Internet Marketing Toolbox
» Search Engine Marketing & Positioning
» Search Engine Submission
» Search Engine Marketing & Positioning
Keyword Tool
Enter a keyword (or phrase) related to your company. The site then ranks available phrases with the given keyword in numerical order, with the number indicating how many competing sites are using that same phrase). Overture then narrows the search, even further, to give a representation of what similar sites are using for keywords.
Link Popularity Check
Enter the URL to your web site and choose which search engine you want to perform the search. You can then enter the URL’s of your competition and get those results as well. Linkpopularitycheck.com then sends the results to the user via email.
Link Relationships Tool
Enter the URL to your web site, or any site. Kartoo then generates a map of all links related to the site selected for analysis.
Meta Search Engine
Enter your keyword search in the search field. Then, choose which search engine you want to perform the search. Queryster.com will then bring up your matches in the search engine specified.
NicheBOT.com
A free keyword identification tool that helps you achieve targeted web site optimization, and conduct powerful market research by revealing exactly what people are searching for and what keywords they’re using.
Compare Search Results
Enter the keyword (or phrase) you’re searching for in the “search” field and the first search engine you prefer. Then enter a word in the “versus” field and chose a different search engine (if you enter the same word in the search fields you must compare against a different search engine, otherwise there is nothing for the site to compare to, and the results will be identical). The results given will demonstrate web site ranking between the two search engines chosen.
Spider Simulator
Want to see your web site as a search engine spider does? Use this search engine spider simulator to pinpoint trouble spots that could prevent you from receiving the PageRank you want and deserve. Simply enter the URL, and you will receive, in return, an overall grade for your page (the home page for Web Digest For Marketers scored a 16/24 or 67% — guess we have some work to do). Luckily you also receive specific instructions on what to improve, and how… descriptions, keywords, alt tags, meta tags, title tags, H1 tags, body text, links and so on, all as seen through the eyes of a search engine spider. Quite illuminating.
Link Tree
Link Tree is a link analysis tool that enables you to find those sites that are linking to your competitors but that are not yet linking to you. Link popularity is important because search engines depend heavily upon it to determine the subsequent ranking of your own site. Simply enter the URLs of your competitors (the more, the better), then enter your own URL to exclude sites that already link to you from the results, and turn the software loose. You’ll receive a list of those sites which link to at least two of your competitors but not to your site. What to do? Contact them, of course, with a personal note explaining why your site deserves inclusion in their list of topical links. This is an effective way to build truly valuable links within your topical niche.
Marketleap Link Popularity Check
This link popularity tool tells you not only who is linking to your site, but also provides the ability to create a benchmarket report to compare yourself against your competitors over time. The tool simultaneously measures your link popularity across six search engines (AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Google, HotBot, MSN and Yahoo!) with the option to explore more than half a dozen other SEs such as DMOZ and Overture. For example, at the time of writing this tool, coders found that AltaVista indexed 2670 web sites pointing to the Web Digest For Marketers web site You can also compare yourself to up to three competitors at the same time and benchmark your performance against a sample of sites in your topic category. Results are presented in an attractive, color-coded chart that can be stored and revisited. Also check out the Trend/History report, which gives you a view of how your web site’s link popularity has performed over time, by search engine or in total.
URLinfo
This tool will tell you everything you ever wanted to know — and more — about any URL. Simply type in a URL, and more than 100 tools are at your fingertips, neatly organized in a tabbed interface. Starting with the “General” tab, with just a click you can view Alexa’s ranking and feedback for the URL or gather WHOis information, for example. Move on to “Links” and you can see how many sites link to your URL according to MSN, Google, Yahoo! and Gigablast, as well as view back links from a number of popular blogs. Under the “Similar” tab you will find links to the “related” or “similar” functions of a number of search engines. Other tools include a link to the Copyscape site, where you can find other sites which have plagiarized your content. The Textalyser tool will perform a statistical analysis of the page, including word count, sentence length and keyword density. Check out the BugMeNot tool the next time you come across a page that requests a user name and password — many times this tool will tell you how to bypass the velvet curtain. There are links to places where you can find cached versions of the URL, tools to search the URL page, tools to translate it into other languages, and on and on and on. A fabulous and very valuable resource.
Keyword Research Tool
Here you can research possible keywords for your site in several different ways. The database contains the results of 10 billion searches compiled from 37 sources, including major search engines, PPC sites and regional search engines. Simply enter a keyword and you will receive a list of the top search phrases, which you can review either by all-time popularity or by recent usage. But don’t stop there…you can also search for keywords related to your search terms, or explore your terms’ Keyword Effectiveness Index, which measures the number of times a keyword and/or phrase is searched for as compared to the number of pages on which it occurs to assign an overall index ranking. Another neat trick is the ability to research seasonal trends in keyword searches (if applicable to your terms and/or business). A short registration process is required to gain access to this tool.
SearchSpell Typo Search
This nifty little tool will deliver the top typos for any term entered. Clicking on any of the delivered results brings up a Google search on the typo in a separate browser window which can be used to determine the popularity of any given typo. This editor’s advice to you? Never underestimate the power of a good typo. For example, including deliberate misspellings of your top search in your meta tags can, depending upon your business, be a huge source of traffic. This was learned during a previous gig at an astrology web site, where it turned out that the average consumer could not correctly spell the word “astrology.” By including the most popular misspellings as determined by this tool in meta tags and other online marketing projects, we were able to drive much traffic our way and we were amazed at the results. Go figure.
Global Promoter Batch Keyword Suggestion Tool
Tired of researching keywords one by one? Use this batch keyword suggestion tool to speed up the process. You will find out how many times each of the keywords and/or phrases you enter have been searched so far this month in the major search engines. You will also find other handy tools like a keyword density analyzer, which you can use to figure out why your competitor’s site is ranking higher than yours in a particular search, and the keyword deletion tool, which removes keyword duplicates from multiple lists in order to compare apples to apples.
ClickTracks Delivers Visitor Habits Data & Much More
ClickTracks Log Analyzer lets you track visitor activities and behaviors within your site. You get much more than the usual number of eyeballs, average number of pages read and other general information. ClickTracks provides useful analytics to better optimize your site and enhance the visitors’ site experience.
What key words are driving traffic? And what percentage of search engine users make a purchase based on specific keywords? This tool provides invaluable information as you refine your keyword list.
You can track visitor activities to identify non-productive links, navigation problems and other concerns that may be keeping your conversion rate low. The Log Analyzer gives you an inside look into the minds of visitors, enabling you to make adjustments and refinements that will improve overall site performance.
Check Rankings.com
You can get a free keyword position report for all major search engines. This is useful for start-ups just putting together their lists of keywords. It’ll also assist established on-line businesses refine an existing keyword list by showing how certain keywords rank in popularity. If you’re using Google’s Adwords program, you’ll discover underused keywords you can pick up at the lowest PPC.
Usable Metrics from PRsearch
PRsearch.net provides page rank and other site information for Google, Yahoo and MSN – the big three. It’s a great way to track your PR, but it’s even better for scouting the competition to see how they’ve developed more SE traffic than your site. Excellent source for market research. Enter your keywords to see how they rate against others. Refine your keyword list regularly. Useful, easy-to-understand and it’s free.
Google Age Share Calculator
Are the products you sell ‘age’ sensitive? Do you target a specific age range demographic? If so you’ll find a lot of useful data at Google Age Share Calculator. This site provides a slice by slice analysis of keywords used by SE users from 8 to 46. You can refine your keyword list to target a very specific age spread and avoid marketing your skateboards to senior citizens and your term life insurance to shredders (who could probably use it).
Site Tracking Made Easy
Web-inspect.com makes it easy to track every site you own, host or maintain from a single location. Use keyword research and density tools to optimize your site text. Check out the top PPC keywords — and who’s using them! This is an incredibly versatile site for experienced webmasters and start-up site owners trying to figure out on-line marketing. Lots of site data without a lot of hassle.
Get Connected With LinkVendor
Linkvendor.com delivers detailed site metrics on links, link strength, total number of BLs, who’s linked, host IP addresses, Google PR of all linked sites and other useful link data. Use this site to locate e-tailers interested in reciprocal links or simply useful links for your visitors. For those just starting out, add LinkVendor to your favorites list and check it often. For pros, review your links frequently to see how well connected you are. In cyberspace, it pays to be well connected.
Do You Have Robust Links?
Here’s how Pubsub.com describes its LinkRanks service: “LinkRanks is PubSub’s method of measuring the strength, persistence, and vitality of links appearing in over 23 million sources that PubSub monitors.” This enables you to quickly determine the ‘influence’ any given site has on the behavior of SE users on any given day and over time. LinkCounts totals up a site’s in- and out-bound links and provides stats on daily changes. Finally, you can set up PubSub’s Site Stats feature to access link ranks and link counts for your site and competitor sites.
Keyword Analysis Simplified
Mcdar.net provides a two-stroke approach to keyword analysis. Enter the domain name (yours or theirs), enter the keywords and press enter. You’ll see a list of how any given domain’s keywords rate against the competition on Google. Selected the 2004 ‘Tool of the Year’, it’s fun, informative and worth a view.
Create Business Simulations With Forio
Forio.com provides free software to create your own on-line business simulations for viewing by clients or customers. You control access and can broadcast the simulations you create over the Net. The basic, free software will handle models with up to 2500 equations – plenty of power for most small site owners. Additional packages with more features and more computing power are available at a reasonable price. You can broadcast over the internet or within a LAN with ease. Ideal for client presentations and in-house data sharing in real time.
Email Marketing Metrics
If your on-line business relies on email marketing, take a look at Bronto.com for the latest in marketing data. You can also organize your emailing lists on-line, create professional-looking send-outs, track your email performance and integrate the data with popular metrics software.
The site also publishes quarterly stats on delivered, opened and click-thru rates by industry — helpful to target both your message and your market with laser precision. Perfect for special promotions, newsletters and other correspondence to keep your ebiz in front of your previous buyers.
Business Analysis Tools
Spotfire.com has been around since 1996 providing business analytic software and solutions to on-line and brick-and-mortar businesses. Often, early decisions made by start-up owners mean the difference between success and failure. Spotfire’s analysis packages allow decision makers (that’s you) to spot trends, identify mutually beneficial partnerships, work synergies and drive well-considered decisions. The software is also useful for developers faced with underperforming websites in need of change.
Metrics don’t lie and this analytical tool will provide the information your clients need to make site adjustments and you need to land the clients.
Site Maps Made Easy
Site maps are useful to visitors and to site owners – especially site owners who change content often. Search engines spider site maps looking for new information from the last visit (cached view). A site map makes it easier to pick up this content by SEs and new content always scores points in the PR sweepstakes. XML-sitemaps.com provides a site map option for Google’s spiders and a text map for Yahoo’s search engine. Simply enter the URL you want mapped, press enter and watch the progress on screen as the entire site is spidered. Help your visitors with an HTML site map. Help search engines with both site and text maps. And help yourself with happier customers and more accurate readings of your site by all the major search engines. It’s simple and very effective.
» Search Engine Submission
The Open Directory Project
The Open Directory Project is a collection of recommended sites compiled by volunteer editors and other interested parties. While not as well known (obviously) as Google or Yahoo, the sites listed on the ODP are hand-picked for quality and relevance by a member editor. Assuming that your site has valuable, interesting content, you can become a volunteer editor and enter your own site on this SE.
altavista: Submit a Site
Here’s the hook up landing page for the Altavista SE. Altavista has adopted the Yahoo SE algorithm so you’re likely to get similar search results through a Yahoo and Altavista search. However, there are users who simply find Altavista to be more familiar (it’s been around so long) and prefer it to the Yahoo SE. Besides, your site should be linked to every search engine available and though not as important as it was five years ago, Altavista is still one of the largest SEs and it has its proponents.
Microsoft bCentral’s Submit It!
The MSN search engine is an up-and-comer with the technical resources and financial clout to compete with the big boys like Google and Yahoo. This is the sign up page to get your site listed on this expanding SE. And it’s really simple to do.
Google: Submit your Site
Then, of course, there’s the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of search engines, Google. Though it has been losing market share since its collaboration with Yahoo bit the dust, Google is still the most used, most expansive SE out there today, though Yahoo and MSN are coming on strong. Even so, your site must be linked to the Google SE, no if, ands or buts. This is your link to start the process.