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5 SEO Tools You Might Be Missing from Your Aresenal

by Jordan Kasteler.

There are so many SEO tools out there with more and more releasing and existent ones coming out with new features frequently. It’s hard to keep up with all of them, test them out, and find a good fit for you. While the majority of SEO Tools are a dime a dozen there are some people prefer more than others whether it’s for the graphical user interface, usability, and/or speed of the tool. I’d like to introduce you to a few of these tools that may streamline your optimization process.

Microsoft adCenter Desktop Beta - Google AdWords Editor Junior

by The Doug.

In June of this year, Microsoft (MSFT) went public with beta testing of their desktop editor for PPC marketing, proving that they are getting even more serious about competing in the Paid Search arena.  Although they still have some vast distances to travel in order to compete on the field with Google, they have clearly taken some strategic first steps forward on this journey, which makes putting campaigns up on the adCenter platform much easier than the spreadsheet build previously required.

Match and Game! Google Automatic Keyword Match

by The Doug.

So there I was, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I had a conversion on one of my campaigns (ALWAYS exciting) but I couldn’t attribute it to any of the keywords in the adgroup it was showing up for.  “Well!  How can THAT be?!”, says I.

After running a search query to investigate further, I found the little miracle keyword that so silently and wonderfully threw a conversion my way.  I found it, and it was not a broad, exact, or even phrase match.  It was Automatic.  That’s right!  It’s not an option that you just choose like the others, but in fact a beta that Google inserted on various accounts with the “you need to do nothing in order for this feature to be turned on” type of message.

Cool Tools & Firefox Extensions for SEO Enthusiasts

by Paul Teitelman.

There are so many free tools and software programs for SEO enthusiasts that it almost becomes overwhelming and difficult to grasp the “right” tools to use in your SEO efforts. Everyone has their own personal preferences which makes this predicament even more perplexing. Yes, I purposely put as many P’s as I could in that last sentence: my name is Paul after all. (Hey I can rhyme too!)

Well enough about me and my love of words; let’s get down to business: What are some of the best free SEO tools on the web?

Cool Tools

Open Source, Open Ads, Open Sesame!

by The Doug.

Image Courtesy - ab initio ad infinitum

So it would seem that everyone is in a race to become as transparent as possible.� It has become (clearly) evident that there is more revenue potential out there by opening up everything and making it available than there is by keeping it all horded and secret and hidden in the dark.

Cell phone technology is a brilliant example of transparency becoming extremely key.� It’s helping mobile carriers and equipment providers to quickly and easily design, develop, and deploy in tandem.� It’s also giving software development platforms such as Google and Microsoft the opportunity to build out their handset web technologies.

Driving Social Networking Home

by Tom Tsinas.

Full Disclosure Confession: I don’t get the whole social networking phenomenon. Perhaps it is because I am a gentleman of a certain age. MySpace is mine and I have no real desire to share it with anyone beyond my other half… and my dog. I leave the Twittering to my parrot. I am not Facebooked as I have no overwhelming desire to make contact with my primary school cohorts. I am LinkedIn, but that’s about that.

And I actually don’t get it from a SEO/SEM perspective simply because there is far too much beyond my control which implicitly and necessarily implies I am a control freak. I am a control freak. And I like numbers that have relevance. Who. What. Where. When. Why.

Microsoft adCenter - Where’s The Revenue?

by The Doug.

So Microsoft adCenter is the only one of the 3 major paid search platforms that does NOT report on revenue.  Google AdWords will break it down nicely for you with conversion types, being leads, sales, sign-ups, and other, complete with revenue dollars generated from paid search ads in AdWords.  It’s quite a beautiful thing, but for the money it can now cost to run ads on AdWords with the competition these days, its good that there are such details to be accountable to.  It looks pretty much like this:

Virtual Reality - Microsoft Office Live

by The Doug.

…and then progress dictated that all things need to be accessible online, so Microsoft (MSFT) created Office Live - a suite of services for small businesses.

Image courtesy www.di.net

Now unlike what the name suggests, this is NOT an online version of Microsoft’s suite of office software such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc, but instead some various services being provided by Microsoft.  Services such as Contact Manager, Document Manager, Workspaces and Project Manager.

Contact Manager allows you to do such things as provide a single view of customers and prospective customers, track contact with customers, check account status and sales opportunities from any location with a Web browser, and send automated “triggered” emails specific to various events such as new sales leads, etc.

Search Wars - Microsoft vs Google

by The Doug.

So how many of you are familiar with Enterprise tools such as Google Search Appliance? Google Mini Search Appliance for example, starts at $2,990 for searching up to 50,000 documents with a 300,000 max document capacity. Google Search Appliance starts at $30,000 for searching up to 500,000 documents with a 30 million max document capacity. (By the way, these are tools used for internal development of infrastructure and intranet and to enable maximum efficiencies between the internal world of information and the internet, among other things, for those of you wondering.)

Affiliate Marketing - How many people are in YOUR marketing Department?

by The Doug.

Affiliate Marketing today is so much more than what it used to be, when simply having someone place your banner on their website to drive traffic was the norm.  Back in the day, your banner would catch someones eye, they would click on it, and you would pay the person displaying your banner for each click that came through to your site from theirs.  (Not so different from Pay Per Click on the search engines today).

Cartoon Courtesy of: http://www.marketingmentor.net