The Internet offers a wide variety of SEO tools, targeting just about every aspect of business and personal life. There are so many, however, that figuring out the best and brightest can be quite the laborious task. Don’t stress out! Webrulon is here to turn lead into gold. We’ve scoured the net and collected the absolute best of the best SEO tools.

Here is how the list works. We picked the best SEO tool that does a certain thing, wrote a short description, and then placed similar yet also good tools underneath it. This way if the one we chose as the best doesn’t suit your fancy you’ll have another option waiting in the wings. Enjoy!

Now, onto the list:

* Ranking Checker by SEOmoz.com

This SEO tool is perfect for you OCD bloggers out there. It allows you to check your rankings for up to 5 keywords per day. It’s absolutely free and the tool also archives all of the searches for easy access. Just sign up for a free SEOmoz account and you are good to go. It even lets you download the archived rankings as a CSV. Cool!  So add up five daily words times thirty average days in a month and that’s a whopping 150 monthly searches.

Similar and also useful:

Keyword Research Tool – Webmaster toolkit

Keyword External Tool – Google Adwords 

* MultiRank Checker by iWebtool.com

In the old days if you wanted to check the Google Page Rank and the Alexa Ranking for many search terms at once you’d be forced to spend all day inputting the information one by one. This useful eliminates that archaic way of doing things and replaces it with a hyper-functional bulk search engine. A great time saver.

Similar but also useful:

Keyword Suggestion Tool – Self SEO 

Competition Tool – SEO Digger 

* Fiddler Web Debugging Tool by Fiddlertool.com

The Charles debugging tool and similar looks are extremely useful. The downside? They can be pricey. The Charles debugging tool alone will set you back at least fifty bucks. Why spend that much when similar and equally functional tools lurk all around the net? Take this one for instance. Fiddler performs the same debugging tools as it’s competitors but with a distinct advantage: It’s free! It’s currently available only for Windows and does require the .NET framework but otherwise, it’s go time. Also, as an added bonus, Fiddler won’t freeze up your computer or browser like some of those Firefox add-ons. Not saying any names. Cough cough. Tamper Data.

Similar but also useful:

SEOpen  

* SEO Analyzer by Sitening.com

Wanna optimizer your site? You could do no better than this handy tool. It gives you a detailed report assessing the components of your website that could use some tweaking. You can even download any previous report as a PDF file for easy perusing.  This isn’t a substitute for a complete SEO analysis, however. Think of it as a great little starting point.

Similar but also useful:

Backlink Watch

Domain Backlinks Checker

* Strongest Subpages Tool by WeBuildPages.com

This tool gives you an organized list of the strongest pages on any web site. This will help you figure out where the most amount of inbound links are headed to and going to. Perfect for analyzing the strength of the competition.  Remember, a lot can be gleamed from what your competitors are doing right.

Similar but also useful:

Top Competitor Tool – Webuildpages 

* Backlink Checker by WeBuildPages.com

Don’t have a backlink checker tool? What are you waiting for. Any successful SEO campaign includes one. This is a great, and free, place to start. Get your linking campaigns in order with efficiency and grace. The patented “Neat-O-Tool” is also perfect for analyzing your competitor’s backlinks.

Similar but also useful:

Competition Analysis Tool – Seoscorecard 

Backlink Analyzer – Sitening  

* Firefox with the Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick

We all know how flexible Firefox is. It can, however, also be used as a great SEO tool when paired with the right add-on. This Web Developer Extension is one such add-on. Want to remove the cascading styles, be they inline or external? It has you covered. Want to modify or remove javascript components? It can do that too. There are few things this handy application can’t do. Also, did we mention it’s free?

Similar but also useful:

Developer ToolBar  

* SEO for Firefox by SEOBook.com

This is the golden goose of browser-based SEO tools. It just gives so much information in one fell swoop that it’s almost unbelievable. Visited page rankings, search engine rankings, compeitive overviews, cache data, domain age, Yahoo backlinks, and a ton of other stats are all available to you in seconds. It’s easy to use and highly functional.You can even export your information directly from the SERPs to CSV. Not bad guys.

Similar but also useful:

SEO Links Extension 

* Google Analytics / Google Webmaster Console by Google.com

Did you really think we’d get out of this list without giving a nod to the big G? Google have wrapped their Orwellian(In a good way!) tentacles over just about every facet of Internet life. SEO tools are no different. Analytics is a great tool that can give you detailed reports on your traffic. It goes miles above similar tools, offering traffic behavior, funnel information, content visitation, length of stay and much more. The Webmaster Console tool pretty much lets you see through Google’s eyes, offering up information like the crawling rate, crawling speed, backlinks, PageRank etc.

Similar but also useful:

Link Popularity – Backlinks Checker – Search Bliss  

Page Rank Tool  

Alexa Traffic 

* Keyword Selector Tool by Overture.com

File this under “oldie but goodie.” This is one of the oldest keyword tools around. Don’t worry. It’s not quite ready for retirement. Keep in mind that most new-fangled keyword tools used this tool as it’s blueprint. And not all of them are free. This one is.

Google’s keyword tool

Keyword Analysis Tool – Mcdar 

* XENU’s Link Sleuth by Tilman Hausherr

XENU is just a great little spider tool. The benefits of having a spider in your SEO toolbox are legion. This tool allows you to find a site’s endless loops, broken links, redirect detections and a whole lot more. XENU is one of the most functional spiders out there, and it’s free to boot. Also, it won’t leave webbing all over your website like it’s real world counterpart.

Similar but also useful:

Spider Simulator – SEO Chat 

Spider View – Iwebtool 

* Xinu BETA by Miguel Camps Orteza

The name might be similar to the previous entry, but these two tools are anything but. This great SEO tool allows you to gather a ton of stats on any site. These include rankings, out-going syndication, social bookmarkings, validation, backlinks and so much more. It analyzes just about every major search engine(In one page) and it’s free!  It’s also open source so tinker away, you shiny diamonds.

Similar but also useful:

Class C Checker – Webmaster Toolkit 

Link Popularity Check – Market Leap  

* Keyword Density & Prominence Tool by Ranks.nl

This simple yet functional tool lets you crawl through a page and analyze the density of keywords. This works not only for the page’s content but also for any and all tags. Really useful and really free.

Similar but also useful:

Keyword Density – SEO Chat 

Keyword Density & Proeminence – Ranks  

* Visual PageRank by iWebTool.com

Do you prefer gleaming information via an image rather than boring old words? Then this is the tool for you. This lets you check out your site’s pagerank through the magic of the visual image. It’s worth 1,000 words, after all.  This tool allows you to physically see your web page and all of the overlays that page rank for each of your links. It’s aesthetically pleasing as well.

Similar but also useful:

Search PageRank – SEO Chat 

Page Rank Tool  

* GeoTargeting Detection Tool by SEOmoz.com

This free tool helps you figure out if your site is optimized for search engines that operate in different countries. As we all know, all engines are not created equal and some will make your site look dirtier than a sinkful of messy dishes. This is great for businesses that service International clients.

Similar but also useful:

Browser Screen Resolution Checker – Markhorrell 

Screen Size Tester – AnyBrowser  

So there you have it. Did we miss anything? Got any favorite SEO tools you think deserve a shout out? Drop us a line and we’ll be more than happy to check it out.

Unique keywords. We all need them, right? They send traffic to websites, among other things. The more unique keywords you get, the more trust search engines have placed in your website. It’s a win-win.

Google Analytics, among other things, can give you a glimpse into how many unique keyphrases you are garnering. Check it out on the Traffic Sources ? Keywords page. One tip. Be sure to select ‘non-paid’ to exclude any CPC campaigns.

So here comes the good stuff. In this post we are going to discuss how to make heads and tails out of this information, and to arrange it neatly in a table. See the example below.

Basically, you want to drop traffic into three distinct categories: ‘branded’, ‘head terms’ and ‘mid-long tail terms’. We’ll worry about the first two and all that is left will be placed into the third.

Google Keywords is not going to let us export enough keywords to work offline, so head to the “Advanced Segments” page. This is going to make us group terms via AND and OR statements. Group the terms into ‘branded’ and ‘head’ and start searching. Here is how you do it.

Plan to create some advanced segments. This will allow you to begin the term grouping.

Use AND and OR statements to to describe where each keyword should go.

Apply these groups, being sure to take it month by month. This will help you accurately reveal each month’s keywords.

Now we are going into some specifics. This may all be a bit “techie” for your average user so feel free to skip to the end if your brain is feeling weird.

Create those ‘Branded terms’

If you haven’t used this feature before, start with Google Analytics’ help pages on the topic. Also take a few minutes to play around with the feature, to get a feel for it’s many nuances. Just get a bead on what the main buttons do and that will be good enough to begin.

Plan the Segment

First, let’s create a fictional company. Let’s call it TechNet and let’s call their main product the Vox9000. Don’t worry about what this product does, but people sure do want it. The ‘branded terms’ returned will include anything that mentions any of those terms.

Define the rules and create the segment

Ok. Here is how you create the segment for ‘branded terms.’ Start by clicking ‘Advanced Segments’ ? ‘Create new custom segment’.

In the first ‘dimension or metric’ space, add a ‘Medium’ block (this is found under ‘Dimensions’) and set Condition to ‘Matches exactly’ and Value to ‘organic’. Then hit ‘and‘ to add another section. Place a ‘Keywords’ block here, with Condition as ‘Matches regular expression’ and a value that is all your branded terms, separated by the pipe character: | This pipe acts as OR in this scenario.

Here is a quick example. Consider the faux company TechNet. Now, a lot of people are going to search for this as “Tech Net.” This must be taken into consideration.  Their product, then, coul be searched as “Vox 9000.” So use this string to make sure you get every search: technet|tech net|vox9000|vox 9000

Now give this segment a name and save it.

Create the ‘head terms’ segment

Now we are going to change the pace a bit and deal with ‘head terms.” These are a bit more complicated. Don’t worry though. They won’t break your brain or anything.There are, however, some rules that must be followed.

Now, this faux company TechNet. They sell laptops and notebooks in Philadelphia and Baltimore. The ‘head terms’ will include terms such as  ‘notebooks’ or ‘laptops in Philadelphia.”

Let’s go over an example. The rules here to define ‘head terms’ are:

* Don’t mention any brand terms. Stick to other terms.

* It has to mention a relevant product group. Laptops, etc.

* They can only feature two words of three characters or more. This will include linking words such as ‘and’ or ‘etc.’

* The maximum number of words that can be used is four.

Define rules. Create segment. Repeat.

The final duo of rules can be tricky to use successfully. The two following insights will help mae sense of these requirements.

Insight 1: Combining the two rules, and using S and L to indicate short words (1 or 2 characters) and long words (3+ characters) we see that the only twenty possible structures for keyphrases are: L, LS, SL, LL, LSS, SLS, SSL, LLS, LSL, SLL, LSSS, SLSS, SSLS, SSSL, LLSS, LSLS, LSSL, SLLS, SLSL, SSLL

Insight 2: The regular expression: \b[^ ]{3,50}\b matches a word of between 3 & 50 characters. It’s also necessary to know that ^ matches something at the beginning of an expression, and $ matches at the end. (Seriously, they do. Start by going through the examples at this site if you want to know why that’s the case.)

Following along so far? We can now take the list of combinations from ‘Insight 1′ and replace ‘S’ with \b[^ ]{1,2}\b (matching words with 1/2 characters) and ‘L’ with \b[^ ]{3,50}\b. Make sure to put spaces between and wrap everything in parentheses. If this seems confusing, here are some real-world examples.

L becomes ^(\b[^ ]{3,50}\b)$
SL becomes ^(\b[^ ]{1,2}\b \b[^ ]{3,50}\b)$
LSL becomes ^(\b[^ ]{3,50}\b \b[^ ]{3,50}\b \b[^ ]{1,2}\b)$
etc.

Use a pipe character to group together to join the twenty created expressions together. This will create one huge expression. Don’t worry about the specifics.

Google Analytics does place a limit to the number of parts you can put into an expression. Break it up into two parts to make ite easier. One will handle those matching three or less words. Also include those matching four and throw the whole thing under one large ‘OR’ umbrella.

Here is what this looks like.

Collect the Numbers

Now that we’ve defined the two Advanced Segments, let’s head to the ‘keywords’ page and put the date range to last month.

So here is the information we’ve collected from the month of September, as shown above.

* Total keyphrases: 64,278

* Branded keyphrases: 393

* Head keyphrases: 2,835

* Other keyphrases: 61,050

You can drop these in a spreadsheet and watch how things change month-t0-month.

So there you have it. You can see the appeal right? You can literally watch your website grow as the new keyword information comes in on a monthly basis. There are many other ways to group this stuff together. Experiment and have fun. Well about as much fun as you could have in Google Analytics.

So you’ve wowed a client with your professional and brilliant work. Now what? Ideally, you want to keep a relationship going. This isn’t to sell any kind of post-product add-on or anything(Although, that’s possible if that’s your bag.) Rather, it’s just to keep a a healthy business-to-client relationship going. This awards many benefits as far as referrals and, well, just plain ole human decency. Not to mention repeat service.

So how do you do it? There is really no reason to contact them once the work is done, after all. You don’t want to seem like a desperate person you met once who is always asking you to hang out even though it’s obvious it’s not gonna happen.

Here are five natural and effective ways you can do it.

Send Newsletters

Does your company send out a monthly newsletter? If not, get on that. It’s a good way to stay in touch with customers and let them know you are still around, doing your thing. Even if you don’t have a formal mailing list, you can still send out emails to key clients every now and again that take the form of a mailing list email . This way you can keep those key relationships alive.

Clip Items of Interest

As you go through your day, reading newspapers, blogs, books or any other business reading material, keep an eye out for subjects your key clients would be interested in. If you find something that reflects their industry’s needs, send it along with a note.

Over time, this will become second nature and will begin to take no time at all. Your eyes will be trained to notice things regarding their interests and you’ll have it packed up and sent before you know it. It can do a lot of good in the long run.

Chat ‘Em Up on Social Networks

If your clients participate in the same social networks as you, make an effort to befriend them to stay in touch. If you are not on the same social networks as them, join the ones they are on. Social media is great for quick check-ins, and it can also give you a way to stay in tune with what’s going on in their businesses. This way you can be ready to offer your services when the need eventually arises. Instant business.

Make a Call

This is simple and obvious. Give a quick call to say hello. Of course, do this in extreme moderation. You don’t want to overstay your welcome. You may want to also email first as a sort of “warning” that a call will be forthcoming.

Send Referrals

Conventional wisdom dictates referrals as client-to-vendor benefits, but why not refer others to the businesses of your clients? It sure would make them happy, and get them to return the favor at a later date. Make a habit of keeping an eye out for potential customers for your clients when you do your networking rounds.

Throughout all of your interactions, don’t forget to ask the clients what they have going on. This is a great way to potentially get in the door with return work via happy clients. Remember, a happy client is a client who will work with you again.

So that’s about it. What do you do to maintain that all-important client relationship once the work has gone the way of the Dodo?

Who doesn’t love email? It’s easy, convenient and trackable. We all have our various systems for managing it. Mine is far from perfect but I’m usually able to make quick decisions about each message I receive. Some emails I file away. Others I transfer to a different folder or project. Some I tag for the future and some I answer on the spot. It’s all about quick decisions. My eternal aim is to have just a few messages(Under twenty) at any given time in my mailbox. That’s the goal anyways.

It works. The field of email management is one where I feel pretty confident. However, the interruptions that come with email are another story.

The Problem

Like most people who work for a living, I keep my email client open all day. I don’t use a visual notification to alert me when new emails show up, but I do have an audio alert set up. I chose the quietest, shortest and least obtrusive alert. It’s a nice, gentle ping. Kind of relaxing actually.

But on some days, I can shoot from 20 to 120 messages in no time at all. There’s also that attention-craving Blackberry buzzing about my desk, also letting me know there are treasures to be read. How do you say no?

I try not to stray off task, but I am guilty of peeking once in a while when something comes in. Again, it’s hard to say no. The pause I take to take a peek at these emails has certainly begun to take chunks out of productivity. For instance, once the pause happens it takes me a few minutes to get back into the groove of writing. A lot of backtracking needs to be done.

This week I decided to face this problem head on.

The Solution

For me, the solution could not be removal of email. I need it. I also can’t even decide to look at it just once a day. Certain emails are time sensitive and that could be a disaster. But I no longer can afford to be run by the ping-pinging of new emails. I needed to turn the tables.

I shut down my email client.

Wait, didn’t I just say I wasn’t’ going to do that? Hear me out. I have more than 12 email accounts coming into my email client. Most of these are not accounts I need to check multiple times a day or even every day.

Also, having those twenty or so emails I have to act on staring me in the face all day tends to get, um, distracting. After all, I am not able to act on a great many of them yet.

As part of my solution, I open my email client just a few times a day to let messages download and to make sure I’m not missing anything important.

I changed my BlackBerry notification settings.

Gone are the vibrations that alert me to new messages. The Blackberry is a silent movie now.

I started using webmail.

My primary webmail account only contains my top-priority email, the messages I need to see quickly. None of these messages are tagged, labeled, colored or anything like that. There is no filtering of any kind whatsoever. This makes it perfect for a quick sneak and peek. Plus, I can delete the junk before it downloads into my email client, making it more manageable later on.

I (am trying to) reset my brain.

This is the hardest part of all. Training your brain into realizing that email WILL be there whenever you are done with what you are doing. You really and truly are not missing anything by waiting an hour to check it. The super important stuff can stream into your webmail and all will be right with the world.

That’s pretty much it. Call it a “zen state.” Call it “email meditation.” Call it what you will. It’s working. I finally feel like email is working at my command and not the other way around. It may seem simple, but I think I’m winning this battle.

What’s Your Problem?

What are your most pressing email concerns and what do you do to fix them?

This story is as old as the web itself. You launch a new website or project. You set up the analytics and expect the hits to start rolling in. After a few days you begin obsessively checking up on it. Over and over. Only nothing is there. You begin to become disheartened and perhaps entertain the notion of tossing your laptop in the river. Sound familiar?

Don’t get excited

Don’t run doom and gloom scenarios in your mind. Don’t automatically assume your anayltics are broken. It must be some kind of a broken html code, right? No, not really.

This scenario plays itself out over and over again all over the web constantly. It doesn’t even have to be a new project, either. Webmasters whose sites need maintenance in the form of XML sitemaps, link building efforts, title tag duplication, or 404 redirection are also guilty of this. The changes are made correctly, then a week later nothing has changed statistically. The rankings sit in exactly the same place. You are left thinking “What did I do wrong?”

Sometimes things just take time. For instance, a major website I work for recently needed some fixing. They had a 404 redirection and toolbar PageRank drop, in addition to a misplaced setting in Google Webmaster Tools pointing to the wrong version of their site. Everything got fixed, but nothing changed statistically. After the fix, there was even a there was a drop in their homepage for their name. This started making the higher ups worried. When higher ups worry people tend to get fired. Someone needs to get in that board room and preach the virtues of patience.

Patience

That homepage drop? It was minimal. It lasted for 2-3 days and then things got back to normal. Things can take up to a week or more to reflect in Google Webmaster Tools. That’s just the nature of the beast. The Internet “feels” instantaneous but not all things actually are.

We live in a society(Internet especially) that thrives on present, immediate returns. Search marketers must make c-level executives happy with their ability to show immediate returns on campaigns. But like the returns on SEO, these campaign returns can take time.

Of course, all of the administrative changes in the world aren’t going to change rankings too much if the content isn’t there. Content is king, after all. It may even be more important than patience, but that’s a topic for another post.

Also, of note, There has also been a recent crack down on over optimized local search listings. Some accounts are suspended or rank poorly just because they are in effect trying too hard. Too many changes at once can raise a flag with the search engines. Thinks of it as a relationship. You don’t want to bring candy to every single date, do you? It could creep them out.

One Month Rule

So here is what I am proposing. Make your changes and leave it. Do something else for a month. Work on social media and link building if you have to. Come back after that month and then see what’s up. If your site is small, feel free to adjust down to just two weeks. I find the smaller the site, the shorter the time it takes for changes to reflect on your analytics.

Just have patience and wait for the statistical algorithms to do their job. It’ll take time but trust in this: It will work.

So remember the next time something seems to be not working in Webmaster Tools or SERPs:

* Double check the code if you have to, but don’t triple or quadruple check it. Also, your oven is off and you locked your front door.

* Remember to breathe. There is always a logical explanation behind everything. Google is just slow sometimes.

* When did you make your last change?

* If it’s less than two weeks, give it more time.

* For major changes, like site redesign and URL restructuring, give it a full month. A full month. Not 24 days.

That’s it. Have patience grasshopper and soon your stats will grow into big, beautiful sunflowers.

Back in 1999, when Prince’s song was a reality and reality television took up only sixty percent of the market, online start-ups began to discover CPC ad networks. This was an exciting time for the Internet. Money seemed to literally grow on trees(virtual ones anyways.) Flycast, Valueclick, Lycos, Go. These were all hot buzzwords among the new generation of web marketers and advertisers. Just pay for a few clicks and you were well on your way. In short, it was an exciting time to be online.

Flash-forward a decade or so and things have changed. When you start buying nowadays there are a host of new concerns. Marketers have grown leery of the networks and exchanges that aggregate inventory across hundreds of properties. There are so many behavioral networks, video networks, and ad exchanges that are impossible to tell apart. They offer only one thing, cheap inventory. It’s like one giant dollar store. And we all know how high-quality the goods are you get from a dollar store. Even the purported strength of ad networks, direct response marketing, don’t hold up to intense scrutiny. In short, online ad networks offer less bang for your buck than other means of driving customers. What a difference a decade makes.

So. Online ad networks are not worth their weight in e-mail. What about mobile ad networks? They fare quite nicely, actually.

Why is this? Simple really. It’s all about the money. Mobile advertising networks bring much more value to the mobile Web marketplace than their PC-based counterparts bring to the PC Internet. Sure, it’s easier to reach a mass audience on the PC-based Internet than it is via a mobile platform. However, the people you do attract via mobile tend to be worth more. This is because mobile platforms tend to be more of a “closed system.” This means the people you do attract are or less, well, a captive audience. The reach of the carrier decks — mobile providers’ home sites, which are the sole mobile Web experience for many users without high-end handsets –are just too good of an opportunity to pass up for many advertisers. This is with good reason.

Mobile ad networks also offer a host of analytics and measurements that your typical mobile content site does not. The technology of serving ads across many mobile sites offers a great view of consumer usage by handset, operating system, and carrier. For one, AdMob’s research report is a great resource. Check it out. Most other ad networks offer similar services. Not only do they give you a great database as to who is using what and when, they also offer insight into consumer behavior. In short, they have filled a huge void. Advertisers can now measure the success of calls to action, link requests, mass e-mails and just about anything else. In the world of online marketing, measurement is key.

Having said that, mobile ad networks are not without their faults. As they proliferate, the need to be choosy becomes paramount. Look for networks that offer total transparency. Networks should be willing to share a site list so advertisers know where their ads might appear. They should also be willing to share some sense of their inventory shares so clients can understand how much they rely on certain types of sites as a source for ad space. The best ad networks will also advertisers to blacklist sites they don’t want to be featured on. The really best ad networks will report back and tell advertisers when their ads ran. Look for all of these features to maximize your joy(and profit.)

So mobile ad networks are go. This may change in the next ten years, but for now it’s 1999 all over again.

The debate over the potential value of linkbait rages on! Throughout the last few years, the argument over linkbait/viral content strategies and whether or not the use of these tactics will result in rewards from search engines has been on the tip of everyone’s tongues. I believe this methodology will remain profitable in the long run for a number of reasons I’ll get to in a second.

First, for the newbs, a handy definition of linkbait as it pertains to SEO practices:

“Linkbait/Viral Content: The practice of crafting web content to attract attention and awareness in the form of natural links given by bloggers, news media, researchers, forum posters and other website contributors. This content can include any combination of static or interactive elements, but is almost always targeted at a specific subset of web audience members who have the ability to influence/create links, share content and spread a message virally (see Linkerati).”

But why talk about it? Pictures are worth, um, thousands of words I once heard. Here are a couple helpful infographics.

(SOURCE: Forrester Research via the Groundswell Blog)

Just a few years ago, three to be exact, linkbait users were targeting 30-50% fewer people than today. This doesn’t mean it’s easier, per say, but it does mean the opportunity to influence has risen dramatically. In short, your audience pool has widened.

So why does linkbaiting carry so little risk of penalization or devaluation?

1. Viral content works hand-in-hand with the functioning algorithms of search engines. Since these engines sprung forth in the early 1990s, they have been attempting to use the web’s link graph to identify content that people have found fundamentally interesting and worth sharing. Doesn’t this sound a lot like viral content?

2. Devaluing your linkbait content carries with it a high risk. There is a slippery slope here for these engines. An argument could be made that every piece of content on every website is technically designed to be linkbait and thus, every natural link should be “suspect.” This is, of course, supposing linkbait is considered to be a manipulative tactic which it is not always the case. Creating web content and creating linkbait are one in the same. Quality content attracts eyeballs. Why penalize this?

3. Search engines have always touted the profitability of so-called “natural links.” This means the links are independently created and editorially minded, and thus serve as an honest recommendation for a URL’s worthiness. These are exactly the kinds of links linkbaiting attracts. After all, why linkbait something nobody is going to like? That defeats the entire purpose.

4. Not to beat a dead horse here, but linkbait is simply great content. These are the kinds of links engines and engineers are constantly recommending as the core strategy for good SEO. When a linkbait is heavy on the bait and light on the link, then people simply tune it out. It has to be good content in order to attract the, well, links.

However, there are high risk ways to go about this and there are low risk ways. Popular blogger Matt Inman wrote a post highlighting some of the most dangerous implementations of manipulative link attraction, but these are most definitely the exception rather than the rule. Let’s take a look at a scale of low-to-high risk quantification:

* No Risk – Production of relevant (on-topic and with the site’s offerings) viral content with no manipulative link schemes. These are promoted ethically and organically on and off the web.

* Low Risk – Production of relevant viral content with potentially manipulative promotion (paying those with powerful social media accounts to help “push” the content into visibility).
This is low risk because the links are still created and given organically and editorially. Even if you managed to, for example, bribe Digg into promoting your story on the homepage, if that story attracts natural links from bloggers, writers, journalists, website owners, etc. it’s still fulfilled the search engines’ principles of high quality content that naturally derived editorial links. Not entirely ethical, but still low risk.

* Moderate Risk – Production of somewhat “off-topic” linkbait that is only loosely tied into the content of the site. These links probably won’t be devalued but it’s possible that they won’t provide as much help to the other sections of the site or it’s overall domain authority and ability to push up the rankings universally across the domain. So, not risky per say but potentially a waste of time.

High Risk – The combination of off-topic linkbait and manipulative push practices, possibly with other less-than-honest tactics like manipulative or irrelevant anchor text pointing to the content’s “sponsor” or “creator.” Typically, this is fine to do, but when employing certain types of “off-topic” anchor text, you need to be careful.

Extreme Risk – Creating content that attracts natural adoption of link code that recommends or points to something other than the original piece intended by the link creator. This could happen by crafting micro-sites on a topic, attracting links and redirecting them to off-topic, commercially focused pages/sites; embedding links into a “copy + paste this code” piece that visitors may not realize links to a location they didn’t intend to endorse etc. Basically, this is bad form so why are you doing it anyways? Stick to quality links that go where it says it’s supposed to go.

So, as always, viral content is a good thing when handled and used appropriately. Just stay on the up-and-up and you’ll do fine. To help inspire you, here are some particularly impressive viral content projects:

• Viral Video Done Right
• 10 Facts Every Westerner Should Know about the Middle East
• A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis: The Bailout
• Web Development Project Estimator
• Economic Recovery Dashboard
• Infographic of US Swine Flu
• Amazon Acquisitions and Investments Leading up to Zappos
• How Different Groups Spend their Day
• Military Spending Worldwide
• Information is Beautiful
• The Booze Death Calculator
• Tim Series of Reported Occupations in the US (AKA Job Voyager)
• Online Dating Advice: What to Say in a First Message
• Modern Mugs and Creative Mug Designs

The creative revolution is among us. Every time “they” say creativity and journalism is dead, it comes roaring back bigger than before. For instance, AOL has recently changed their business model to reflect a large shift toward the creative market. However, one area that has lagged behind the others is the mobile market. The mobile market is in dire need of more than a creative revolution. It needs a creative ignition.

Mobile Industry Does a Great Job of Recycling

Typically the mobile industry looks through the creative outlets of the rest of the world, and cherry picks what it likes best. Usually this content is a dollar short and a day late. The mobile market takes the “path of least resistance” strategy.

This is because the initial objective amongst the mobile markets was to grow audiences to critical mass, get brands to buy mobile advertising inventory, and build mobile sites so ads have someplace to drive to. This has forced us we have rely on re-purposed creative content as the supply for ad units and site design assets. This was just the cheapest way to maximize outreach.

After all, the less money that goes into producing original content the more that can go into paid media and site production. This worked for a while, but the mobile market has grown too much in recent years to continue making this a viable option. The quality of original content simply has to step up.

Banners don’t bring home the bacon

It’s unlikely a consumer ever thought to themselves “Wow. I really can’t get that amazing banner ad out of my head.” The riches and prestigious trophies don’t go to text ads and clever expandable mouse-overs. Not to downgrade the importance of that kind of thing. They are typically worker bees in a successful campaign. They, however, cannot be the linchpin of said campaign.

Case in point, the winners at the yearly Effie awards hardly ever represent mobile content. This is because the content just isn’t there yet. It has not matched the level of quality present in the rest of the Internet. One day we’ll see a campaign led by a brilliant idea and execution on mobile that’s supported with other wise choices of channels and integrated messages. Hopefully this day will come soon.

The mobile platform has so many exciting new toys to play with. There’s accelerometers, GPS, mapping, user-initiated still and video images, click-to-call, and the ability to wake other applications along with old standards like interstitials, embedded video, animations, and audio. It’s enough to give you a headache, but assuredly they can all help your business thrive.

Budget is king

One of the main reasons creatives are slow to get involved in the mobile game is the limited budgets usually reserved for those campaigns. Mobile efforts simply need more funding so we can reverse this trend.

There is also a common misconception that the mobile platform is limited and thus would act as a “crux” of sorts for creative content. These people obviously have not seen a fully-enabled mobile campaign in the past few years. As us mobile-heads know, the sky truly is the limit here.

Marketing strategies, budget processes, measurement schemas, and account leadership must consider the mobile platform when planning out their campaign budgets. The demand is there for quality content. Now let’s fulfill it.

Build the momentum

Sure, there are already some really talented creatives working in mobile. That fact cannot be disputed. We are certainly on the right track. But why not speed that track up a little bit? The momentum has started. Baby steps have been taken. But it’s time for that baby to grow up.

Social media. The world is flipping out over it. It’s easy to see why. Social media represents an easy and instant way for companies to interact with a customer base on the fly. Social media doesn’t only connect companies with current customers, however. It also connects companies with potential customers. This is perhaps even more important.

Not all comes up roses in Tweetland though. There are several unsettling problems arising with social media that questions it’s validity as an enhancer of business-related profit.

So what’s the deal?

The enthusiasm for social media (and especially Twitter) is stronger than ever. However, that enthusiasm is dampened a bit by one uncomfortable fact: It’s become nearly impossible to measure the success of social media. Sure, each platform features it’s own set of metrics. Twitter has followers. Facebook has fans etc. But without something external to tie it to, those are jus high scores in the social media video game. What does it mean for you and your business? Being popular is certainly great for companies, but it doesn’t always translate into profit. So what is the benefit?

The B-word

Of course, the default answer always comes down to “branding.” Branding. That most ephemeral of concepts that, along with “engagement,” is always listed as the main benefit of the Internet age. However, branding is often just a distraction. No real results to report? Let’s just talk about how your brand is “improving.” Pretty soon your company’s logo will be like the Rolling Stones lips, right? No matter what you think branding is, you have to find a way to measure it. Here are just a few possibilities:

- Direct brand mentions

- Links with brand-related anchor text

- Branded search volume

As long as you have some kind of a number, you can calculate some kind of ROI.

Target a Response

We have all become guinea pigs. We are all learning how we go, trying to figure out how to use Twitter and Facebook to drive real business value. There’s the direct response approach, of course. But why not target it a bit? Put out a special offer through social media channels, and you can measure the response. When you can measure something, you can get close to an accurate ROI.

Take a cue from the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas. Their head of marketing has delved into another aspect of social media. Their employees monitor Twitter to spot dissatisfied hotel guests, then send off staff to fix the problem. Then they had back on to Twitter to try to measure the response. How many problems did they intercept? How many were they able to solve? What does solving one customer’s problem equal in real dollars? These questions can now be answered and with that comes an approximation of real value.

Find a Comparison

Lee Odden once told me an anecdote regarding his company. He said the company drives about 15-20 major media mentions per month from social media. He estimates that this equates to paying a PR firm $10,000/month. These are not traditional metrics but they sure do help to drive a point home. Social media, when used effectively, can replace the need for professional PR.

Just Measure It

What’s to be afraid of? It’s just social media ROI. It won’t bite. Well, not literally anyways. Stop making excuses, stop mumbling about branding, and find a way to quantify social media success in real dollars. You’ll be glad you did.

Sure, everyone knows that Google’s suite of webmaster tools are exemplary, but they aren’t the only player in town. Yahoo also offers some nifty tools for all of you webmasters out there. Some of the features may be old hat to you seasoned webmasters, but I’m sure this article will open your eyes to at least one thing you didn’t know about.

One note. Yahoo doesn’t refer to this suite as “webmaster tools.” I am using that phrase to simplify things and, besides, we all know what they really are. Yahoo calls it Site Explorer, but so many people think of Site Explorer as a backlink checker so I wanted to differentiate it’s varied and useful set of components. Let’s move on, shall we?

URL Removal Made Easy

You know the problem. You have a URL that you want excluded from search results. There a few obvious ways to go about this: The meta “noindex” tag, exclusion via robots.txt, or password-protecting the URL itself. These solutions will handle 99 percent of any problems you may encounter.

However, there is that prickly final one percent. It’s in these cases you pull out the big guns. Suppose the URL has already been nixed from your server but Yahoo just hasn’t recognized it’s dismissal yet, what then? After all, this makes the URL show up in SERPs with potentially humiliating results. This is a case for Yahoo’s URL removal tool. This will delete the URL from Yahoo’s index. No fuss. In the left navigation of Site Explorer, find the “Delete URLs” tool in the “Actions” section.

However, use this tool with caution. Here are some points to remember before you go in for the kill.

* A deleted URL will disappear only from Yahoo’s index. It will still appear on every other index across the Internet.
* You can only delete up to 25 URLs from a given site. If you are in need of some major, major URL removal, say 100s or more, you are gonna have to look for another tool.
* Yahoo Site Explorer classifies URLs in an odd way. You can inadvertently do some real damage if you delete a “directory”-based URL. Be extremely careful not to delete any URLs that are tied to directories which may feature pertinent URLs. You don’t want to get rid of anything by accident.

Update on URL Parameter Tool

Yahoo’s parameter tool can be extremely useful. One cool use is the ability to filter up to 10 parameters, as opposed to three which used to be the cap. This is great news because most sites with very problematic URL dynamism have more than three URL parameters, but few have more than 10.

Crawl Errors

This tool is extremely similar to Google’s tool of the same name. If you’ve used that one before, then you know what to expect here. The Crawl Errors section lists URLs on your site that are, for various reasons, inaccessible to Yahoo’s crawler. This includes the usual suspects: 404 errors, pages excluded by robots.txt and so on.

Top Queries

The goal of this tool is to give you an overview as to which Yahoo search queries lead to “views” and “clicks” from Yahoo SERPs. Views here means something different from what you may think, however. It simply means the user has an “impression” of the page, meaning they saw the page information on a Yahoo SERP. This tool isn’t finished yet, as noted by that rascally “beta” tag. Look for more improvements soon.

Statistics

The Site Explorer “statistics” section provides a useful snapshot of data about your site. This includes, but is not limited to, the total number of crawled pages, “all known” pages, inbound and outbound link data, and the total number of known hosts on your site. These numbers are not clickable as of yet, but the tool still offers a ton of useful information.

In Conclusion

Yahoo and Google aren’t the only kids at the webmaster playground, but they are two of the strongest. It’d be wise to get to know all of the services they both offer, and while you are at it, do your best to tackle other engines as well. Bing, for instance, also offers a similar suite of tools. Until next time.