As he discussed here in How To Start A Blog That Gets Instant Traffic, it’s vitally important that you write content that is SEO optimized for search engine traffic. Yet there is one SEO trick that is overlooked quite a lot by Blogger users which could boost their traffic; how they appear in the search results. And I’m not talking about where they appear, but how they appear.

Below is a screenshot of my new blog in the Google search results next to MakeUseOf in the search results. Notice anything different between the two SEO-wise?

It’s in the titles. You can see that my blog’s title is NovelInThirtyDays. Now for some reason I can’t see many people Googling that anytime soon. However, look at the MUO title: ‘Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips’. Many more people will Google things like that, thus driving more traffic to the site.

So in short, my advice is to change how your blog’s title appears in the search results. One of the best ways to do this for a small to medium blog is to reverse the order in which the blog title and post title are displayed so that the post title comes first. This will SEO optimize every post.

Here’s how.

Log into the Blogger dashboard and select your blog. For demonstration purposes we’ll be breaking out the MUO test blog again. By the way, it has changed significantly in appearance since my last blogger post, because I used it to test coding and themes.

Select your blog and then click ‘Layout’ along the top. Underneath this, select ‘Edit HTML’.

Using CTRL + F, find the following piece of HTML code:

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

In most templates it’s around 5-10 lines from the top. Replace that code with the following code:

<b:if cond=`data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;’>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>

Once you have pasted that into the HTML as shown in the above screenshot, your Post titles should appear first in Google search results (not immediately though, Google will have to crawl your blog first before it changes).

However, the SEO optimized results will be noticeable immediately in the tab along the top of your browser.

So now when people search a phrase that appears in the title of a post on your blog, your post will appear higher in the search results. This is a much more likely scenario than someone searching for the actual title of your blog.

For more tips about how to SEO optimize your blog so it gets more traffic, see Ryan’s post entitled How To Start A Blog That Gets Instant Traffic.

For more ‘Blogger’ tips see my recent article entitled 4 Easy Tips to Improve Your Blogger Blog.

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With millions upon millions of websites on the Internet, and with potentially hundreds of thousands focused on the same subject or niche that you are – developing an audience can feel even more overwhelming than trying to start a blog from scratch in the first place.

I’ve been working on the Internet long before it became wildly popular in the 1990s, and in the process of watching the evolution of the Internet I’ve come to realize and appreciate something amazing about the current incarnation of the Internet, known as Web 2.0. That something is this; If you know the rules of the game, then it is possible to start a blog that gets instant traffic from day one – and maintains that traffic into the future. Today I’d like to share 3 powerful techniques you can use to accomplish this.

Tip #1 – Write Optimized Content The First Day You Start A Blog

Many people who start a blog do so because they love writing. That’s one of the reasons I started several blogs (horribly neglected) of my own. The problem is that most writers enjoy writing for the love of the process – not for the purpose of “optimizing” the content for search engines. The process of optimizing makes writers feel stifled, non-creative and cheap. Sort of like not wanting to go to Wal-Mart to save money even though you know that things are a heck of a lot cheaper there.

Writers know that optimizing is important to gather search engine traffic, but they either really understand the rules – or they simply don’t care. Optimizing can take years to learn how to do effectively. Many bloggers suffer low blog traffic because they believe if they simply write amazing content – people will love it so much they’ll keep coming back for more. This may be true – but it’ll take you years to accomplish, versus months if you use SEO effectively.

Abhijeet offered a fantastic list of SEO tools that you can use to come up with high-value keywords for your posts. One of those tools that I would highly recommend to all bloggers is the Google Adwords tool. Using this tool the right way, you’ll be able to start writing your very first blog posts that target exactly what people are searching for online.

What’s the “right way” to use Google Adwords? It’s very simple, just brainstorm general topics that you want to write about and enter those, one at a time, into the “Descriptive words or phrases field.” When you click “Get keyword ideas,” you’ll see a very long list of keywords and statistics appear at the bottom. Next, click on the blue column header “Global Monthly Search Volume” to sort the results by how many searches occur for each term every month.

If you find your keyword doesn’t have a lot of traffic, scroll down to the section titled, “Additional Keywords to Consider.”

Here’s the basic SEO rule #1 that I’m going to share with MUO readers. Most bloggers see a keyword with very high search traffic and think, “oooh, a goldmine!” They then proceed to expend tremendous effort writing up a brilliant post using that phrase, only to end up on page 25 or 30 of Google results for that search term. Why? Because the secret of success when choosing keywords where your new blog (or even professional blog) can compete is choosing keywords with very low competition (that cool-looking blue bar graph on the left). Choosing keywords with very high search traffic each month and very low competition will bring traffic to your site the moment Google next crawls your blog. Speaking of which, did you take Karl’s advice and submit your site to Bing and Google yet?

Tip #2 – Engage The Blogosphere Every Single Day

If you want to get a lot of traffic to your new blog from day one, you’ve got to give people who are interested in the topics you write about a good reason to visit your blog. One of the first things that I noticed when I started using Facebook is that it’s human nature for people to check out your wall if you take the time to post on theirs. The same is very true about the world of blogging, but on a much larger scale.

When you post a thoughtful comment on someone else’s blog, not only will the blogger probably check you out, but so will readers who like your comment. To do this effectively, you should use a tool like Ratingburner or Technorati to find the most popular blogs on the net within the niche that you write about.

Using Technorati to find similar blogs to my own blog FreeWritingCenter, I discovered one high-authority blog, AListApart, with fresh content just waiting to receive a good comment. You may need to sift down the list for blogs that are relevant to yours (I did).

Visit the other blogs, and if you aren’t already a subscriber then become one. Your new blog will not take off unless you’re ready and willing to engage the blogging community and contribute to other blogs as much as you want other people to contribute to yours. When you post a comment – don’t do it without reading the post you’re commenting on. Don’t be one of those annoying spammers – you’re trying to engage a community, not get free marketing for yourself.

The general rule of thumb here is to only post on blogs that allow you to include your URL, be positive and always compliment the blogger, and finally always reference one or two important points in the blogger’s post – this proves that you actually read the article and found it interesting. A well written comment can go a very long way toward immediately attracting interested readers (and fellow bloggers) to your own blog.

Tip #3 – Becoming an Active Member of the Forum Community

The third most effective way to get instant traffic to your blog is to engage forum communities filled with folks who share an interest in the topic that your blog covers. Either generate a new thread, or comment on an existing thread that covers something you wrote about.

Finding a forum based on the topic of your blog is usually as simple as typing it into Google as something like, “writing forums.” Although, I would highly recommend taking Darko’s advice and use forum search engines which are often far more effective since they specifically target forums. Using BoardReader, I found a great webmaster forum post about writing at the V7 Network.  When you register, don’t forget to include your URL in your forum profile (most forums have a field for this).

Forum etiquette is to avoid posting your own URL in the very first few posts. Simply engage in a conversation with forum members. Once you prove to the forum administrators that your goal in engaging the forum community is to have a conversation and not just advertise yourself, they’ll be far more willing to let you quote (and link) from your own blog every now and then. But the first step at any forum is just to get engaged in a quality conversation with other folks.

Forums can help in a lot of ways. Readers who find your comment interesting may click on your profile to check out who you are – and there, they’ll find the URL to your blog. Additionally, many forums (such as the one above), allow you to post a link in your signature after you’ve made a certain number of forum posts. This assures the forum administrators that you’re not only there to market yourself, and it eventually allows you to have a link back to your blog on every single post you make – which is a very powerful way to get a lot of traffic to your blog.

Forget about all of the silly instant marketing gimmicks that you find online from “SEO experts” that claim they can get you thousands of visitors a day. The unfortunate fact is that these are typically scams that use spamming techniques that’ll get you penalized by Google in the end. The most effective way to “grow” your blog in a very organic and long-lasting way is to make sure all of your content is optimized, and then start spending an hour or so a day just engaging the online community that shares your interests.

Do you have your own unique techniques to draw instant traffic to a new blog? Share them with other MUO readers in the comments section below.

Image Credit : Mike Licht

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By submitting your website to a search engine, you are making sure they include you in their indexing of the web. It can’t be a bad idea to get this done quickly and while the site is still getting its act together.

How To Submit Website to Bing

First things first, just like all Microsoft products, if you want to interact with it you will need a Windows Live ID. Then, you will need to visit this site:

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/WebmasterAddSitesPage.aspx

All you need to do is fill out your website’s complete URL in this format: http://www.asktheadmin.com and if you have a sitemap, you can insert its URL in second line. Next, you need to input your contact email address and select if you want news updates for webmasters.

That’s it! It is as simple as that. While you are in there, you can have Bing verify that your Robots.txt file is being read properly as well as a website verifier and keyword research tool.

After you have submitted your site, you will apparently see an influx of traffic from Bing in as little as 48 hours! If and when you do submit your site, come back and let us know in the comments, how it has improved your site’s traffic.

How To Submit Website to Google

The process is almost identical to Google, as we will see now. To submit your site or blog to Google, you would visit this website:

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

There, you will need to log in with your Google ID.

Once you are logged in, you can type in your site’s address and click on Add Site like you see below:

You may also add a site map and get it verified. Verification involves adding some code to your Index.html so that Google can crawl it and make sure you are who you say you are!

Have you submitted your blog or website to these or other search engines? Which has brought you the best results? Share them with us in the comments!

Tried Bing? Not sure it’s better than Google? Find out by reading my post on Bing vs Google.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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These are tough requirements but I’m always up for a challenge. So here are “5 Free Ways To Promote Your Website” – starting with Google.

1. The Best Free Search Engine

It is no secret, Google is the most popular search engine. From the novice to the expert; young and old; millions of people use Google to find what they are looking for. So getting your website indexed is very important. The best part, submitting to Google is free, fast and easy. However, before you submit you should search Google to find out if your website is already in Google’s index. To do this:

1. Go to Google.com and enter your domain name into the search box.
2. When entering the domain name type it exactly as it was registered. For example, if you wanted to find out if MakeUseOf was indexed in Google you would type www.makeuseof.com
3. If your site was indexed the first result will be your domain name. In this case you do not need to resubmit.
4. If you site was not indexed, submit using the form above. It may take up to 3 weeks for your site to get indexed. Don’t keep resubmitting during that time. If your site is not indexed after 3 weeks, resubmit it.

2. The Best Free Directory

The next place to promote your website is Yahoo!  Although it is not as popular as Google, Yahoo! is the best directory. It is also free, easy and fast to submit your site to Yahoo!.

Just like in Google, you should check to see if your website is already in the Yahoo! index. If your site is listed you do not need to resubmit. However, if your site is not found make sure to add your site to Yahoo!, rechecking in a few weeks to make sure it has been indexed.

3. Email Signature

At the bottom of your email, add a signature that includes your domain name. Just in case you need help with adding an email signature I’ve added some information for the most popular applications:

• Adding an email signature to gmail
• Adding an email signature to outlook express
• Adding an email signature to outlook
• Adding an email signature to entourage
• Adding a HTML signature to Mac’s Mail

4. Yellow Pages Directory

Yellowpages.com has a free listing that will remain active for 12 months. This is a good place to promote your site – and it is free, fast and easy.

5. Google Local Business

Last, but definitely not least – Google Local Business. When you submit your website to Google Local Business, it is eligible to rank in the local business section. The section is displayed before the organic search results, toward the top of Google. For example, I did a search for: dentist in dana point ca. Local business search is displayed just below the sponsored link section, with a map inserted to the left of the listings.

If you are going to submit to Google Local Business you will need either a business phone number or a business mailing address. Toward the end of the submission process you will be given a PIN number. You will need to use this PIN to complete the submission. If you opt for a postcard, the PIN will be mailed. However, choosing the phone option, the PIN will be displayed and an automated phone call will be made. Importantly, if the number is not a “business line” you will have to take the postcard route.  Either way, it is free, fast and easy.

If you have promoted your website using a free, fast and easy method other than the ones listed here, let us know. Also, if you’ve enjoyed this article, check out what Mark wrote on getting your blog noticed.

How did you find this article? Did it boost your site’s traffic? Share it in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Submit Your Website To Bing & Google For More Traffic (20)
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Chart Chooser from Juice Analytics is an innovative tool that lets you create Excel and Powerpoint charts and choose what characteristics you wish to highlight in your data; Comparison, Distribution, Composition, Trend, Relationship and/or Table, and it will filter the selections highlighting the possible charts for your needs.

Once you have decided on your selection, Chart Chooser will display options to download templates for Excel and Powerpoint. The downloaded files will have random data filled for you to get an idea of how the data is presented and where you will be able to enter your own figures.

The good news about this service is that Juice Analytics doesn’t seem to be stopping with the current selection of graphs available on the site. Users are encouraged to suggest different charts to be added to their website and even design bespoke versions for organisations. Juice Analytics have also endeavoured to make all their charts Tufte-compliant (clean and minimal) whilst remaining visually aesthetic.

Juice Analytics also operates an analytics blog that focuses on free tools and open source code. Here, you are able to find a wealth of information on how the Juice Analytics team tackle different projects, including this project inspired by the New York Times.

One tool that the team recently released was Concentrate, a search analytics tool for SEO and paid search professionals who wanted to make sense of search keyword data. Concentrate works by connecting to your Google Analytics account and helps to visualize keyword relationships to see connections and performance of common word combinations. All data collated by Concentrate is automatically formatted and information such as categorized search phrases and pattern groups can be downloaded to CSV format for off site analysis.

Juice Analytics is a great source of Excel and Powerpoint information as well as providing open source code, most of which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. If you need to impress the board, your boss or your peers at your next meeting, a visit to these guys, even just for the Chart Chooser, should be your first stop.

Do you know of any other sites that offer templates like these? If so, let us know of your recommendations in the comments!

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There are two types of sitemaps – a HTML page or a XML file. A HTML sitemap is a single page that shows visitors all the pages on a website and usually has links to those pages. The XML type of sitemap is used by search engine crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed. A XML sitemap isn’t meant to look pretty for the website visitor.

XML-Sitemaps is a free sitemap generator. XML-Sitemaps will index your website and create a XML file that you can upload to the root directory of your website. There is nothing to download or install. Just use the XML-Sitemaps website and they will do all of the work.

4 Easy Steps for Creating a XML Sitemap

1. Go to xml-sitemaps

2. Enter your full website URL. Choose your other options:

- Enter the frequency your website is usually updated from the drop-down list.
- Choose an option under ‘Last modification’. This is the time the URL was last modified.
- Leave the Priority at Automatic.

3. Click ‘Start’. Wait while your sitemap is being generated.

4. Click the link to download the .xml file.

Now you can upload the sitemap.xml file to the root directory of your website and you can submit your sitemap URL to Google Webmaster Tools.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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But all it provides in terms of actual search ranking is your position for the queries that land the most people on your site and your position for the top queries in which your site appears. What it doesn’t give you is a way of easily checking your search position for any search terms you want. That’s where the Google Position Checker comes in.

Simply enter your website, the search term you want to check, the region if your site is geared toward a particular country (or choose ‘world’ if country doesn’t really matter) and how many of the top results you want to check (you can go up to the top 1000 results, but for a faster check you can go as low as the top 100 results).

This way, you can easily see your ranking for any search term, without having to do the search yourself and look through the results for your own site.

They also have a similar tool for MSN and another one for Yahoo (although I’ve never met a single person who uses Yahoo or MSN for web search – have you?).

What do you think about Google Position Checker? Do you have a better tool for the job? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

(By) Blake Elias is a computer addict, always learning about new technologies and figuring out ways to do things better. He writes about his thoughts and activities regarding Linux, Google, useful programs, web development and computers in general on his personal blog, The New Geek.

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We decided to list the best of the free tools which can help you research different keywords specific to your site and optimize the site.

1: Google Adwords Research Tool

Although this tool is primarily meant for Adwords bidders, this is also widely used by webmasters and publishers to measure the popularity of different keywords based on their Google search volume.

2: Wordtracker’s Free Tool

When it comes to finding the right keywords, Wordtracker is definitely a name you can count on. They primarily provide paid keyword research tools but they have a free tool too, which, for a particular query, can generate up to 100 related keywords and an estimate of their daily search volume.

3: Google Suggest

Google Suggest also offers a nice way to research keywords. When you start typing a word in the Google suggest box, it starts showing the related most popular search queries in a drop down menu. Therefore you can immediately come to know about the related keywords / sentences for a particular search query. Even Google Toolbar has this feature but it doesn’t show the number of search results for the keywords.

4: SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

Although different SEO related sites have developed their own keyword research tools, the one by SEObook.com is worth mentioning. It is powered by Wordtracker and provides results which are much more comprehensive than the free tool provided by Wordtracker. It’s worth a try.

5: Good Keywords

Good Keywords is another handy tool for researching keywords. It is a tiny 500kb program which offers several features when you start it. Mark has already described it in detail here.

6: Keyword Discovery

This free search term suggestion tool by Trellian is a nice one too. Although it only shows the first hundred related keywords in its free edition but it still could be useful.

Have I missed anything out that you use to get the best keywords for YOUR site? Let everyone know in the comments.

By- Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips, productivity hacks at Jeet Blog

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Submit Your Website To Bing & Google For More Traffic (20)
• How To Start A Blog That Gets Instant Traffic (57)
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Desktop Blogging Clients

Post to your blog straigth from the desktop.

Windows Live Writer – One of the best. Plugins can be added to increase its power. Check out our review here.
w.bloggar (Windows only) – Available as a full and portable version (can run from USB thumbdrive).
AIRPress (Windows, Mac) – Adobe AIR based blog editor for WordPress blogs. AIRPress requires Adobe AIR beta 2 to work. If it’s not installed already, it will be auto installed with AIRPress.
Thingamablog (Window, Mac, Linux)
Qumana (Windows, Mac)
BlogDesk (Windows) – Optimized for WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine.

Statistics Tools

Monitor websites traffic and other stats.

Google Analytics (AIR) – Check detailed traffic stats from the desktop. Works both on Mac and Windows PCs. Google Analytics account required.
Snoop (Mac, Win) – Track website visitors in real time staight from the desktop. Stats provided by reinvigorate.net
SERPs Finder (Win) – Find where your page lists for a particular keyword on Google, Live and Yahoo! Search.

Screen Capturing Tools

Snippy (Windows) – System Tray Tool for screen capturing. Mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy — and Snipp it.
Clip2Net (Windows) – Take screenshots, add notes and arrows, and save them online.
WebShot (Windows) – One more screesnhot grabber, free version is quite limited, but still does the job.
Camstudio (Windows) – Capture screen activity (vide+audio) and save it in AVI or SWF format.
Windows Media Encoder – Capture audio and video content and encode video captures to WMV format.
SnagIt 7 (Windows) – Powerful screenshot capture and editing tool. Normally it costs $29 but version 7 is available for free. Unfortunately, the promotion period is over.

Image Editing Programs

GIMP (Win, Linux) – Free Photoshop alternative. Also see Gimpshop which even looks like Photopshop.
Paint.NET (Win) – Another open source software tool for your image editing needs.
IrfanView (Win) – Worth a mention here, it’s an image viewer with a few editing capabilities.

FTP Programs

Filezilla (Win, Mac, Linux) – Open Source FTP Client. Read MakeUseOf review here.
FireFTP (Win, Mac, Linux) – FTP extension for your Firefox browser.

Keyword Research

Good Keywords (Win) – Excellent too for finding suitable keywords for your article titles. MakeUseOf review: Get Your Keywords Right.

Microblogging Tools

Pwytter (Win, Mac, Linux) – Cross-platofrm Twitter client.
Twitbin – Firefox Extension for Twittering
OutTwit – Twitter client for Outlook. If you’re interested check out more Outlook addons here.
Pownce Client – Official Pownce clients for Mac and Windows. [What is Pownce ?]

Task Management

Rainlendar (Win) – One of the best desktop calendar apps for Windows.
Essential PIM (Win) – A free personal information manager.

Offline HTML editors

First Page (Win) – Two paned windows HTML editor.
KomPozer (Win, Mac, Linux) – Extremely easy to use and ideal for non-technical users.

Miscellaneous

WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier – Get notifications when there are comments that need to be moderated.

That’s about it. Do you have a must-see program that’s not on the above list? Let us know in comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Website Grader – Free seo is a tool that measures the marketing effectiveness and popularity of a website. Find out things like website traffic, its popularity on social bookmarking networks (Digg, del.icio.us, …), incoming link count, and lots of other relevant factors. It also provides some basic tips on how the website can be improved.

Just type in your URL, primary keywords, competing websites (shhhh! you can check up on them too) and the email address where you want them to send the Full Report!. And a FULL REPORT is exactly what they will send, too! It’s very informative, and gives you a ton of ideas on how you can make your site better. So, pour yourself a stiff one, then sit down and check it out!

And while you’re at it, you may also take a look at their report on SEO Capabilities of the Top 20 Bloggers.

SEOMOZ -Page Strength – Similar to WebsiteGrader but takes a slightly different approach. Instead of giving the effectiveness of the website in comparison to other rated websites, it does a thorough SEO check and grades the website (from 1 to 10) based on the actual stats. Extremely useful at tracking website’s performance over time. Take a look at MakeUseOf report here

How Much is Your Blog Worth ? – Exactly does what it says, find out how much $$$ the website is valued at. This tool uses the same the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc. deal. The only problem, it pulls link count from Technorati, which unfortunately doesn’t work well anymore.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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I used to find it extremely tiring researching keywords. I’d be sitting in front of Google or Yahoo for ages typing in random phrases and seeing what popped up. I’d be looking at places such as Technorati or Google Blog Search and I would still be clueless as to what keywords I should be using to make my blog more accessible to the discerning web surfer. But then I discovered a neat free little program called “Good Keywords” which takes all the stress out of the process. It’s such a great program that Search Engine Watch called it “a keeper”.

The website that offers “Good Keywords” also offers various other keyword-related programs such as Keyword Pad (for managing long lists of keywords) and Keyword Explorer which analyzes keyword phrases. But the real jewel in the crown is “Good Keywords”.

“Good Keywords” is a tiny 500kb program which gives you several options when you start it. The main feature – and the real goldmine in my opinion – is the “Keyword Suggestions” box. This links to Yahoo and Overture and when you enter a keyword in the box, it goes to Yahoo and Overture and instantly brings back LOTS of variations of the keyword along with the number of search engine queries for those keywords over the past month (the most popular keyword phrase being at the top).

By entering your keywords into this program, you can find out right away the search query habits of internet users so you can know which keywords to include and which ones to exclude. Not only it can make your titles more Google / Yahoo friendly, but also can make a financial difference for the better if you are running an Adwords campaign where the wrong keywords could end up costing you a lot of wasted money.

Other options that the program gives you includes possible misspelled variations of a keyword, a keyword phrase builder, a website analyzer (which tells you the site’s PageRank as well as the number of other sites that link to it) and a keyword organizer.

“Good Keywords” is freeware and it never nags you to register for anything and it never asks for an email address. It is simply just a great little tool which fills a big need. This is most definately a keeper on my PC.

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