As an SEO & SEM consultant, I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my productivity and effectiveness. In this quick post, I’d thought I’d share 5 tools that are making my life a heck of a lot easier.

1. SEO Digger: My top fav right now, this innovative tool allows you to see which search queries you are ranking in the top 20 Google results for. According to the SEO Digger site, here’s how it works: “Seodigger works by building a reverse index. The first 20 SERP results are saved from 60 million search requests. Then, a “backward index” of the search engine is built, linking sites with keywords these sites can be found by.” For me, the tool is useful because it shows me keyword phrases that I haven’t intentionally optimized for, but present a great opportunity for capturing good traffic with a little work.
2. Google AdPreview: A godsend for PPC marketers, this tool allows you to see ads as they appear to the normal Google visitor performing a search. (typically your Adwords ads don’t appear for your own searches when you are logged in). You can also change your geographic location in order to preview local ads as someone would in other part of the world. Thanks to Jeff Novak from 10 Golden Rules for alerting me to this one.
3. SEO Book’s Firefox Plugin: This is the one Firefox plugin I can’t live without. The plugin shows 22 SEO metrics directly on the Google SERP, including incoming links, PageRank, Technorati Rank, Domain age, and more. You can also right click on any webpage and look at these same metrics at a glance.
4. Google Sets: This Google labs tool is a great way of generating related keyword ideas. Basically, you enter a few keywords, and Google generates a list of related search terms. While the regular Google Keyword tool also generates keyword suggestions, Google Sets takes into account more than just one keyword phrase at a time.
5. AdCenter Keyword Mutation Tool: Microsoft AdCenter’s keyword mutation tool is great for finding misspellings. Thanks to Linda Bustos for pointing out this tool as a great way to optimize internal site search.

Have you found any other SEO or SEM tools that are making your job easier? Please drop a comment.

Recently, I received a few links to my blog from a website located in France. About the same time, I started receiving traffic from the French version of Google. (google.fr) This got me wondering how to capture more international search traffic.

Despite the many SEO blogs I subscribe to, I see very little information posted on global SEO strategies. Out of curiosity, I started researching international SEO tactics. Below are some suggestions that I found.

1. Use Local Domain Extensions: The most effective strategy for international SEO is the most obvious one. If you’re trying to optimize for Google.ca and your domain has a .ca extension, you have a great advantage (though it’s still very possible without one.) In addition to the domain extension, Google probably looks at the IP address location of your server to determine the geographical relevance of your site.
2. Translation Isn’t Enough: Many assume that a word-for-word Google translation of existing website content will result in high rankings on international SERPs. Those of use who’ve ever read a word-for-word translation from another language to English realize this isn’t a good idea. You may get into the SERPs, but your odds of converting the visitor and slim to none.
3. Get Links from international domains: If your site contains a good diversity of incoming links from many domain extensions (.co.uk, .ca, .fr, etc), Google will begin to notice your site on the non-US versions of Google.
4. Links to international domains: While I’m not sure if this will really improve rankings, it at least shows you’re participating in a global community by linking to international sources.
5. Keyword + Country Landing Pages: I’ve found searchers sometimes do a keyword search and append their country name to it. (e.g. “ipods uk”) By optimizing a landing page for this combination, you can begin ranking for the terms.
6. Do International Keyword Research: It doesn’t make sense to get your keyword suggestions and counts from keyword tools only showing US results. Aaron Wall’s International SEO keyword tool allows you to get keyword data from 15 different countries.
7. Know the Local Lingo: Anyone who has traveled to another English speaking country knows there are significant differences in local lingo. For example, one of my clients discovered that “shop” is more frequently used than “store.” in many European countries.
8. Consider Local Search Engines: Google doesn’t exactly rule the entire world of search….yet. While its still the number #1 engine internationally, local engines such as Voila in France, Ansearch in Australia, or Yandex in Russia are very popular. If you’re targeting a certain local audience, it pays to understand the algorithms of other engines besides Google.

For many international brands, global Search engine optimization remains a virtually untapped arena. According to this podcast from Oban Multilingual, 70% of internet search queries are not in English.

About Palmer Web Marketing

Justin Palmer is an eCommerce, SEO, and Web Usability consultant that offers Local SEO consulting and SEO Website reviews for small to medium size e-businesses.

Now that Google seems to be artificially adjusting the PageRank of certain sites, we have one more reason to ignore it as a useful SEO key performance indicator. So what should we use to measure the success of our SEO projects? Below, I’ve listed the 7 SEO KPI’s that I track for my sites.

1. Unique keywords: By tracking the number of unique keywords your site is found for, you’ll see a global, birds eye view of how well your site is doing with the long tails. Sure, you want to be found for the important, high volume terms as well, but a healthy site will rank organically for a great diversity of keywords.
2. Organic Visits Per Page: Every page on your site should target a few keywords and draw in traffic for those terms. In other words, what percent of your total unique pages are doing a good job of bringing traffic? If you have 1000 pages, and only 200 unique keyword visits, you’ve got some issues that need to be addressed.
3. Conversion Rate Per Keyword: It’s extremely important to know which keywords outperform others. As a search marketer, your time is very limited. Therefore, you must focus on the terms which return decent ROI.
4. Pages Indexed: The number of pages your site indexed has indexed by Google and Yahoo can give you a rough metric of your site’s crawl-ability. If you find that the number of actual pages you have is much greater than the number of indexed pages, you may have issues with navigation or duplicate content. To view your indexed pages, simply use the “site:” command on Google or Yahoo (e.g. site:www.yoursite.com).



5. Yahoo Backlinks: Unlike Google, Yahoo actually shows you the approximate number of back links pointing to your site by using the link: command.
6. Google Backlinks: Unfortunately, the Google link: command is worthless. In order to see an approximate, although likely outdated count of your external links, login to your Google Webmaster Central account.
7. SERP Rankings for High Volume Keywords: Because web users are becoming more sophisticated and less predictable in their searching habits, I would caution about worrying too much about high volume keywords. However, it’s still important to monitor these keyword positions. SEO software such as WebCEO or WebPositionGold are great timesaver tools.

About Palmer Web Marketing

Justin Palmer is an eCommerce, SEO, and Website Usability consultant that offers Local search consulting services and an SEO Website review for small to medium size e-businesses.

Now that everyone and their mother has a website and thinks they know SEO, odds are the number of websites competing for your keywords has increased drastically. Within any business, it’s vital to keep track of what your competitors are doing. This practice is even more important when it comes to SEO. In this post, I’ll share some steps to keep tabs on what your competitors are doing so you’ll remain on top.

1. Identify Your Competitors:  Obviously, the easiest way to find your competitors would just be to Google your keywords. Another good way would be Alexa Traffic tool and look at the related sites.
2. Setup Google Keyword Alerts: A great way to monitor your competitors as well as your industry in general is to setup Google Alerts for each of your primary keywords. Every time Google finds a blog post, press release, or article featuring your keywords, you’ll get an email with a link to it. Many times, Google alerts have alerted me to the fact that a competitor was using a less than ethical SEO tactic, such as splogging.  
3. Setup Google Company Name Alerts: In addition, setup a Google alert for each of your competitor’s names.
4. Check Your Competitor’s Back links: By using the “link:www.yourcompetitorurl.com” command in Google or Yahoo, you can see where your competitor’s back links are coming from. This is a good way of generating ideas for link building.
5. Check Your Competitor’s On-Site Tactics: What keywords are your competitors targeting on their landing pages? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve discovered keywords on a competing website that I’d never considered.

The success of an SEO campaign is dependant on many factors, but it all begins with keyword research. Targeting the right keywords, and you’ll both rank well and convert your traffic. Target the wrong words, and you’ll either rank for keywords that don’t convert or not rank at all.

I’d like to suggest that the secret to picking the right keywords is finding niche terms that are not too hard to rank for, but will convert well. Time and time again I’ve seen new websites pick terms that are to hard to rank for in a relatively short time. By shooting for the stars, these sites end up missing the mark entirely, and not ranking for anything.

In my opinion, SEOs should always target the more attainable niche keywords first. For example, I’ve been working with a company that is seeking to obtain first page ranking for the term “Christian Music“. However, with Google showing an estimated 85 million results for this query, the odds of ranking in the top ten anytime soon was not promising. With this in mind, we chose to target the keywords “Christian music cds”, “new Christian music”, and “Christian music store” instead. Not only were these keywords easier to rank for, they are more specific and targeted towards my client’s business. Because we chose niche keywords with the term “Christian music” within it, we ended up slowly gaining ground on that term as well.

The moral of this post…. target niche keywords first, and the generic ones will follow. Happy SEOing…

About Palmer Web Marketing

Palmer Web Marketing offers Christian SEO services and SEO Services in Orange County.