Getting Your Copy

Both the Advanced Link Manager and the Advanced Web Ranking  programs can be downloaded from  www.advancedlinkmanager.com.   The package includes all three version of the programme – standard, professional and enterprise.  This will be a review of the standard version.

Installation

Hats off to Caphyon for providing Linux, Mac and Windows versions of the software.  We have only tried the Windows version installed on a Windows 7 Ultimate laptop and the installation was straightforward and fully compatible with the latest version of windows.  The installation took less than five minutes after the download had completed.

The Results

1.       Advance Link Manager

Once the application loads all you need to do, if you skip the tutorial, is click on Project then new project.  Enter the domain name you want to work with and select the search engines you want to check.  The application seems to have every search engine you have ever heard of and some that you haven’t.  This may be overkill as most people in the UK will only be interested in Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Once you have done that click run and the application does it’s magic.  I ran it on a site that is about 2 years old with a lot of content and a lot of links – it took about an hour for the task to complete.

So what do you get.   One of the most powerful features is the ability to identify new link sources and to send link request e-mails from the application and track the responses.  This tool can be used as a very powerful competitor analysis tool allowing you to identify and replicate a competitor’s link profile.

One feature that I really like is the link development graph which shows how your link profile develop and grow over time.

It also has a useful broken link checker to find links on your site that are not working.  This is probably in the nice to have category, but it is a nice addition to the package.

2.       Advanced Web Ranking
Again all you need to do with this application is click on new project.  This time you have to select the search engines – sensibly only Google, Bing and Yahoo are selected by default.  However, it is possible to add more search engines – again they have included practically every search engine that you have heard of then some including the new Google caffeine.  One word of caution the default search engines are the US versions, if you are based outside the US you should change to your local versions of Google, Yahoo and Bing.

You then have to add your keywords and there is a nice integration with Google suggest right there in the application itself.

Finally,  enter your domain names yours and your competitors, which is a nice feature, and click OK.  You are then promoted to give your project a name and your rankings are checked.

The results are comprehensive to say the least and you can cut the data in a number of different ways using the built in reports.  These include: Visibility Reports, Keyword Research Tool Reports, Search Engine Ranking Reports and Keyword Ranks.  If you are doing creating these on behalf of a customer there is a built in FTP client in the professional version that allows you to upload them to a web server for your customers to view online.

Overall

These tools are a must have for anybody that is serious about SEO and value their time and doesn’t want to spend an inordinate amount of time doing low level SEO tasks and manually monitoring and recording results.   In terms of cost the tools represent excellent value for money.    The standard version of Advanced Web Ranking and Advance Link Manager is only $99 and this is a great way to try out both tools if the 30 day free trial does not provide you long enough to trial them.  However,   the best value for money option is to go for the bundle to get both standard versions for $149 – saving $51.   If you use these tools in earnest you will probably soon outgrow the standard versions fairly quickly and it is advisable to review the feature comparison charts for both Advanced Web Ranking and Advanced Link Manager.  The price for the professional version of both programs starts at $199 and both can be bought as a bundle for $299.  The enterprise version starts at $399 and is $599 for both applications bought together.

Find out more about both products on the Caphyon website.

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I had my heart set on the Sony KDL-40V3000U after seeing it online in Argos and John Lewis for £999 with a Playstation 3 included, but was really disappointed to find that both had sold out and would not be getting any more stock. How many did they actually have I wonder?

Anyway, a couple of weeks later I saw the same deal in the Sony shop in the Trafford Centre in Manchester and went for it albeit £100 more expensive; plus I also agreed to buy a £40 HDMI cable. I later found out from colleagues that this was a complete waste of money as you can get a HDMI cable for £10 and as it is a digital connection it either works or it doesn’t (at least I didn’t go for the £60 one).

Despite all this I have been completely gobsmacked by the television, and amazed how my old Sony 28″ CRT suddenly looked like an antique.  If I were buying one again I would be looking at LED TVs instead.

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Link Building

Marketing articles you have written is probably one of the best ways to get hundreds, if not thousands of one-way back links to your site from all across the Internet, not just from the article directories that you submitted them to. Article marketing helps with your websites optimisation as well so be sure to include this added value in as you decide how much time you plan to spend on writing articles. Of course it takes a little bit of time to write articles for this purpose, but you must look at is as an investment for your future and the benefits it will bring to your site. The articles don’t have to be like the loooong essays we used to write in school, when you are the author, you’re in control. Your article could be about your own opinion on a subject or just you simply telling the world about one of your own experiences or pretty much about anything you like!! (within reason of course).

The trick to getting the hundreds of back links is to write articles that have information in them that is new and fresh to readers. Everyone in your niche will want to use your good article on their site or blog and will in turn be giving you the link love we all need to help us rank better with our websites.

It’s Only As Hard As You Make It?

The chances are the products or service you are trying to sell or the reader base you are trying to grow will relate to what you already know and you will be able to just sit down and start typing an article out. When you get started writing your article, you’ll see the article take shape and come to life and can easily spruce up any areas of it that you see necessary as you write. Even if you’re not sure where you want to put a certain sentence but you know you want it included somewhere in your article. Type it out on the page before you forget it and build on it. Think of what else needs to be introduced before and after the sentence and soon you will have a well thought out article to start article marketing.

The way I write articles is pretty simple. Think of it as making a cake. You add layers to build up the cake right? Well the same principal applies with writing an article. Sure, you may go and edit it a few times to get it the way you want it but that’s only natural. Even the best authors have to go and change words about.

Become Established

You can make yourself appear to be an expert even if it is your very first article. Just because you know it’s your first article on the subject doesn’t mean anyone will know. Take a look at Ezine Articles, they give you an expert author status with your first published article so readers who found your article by searching Google are naturally going to want to go to your website as soon as they see you have one at the end of your article. You could turn that visitor who found your topic on the article directory into a RSS subscriber to your blog just because they like you and believe in what you are writing about.

Give your article the edge by putting a controversial spin on your writing that you use for article marketing to get some controversy going. Using your articles to spark the interest of readers is the best way to get someone to your blog to make a comment, and you can bet they will tell someone about it, which is all free advertising for you and your blog or website. This could be considered as “Link Bait”

When I say add a little controversy, I don’t mean writing an article slating someone or something that is Taboo. That could literally come back to haunt you in a bad way.

Article Targeting

If you are doing or planning on doing affiliate marketing, take the time to write an article on each of the products offered so that you can gain the links from those pages and to let people know that they can buy the products directly from you. Buy the product if you have to so that you can write a review of it to submit to article directories. Again, these are easily spun up to make a few articles that you can submit to the top article directories. Remember if people like you, they will want to buy the products and services they need from you instead of going elsewhere.

I once owned a “TV Blog” where I literally just wrote reviews on the TV’s that were out at that time. You would be amazed on how influential I was with people buying TV’s. It got to the point where I would literally have TV manufacturers call me up to ask me if I wanted to test a new TV for 30 days or so.

Can’t Write, Won’t Write?

If you are simply poor at writing, don‘t give up on article marketing just yet!! There are loads of ways to gain exposure from articles without you having to lift a finger. Just find someone else to do it! If you find yourself having mental blocks for words or you find that it is just to time consuming for you to do it, hire a ghostwriter who will do all the work for you. All you have to do is proofread it before submitting and come up with your own resource box. You can always take the ghostwriters copy and add to it if you want more information in the article. You can put in anything you would like but at least you have the ghostwriter’s work to start with similar to an outline, except most of it has already been written.

There are loads of excellent freelance writers out there and just for 2 or 3 pence per word who will write a really good article for you as a starting point. You can find these people pretty much anywhere, in forums, project sites like Guru.com and so on. You don’t even have to tell them what you will be doing with the copy they will be doing for you, you just need to have them write it and then tweak it for article marketing at will.

Syndication Tips

How many article submission sites should you submit to? Well that depends on how well your content is written. If you have excellent content you will only need to submit it to the most popular directory for your targeted niche and you will be given loads free links from the other webmasters and bloggers that like your content. The best thing to do is only submit each article you write to one article directory like ezinearticles.com or whatever one you prefer to use.

If you want to submit the article to more than one directory, you can always take your one article and spin it up so that it offers unique content in a different way and with different phrases. It’s not that hard to take one article and quickly turn it into 5 or 6 really good articles all with different outlines and wording. Then you can continue on writing articles on the other areas of your niche and do the same with them.

Topic Ideas

Look at your site and decide what pages you want to get more traffic to and write about whatever that page is about. It’s not hard to come up with ideas and topics for articles when you look over your website to see what information you are offering your readers there. Just elaborate on one of your products/services or tell some “teaser” information to get them to click on your resource link for more good quality information on the subject.

Don’t stop Writing

Never stop writing articles for marketing purposes. As you add new pages to your website or blog, write an article about it to submit to the article directories. This is the best way to stay on track with your article marketing and you should always have good information inside your article and on your site as well. You’ll soon find many of those people who found your article and then clicked through to your site will become regular readers who have bookmarked your site or subscribed to your RSS feed.

Read more from Kingpin on his search engine marketing blog.

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This is an example using the Google Adwords and Google Adsense market exploiting the differential between the two:

This is my Adsense earnings for one page optimised for a particular keyword for February 2008.

Pageviews: 3,279
Clicks: 752
CTR: 22.93%
CPM: $35.45
Earnings: $116.24

The CPM is a very important figure as it shows how much 1000 page views are worth. In this case it is $0.035 or approx. £0.0175 per pageview, so if I can get relevant traffic for less than this I will make a profit. It is that simple.

Now this is just one page, the site has other related pages with similar profiles and I know from the web statistics that visitors on average will visit three pages, so in actual fact a visitor is worth approximately $0.10 cents or £0.05 as the CPM is similar across the whole site and I don’t want to be paying more than that per visitor.

I have set up a Google Adwords campaign to send targeted traffic to this landing page and I don’t really want to spend more than a maximum of £0.05 per click as this is the value in Adsense terms of a visitor to the site and I would like to make some profit, so I have set the maximum CPC at £0.03.

This Adwords campaign gives:

Impressions: 24,675
Clicks: 1,618
CTR: 6.55%
CPC: £0.02
Costs: £33.59 (approx. $67)

If you do the maths you’ll see that this page makes me about £25 per month which isn’t much. When you take into account that only half the traffic comes from Adwords, you could come to the conclusion that campaign only just about breaks even. However, on this site the visitors will go on to visit two other pages on average with similar click-through rates. And of course your site may not be just made for Adsense it might actually have some value and you may be able to put other values against the costs of a pageview. For example, how much is an e-mail subscription worth to you? How much is an enquiry worth? How much is a new forum member worth? Etc.

I must admit that this is not the most profitable niche in the world. The trick is to choose something where the advertisers bid up the CPC and the CPM and you can get traffic that converts well at a much cheaper price. Good luck

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I got the phone back they said they had flashed the BIOS and everything was fine, so I tried the GPS and guess what it took an absolute age to get a lock – minutes. I couldn’t face speaking to Nokia or Phones4U, so I thought I would give the service provider a ring to see what they would do. They tried to convince me that this is normal and I had to stand with my arm outstretched at a 45 degree angle – apart from looking like a prize pr*#+ it would also be like offering up my phone to any mugger in the vicinity. Fortunately, they realised that I was about to go postal and agreed to give me a new phone and guess what it didn’t work any better – arrghhhh.

In desperation I turned to Google and found out that if I upgraded my phone to firmware version 20 all would be fixed. I tried this and unfortunately Nokia’s firmware upgrade software told me that I was on the latest version. A bit more Googlefoo and I found out that you can only use version 12 on Orange phones and need to trick the Nokia software into thinking my phone was a generic one. I followed the instructions here and guess what the GPS works perfectly.

Did Nokia, Orange and Phones4u know this? Of course they did…

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