Arguably the most comprehensive SEO tool on the market, Market Samurai is an affordable, must-have research and management aid for the affiliate marketing expert and novice alike.
Eugene Ware demonstrates Domain Samurai
Yesterday, more than 150 people were privileged to see a presentation of Market Samurai by Eugene Ware of Noble Samurai, the company behind the tool. Speaking at the Affiliate Marketing SIG of the Melbourne PC User Group, Eugene went through the basics of using this tool that is rapidly catching the interest of affiliate marketers everywhere. Continue reading…
A discussion in the Webmasterworld Supporters forum (you need to be a paid Supporter to get there) entitled Rank checking for agencies led to a comment suggesting that using tools to make ranking checks is not a good idea for search agencies. Apparently, a manual check results in different results.
I had just made a check of some UK banks rankings while testing Axandra IBP.
New Link analysis app for the iphone! http://r3.ms/2o Very cool. has majesticseo moz and semrush data.
I bought it for $2.49 and checked it out. I entered my URL and pressed Done.
Waiting, waiting. Oh, there’s a Link Juice button up there. Does it take me to the beginning? Try it.
Success. The numbers in the top box are not clickable. OK, let’s try the links below. The first one I try is SEMRush.
Let’s try another one. SEOmoz Linking Domains:
Hmm. Let’s try MajesticSEO:
Hmm, I need More Details, and there’s a handy green button. Let’s see where it takes us:
Oh, it needs permission. OK:
Now I’m annoyed. This isn’t “more detail” about the link stats I was looking at but the app was closed and I am now in the browser looking at a non-mobile web page that has to be enlarged to be legible and it doesn’t even have my URL preloaded, waiting to be clicked.
The SEOmoz information is fairly detailed, but the MajesticSEO and SEMRush data is minimal – just three values from MajesticSEO:
Indexed URLs
External Backlinks
Referring Domains
and three from SEMRush:
SEMRush Rank
SEMRush Traffic
SEMRush Cost
I can’t say I recall hearing about SEMRush before and it hasn’t heard of my site, as it estimates my traffic to be 166 visitors per month.
Verdict
This is Version 1.0 and I am underwhelmed. I can imagine an SEO using this app while visitng a client but it isn’t something I’d be using in a coffee shop or in the crapper. It has the feel of a lead generator for SEMRush and MajesticSEO and not a good one at that, since we don’t get a mobile site in the browser.
Given the name of the app, Link Juice, I can’t see how the SEMRush data has anything to do with links. The SEOmoz data seems to come from Open Site Explorer, which is worth a visit in a desktop browser or a mobile browser if that’s all you’ve got. MajesticSEO is also well worth a visit with a desktop browser.
But the app has potential, i.e. provide more detail, or a connection with LinkDiagnosis.com.
The Inside AdWords blog reports that the Google AdWords Tool now shows “more relevant” traffic estimates. I don’t like it so far, more relevant or otherwise.
Google Keyword Tool
I was chucking keywords into the tried and tested keyword tool when I noticed the link to the new tool, so I took a look. The old information is still there, and some features from the Search Based Keyword Tool are incorporated.
So what didn’t I like? Actually just one thing — when I choose (Show results for) Ideas containing my search terms, I get zero results. Even if I enter “Google” I get zero results. What am I supposed to enter to see something for that option?
The option to enter a website URL apparently produces relevant keywords that you may not have considered. Good idea, but for my test site (an Australian migration consultancy), the suggested terms included inappropriate ones such as “embassy uae, canadian embassy, american visa” . It also had fragments such as “visas for, visa and, etc” and other non-Australian keywords that would be worthless. Great for Google if your PPC agency uses this tool blindly.
This makes no sense. I liked the old interface, which first shows results based on my keywords, and then additional terms to consider. If you are not logged into your AdWords account, you only get a maximum of 100 results.
I suppose I’ll get used to it.
Added 1/5/10:
I took a closer look at the downloaded Excel CSV file. This is an improvement. Instead of getting an unformatted file as per the old tool where we had to convert Text-to-Columns each time, we now get a comprehensive data dump in a zipped file.
Exported Excel file from the new Google Keyword Tool
How useful is this dump? Most of it is not useful to me. For either SEO or PPC I am usually targeting a country or a smaller locality, so the Local Monthly Searches data is the most valuable. The global count is meaningless to me. When I try to sort the Local column from high to low, the hyphens are sorted above the largest number – zeroes would have been better.
I’d prefer to be able to choose which data I want to export, e.g. 12 months worth of Local searches would be more useful than the Global ones. Even so, monthly search volumes are rarely news to business owners, who know exactly when seasonal changes come into play. Over here, the period post-Christmas through mid-February is our summer break, when search volumes dip for most websites, particularly B2C sites.
Anyway, I know from my access to large traffic data sets that these numbers are wildly understated, so I don’t scrutinise the actual numbers. They are good for assessing relative popularity of the keyphrases.
It would also be useful to be able to select more than one country at a time, showing each country’s Local Monthly Searches results in a separate column. What do you think?
Today I also happened to read some affiliate (joint venture) promotional emails pushing a new link-building tool, but I won’t give it any exposure here other than to say that the promoter was complaining about a “Google slap” to SEOs. There is a growing theme here.
What “used to work” isn’t working now, it would seem. Blame some of it on the Caffeine update; blame some on Google conspiracy theories, but blame a lot on not keeping up-to-date. Either way, some SEOs must be worried.
I consult to some of these agencies and have noticed a 30% drop in ranking success at one agency I have known for several years. I have also seen the work of other agencies where the customer didn’t get ranking joy and moved to another SEO.
The common theme arising at these SEO agencies is a failure to keep up with the search engines. Many use a checklist to tick off a list of tasks such as the following real example (their words):
Article submission
Directory submission
Search Engine submission
Social Networks submission
Technical errors correction
Remove Meta robots
Robots
Google Sitemap
Google Analytics code
Meta Keywords
Meta Description
Page Title
Image Alt Tags
H1 Tags
Content pasting
Those tasks are mostly fine, but the main issue is that this templated approach doesn’t suit all projects. After working with the agency (which needs to use checklists), they now have three longer checklists covering three kinds of projects they get:
Competitive niches
Non-competitive niches
Ecommerce sites in competitive niches
Back to the Yahoo patent, there is more scrutiny of backlinks to detect unnatural patterns. Most agencies I know keep a list of submission-friendly directories and blogs. They usually submit all clients to the same list but the more savvy ones take care to match a client to a relevant industry directory.
Too many directory links in quick succession should raise a flag at the search engines. What about a link from EzineArticles? If your site is linked from an article submitted to this popular directory, followed by a couple of others, does this look unnatural? Sure does to me. Most business owners would neither know those sites nor the concept of writing articles for republication. If search engines did not exist, would anyone write articles containing links to a website and submit them to an article directory?
Would an agency client be notified about a fairly new development that has SEO implications, such as microformats and have it implemented in their code? Google just announced mark up support for recipe RDFa/hRecipe microformats, which isn’t new, but once Google announces something like this, a lot of SEOs will take note.
A long time ago I alerted my friend Edward Lewis about this company that purported to rank SEO companies and awarded them badges. I had been working as an in-house SEO at a large IYP, so my own businesses had not been operating (or barely). Those websites, however were and are still up. (as it so happens, I have been downsized at Sensis Yellow Pages® as of this coming Friday, so I may need to revive those businesses):
Since 2008 I had been getting “award badges” from TopSEOs.com such as the following examples:
SEO July 2009PPC Management April 2010SEO Training April 2010
The reason I don’t display them is pretty simple: I didn’t deserve a ranking that could not be determined by anyone. It’s meaningless at best – do we rank our doctors? Is Fred Nurk better than me? Moreover, the list of my clients is out of date or taken out of context.
Here is an example of my latest #2 ranking for TrainSEM.com:
Rankings for training companies April 2010
The list of clients is taken from my testimonials, with the odd exception of my soon-to-be former employer Sensis. The latter is mentioned on the About page as a place where I worked. The number of employees, active clients, client retention rate (!) etc is sheer fiction. Here is a screen shot of the detailed profile for TrainSEM on their site.
There is a similar ranking chart for PPC companies and one for Organic SEOs. I haven’t received a recent award for Organic SEO possibly because SEM911 sounds like it does SEM (which a lot of ignorant people think means paid search – PPC), hence SEM911 keeps winning PPC awards. In reality, I haven’t done any major PPC work since 2005, so it’s irritating to keep getting these flattering awards. OK, I managed a 7-figure annual PPC spend for my current employer, but that doesn’t count for SEM911. The profile for SEM911 is accurate.
My “rankings”? If I remember correctly, I might have been sent an email or three in the early days, encouraging me to get a paid listing. I used to get a #1 ranking for TrainSEM when Kalena Jordan was the only other person to offer SEO training. Sometimes her Search Engine College would rank #1 and sometimes it was me. Then as other companies entered the training market, we were demoted. In those days there was not a separate list for Australia, so we were on the global list. I hardly do any SEO training in Australia, but I’m not worried about the non-existent TopSEOs ranking for India where most of my students live.
This isn’t the first month when I have received two different ranks for the same website one minute apart, (ranks #2 and #3) – OK, this is because in the US rankings, TrainSEM is #3 but in Australia it is #2. However, in the column for “Comprehensive”, for Australia I score “Very Good” but in the US I am “Excellent”.
Some of my work colleagues have done Bruce Clay’s SEO training in Australia and I have seen the detailed course notes – they are comprehensive. In the Australian list he doesn’t make the top 10 but in the US, he’s #4 and Kalena scrapes in at #10. Jill Whalen offers SEO training too, but I can’t recall seeing her site on the list.
Begs the same question others are asking – who makes the list and who doesn’t?
I have never paid to be ranked by TopSEOs or to be a member. Initially, TopSEOs only dished out a free membership badge, which I displayed, but I dropped it some years ago. I don’t believe I linked it to them, or perhaps it was nofollowed – not terribly important. Each month I would get at least one award but no attempt was made to sell me a membership. Perhaps the time zone difference was too great. It was amusing to see who was at the top – either they were a new company or they had paid for top billing.
Fast forward to the present.
There’s a small tempest brewing about TopSEOs right now:
My verdict: TopSEOs have not tried the hard sell on me but I agree that a for-profit company is in no position to rank anyone or anything, particularly SEOs.
There is no comparison between an agency with 10 happy customers who were ranked #1 for non-competitive phrases and another agency with 10 equally happy customers who got #1 placement for very competitive phrases. If the set of customers were swapped around, the results might be very different.
The victim here is the SEO’s potential customer. It is bad enough that anyone can slap on an SEO shingle, but if they can also get a favourable ranking by virtue of a paid review/inspection, then there is a risk that a shonky operator might fall through the cracks and be awarded a high ranking.
Fortunately, my free high rankings have not given me a single paying customer (that I can identify) through TopSEOs. I think there’s a message there.
Grill’d is a burger restaurant chain in Australia, where their recent marketing campaign consisted of an ad in a printed university newspaper. So far, so good. Then their fans spread the love by sharing this ad in electronic format: Instead of sizzling, the love fizzled. Grill’d customers who flocked to the restaurants with a printout of the scans were dismayed to be denied the buy-one-get-one-free offer because they didn’t bring the original newspaper. The Grill’d blog tried to explain:
Uni Times 2 for 1 Voucher Offer
We’ve been inundated recently with people trying to redeem a 2 for 1 burger offer that has been doing the rounds via email. The 2 for 1 burger offer originated from the current print edition of the Uni Times Magazine (a magazine for Victorian Uni Students) and we only ever expected for this voucher to be available for readers of the print publication, and not available online.
The Uni Times 2 for 1 offer was intended to be limited to the readership of the Uni Times publication – otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to offer it at all – All vouchers from the printed publication will be honoured. To get the real voucher just pickup a free copy of Uni Times from any of these locations. We hope all of our customers can appreciate the good faith in which the offer was released, and that neither Grill’d or its loyal customers will win in the long run if we allow digital copies or scans to be honoured for printed offers such as this. We know a lot of our loyal Grill’d fans have received electronic versions of the offer and we apologise for this, but we hope you understand that this was never our intention.
Logical, at best. All marketing campaigns need to have certain rules and players have to abide by them, so that both buyer and seller are happy. So far so good.
However, the scanned image I saw does not mention anything about digital copies being invalid. There was a storm of protests as comments below the blog post starting at 9:17 am on the 24th by Brendox, who said:
However legally, I believe you must honour the voucher as there is nothing indicating that print outs cannot be used.
That was followed by dozens of comments, with varying degrees of passion and colourful language. By 2:21 pm Nandos_FTW (either an employee or fan) commented:
Not missing an opportunity, Urban Burger must have thought of the same thing at the same time, as the post by I Love UB went up a mere 40 seconds later:
I have just heard that Urban Burger will be honouring the Grill’d vouchers. Just take them into any store and you can get the 2 for 1 offer
Nando's offer to disgruntled Grill'd customers
By yesterday, the comment thread was deteriorating, with allegations of comments being deleted and even some Nigerian “419” type scam posts!
At some time after 4:19 pm on 25/2, Grill’d had enough grilling and they closed comments on the blog with this announcement:
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Grill’d marketing bunker this morning.
The lessons to be learnt from this case study are too obvious to list here, but I can see this incident being relived in hundreds of marketing presentations for some time to come.
Grill’d is a burger restaurant chain in Australia, where their recent marketing campaign consisted of an ad in a printed university newspaper. So far, so good. Then their fans spread the love by sharing this ad in electronic format:
Instead of sizzling, the love fizzled. Grill’d customers who flocked to the restaurants with a printout of the scans were dismayed to be denied the buy-one-get-one-free offer because they didn’t bring the original newspaper. The Grill’d blog tried to explain:
Uni Times 2 for 1 Voucher Offer
We’ve been inundated recently with people trying to redeem a 2 for 1 burger offer that has been doing the rounds via email. The 2 for 1 burger offer originated from the current print edition of the Uni Times Magazine (a magazine for Victorian Uni Students) and we only ever expected for this voucher to be available for readers of the print publication, and not available online.
The Uni Times 2 for 1 offer was intended to be limited to the readership of the Uni Times publication – otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to offer it at all – All vouchers from the printed publication will be honoured. To get the real voucher just pickup a free copy of Uni Times from any of these locations. We hope all of our customers can appreciate the good faith in which the offer was released, and that neither Grill’d or its loyal customers will win in the long run if we allow digital copies or scans to be honoured for printed offers such as this. We know a lot of our loyal Grill’d fans have received electronic versions of the offer and we apologise for this, but we hope you understand that this was never our intention.
Logical, at best. All marketing campaigns need to have certain rules and players have to abide by them, so that both buyer and seller are happy. So far so good.
However, the scanned image I saw does not mention anything about digital copies being invalid. There was a storm of protests as comments below the blog post starting at 9:17 am on the 24th by Brendox, who said:
However legally, I believe you must honour the voucher as there is nothing indicating that print outs cannot be used.
That was followed by dozens of comments, with varying degrees of passion and colourful language. By 2:21 pm Nandos_FTW (either an employee or fan) commented:
Not missing an opportunity, Urban Burger must have thought of the same thing at the same time, as the post by I Love UB went up a mere 40 seconds later:
I have just heard that Urban Burger will be honouring the Grill’d vouchers. Just take them into any store and you can get the 2 for 1 offer
Nando's offer to disgruntled Grill'd customers
By yesterday, the comment thread was deteriorating, with allegations of comments being deleted and even some Nigerian “419” type scam posts!
At some time after 4:19 pm on 25/2, Grill’d had enough grilling and they closed comments on the blog with this announcement:
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Grill’d marketing bunker this morning.
The lessons to be learnt from this case study are too obvious to list here, but I can see this incident being relived in hundreds of marketing presentations for some time to come.
This is a longish response to Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Advisor: SEO Q&A Out the Wazoo – Issue No. 273. The question was “… what the differences are between SEM and SEO”. See Jill’s reply in the link above (and subscribe to her excellent newsletter).
Great reply Jill, about this annoyance we hear so often in user land. Yahoo can take some of the blame for perpetrating this “SEM=PPC” mindset, as they use that expression a lot, particularly when they deliver local seminars. Example.
I work in the corporate SEO space where big-name ad agencies just love to use the “SEM” expression, so, naturally, a lot of corporate people also use it.
I wonder how many of such people will go to the SMX West 2010 In-House SEM Exchange session expecting to hear about paid search. They will be sorely disappointed.
I like to explain that SEM = SEO + SEA + SMO (this elicits a blank stare). They usually get SEO. I say that Search Engine Advertising (SEA) includes PPC, CPM, etc (every type of ad a search engine accepts). SMO includes all social media optimisation tactics you can use to send signals to search engines, e.g. citations, nofollows, ratings & reviews etc.
I am still met with scepticism and some people continue to use the SEM expression after I have explained the difference. I have tried to illustrate with a Google.com site: operator search (filtering out Groups, Books, etc) to show that there are about *two* Google-employee-authored documents on the web where the writer treats SEM as synonymous with PPC. More tellingly, the Google AdWords glossary only mentions PPC but not SEM.
For anyone out there who is still unclear, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) covers any concept about marketing through search engines, not simply paid search. Ad agencies, please stop fooling your clients. You can still milk them by using the correct terminology.
Instead of sizzling, the love fizzled. Grill’d customers who flocked to the restaurants with a printout of the scans were dismayed to be denied the buy-one-get-one-free offer because they didn’t bring the original newspaper. The Grill’d blog tried to explain:
