Rank Checker - A Free SEO Tool

As online marketers, we are always looking for the latest and greatest tools to help our clients stay ahead of the competition. This week I came across Rank Checker which is a Firefox extension (an add on to the Firefox web browser) that allows you to upload your keyword lists and run reports to check your website rankings in Google (including international), Live and Yahoo. This tool is designed to be quick and it takes only a few minutes to install. What I like about it is that once you run your keywords report, you can verify you positions in the search results by double clicking on the URL - keep in mind that if you are logged into your Google account it shows personalized results which tend to show better results than what they really are. To avoid this, you can check under preferences "don't show Google personalized results if any." Did I mention this tools is free?! it is and you can also export the data to a CSV file.

Five Link Building Tips

There's no denying that link building is a time consuming and repetitive process. However, there are ways to speed up the process and keep it relatively painless:

1. Directory Text - Create a few different titles and descriptions for your site. Vary the word count, key phrases and your target audience in order to be considered for a variety of directories.

2. PageRank - Look for quality directories with a Google PageRank of 3 or better.

3. Update Your List - Constantly update your list of directories. This includes deleting old directories and updating changes in PageRank.

4. Comments - Create a comment column on your list of directories where you can note specific information about the directory. This is useful for niche or regional directories.

5. Save the Date - When you submit to a directory, record the date submitted. Knowing when you submitted lets you know when you can expect to be included. Most free directories have a waiting period of a few months.

Keyboardr: A Search Mashup

Keyboardr is an interesting website I found this week. It's a search engine that is a mashup of Google, Wikipedia and YouTube which as you type in the search bar, will find results relevant to the keywords typed. Once the search results come up, you can use your keyboard arrows to navigate and press enter to go to that website.

Since it's fairly new it's kind of barebones right now, but the concept is pretty clever if you're into shortcuts. They are planning to support Friendfeed, Delicious, Twitter, Flickr, Google Docs and many more.

Google Ad Planner, a free media measurement tool

For all you media planners out there, you'll get a kick out of this free tool; Google Ad Planner. It can help you narrow down what websites your audience is more likely to visit and therefore, help you make better informed advertising decisions. The whole idea is to help us discover relevant sites for your products and services.
With this great free tool you can:
- Find websites relevant to your audience, create lists and store them in a media plan
- Define audiences interests and demographics
- View the number of unique visitors, page views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries
- Generate aggregated website statistics for your media plan

When google announced this tool it was only available by invitation only but now is available to anyone with a Google account.

Viral Marketing - Basics -

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. 

Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

The elements of viral marketing strategy are: 

Gives away products or services

Provides for effortless transfer to others

Scales easily from small to very large

Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Utilizes existing communication networks

Takes advantage of others' resources

Source: Wikipedia - wilsonweb.com

Sprint's Now Widget

Many people talk about building a widget and utilizing it as link bait. Well I think this could be the busiest widget EVER BUILT. Sprint's Now Widget has built something showing everything from the national debt to how many people are stuck in an elevator to sticky notes being produced. A MUST SEE!!!!

Enhanced Podcast

A big thank you to Kearney Adams from the Home Remedies Digest . He created an 'enhanced podcast' version of our Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 31

An enhanced podcast lets you skip to each section and add different images in each section.

This was created using Apple's Garage Band, we're going to investigate how to do this for PC. Here is a link to how to a video tutorial for creating enhanced podcasts on Garage Band.

Google Releases SEO Starter Guide

Yesterday on the Google Webmaster Central blog, they released an pretty interesting guide to help webmasters understand the best practices for SEO to apply to their website. It covers topics such as how one should construct their page titles, meta tags, URL structure and site navigation best practices. For a 22 page .pdf, it's worth taking a look at, and Google plans to update with new suggestions because as we all know with Google... changes happen all the time.

Of course, there are more elements to getting your website at the top of the search engines that also should be considered, such as social media, PPC and much more.

Dyve Deep into the Web

DeepDyve, formerly Infovell has released a beta version of their deep Web search tool designed to dig below the surface of the Internet, reaching resources not indexed in Google and the other major search engines. With over 500 million pages indexed to date, DeepDyve is targeting in-depth, professional content that resides deep within the Web.

By using a search algorithm that matches patterns and symbols, DeepDyve returns complex data that is not likely to be found in traditional keyword searches. The goal is to filter out opinion sites and irrelevant content for researchers looking for highly relevant, non-opinionated information on complex topics.

Although this search tool can be used for free upon registration, a more complete version is available for $45 per month. While the major players in search offer free access without registration, we will see just how much people are interested in reaching these deeply buried web pages.

Obama is the first global leader of the digital age?

Change has come to the federal government, and Barack Obama hasn't even been inaugurated as the nation's 44th president. Change.gov — was launched within 24 hours of Obama's presidential election victory over John McCain.

The interactive Web site of Obama's transition team is the first sign that the candidate who revolutionized American politics with his heavy use of cutting-edge communications technology and social networking tools is preparing to transform the way the U.S. president interacts with the citizenry.

"Obama is going to be the first global leader of the digital age," said Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline.com, an Internet information and consulting company. "We are in totally uncharted territory."

At the turn of the 20th century, William McKinley became the first mass-media president during the newspaper barons' golden age. Three decades later, Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" ushered in the era of intimate radio communication. John F. Kennedy's performances in televised news conferences brought Camelot to the masses. Obama's presidency, experts say, will reflect a leap in communications technology that will allow the commander-in-chief to speak directly and unfiltered to the American people. It could also allow the American people to interact in unprecedented ways with the nation's chief executive and the federal bureaucracy.

Source: Chron 

Ten Golden Rules CEO Jay Berkowitz featured in Solutions Stars Video Series

Our CEO Jay Berkowitz joined an All Star cast of internet marketers in the Network Solutions video series. See such industry icons as: Tony Hsieh CEO of Billion dollar web company Zappos.com, Guy Kawasaki Author and Founder of Alltop.com, Tim Ferriss Author of the 4 Hour Work Week (I want one!), Rohit Bhargava author of Personality Not Included and Chris Baggot CEO of Compendium Software.


Visibility through Search


Building Web Presence


Rising Above the Noise


Strategy Drives Outreach


See the entire series at Solutions Stars Videos.

Internet Monitoring Methodology Predicts US Election Winner...

On our Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Podcast distributed on August 5, 2007 we used a set of Internet Monitoring tools to correctly predict the winners of the party primaries. These tools included: SEO Quake, Twitter Followers, MySpace Friends, Search Engine Optimization and popularity on blogs through Technorati.

On October 28th we used the same tools to predict Barack Obama the winner of the 2008 US Presidential Election, listen to the podcast on our website or iTunes :)

Netbooks or Notebooks?

A netbook is a small to medium sized, light-weight, low-cost, energy-efficient laptop, generally optimized for internet based services such as web browsing and e-mailing.

The form factor of a netbook is smaller than that of a notebook and they are very light in weight (usually 2 to 3 pounds). Common features include a small screen (usually around 7-inches to 10-inches diagonal), wireless connectivity, but no optical disc drive, and a smaller sized keyboard (usually 80 percent to 95 percent of normal size). There is also a trend of using solid-state drives instead of traditional hard disk drives. Netbooks typically include a pre-installed operating system, either a custom version of a GNU/Linux or Windows XP Home Edition.

The idea of a netbook is not new in 1997 HP introduced the OmniBook, now in 2008 HP is back with the Mini-Note, ASUS and ACER are others manufacturers which are fighting for this under $500 market-share. These low cost machines are good for students and people on the go that just need check emails, surf the net and edit quick documents.

I found a good video on YouTube promoting the new ASUS, enjoy:

Source: Wikipedia