Marketing Mule

Wordstream recently released a suite of seo tools called “WordStream for SEO”. Wordstream for SEO features a set of keyword reasearch and content authoring tools to help writers create search engine optimized, “keyword focused” content. To be more specific WordStream for SEO helps enhance your search engine optimization efforts with better:

• Personalized Keyword Research: By mining your site’s own historical query data, you’re able to discover relevant, proven keyword opportunities that searchers have used to find your site
• Keyword Analytics: Instead of keyword tool “guesstimations,” WordStream…
  Continue reading WordStream Announces New SEO Toolset

Interspire’s Email Marketer software is a full fledged web based email marketing software with all the bells and whistles. As with any email marketing software there are some features that are an absolute must and there are features that are “just nice to have”. Interspire’s solution has all of the features that most small and medium sized businesses would need, and a large list of optional features that most businesses want.

Here are just a few features that I’ve found useful in the past that are included in Interspires offering:

• Segmentation – The ability to segment your emails is…
  Continue reading Interspire Email Marketing Software Review

In my last article I brought you 5 of my top 10 favorite Google applications for improving online productivity. These are free apps that I use on a daily basis and I’ve found my productivity has improved.

So without further delay, here are my top 5 favorite Google apps for productivity:

5 – Google Reader

I think one of my biggest productivity gains came when I switched to Google reader from my other feed reader.

For one, it’s a much more streamlined reader then most. Plus it gives me more ability to group my feeds using tags, and scan them much more quickly. I’ve found that I’ve saved over an hour a day…

If you are a web worker as I am, your time is precious. If you don’t work you don’t get paid. As such you need to be as productive as you can. That being said there is room for other things as well.

Plus, if you are like me, you work from more than one computer which can make it difficult to have all your settings and “stuff” on both computers.

But this is where Google can be quite helpful. If you aren’t as concerned about privacy then Google can be quite helpful at not only helping you get organized, but also helpful for keeping you productive and connected.

These are 5 of my favorite Google applications:

10 – Google History

I know many privacy conscious users…

If you operate an e-commerce enabled website you may have already researched your options for a shopping cart solution.

There are many great commercial and free solutions, from ProStores on the paid side to Zen Cart on the free side. In addition to these two there are literally dozens of other options.

In this review we look at Zen cart to help you determine if it is right for you.

Benefits of Open Source Software

There are many reasons people chose open source over other options. The first and most obvious is cost. As with other open source…

Many times whether you are a blogger or a business owner, your name comes under fire. Or sometimes someone with the same name as you has a less-than-desirable history. In either case it is important to know how to manage your brand online, to ensure that any negativity which could be associated with your name is mitigated.

Today we look at three sites which can not only help you manage your brand but also increase your reach, potentially leading to new customers or even friends.

Social Networking, not just for kids anymore

While it is true that kids and teens seemed to be the first to jump onto the social networking bandwagon (even before it was known as social…

There are many shopping cart systems out there. From paid ones, such as the ProStores system to open source ones such as Zen-cart. And while many people like the fact that open source software is generally free, they don’t like the fact that there isn’t an organized support system available.

On the other hand, while there is organized support for commercial systems one has to decide if paying for such a system is right for them.

In this review we look at one of those paid systems – ProStores.

After you create your ProStores account and log in you are…

There’s a new web analytics player in the market. One that has some interesting features not found in any other analytics program available.

It’s name is reinvigorate and it offers a few features not found with other web based analytics packages.

Reinvigorate is still a beta product so you need an invitation. Getting an invitation is fairly simple, just go to their home page and click on “beta registration.” Provide the necessary information and within a couple days you should receive an invite.

Once you receive your invitation link, log in and provide your website details along with your preferred login. Then tag…

The Moveable Type blogging platform has been one of the most flexible and easy to install platforms for some time.

And soon there will be an open source version which means that even more people can begin to realize the power of Moveable Type. Therefore I thought it would be timely and prudent to write a “how-to” on optimizing a Moveable Type blog so that more of your content can be found easier through the search engines.

The method I describe here is what has worked for me, however the system is flexible enough that you can play with it to find something that works for you should you find these instructions not…

If you believe Web Analytics is overrated and your business could succeed without Web Analytics, then you’re absolutely correct. Below are 21 reasons why you don’t Web Analytics integrated into your online campaign.

• You don’t want to know where your visitors are coming from.


• You don’t care how much time visitors spend on your website.


• Most popular products? Who cares, you already know what your customers want.


• Tracking hits is perfectly sufficient.


• Dead Content? There can’t be any dead content on your site.


• Site overlay is overrated because you can pretty much guess which links…
  Continue reading 21 Reasons Why You Do NOT Need Web Analytics

As with any offsite but online transaction, it can be difficult to measure it’s effectiveness. For example, it can be difficult to measure true ROI on banners where you pay a CPM cost.

The same can hold true for press releases. That is, you pay the editorial cost of submission and wait for the referrals, but it is sometimes difficult to track them. However PRWeb does provide some basic statistics. When you implement conversion tracking along with PRWeb statistics you can begin to understand the effectiveness of your releases.

Once you have submitted the press release and it has been approved by an editor, simply log into the account created earlier and scroll down the page…

As a search engine marketer, one of my jobs is to consult on press releases and press release submission.

Many times my clients will write their press releases and then send them to me to optimize them before they are submitted. And many times I have to perform quite an edit job in order to make them not only ready for the many online submission services, but also more compelling.

You see, optimizing a press release is very similar to optimizing a web page. You want the title to be compelling enough to get someone to click on it and read it, and you want the text to be just right. Not too wordy, but having enough to explain the premise of the release and keep the readers…

PRWeb is one of the largest press release synidcation services on the web. The claim they can reach over 14 million journalists every day.

In addition PRWeb offers many other ways to get your press release “out there” including keyword based RSS as well as traditional media exposure.

PRWeb doesn’t come cheap. It costs at least $80 to submit a release, and for extra features the cost goes up. But a well crafted release can generate significant traffic to your site, increasing pageviews and ultimately conversions.

In this article we provide some tips on writing an effective press release for PRWeb.

Rule #1 – Remember the Editor

PRWeb is editor driven. They have a…

I have done a fair bit of interviews over the last year and have started using audio and podcasts in order to share the content with my readers. My process is quite simple and I’d like to share my procedure for publishing an audio interview. Thanks to my colleague Cory Bates for helping me with my first podcast.

1. If you don’t have a FeedBurner account get one, and make sure you’ve declared yourself as a podcaster. FeedBurner recognizes media files which allows other people to subscribe…
   Continue reading How to setup a Podcast and Embed Audio

For a long time there wasn’t any very effective ways of measuring your “brand” or blog’s reach aside from the more traditional “link:” queries which you’d use on search engines.

With the explosion of bloggers out there more and more services have been built by bloggers for bloggers. Some of these include ways of finding out just how big of a blogger you are by measuring how other bloggers react to you.

As such, even the search engines have gotten into other ways of measuring your blog’s reach. In this article I review a few of those tools and show how they can be used to measure your blog brand.

Before I get into the blog specific tools I thought I’d review some which you may…

Web Analytics provider, StatCounter, has upgraded its free version by increasing the log file size from 100 to 500. A log file size of 500 means that StatCounter will allow web analytics users to gain insight on the last 500 visitors.

My favorite thing about StatCounter has always been its ability to report data very intuitively and in real time. I wonder if the upgrade of the free version is due to the pressure StatCounter is feeling from Google Analytics. I believe StatCounter has a long way to go if they really want to compete against Google’s free…

Everybody over the past year or more with any type of involvement in buying clicks, be it PPC, CPM, or any other type of keyword associated traffic purchase, has been talking about the long tail of user intent. In other words, those 80-90% of words that people search for, but that do not possess the individual volume to be highly competitive.

For example: let’s say you are running a campaign for Detroit’s latest sports car. First and foremost, you try and buy up all the branded queries because it will take time for your website to get some natural traction and you don’t want to be mugged by any squatters or direct competition. Second, you try to buy all those reasonable search…

I recently came across a cool new widget for bloggers called Add This. With it you can quickly and easily help get more of your content noticed in more places.

Before I go on, I should say that it isn’t just for bloggers. Anyone can use this.

With that out of the way let’s take a look at “Add This”.

There are a couple ways you can go with this product. While it is free either way, both have their benefits.

You can get a free widget that gives your site enhanced bookmarking abilities or you can create an account to get that plus stats on bookmarking.

In either case you get your choice of 3 buttons to…

In today’s Web 2.0 world there are more and more contractors who work from home and/or work for other companies down the road, in the next city or even in the next country.

For example, right now I am writing this article from my home where I work full time, and I log into a web based administration panel to post it. Working from home gives me the flexibility to work on many projects whenever I want.

But sometimes such flexibility can cause problems. Especially when you have workers spread out throughout the globe. Project management in such a situation becomes critical especially if you are trying to building a business or just rely on that next complete project to keep yourself…

In today’s world the Internet is playing an increasing role in day-to-day business. Even the most die-hard brick and mortar businesses realize the power of the web.

And for those businesses that truly lead the pack there is now an enterprise level analytics package to help them do business online.

Omniture’s latest release of Site Catalyst is just such an analytics package. Sure it gives you the usual statistics about your site, such as search engine referrals, page views, paid campaign management and so on. But it is one of the few analytics packages that also embraces Web 2.0.

Now, I’ve reviewed other 2.0 analytics packages such as Continue reading Omniture Site Catalyst – Enterprise Level Analytics for the Web 2.0 World

NEW YORK, NY – May 10, 2007 – Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, announced the launch of Hitwise To Go, an RSS-based service for journalists and academics providing regular updates of online consumer activity and statistics. The new service provides an extensive view of how more than 25 million Internet users (10M in the US), search and interact online across more than 900,000 unique websites each day.

The published data will cover a range of timely industry topics from the growth of newly launched websites, recent search trends, current events, the affect of web 2.0 technologies on specific industries, and popular websites amongst specific demographics or…

If you have been looking for an easy-to-use CMS system that doesn’t require a lot of overhead and can be easily managed, but haven’t been able to find one then this article is for you.

If you are like me, you may be looking for a light weight CMS system. One that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of more common systems such as Zope, Mambo or a host of others.

That’s because, while these are great systems on their own, in some cases they are just too much. If you only require support for a couple users and don’t want the hassle that sometimes goes with such robust systems then perhaps you need something a little simpler.

I’m talking about using a blogging platform like…

On May 8^th, Google announced its first major upgrade to the free Analytics package since the Internet giant acquired Urchin and MeasureMap. Why? Because Google wanted its analytics package to be as intuitively usable to a mid-level marketer as it would be to a senior developer or “mom & pop” wholesaler trying to get a toe hold into an online identity. But before you get too excited, this is a staged roll out; over the next several weeks, Google will be migrating all existing Analytics accounts to the new interface. Each account will be notified by email once the account has been migrated, where for a minimum of one month, you will have access to both the original…

If you are a Moveable Type blog user and fan as I am then you will find these must have plugins will really help you manage and improve your blog.

I’ve been a Moveable Type user for many years now, and I have to say that I’m very impressed with how it has been improving. Simply upload the files, check to ensure you have the prerequisites and log in. Within a few minutes and some basic setup you can begin blogging.

Whether you are familiar with Moveable Type or not, you will also find that plugins can be extremely helpful. While Moveable Type comes with some great ones built in like spam filtering you will find…

Google’s latest release has been in the beta pipeline for almost six months – Website Optimizer, Google’s free multivariate testing application, allows an advertiser to run rather intensive landing page tests without having to recruit a lot of technical resourcing or statisticians to evaluate the data.

In fact, the interface is so easy to work with it takes most of the “test design” work out of you hands. Really, all you have to do is upload some java code to the landing pages and run through the Google wizard – in as little as ten minutes you can run your own multivariate testing (as complicated as you want to make it)...

As blogging crosses the floor and switches from a personal diary to a corporate tool, more and more plugins, add-ons and widgets are being developed to help bloggers get more exposure and traffic.

Whether you are a corporate blogger or keeping a personal diary these Wordpress plugins can help make your blog more interactive and entertaining.

Now, we find Wordpress a very functional platform on its own, but we feel that these plugins defintely enhance both the user experience and ultimately your blog’s goals. Whether that is corporate branding or simply sharing your life experiences.

To start with, let’s look at a couple SEO related plugins.

As many in the search engine…

Back when there were issues with feeds, where different blog platforms were pushing their own feed, many users became frustrated because their feed reader didn’t support the feed type.

But then services like Feedburner began to crop up. They were able to bridge that gap by allowing bloggers to “burn” their feed into other varieties. Since then Feedburner has become must more than a feed translation service.

And while Feedburner’s offerings can be helpful to bloggers one begins to wonder if there is a price bloggers are paying to use the service?

By price I don’t mean an actual cost. A Feedburner account is free, and it only takes minutes to burn a feed. Plus Feedburner has a…

Technorati was a service that was popular with “hard core” bloggers when it first came out. And like many bloggers I was one of the first to use it. Still do today in fact.

It soon gained international attention with its quarterly “State of the Blogosphere“ reports, beginning in 2004. Now it claims to track over 75 million blogs.

Back then it was a leader in blogging technology – from widgets to pinging, Technorati had it covered.

But is Technorati as relevant and useful to bloggers today?

First let’s talk about the state of the blogosphere. The following image illustrates what Technorati monitors:

Continue reading Technorati – Good for Bloggers?

MyBlogLog is a relatively new player in the blogosphere. It offers a mix between MySpace, Technorati and Google Analytics in that it spans multiple services in one convenient package.

That being said, do we need another MySpace or Technorati competitor?

MyBlogLog was originally launched as a blog analytics service back in 2005. However it soon became apparent that MyBlogLog was being used for building communities moreso than analytics. According to reports, MyBlogLog claimed to have…

19 April 2007

Experian, the global information solutions company, announces that it has acquired Hitwise, a leading Internet marketing intelligence company, which helps clients monitor the performance of their websites and target their online advertising spend more effectively. The purchase price is approximately $240m and will be funded from
Experian’s existing cash resources. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval.

Don Robert, Chief Executive Officer of Experian, commented:

“We have been successfully repositioning our Marketing Solutions business to meet our clients’ needs as they continue to switch more of their advertising spend online. Hitwise, which is a…

There are many competitive intelligence gathering and research tools out there. Some free, such as Alexa and Compete. While others are paid, like Hitwise and Nielsen//Netratings.

And the pricing for the paid ones can range from several hundreds to many thousands of dollars, depending on the feature set you require. But does that make them better than the free systems?

A comparison between free tools and paid tools

At first…

Google has recently announced that there is a new feature to be found at Google Webmaster Central.

The new feature allows you to remove URLs from their index. At first glance one might think that this is a handy way to remove URLs that are generating 404 errors. These could include pages that no longer exist, or pages that are improperly linked to from outside sources.

And this is why I think you should explore why the URL is generating a 404 before you remove it.

For example, I found that many pages on my personal blog were…

One thing I’ve been struggling with is a good, accessible system for managing my business life. Anything from managing contacts, to-do lists, and sales opportunities. Up until now, these and other business related tasks have been spread among various websites and various desktop applications.

However, I’ve been on the hunt for something that gets as much stuff off my desktop as possible, so that whether I’m sitting in front of my computer in my office, or out with my laptop, I can gain access to the same information.

Granted there are various CMS applications out there – some commercial and some open source, but for smaller businesses and sole proprietorships there aren’t many…

A common problem in B2B sponsored advertising is that the long consideration phase is not necessarily conducive to the framework of pay-per-click. Because the research phase can be anywhere from 30-300 days, and the actual buying funnel is crossed with multiple stakeholder touch points (sales dialogue enter here, RFI here, RFP here, etc), it is very difficult to monetize the return from a PPC campaign. Even with cookies, you simply cannot link a sale to an origin in PPC, there are too many people involved in the purchase decision, and there is just too much interaction throughout the consideration phase.

However, Industry knows, intrinsically, that there is value…

For the last two months I have been busily looking for a single tool to replace the past capabilities that Overture gave to every search marketer; namely, an almost accurate representation of monthly search volume. Granted, there were always flaws in the system; for instance, automated searches were impossible to take out of the volume results, as well, Yahoo! always accepted a certain level of plurality and synonyms as a single count, unlike any of the other search engines – ( “market” and “markets” were the same word, “auto” and “car” were the same word). But even though there were flaws, I could still drum up a few calculations and plug them into a spreadsheet and get a fairly…

A while back SEOBook released a Firefox extension called the “SEO for Firefox“ extension. At the time it had some pretty cool features. It has since evolved into a full featured SEO toolkit.

In this article we look at SEO for Firefox to see what it can and can not be used for.

When you first install SEO for Firefox it turns most features off. That is, while it does add extra information to a Google search results page, it doesn’t immediately make that information visible.

But to view the data you want you can click on the “?” found beside the entry you’d like and the extension will fetch the data.

Continue reading SEO Competitive Research with SEO For Firefox

The best way to have a successful pay-per-click campaign is to firstly, clearly define the objectives and goals of the campaign; secondly, establish some effective analytics to accurately track the metrics that matter; and thirdly, separate yourself from the competition – both visually and strategically.

The first two steps seem to be no brainers, and most marketers understand that you both need to know where you are going and know when you get there; however, some marketers still make common mistakes and improperly append URLs for their analytics, or compromise strategies weekly while making erratic changes to campaigns. It is basic business common sense, but marketers still make…

In my previous article introducing you to Hitwise I talked about some of the features available with the product. However there was a whole branch of options that I wasn’t able to get to.

In this article I look at those other features. They include demographics and psychographics.

Demographic data in Hitwise tells you not only where visitors to your site come from but also their gender, age and income.

In order to see this data you first need to pick a site for which you want to see the information. Once you have chosen the site, simply browse to the “demographics” tab where you can see information such as this:

Continue reading Hitwise: Is Demographic Data Useful?

There are free competitive intelligence gathering tools on the market like Alexa, Compete and Spyfu and then there are paid ones such as Hitwise and Neilsen//Netratings. All offer varying degrees of data, but does the apparent lack of free data justify the costs of products like Hitwise?

In this article we review Hitwise from a competitive intelligence gathering point of view to determine if it is worth the many thousands of dollars per month it could conceivably cost.

Hitwise…

There are SO many products and services available to search marketers and bloggers to help measure and market their websites that one can’t simply keep up with. So I thought I would begin assembling a list of some of the popular products/services I am familiar with in order to help spread the word (I took snippets of descriptions from each of the products’ websites). I hope to continuously expand on this list so that it makes a little bit easier for people (especially me) to keep on top of everything.

The following table is just a brief list of products avaialable to search marketers and bloggers. Some have free and or demo versions while others are paid, or have paid versions with…

I am often asked by colleagues, clients, and blog readers for comparisons between different Web Analytics Products: “What are the differences between Google Analytics and SiteCatalyst,” “How do I know which web analytics product to use?” So I did some research and have compiled a list of resources which compare analytics products. I also grabbed the ‘feature’ page links from various web analytics vendors so that all this data could be accessed in one place. Enjoy:

Analytics Vendor vs. Analytics Vendor

Google Analytics vs. Visistat

Continue reading The Ultimate Web Analytics Comparison

Caphyon Ltd. is proud to announce the release of Advanced Web Ranking 5.1. This version features W3C standards compliance for HTML reports and the ability to customize the HTML reports using CSS style sheets.

New features:

• Redesigned the HTML reports to comply with W3C HTML 4.1 Strict standard


• Added ability to customize the HTML reports using CSS style sheets


• Added the ability to show/hide charts in HTML printable reports


• Added the ability to choose the chart size in HTML printable reports


• Added the ability to generate a report for a previous day


• Added the Competion column in the CSV reports


• Added the Quick…
  Continue reading Advanced Web Ranking 5.1 Released

Late last week I had the pleasure of catching up with Compete, Inc’s CTO and co-Founder, David Cancel. During this time I had the opportunity to chat with David about the history of Compete Inc and got some insightful background on their product Compete.com. Here’s how it went:

Tell me about yourself and how CompeteInc.com got started?

I’m the CTO and co-Founder of Compete, Inc. We started the company 6yrs ago right after the bubble meltdown (Oct. 2000). Before founding Compete, I was the founding CTO of BuyerZone.com, part of the founding…

This is a product review recently completed by Manoj at Web Analytics World. It is being reprinted here with his permission.

I was recently asked to review a product by Submit Suite called Website Popularity. Website Popularity basically tells a person how they are ranking on various measurements across the Internet. I was impressed with the speed at which it returns the data as well as the amount of metrics it returns. The cost is a one time fee of $50. This tool can be best used for many reasons:

- As a sales person who needs to provide a quick analysis for a prospect regarding their competitive…

Alexa was founded in April, 1996. It is probably most well known for both its toolbar and its “Traffic Rankings” site statistics tool.

Since its inception there have been concerns that Alexa data is flawed in some way. That is because the Traffic Rankings data comes from information harvested from toolbar users. Therefore the data could be easily manipulated.

There have been cases in the past where site owners have felt they could positively influence their own site ranking on Alexa merely by installing the toolbar and visiting their own website multiple times per day. While it would have been difficult to prove or disprove this claim, many felt that the data was flawed…

There are many ways to gather competitive intelligence on your competitors. From using free services like Alexa to paid ones such as Hitwise and Neilsen//Netratings. But another player in the free market space has been making strides. It is called Compete.

Compete is the brainchild of Goto founder and former Yahoo! executive Bill Gross.

Compete is based on the idea of “click-sharing.” Click-sharing is when a variety of users share their experiences (clicks) with other users to help build a profile of the web including…

Chitika is a well known affiliate type program where advertisers can select to advertise their products via various services including “Mini-Malls.”

Site publishers, on the other hand, can earn revenue from these services by placing code on their pages which is supposed to serve targeted content to website visitors.

Now before you rush to sign up I must tell you that your site needs a minimum of 10,000 pageviews per month which means if you are a blogger that only gets a couple thousand per month you will be rejected. However if you do qualify then continue reading.

Mini-malls

Chitika’s most well known product is their mini-malls. They are small areas on a website…

There are many affiliate programs available today. In this review we look at Shareasale.com to see what (if anything) it offers differently from other programs.

Shareasale offers programs for both merchants and affiliates. That means, whether you have products to sell, or are a content creator who wishes to monetize your site, Shareasale has a program for you.

From the merchants point of view, Shareasale is a good deal. The merchant decides what to sell via the program and the commission structure they prefer. Commissions are only paid when results are achieved. That means only paying for qualified traffic. You can choose to setup your…

There are many free and paid search engine optimization management programs out there which can make it difficult to choose which one to use.

But offering free trials and free downloads can help make the decision easier.

Web CEO is one of those programs which offers both freely downloadable and paid versions. Today I am going to review the free version.

I have only just started to use this tool but I must say I’m impressed with the variety of detail one can get from it.

I started using it to analyze my own sites and was impressed with the reporting. However I find the most impressive part of the package is the link analyzer which gives…

There are a variety of ways to capture more links to your site. As you may know there are two keys to successful search engine positioning: Links and Content.

In fact, the content can be used to help capture those links. So that is tactic one.

Tactic 1 – Writing compelling content

For some people it can be easier to simply write great content than go out and hunt out sites to request links from.

Then there is the hassle of likely having to set up and maintain a reciprocal links section to the site, and monitoring it regularly for spam.

This is why some have turned to creative content in order to capture links they may not normally have gotten.

Such content can be…