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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• May 2, 2008 -- SEO 102: Article Marketing (8)
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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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The Wrong Way

This is a very common mistake and includes using bold, italics, font size to modify body text to designate headings in the content. Or even worse using images of text for headings.

The Right Way

Use the standard html heading tags to designate headings e.g. <h1>heading 1</h1>, <h2>heading 2</h2>…

The reason people choose the wrong way is that it is easier (I just did it above tut tut) and looks better than the unmodified heading tags which look pretty ugly. The solution is to apply the styles to the heading tags making them look exactly how you want. You can do this on a heading by heading basis or you can define them in a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), which is the preferred option.

Although not specifically related to SEO, the correct use of heading tags is essential for creating an accessible website as it makes it much easier to use a screen reader.

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The meta description as the name suggests should describe the contents of your web page and is another opportunity to include target keywords and synonyms. In the same way that you vary your titles across your site you should also vary the descriptions. If you do this, your rankings will improve.

The meta keywords are not used by the majority of search engines any longer. I have seen a lot of people giving incorrect information about this, so to back up what I am saying have a look at this post on the Google Webmaster’s blog.

“we generally ignore the contents of the “keywords” meta tag. As with other possible meta tags”

If you are using a content management system to create your website there will be a setting for modifying theses meta tags across the site and will hopefully let you define these for each page.

Another important thing to remember is that it is the meta description that is usually returned by Google in the search results along with the page title.  And guess what, if your titles and descriptions are relevant to the search terms you will get more clicks. Some claim that Google monitors the click through rates in the natural search results and use this data as part of their search engine ranking algorithm. Although I have no direct evidence for this it is clear that Google uses this technology in the Adsense PPC (Pay-Per-Click) programme and they use tracking URLs in the natural search results.

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On-site Optimisation

This is the easy bit for obvious reasons.

1. When using links within your website make sure they convey meaning and include your target keywords and avoid using terms such as “more”, “next”, and “read more” as they convey no meaning and will not help with your optimisation efforts. Sometimes it is difficult to avoid this if you are constrained by a content management system such as Wordpress – the one I am using.
2. Don’t forget about the links in the menus, these are very important as they appear on every page.
3. Create a site map for your website, where you can manipulate the anchor text and make it easier for the search engines to find your content. This is my site map.

Off-site Optimisation

Unless you have a number of website you will often have little control over the anchor text used by other.

1. People will often link using just the domain name e.g. www.thehipzone.co.uk, so choose a domain name that is relevant and includes your target keywords. As you can see I haven’t done this. I will cover domain names in anther post later.
2. Some provide the code for other to use to create the link e.g. If you like this site please consider providing a link to us using this code:
   <a href=”http://www.thehipzone.co.uk”>Search Engine Marketing</a>.
3. Analyze directories to see how outbound links are created. For example, this Home Information Pack directory uses the listing title as the anchor text so choose your title carefully.

The rest of my SEO Tutorials

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1. Create a Great Website
   If you have a website that has really useful features or content people will link to your site, which the search engines see as a “vote of confidence” and your search engine rankings will improve.
2. Press Releases
   This is a tried and tested way of promoting your business online and off-line. Make sure that your press release is newsworthy and well written; and it will get picked up. I will be compiling a list of decent press release services in later posts, but in the meantime I can personally recommend Response Source which has helped me to get on TV and radio as well as countless newspaper mentions.
3. Online Forums
   Many forums allow you to put a web link to your website in signature of your posts and may tolerate links to your website in the posts as long as you are adding value to the forum – check the forum terms and conditions or you may get banned.
4. Blog Comments
   Many websites, especially blogs, allow you to comment on content and add a link to your website. This is a great way to get links, but make sure you are adding value otherwise your comments will be seen as spam and will get deleted. (Ed. why not add a comment to this blog ; ))
5. Blogging
   Create a blog to complement your web site and provide inbound links. There are lots of public blogging services such as wordpress.com and blogger.com.
6. Directories
   There are countless directories on the web that can benefit your site. Some of the oldest are http://www.dmoz.org/ and http://dir.yahoo.com/, but there are also countless niche directories that are a great source of links. Google says this about directories:
   Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.  Read about evaluating directories.
7. Buy text-links
   This is a bit of a short-cut to building links and Google does not like it as they see it as ‘gaming’ their algorithm and has been penalising sites that sell links. However, as long as the site you buy links from has not been spotted you can still benefit – see http://www.text-link-ads.com.
8. Ask for links
   This is quite simply a case of writing to fellow webmasters and asking them for links or whether they want to swap links with you.
9. Article Marketing
   This is essentially the writing of an intersting piece of content that you upload onto the various article directories on the web.  The great think about this is you get a link back from a relevant page, assumming you write something relevant to your website.  Watch out for sites that don’t give a link back or use no-follow links.  Read more about article marketing.

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• November 11, 2009 -- Review Advanced Link Manager and Advanced Web Ranking (0)
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