Our company bought a tool called SEO Powersuite from Link-Assistant 6 months ago. We have been using its free version for about 4 months and it has served its purpose pretty well that we finally decided to buy the paid version. We have been so happy with the free version of the tool that we bought two licensed versions, one professional and one enterprise.

One particular tool that proved to be invaluable is their Rank Tracker. Serves like any other rank checking tools out there but it gives you the results faster. Having 1,500 sites under your wing, our company wants anything that makes you do things fast. And Rank Tracker falls in that category.

You maybe thinking what’s the difference between the free and the paid version. Well, the free version allows you to run keywords and get their ranks on Google, Yahoo and Bing immediately, but it won’t let you copy the results or export it (yep that means manually putting in those numbers in your spreadsheet..not so fun).

The paid tool on the other hand, allows you to easily copy and paste the results and also allows you to generate historical, monthly reports of your site’s rankings and schedule each rank check with no fuss. So there.

The only downside with RT is that when you run the tool frequently, and/or put in 100+ keywords on there, there is a BIG possibility of getting temporarily blocked in Google.

And that’s not very fun for us. But that did not prevent us from buying the tool since we usually monitor only a few keywords per client and only use the tool 4 to 5 times in a day.

The problem started when we purchased the paid version and we started scheduling rank checks on Rank Tracker. Exported reports would show no data, simply because the tool was blocked by Google. We have emailed their support and in turn told us that they have another service, Anti-captcha that types in the captcha for you once Google asks for it. Yeah, another paid service.

We did not like this option. No, the tool was expensive enough. And Google, after you type in series of captchas, will show this one:

So paying for a service that won’t really solve the issue is definitely a “no go”.

After a series of email with their support team, we have been asking a lot of questions (their site has very little information about the nits and grits of their tools) and their support have been answering questions in staggered basis, sending a reply one question at a time, which somehow annoyed us.

After 6 months of exchanging emails with their support team on how to schedule reports on the enterprise version (while using the professional tool for daily rank checks), we have finally got a way to schedule clients on RT and do rank checks without getting blocked by Google.

When we have finally added and scheduled 56 test sites on the tool for a dry run, for some reason the tool won’t work. It stopped doing its thing. No results. Instead we got this:

Did the tool just say something about a subscription?

Uh.. what?

Did anybody say there’s a subscription?

Not that we know of! So for the Nth time,  we hurried and send them guys an email.

It was a lengthy rant.

We have not received any thing from them, until I sent another ticket!

And they said they are very sorry and tried to console us by giving 1 month subscription free.

We want to get our money back but with a company that can’t be reached via phone, no office address, I guess it would be hard for us to track them.

Moral of the story? I guess you already know.

My recommendation? Use their free tools but don’t ever ever buy their paid version.

They sell the tool and they charge you monthly. That’s charging twice for the same product.

And for you guys in Link-Assistant, you keep on saying the subscription is needed for algorithm updates etc..

Well that’s just lame, because your free version provides rank checks just the same. The only difference with the free and the paid is the ability to save and export data..  which part of the Google algorithm is needed in that? But you keep on saying hey, once the subscription expires, you can’t even do a rank check. That smells like deceit to me.

Please beware of Link Assistant.

It was sold for a whopping 13 million USD last November 2010.
Has a Google page rank of 6.
With a total of 5,487 backlinks as of Feb 21 2011.
Site must be getting offendingly enormous amount of visits, that everytime I try to check site’s estimated number of visits, the tool crashes.

More about the buyer here.

A sex site is now officially the most expensive (that equates to the most important) site on the internet. Geez.

I did not add a backlink. Visit the site on your own risk. Though site’s still parked.

It’s funny how they keep asking the new owner what he would do with it.

Update: I don’t use any of the tools mentioned below anymore. I found that SEO Book Reciprocal Checker really does the job well.

Found a cool way to check if the links you’ve built are still live.

Checking live links has always been a sore part of my SEO job since you have to do it manually. Looking on an excel file containing 500 to 1,000 links, it’s not really very exciting to start the crude task.

I used to copy paste the url to the browser, patiently wait for the site to load, and check if my links are still live.

But even though I have been doing this manual act for more than two years now.. (Yes, it was a bit dumb not to look for a solution right away… or maybe a year earlier.)

I found a neat site that will just automate the process.. for all those who’ve been using this since they knew SEO, well that’s really good news. But for those, (like me) who still do the checking of links in a manual process, here’s the site you should consider using.

It’s the Reciprocal Link Checker.

Yep, I was done in a flash. Vebtools has a lot of pretty cool seo tools for free. Let’s make the most out of it, while it’s still is.

There is another tool I found, it’s also free, but you have to download the file and run the program on your computer. It’s called Link Verify.  I have downloaded it yes, but making it work, I’m not pretty sure how.

I think it’s a cool tool, I just have to find a way to make it work. If you use this tool maybe drop a line in the comment section and tell me how to figure this tool out. Thanks in advance!

On its continuous search to improve its search engine results, it has now started using “Google speech to text” video search recognition technology to better help users find the video they are looking for.

For those of us who would do anything in exchange for a targeted traffic, this Google Speech to Text video search gadget will give us another way of reaching out.

Aside from making good content, throwing in a video or two for your site would definitely help.

And when making your video, try to incorporate within your speech the keywords you’d like to target.. use them in a natural way, throughout your video and tell Google what your video is all about.

Video optimization is now becoming a faster way to get good Google rankings, since they are now treating your video as if it were a written content.

To date, the popularity of social websites has lead to thousands of web communities created everyday. These social networks are a group of people or enthusiasts who share something in common; they share ideas, build online friendship and help each other with relevant resources online. This group of online enthusiasts should not be taken for granted. Online groups make it even easier to find a group of people who’ll be interested to check out your site, blog posts or even your products or services .

At first, there was Yahoo Groups and Google Groups, but now, online groups have gotten more active in popular social sites like Netlog, Gather, Facebook, Orkut and Wetpaint to mention a few, where people of same interest stick together and form a community. In mingling with this community, creating a good reputation that they could trust, referring your site can be easy especially if you’ve been sharing resources with other members regularly.
Web 2.0 sites are also a good way to build a trustworthy reputation, by adding not just your bookmarks but also adding friends, you can actually create rapport with other users and make them trust the links you share with them.

2.How You Can Improve Your Site’s Traffic and Page Rank:

Create a Neat Profile

It all starts by creating a neat, well-written profile. When joining social networks, be sure to create an impression that you joined because you have something to share to the group, and not just some spammer placing links or promoting sites. (Which in this case, you are – not a “spammer” by definition, but your goal is pretty much not what other users will be excited to know about… and that is to get as much citation links to your site from these online communities.

In other terms, it’s creating inbound links from these sites to yours. So create a nice description about yourself and don’t forget to add “the site” that keeps you busy. And you can also add, that despite being busy working with your site, that you are enjoying joining social communities, getting relevant ideas, making friends… and you can take care of the rest. Just make sure to build a good reputation.

Join and Add Friends

By joining online groups, specifically groups with the same interests as yours you’ll get visitors or even followers for your blog.
There are a lot of online groups where you can join, talk, discuss things and later on share links with. In this way you are not just increasing pageviews but you are also improving your site’s Page Rank.

Discuss and Share

This is very effective way since you are “socializing” not just by random but you know that they will be interested with your site or service or you won’t be joining their online group at all.

Some Web 2.0 Social Sites You Can Join:

Since there are really a lot of Web 2.0 sites and most of them are online groups for specific niche or topic, it will be better to join social sites that are related to your blog or site.

Here’s a neat way on how to search for social networks or online communities:
“keyword” + “powered by Kickapps”
“keyword” + “powered by Flux”
Kickapps and Flux are only two of the most common Web 2.0 platforms frequently used by online communities and you’ll sure find some Social sites that is related to your blog or website.

If you’d rather have a list of Social Network sites, you’ll find plenty of link resources by searching in Google, Yahoo and Bing (New Search Engine by Microsoft… really new).

Feel free to read my previous post: Blogging – A Writer’s Bestfriend

Writing for search engines simply put, means writing online. If you want to set up your own blog, or do freelance writing work online or you want to get an idea on how writing online differs from regular writing stints we do “offline,” here are some basic things you need to know about seo writing:

1. The Journalistic Style vs SEO Style

In news writing, you are required to have a certain kind of writing technique to formulate catchy titles and appealing sentences and capture your readers with your words or otherwise lose them in 5 seconds. But in internet marketing, you need FIRST to be FOUND.

Since the world wide web is composed of this vast cyberspace full of billions of webpages (that’s as far as I can count, but probably there’s more), your copy can easily be dumped and lost under its webby spaces and you will never be found. Ever again. Poor you.

But by simply “optimizing” your copy or your contents, spiders crawling around the web will find ya.

2. Optimizing copy

When writing for search engines, we need to maximize or get the most out of our copies. Let those spiders feed on your content and you’ll be happy. I’m actually telling you there are spiders and you need not be afraid of them.

In tech terms, they are called bots and they are exactly like spiders that crawl from one webpage to another and feast on billions of information they save in what they call data centers. Imagine like a lab and a highly enclosed facility hidden in an unidentified location so powerful and huge. Where people look so happy and they are all smiling because they work in Google. Yep.

Of course, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines have their own datacenters and set of terms they use. It’s GoogleBot for Google, Yahoo Slurp for Yahoo and MSNBot for MSN.

When writing for search engines, you are actually hoping that these bots or spiders will come and visit you and crawl your contents, not just once, but in a regular basis.

Optimizing your copies is the first thing you need to do, to make sure they’ll drop a visit. If they give you a visit, hola, YOU ARE FOUND. Finally.

3. Why Keywords are Important

When searching online, we usually go to a search engine, type in terms, phrases or keywords we think are relevant to what we are looking for and hit enter. Let’s say we use Google. I typed in, “seo hybrid” and hit search.

In the result, I am placed in the number two position. The result after every search is called, SERP or Search Engine Results Pages. And position of results is usually called search rankings.

Any idea why I’m on number two?

It’s because I used the keyword “seo hybrid” as the title of my blog. And GoogleBots think that the second most relevant to the “seo hybrid” keyword is my site, which is really what we are looking for here, and Google gave us the right information.

Why I’m not number one? That requires some other explanation but for now, I’d say, yey! I was found. =)

So simply put, if we placed keywords on the title, heading, subheadings of our webpage or copy, the spiders or bots will usually find us by those keywords.

Again to make it short, writing for search engines is based on targetted keywords, NOT necessarily UN-CATCHY titles but instead of writing “Movie Star to Speak Up in TV Show” it will be better to write Tom Cruise to Speak Up in Oprah, the exact keyword, than putting a vague description.

It’s OK if you prefer it that way, but optimizing copies will definitely make it easier for you to have readers drop by your site, because Google finds you relevant to show your webpage to searching users.

4. Keyword Placement

If spiders or bots finds you through keywords, why not place all the keywords you’d like to target on your entire copy? Not so good idea. Thousands of years ago, the emperor of Googleville found out that some webpages they crawl are only a bunch of spammers filling their content with keywords, over and over again. The Google emperor got so angry ang proceeded to create the “Google Algorithm.”

The Google Algorithm can’t be fooled. It won’t eat spam so spammers had to devise some other ways. The war is still on though.

So as not to be seen as a spammer, better place your keywords to the right places… (where it makes sense).

Place terms or keyword you’d like to target in the title of your copy, in the first sentence of your paragraph, you can italicize or bold it once or twice within your copy, and/ or add to your bulleted lists.

This way you are making a point, that your copy is about that “term” or “keyword.” I suggest you use your keywords 3 to 4 times within your entire copy, placing it to relevant places. If you used your keyword 8 times or more, your copy may be tagged as “spammy.”

5. Focus on Readability

It may be hard at first to write copies focusing on keywords but it’s actually easier. Writing online is way easier than news writing or writing feature articles on magazines etc. But it doesn’t mean you’ll write vague, unclear copies with keywords placed all over the right places.

Write for the human eye, that is still the major factor, once your copy is found by visitors, it’s your writing that will make them want to stay on your page or click back.

If you find it hard to combine readability and keyword insertions to your entire copy, ignore the keywords, write for people and then just go back to place the keywords in the right places.

SEO or search engine optimization, simply put is a kind of internet marketing. Knowing how it works, you’ll be surprised just how much fun it can get once you try it yourself.

This blog would be my own piece of SEO project. Since I am trying new ways, I will be documenting and sharing my thoughts with all the newly acquired knowledge and I assure you that with SEO, learning never stops.

First Books I’ve Read about SEO?
I got my first bite with Brad Callen’s SEO Made Easy. Although some contents of this e-book may not be effective anymore, it will definitely give you an idea on what I’m talking about. It’s like a baby formula for SEO toddlers. And having your first taste of its milk will make you want more. Sounds yummy.

You can download Brad Callen’s SEO Made Easy.

After getting an idea of what SEO means, I read a deeper yet easy to understand approach. I really enjoyed Aaron Wall’s first release of his SEO Book. It gave tips and suggestions and valuable resources. Aaron Wall, aside from releasing e-books, also provides free SEO tools that you can use for your own online research and website rankings.

Get Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.

Special thanks to a friend for providing me the basics about search engine optimization.

SEO in a nutshell
SEO is all about website content and how you can get more visits/readers to your site or blog.

Here’s a scenario: You have just set-up a website or your very first blog. You have written a thousand word count piece for your blog. You posted it. And now what?

You need exposure. To have exposure, you need your page to be pulled out and placed in Google/Yahoo/MSN results page.

And that’s where SEO comes in.

Enjoy reading!