Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Watch’
Best of 2009: Social Media Marketing, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010With the rapidly increasing use of social media tools for marketing and PR comes growing pressure to demonstrate results. But what metrics are really most appropriate for social media measurement? How can you monitor everything that’s being said about your company, competitors and key industry topics across the social media landscape without spending a fortune on monitoring software? Is your social media strategy built on a solid foundation, or is it more like a Hollywood movie set—a pretty facade with nothing behind it? Which tools are most important for social media participation, analyzing what’s being said, and separating important substance from the noise?
Discover the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best posts on social media from this year.
ROI Is Dead by StraightUpSearch
This post suggests that marketers should focus on a different ROI when calculating the value of social media efforts: “return on insight.” Traditional ROI measures fail to take into account the search value of social media engagement, as well as the value of the customer service and product enhancements that social listening and interaction can provide.
Facebook Lets Users Open Up Profiles by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Mark Walsh helpfully outlines the recent changes Facebook has made to its privacy settings, though noting that “profiles opened to everyone, however, will still not turn up in searches on Google or other outside search engines.”
How to Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard by aimClear
Marty Weintraub provides a remarkable and highly detailed guide to setting up a social media reputation monitoring dashboard using free tools such as Google Alerts, iGoogle, Google Analytics, and keyword tools along with Excel. The set up takes some time, but the end result is a powerful monitoring tool without the cost of a paid social media monitoring application. This tutorial is clear and generously illustrated with screenshots.
Is Your Online Marketing Strategy All Tweet and No Meat? by HubSpot
Rick Burnes notes that without a strong content strategy to back up social media efforts, marketers risk the “all hat, no cattle” syndrome: lots of attention on Twitter and Facebook, but no compelling content to back it up and turn the curious into the converted. Compelling thought-leadership content, blog posts, white papers, video and SEO efforts support and create long-term value for social media tactics.
A free DIY approach to social media by iMedia Connection
Rebecca Weeks provides a “cheat sheet” with five key tactics to increase website traffic through social media, including interaction on the most popular social networking sites, using free Twitter tools to maximize the value of that platform, and getting exposure on social news sites. Another noteworthy post from this publication is Facebook is a Personal CRM for Baby Boomers, in which Daniel Flamberg reports on an Accenture study showing that in early 2009, “boomers posted a 59 percent increase in use of social networks; a rate of adoption 30 times faster than any other age group.” Facebook’s InsideFacebook blog reports that in February and March of this year, the number of Facebook users age 35 and over doubled. Boomers use Facebook somewhat differently than younger age groups as well; Flamberg notes that “they are more reticent to share information, less likely to leave comments and a bit slower to join groups.”
8 Excellent Tools to Extract Insights from Twitter Streams by Social Media Today
Noting that with the collective millions of tweets produced every day, there is “an emerging demand to sieve signals from noises and harvest useful information,” Yung-Hui Lim reviews Twitter analytics tools that can help with the task, including Twitalyzer, Trendistic (formerly Twist), Twitt(url)y and TweetStats.
What’s In Your Social Media Toolkit? by Dave Fleet
In this short but useful post, Dave Fleet outlines the set of social media tools he finds most useful on a daily basis, such as Google Reader for keeping up with blogs, Twitter for real-time communications, Radian6 for social media monitoring, and LinkedIn for social networking.
Video search 101: Marketing and optimization by iMedia Connection
Noting some statistics on the explosive growth of online video, David L. Smith explains how marketers can use video search engine optimization (VSEO) and video search engine marketing (VSEM) to maximize both the organic and paid search value of video assets.
Forrester: B2B Marketers Need To Keep Up With Business Technology Buyers On Social Media by Forrester Research
It’s pretty rare to include a press release in a best of list here—actually, this is probably the first time ever—but this one includes key statistics on how b2b buyers use social media on the job. As the release notes, “Despite the fact that 77 percent of business technology decision-makers engage with social media on the job, most B2B marketers are not effectively using social technologies to influence the purchasing decisions of their customers.” For those marketers, reading this announcement is a starting point.
6 Steps for Creating a Social Media Marketing Roadmap & Plan by Social Media Today
Lorna Li provides an outstanding roadmap for b2b social media marketing, starting with an understanding of what social media is and what it can and can’t do. She explains how to use tactics like blogger outreach, social networking and social news marketing to create engagement with prospects and move them toward your solutions. Another noteworthy post from SMT is Social Media ROI – a financially sound method. After noting that no “even ‘somewhat’ acceptable method for calculating marketing ROI” exists, Axel Schultze goes on to propose a formula for measuring the ROI of social media interactions. But measuring the return from social media investments is problematic for several reasons, and the notion of being able to do so with any accuracy remains controversial, as indicated in the large number of comments generated by Axel’s post.
Top 25 Social Networks by Navel Marketing
Brian Critchfield reports on the top social networks ranked by traffic. The list also shows previous rank—indicating which networks are growing and which faltering. While most of the sites on the list are hardly surprising (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), there are a few unexpected results, like Tagged at #6 and Yuku at #16.
Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation by Mashable
Noting that “Depending on how popular and well-known your brand is, there may be few or many people talking about it,” Dan Schawbel recommends setting up an RSS feed reader and Delicious account, then using free monitoring tools such as Google Alerts, Technorati, Twitter and Social Mention to keep tabs on discussions of your company and products across social media platforms. For those marketers more serious about social media engagement, and a budget to back it top, Dan wrote a follow-up post detailing the Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For, including Buzzlogic, Radian 6 and Cision.
5 forces that are strangling conversational marketing by iMedia Connection
Tom Hespos warns marketers against five practices that can damage a brand in the social media sphere, like failing to think about conversational marketing strategically, or flooding Twitter with brand messages rather than engaging in true dialogue.
11 Reasons You Can’t Ignore Social Media in 2009 by Digital Labz
Social media now has wide adoption as a marketing and PR tool, but for those still reluctant to use tools like blogs, video, LinkedIn and Twitter for marketing, Eric Brantner offers almost a dozen reasons to get started, such as “social media is gaining trust,” it’s fast, it’s passionate, and it’s free (at least the tools are for the most part).
Study: Company Blogs Lead Social Media Options by MediaPost
Mark Walsh reports that “blogging (is) the most important lead-generation source among social media options, followed by StumbleUpon, YouTube, Facebook, De.lic.ious and Digg” (not a surprising result, considering that those other sites tend to support a corporate blog, not replace it). He also quotes a HubSpot study finding that three-quarters of bloggers in small to midsize companies say that “their company blogs were ‘useful,’ ‘important,’ or ‘critical’ to their business.”
Another MediaPost article worth checking out is Scout Labs Offers Cheaper Way To Monitor Consumers. Gavin O’Malley writes that Scout Labs offers “a more economical consumer sentiment-tracking service for agencies and marketers” than Nielsen BuzzMetrics or TNS Cymfony. The company has an impressive list of clients using its tool to monitor and analyze brand conversations across the social media landscape.
Top 5 SlideShare Groups – A Rich Learning Environment for Social Media by uber.la
John McElhenney praises SlideShare as an innovative social media tool and links to his favorite groups for learning about and sharing knowledge of social media.
How to be a LinkedIn superstar by iMedia Connection
Larry Weintraub explains how to get the most out of LinkedIn, from creating the right kind of profile, building connections and soliciting recommendations to working with LinkedIn groups.
Social Media Marketing 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch
For those either still new to social media, or just struggling to explain its value to a manager or client, Ron Jones provides an excellent explanation of social media, the different types of sites on the social media landscape, and the marketing and PR benefits of using social media.
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business by Social for Business
As the title promises, here are more than four dozen ideas on how to use Twitter for business, categorized into five groups including “Ideas about WHAT to Tweet” (e.g., ask questions, retweet interesting information from others, and when retweeting your own stuff, make sure it has value to the reader and isn’t just self-promotion) and “Some Positives to Throw Back” when people argue that Twitter is a waste of time, such as Twitter’s value in breaking real-time news and quickly collecting market feedback.
The Periodic Table of the Social Media Elements by eyecube
This very clever and ambitious post compares social media to chemistry, and lays out a “periodic table” for social media encompassing different behaviors (e.g., sharing and listening), key influencers (David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis, Joe Pulizzi, etc.), tools (delicious, Feedburner, LinkedIn et al.), practices, blogs and more.
7 Social Media Predictions for 2009 by Search Engine Watch
Erik Qualman produced this list of predictions in January. Granted, perhaps none were particularly daring, but his clairvoyance has proven remarkably accurate to this point. “Social media continues its rapid growth”—check. “Marketing budgets will continue shrinking”—yup. “Many free services will become defunct”—hmm, not yet, but there are still three months of 2009 to to.
Social Media and the Enterprise Customer – Wired PR by uber.la
John McElhenney lays out a process for mapping your social media communities, then capitalizing on their structures by letting your customers and partners tell your story for you.
What The F**K is Social Media?
Marta Kagan has put together possibly the best single presentation on social media ever. Not sure how to explain the potential and elements of social media marketing to your boss or client? Borrow some wisdom from Marta’s slide deck:
20 Totally Free Buzz Pocket Mining Tools by aimClear
Want to know what’s being said in social media circles about your company, competitors and industry but don’t have the budget for a tool like Techrigy SM2 or Radian 6? The inscrutable Marty Weintraub reviews 20 free tools for monitoring social media buzz, including StumbleUpon Recently & All Time Most Popular Hot Tags, Facebook Lexicon. Twitter search engines, Google Advanced Blog Search and a few you’ve probably never heard of.
7 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Failed (and how to fix it!) by Stuntdubl
Todd Malicoat advises marketers on how to avoid social media marketing failure by outlining seven reasons results may fall short of expectations, including “you chose the wrong channels” and “your content sucked.”
5 Social Media Mistakes To Avoid by ZoopMedia
In another post on the theme of social media mistakes to avoid, Justin Wright offers up five surefire ways to fail, such as spamming the networks with only your own content and not taking full advantage of the messaging and SEO potential of social media profiles.
The Six Fears of Facebook and Other Social Media Channels by Internet Marketing Strategies and Secrets
Bob Cargill analyzes the fears that keep some people out of the social media realm. These are individual fears (e.g., fear of rejection, loss of privacy, time commitment) rather than the social media ostrich type fears that prevent businesses from taking advantage of it.
How to Make Money Off Social Media (originally titled: Selling Social Media to Your Clients) by Webdesigner Depot
Despite the spammy title, this is a very worthwhile piece for corporate b2b marketers or those who work with them. Most helpfully, for those just getting started with social media (or not sure if they’ve started correctly), this post provides a “Suggested Social Media Package” with a list of must-haves (e.g., a WordPress blog, Twitter account, Facebook page) and nice-to-haves (e.g., a YouTube channel and Live Help component on your website). One caveat to the advice given in this post: for businesses, a Facebook page is generally a better option than a Facebook group.
Best of 2009: SEO Tips, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010Which factors are really most important in search engine rankings? How do search engines treat different forms of keywords? How can you get the most of out of Google’s free webmaster tools to improve rankings? What other tools are worth checking out for keywords, linking and website analysis?
Find the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best SEO blog posts from this year.
Guide to Search Engine Ranking Factors by HuoMah SEO Blog
The brilliant—and entertaining—David Harry provides an exhaustive list of the primary and secondary factors affecting search engine rank, from link-related factors (link text, relevance, PageRank) and header data through trust-related factors (domain history, outbound links) and “dampening factors” (poor coding, duplicate content and URL issues).
Q&A: A Few Things You Need to Know About Keyword Usage by Search Engine Guide
Stoney deGuyter offers valuable insights on how search engines treat keywords, such as that capitalization (usually) doesn’t matter, keywords have more weight if they are used in a title or header tag or are bolded, and search engines are getting better at recognizing forms of a word (e.g. sites including “kayaks” or “kayaking” will show up on a search for “kayak”). On that last point though, keep in mind that for popular search phrases, even a single character can make a big difference. For example, one website shows up at #2 on Google for “business services management,” but at #23 for business service management.
Build A Great B2B Search Engine Marketing Campaign by The Milwaukee SEO
This post combines useful information about setting up b2b SEO and SEM campaigns (such as getting the website information architecture right to start with, choosing keywords carefully with an eye toward the long tail, using PPC advertising effectively, and targeting local search) with humor—at least to those of us who live and breathe b2b marketing, and are amused by how perplexing it can be to b2c marketing agencies. Another noteworthy post from this blog is Get Keyword Rank Data from Google Webmaster Tools, provides detailed step-by-step instructions for analyzing website performance using Google’s webmaster tools. This is geekier than even most search marketers will go, but can supply valuable insights.
SEO Basics: 6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
Thomas McMahon serves up more tips for using Google’s webmaster tools, including how to spot site errors such as broken links, analyze meta and title tags, and identify a site’s top keyword search queries.
Domain Name Forwarding and Search Engines by Best Domain Names
Dan LeFree explains how properly set up forwarding for multiple domain names to a single website without being penalized by the search engines for duplicate content. The site looks a little spammy, but the article is a helpful, quick read.
Five Tips for Avoiding Deceptive SEO Companies by Small Business Trends
An excellent piece from Janet Meiners Thaeler on manipulative practices to watch out for when hiring an SEO firm, such as “guaranteed” rankings, use of hidden links, and duplicate content on multiple domains or subdomains. For more on this topic, see Just Say No to Bad SEO on SEOmoz.
SEO Tools 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch
Ron Jones reviews several keyword, site grader and linking tools. His favorite keyword tool is the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool; as Ron explains, “I like this one because it links to most of the other existing keyword tools, such as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and tools from Google, MSN, and Yahoo. This one tool lets you explore many others.”
B2B Marketers: Setting Expectations For Your SEO Campaign by Search Engine Land
What’s the magic formula for SEO success? Julie Shumaker writes that “Setting realistic goals, measuring the right thing, and establishing a baseline” are all key parts of the process. She emphasizes that SEO is a long-term project, that getting on page one of Google isn’t always realistic (at least in the short term), and that ultimately, traffic and conversions are what matters—not just rankings. Another excellent SEO post from Search Engine Land is The Evolving State Of Social Media & SEO. Eric Enge notes that “social media will be a major source of ranking signals for the search engines in the future,” both due to its link-building potential and the emergence of real-time search.
Setting Expectations for Search Engine Optimization by Search Engine Watch
Following on the same theme as the post above, Mark Jackson writes a case study on setting realistic expectations with SEO clients. It’s very difficult for small websites to outrank large ones, particularly for highly competitive phrases. Among his conclusions: more content helps. Blogging helps. Social media works. Link buying isn’t supposed to help, but it does, and some large companies spend big bucks on this, which is difficult for smaller firms to compete with. Focusing on longer-tail terms can provide respectable traffic and conversions without huge costs.
Why it Makes Sense to Target Longtail Keywords First by SEO Book
Aaron Wall explains that because new or small sites without a large number of external links pointing to them are unlikely to rank well for highly competitive search phrases, it’s better to focus on longtail terms first, building up trust, links and traffic gradually. This post includes a couple of excellent graphics showing the differences in how search engine algorithms treat highly competitive terms from more specific longtail phrases.
12 Easy Mistakes That Plague Newcomers to the SEO Field by SEOmoz
For those new to SEO, Rand Fishkin provides some excellent advice on mistakes to avoid including reciprocal linking (it doesn’t work, and it looks spammy), targeting the same keyword on multiple pages, and not using XML sitemaps. My only quibble would be with his advice to use the nofollow attribute for PageRank sculpting; the nofollow tag is insidious and the value questionable.
SEO Quality Indicators & The Heap Paradox by Search Engine Journal
Ryan Caldwell ventures from the philosopical to the practical in this post, providing 10 key indicators of website SEO quality, from “lean code and meaty content” along with proper tag usage to listing a physical address and toll-free phone number. Another notable post from Search Engine Journal is There Is No Secret Sauce in SEO! , in which James Morris debunks several common SEO myths, such as that there is “mystical secret formula” or “complicated scientific method” to achieving SEO success. He closes with advice on where to begin, and the missions of an SEO including a clear understanding of goals up front and collaborating with developers and writers to optimize content.
Blog SEO: 5 Tips To Improve Ranking and Increase Traffic by PCWorld
Mike Keller offers a helpful set of tips for new bloggers to optimize their blogs for search, covering basics such as variable title tags in Blogger (note: this won’t work with all templates), meta tags and setting up RSS feeds.
Blog SEO Tips: Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid by Blogsessive
Alex Cristache details five common SEO mistakes bloggers make that cause their sites to fare more poorly than necessary in search engine rankings. Among the mistakes are ignoring (or improper use of) h1, h2 etc. title tags, and viewing SEO as a one-time process rather than an ongoing discipline.
5 Client Pitch Tips That Score Contracts by Search Engine Journal
Dev Basu provides five tips to SEO consultants on how to successfully sell their services, such as asking good questions, focusing on solving client problems, and identifying exactly what the prospective client needs to know (and then not wasting time by telling them everything under the sun). Great tips for SEOs who know their craft but may struggle with business development.
SEO Trends and the Future of SEO by SEO Theory
In this extensive and thoughtful post, Michael Martinez discusses the impact of trends such as personalized search, universal search and social media, and advises SEO professionals to focus on optimizing for query spaces (all the queries and content relevant to a specific topic) in order to capture traffic for long tail keywords.
The Answer To All Your SEO Questions! by Search Engine Land
Jill Whalen exposes the simple two-word answer that applies to nearly any question about SEO, including how quickly Google indexes new pages, what to do if your search position suddenly drops, the benefit of including keywords in URLs and more.
How to do a 301 redirect for a website by Revenue Robot
This post, which belongs in every SEO consultant’s bookmarks on technical topics, explains how to create a 301 redirect for PHP, ASP .Net, Java, ColdFusion and other environments.
6 cures for common SEO mistakes by iMedia Connection
Brian Easter runs down six common SEO mistakes—such as ugly URLs, duplicate content, and a disconnect between SEO and PR—and explains how to correct or avoid them.
Canonical URL Tag – The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps by SEOmoz
Rand Fishkin extols the virtues of and details the process for using the cannonical rel parameter to resolve duplicate content issues with less technical muss and fuss than implementing a 301 redirect. He outlines the tag’s purpose, operation, and treatment by search engines as well as answering common questions. The incredible number of comments this post generated is a testament to the tag’s importance in the SEO toolbag.
Minor Miracles And Major Feats of First-Page Rankings by MediaPost Search Insider
David Berkowitz reports on how critical video is to attaining a first-page ranking on Google, reporting on a study showing that “Videos are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text pages.” He also quotes a finding from Nate Elliot of Forrester that there are “an average of 4.7 million text pages competing for a place on results pages with an average of just 9.4 text results—giving each text page about a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of results.” Every SEO who’s ever achieved this feat should be proud.
Rewriting the Beginner’s Guide Part VIII: Search Engine Tools and Services by SEOmoz
Danny Dover updates one of the most indispensable guides to the SEO craft anywhere. Though written for beginners, even fairly experienced SEOs are likely to find at least a few new ideas, and helpful reminders, in this detailed guide to the robots.txt file, search engine tools and more.
Check Your Search Engine Rankings, Why Your Competitors in Organic Search Might Not Always Be Who You Think They Are by The Internet Marketing Driver
In this extensive post, Glenn Gabe points out that the competitors for a keyword in SEO are often quite different from a company’s real world competitors; they can include reference sites, blogs, publications, review sites, directories and other websites that a business owner wouldn’t normally identify as “competition.” To support his point, Glenn uses example searches for flat screen TVs (only two manufacturers listed in the top 10 sites), HD video cameras (only Canon at #4), cabernet sauvignon and fuel efficient cars (no makers listed in the top search results).
Understand Google’s Guidelines by Alibaba
Jon Rognerud reveals what matters to Google when indexing and ranking pages, and what doesn’t. He provides tips on design (how to get Google’s spider to read your text before your menu links), how to get your site indexed in 24 hours or less (though you need to be careful with this technique), and what Google ignores (e.g. the meta keywords tag, duplicate links, and graphics—except for the alt tag assigned to them).
6 SEO steps for a website redesign by eVision Online Marketing Blog
George Aspland offers an excellent primer on incorporating SEO considerations from the start when doing a website redesign, from the initial site audit and keyword research through navigation, linking and URL structure changes.
Dirty SEO tricks you should avoid by iMedia Connection
Rich Cherecwich delves into the details of two “gray hat” SEO practices that are best avoided: link buying and domain buying. He also gives advice on what to do if your site does somehow get blacklisted by the search engines.
Why do SEOs forget about REAL marketing? by HuoMah SEO Blog
In this long guest post, Ben McKay starts off with the contention that “with market research, planning, implementation, creative flare, and an ongoing feedback loop of course, you can do just that –(SEO to draw the right kind of traffic) the same way you attempt to carry-out more traditional marketing campaigns.” He then goes on to discuss the art vs. science of SEO, ROI measurement, what SEO practitioners can learn from traditional marketing, before concluding “A more fulfilling and professional online presence could be found from thinking along structured lines—both in the way you operate with clients and also the way you achieve your SEO goals.”
DoFollow Links vs. NoFollow Links by The Minority Report
Supporting my recent post on the insidious nofollow attribute, this post notes that “the entire Internet is built on the premise of hyperlinking and as The Pasty Muncher says it here: ‘Links form the chain that holds the web together.’” The writer notes that WordPress blogs are nofollow by default, but again you can fix that with the dofollow WordPress plugin. Just say “no” to nofollow.
How Yahoo Might Automate SEO by SEO by the Sea
In this controversial post (just read the comments!), Bill Slawski reports on a patent from Yahoo! that seems to suggest the search engine can “optimize” pages automatically. Bill outlines what’s in the patent, then points out a number of obvious flaws in any such approach, including “A site owner might want to target less popular search terms on pages that are a few directory levels deep in their site and have those pages rank well for searches that their audience will conduct rather than target more popular terms with those pages, and rank very poorly.”
Best of 2008: SEO Keyword Tips & Tools
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010The posts below, some of the best of 2008 on the topic of keyword research for SEO, provide guidance and reviews of efficacious tools to help throughout the process of generating a comprehensive keyword list; analyzing the competition; and prioritizing keywords to generate maximum ROI from SEO efforts.
Using pay-per-click guinea pigs: How to leverage PPC for more successful SEO campaigns by Hamlet Batista
Search guru Hamlet Batista presents a detailed yet concise guide to using Google AdWords data to maximize the ROI of your natural search efforts, by focusing on those terms that convert most effectively rather than merely the phrases with highest monthly search volume.
Building Bricks: Keyword Discovery Process for Small Businesses by SEOmoz
This clearly written post describes a short process that an SEO practitioner can work through with a client (or internal management) to very efficiently develop a comprehensive list of generic, longtail, alternative, complementary, brand and competitive keywords and variations to prioritize for a website.
Keyword Research: Wordpot Rivals KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker by Practical eCommerce
Online marketer Jeff Muendel provides an in-depth review of Wordpot, a free keyword research tool which displays, for any query, both Exact Daily (searches for the exact term) and Total Daily (searches that contain the search term) figures, as well as synonyms, related words, and associated words.
Advanced Keyword Research Tactics by Bruce Clay, Inc.
Writing from the fall 2008 SMX East conference, Virginia Nussey relays the advice of several search experts—including Christine Churchill, Ariel Bardin and Marty Weintraub—on the next steps to take beyond basic keyword research. Among the ideas: looking at terms used by visitors in your site search box, gathering terms from offline conversations with customers and prospects, and checking tags clouds on social media sites.
Top 10 Free Keyword Tools by Internet Marketing Blog
As the title of his post suggests, Frank Levert offers brief, informative summaries of his favorite keyword research tools here. While several are familiar to almost anyone who does SEO (the Google Insights for Search, Wordtracker, Trillian), there are a few suprises on the list worth investigating.
Google AdWords Free Keyword Tool
The free version of Google’s AdWords keyword tool, once little more than a barely useful toy, has been beefed up to provide the power of the real AdWords keyword tool to non-advertisers. This is one tool that belongs on every SEO pro’s list.
Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimization by Search Engine Watch
Mark Jackson presents a concise yet very helpful process outline for performing basic keyword research, using keyword tools, and analyzing the competitiveness of terms to prioritize your list for SEO efforts.
Free Keyword Research Tools – the Ultimate Guide by Search Engine Journal
Following up on her excellent 5 Tools for Keyword Brainstorming post from the spring of last year, Ann Smarty has compiled here a list that lives up to the title, with tools divided into categories including: synonym search (Thesaurus.com belongs here BTW), competitor analysis, social media, keyword suggestion tools, analytics, and related posts.
