seo tools

As a full time SEO you often come across SEO tools that promise to make your life easier, like Market Samurai. It comes standard with tools for keyword research tool, ranking, and competitive analysis: the professional SEO’s toolbox of sorts. As soon as you open Market Samurai you’ll be asked to either Create A New Project or Open a Recent Project. A project consists of your keywords, research, competitive analysis and domain information.

In the television and newspaper industry, there is a standard format. For television, you know you will be getting a thirty-minute or an hour-long program, and :30 commercials. With newspapers, you know what stories are on the front page, above the fold. But as more businesses migrate to the InterWeb, lucrative websites are being built to fit the most technologically- functional formats. The problem is, it is hard to predict what type of browser size your visitor will be viewing your website with. That makes it hard to determine what on your homepage will be seen “above the fold” and what is scroll-worthy. Computers come with different size monitors and browsers will not always be full screen, not to mention that some folks will have tool bars taking up more precious space. If your call to action statements and ‘click to buy’ buttons are too far down the page, many visitors may not scroll down and see it.

You may know that SEO drives traffic, produces quality ROI, and increases conversion rates, but not everyone in your organization sees and appreciates the value that search engine optimization can bring to the table. When the skeptics sit in the window offices and spend lots of time making important decisions, it may prove difficult to convert them into SEO fans. Sometimes it’s like trying to convince your grandmother to use Google instead of the ten pound, 2000 page phonebook to find the closest light bulb shop. (yes they exist, and Austin has one) No matter your digital immigration status, there are proven tactics to turn even the most stubborn of skeptics into an SEO fanatic.

Before I begin, please note: There is no SEO Chia Pet solution. These five tactics don’t work overnight, nor do they contain any pixie-dust qualities as seen on the Disney channel. Simply put, this is not a quick process. Most companies are like large ships maneuvering carefully through the icy waters of today’s globally-crowded markets. It takes time to turn or redirect a ship, and investing in SEO to improve natural search traffic and revenue is no different. However, these tactics can be effective and pay off in the long run. Here are five tactics that can prove to the skeptics that natural search has value for the company.

Tactic #1: Run a sample campaign

Select a few pages on the website to optimize with a few of SEO’s best practices. Most likely, the changes you will need to make will be in the page’s source coding. Choose a highly-competitive keyword to target for each page. Make sure the keywords are peppered throughout the pages and include the keyword in the page titles. Create an appropriate meta description and organize the inbound and outbound links. Run the campaign for one month while constantly monitoring rank, conversions, and revenue. You may find higher rankings for the pages, along with more traffic, higher revenue and some ROI that those skeptics can dip their chips in. For more tactics, please read on.

This is the ultimate in searching. This tool allows you to refine results based on whether your search is a question, date related, if you want blog/non-blog results, files only and many other options. Try searching the Google (Dmoz) directory - results are complete with thumbnails of the various sites. Find Forward also includes a nice meta-search feature. Check it out here.