The Seven Key Habits of Successful Bloggers

By in Blogs & Podcasts

Growing a blog isn’t easy, yet many dream of being of a successful blogger. What key habits set successful bloggers apart from the thousands of blogs that are eventually abandoned and fail?

Like many things in life, it comes down to habit. Successful bloggers have proven and tested routines and approaches they perform faithfully, pushing their blogs to greater and greater success.

Here are seven key habits to becoming a well-known blogger:

They write in an easy-to-read and flowing style

Where new bloggers often agonize every word, and need multiple revisions before their pieces are “perfect,” successful bloggers have found a way to write in a flowing and conversational style. This is not to say they don’t do research and use facts — they do — but they find a way to incorporate those facts into an engaging and interesting story. The very best bloggers can make you feel like you’re having a direct and personal conversation with them, just as you would a close friend.

They write — a lot

As the saying goes: “If you want to be a writer, you must write.” And, therefore, if you want to be a blogger, you must blog.

Writing, like many other skills, improves with practice. The more you blog, the better you’ll blog.

They share personal examples and stories

They let you know what they’re thinking about, what they’re trying, what worked, and what didn’t. They are constantly learning about blogging, and also, actually, about life — and they are open in sharing their experiences. This process of being human helps them build large and committed followings.

They engage through pictures and data

While crafting the content as a story, successful bloggers know their blog is more interesting when it has pictures and data.

They use both liberally. They are not afraid to expand on data gathered by others, or to collect their own. They often use images in a way that captures attention and certainly furthers the story. They pay attention to the visual appeal of their post, alongside the written appeal.

They are active members of the community

Successful bloggers are quick to build connections and take part in their online communities. They like, share, comment, and curate when they find work that is worthy of notice. They are glad to share additional resources and information with their communities, and are happy to give help and receive help.

They have opinions and share them

The best blogs are written from a point of view — a perspective. They are not just aggregators of information, but, instead, offer tailored and deliberate points of view. Successful bloggers share what they stand for, and are not afraid to give their opinions. This helps them stand out in the sea of other bloggers who might be writing on the same thing. Successful bloggers are willing to be human and vulnerable.

They commit to their blogs

One study I read suggests that more than 181 million blogs come online each year, and the bulk of them will be abandoned within six months.

Successful bloggers commit to their blogs as a long-term endeavor. They work steadily and consistently to build their readership and their alliances. They know they need to be committed to their blogs to have worthwhile results.

These are the seven key habits of successful bloggers. Which will you polish up to make your blog more successful?

Dr. Rachna Jain is the author of Internet Marketing for the Rest of Us: Your In-Depth Guide to Profitable Popularity. She writes at ProfitablePopularity.com/blog.

Four Benefits of Cloud Computing for Your Online Business

By in Business Cloud Technology

Cloud computing is one of the newest phenomenons in the online business world that is taking companies to new levels of efficiency.

Many small- and medium-sized online businesses are choosing to improve their efficiency by making use of the greater computing power cloud computing can give them. This power is usually provided by a third party.

Since small businesses can now delegate their mail storage, customer care, data storage, software delivery etc. to the cloud, they can compete with larger businesses without being forced to foot a large technology bill.

Here is a look at how you can use cloud computing both to improve your efficiency and increase the opportunities available to your small online business.

1. You will have fewer operational issues
The third party that provides you with your cloud computing services will use standardized processes. Standardization helps ensure there are fewer errors and issues with your processes. This will give your business certain continuity. As a result, you will spend less time trying to fix operational failures and spending more time on the important things such as drawing more customers and connecting with them.

With cloud computing, you will be able to use the same service or integration of several services each time and in similar projects. You will, therefore, see the same result each time. This predictability will help you to have services based on predetermined design patterns.

2. You can open up new business models
With powerful computing within your reach, you can now have access to various projects and business models that had not been possible in the past. You can start new innovations and open up new streams of revenue. There are many companies that are using cloud services dedicated to build completely new propositions and business models and offering new services. Small businesses are doing this the most. Other examples include Spotify, a digital music portal that brings mood-specific music to all devices ranging from tablets, mobile phones, computers and home entertainment systems.

3. You can achieve business agility
With having a reliable third party offering you remote assistance with several processes, you can get the computing resources you need exactly when you need them. This means that you will be able to deliver results in a more timely way. You will also be able to provide cheaper services because efficient business will bring your own overall costs down by reducing the time to send your product to the client.
As a result, you will be able to offer your services at competitive rates and attract the loyalty of your customers. It can be possible for cloud computing to bring down a project such as a data analytics project to three weeks from a projected time period of four months.

4. You can make better use of resources
When you find your brand launching and completing projects that are more efficient, and that your employees are spending less time on struggling to fix operational issues, you know you are making the most of your resources. You and your employees now have valuable free time to devote to other activities that can add value to your business and help it grow.

Of course it’s not easy to quantify such value, and it differs from business to business. However your employees are assets as well and, therefore, if they are able to engage in activities that improve them, this is valuable for the business.

With cloud computing, you will also find yourself benefiting from what is known as the ‘economies of scale.’ Your cloud computing service provider will be able to make better use of physical resources and bring down consumption of energy when compared to standard traditional ways.

It’s important to note that cloud computing third-party services are usually provided without a contract. What is great about this short-term operational expense mode is that you are not making any long-term commitments in this case. You don’t have any upfront expenses, which is great for small businesses with limited funds. You can start your projects much faster than if there was an upfront expense required and can also end the projects quicker with no loss through investments in cloud computing.

Take the lead today and see what cloud computing can do for your business. You will be surprised at the true power of what is known as the cloud.

Collins Paris writes content that snaps, crackles and pops on a variety of topics related to Web-based business and working from home from SEO and Web marketing to writing and eCommerce. To find out more sizzling content, visit him at WebBusinessAgenda.com.

How to Use Link Removal & Google Disavow to Fix Link Penalties

By in Featured

Over the past year, Google has really tightened the screws on what they determine to be participation in manipulative link schemes. This has been tackled from both sides of the link equation; he who giveth, and he who taketh away.

Those who give out links from a site which was engineered to manipulate search engine rankings may have their sites penalized. Manual reviews that see evidence of serious breaches of Google’s commandments may result in excommunication. Yes – banned, de-indexed and sent into galactic oblivion. That might be for the sin of selling page rank via text based-links, giving run-of-site links, encouraging guest blog posts, allowing registration of sploggers, along with and each and every form of manipulative link-building schemes known to man.

The recipients of the links won’t escape Google’s witch hunt for link miscreants either! Obviously, bad links lead directly to your website’s front door, so finding you is not at all difficult. On the basis of guilt by association, ignorance is no excuse. You may not actually be burnt at the stake, but you may be spanked for even minor link receipt infringements.

In many cases, the impact of bad links will not be dramatic. Instead, it may manifest itself as an erosion rather than an “across the board” drop. Often, a group of important keyword phrases will decline in the search engine results pages, while others remain relatively stable.

Getting your head around what’s happening can be extremely difficult because Google now has so many punitive facets to its algorithms. (*1) Incoming link quality and anchor text content, along with on-page content analysis, assessment of percentage of advertising content above the fold, exact-match keywords in domain name and heaven only knows what else! Devising a remedial strategy can be confusing in the extreme!

Basically, your best option is to take an holistic approach and address the various aspects in turn. In this instance, we shall address a mechanism for tackling algorithmic penalties.

Guilty Twinges Notwithstanding

Have you ever been seduced into building links to boost your rankings? Sure you have – hasn’t everyone tried to find a way to improve their position? Unfortunately, it’s highly probable that some of the links that boosted your rankings 5 or 6 years ago are now a liability at best. Even more likely, some are now an insidious impediment to your good rankings today.

I don’t think anyone in their right mind ever thought Google would actually penalize a website for incoming links. It seems just plain wrong to me, because its not an aspect of website ownership over which the site’s owner has full control. Anyone can make a link to your site without let or hindrance! In most cases, you won’t even know about it!

How to Identify Your Incoming Links

First, you’ve got to assess the big picture on incoming links and that requires access to in-depth information. If you have a Google Webmaster account, and your site is verified correctly, Google will give you access to all the links they find pointing to your site. That’s all very well and good, but the last thing you want to do is rush into dumping links that might actually be making a positive contribution to your rankings!

You need a way of determining the quality of those links, and you have at least 2 options:

  1. Manually review every linking site and decide if its delivering a good link or a bad link.
  2. Pay for a link analysis that provides a quality score to help with the decision making.

There are several commercial services that provide link quality analysis. The one I’ve used is LinkDelete, chosen because it had good online reviews. My own experiences with the service have been positive thus far, with deadlines being met and prompt responses to questions I’ve asked.

Initial payment gets your account established. Within a few days a comprehensive spreadsheet list of incoming links they’ve found via their sources is provided for your review. A link quality score is included with every link, and there are often multiple links found per linking domain.

You have three tasks at this point:

  1. Select the links to remove.
  2. Refine the links to the core link detail / account listing if possible.
  3. Provide a text file listing of all links you’d like removed.

Selecting the Links to Remove

Commence by copying all the spreadsheet data to a new worksheet. In the initial phase, you could opt to eliminate all links with a positive link score, on the basis that they are probably good. Sort the remaining links by Domain / URL to get a better view of how many links have been found from each domain to your site.

Be aware that the link quality assessment is NOT without flaws! It may not take into account the relationship of your site to the link genre, or that the site belongs to a member of your business network or contacts. Three of the sites I’ve worked on had Open Directory links showing as -100 link quality, which seems a little harsh! Most of us would commit to almost any indiscretion in exchange for a DMOZ link to our site – its always been the holy grail of directory links.

What is a given is that a link showing up as -500 quality rating is highly suspect! A link showing a positive link value is most likely a good link that you’d want to retain. Link quality is a factor of trust + relevance and automated assessments may throw up a few false negatives. Regardless, it’s up to you to review the list with due diligence! (*2)

Mastery of Excel spreadsheet commands is a handy skill if you want to refine lists because you can identify and remove duplicates, search and replace to drop portions of URLs and much more.

Link Quality Assessment

Carefully scan through the list looking for:

  • sites you know are good
  • sites you know are relevant to your industry / genre
  • sites that are part of your network of business contacts
  • local or regional directories and country-specific local businesses

Remove all the “probably good” links from the remove list. To verify an individual domain’s perceived quality, check it on Google by searching for the domain name. If the search results show the site in first position, with a number of the site’s pages listed as a sub-menu, its very likely to be a ‘good’ site.

If the domain name search does not show the site in top position, the chances are high that it has:

  • been taken down
  • been penalized by Google
  • been de-indexed by Google

If it’s in top place with no sub-menu pages listed, check how many pages its got indexed by changing the search parameter to “site:www.domainname.com”. Zero pages indexed may mean its been blacklisted by Google and you don’t want it in your link portfolio!

Linking Page Content

Open the linking page’s URL in a separate tab or window and review the page content and the actual listing for your site. Not all links pages are created equal, and some give clear indications of quality, or lack thereof.

  • If the page has 100′s of miscellaneous links, you should mark the link for deletion.
  • If the page has few (+ or -30) links and all are closely related sites associated within a correct category, it’s probably a keeper.
  • If the site is clearly advertising itself as offering fast, SEO-friendly PR links and the design is cheap and nasty, lose it!
  • If it’s a directory site that’s smartly designed, stated as human-edited, and there’s a backlog of submissions, its possibly a keeper.

If the page does not open, but a custom 404 Page Not Found error page displays, it may be that the linking page has already been taken down by the owner. I’ve observed many directories that have deleted ALL listings, but the base site still loads, indicating a possible ‘start afresh’ approach.

If a domain registrar’s page opens, showing the domain as available for purchase, you can cross it off your link removal list on the basis that the link has already be taken down.

Link Anchor Text

If the initial indicators are positive, look at the link’s anchor text.

  • If there’s a branding element included, such as your business or domain name, this is a link you’d probably want to keep.
  • If the anchor text is stuffed with exact-match keyword search phrase/s, the link may be a liability.

Some experts suggest you retrieve the anchor text for every link as part of the review process. If there’s only a few links, that’s something you can do quite quickly. However, if there are 5,000+ links to to be reviewed and sorted into good and bad, finding and checking individual anchor text would add a huge burden to an already time-consuming and tedious task.

In the overall scheme of things, it is important to understand that Google is assessing you on multiple fronts. Keep in mind that not only are the quality of the links to you assessed, Google also analyzes the keywords within the anchor text for manipulative efforts.

Thus, a link from an otherwise good site which has over-optimized anchor text can still harm your rankings!

Stages 1 & 2: Link Quality

I’ve settled on a system of making the first pass through the Removal List and eliminating potentially good links, at the same time confirming those which are clearly suspect and possibly toxic. I get link removal requests underway as Stage 1, with a follow-up in the second month where requests were ignored.

Stage 2 is using the Disavow Tool to distance the site from potentially harmful links.

Stage 3: Anchor Text Assessment

As a Stage 3 process, you could go through every remaining link and assess the anchor text content for keyword variation and branding inclusion. This might be the time to extract the list of links to your domain from your Google Webmaster Tools account, and match those up with the each link’s anchor text.

As is usual in SEO circles, there’s a range of conflicting advice on what’s the best format for anchor text! Overall, it seems Google expects that a natural link profile would show far more domain name and/or branded links than exact-match, high search volume keyword-rich anchor texts. Any potential imbalance could be addressed by addition of new “branded” links, rather than removing otherwise good links from trusted domains. If an otherwise good link contains over-optimized anchor text, you could try politely requesting the webmaster or site owner to revise the link using the text you provide. (*3)

Refine the Link Removal List

The LinkDelete process has a limit on the number of link removal requests per month, so targeting the primary link from a domain can reduce your overall list significantly. Look carefully at the links, and try to spot the core account link. For example, a directory may have your core listing, along with links to it from several category pages. Eliminating the core listing will automatically remove it from all other pages, as per this directory listing example:

http://www.somedirectory.net/detail/link-47231.html

You should spend time trying to find the account listing URL. It may be found as a link on the “More Info” button. You may even need to search the site for your domain then track down that primary listing.

Rather than have the “Please Remove Link” request list all the pages the link was found on, simply requesting the deletion of the primary account / listing link also helps the webmaster quickly identify the source to remove, and increases the chances of a positive outcome.

Submit a Text File listing Links for Removal

After reaching the end of that marathon effort, you now need to copy and save the list of links you’d like removed into a simple text file. Log into your LinkDelete account and reply to the Project’s link list message, and attach your Links to Be Removed text file.

Link Removal Report

Approximately 3 weeks after your link removal list is submitted, the first month’s process will be completed. You will receive a report outlining which links have been successfully removed, and which remain. At the same time, you will be billed for month two of services.

The number of links you’d like removed determines your next step. A single site has an allocation of 400 link removal submissions per month. None of the sites I’ve worked on have exceeded that, so a second batch of new removal requests was unnecessary. Instead, a followup contact with those sites that had ignored the first round of removal requests was the correct option. If you have no further new links to be processed for removal, you should now cancel your monthly subscription.

Towards the end of the 2nd month, you will have the final list of links removed from the follow-up campaign and are ready to take the next step.

LinkDelete will provide you with the evidence of two months of remedial efforts to remove links you don’t trust. You now have a list of links you’ve successfully removed, and a list of sites that have not responded to two consecutive requests to delete the link.

The Disavow Tool

This was provided in late 2012 for site owners to “disown” links that might be hurting them. It’s important to heed Google’s instructions. Here’s what they say about the use of the disavow tool! (*3)

“If you believe your site’s ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control, you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site. You should still make every effort to clean up unnatural links pointing to your site. Simply disavowing them isn’t enough.”

However, you’re now good to go! You’ve already done the hard yards and can back that up with demonstrable results from 2 months of link removal efforts. The links you are disavowing are owned by someone who steadfastly ignored your polite removal requests over 2 consecutive months!

When you submit a disavow request, it will be processed much like a sitemap is processed. Google will flag the disavowed links pointing at your site as if they have the rel=”NOFOLLOW” meta-tag attached to them. Effectively, in the context of both link counts and anchor text analysis, they will be treated as if they did not exist. On the Disavow Tools page, Google provides a link to detailed instructions.

Having determined that a potentially toxic domain is linking to you, it’s sensible to simplify the process by dealing with links at the Domain Level, rather than individually specifying each link.

Basically, you need to:

  1. Copy your final file of non-removed links into a worksheet.
  2. Remove all the multiples so that you are left one link per domain.
  3. Search and replace “www.” with “domain:” because Google does not need the canonical version.
  4. Trim the page file names off the end of all the domains to ensure all links are disavowed.Save the list of domains to be disavowed as a text file (use Wordpad or similar). The file needs to be in UTF8 format, with a .txt extension.
  5. Go to Webmaster Tools / Disavow: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
  6. Select the correct Domain name that you wish to disavow links to, and upload the text file.

Wait patiently – potentially for a quite a long time. Google may process the list quite quickly, but it may be weeks / months before the impact of the changes appears in a future iteration of the Penguin update process.

The Webscape Changeth

After months of link deletion efforts across websites in different genres, it’s clear that the impact of Google’s efforts to cleanse the web of link manipulation is having a broad impact.

“Bad” Sites Are Being Turned Off

While reviewing lists of links to assess quality, I’ve been surprised by the numbers of sites that have been taken down. Lots of cloned versions of dodgy SEO-friendly directories now have their domains parked or have had all content deleted.

  • If your *.blogspot.com site was created solely to improve SEO ranking of your main site, then there may no longer be any point in retaining it because it’s likely doing you more harm than good.
  • If it’s a link-scam directory, all it’s potentially good for is negative SEO. Its output is now harmful to the sites that are listed, or to unwitting sites innocently submitting links in future.

Of course, at the point where link removal requests exceed link submissions, running a directory becomes a pointless waste of time and money.

1st Month Link Removal Results

Of the sites I’ve worked on, the lowest removal success rate was 24% in the 1st month. Most achieved between 27% and 36% removal of unwanted links. The highest success rate was 100% removal of all unwanted links, albeit on a site that had a modest 81 domain links targeted for elimination.

2nd Month Link Removal Results

The follow-up emails achieved a 5% – 10% return, but provided additional supporting evidence to Google that we’ve tried to “make every effort to clean up unnatural links.”

How Rankings Improved After Link Removal

Across the board on all sites, demonstrable improvements to rankings were evident. Sites with 30% removal of poor links responded progressively, month by month. Even the site with the lowest percentage of links removed also responded positively.

Conclusion on Initial Link Removal Efforts

Clearly, the results of cleaning up potentially harmful links are positive. The task is relatively modest in cost and therefore well worth the effort. Like much of the work involved with SEO, it’s tedious and requires attention to detail.

The impact of the Google Disavow Links submissions remains an unknown quantity at the moment, and it will be interesting to see if there’s an incremental improvement as disavowed links are removed from the equation. There’s little in the way of online case studies as to the effectiveness of disavowing links and the timeframes for seeing results.

Stages 1 & 2: Link Quality

I’ve settled on a system of making the first pass through the Removal List and eliminating potentially good links, at the same time confirming those which are clearly suspect and possibly toxic. I get link removal requests underway as Stage 1, with a follow-up in the second month where requests were ignored. Stage 2 is using the Disavow Tool to distance the site from potentially harmful links.

A bad link is a bad link, no matter if the anchor text is good, so the priority should be eliminating the low-quality links first.

Stage 3: Anchor Text Assessment

As a Stage 3 process, I go through every remaining link and assess the anchor text content for keyword variation and branding inclusion. This might be the time to extract the list of links to your domain from your Google Webmaster Tools account, and match those up with the link’s anchor text.

As is usual in SEO circles, there’s a range of conflicting advice on what’s the best format for anchor text! Overall, it seems Google expects that a natural link profile would show far more domain name and/or branded links than exact-match, high search volume keyword-rich anchor texts. Any potential imbalance could be addressed by addition of new “branded” links, rather than removing otherwise good links from trusted domains. If an otherwise good link contains over-optimized anchor text, you could try politely requesting the webmaster or site owner to revise the link using the text you provide. There seems to be some consensus that targeted (exact-match keywords) anchor texts should not exceed 30% of your overall link portfolio. (*4)

There’s no magic bullet, no quick and easy shortcuts. However, those prepared to put in the time and energy required will reap rewards commensurate with the efforts they’ve expended.

References:

1 – www.seomoz.org/blog/the-difference-between-penguin-and-an-unnatural-links-penalty-and-some-info-on-panda-too
2 – www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012
3 – http://searchengineland.com/how-google-disavow-link-tool-remove-penalties-154928
4 – www.seomoz.org/blog/click-here-seo

Ben Kemp, a search engine optimization consultant since 1997, is a specialist in website redesign, and a veteran with 25+ years of experience in the IT industry.

www.ComAuth.co.nz +

www.Website-Redesign-Company.co

New Google Tool Investigates Online Path to Purchase

By in Featured

Google Think Insights released a new interactive infographic, The Customer Journey to Online Purchase April 25. Its goal is to help you determine what marketing efforts pay off most at each stage of the buying process, so you can more intelligently apply your advertising dollars. A customer often completes a number of steps before coming to a purchasing decision, and that the decision-making process can last days, weeks, or even months.

According to Google, the data was pulled from 36,000 Google Analytics accounts that have eCommerce tracking enabled and have authorized sharing with Google Analytics and other third parties (a default option when signing up for its free analytics). The tool shows how different marketing channels fall into two different parts of the buying process, which Google labels ‘Assist’ (actions that assist the customer in coming to a decision — awareness of the product, consideration of different options, and intent to buy) and ‘Last Interaction’ (the last marketing interaction before the customer makes the purchase). Days to purchase and steps to purchase are also analyzed.

The data for types of marketing channels and order values by days and by steps to purchase is broken out between the first two interactive charts, and then comprehensively put together in the Benchmarks Dashboard. In each tool, you can change the view to a specific industry (automotive, business, local, consumer packaged goods, education/government, finance, health, media, retail, technology, or travel) or a specific location (United States, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, or United Kingdom) to make the data even more relevant to your own analytics.

Google’s blog post about the new tool highlights some interesting examples from the data, such as the fact that, in the United States Technology industry, online purchases that take more than 28 days are worth about 3.5 times more than purchases that occur immediately. These figures vary vastly by industry, so be sure to look into the data from your field before wondering what’s wrong with your marketing strategy.

Google’s blog post also offers some advice for directly comparing your own analytics to your industry’s benchmarks, by setting up Multi-Channel Funnels. These reports show how different marketing channels play different roles in your sales process, including interactions with paid and organic search, referrals, affiliates, social networks, e-mail newsletters and custom campaigns. Google suggests adjusting the Lookback Window once you set this up to line up with the typical purchase path length in your industry to really see how you match up. To set up Multi-Channel Funnels in your Google Analytics, go to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels under Standard Reporting. The report should automatically detect any other marketing channels you have defined in your Analytics.

How can you apply this information to your own analytics and advertising process? In different industries, different types of marketing play a different part of the buying process. As a media retailer, social media is much closer to the buying decision than it is for the travel industry, where social media is more for brand awareness. So, if you manage a hotel or a car rental company’s social campaigns, you may want to focus more on broad schemes to increase awareness of your business and the importance of your services than on making direct sales. Meanwhile, in the health industry, e-mail campaigns are of much higher importance in the last interaction than for other industries — if your vitamin retail website doesn’t have a regular newsletter set up yet, you better get on that.

At the bottom right of Google’s Benchmarks Dashboard are two pie charts which reveal the total revenue from purchases made in more than one day and from those made in more than one step. Though they do vary widely by industry (media in particular is on the higher end of both spectrums), overall 47 percent of revenue comes from purchases made in one day and 65 percent of revenue comes from purchases made in more than one step. If that’s not a compelling enough argument to track the path to conversion, I don’t know what is!

Adrienne Erin is an Internet marketer and blogger. She writes about a variety of subjects, from analytics tools to organic weed control. If you’re interested in seeing more of her work, follow her on Twitter: @adrienneerin.

Getting the Best from Global Social Media Marketing

By in Social Media Marketing

If you love social media, you’re in good company. Web users around the world have embraced social media as a way to connect and share.

Integrating social media into your digital marketing strategy is a wise move in any market. For most global companies, a presence on major networks such as Facebook and Twitter has become a key part of their marketing strategies. However, when it comes to reaching international customers, a single English language account on each network isn’t enough.

Social Media is a Smart Marketing Choice

Using social media as part of a global campaign has the advantage of being budget-friendly. Also, it’s fairly straightforward with most networks welcoming businesses and even guiding you through the creation of your profile or page.

The potential audience that awaits is another draw. As of March 2013, eBizMBA statistics estimates 750 million unique monthly visitors worldwide for Facebook alone. Twitter follows with 250 million, and LinkedIn has 110 million. Relative newcomers Pinterest and Google+ are both closing the gap at 85.5 million and 65 million respectively.

Why Going Global Means Going Local

All the networks mentioned above have a strong international user base and are well worth considering. This doesn’t mean they are the only choices or even the best ones for every overseas market.

For instance, the fact that Facebook has the largest number of global users might lead you to believe you’ve got the world’s social networkers covered. However, it’s not top in every country. In China, access to Facebook is restricted and the majority of China’s 513 million Web users instead network on local social media sites such as Sina Weibo and Qzone.

Although China is a special case, other countries have their own preferences for certain networks. Facebook saw rapid growth in Japan in 2012 but local social network Mixi still has 14 million active users, according to The Japan Times. Meanwhile, new messaging service Line has burst onto Japan’s social media scene, growing to 36.4 million users (as of December 2012) at an unprecedented rate.

Having an online presence on the networks that are used by your target demographic is key to successful global social marketing. Another aspect of this is keeping up with the ever-changing trends in specific overseas markets. After all, a couple of years ago who would have expected Pinterest to be so popular in Latin America, or Instagram’s most enthusiastic users to be in Singapore?

Cultural Effects on Social Media Use

Participating on the leading social networks for each nation is only half the battle. It’s important to take into consideration the ways in which different national and cultural groups use social media. For example, in Japan it is Facebook and not LinkedIn that has become the business network of choice.

Similarly, the ways in which people use Twitter is not the same in every country. The Palo Alto Research Center in California researched the differences in their Language Matters in Twitter study.  They found that German speakers were the most likely to share URLs with others in their tweets, using the network primarily for information sharing. On the other hand, Indonesian and Malay speakers were the most likely to retweet, enjoying social interaction with other users.

One Language per Account

On the face of it, a single account per social media site might seem easier to manage. However, if you are there to win a following, mixing languages on a single page or feed is a bad idea. Why risk irritating and ultimately losing your network by bombarding them with messages in multiple languages? Instead, set up separate accounts for each language and let users choose which one to subscribe to.

How many languages you offer will vary depending on your markets. The golden rule is to go for quality over quantity with carefully translated content. Don’t forget to take into account the variety of language. For example, there are significant differences between French Canadian and the language of France.

Another benefit of keeping accounts separate is that it is much easier to cater to different cultural styles of communications plus, the content can be kept interesting for readers by only covering topics relevant to their part of the world. Anyone who has been excited by an online competition, only to discover at the last moment that it’s only open to residents of another country, will understand why this makes sense. Similarly, a localized presence lets you use local currencies, refer to local holidays and time zones, and appeal to regional tastes.

Global social media is a powerful opportunity. Use it wisely and you could get the whole world talking.

Christian Arno is the founder of U.K. translation services provider Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24, now has more than 180 employees spanning four continents and clients in more than 60 countries. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.Google+

Top SEO Tools for DIY Webmasters

By in Featured

If you embrace the do-it-yourself mentality with most aspects of your online business, chances are SEO tops your priority list. Since algorithms like Google’s are dynamic and unpredictable, employing the top tools of the trade is critical to your ranking success.

Today’s tools do their best to unravel the mystery of achieving high SERPs by dissecting each key element and aiding in top strategies and best practices. Below is a list of some of the current favorites in this space. Each one listed is free, but many require registration before using. With dozens to choose from, your challenge will be finding those that feel most intuitive, and of course, help you see positive results in the near term and beyond.

Google’s Webmaster Tools

The search engines themselves have some of the best tools around, and it stands to reason that in a sense, they would know best. While some brilliant minds have certainly improved upon the originals, you should absolutely be familiar with Google’s suite of webmaster tools as a DIYer. In addition to the following tools, Google has a stellar webmaster help forum and a great SEO starter guide that does wonders for demystifying much of the process, especially for beginners.

Google has a slew of free resources for the independent webmaster (which are also used by professional SEO experts too.) These tools help you tackle all of the following critical SEO tasks:

  • Identify sections of your site that Googlebot cannot successfully crawl
  • Display results that let you see exactly what Googlebot sees when crawling your website
  • Assist with creating the essential robots.txt files
  • Suggestions for improvements in meta data
  • Keyword analysis and comparisons
  • Be alerted when best practices are not used by your site
  • Notify Google of your XML sitemap submission
  • Remove duplicate content

Additionally, Google offers an excellent metrics tracking tool called Google Analytics, and a very powerful app called the Google Website Optimizer that lets you track conversion improvements with on-site changes. Don’t forget to track keyword popularity with the Google Trends tool too. While relying solely on this Google suite won’t be all-encompassing, this is a wise place to start your DIY SEO adventure.

Keyword Research Tools

Few things are more important in your SEO strategy than choosing the most effective keywords. Your keywords will also likely shift overtime, based on how people are actually searching for your content.

The following tools help you stay on top of search trends and competitive keyword analysis:

SEMRush – SEMRush does an exceptional job at competitive analysis, plotting top traffic-driving keywords for both your site and your competition’s.

SEOmoz Term Extractor – One of the most trusted names in SEO, SEOmoz has many valuable tools, with Term Extractor near the top. This is best used by entering your top competitor’s URL, and then analyzing their keyword strengths and weaknesses.

Alexa – Every webmaster should regularly check Alexa’s multitude of data. This site does more than just provide your traffic score, it also gives you valuable search analytics and keyword query info too.

Backlink Analysis Tools

Link building is another essential element to excellent search rankings, and without tools that help analyze your current progress, it’s tough to decipher how well your backlinks are faring. These tools will aid in giving you tangible data that will accurately instruct you on how your link building process is working for your site’s SERPs.

MajesticSEO – While many of the more robust features in Majestic are not free, the backlink history analysis report is, and it’s extremely useful in measuring competitor activity. The report tracks referring URLs by volume and effectiveness; access the “cumulative view” for the most useful data.

Open Site Explorer from SEOmoz – Open Site Explorer allows webmasters to compare their site with other domains, tracking domain authority, anchor text analysis, and full link analysis breakdowns. Reports can be exported into Excel too.

Monitoring SEO Campaigns

The suggestions above cover many of the basics in SEO, including keywords, meta data, competitive analysis, and rankings. To accurately monitor any of your future campaigns, however, check out Authority Labs. This is a super-site full of SEO tricks, including constant real-time monitoring of new campaigns, average ranks on all major search engines, keyword analysis, and much more. While most of the features are subscription based, they do offer a totally free 30 day trial (no credit card required), and the opportunity to continue tracking 1 domain for free after the trial ends.

SEO Toolbars

To instantly track valuable metrics like page rank, Alexa ratings, and incoming links, install one of the many popular SEO toolbars.

Two of the best are:

SEOmoz Toolbar – For Firefox or Chrome, the SEOmoz toolbar lets you stay connected to metrics as you travel throughout the web. Create custom searches by search engine, country, or region, and expose page elements via the Analyze Page feature.

SEO Site Tools Toolbar – Available for Chrome only, this fabulously free browser extension displays the PageRank of the site you are currently visiting, as well as all standard SEO metrics. SEO Site Tools also critiques your own site and offers plenty of on-site SEO suggestions.

The web is teeming with valuable freemium SEO tools that actually deliver results. With a little knowledge and a lot of practice, these services can help a DIY business owner become well-equipped to achieve enviable search engine rankings. While the tools don’t replace the ease and trustworthiness of a dedicated SEO pro, until you can afford the luxury of handing over the reins, it’s good to know you’ve got an army of effective tools to assist in your SEO mission.

Digital producer, game designer, Internet marketer and staff writer for SiteProNews, one of the Web’s foremost webmaster and tech news blogs, Tina Courtney-Brown has been shaping online businesses since 1996. She’s produced and marketed innovative content for major players like Disney, as well as boutique startups galore, with fortes including social media, SEO, massively multiplayer games, social networks and project management. Tina is also a certified Reiki practitioner, herbalist, nonprofit director and true cooking diva. Learn more at her personal website, or find her on Facebook and Google+.

Effectively Use StumbleUpon to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

By in Marketing

Next to creating content, curation of content is a great Web traffic magnet. Sharing relevant and great content with your readers can establish you as a leader — the term is ‘influencer’ — in the world of social media, and in your relevant industry. The more that people trust your ability to discover great content, the more are your chances of expanding your loyal customer base.

The social bookmarking site Stumblepon  managed to outrace Facebook in 2011 in the number of visitors it sent to websites. This makes one thing clear: you must include StumbleUpon in your overall social media strategy. Here is a look at how you can use StumbleUpon to benefit your business website.

1. Complete your StumbleUpon Profile
Many brands make the mistake of creating social media profiles and not completing them. It’s very important that you not only complete your StumbleUpon profile, but make it comprehensive. Let visitors know about your interests. Include a relevant image that speaks about your brand. Use your company logo if possible, but if it doesn’t scale down well to the space allowed for your profile picture, use any other relevant image instead. Based on your profile visitors will decide whether they will want to connect with you.

Also, add a StumbleUpon badge on your business website, so people can instantly ‘stumble’ your blog posts or other articles. This is great for drawing short- and long-term traffic to your site.

2. Be Strategic About Your Content Submissions
Plan your content submissions and curation carefully. Note that it’s as important to stumble other relevant articles as submitting your own, to avoid looking like a spammer. Also, make sure the content you stumble is of the very best quality. You want to be known as a member that shares valuable content.

Of course, you must also include a great description and title that stands out with each share. There are plenty of stumbles going into the newsfeeds of other members, so make yours special. Adding an image whenever possible is a great way to draw attention.

3. Connect With Other Members
You have to be social on social media. And StumbleUpon is first and foremost a social sharing network. Therefore, connect with other members by searching (with relevant keywords) for people who share content relevant to your industry or niche. Check out the profiles you cull, and choose those you think will be interested in what you share. These are your potential customers as well as sources of great content.

A good practice is to share a personal note with any content that you share directly with your followers. And just as you hope they will stumble your content and give you greater visibility, be sure to share what they post as well. In this way, you can create reciprocal relationships that will go a long way in bringing you the exposure you seek.

4. Create a StumbleUpon Channel
One of StumbleUpons highly popular features that was recently tested, the StumbleUpon channels, are meant to offer the same kind of functionality as YouTube channels, Facebook Pages and LinkedIn Company Pages. There is a scope to create Brand Channels in particular, where your hand-picked content is shared on your channel, becoming a part of your followers’ feeds. This will send only pre-culled audiences to your stream, increasing the chances of your shared content getting a ‘stumble.’

Unfortunately, StumbleUpon has currently closed the creation of new channels, so be sure to watch for that feature to open again.

5. Pay for StumbleUpon Exposure
You can also pay for a short-term boost to the traffic the website drives to your site. The Paid Discovery feature has several advertising plans that you can subscribe to. Here’s how it works: You pay and StumbleUpon features your links to other members. This is a great way to increase exposure with members, and the higher the price you pay, the greater the engagement.

Remember, however, this should only be a short-term measure to draw followers. If adopted on the long- term, it can make you appear self-promotional, and no savvy consumer will respect that.

In conclusion I would say that if you are a brand looking for ways to use social media for greater visibility, StumbleUpon is a great, free option to do so. Go and get your StumbleUpon account now.

Collins Paris writes content that snaps, crackles and pops on a variety of topics related to web based business and working from home from SEO and Web marketing to writing and eCommerce. To find out more sizzling content, visit him at WebBusinessAgenda.com.

Maximizing Google+ For SEO

By in Featured

After much debate about Google+ and whether it is worthwhile or not, more and more people are accepting it and jumping on board. There are some definite SEO advantages to having a Google+ profile. In order to enjoy the benefits, you need to ensure you have it properly set up. Let’s take a look at the benefits and then go over the setup.

Some of the benefits that come with a Google+ profile are:

  • Google+ allows you to link to all of your social media profiles, sites and Blogs in a neat, organized manner. You can also link to any sites that you regularly contribute to. All of these links are followed links AND you get to select the anchor text (in your bio).

Tip: The more people share your posts, +1 your posts or link to your profile, the more valuable these links become to you. The takeaway here is that you need to network and build connections that will help spread your content.

  • Google will also follow the links in your posts and again the value of these links increases as the post is shared, linked to and +1ed

Tip: If your post is really good and goes viral or is shared by a high authority profile, the value of the links increases more.

  • With many social media sites, you have little to no ability to edit your content once it has been posted. Google+ allows you to go back and make edits to posts as you see fit. They don’t restrict you. This is great if a post has spread and gained traction and you want to update the information. You can easily go in and add to the post, bringing the information current and to your satisfaction.
  • Content on Google+ is indexed pretty darn quickly. Some say almost instantly. It’s a great way to get posts by you into Google’s index quickly when there is a hot topic.
  • You can network with influencers in your industry (see more on that below).
  • Author/Publisher markup (rich snippets) creates extra exposure for your listing in the SERPs (search engine results pages). This one is worth expanding on. Google knows you have gone to a lot of effort to create your high quality content, so they want to ensure you can truly take ownership of that content. The author tag is for an individual claiming content on a page. The publisher tag goes on the homepage and is for a business to claim ownership of a site.

NOTE: You need a Google+ profile in order to implement the Authorship Markup. And you do want to implement authorship markup. Trust me, you do!

The benefits are:

1. It makes your listing more robust, because it includes a photo, your name and links to more content by you. It’s a great way to make your listing stand out in the SERPs and get more exposure. There are also indicators that your authorship markup may give you a boost in rankings. While some say it doesn’t directly help, others have reported an increase in rankings after implementing it.

2. Your authorship markup also helps you build trust – wouldn’t you trust a nice smiling face next to a listing over one that has no imagery? It establishes you as a real person in the often anonymous online world.

3. It also allows you to claim your name (you don’t want someone trying to steal your name!) and your content (you’ll be seen as the original and rightful owner of the content and won’t have to worry about a copy scraper outranking you).

4. You can improve your click-through rate by playing with your profile image (which is what is shown in the SERPs). Most people are finding that different images get different click-through rates. Images that perform best seem to be close-ups where the eyes are looking to the right towards the listing in the SERPs.

Let’s move on to how to properly set up your profile to ensure you get maximum benefit.

To set up a personal profile, you can go to:
https://plus.google.com/?hl=en

Business profiles can be set up here:
http://www.google.com/+/business/

You can use the same login for both and in the upper right corner, if you click to the right of your photo, you’ll see the business page listed. All you have to do is click that to view/use the business page.

Below is a screenshot of my account as a sample. The button circled in red takes me to my personal profile and the one circled in yellow takes me to the business page.

Once you are logged in, click on Profile on the left hand side to bring you to the section you need to complete.

Business Pages:

Make sure you use keyword phrases (never stuff keywords, use them strategically) in the Tagline and Introduction boxes under the Story section. Google indexes this, so it’s a great place to ensure you write compelling info that includes your keywords.

In the Links section, you can link to your site and Blog. If you have a critical site page, you can also link to specific pages.

When you write your Description be sure you also use keywords and create links (don’t forget to use keywords in the anchor text). The keyword you choose to use should be related to the page you are linking to. Again, I have to remind you, Google won’t tolerate spammy practices so don’t turn your profile into a link farm.

Personal Pages:

On the personal profiles, it’s important to get keywords in the Occupation and Skills section and also in the Tagline and Introduction. Think of the Occupation section as your Meta Description tag (on a normal site) so you want to ensure you have your main keywords in there.

In the employment section, put a description of services offered and not just the company name.

Tip: Once you’ve completed your profile and you start posting, keep in mind that the first sentence of your Google+ post becomes part of the title tag. As you probably know, the Title tag impacts rankings and influences click-through rates.

Rich Snippets: Author Vs Publisher Tag

Don’t be fooled (I was) by Google’s ‘rel=publisher tag’. It’s still a good idea to use, but you won’t get the image in your SERP listing like you do in the authorship tag! I should clarify. What I mean is, if you test the publisher tag in the rich snippets testing tool, it looks like your logo will appear next to your listing. That is not the case right now. The tag will expand in the future so it’s worth using.

Right now, the author tag DOES display an image, so you may want to consider using that.

A couple things to keep in mind: you can’t use both the author and publisher tag on the same page AND if you use the publisher tag, it’s only for the homepage, not internal pages. You can use the author tag for internal pages with content.

Networking on Google+

There are a lot of different ways to connect with influencers in your industry. Networking with influencers is often one of the core focuses of people using Google+. It’s fairly easy to do because there are so many ways to do it, but be sure you don’t abuse the privilege. If you get known as a spammer, it’s going to be very difficult to grow your presence.

Here are some of the ways you can reach out and connect:

Depending on their particular settings, they will be notified if you:

  • Mention them in a post
  • Share a post with them directly
  • Share a post and you’re in a circle they subscribe to
  • Comment on a post they created
  • Comment on a post after they comment on it
  • Add them to a circle
  • Suggest new people to add to their circles
  • Tag them in a photo or tag one of their photos
  • Suggest a profile photo for them
  • Comment on a photo after they comment on it
  • Comment on a photo they are tagged in or that they tagged
  • Start a conversation with them
  • Send them an invitation or update an event
  • Any activity on events they created

The above actions are a great way to connect and let people know you are there. It’s worth repeating, do not abuse this system and spam people. Only reach out via one of these actions if you plan to truly connect and create a conversation of value.

While Google+ numbers aren’t as large as Facebook, they are growing and as with most things, it’s the early adopters that do well in the long run. Get in now and establish your position.

Looking to get active on Google+ without spending too much time? Take a few minutes a day and do the following:

  • +1 great posts or comments
  • Comment on posts and engage people in conversation
  • Start a hangout
  • Grow your circles

Tip: Ensure you add a +1 button to your pages so your visitors can easily +1 your content. Don’t forget to +1 your own Blog posts and key site pages.

Google+ is likely here to stay and also likely to get more important to your rankings and traffic.

Jennifer Horowitz is Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. With over 13 years in the industry, Jennifer has amassed much knowledge and experience and has much to say about all things SEO, marketing, copywriting & social media. Jennifer says “My focus is always on results based marketing. It’s not about reports and rankings, it’s about results. It’s about business growth. My job is to uncover areas of new growth for clients. My job is also to educate site owners that want to be proactive in their marketing efforts. I focus on the details and the data – that is where the success lies!”

Driving Traffic with RSS Feeds

By in Featured

RSS feeds are handy marketing tools that create a win-win for online business owners and their eager visitors. Those who subscribe to any given feed do so out of genuine interest in the service or content, and the site owner gets to create a regular, real-time dialogue with the interested parties as often as they deem necessary. Likewise, if you submit your content to various free RSS feeds, you are essentially unlocking a powerful and free marketing outlet, which can result in dramatic upticks in your site’s overall traffic. If you’re not already utilizing the power of RSS, prepare to be enlightened and enthused at what these feeds can do for your business!

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “real simple syndication”, and it’s aptly named. These feeds are content broadcasts displayed in a compact reader to the subscriber. For a prime example of how they work, check out Feedly. If you’re a regular user of Google’s version, the Google Reader, take note that it willbe phased out on July 1, 2013. Feedly is particularly useful to former users of Google Reader, as it will connect to your existing Reader feeds.

Feedly, and other tools like it, help users to organize, consolidate, read, and share any and all web content they choose. A given feed can have subscriptions to recent news pieces, favorite blogs, recipe sites; the sky’s the limit. These feeds help site owners take all their well-crafted, high quality site content and instantly deliver it to an eager audience.

How to Use RSS Feeds

Your RSS approach should be two-pronged:

1) Allow users to subscribe to your own RSS feed on your website. All major content management systems have RSS features built-in that make this process quick and easy. These tools will then be linked to your site, and when you release new posts and content pieces, they will automatically be distributed to subscribers of your feed. Depending on the reader each of your subscribers use, they may see just the title of your content, or a small summary as well.

2) You can also submit your content to any of the free RSS distributors. First, download a free RSS Validator application, and submit your content’s URL. The app will then create a URL with the RSS feed included. Take this address and input it into the free distributors of your choice. Feedcat makes a great one that actually lets you track readership statistics as well. Make sure you create keyword-rich, descriptive titles that catch your readers’ attention, just like any eye-catching news piece would.

The Many Benefits of RSS Feeds

In addition to giving your newly published content instant attention from people who truly want to know, RSS feeds have other advantages. From an SEO perspective, they increase your chances of getting indexed quickly by the major search engines, and RSS feeds on your website are by themselves an SEO advantage, as search engines see them as a good addition.

They are also great for link-building, especially if you’re willing to post relevant content from your partners in the feed as well. This, in turn, increases the likelihood that other RSS feed managers will add your content, creating more traffic and good will. And, of course, search engines love link building!

Finally, since feeds are distributed to quality subscribers, they have a higher likelihood of sharing your content, giving it the viral effect. This all adds up to happy subscribers and a broadening user base for your website.

Tips for Optimal Feeds

If you do decide to submit your published content to various RSS directories, there are thankfully tools that will aggregate your submissions across multiple feeds. Check out RSS Submit. It’s not free, but it’s an incredibly powerful tool that will instantly link you to over 90 RSS directories at the touch of a button. If you produce any volume of articles and content, this is a wise move. It will save you substantial time and effort.

For truly powerful feeds from both a user experience and SEO perspective, create a custom feed on your site that features not only your content, but incorporates feeds from sources that cover similar topics and have content of equal quality. This results in a powerhouse of backlinks to your site, and makes the search engines take notice. RSSMix.com provides an excellent custom feed generator.

If you have a feed setup already, you may have noticed that you receive inbound traffic from odd locations. Many sites “scrape” feeds and feature your content on their site, often as if it were their own. It’s an almost impossible task to prevent this from occurring, but you can use the procedure to your advantage. Install the RSS Footer plugin, and you’ll give yourself an edge. This tool automatically adds a link at the end of every post in your feed that points directly back your website – any page you wish. This provides an instant backlink to your content should anyone decide to scrape your content.

RSS feeds are valuable ways to increase traffic and link building for your online business. Feeds take what could be static content on any website and immediately generate a dynamic, fresh site. Search engines, as you likely well know, love fresh content – and so do your readers. With all the fantastic tools available these days, setting up feeds and submitting content to directories can truly be a one-click process. With a little research and setup time, your RSS feeds can produce tangible increases in traffic, revenues, and search engine rankings, just by utilizing the great content you’re already producing.

Digital producer, game designer, Internet marketer and staff writer for SiteProNews, one of the Web’s foremost webmaster and tech news blogs, Tina Courtney-Brown has been shaping online businesses since 1996. She’s produced and marketed innovative content for major players like Disney, as well as boutique startups galore, with fortes including social media, SEO, massively multiplayer games, social networks and project management. Tina is also a certified Reiki practitioner, herbalist, nonprofit director and true cooking diva. Learn more at her personal website, or find her on Facebook and Google+.

Jill Whalen’s SEO Tools and Extensions

By in Featured

I am not a big tool user in general. By that I mean the types of tools that supposedly help you “optimize” your website. There is no perfect page for SEO purposes, so in my opinion any tool that claims to give you information such as how many words you need here or there is simply wrong.

What most of those tools do is look at the top 10 ranking sites for a specific keyword phrase and then take averages of how many words they have in the Title tags, within the content, etc. Which to me is just silly. An average doesn’t tell you anything. One page might have 1,000 words and another might have 50, but the average is then in the 500 range. That certainly doesn’t mean that if you create your page to have 500 words it will somehow magically rank well.

SEO is more about fixing technical issues (which some tools can certainly help with), and it’s about being sure you’re using words that your target audience uses. And these days, in the wake of Panda and Penguin, it’s also about diagnosing bad links and other things that may be bringing your site rankings down. Online tools can certainly help with all those things.

Keep in mind that I generally only do SEO site audit reports, and high-level SEO consulting and training (as opposed to rolling up my sleeves and actually doing the SEO for clients). So I may be missing some that I previously used. Please note that while I assume that the Google tools I’m mentioning are obvious, they’re so integral to my work that I’d be remiss not to mention them.

Here are the tools I use regularly to help with my SEO consulting services:

Google Analytics

Most critical tool of all, it diagnoses lost traffic for site audits, and of course is used to measure success. Especially helpful when combined with custom reports, dashboards, and advanced segments.

Google Webmaster Tools

Everyone with a website today needs to be signed up here. It offers tons of useful information, but basically it helps diagnose website problems and provides messages directly from Google if a site has a major issue or penalty.

Screaming Frog

This tool sends a spider out to sites and compiles a nice spreadsheet report on the pages. It shows you Title tags, URLs, Meta Descriptions, Canonical tags, etc. Plus, it tells you about pages that may have 404 errors, redirects, and lots of other things. I usually use this when I’m starting a new site review because it helps me get an overall feel for the site and quickly shows me any major technical issues. (And I just love the tool’s name.)

Rex Swain’s HTTP Header Viewer

This one is good for seeing what sort of redirect any page may have. For SEO purposes we like to see 301 redirects rather than 302s or any other kind. It will also show if there are multiple redirects for any URL.

Ahrefs

This is a great tool for learning about any website’s backlinks. You can get a lot of that also from Google Webmaster Tools these days, but I often find different ones showing up in Ahrefs that I may not have seen in GWT. Plus, you can learn about the backlinks of competitor sites. I mainly use it to see if the website I’m reviewing has a lot of spammy links. It’s especially helpful if the site has received an unnatural links warning in the GWT account. It’s a great way to see the distribution of anchor text as well. This tool also has a spidering component similar to ScreamingFrog mentioned above.

Google Keywords Tool

This is pretty much the only tool I use or recommend for doing keyword research. Use it to learn about the types of phrases your target audience uses at Google when they’re looking for what you offer on your website.

Google Drive

This is not so much a SEO tool as it is a way to have all my files synced across all of my computers and devices. Drive makes it easy for me to review a website and have my report in progress anytime and anywhere I need it. It also enabled me to buy an inexpensive Chromebook as my traveling laptop. All the tools and programs I use are online, so with my documents and files safely tucked away in Google Drive I’m totally in the cloud.

Toogl

This is a project timer that I’ve been using lately. I like to keep track of how much time I spend on any client work so that I have a good idea of how to price similar jobs in the future. I’ve used a variety of timers in the past, but this one has become a favorite because it syncs up “in the cloud” so I can access it using any device.

Chrome Extensions (Most if not all of these are likely available as Firefox extensions as well):

NoFollow

This is the BEST extension ever if you’re a SEO! It outlines all links on a page that have the Nofollow attribute on them. But even better is that it pops up a little window if the page you’re looking at has the Noindex tag on it. You wouldn’t believe how many websites I find through this extension that are inadvertently blocking all search engines from being able to index them.

PageRank Status

This tool teaches you lots of things about a page, such as its Google Toolbar PageRank, the number of pages from the site that are indexed, a link to the page in the Wayback Machine (archive.org) and many other things. (This one will also highlight nofollow links.)

TagAssistant (by Google)

This one shows if there are any Google Analytics code errors on any given page. It can come in handy if a site appears to have lost traffic because sometimes traffic wasn’t actually lost, but the Google Analytics code is missing from certain pages, or it’s used incorrectly.

Awesome Screenshot (combined with Evernote)

I use Awesome Screenshot nearly every day while doing SEO site audits to quickly and easily show what’s wrong with pages on a site. You can add arrows and words, draw circles around items, etc. I basically paste them all into Evernote along with my other notes of what’s wrong with a site. Then I use those notes to compile my report.

How about you? What tools do you use? (See the question of the week for even more tools!)

Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen

If you learned from this article, be sure to invite your colleagues to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive similar articles in the future!