Keeping an eye on the competition is the smart thing to do, if you want to know how are they climbing the SERPs so that you can alter your marketing strategy to combat that. The good thing about online businesses is that spying on the competition is made very easy, in fact like child's play with the plethora of online tools available. Some of these are paid while many are free, that you can use to know what your competition is up to. These free Spy tools tell you:

• The keywords that work for your competition
• What features they have been carrying on as they have become popular with the users.
• Know the kind of tools your competitors are using to generate the excellent returns on their pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns
• Know how they are going about with their SEO initiatives

Listed below are the top five free spy tools that can help you in keeping a very close watch on your competition.

1. Google Alerts- Any thing, any time, anywhere on the web, that your competitor does will be known to you if you use Google Alerts. All you have to do is set up searches for your competitors and keywords to monitor their activity. In fact while using Google Alerts, you can also monitor what is being said online about you and your company too, along with your competition. You will get an email alert when the keywords/competitor's name you mentioned shows up anywhere on the Web, Google News, and Google Blog search. See the image below to get an idea of the comprehensive detailed alert you will get.

   

   You will get daily updates on the terms you are tracking from a particular industry or your niche. You will get a notification email when new links start pointing to your website, or when your articles are picked up or any one in the blogosphere discusses you. Enter the competitor's name and you will get an email the minute someone talks about them-their new offer etc.

2. Compete Search Analytics- This tool will tell you the number of unique visits to the site, over a period of time, and the rank of the site based on the number of unique visits. See the image below to see, how you can know when the traffic to the competitor's site is increasing and what caused that.

   

   The tool also gives you detailed information about the keyword information of your competition. Simply enter the competition's URL , and the tool will furnish the results, that display the keywords driving traffic to the competitor's site. The tool will also tell you the share of search referrals, and the share of paid referrals.

3. SEMRush- SEMRush is a free tool that comes in very handy for handling PPC advertising. As you will enter the competitor's URL, you will get detailed information about the popular keywords, volume, position and CPC for every keyword. See in the image below, how the keyword and the percent of traffic it drives and the competition it faces is displayed.

   

   The tools will also let you know the Google Adwords key phrases that drive the most traffic for the site.

4. KeywordSpy- Keyword Spy actually lives up to its name by letting you know the organic keywords that are working for your competitor. It is a Google-focused keyword tracking tool. Not only this, you also can search for domains, and destination URLs among others. See how in the image below, the top 10 keywords driving organic traffic are listed with positions, CPC and traffic details.

   

   This is an excellent spy tool as you gain a deep insight into your competition. It’s free version will give you a lot of useful data on the specified geographical location. SpyFu.com is also an interesting alternative that lets you research your competitors marketing campaigns. While the tool gives you the number of clicks, average ad position and the keywords, it does not tell you the position of a keyword.

5. OpenSiteExplorer- This tool from SEOMoz is one of the most popular online tools to check up on the competition. You can in a single go compare up to 5 competition sites. See the image below how the comparison box opens up.

   

   The tool then further gives you a lot of data, to study. One thing that you will appreciate is that it tells you the Anchor text of the competition. What keywords are they using for inbound links.

   

   And furthermore, you can also know the domains that are linking to your competition. This way you can approach those authority sites too!

To Conclude:

Use these free tools to gather what your competition is up to, however, keep following industry trends and more importantly visit the forums, and actually sample what the competitor is offering to make changes in your business.

Here is a list of a few paid spy tools, that will give you deep insights into the competition's modus operandi.

• HitWise
  
• KeyCompete
  
• SEMPhonic
• Trellian Competitive Intelligence
  

Are there any other tools you use? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

5 Free Tools to Spy On Your Competitors!

Google Analytics can go a long way in helping you achieve your conversion goals. With the smarter Analytics, you can create your own metrics and reports, which will fulfill your specific requirements.

Listed below are a few tricks and tips to help you get more out of Google Analytics.

The standards of SEO have changed drastically. Getting high ranking is just not enough now. Getting hordes of traffic is not enough. What you need is conversion. The number of people visiting your site should change to leads or sales. Google Analytics can help you in analysing the traffic trends on your website, and direct you in making the right changes in your SEO techniques.

Creating Filters:
With filters, you can weed out the data you don't want in your reports. For multiple filters, you can create multiple profiles to track different filtered data. However, have one master profile that has all your data. You must create filters within your Profile Settings page. Here is more on creating multiple profiles. Andre Scholten of Yoast.com also stresses that in order to get the right ranking in Google Analytics report, a new filter is needed. He says, “Well, you can't specifically track the exact position of the keyword that was clicked like you can do with AdWords. But it is possible to determine the page he was on. A ranking tool can tell you over and over again that a certain keyword is around position 15 in Google while Google Analytics claims he is on page 1 (position 1 to 10). This effect can come from 'personalized search' or 'local results' that can influence the Google rankings dramatically. ” See his tutorial on how to use and understand the filtered data here.

Advanced Segments:
Advanced Segmentation is a tool with which you can filter the Analytics data in a report,  without having to create separate profiles. You can then keep track of different groups and traffic sources and also analyse their behaviour. These segments can be created from the control bar at the top of any report, or the Advanced Segmentation section underneath the list of your reports. To set them up, click on “Advanced Segments”, click “Create new custom segment” and then you can add your dimensions and metrics. You can segment organic visits including your brand name, or visits that are made after words like – 'help' or 'ways' or 'buy'. You can go in depth, analyse for instance the referral traffic that you are getting and their conversions. Here is a very helpful blog on Advanced Segmentation. 

Custom Reports:
It is of prime importance to customise your Analytics. You should know what works for you. Now, you may be happy by knowing general stuff about number of visits, from where, bounce rate etc. But how does all this relate to the most important word- conversions? This you can gather from ordering a customised report. On the dashboard- Follow these steps:

Custom Reporting–>Manage Custom Reports–> Create new custom report–>

At this stage, you can drag and drop your metrics and dimensions. You can always, save the report and modify the metrics to see further insights. 

Creating Goals:
Setting up goals is the best way to achieve conversion. Google Analytics helps you evaluate how well your site is moving towards the goal in your mind. A goal varies for every site- and so does the funnel. This is the process of setting up a goal:

Overview section–>Edit–>Add Goal ( in the Goals section).

Now you can set the sales as a goal for an e-commerce site and time spent on a page for a publishing site as your goal.

After that Name the Goal–> define URL Destination as the Goal Type–> For Goal Details select Head Match for match type, and /feeds as the Goal URL

Here is the detailed process of setting up and analysing goals.

Google Analytics looks simple but has has many layers and provides data that you can filter-segment and then customise it to set better goals that lead to conversion. Being an SEO, reviewing these customised reports will help you work better on your site and convert every visit into something profitable. The conclusion is simple- Get more out of Google Analytics

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Analytics And SEO!

Here's a cool tool for businesses to track their local search engine ranking. The Local Search Rank Checker is developed by BrightLocal.com. Using this web-based tool, you can check and track your local search engines ranking, for instance, on Google Places or Yahoo! Local and also your main, organic rankings on Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Here's a brief review of the features offered by the tool and how to use them:

1 – Providing the details of your search

Here, you fill in the fields in the boxes provided, for instance, Search terms, Website Address, Your Business Name(s) and so on. After filling in the boxes with appropriate inputs, select your preferred settings and click ‘Get Rankings’.

*For a lot of search terms, you can cut and paste them into the “Search Term” and save time.

2 – View the report of your ranking

Your ranking report will be returned, displayed in a full table of results including your current position and last position in each search engine and the type of result result (organic, paid etc.,). The number of search terms you enter will affect the time the tool takes in generating the report.

You can also download your Ranking Report as a CSV or PDF file.

3 – Save reports to your BrightLocal account

The reports generated by tool can be saved to your BrightLocal account, then you can tag them to your clients and branch locations etc. The tool also lets you schedule each report to update weekly or monthly, or you can just leave them as ‘ad-hoc’ reports that can be updated whenever you want to.

You can also receive reports by email. By choosing the 'Yes' option for the 'Send schedule reports by email' (as shown in the image below) you can use 5 email addresses to receive the reports, or be sent to colleagues and clients directly.

4 – View and access your saved reports

In the Reports Table, you can view all your saved reports, re-run reports and click to view the most recent reports as CSV or PDF files. On the same table, you can also access all your previous reports by clicking the 'Report History' right next to the 'Re-run Report' button. This way, you never lose your previous ranking data.

5 – Customize reports

This tool also allows you to customize reports by creating ‘Branding Profiles’. You can also upload your logo, change the font colors and add your own text or links to the report header and footer. After making your preferred changes, you can save your branding profile and use it later to customize each report that you create.

The tool crawls through the top 50 results on all search engines and local search engines. It also crawls local directories apart from the specified search engines while you generate your ranking report. To further simplify the process of running new reports, the company also says that they will be adding an option to upload CSV in a later release. You can register to start using the tool or test it out for 5 times free of cost.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Track Your Local Search Ranking With The Local Search Rank Checker!

AdMax has recently launched a SEO Toolbar, that comprises of the popular SEO tools, put together on a single browser plugin. It also features mobile keyword rankings and mobile link building tools. It is the first FireFox addon that addresses mobile SEO as well.

The first most prominent section of the toolbar is the page speed:

• Load time
• Page size
• Number of requests

Current Page External Metrics

The next toolbar section lists SEO’s favorite numbers:

• Page Google Toolbar PageRank
• Yahoo! SiteExplorer “Links to domain” number
• The number of Dmoz listings
• Yahoo! SiteExplorer “Links to page” number
• Yahoo! SiteExplorer “Indexed Pages” number
• Domain page

Toolbar “Actions” Section

This section allows to perform some actions that could speed up the working process:

• The easyComment button can be used to create multiple profiles to let the tool pre-fill the name, email and URL
• it can be used for highlighting on-page no-follow attribute
• Also, can be used to view page source
• It allows to get the page info
• It is helps to find out the keyword position on Google
• It performs a keyword research very quickly
• One has the option of accessing the “link building tool” from here.

Link Building Tool

The link building tool has three sections:>

• Backlink Builder – This tool takes advantage of the Google’s link building queries, which when combined with the base term, allows one to search for various link building opportunities.
• Directory submission – This helps to search for relevant directories.
• Blog Commenting – This section offers access to “do-follow” blog database.

Though the tool is in its beta phase, but is worth a shot.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

AdMax Rolls-Out New Multi-Feature SEO Toolbar

All this week we will be sharing the SEO tools and services we use at PageTraffic with our Twitter Subscribers! Don't forget to follow us on Twitter for the exclusive SEO Tool A day Tweets! Here is a quick link to our Twitter Profile: http://twitter.com/pagetraffic

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Twitter Exclusive: Cool SEO Tools we use!

SEOBook that allows its users to find the most valuable or highest traffic rankings for competing sites!

Watch the video for more info:

If you are a subscriber, then you can try it now onwards. But if you have not subscribed yet, then click on this link to join

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

New "SEO Book Competitive Research Tool"

The world of SEO is getting intricate with the passage of time. More and more tools are being released day by day. To keep all thenecessities in mind, Aaron Wall has come up with an entirely new SEO toolbar to put the best competitive research data and SEO research tools in front of us. No need to pay anything… It's free!

The toolbar is just a click away: http://www.seobook.com/seo-toolbar and offers an array of cool features like displaying PageRank through Yahoo! linkdomain and page links, Traffic value and analysis, competitive analysis of every aspect related with SEO, Dmoz entries, BOTW links, domain age, the ability to compare up to 5 competing sites against each other, SEO XRay, and more. In addition, click on this link and get a rank checker directly in your toolbar!

The main motto behind designing this toolbar:

“This tool was designed to make it easier to evaluate how strong a competing website is. The SEO Toolbar pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from your browser. In addition to pulling in useful marketing data this toolbar also provides links to the data sources so you can dig deeper into the data.”

How to operate it?

“If you are casually surfing you may want to turn this extension off. To do so, click on the SEO Toolbar logo, then click on the “Turn Toolbar off” link at the bottom of the menu.”

“To turn this toolbar back on, click on the SEO Toolbar logo, and then click on the "Turn Toolbar on" link at the bottom of the menu.”

The popularity of the SEO Toolbars is certainly on the rise!

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

A New SEO Toolbar By SEOBook!

Clan of Bruce Clay has come up with two brand-new SEO tools that are available for free on their Web site. These new tools are the Search Engine Optimization/KSP tool, and the SEMToolBar(TM).

The KSP tool is designed in such a way as to help the users know more about a particular keyword or phrase and its importance in the search engine optimization. Here is the screen shot of how it works:

On the other hand, the SEMToolBar is only available for Internet Explorer. You need to make use of the toolbar that is located in the search box to navigate for the keyword or phrase you want to optimize. Let the result page load. When it is done, you will be able to notice diverse specifications like page rank and inbound links.

Both KSP tool and SEMToolBar compile selected data from various search engines like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! and put only the most relevant as well as useful and appropriate SEO information within easy reach.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

New SEO Tools for 2009!

The main purpose of SEOs is to take care of the “ranking aspect” of the websites, but with the personalization updates of search engines, it has become difficult to know about the true rankings of the websites. A personalized search result page can be entirely different as compared to those actual results that are provided with the ranking tools.

Thanks to André Scholten for making all of us aware of the fact that Google Analytics users can track SEP rankings and know as to where they rank for specific keywords. Of course, they will not be able to figure out the exact position, but figure out a rough assumption on what page of the SERPs they rank on.

According to a post on Yoast,

“To get the rankings in your Google Analytics reports you have to create a new filter. The title of the filter contains a 3, that's because filter 1 and 2 take care of filtering out everything else than Google Organic traffic.”

Screenshot of the Filter:

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Use Google Analytics to Track SEO Rankings!

Wordtracker has announced the launch of “Keyword Questions”, that allows the webmasters as well as users from the SEO world to find certain questions that are frequently asked by the visitors in the search engines. With the help of this tool, webmasters would be able to get answers to all the FAQs and can get interesting web copies to get plenty of traffic on their websites.

According to Ken McGaffin, Chief Marketing Officer of Wordtracker, “People have a ton of questions about all sorts of things and people will go straight to a search engine to find the answers. Just enter a keyword and we’ll give you up to 100 questions that people have asked."

How does the tool work:

The keywords are paired up with one of the six words that are useful in starting a question. These words are: Who, what, where, when, why and how. Then a match is conducted from Wordtracker's database.

Let us have a look at the a very interesting example: If some one who has a coffee website, types a keyword “coffee” and jot down questions like “why cold water is used in brewing coffee,” in the search engine, then the particular question is tracked!

In a press release, McGaffin said, “This is a fun tool that is a great source of inspiration for web content writers. You need never be short of creative ideas again.”

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Wordtracker Launches “Keyword Questions”

It is a fact that the Google Webmaster Tools offers great data for all the webmasters. But still certain things are missing. Earlier, the webmasters had to chart the timeline of the inbound link from GMT, but on a manual basis.

But now, Russ Jones has announced the launch of an entirely new tool called Glync that shows link data for the most recent one month.

Pro Version 1.0b

The Pro Version offers a wide array of data directly from your External Links page.

• 90 day tracking of Google Webmaster Tools External Links for Site
• 90 day tracking of Yahoo External Links for Site
• 90 day tracking of Google Webmaster Tools External Links for All Sub-Pages Listed
• 90 day tracking of Yahoo External Links for Site for All Sub-Pages Listed
• PageRank for all on-site pages listed
• PageRank for all external-links listed – GoogleCache

Glync Basic is a free Firefox tool that allows the users to see the link data for the past 30 days but a paid version that tracks for 3 months is also available. The paid feature of this tool would provide the users to add Yahoo link counts side-by-side.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Track Your Google Links With GLYNC

It's been a while, since we had an all-in-one web based tool that could provide Webmasters with comprehensive, relevant and important information in regards to their website rankings in major search engines, such as Google etc.

At PageTraffic, we have been testing a new online rank checking tool called SheerSEO since May this year. We had been contacted by Eyal Aldema, the creator of SheerSEO, who had requested us to try this new online tool. Accepting the request we went on with our testing of the this rank reporting tool and now we are delighted to inform our readers that the tool has come up to all our expectations. It has proved to be an outstanding tool that helps you in tracking your rankings and index pages in the most efficient and user friendly manner.

The sole purpose of this tool is to offer the best in the field of tracking rankings in major search engines such as Google and Yahoo!. SheerSEO not only helps in tracking multiple keywords, but is also embedded with an extremely user friendly interface that makes working on it a pleasant experience. It is also absolutely free of cost and all you need to do to is to register at SheerSEO to use this great tool. Once registered with SheerSEO, the tool will analyse your website and then will suggest you with the keywords that are required to be monitored along with the pages that require tracking. Unlike other online tracking tools, that are marred by their ability to track limited keywords, SheerSEO on the other hand can track almost unlimited keywords.

Some of the most prominent features of SheerSEO are:

1. It features a tracking tool designed specifically for search engine result pages (SERPs) of Google and Yahoo!
2. This tools has a highly effective PR (PageRank) monitoring system.
3. It also provides the users with regular e-mail updates about their PageRank and the SERP positions.
4. Current & historical referrers
5. keyword density.
6. Indexed Pages

As we mentioned before, the interface of SheerSEO is very simple to use and at the same time, it allows a Webmaster to track unlimited keywords rankings for his website.

However, besides the loads of functionalities provided by this tool, there is one major factor that this online tracking tool lacks and it is that, it isn't able to track Live.com, which is one of the biggest search engines. We also observed that, to track the rankings of multiple websites, you need to create a separate e-mail ID for each of the sites that you wish to monitor.

We sincerely hope that, SheerSEO will work on these downsides and would be able to provide its users with a fully integrated software. All in all, on the scale of 5, we rate this online tracking tool as 3.5 due to its non-compatibility with Live.com. Still, this is a really excellent tool and it is our recommendation that all Webmasters should definitely try it out.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

SheerSEO- The Newest Tool for Tracking Rankings and Index Pages!

Ann Smarty over at Search Engine Journal has put up a post that highlights the Top 5 Firefox browser add-ons designed for exploring the backlinks. These plug-ins are:

Smart PageRank: This user-friendly Firefox add-on instantly checks backlinks for a current active page. It has a number of helpful settings that allow users to check for Google PageRank, anchor text and nofollow link attribute. However, there is one drawback to this tool and that is, it will open backlink list in the same tab as the active page and there’s no way to change that.

SearchStatus: This Firefox plug-in allows quick access to the backlinks of a page or domain in Google or Yahoo Site Explorer.

SEOQuake or SEO for Firefox: You can use either on the one, whichever you prefer. However, using SEOQuake or SEO for Firefox will slow down the search process. Either of the plug-ins can be used to enhance link: search in Yahoo! or Yahoo! Site Explorer. Through the use of these plug-ins, users will be able to view valuable information for each linking page necessary to make a conclusion on the checked page's actual strength. This information would be related to Google PageRank, Google indexed pages, Dmoz or Yahoo Directory presence, page backlinks, etc.

Inbound Link Quality: This Firefox add-on will display the estimated quality of backlinks for an active page based on Dmoz and yahoo directory mentions, number of .edu and .gov backlinks, age and Alexa rank.

SEO Link Analysis: This Firefox plug-in checks Google PageRank of the linking page, anchor text used and the nofollow attribute. One of the surprising facts about this add-on is that it works for Google Webmaster Tools “Pages with external links”, where no other Firefox plug-in is compatible.

These are some of the best known Firefox browser plug-ins that would keep you informed and assist you in exploring backlinks.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Top 5 Firefox Add-Ons to Help You Explore Backlinks!

Aaron Wall has come up with a very simplistic tool used as an extension for Firefox. Known as 'Rank Checker', this extension allows a user to check the rankings of websites by grabbing data from major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Search Engine Result Pages .

This tool is very useful for site-owners and users alike. For a detailed description of Rank Check visit http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/

Tracking the rankings of websites allows a user to:

• Understand the methodology behind search results.
• Gain more perspective towards general algorithmic trends.
• Be the first to know, when the relevancy algorithms change.

The tool is quite simple and easy to use. Thus giving the user an opportunity to gain knowledge about SEO competition at professional levels.

• If the user preferred site is not listed in the top 200, then a – will appear.
• If a user has used long URLs or keywords, they would be omitted in the display. In such a case, they can be made visible by scrolling over them.
• The position of a website in the search results can be verified by double clicking on the URL.
• Personalized ranking results are also available through this tool, if the user is logged into Google through Firefox. These personalized results can be turned off through the Rank Checker options.

This tool has certain settings that allows a user to ping search engines for data at a slow rate. The recommended delay for setting pings is 2 seconds.

Domain name and keywords combinations can be uploaded directly in the Rank Center console one at a time. Adding to this feature, it also gives an option of adding multiple keywords matching a domain.

Some of the most effective feature of Rank Checker are:

• International: In the preferences section, a user can choose which international version of the search engine, would he like to pull the results from.
• Presets: Allows to save and create a set of keywords that can be used to research data on. It is very beneficial in segregating the data from different websites, under different categories. These preset keywords can be saved and opened from the Rank Checker Console.
• Scheduled Tasks: Allows an user to set a particular time for Rank Checker to look for the preset keywords. It can be daily, weekly or monthly, as per the user's requirements. The scheduled tasks can be activated by:

a. Click on 'Tools' on the top of the Firefox browser.

b. Click on Rank Checker and then click on Scheduled Tasks.

A simple yet, very effective feature of this tool is that, data generated by Rank Checker can be exported to a .CSV file (spreadsheet). In the presets window there is an option to download the history of the keyword list to a CSV file, which shows a user how the rankings for his mentioned keywords change over time.

The results in the .CSV file would look something like this:

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Firefox Based Rank Checking Tool!

Recently, Aaron Wall released a new tool. This tool with the name of "Website Health Check Tool" has been developed especially for reviewing a site's title tags, descriptions, URLs, and page status codes.

The Website Health Check Tool then returns the problems the particular site may have, such as missing title tags and descriptions, duplicate title tags or descriptions, www versus non-www issues, index page health, or any type of error handling issues. This tool aims at providing a simple and intuitive interface to make your site free of any major SEO issues.

The Website Health Check Tool will give you answers to queries like:

• Is Google indexing your site? Are they quickly indexing your new pages?
• Do you have duplicate content pages getting indexed in Google?
• Do you have canonical URL issues?
• Are any of your pages in Google missing page titles?
• Does your server send correct error messages?

Aaron Wall is also planning to release the second version of the tool by the end of this month. As put by him, the second version will have features like:

• Allow you to search for not just a site, but a site and a keyword, like [seobook.com seo]
• Add indexed page counts from all major global search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask)
• Allow webmasters to grab results from any of the above 4 engines, or mix and match
• Make each data point we collect link to the source

A good tool to use!

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

New Website Health Check SEO Tool!

Using appropriate keywords are immensely crucial to the ranking of the site you are working on. Imagine a site which has the coolest Flash applications, great and unique content, the best products and services. However, without appropriate keywords, it would hardly ever have a good rank in the Google SERPs! And what about domains and keywords listed in them? This is why Keyword selector tools help us in understanding and analyzing the market while also capitalizing on its benefits. Mentioned below is a list of 10 best keyword selector tools for SEO in alphabetical order: Ask: Run a search for say, 'Search Engine Optimization' in Ask.com. On the left side of the SERPs, you will find a segment titled 'Narrow Your Search,' that has links to all many search terms related to 'Search Engine Optimization'. Use these as keywords. Ask gives you refined SERPs through searching further with this feature. However, many may find this time-consuming. Also, it does not feature volume of traffic.

Compete: Compete offers three main features Keyword referral, Site referral and Compare sites. Keyword referral tells the most recommended domains for certain search terms and queries. In site referral, you tupe in a domain to find out the most referred phrases or search terms. And, in compare sites, you type in 2 domains to know the comparison for keyword referrals. With compete, you do gain a lot of insight on how your competition is faring but it doesn't give you ideas on how to take advantage of the data you get. In case you don't have other alternative analysis tools and you do not mind paying up, its good enough. Else, don't.

Digital point's Keyword suggestion Tool: Digital point's Keyword suggestion Tool incorporates the results of both Overture and Wordtracker's free tool. When you type a phrase, say 'Search Engine Optimization,' and press enter, the site returns two tabular lists of both Overture & Wordtracker information. When you think about it, there couldn't have been a better tool as no keyword is better than the one that brings in most traffic as Overture's tool shows daily results while Wordtracker's free tool shows results of every 6 months. Again, as it feature's Wordtracker's free tool, the results are limited.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool: The Google Adwords Keyword Tool benefits not just Google AdWords advertisers & AdSense publishers but laypeople like us SEO professionals too. As soon as you type a query, say "Search Engine optimization," it gives long tabular list of keyword variations. Okay, no great shakes! Its the next features, that bring home 1st prize- Search volume and average search volume. It shows how the potential keyword you will use is faring in comparison to 'Search Volume' and 'Avg. Search Volume.'

Google Suggest labs: When it first emerged, I thought it was a really nifty tool. Not only does it try to complete the term for you, it also shows the number of results for each keyword. Obviously, it goes without saying that these are helpful keyword alternatives. As for its disadvantage, Google search toolbar offers almost the same features now.

Google Trends Labs: Type two terms, say "Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Optimisation" in the query box and it gives a graphical representation about those 2 terms. You can put in 5 search terms at one go. You can also find out about the relevance of the search terms as it displays the frequency in which the respective topics have appeared in Google News. Additionally, it also tells in which location, people have searched for them most. Beyond this, it serves no benefits. The disadvantage is that, only popular terms are served here. Not good if you are looking for a long tail!

Keyword Discovery Tool: Keyword Discovery is one of the more popular keyword selector tools. It has many excellent features and if you are willing to cough up $49.95 per month, you can get over 1800 phrases! Keyword Discover Tool lets you search specific results of keyword terms in different countries. For eg- A search for 'search engine optimization' in Australia had '9,164' results while in the UK its had just '16'. This tool is helpful if you want to export keyword data and then later import keyword data into other tools that will provide this kind of intelligence.

MS Adlabs Search Funnels: Use this in Internet Explorer and not in Firefox, as more features are available in the former. Type a query and choose from Funnel in or Funnel out. Funnel in will run a search where the results will show all things users searched for before say, typing "Search Engine Optimization". In the outgoing funnel, the results show is a search that starts with the keyword; for example, an outgoing funnel for "Search Engine Optimization" displays all the queries that customers searched after searching for "Search Engine Optimization". The main benefit of Search Funnel is that you can visualize and study behaviour of prospective clients' incoming and outgoing search terms. Disadvantage is that, it can take long to learn and use.

NicheBot: Nichebot's results combines the intelligence of Overture, Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker. That's not all, besides the aforementioned three, you can perform 3 more searches on Thesaurus, Lateralus and Google ranking. In simple words, for $9.95, you can have results of 6 searches and that is really a good deal. However, Nichebot can get slow sometimes and it would only be good to use if it was little cheap!

Word Tracker's Free Tool: Granddaddy of all. Wordtracker is home to 340 million search queries. Use it to discover the most appropriate keywords for your website. This even features a misspelling search which helps you find misspelled keywords. This will ensure your website ranks high in SERPs. The biggest disadvantage is that, its not for free.

Yahoo! Buzz: As the name suggests, Yahoo! Buzz provides readers and everyone with the latest stories, most searched items, top daily searches and the top percentage movers. SEO can take advantage of these features by analyzing the results. This way, you know which domains to register for. As helpful as it is, remember that it will only benefit you if you are seeking the 'percentage of users searching for that subject' within the US alone.

What do we use at PageTraffic for keyword research? Our favorites are Ask, Digital point's Keyword suggestion Tool, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, MS Adlabs Search Funnels and Word Tracker.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

10 Of The Best SEO Keyword Selector Tools!

Every month there is a 'new, must-have SEO extensions' but we hope you don't fall into the trap and actually download them all. Listed below are some of our favorites (read at PageTraffic) and obviously the leading SEO extensions for Firefox available. Here goes the list:

1. Firebug 1.05 - With this helpful little add-on, you can tweak and monitor CSS, inspect and edit HTML, debug, visualize CSS metrics, monitor your network and also make changes in JavaScript live in any web page.

Requirements: Firefox: 1.5 – 2.0.0.

2. Google Global Firefox Extension - As results for Google differ from one country to another, results become limited. The end to this problem is Google Global.

Global is an unobtrusive Firefox extension that allows you to see what the Google search results that you are viewing, look like from different geographical locations. This is very useful if you want to compare organic search results in different countries or if you want to see how your AdWords PPC campaigns appear in different regions. With Google Global, you can change depending on your personal browsing habits. You can open the search results in a new tab, useful for comparing results, you can add as many countries to your Google Global search options and you can also depersonalize the search results shown by Google Global.

Requirements: Firefox LogoFirefox: 1.5 – 2.0.0.

3. Google Webmaster Tools External links ++ - With Google Webmaster Tools External links ++ you can check the PR of the pages linking to you and the anchor text used on the link. This Greasemonkey script determines PR for the link through an XML HTTP request and adding it in front of the link. You need to have Google Webmaster Central Account and the site added and verified in it.

• If the link is found, and it's normal, the PageRank and anchor text is displayed in black, with the anchor text within quotes.
• If the link has rel="nofollow" on it, the info is made orange and striked through.
• If the link is not found the info is made red, and the text "Link not found" is added.
• If the link is an image link, the text "img, alt:" with the alt text is added. Since v1.1
• If a single frame is encountered, the script opens it and tries that for the link, matching Google's behavior. Since v1.1
• URL's without www are now properly recognized as well. Since v1.1

4. LinkChecker 0.6.1 - With LinkChecker, you can check webpage links at a glance with simple color coding. Ditch those massive listings of bad links that provide no context and add LinkChecker to your arsenal of web development tools today. The best thing about this extension is that the creator, Kevin Freitas is constantly developing it and some of the expected upcoming features are:

• Sidebar with broken link summary list anchored to bad links
• Link duplication checking/count
• Options dialog to set timeout, color, skip criteria, right-click menu visibility, and other settings
• More detailed or SVG progress pie chart
• Easy bookmark link checking (currently achieved by finding your bookmarks.html file on your computer, loading it in Firefox, then running LinkChecker — not exactly ideal, is it?)
• Abilty to remove or "turn off" LinkChecker colors after check is complete
• Option time delay each link checked so script not seen as robot

Requirements: Firefox: 1.5 – 2.0.0.

5. RankQuest SEO Toolbar 3.9.1 - RankQuest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensures the popularity of the site. Once you download and install the SEO Toolbar you are only one or two clicks away from carrying out most of your day to day SEO operations. available in Japanese, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, German, Dutch, French and Chinese languages.

Requirements: Firefox: 1.0 – 2.0.0.

6. SearchStatus 1.21 - Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools. In simple words, you can check how any website, no matter where in the world, is performing. With SearchStatus, for every site you visit, you can view its:-

• Google PageRank
• Google Category
• Alexa popularity ranking
• Compete.com ranking
• Alexa incoming links
• Alexa related links
• Backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN

Requirements: Firefox: 1.0 – 3.0a7

7. SEOpen 0.8 - Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization. Including google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using the included toolbar.

Highlights of SEOpen 0.8 are:-

• Yahoo Backlinks
• Pages in Yahoo Index
• Google Backlinks
• Google Cache
• Pages in Google index
• Google Translate to English
• Google Related
• PageRank Check
• MSN Backlinks
• Pages in MSN Index
• Alexa Overview
• Alexa Traffic
• Alexa Related
• Alexa Backlinks
• "Mass Check" multiple sources at once
• Check DMOZ Inclusion
• Keyword Density
• Page Size Checker
• HTML Validator
• Server Header Viewer
• Wayback Machine
• Check robots.txt
• Whois Info

Requirements: Firefox: 1.5 – 2.0.0

8. Server spy 0.1.2 - Server Spy indicates what brand of HTTP server (eg. Apache, IIS, etc.) runs on the visited sites. When a tab is selected, the corresponding server name is shown on the right-hand side of the browser's status bar.

Requirements: Firefox Firefox: 1.5 – 2.0.0.

9. Web Developer extension - The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock, Mozilla and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Requirements: Firefox: 1.0 – 2.0.0.

10. X-Ray 0.8.1 - With X-Ray 0.8.1, without viewing the sourcecode, you can see the tags on a page. One installed the X-Ray command is available by right-clicking as well as in the Tools menu. When applied to a page it can help you see how the document was constructed without having to go back and forth between the sourcecode and the page in your browser. Is that list made of li, dd or p elements? Is that an h3 tag or just some bolded text? X-Ray shows you what's beneath the surface of the page.

Requirements: Firefox: 1.5 – 2.0.0.

No doubt, Firefox Extensions For SEO has greatly eased working thanks to the extension's functionality and possibilities. The above mentioned SEO Firefox extensions are an integral part of our SEO department at PageTraffic

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Top 10 Must Have SEO Firefox Extensions!

Recently, Francesco Mapelli came up with a new SEO tool, known as the 'Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator'. The main functionality of this tool is to provide the site owners with the percentage of pages from their site that are included in the Google Supplemental Index. The Supplemental Index Ratio tells you what percentage of pages from your website are supplemental results. It is good if your site have a lower Supplemental Index Ratio.

Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator with the help of a simple Google site search (with &filter=0 ) can easily find out how many pages are in the total index (main + supplemental). To find out the total number of pages in the main index, one have to add ‘+-inallurl%3Awww.yoursite.com’ extension.

With some basic mathematics principles, the new tool also calculates the percentage of pages that are in the supplemental index. One can notice a strange operator “inallurl:www.domain.com” in the second query. This query is not a real Google operator. In fact the operator does not even exist, this is just an hack to have Google trigger his supplemental filter. With “xyz:www.domain.com”, one gets the same result.

In short, the Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator, gives:

• With http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adomain&filter=0, it finds out the total number of pages indexed by Google from your website.
• Finds the total number of pages in the main index http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adomain+-inallurl%3Adomain&filter=0

This new SEO tool will be helpful to many site owners. To read more on this topic, click here.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Supplemental Index Ratio Calculator: New SEO Tool!

Half’s SEO Notebook has a comprehensive explanation about his new PR tool which he calls Supplemental Results Detector Tool.

“What this tool will do for you:

• Gives you complete control over internal PageRank distribution.
• Helps you visualize exactly what's going on with your internal links.
• Takes the guesswork out of solving supplemental results issues.
• Saves your work so you only have to deep crawl a site once.

And a whole lot more.

How to Use the Supplemental Results Detector

1. First, look at the "total site PageRank" percentage. By increasing that number, you're re-routing more PageRank to your supplemental pages instead of letting it flow out to other domains. I aim for 80%+, but you may feel comfortable with a much lower percentage.
2. Make a list of URLS in Google's main index by running an inurl:www.domain.com search. Look at the results for those pages. You want a high internal PageRank percentage and raw PageRank value as high as possible. To increase the internal PageRank percentage, add more internal links to the page. You can yank out some external links or nofollow them, but I'd avoid that if possible for various reasons.”

Apparently, its so simple a caveman can install it. Its not the greatest invention since sliced bread but nevertheless a helpful tool to stimulate flow.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Introducing 'Supplemental Results Detector Tool', A New PageRank Distribution Management Tool

RedFly Marketing has released the Google Global Firefox Extension which is an unobtrusive Firefox extension. With the help of this extension, the user can know what the Google search results that they are viewing would look like from other geographical locations. The Google Global Firefox Extension is a very helpful tool in the e-commerce field as it allows the users to compare organic search results in different countries or to know how their AdWords PPC campaigns appear in different regions.

One can avail this facility without even having to append the &gl=XX to the search string. It also supports all Google search properties. What you have to do is that when you do your search, simply right click anywhere on the search results page and select “Search Google Global” and select the country of your preference from where you want the search results from. It is as simple as that. The other way is to get the option from the context menu or from the toolbar.

Google results are served in different countries in both organic and paid search. So, start an International or geotargeted Google AdWords campaign running without any second thought as all the controls will be in your hand.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Global Search Firefox Extension!