Aaron Wall created the first SEO Book in 2003 and has continued to keep it current over the years. He provides quality information and has quite a large following. Being an e-book, it is constantly being updated. Many books and websites gloss over these subjects but SEO Book and SEOBook.com provides on and off page search optimization to help you make your website a success. The end of each chapter has a quick reference section. Pay-per-click is covered as well.

The book starts at the beginning with finding good hosting and moves on to site building and copywriting. He covers in great detail the importance of how to write good copy for the internet as opposed to newspapers and magazines. The dos and don’ts of getting your site listed in the major search engines are described.

Keyword optimization, onsite optimization, linkbuilding….are all a complicated subject which Wall walks his users through. Never shy of personally answering questions. He also offers various valuable free tools.
Aaron provides all forms of optimization methods you will need to know in order to succeed. All this information must be tracked to verify results of your efforts and this is covered.

You may be able to find the information in this book on the internet but it would take years. Aaron Wall is the go to man for SEO and lays it all out in his book. The book is not too cheap($79.) however the information you receive is priceless and will save you tons of money.

a.  Look at your current backlink structure and the one of your competitors

b. Identify your current keyword rankings with tools such as SEMRush

c.  Google results and make sure universal search doesn’t dilute the results

d. Check the search volume for your keyword

2. Splash page
Splash pages were cool in 2000, but in 2010 splash pages are a waste for the user and search engines. The problem is that search engines will spider the splash page as your main page instead of the one with the content.

3. Popups / Layers and other nonsense
Popups are as useless as Splash pages and Google hates it. Whether it’s a regular popup an exit popup or a layers it’s advised not to use any. It’s been rumored that it kills your rankings when detected.

4. No Deeplinking
A deep link is a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on a website, instead of that website’s main or home page .Make sure to mix it up and don’t point all links to your homepage. Also note that there is no average deep-link ratio. The ratio depends on the nature of the site and industry.

5. Meta Tags
Keyword stuffing in the Meta tags doesn’t work in 2010. Google claimed in a post that they no longer even look at the meta-keywords in order to rank your website. So stop stuffing keywords and concentrate on links and content.

6. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is content which is duplicate or near duplicate in nature. Search engines do not want to index multiple versions of similar content (but still do it). If you have websites with identical content, scraped or recycled content, e-commerce product info (manufacturer info), participate in article distribution or have printer-friendly pages, there is a chance that it negatively impacts your SEO. Make sure your content is fresh and unique.

7. Link velocity
Link building is like a marathon. Keep links growing week after week after week.

8. Robots.txt
Never disallow crawlers to stop by (unless there is an issue). Make sure to guide crawlers throughout your pages. Make sure bots are also not blocked via meta tags.

9. Sitemap
Sitemaps are an easy way to inform search engines and users about the pages. Put a sitemap up or submit it to the engines via XML.

10. Hosting
Try to host in good neighborhoods and don’t engage in hosted template companies, which are all sitting on the same IP.

SEO Effect Software

Features:

Keyword research. Like all tools of this type on the market, SEO Effect allows you to provide your own list of keywords or extract them from Google’s database. Unlike most of it’s competitors however, it also allows you to “rip” keywords from a URL. In other words, you can put in a competitor’s website and see what keywords that competitor is using and how difficult it will be to rank against them.

In addition to simply researching the keywords, SEO Effect allows you to set keywords that you want to monitor. This can a huge time saver. In the ever-changing world of SEO, there’s always a constant scramble for those coveted top 5 search engine spots. With your average keyword tool, you’re forced to run a full analysis on the keywords each time you want a snapshot of what’s going on with that keyword. With SEO Effect’s monitoring ability, every time you open it up and look at those keywords, you can get an up to date picture of what is going on with those terms.

Visitor traffic monitoring. Everyone who is interested in a SEO tool wants his or her web site to bring a profit at some point. The sophisticated traffic analysis that SEO Effect is capable of allows you to tailor your website to get the desired result from your web site visitors, whether that result is clicking adsense ads, affiliate sales, or anything else.

The Pros of SEO Effect:

- It offers very handy options that other tools on the market simply don’t have. This could give you a competitive edge.
- As the development team continues its work, SEO Effect promises to grow into an all-in-one tool to meet any SEO need.
- Free trial. This is huge. Unlike tools where you’re forced to pay your hard earned cash just to find out if the tool will meet your needs, SEO Effect allows you the option of taking it out for a test drive.

The Cons of SEO Effect:

- There are minor issues (like a time intensive manual system for sorting the best keyword for your web site) that some could find annoying. On the plus side, the development team is no doubt aware of these issues and working to eliminate them.

- The biggest con is that SEO Effect is a work in progress. At this point in time, it is not that one-stop solution that it will eventually be. The developers might have been better off simply not mentioning the future capabilities because what it can already do is quite impressive.

Summary:

While it is impossible to judge the capabilities that have not been implemented yet, the 2 modules that are functional are enough to give anyone a competitive edge.

For the existing capabilities, we give SEO Effect a 4 out of 5. If the developers can make a couple of minor user friendliness fixes, SEO Effect might become a perfect weapon in your SEO arsenal.

DIYSEO software

The Importance of Ranking Well on Search Engines

When your business is near the top of the list of websites that come up for a specific search engine keyword, the traffic that visits your site will be focused more closely on the products that you sell. DIYSEO can help you create the most effective keywords and place them on your site in the proper fashion so that your website will be indexed higher on the search engine rankings for those keywords. When a site is listed near the top of the unpaid search results, customers understand that the website contains more of the information they are wanting to find. People will visit your site ready to learn more about what you have to offer.

Affordable SEO Results

DYSEO is priced so that even the smallest internet company can afford to purchase search engine optimization tools through their automated SEO software package. The knowledge of several years of search engine optimization experience has been condensed into a software program that can be used by any business to increase their rankings in search engines. A monthly subscription will buy you access to search engine optimization experts who can help you with any problem you may have while you are working toward optimizing your site so that the top search engines will rank you higher.

Create a Simple Plan of Action

There are three steps that DIYSEO uses to optimize any business website. This software helps you plan your site, complete tasks that are broken up into achievable sizes, and measure the results through website statistics. You will have all of the tools you need to continue making the right changes to generate higher search engine rankings. DIYSEO will help you interpret your website statistics so that you know exactly what your next step should be. Before you begin your optimization efforts, DIYSEO will guide you through planning a strategy that works for your specific business site.

Get the Information You Need in a Central Location

After you have installed DIYSEO on your site, you will have access to a dashboard that tells you everything you need to know about how your site is being used by your visitors. It will show you how you are currently ranking on the top search engines, with specific information on which keywords are rising or falling in the rankings. You can see where your site is listed for each keyword term on each of the top search engines at a glance. The dashboard is also where you will receive tasks from the software that guide you through the steps you need to take to improve your rankings.

Summary

Overall DIYSEO is a great product for small businesses, who cannot afford expensive SEO consulting. The unique features and constant development of the SEO platform should help anybody to earn some good rankings.

We even recommend DIYSEO for more advanced clients. The task builder is just a unique feature, that can help also the professional SEO in not missing out on the SEO steps.

Features

A quick visit to the Quantcast home page gives you a lot of options, many of which you may have never heard of, even if you work in marketing. Here are some of the features:

• Web analytics. As a user, you can see demographic data for any site. Sites that use Quantcast have exact numbers, and sites that don’t still show estimated traffic data. You can sign up for a free account and use them to track your website’s traffic, too.

• Lookalikes. The Quantcast home page prominently advertises their ability to buy and sell lookalikes. This means that instead of just regular traffic, they know lots of detailed demographic data, and can advertise to very specific audiences. As a Quantcast user, you can buy or sell very specific, targeted web traffic.

• Advertisements. Quantcast can help you track, find, and sell ads on your site.

The Good

Quantcast’s extensive data is pretty cool to just an ordinary user, and extraordinarily awesome to a marketer of website owner. It is also the thing that sets them apart from other similar analytics services – they know a lot about web traffic, and can target <i>very</i> specific markets. Another of their huge advantages comes from being an independent third party. Advertisers know and trust them to be accurate, so they don’t have to worry about whether or not publishers are actually showing their ads enough times or if they are really getting the traffic that they claim they are.

The Bad

For all its good features, Quantcast is not without its downsides. For one thing, their data sources are a bit ambiguous. Sure, it’s easy to track what pages a user visits, where they are from (using their IP address), and what they click on, but exactly Quantcast gets their data on age and gender is a little bit ambiguous. Along those same lines, it is easy to believe that Quantcast can very accurately track websites which have signed up and use the Quantcast tracking code, but their data for sites that are not “<i>Quant</i>ified” is just an estimate, and as such can be a bit off, especially for smaller sites.

Review and Rating

Overall, Quantcast is a great and reliable service that is definitely worth using. There data sources are a little bit sketchy for some sites, however they are completely reliable if you put their tracking code on your site, so they can be a great way to prove to your advertisers that you really get the traffic you claim. Their ability to move highly targeted traffic is unparalleled, and is a great way to find the traffic you need.

Features
Overall features of Compete.com are impressive. These features include search analytics, referral analytics, ranked lists, category profiling, company website profiling and a click stream of data form over two million people whom have agreed to continuous monitoring of their Internet surfing habits.

The Good
The way Compete normalizes the massive amounts of data they collect is one of its strengths. Using a “multi-dimensional scaling” technique, Compete can weed out the international users and de-bias the US users for both the weekly and monthly statistics. The Compete Pro version allows site owners to keep tabs on competitors while tracking their information including competitor keyword tracking, SEO link building and the ability to see a complete site profile of any website, not just sites that Compete tracks using their analytics techniques.

Additionally, Compete excels in the area of online media and marketing campaigns. With analytics for gauging the effectiveness of a marketer’s ad campaigns, their Ad Impact product can effectively measure the consumer’s behavior when viewing ads-or not. Ad Impact not only uses click-through as a measure, but it also measures the clicks to competitor sites, conversions and search activity as related to brand-terms.

Compete’s behavior Match product is another addition to their analytics that no marketer should be without. Its ability to find the ads the consumers want to see outranks any other similar product. By monitoring consumers’ interests when surfing the web, Compete can effectively gauge their behavior and find the right publishers that make those consumers want to click.

The Bad
The pricing for their Compete Pro products is much higher than your average analytics tool and rests at from $199 to $499 a month, with various custom plans for enterprise solutions. While Compete does add extra tools to a paid account, admittedly these same features come with Google Analytics, Alexia and with other analytic websites free of charge. Additionally, many of the tools offered in the paid version can be found elsewhere on the Internet free of charge as well. Consumers are simply paying for convenience in this case.

Another key point to consider when looking at Compete as an analytics website is its reported inconsistencies when it comes to normalizing the data collected. According to some reports of users whom have searched their own company’s websites, they state the data Compete has on their site is flat out wrong and not even close to the reported statistics of their web host. While this may just be an artifact of Compete’s normalization process, it might be just enough to want to use Compete simply as an observational tool instead.

Review and Rating
The upshot here is that Compete has a much higher and sampling of the ”average consumer” than any other analytics site does, so this alone may outrank the price paid for those who need the information from a more complete consumer base. However, with so many reports of statistical flaws and inaccuracies, be wary of using their paid tools, since no refunds are allowed or offered. Overall rating, five stars out of ten.

Features

Every month SEMRush searches for 40,000,000 of the highest-ranked keywords used, searching at least 20,000,000 domain names. After gathering the data, SEMRush provides a detailed and helpful report to guide users in the right direction toward optimization of their web data. Based on recent data history, companies may then adjust content to fit higher standards for visibility and web traffic.

The Good

SEMRush searches through countless domains and words; it is also searches words and websites of many other languages, making the data the most extensive collection possible. Not only does SEMRush help the user identify the keywords used in their content the most, but it also gives reports of those words’ popularity and where the website would rank. The program is reported as being very reliable and efficient. Considering that gathering such information, reports and analyzing the information would be very costly and time consuming; SEMRush omits the time and cost. SEMRush offers a free trial and regular purchase price less than $60.00.

The Bad

One of the disadvantages noted from SEMRush users is that the data is older than it is described in the description SEMRush provides. Personally we haven’t noticed that, but could not approve or disapprove the statements. Otherwise we haven’t seen or noticed any negative statements abou the tool

The Review and Rating

Considering both the pros and cons of SEMRush, it does seem to be a very good investment. Considering the fact that gathering data without an automated software would be costly and time consuming, paying under $60.00 for a program that does all of those things automatically is really a good offer. Ratings have ranged between 3-5 consistently on a five-star scale by many users. Another factor to consider is that the use of consultants for SEM and SEO purposes are very pricey; purchasing this program will save a company the process of hiring a professional to enhance their web content.

Searchmetrics Suite has a strong set of features that allow web developers to create sites that drive the maximum amount of traffic. The company has a strong track record of assisting customers in achieving a high number of sales conversions. Customers will find the features of Searchmetrics Suite make it easier to perform mundane tasks in the least amount of time. Customers can then focus on web design and other metrics to drive business to sites.

• Screens and filters web data to provide results
• Increases website visibility
• Analyzes the search engine strategy of competitors
• Easy to understand line, bar and scatter diagrams
• Intuitive software interface
• Access to Page Rank or Alexa Rank
• Access to social media websites an blog links
• Highlights Key Performance Indicators
• Monitors trends and provides at least 12 months of historical data
• Through Backlink provides information about IP address, relevance, link texts, geo location and other information

The Good

• Displays the top 10,000 keywords for the given topic
• Provides a domain audit and an in depth analysis
• Provides suggestions for website improvement
• Includes automated reports for decision making processes
• Includes a database of Business-to-Business keywords
• Guarantees customer satisfaction through excellent support tools
• Used by companies such as, T-Mobile Online, Experteer, Parship, Handelsblatt, MyHammer and StepStone
• Monitor SEO and SEM strategies executed through automated reports
• Creates a “Cost Benefits Analysis”
• Provides all of the components for sales conversion
• Access to current and archived data
• Monitors competitor data
• Provides email reports
• Allows clients to take control of their own website without the assistance of the IT department
• No complex integration necessary. Easy to install.
• No setup fees involved
• Right to terminate within the first 30 days
• Only pay for 11 months, if you sign up and complete 12 months
• Available in 3 different packages. The packages differ based upon the number of domains offered.

The Bad

• Searchmetrics requires a 6 month contract. Also basic solution is limited to 10 URLs.

The Review and Rating

Customers have good remarks about Searchmetrics Suite. There are really no negatives compared to similar software offered to individuals. Individuals help to increase traffic to a number of visitors at once. Searchmetrics Suite will allow customers to reach new audiences that possess a strong interest in the product. The software also protects copyrights. The software generates traffic while remaining cost effective. Searchmetrics Suite will allow your company to maintain its competitive position in the marketplace. In effect, this will improve the company’s brand recognition and image.

Overall, Searchmetrics gives customers the features that they are seeking. The product is affordable and user friendly. Most customers rank the product 3.5 out of 4.

Essentially, search engines rate websites on loads of factors, one being how many links (or “backlinks”) on the web are linking to that specific site. Ever since the general public figured this out, all sorts of things have magically surfaced on the web such as link farms. Since these methods of link building have become frowned upon, many users that are hungry for SEO are turning to other alternatives. One service that has been under quite a bit of discussion here lately is called Xrumer. Xrumer is a service that automatically posts automated comments (that all link to one particular site) to hundreds of thousands to millions of blogs, forums and message boards to ultimately build a massive collection of backlinks without the use of link farming or other techniques.

Features

When initially using Xrumer, the service begins by probing major search engines to build a massive list of of blogs, forums, and other means of communication sites to post automated comments to. There are loads of filters and settings to adjust so that you build the most efficient list possible. Once you’ve created your list, you can begin editing settings for proxies, post times, multithreading, etc. Xrumer is actually quite in-depth and flexible for your particular SEO campaign. It will take care of registering to all of the sites in the list because it is actually quite clever at solving over 700 different CAPTCHAS. Since most forums, blogs, etc. require clicking on a confirmation link so that you can begin posting, Xrumer has been designed to automatically enter a specified email account and verify email addresses. It’s a pretty intelligent service that’s obviously had lots of work put into it.

The Good

One of the great things about Xrumer is that it’s one of the most intelligent services of its kind. Usually auto-comment services bottom out rather quickly, but Xrumer has been in the running now for a few years already. Another great thing about Xrumer is that it targets blogs and forums related to keywords. If you’re marketing a website related to car engines, you won’t be wasting your time by posting to a blog about gardening.

The Bad

Probably the most common complaint and frowned upon attribute of this program is that it is considered socially to be a spam service. Most of the time, blog and forum owners find these types of auto comments offensive, and your efforts could quite possibly be counter-productive. It’s definitely recommended to use at your own risk.

Review & Rating

Overall, Xrumer is a great tool to use if you’re really wanting to gain a lot of exposure, but in some cases, the exposure you gain might not be the kind that you intend. It’s important to use automated services like this with caution as they can become a nuisance very quickly.

Features

So, the SEnuke service can cover a plethora of normal SEO tasks, but what does this mean? SEnuke claims to minimize efforts by completing a number of tasks such as instantly turning out countless hubs, articles, lenses, blogs, etc. all with unique content, supplying the user with 60-80 “high PR” (high page rank) backlinks from reputable websites, creating lots of article variations from one article with one click, using a thesaurus to create loads of unique spinning articles, etc. Also, SEnuke allows the user to read each spinning article to check for individuality, get submissions indexed in as little as 10 minutes, review word count and density effortlessly, etc. This service truly covers a lot that other SEO utilities do not.

The Good

One of the greatest parts of this service is that is updated quite frequently. Most of the time, it’s common that most services bottom out pretty soon after launching, but with this one, you can expect to see updated features and content as the service grows. Another nice perk included with this service is the free 7 day trial. There are no restrictions included with the trial either, so you can use it as if you already bought it.

The Bad

However, this program is probably not the best choice for beginners. This program delves into SEO at an rapid rate, and the user is almost automatically expected to be very familiar with the concepts and terminology of online marketing. This program is also priced at a pretty steep price. Once the 7 day free trial expires, users can expect to fork over $97 a month for the service. Once again, this service really isn’t recommendable for beginners.

Review & Rating

Overall, SEnuke is a great service for the intermediate internet marketer or even the experienced internet marketer. There are loads of tools and features included that have never been seen in any other SEO tool, and for the price, it’s certainly a great value. It’s a tool that has endless potential, and anyone that is serious about SEO can expect good things out of it.