I’m going to wait  because I want to give commission junction stats some time to  catch up after the holidays.

This post is really about another “feed drive”.  See that orange RSS icon in the sidebar?  RSS is a way that you can keep up on my blog postings without having to actually open a web-browser and come to my blog.

Instead you add the “feeds” of the blogs you want to follow into your feed reader, whether it’s Google, Bloglines, etc.  It’s a great way to keep track of a large number of blogs and just read the posts that capture your attention (Which is most of mine, I’m sure. )

So go ahead and click on the orange icon, and sign up for Bloglines if you havn’t, it’s the one that I use.  It’s free, there is no affiliate program (that I know of), it’s just a great way to keep in touch with your favorite bloggers (like me!).

Will you be one of ten new subscribers to my RSS feed?

Thanks, let me know in the comments here!

According to Wikipedia,

The term keyword [...] refers to a word or phrase (combination of words, such as ‘Chicago Courier Service’) used to find relevant and useful webpage.

Crafting the content and structure of your website to rank highly for your selected keywords is the art of “Search Engine Optimization.” I’m not trying to write an article about SEO, there are entire blogs, books and businesses that cover SEO. But I would like to introduce you to a few ideas about keywords.

Wordtracker is a company that uses information from actual search engine databases to help you find keywords for your articles, websites and blog posts. Here are a few screen shots of me actually using Wordtracker for a recent post I wrote.

Using “Keyword Thinking”, I logged into my Keyword Account to figure out how I could maximize potential search engine traffic for this very post by using a keyword phrase with active searchers but little competition.

Using Wordtracker’s Keyword Research Tools

Here’s how it went…

First I logged into my Wordtracker account, and entered two keywords into the Keyword Researcher area of the page. I simply used two general phrases that I thought applied to my intended post, “Search Engine Rankings” and “Webmaster Tools”.

The first thing WordTracker does is look through its database for the phrases you typed in, and shows you similar phrases to the kewords you typed in. You can get anywhere from just a handful to 300 additional potential keyword phrases that you might not have thought of! Can you see how much potential a keyword tool has for helping you maximize your search engine results?

With keyword tools like Wordtracker, you can get an insiders peek at what phrases people are actually using, and then focus on those phrases. It doesn’t mean you have to change the content of your post or webpages, it simply means you can customize your post titles and headers in order to maximize search results.

Discovering your Keyword Efficiency Index, or KEI…

The next step is to click on “evaluate” and Wordtracker does it’s magic. The resulting table shows you how many times the keyword has been typed into engines in the Wordtracker database in the past 90 days, and an estimated number of times the phrase is typed into global search engines on a daily basis. This information is available in Wordtracker’s Free Trial version.

But how much competition do I have?

But with a paid subscription, you are able to see how many competing webpages exist on each of the major search engines as well as a “Keyword Efficiency Index” or KEI. The KEI is a reflection of the number of daily searches versus the number of competing pages on the major search engines.

A keyword with high searches and low competition will score a high KEI. Those are the prime keywords you want to search for.

How do you choose a keyword phrase based on KEI?

When I sorted my Wordtracker results by the Google KEI score, one keyword phrase stood out as having a reasonable number of searches with low competition, and thus a reasonably high KEI of about 9. In general, anything above 10 is pretty good, results between 1 & 10 are reasonable, and anything less than 1 is not really worth trying to optimize for because there is simply too much competition.

Here’s the screenshot with the keyword phrase highlighted. Look familiar? It’s the title of this post!

So what’s the end result of all of this?

Hopefully using Wordtracker to find high KEI keyword phrases will help this particular post stand out in the search engine results, and I’ll get a lot of “organic” search engine traffic for this particular post.

I’m sure you can see the potential power of this type of keyword research for your website! Just pop on over to the free keyword tool at Wordtracker and try it out. In order to use the free keyword tool, you’ll just have to supply a valid email address and confirm the trial. Your confirmation link is good for two hours after it’s sent and you can conduct unlimited searches.

Want to use it again? Just reapply for the free trial (you can even use the same email address!). With the free keyword tool, you won’t be able to see the KEI directly, but you’ll get an idea of the potential that this type of research tool can have for your websites as far as increasing your search engine traffic.

Download the Free Keyword Guide by wordtracker for more information about keyword research.

Got any other keyword tools you like to use? Let me know about them!

I’ve just discovered a FireFox addon called ScreenGrab! that installs as a firefox extension and enables a right click menu to grab just the visible portion of the screen or the whole page. Here is the ScreenGrab Add On homepage, grabbed, of course, with ScreenGrab!, click to enlarge:

Pretty nifty, huh? I will be using this a lot to write tutorials for you guys as well as posting to some of my other blogs…

Just recently, however, new analytics sites are being given a new object orient script to install, simply referred to as “GA”. Presumably stands for “google analytics”.

Anyway, here is the simply coversion to add click tracking to your BANS store with the new code from analytics:

First, take a look over at Web Mogul’s site for the initial steps, but instead replace step six with this:

Old Step Six:

After the rel=”nofollow” attribute, add this:

onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('.$clickUrl.');"

MAKE SURE there is a space between the ending quote on the rel=”nofollow” and the onclick.

New Step Six:

After the rel=”nofollow” attribute, add this:

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._ trackPageview('.$clickUrl.')

. MAKE SURE there is a space between the ending quote on the rel=”nofollow” and the onclick.

I hope that helps! Let me or Web Mogul know if you’re having any troubles with the mod. He wrote the original mod and did all the hard work. I just updated it for the new GA code.

If you are undecided on Build a Niche Store, check it out! My commissions are increasing slowly with ONLY organic search traffic and minimal effort at driving traffic to the store.

Today I want to introduce two useful tools from the big G (Google). Having written the book on web based searching, Google has designed several useful tools that you just shouldn’t be without, yet many people just don’t know where to start.

Google Analytics

This incredible free resource from Google allows you to view an enormous amount of data from your websites, track conversion rates, file downloads, keyword use, geographic location of your visitors and much, much more.  One neat trick I just learned about is having analytics email me a report everyday.  For one of my niche websites, I simply created a report that contains the keywords used to find my store that day, and the store pages that were visited.  it was as simple as viewing the report in Analytics and clicking the “email button”.   For subsequent reports, you can add them to existing reports or create new ones.  All the reports get sent to you in a PDF file to your specified email address at whatever interval you choose (daily, weekly, monthy, etc).

Google Webmaster Tools

I just signed up for this about 2 weeks ago and can’t believe that I have been building websites for 4 years without it.  My favorite uses of the google webmaster tools include the ability to submit a sitemap, run a check of your “robots.txt” file, see what pages are indexed from your site, see what sites link to your site, and the MOST fun, is seeing where your page is ranking on actual search engine hits…and what keywords are getting clicked on the most.

I’ve found the best results with new sites when I have the majority of the site up before submitting the sitemap to Webmaster Tools.  According to Google, large & rapid changes in the content of an existing website can be an idication of a hacked site or a spam site.  If you’ve registered a domain name, don’t submit it to google until you’ve developed a good part of your site.  Of course your website will never be finished, but that’s expected.  Google likes dynamic, living sites.

Are you using either Analytics or Webmaster tools?  If so, let me know about them here in the comments!  I’d love to here about your favorite features that you’ve discovered in both programs.