Monday, November 21, 2011

How to: Keyword Research

How to research keywords for your new blog article or web page? For example you decide to publish article and want to find best keywords combination and want to be on top of Google search results. It is not easy! Read this post, use proposed "How to keyword research" method and you will find how to increase probability to find best keywords combination.

How to make keyword research?

Answer on question: "how to make keyword research" is by using KEI and KOI. Let's start with KEI.

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) - helps point out which keywords are the most effective and valuable. The KEI compares the number of monthly searches for a keyword with the number of search results and help to find the most effective keywords.

To find KEI use KEI formula:

KEI = (Number of Monthly Keyword Searches)^2 / (Competing Pages)

Number of Monthly Keyword Searches - this indicator you can find using Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
Competing Pages - find using Google search. Just enter your search term and check number of results.

    To make things more clear take a look at this example:

  • we want to make keyword research on this keyword combination: "google keyword research"

  • on Google AdWords Keyword Tool page we can determine the number of global monthly searches for specific term, for keywords term "google keyword research" it is 9,900 searches per month

    How to keyword research - find out number of monthly searches for specific term with Google AdWords Keyword Tool















  • to find out raw google competition for specific keywords term we use Google search. For "google keyword research" there are 15,200,000 results.

    How to keyword research - find out Google competition for specific keywords term





  • now we can calculate KEI
    KEI = 9,900 ^ 2 / 15,200,000
    KEI = 6,49

  • higher KEI better keywords combination. With KEI we try to find keywords which are highly searched but in the same time are not overused on web

There is one more indicator similar to KEI - Keyword Opportunity Index (KOI). KOI compares the number of monthly searches for a keyword with the number of directly competing search results.

Formula for KOI is:

KOI = (Number of Monthly Keyword Searches)^2 / (Directly Competing Pages)

    Example for calculating KOI for keywords term "google keyword research":

  • monthly searches for keywords term "google keyword research" is 9,900

  • number of directly competing pages can be found by using Google operator "allinanchor:". This Google operator return results containing query terms specified in the anchor text on links to the page.

  • number of directly competing pages for "google keyword research" is 9,740,000.
    Find directly competing pages with Google operator allinanchor for optimized keyword research





  • KOI is:
    KOI = 9,900 ^ 2 / 9,740,000
    KOI = 10,06

When you ask yourself how to do keyword research, it is good practice to find various keywords combination (thesaurus synonyms can help) find KEI and KOI for each of them and compare. Keywords combination with highest KEI or KOI is best choice. KEI method doesn't measure quality of competition just quantity (number of search results). To get quality in calculate, you can use SeoQuake, it show Google Page Rank for each result. So, if first few results have high PageRank, quality of competition is high.


Monday, November 14, 2011

Online tools for better blog

There are many great online tools which can help you to build a better blog or web site. Some exists as web pages and some are various add-ons. Here you will find a list of best free online tools (in my opinion) for better blog.

Find blog visitor statistics

To improve your blog you must learn on your own success and mistakes. To do so, you need to know how well your blog or site is doing, you must track traffic and visits.

Two best web tools for tracking website visits are:

  • Statcounter - very simple web tool for tracking number of pageviews and visits to your site. The main advantage of Statcounter is its simplicity and it is ideal for begginers. Using statcounter you can also track:
    • Popular pages
    • Entry pages
    • Exit pages
    • Keyword analysis...
    If you are using free version you can get detailed data only for last 24 hours. For basic tracking Statcounter is enough.


  • Google analytics - while Statcounter is easy to use, Google Analyitics (GA) is extremely powerful. Here I will not list what GA can do, it can do almost everything, it have many features and reports. What to say, GA is a king, long live to Google Analytics!

    Google Analytics screen preview







Estimate traffic of other sites

One way to estimate other web sites traffic and strength is through Google Page Rank and Alexa. Google Page Rank can vary from 0 to 10, 0 is worst while 10 is best. For Alexa on the other hand, rule is lesser is better, smaller number more visits. My blog in this moment have 217,000 Alexa value and 9,500 visits per month. So if some web site have Alexa rank lesser than 217,000 I can presume that this site has more than 9,500 visits per month.

  • SEO Toolbar add-on for Firefox - easy to use, shows Google Pagerank (PR) and Alexa rank for each visited website.

    Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank from your FireFox browser






  • SeoQuake - this add-on have one great feature. User can see Google PageRank value in Google result page. This can be very helpful when you try to find keywords for new blog article.

    SeoQuake shows google pagerank and other parameters for each result in Google result page












    SEOQuake have more features like Keyword density, nofollow indicator, URL comparer...


  • Builtwith - with this service you can learn all sorts of useful informations about site you enetered into the search bar. Find out which blogging platform is used, what type of adverts are on site (like AdSense, Amazon...), how traffic is tracked, what javascript libraries are used, what widgets are on site and informations about aggregate functionality.


Online tools for choosing right keywords

Choosing right keywords for blog posts is essential for good Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP). It is important to choose wisely, keywords with low competition and, in the same time, keywords which people looking for (high number of searches).

  • Google - is an excellent tool to find how many web pages for specific keywords exists out there on Internet. You just need to type keywords in Google search bar, make a search and check the number of results below the Google search bar.

    Google search result count






    On the picture above you can see that for keyword search term online tools for blogger exists 36,000,000 search results.
    You can use allinanchor Google search operator which return results containing query terms specified in the anchor text on links to the page. Some people think number of results with allinanchor is a more quality measuring unit for SEO then number of results gained with common Google query.



  • Google Adwords Keyword Tool - with this tool you can find number of Google monthly searches for specific keywords. This tool also, will suggest keyword ideas.

    Google keyword tool to find number of monthly searches for specific keywords










Guest blogging tools

If you want to publish guest posts on your blog first you must find guest post and second, verify if guest post is a duplicate.


  • Find guest posts using MyBlogGuest article gallery
    My blog guest is a web community of guest bloggers. This site have article gallery where you can find and read guest post previews sorted by category. You can offer to publish chosen guest posts on your blog and if guest poster agree, you will get whole guest post article. In my experience to get guest posts on this site it is advisable your blog have Page Rank 3 or higher. My blog has PageRank 3 for some time. During that time I managed to publish 30 guest posts in less than 3 months. But when my PageRank fall to 2, guest posters lost interest for my blog.





  • Duplichecker is a free online plagiarism detection tool. You can copy and paste text you want to check or you can choose a text file to check for duplicates.

  • CopyScape plagiarism checker which search for copies of selected page on the web. You enter url of some web page click Go button and get duplicate of entered web page.

Online tools for better article writing

There are some online tools that can help you to write better articles. Online tools like tool which can help you to find synonyms which are better choice in keyword terms then your first keyword, spelling checker or help with putting HTML code in blog post.

  • Thesaurus - with this tool you can quick find definition and synonyms. Synonyms can help you in process of keyword optimizing. For example you want to use word help and deduce word "help" is to competitive in Google search results. Then you enter word "help" in Thesaurus and find that one of the synonym is word advice which is less Google competitive then "help".

  • English spell checker for Firefox - Firefox automatically checks the spelling of words entered in any text boxes containing more than one line. As soon as word typing is finished, it is checked and if the word is not in the dictionary, word is underlined in red color.

  • Postable - if you want to insert some HTML tags (like <p></p>) literally in your post you need to encode this text. Postable encodes HTML tags and when HTML tags are encoded you can insert encoded tags in blog posts and HTML will be showed literally in post. More about this topic in How to display HTML code in blog post

    Encode HTML tags to display them literally inside your posts

  • PaperRater - Grammar & Spelling Check, Free Online Proofreading

Graphic element generator

Blog appearance can be important. To improve graphic appearance of your blog or web site you can use various online graphic generators.

  • Cool Text - this is free online graphic generator for logo style and button design. With this web application you can easily generate styled text for menus, sidebars and buttons.
    Choose style of text for blog sidebars










Tools for find free images

Finding the right picture to your blog article might be important. But many images are non-free for use so be careful. Where to find free images to insert in your new blog article? There are the list of few sites with free to search for free image collections.

  • Free digital photos - on this site you will find quality free images in small format (like 400 X 266 pixels). To publish free images you need to place a text hyperlink to the image creator's portfolio on FreeDigitalPhotos.net. This link must appear on the same page as the image.

  • Wpclipart - public domain (PD) pictures, no attribution or linking is required.

Where to upload files

  • Upload additional files for bloggers - in this article you will find list of free hosting services where you can upload additional files such as jscript files, css files, image files ect.

Miscellaneous

  • https://flippa.com/ - site for selling web sites