EzSEO Newsletter # 170
July 8, 2007 by Andy
This week:
1. The Biggest Problem With Wordtracker…
2. Does Your Site Satisfy Visitors?
3. Poll Results – Next Miniseries
4. Review – Blogging to the Bank 2.0
5. Other News
Hi again.
Hope you have had a good week. In this issue, I’ll tell you about a great little script (it’s fr.ee) that can give you insider information on what your visitors really want. I’ll also announce the topic of the next mini-series which will start next week, and I’ll give you an honest review of blogging to the Bank 2.0, and more. Let’s get on.
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1. The Biggest Problem With Wordtracker…
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If you have ever followed my Wordtracker Tutorial (it is dated now, but you can read it if you search Google for wordtracker tutorial – it’s usually #1), you’ll know that the way I do keyword research often means I have several thousand highly related keyword phrases in a particular niche.
The largest research project I have ever done at Wordtracker had around 22,000 phrases!
For me to decide on the best use of each phrase, I need to know how much competition each phrase has. This is where my Wordtracker gripe comes in. Wordtracker only lets you do the competition for 100 phrases at a time.
For a project of 22,000 keywords, it means I have to carry out 222 competition searches. This takes hours, and means I have to sit at my computer for the whole time, checking checkboxes, and clicking buttons. It’s tedious.
Now, the majority of my projects aren’t that big. In fact, I’d say the average is closer to the 5000 phrases mark.
That means 50 individual competition searches, which isn’t quite so bad, but still very tedious, still takes a couple of hours, and to be honest, I have better things to do with my time that sit at my computer, checking boxes, and clicking buttons.
Well, for all of you in the same boat, there is now a software utility that can do this tedious job for you. Not only does it do the competition search (while you get on with other stuff), but when it is finished, it sends you a single email with all of your keyword phrases and data (including the all important competition). This tool is great, and I am using it for all of my Wordtracker research.
You can watch a video demonstration of the tool, by its creator, here:
Wordtracker Competition Automator
A Note about the sales page. Ian is new to all of this, so don’t expect a big sales letter packed with hype. The video shows you what the tool does, and there is a link to buy the tool, and not much else.
If you are interested in this tool, you need to act quickly. At midnight on Monday, the price is going up!
Wordtracker Competition Automator
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2. Does Your Site Satisfy Visitors?
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Using log files to see where a visitor came from, and what keywords they used to find you site is a great way to find information about your visitors. However, there is method that I use, that gives me a huge advantage, and it’s now fr.ee.
Have a look at this site:
Follow the link to the 1-search script.
I actually bought this script a few years back, but I see it is now fr.ee, so highly recommend you get it.
OK, so what does this do?
Well, firstly, it gives your site a search box, that visitors can use to find your pages. It’s cool, but its not the reason I use it.
Have a look at the demo on the site.
What this script also does is allows you to monitor what your visitors are searching for. Log into the control panel, and you’ll instantly see the top searches that people made. You can see the words that actually returned pages on your site, but more importantly, you can see the words that did not return pages. You suddenly have a great way of finding topics for new content on your site.
e.g. imagine you have a gift site. You login and find that 50 people have searched for something you have never heard of. On doing a quick Google, you find that it is a new, just-released toy. You have just found a new, in-demand product. The next step is to find an affiliate program, and write up a review.
This can work for any site. See what people are searching for, and make sure you have the content to serve them for all of the popular searches. This type of information is extremely valuable.
OK, that’s all very cool, but this script does even more. Each search results page is dynamically created.
e.g. You can create links to search results pages. Again, lets take the gift site idea from above.
Let’s suppose that you have a number of music boxes on the site, and each music box has its own page. You can instantly create a single page on music boxes that show links, descriptions etc of all of the pages on your site related to music boxes.
This is done by creating a link to the search script, passing “music” AND “box” as parameters to the script. Sounds complicated, but its not.
I highly recommend you have a look at this script.
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3. Poll Results – Next Miniseries
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Last week I setup a poll to help decide which topic I should cover in the next mini-series. Thanks to all who voted. You can see the poll results over at:
http://ezseonews.com/polls/miniseries.htm
Just click the link to view results.
At the time of writing this, the winning topic (with over 37% of the vote), was “How to sell a product online (setting it all up).”
A close second was Web 2.0. with abut 32% of the vote.
Next week, I’ll start the new mini-series, which will guide you through the pitfalls of selling a product online, and show you how to set it all up.
Because of the interest in Web 2.0, I may also cover various aspects of that in the coming weeks in a separate section.
Again, thanks for voting.
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4. Review – Blogging to the Bank 2.0
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This eBook was written by Rob Benwell, and is his second book on the topic. I never did read the first eBook, as I had the impression from reading other reviews that Rob used a lot of black hat techniques. Black hat is something I stay away from, but after hearing that Rob had left the dark side, I decided to buy it.
Here is my review:
Many people still think that a blog gives you an edge in the search engines, with some people really believing that blogs can out-rank normal sites purely because they are blogs. I don’t see any truth in this. In my opinion, the reason blogs can do well, is because the search engines like constantly updated sites, and that is what a successful blog is – a constantly updated “journal”. However, any site that is updated frequently can rank as well as the identical site built as a blog.
Too many people setup blogs and fail, but Rob Benwell certainly seems to be doing things right. I wanted to see what he was doing, and more importantly, how I could use that information.
Before I read the eBook, I was anxious to see whether he was a black-hatter, or a white-hatter. I never use black-hat techniques myself, as I want to build long-term businesses, not just sites that last for a few months and die a death. I saw on the sales page, a comparison between hand-built sites, and automated sites, and that convinced me to buy, as it showed the hand-built, non-automated sites were the way to go. It looked like Rob was getting his success through white hat blogging.
On page 7 of the eBook, Rob outlines his “5 Blogging Commandments”. These commandments mirrored my own non-blog site building philosophies. That is a great sign (Note to Rob: You need to proof read, as the 5th commandment does not make sense).
The next section of the book is a good overview of market research. They are the same sorts of things I look for when deciding if a niche is profitable.
Rob goes onto setting up a blog (where you own the blog), and where to get the content from to post on the blog.
The next section on blog optimization is one of the most useful chapters in this book, and I can see how this chapter alone would be responsible for a big chunk of his monthly paychecks. He talks about optimising the blog for visitors and search engines, and takes you through the code changes you need to make (they are very easy). He also goes through the monetization of the blog, and this again is a useful section.
Rob goes into the various methods of promoting your blog, and one of the useful bonuses you get with this book is a piece of software that can “submit to over 150 directories in around an hour”. This is a useful addition, as it will help grow the inbound links to your site. Rob covers a lot of different methods for getting links in, and promoting your site.
He then moves onto Web 2.0 methods for Traffic & Promotion. Its a useful introduction whether you are promoting a blog, or any other site, and covers some of the top Web 2.0. sites that I use myself with good success.
Overall, I found the book as a great introduction for building profitable sites (not just blogs), as Rob uses the same range of techniques I myself use. The way sites are built ensures they have the potential to still be there in years to come, quietly earning you a decent income.
My only real complaint is that the book didn’t seem to have been proof read. I was left feeling that there was a rush to get it out. There was at least one paragraph that did not make sense, and one picture that was not introduced, so I was left wondering what I was looking at. However, apart from that, the book was informative, and gave a good plan, and level of detail.
Who this book is for: Anyone who wants to learn how to setup and monetize a blog. Every step is covered, giving you a great blueprint to follow. I cannot see how anyone could fail by following this eBook.
Who this book isn’t for: Anyone who is successfully blogging already. The book probably wont teach you too many new things.
If you want a good overall action plan for setting up blogs that work, I highly recommend this eBook.
BTW, Have a look at the interesting case study on this page.
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5. Other News
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The June Niche Blueprint was released last week, and there are 9 copies left if you are interested. Here is the low down on the niche:
Total Phrases: 2935
768 of these phrases have 5 or more daily searches, with less than 1000 competing pages in Google, representing 7400+ searches a day at Google.
346 of these phrases have 5 or more daily searches, with less than 100 competing pages in Google, representing 2800+ searches a day at Google.
276 of these phrases have 5 or more daily searches, with less than 10 competing pages in Google, representing 2100+ searches a day at Google.
117 of these phrases have 5 or more daily searches, with less than 0 competing pages in Google, representing 790+ searches a day at Google.
This niche is ideally suited to Adsense or Affiliate programs.
Google highlights 240+ phrases in this niche that have and estimated CPC of over $1.
There are also a lot of affiliate programs that service this niche.
If you are interested, just visit:
.. and click the link top right to the June Blueprint.
Well, that’s it for this issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:
http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:
http://ezseonews.com/archives
Have a great week!
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