The Best Marketing Tools For Search Engine Research

When starting a new search marketing project, technical folks will tend to lean on a trusted set of tools to help them. New players, or complete newbies will want to know what tools to use, and not waste time with losers, and not get the correct results to complete their search marketing strategy.

The below is a fairly complete list, that will take you there. In fact, a recent article on Google Blogoscoped discusses a senior search marketer’s top choices.

Here are links to the top tools that you should use:

Webmaster Central and their blog for webmasters

Google AdWords Keyword Tool – updated with search volumes, incredibly valuable

SEO Book keyword tool – API to Wordtracker – many more features, must include

Google Traffic Estimator – number clicks and $ estimates for keywords

Microsoft Ad Intelligence Download – Excel 2007 – shows Microsoft real search data in Excel – powerful

Google Analytics – Free

Google Trends for Websites

Google Insights for Search

Clicky – inexpensive analytics tool – whitelabel for search agencies

Mint – paid, realtime data, powerful

Free rank checking tool – Firefox plugin – free – use it now

Advanced Web Ranking – paid – popular desktop ranking tool

SEO Link Analysis – Firefox plugin

Blog Search Google - Detect links from blogs (note: use the link: site (replace ‘site’ with your url)

Xenu Link Sleuth – free – deep crawler for bad links and more

Advanced Link Manager – paid – track new links by competitors

Backlink Analyzer – free tool

Compete.com – free analytics search data – and paid

KeyCompete – find out what competition is buying

SEO Digger – what organic keywords are you ranked for – free and paid

URLTrends – similar to SEO Digger – free

This should be a complete list for 99% of your projects. What other tools have you found useful?

Sept 19 — UPDATE –

Recommended additions from another expert, listed below:

3 more worth taking a look at:

Escape’s Web Page Analyzer – http://www.the-escape.co.uk/tools/pageanalyzer/  – This web page analyzer breaks down the structure and content of your web page and assesses the build quality and content quality from an accessibility, usability and search engine point of view.

Page Rank Checker for Internal Links – http://www.livepr.info/internal-pages-page-rank3.php  — Check Page Rank of Internal Pages – This is one of my favorite SEO tools and particularly useful after every pagerank update. The only downside is, it only registers 100 entry before it comes to a stop.

Seo Site Checkup – http://www.seositecheckup.com/  — Analyze your site to rank better in search engines and get more traffic!
 

Google, Inc Announces Purchase of Korean-Based Blogging Software Firm

Acquisition expected to increase search engine’s market share, presence in Asia.

September 17, 2008—Google, Inc announced today that it has purchased Korean-based Tatter and Company, a blogging software firm.

“We are excited to welcome Tatter and Co.’s engineering team to Google Korea,” a spokesperson for Google wrote in an email to DMNews. “Acquiring Tatter and Company will allow us to enhance our online publishing tools in Korea, benefiting the large number of users who already depend on and enjoy Google and Tatter and Company’s products.”

TNC co-CEO Chan-Won-Kim compared TNC to the open source blogging project, Automattic in a blog entry last Friday.

“To my knowledge,” added Kim, “we are one of the first major acquisitions done by Google in Asia let alone Korea, if we don’t count Australia and also exclude share-taking activities in China for licensing purposes.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed at press time.

Potentially Violent Videos Banned From YouTube

September 16, 2008

At what Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn). is calling his request, YouTube Inc. has updated its acceptable content guidelines to effectively ban videos with the potential to incite violence.

The video uploading and social media site had previously turned down a request from chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental affairs to remove videos produced and sponsored by terrorists which showed assassinations, deaths of US soldiers, and other violent acts.

The new guidelines, which state that “predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people’s personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts or to violate the terms of use are taken very seriously.”

Sen. Lieberman is also asking Google, Inc, the parent company of YouTube, to remove all videos that have been created by terrorist organizations, whether they violate the guidelines or not.

While some are in favor of the new guidelines, others believe that they infringe on the right to free speech, and that Internet-based sites should be free of governmental intervention.  Some people, like CEO of IT research firm Techdirt Inc, Mike Masnick, question the lasting effectiveness of banning terrorist produced videos from being posted to YouTube.

“Those videos will quickly pop back up on other sites that won’t take them down,” Masnick told ComputerWorld.com in an interview this week. “Second, most of those videos are preaching to the choir. It’s highly unlikely that very many people are being recruited by terrorists’ causes by a grainy video on YouTube.”

Failure to adhere to the new video submission guidelines could result in a permanent banning from YouTube.

What does Google say about Page Rank?

Pagerank (Google Larry Page & Sergey Brin responsible) has been written about – a lot. What does Google say about it themselves?

We stand alone in our focus on developing the “perfect search engine,” says Google co-founder Larry Page. … Something that, “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.”

To that end, we have persistently pursued innovation and refused to accept the limitations of existing models. As a result, we developed our serving infrastructure and breakthrough PageRank™ technology that changed the way searches are conducted.

Read excerpts from Google Corporate and what their senior spam officer has to say about Pagerank. Enjoy!

SEO Linking Demystification From 5 Top Link Gurus

Recently, we came across a brilliant interview on “How to linkbuild” – and answering questions like these:

What are the three most important criteria a search engine robot might consider when it is evaluating an inbound link?

How does PageRank play into natural search rankings and what does PageRank really mean?

Once you’ve established SEO best practices for internal linking procedures, is it worth the time to go back and adjust the entire website? Or should you just move forward with these new practices?

How does the actual text in a hyperlink play a role in SEO?

Will I be passing link value to my competitor if I link out to their website?

From an SEO point of view, when is it advisable to link out to a resource, and will linking out actually help my natural search rankings? If so, can you explain why?

For a under the hood discussion to find answers to these questions and many more articles, please look at this linking article.

Also, as a refresher – make sure to read the “Top Ranking Factors” (SEOMOZ) official document, you’ll understand better how to balance onpage and offpage (links) factors for optimum ranking.

Google-Yahoo Search Advertising Deal Met With Protest From Major Advertisers

September 9, 2008 – search marketing news pick for the day:

A proposed search advertising deal between search engine giants Google and Yahoo has prompted some major national advertisers, including Wal-Mart, Pepsi, Ford, and Sara Lee to send a letter of protest to the U.S. Department of Justice.

According to ComputerWorld.com, the Association of National Advertisers—the group responsible for representing the corporations involved, the letter, sent to Assistant General Thomas Barnett is a result of a “comprehensive independent analysis of the deal, which under Yahoo Inc. would run advertising from Google Inc. alongside its search results.”

“A Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90% of search advertising inventory,” said ANA President and CEO Bob Liodice in a recent post on the ANA website.

 When asked for comment, Google’s senior manager of global communication and public affairs, Adam Kovacevich  released the following statement: “Numerous advertisers have recognized that this agreement will help them better match their ads to user’s interests, and that ad prices will continue to be set by competitive auction.”

The Justice Department is currently reviewing the proposed four-year deal, which would generate an estimated $250 to $50 million in operating cash flow during the first year and up to $800 million during subsequent years.

Top 10 reasons why Google is truly an All-American company

(It’s as American as it can get, read on…):

1. Its young. And so are we. Haven’t you ever gone to Europe and been amazed at the buildings that have been there for hundreds of thousands of years when our oldest building is a woman with a crown, a book, and a flame? Which possibly isn’t even our oldest building, which leads me to my next point:
2. Google is cocky and thinks it knows everything, just like us. It’s convinced that it knows what type of ads we want and need and specially targets and matches them to what we’re interested in. The scary part is that they’re often right too. They serve me up ads about salsa dancing and The Office all the time, and sure enough, that’s precisely what I’m interested in. Remind you of any other entity who claims to be all-knowing and omnipotent? Maybe a certain America who’s convinced it knows exactly what’s best for other people in other parts of the world whose culture and reality is so different than ours its not even funny? Just a thought.
3. Reason three- it’s both copied and a copycat. Everyone tries to emulate what Google and America do, whether its AOL trying to be more Google-esque or little Japanese high schoolers knowing every word to Snoop’s ‘Sensual Seduction’. On the flip side though, both entities know when to copy others. Google wasn’t the first search engine. America wasn’t the first country to speak English and be mean to other people and colonize and displace them. The reason they’re both so successful though is because they do it best. Nobody does it better. Which takes smarts, hence reason numero cuatro.
4. Google is multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-everything. Whatever you want to know can be explained to you in Spanish, French, Norwegian, Arabic, etc. Google’s diverse, with the co.uk, the Google France, and the Google.es for the Espanish espeakers. It’s a bonafide Melting Pot, just like some other place I know…
5. Google was created by people branching off from where they came. They had an idea and went with it. And the rest is history. Just like the land of the red, white and blue.
6. Google is Big Brother-ish. Actually maybe it’s not even ‘ish’, maybe it actually is just Big Brother. It collects personal data about you and stores it for future use and whenever it needs it. And America, well, we know what we do. We have secret societies like the CIA who have the power to put their hand in anything and do whatever they want in the name of ‘democracy’, but shhhhh, it’s all very hush-hush. Just like what Google Earth is doing. I mean, who knows really?
7. Google expands rapidly, buying businesses like YouTube left and right, just like us when we ‘buy’ and take over little places like Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. We do what we want. It’s the big fish eating the little fish. Survival of the fittest. Nothing personal, just business.
8. Under the guise of ‘just business’, we both actually are extremely cutthroat and hardworking. Neither one of us are slackers, that’s for sure. We work very hard. Sure, Google will let you sit on exercise balls and serve you free lunch every day, but did you ever stop to think that they might be doing that so you eat your lunch at your desk and take 15 minutes instead of an hour and a half? Not that bad of a ROI when you look at it that way. And we Americans work hard too. I always hear of these Europeans taking a month off every year and siestas and what not, but none of that for us. The 40 hour work week is soon becoming a thing of the past from what I hear.
9. Google is where people strive to be. It’s at the top of the world. Not too shabby of a place to be, huh? At the same time however, they’re constantly underdogs like China and India trying to bring something new to the table and beat it at its own game. Just like SEO companies beating the Google system. And when you come across a savvy white-hat SEO companies out there, watch out.
10. Since most of the previous reasons could be construed as slightly negative, let’s say something positive about the two, shall we? They’re both fun. And innovative. And cutting edge. Not to mention pretty amazing and incredible. Even though I only pledge allegiance to one (for now). Thanks, Brooke