targeting, getting familiar with server response codes and redirects and site architecture amongst other things.

Are you an SEO predator?

Predatory SEO is characterized by being cutthroat, deceptive and dishonest. This blog post sheds light on the widespread presence and continuing grasp of predatory SEO in the internet. Basically, the author tells us that the people should be vigilant enough to know whether or not the website is saying factual SEO facts or not.

Using trends can help your website

Every little thing that is connected to the internet is subject to change. Even the SEO techniques that we have are subject to change. This blog post stresses that using trends in your website can help your business stay afloat and even prosper. The main benefit of SEO is that you can pinpoint exactly what specific month or time is the peak season and you can use this information so that it can work for you too. Different avenues where in you can see the current trends that you can use include Google AdWords Keywords Tool and Google Trends.

Top SEO blogs that you can use

There has been many ‘Top SEO Blogs’ articles out there that you probably lost count all in all. But this particular list is different from every other list because the blogs listed in this one is personally handpicked by the author and he swears by them. Different blogs included in his list include: Search Geeks, SEO Peeps, IR Watching, SEO Bad Asses, SEO Collectives and many others.

Designing a better landing page

Again, one of the most often overlooked parts in your SEO site is your landing page. Most SEO practitioners often disregard this part because they think that search engines won’t bother in checking this part of their webpage. But contrary to popular belief, your landing pages are extremely important in increasing your site’s rankings. Basically, there are four basic things that you can look out for in a landing page and these are: research, design, copy and testing and modification. Different tips given out by the author of this blog post in order to improve your own landing page include: knowing your visitors, putting up images, building your visitors’ trust and knowing exactly what your visitors are looking for.

Internet Marketing Tips from Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco is the creator and main blogger of Daily Blog Tips, a popular blog in the internet which talks about internet marketing and social media. This article is actually an interview wherein the interviewer asks Daniel about the main idea or inspiration for his blog, major influences that brought about his blogging style, details and statistics about the Daily Blog Tips, his favorite posts in his blog and his personal favorite blogs which include other blogs.

Free SEO tools that actually work

For all SEO and SEM practitioners, finding out which SEO tools are free to use is a gold mine in itself already, but if these tools actually work, it brings about a whole new level of using SEO. This article gives off 100 tools that you can use in SEO which actually are proven to work very effectively. The different tools mentioned in this list are divided in different categories such as keyword tools, online tools, browser plugins, website ranking tools, monitoring tools, website optimization tools, sitemap tools, link tools, trend analysis tools, competitor research tools, resources and SEO services.

Google tools to SEO your iGoogle home page

A lot of people are using iGoogle as their home page, but do you know that you can further enhance this page so that you will be able to use it more effectively. This article gives off different tools that you can use for that same purpose. Different tools that were given are Google tools, competitive analysis tools, PPC, quick links to Google search tools and keyword research tools.

Social Media ABC’s

For people who are not that well-versed with social media, this article gives off a fresh take on the different things that you need to be aware of if you want to wander into the social media world. Literally, things that start with the 26 letters of the alphabet that will help you have a grasp and better understanding of how social media works.

Keywords and probability

We all know that keywords are the backbone of any SEO campaign. In this article, keywords are presented as an abbreviated thought that the SEO practitioner might have so that this thought will grow into the whole campaign but you need to keep in mind that you always need to go back to your central thought all the time and that is your keyword. With keywords, you need to remember that keyword density is always important and measuring the click through ratio of keywords is also a must so that you will know which keywords are profitable and which are not.

Hacking and cyber crime

Believe it or not, even if we are living in a fast-paced technological world, cyber hacking is still very rampant. Just this week, Twitter was hacked. Imagine, one of the world’s most popular and biggest social media sites was hacked, what danger will this pose to other smaller sites who do not have the same protection and security as huge websites? Cyber crime is very visible today but this does not mean that we cannot find out ways on how to fight it.

Business ethics and SEO

When we are talking about ethics and SEO, we usually conjure the ideas of White Hat or Black Hat SEO but what we don’t usually think about is the business ethics that should also be a prominent theme in your websites. In the world of ethics, the basic rule is very simple, do not do unto others what you don’t want to be done to you. What goes around WILL come around. If you decide to play dirty with a competing website, rest assured it will come back to haunt you one way or another so you have to be careful. I am not saying that you can’t have friendly competition with your competitors, competition is always healthy but you have to make sure that it is within the bounds of ethics.

Online advertising and adult advertising?

There is an ongoing idea that adult advertising is one of the leading sources of online advertising. According to Google, people search for the word ‘porn’ now more than ever compared to the previous years. But if you look at the list of the top 100 sites, very few of these adult websites are included there. The reason for this can be possibly pointed at the use of long term keywords in adult advertising.

Getting kicked out of Twitter

There are people who are getting kicked out or suspended in Twitter. What are they doing wrong? This article highlights a specific case wherein a person was suspended in Twitter because of suspicious activity.

Be careful while using StumbleUpon

If you are using Stumbleupon, you will notice that there is a ratings guide that you need to abide so that you will not have problems with posting content in the site. If the rating is titled ’suitable for all’ this means that everyone can view what you posted. On the other hand if the rating is ‘r-rated’ this means that your post contains nudity or violence. Lastly, if it is rated ‘x-rated’, your post possibly contains pornography, excessive nudity or a nude photo.

SEO Boondoggle?

Let’s admit it, there are a lot of SEO articles out there and majority of which are just complete nonsense, hence the term boondoggle which is actually defined as work done of little value just to look or appear busy. This blog article tackles this topic and discusses why some SEO sites are submitting themselves to be victims of such. To avoid being a boondoggle, the client must be extensively involved in the whole SEO process even if the SEO work has been outsourced to another professional company.

The relation between search and social media

Big companies bank on their huge budget to boost their brand awareness and brand name, but small companies cannot afford this kind of luxury. Most companies make the mistake of simply building the brand or company itself but they must realize that all of these are in vain because all these are nonsense without visibility. This blog post suggests two ways that you can do to increase your company’s visibility. The first one is to do your keyword research and get to know what the people are looking for and the second thing that you can do is to use social media sites to increase your site’s visibility.

Content ideas plus link building

This article starts off with stating a statistic that 69% of Americans go online to enable them to get through the recession. You might be asking why? Simple. If you go online there are increased chances of you finding bargains and discounts that will help you get most bang for your buck. With this fact in mind, you can now capitalize on making your website more attractive to this specific market. What you can do is to: encourage linking to your site by reaching out to your immediate network, writing a press release, use Twitter and other social media sites.

Do not be an SEO criminal

If you don’t want to be labeled as a SEO criminal by Google, you will definitely not do any of the following: big mouthing your SEO tactics, your sites are all tied together which makes you an easy target, over optimizing some of the keywords, link profile is unnatural, having a nofollow link attribute to sculpt PageRank, buy and sell obvious paid links and using a spam site to increase your rankings. Doing any of the aforementioned ways will surely put you in the Google hot seat and possibly get banned from the search engine.

China: No to Digg?

One of the more controversial news articles that were released last week highlights this topic. With China having a history of banning popular sites, this came as a no-surprise to many. There are cases where Chinese bloggers or bloggers who are based in China would try to submit their submissions to Digg but the site would hang and be like that for a long time, prompting people to believe that there is a possibility that China is actually in the process of banning the popular social media site.

Common misconceptions about Black Hat SEO

The term Black Hat SEO is also synonymous to unethical SEO. Major search engines sites like Google are particularly adamant on battling this SEO technique which are being used by certain individuals and companies who have the intention of increasing traffic to their site by employing fraudulent practices like link farming and using invisible white text. Here are some misconceptions that are mentioned in the article: Black Hat SEO strategies will yield short-term results, Black Hat SEO are not as effective now because search engines are getting smarter against it and Black Hat SEO will poison your corporate image.

Guide to building links internationally

International link building is one way of expanding your target audience and at the same time, reaching your local areas specifically. In this article which can also be called as a crash course to international link building, you will see that there are several things that you have to know before you can actually do it. These steps include: identifying your international SERPs competitors, prospecting for international link building policies, qualifying international link building opportunities and actually acquiring international links.

Business strategy that you should have for international SEO

In connection with the blog that was discussed previously, this article tackles certain business strategies that you can undertake if you want to break into international SEO. This article also tackles geotargetting wherein you specify which areas your SEO campaign will be visible in. Geotargetting is extremely helpful especially if you have a certain market for your products or services.

Resources for mobile SEO

An emerging trend is now taking the form of mobile SEO and this article gives off resources that you can use in order to help you enhance your mobile SEO campaign. The resources are grouped as follows: mobile internet and search, mobile SEO blogs, mobile SEO best practices and ranking factors, mobile web design, iPhone SEO, mobile analytics and other mobile SEO resources.

Technical review for Geotargetting

As previously mentioned, geotargetting is extremely helpful especially if you have a particular segment of the market that you are catering to. In order to determine if you are ready to use geotargetting, you need to qualify first three different characteristics which are: query, interface and SERP. You also have to use explicit signals and implicit identification while doing these.

We at Rockin’SEO believe that SEO tools are important in carrying out and implementing any SEO campaign. In this update, we will discuss the top 5 blog posts about SEO Tools which will be beneficial in helping any SEO campaign.

The ultimate SEO tools list
Who doesn’t love free stuff over the internet? Especially if it comes off as very effective tools on top of being completely free. In this ultimate listing, different SEO tools are included which meet three requirements. One, these are all very helpful in SEO. Two, all these tools are web-based. Lastly, all the tools listed are completely free. How else can you go wrong? The tools listed in this blog post are grouped in different categories. The categories include backlink analyzing online SEO tools, keyword research and brainstorming tools, domain name online tools, on-site analysis online SEO tools, search related online tools and website traffic and demographics report. And ofcourse, if you are looking for a free keyword tracker that works across search engines, you can always check out our very own free keyword tracking tool.

Tools for SEO diagnostics

Most people who are into SEO have complete disregard when it comes to diagnosing their SEO campaign because they don’t know how much benefit this can bring to them. Diagnosing your SEO campaign will give you feedback on how your SEO campaign is doing and what areas need improvement. The different tools listed in this blog post will surely help you with diagnosing your SEO campaign. The tools mentioned are: QuarkBase.com, CubeStat.com, Statbrain.com, Popuri.us and Test Everything. Different rankings and evaluation are also given to these sites. My favorite is definitely ReviewMyWeb - a free website grader, which gives you a good overview of which components of your website you need to concentrate on. I’m a bit biased as I created this tool recently with my friends. It’s got some great reviews though and you should definitely head over and give this one a try as well!

Easy ways to get links

Any SEO expert will attest to the fact that easy link building is one of the most important tools that anyone can use on SEO. But of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should just incorprorate any link out there to your site because that’s called link farming and is deemed illegal in Google. Search engines will look at both the quantity and quality of the links. Some of the steps given in this article suggests that in order to do link building, you should submit to directories, add resources to generated sites, get online bookmarking badges like Delicious and working with other sites or blogs to get your link published on other sites.

Need help with Keyword Brainstorming?

In SEO, content is king. But if you look at content, you will see that majority of what is used in the web content concentrate on the different keywords that you have. The first step towards finding the right set of keywords is challenging but there are a lot of tools that you can use in brainstorming for different keywords that you can use. In this article, different keyword brainstorming tools are discussed and some of these include Google Sets, MSN cluttering tool, Searchradar, Keyword Map and Urban Dictionary.

Using Google Analytics in tracking SEO rankings

Tracking SEO rankings is also an important way of evaluating the over-all effectiveness of your SEO campaign. Google enables SEO practitioners to have an easier time in dealing with this task by introducing Google Analytics. Using this tools will require you to undergo several steps like setting up a filter and viewing the ranking results.

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Top Ten Items in SEO and Search Marketing

Habits of effective PPC Managers
There’s really no denying that it really takes a lot to be an effective and highly successful PPC manager. In this article, 6 common habits that are evidently found many successful PPC managers are discussed. These 6 habits are growing your keyword list, testing and tweaking, keeping a campaign diary, leveraging your web analytics software, eyeing your competition and staying informed of advertising policy updates and other search publisher news.

Brand awareness is great SEM
In this article, it is said that brand awareness is what fuels SEM. The writer argues that there are many things that traditional marketing and SEM don’t come in good terms about but one of the common links that are unifying both marketing techniques is brand awareness. The public is getting wiser by the minute, they do not only go to the popular sites or the sites which are most frequented by other people, they usually go to proven and established sites because their trust levels toward these sites are greater.

Great traffic trackers for your campaign
When it comes to SEO and SEM, the main determinant of how efficient and effective your over-all campaign is through the traffic that is being coursed to your site. Daily monitoring and live tracking is very important. To help you out with live traffic tracking for your site, there are three free tools that you can use which are SiteMeter, GetClicky and BLVD status. SiteMeter is considered as the simplest of the three free tools, giving out basic information about traffic to your site. On the other hand, GetClicky and BLVD status are more advanced tools, offering traffic analysis to the users.

How to do an SEO audit
An SEO audit is a much needed undertaking for any SEO practitioner. This is done to discover and potentially troubleshoot problems in your site. A framework in doing an SEO audit is given in this article and it covers everything from the title page to the big four factors of SEO which are URLs, site architecture and navigation, product label pages and site latency. Tools to help out in doing an SEO audit is also ennumerated.

Sources of duplicate content
Most SEO practitioners try to shy away from duplicate content as much as possible because having something like this in your site will spell SEO and ranking problems for you. But what some SEO practitioners don’t know is that there are many sources of duplicate content online. Here are some sample tell-tale signs that you can pick up in order to know if a content is a duplicated one: if the content has any type of disclosure or disclaimer, words that occur in your web template, navigation, footer, sidebars, your last name and address and contact form.

Do you think you have too big of a company for SEO?
Most large companies often think that SEO is just for small and medium enterprises so they don’t usually bother with it. In a perspective of an SEO consultant, SEO is equally important for a large company who has an already established brand name and a small company which is struggling to make a name for itself. If you want to convince a big company to do SEO, you must present them with the results. This is a tried and tested formula that will surely work in convincing them to incorporate SEO in their marketing plan.

Social Media’s history
We all know how prevalent Social Media is today but how it exactly went from being a never heard of term before to being incorporated in our everyday lives now is quite a mystery. In this article, the history of Social Media is discussed which points its roots back at the 1950s. This historical timeline threads through telephone phreaking, bulletin board systems, commercial online services, world wide web, instant messaging, P2P, social networking and real-time statusphere.

Writing for people, not for search engines
This golden advice reiterates that even SEO practitioners should keep their focus on ultimately writing for people and not for search engines. Most SEO sites are being written for the sole purpose of rising up the rankings of search engines but this should not always be the case as people are the ultimate end users of SEO sites and not search engines. It’s okay to make your site SEO ready but also keep in mind that you are also catering to people and not just search engines.

Bing controversy
It surely doesn’t take long for new things especially new tools which are being introduced over the internet to be criticized and be in the middle of a controversy. Not even two weeks into its launch, Bing (the newest search engine developed by Microsoft) is being hounded by complaints that they manipulate the search engine rankings to bring in higher click through rates.

SEO tools that you probably aren’t using now
This list summarizes the little known SEO tools that most people don’t know about. These tools include Google Insights Bookmarket, Social Media Metrics Greasemonkey Plugin for Google Analytics, Robots.txt Generator, SearchBot Plugin and Disabled Personalized Search Plugin. All these tools are also free of charge and can bring in great advantages for your SEO site.

Top Ten Items in SEO and Search Marketing

Brand PPC’s real value

Some companies who are doing PPC are actually shying away from using brands because they think that using generic keywords is a more feasible option. The main reason behind this way of thinking is that they think that if they use their company name or brand name, it will not bring in new customers since the only people who will be searching for them are the old customers. But contrary to this misconception, a lot of internet experts believe that using brand PPC will actually increase a website’s exposure and the brand keywords are actually cheaper which will bring in increased return of investment.

Bing vs. Google

Microsoft recently launched their own search engine named Bing to rival industry dominator Google. But Microsoft do not entirely propose that Bing will kill Google, in fact the company has been adamant about stressing the fact that Bing is a competitive product, much more competitive than Live Search. The author who tested Bing is very satisfied with the results, but some of the searches are surely right on Google’s position as number one. To put all the rivalry aside, Google is the lead of the pack, closely followed by Bing and Bing is trailed by Live Search. Bing in turn closes the very large gap between Google and Live Search making competition closer and tighter.

CAPTCHA

In this article, the number one problem tackling many website owners and developers are tackled, which is CAPTCHA. We all know that in SEO, it is all in vain unless the customers will do action like completing an entry form or purchasing something from the site. This is where the problem of CAPTCHA enters, this acronym stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

7 Easy Wordpress steps

The author of this blog post has recently been affected by a virus that went straight to his Wordpress account. Some of the measures that Wordpress users should do to be in the defense side against these attacks are given. Some of the areas that you need to look into are robots.txt files, protecting wp-config.php file with .htaccess, password protect the wp-admin directory, delete the admin user account, restrict erroneous log in attempts, wordpress firewall and WP security scam.

Social media relationships

Social media sites are really flowering in the internet. The main purpose why these sites were put up were to let old and new friends reconnect with each other. But the problem starts when your own family members like your parents start creating their own accounts and adding you up as your friend. I know that this is completely acceptable and it is a nice thing to know that the older generation is now adapting to what the new one is raving about. But there has to be some sense of awkwardness when it comes to these thing. This article advises that there are some things that you can do to make sure that you avoid these awkward moments.

Why should you use Twitter

There’s really no denying that Twitter has taken the whole internet and social media world by storm. Every person on Twitter probably has a different reason why they became a member of it. This blog post tells us 33 reasons why people use Twitter. Some of the reasons included in this list are employee tracking, market research, competition, branding and promotion to name a few.

Goals for link building

In the whole link building process, you should have formulated your own goals on why you want to do it besides getting all the links that you can possibly get your hands on. In this article, there are so much more reasons there is behind link building. The reasons highlighted in this site are broaden the keyword relevance, increased targeting, steady rankings, increasing market awareness, move from 2nd to 1st page rankings, own your own brand name, naturalize your link profile, get new pages, show results quickly and improve geo specific rankings.

Classic SEO articles

In this blog post, 6 topnotch SEO articles are highlighted. These are the best of the best and the author even goes on to saying that every SEO practitioner should read these articles. The top 6 are Successful Site in 12 Months in Google Alone, SEO is Easy? Let’s Look at the Hard 5 Percent, Filthy Linking Rich and Getting Richer, 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity, Spam Guide for Raters and Hilltop in Plain English.

Increasing local presence

Some SEO experts think that going global is the way to go if you want to increase traffic and brand awareness but a recent look on localizing a website’s presence is now making waves. Here are some ways given in the article that you can do if you want to increase your website’s local presence: claiming your business listing with Google, Yahoo and MSN, getting listed in local directories and search engines, getting listed in the yellow pages and creating local citations with third party data providers.

Online resources for the digital enterprise

This is considered as a master list when it comes to different online resources which are great if you are a digital enterprise. The tools listed are categorized into general site research, site technical stats and performance, domain tools, social media monitoring, general SEO analysis, keyword cloud and density tools, keyword analysis and suggestion tools, external and internal linking analysis, visibility/ranking tools and miscellaneous tools.