by Nick Throlson | Aug 4, 2011 | Guest Post, SEO
If you?re into Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Marketing, then you should be into SEMrush because it can help you stay ahead of the game.SEMrush is the only tool of its kind currently scraping over 88 million Google SERPs a month for the most popular keywords. It then takes that data and translates it into easy to follow charts, reports, and stat summaries for each keyword, phrase, or domain you plug into the search box.When you open the SEMRush page, you?ll see the search box. Once you type in either a domain name or a keyword, a navigation menu on the left will list out the various reports you can browse through. These reports are based on both Google Organic search results and Google AdWords data.Reports available include:- Main Report
- Google Keywords
- AdWords Keywords
- Competitors in Google
- Competitors in AdWords
- AdWords Ads Texts
- Potential Ads Buyers
- Potential Ads Sellers
You might begin your analysis by entering your own domain name in the search box. You?ll then be able to see a snapshot of all the reports available.The Google keywords report will give you a list of keywords for which you are currently ranking in the first 20 positions in Google SERP. For each keyword, useful information about it is provided, including: the exact SERP position, percentage of the traffic you are getting from it, total number of Google search results for the keyword, as well as numbers related to monthly search volume (CPC, search trend, and the like). Any AdWords data is also readily available via the AdWords Keywords tab.Perhaps more important than checking data related to your own site, is checking the data relative to your competitors? sites. This is easy with SEMrush. Just enter a domain in the search box, click on the Competitors in Google tab in the Reports Menu, and you?ll see a list of competing domains based on an organic search. Included in this report is data such as: number of common keywords, search engine traffic, search engine traffic price, and total number of AdWords keywords associated with each of the domains. A similar report is also available relative to your AdWords competitors.Keyword data can be attained the same way as domain info. SEMrush gives a complete list of data in its keyword summary, including: the list of sites using the word ranking in the first 20 positions in Google Organic Search, a Related Keywords Report, a Phrase Match Report, and an AdWords Report (list of sites running AdWords campaigns for that keyword).SEMRush can even help identify potential ad buyers or ad sellers for your site based in your keyword searches. It compares the keywords you?re ranking in Google?s first 20 positions for to the list of Google AdWords buyers for those keywords and produces a Potential Ads Buyers report, or Potential Ad Sellers report for each.SEMRush is available for varying levels of access and data. There?s a free, limited access version for those who want to check out how it does what it does, but that will only scratch the surface if you?re a true SEO or SEM professional. Other subscriptions to the service range from ?light? to ?PRO? and even Guru and Enterprise levels for those who need it.Now, for a very limited time, my readers can try a Pro version of SEMrush free for 2-weeks. Simply, go to the SEMrush home page www.semrush.com, create a free account, and use the promo code below try it. This offer is only good through August 20th, so don?t wait! Accounts remain active for 2-weeks after activation.PROMO CODE: V2N7-S650-H358-P30T
by Nick Throlson | Sep 23, 2010 | Guest Post, Web Design
Do you want to create the perfect video for your business? Videos make excellent marketing tools. With videos, you share your experience and expertise with potential customers. Presentation is key when designing your videos. You want to appear professional, speak eloquently and highlight your services in the best light. How can you look more professional on video? Here are some simple tips.1. Variety: Customers do not need to look at you through the entire presentation of the subject. Show off professionally designed Powerpoint presentations, use graphs or bring others into the conversation. If your video is long, change your background graphics.2. Dress professionally: Your video marketing needs to instill confidence within your customers. Poor grooming makes the customers believe that you don't care about your product. If you don't care about your product, why should they? Make sure that your clothing has no holes and no excess wear and tear. Looking great makes you feel good, and feeling good instills confidence.3. Use high quality audio and video: Customers should be able to hear you and see you when you are on camera. If customers can't hear you, they become confused and will not purchase your products. For demonstration and how-to videos, your subject needs to be absolutely clear and in focus so that the customers can follow your instructions. Minimize any background noise.4. Be concise: Avoid rambling off-topic diatribes. Your viewers want to see what you are offering, not hear your opinions about the latest football scores. When you are scripting your video, eliminate anything which can be construed as off-topic or rambling. Your viewers should not be wondering when you will get to the point.5. Scripting: Very few people can sit in front of a camera and produce a great video on the first take. Script every single word that you will say on the video, edit as necessary. Eliminate topics which do not relate to the intention of the video. Each word should forward the story.6. Practice: Practice your script. Most importantly, practice your facial expressions. Practice your body language. Do a few dry runs of your presentation so you can see how well you present yourself. Show a genuine interest in your product. Practice displaying your confidence.7. Mindful speech: Eliminate 'er' and 'uh' and other filler words. This returns to the idea that you need to be concise with your thoughts. There is nothing so distracting as to listen to a presenter who is very obviously camera-shy. Think about each phrase as you are saying it.8. Look at the camera: When someone is looking away or looking down, there is a natural inclination to see what has captured their attention. When you develop a conversational video, pretend that you are speaking directly to your friend or neighbor. Look into their eyes.9. Alter your cadence: Everyone has a rhythm to their speech. When you are saying something that your viewers need to remember, change the cadence of your speech to draw attention to it. Move from a slow rhythmic flow to short bursts. Pause longer between sentences. Speed up or slow down.10. Smile: Your smile places people at ease. When you are smiling, you show that you are relaxed with your presentation. Hide any internal fears that you have by consciously smiling. When in doubt, practice smiling in front of a mirror to determine your best expressions.A video marketing campaign enhances your business. When your presentation is clear and eloquent, you instill confidence within your viewers. When that expertise shines through, you generate more interest in your products and services.A writer and product analyst, James Adams currently works at Cartridge Save, one of the UK's foremost suppliers of printer inks. by Nick Throlson | Aug 28, 2010 | Guest Post, Web Design
Author Bio: Joel Ohman is a Certified Financial Planner? and serial entrepreneur. Some of his most recent web projects include a website with a bunch of easy to use tools for finding great domain names and a website that makes it easy to compare car insurance online. He is a newcomer to NickThrolson.com and would encourage you to check out the recent post from Nick with a review of Fiverr.The acid test for any website in any market is quite simply if you can objectively take a look at your site as compared to the other top sites in your market and then ask yourself the question: "Is my website honestly the best website out of all of the other websites gunning for the same keyword?" and get a resounding "Yes, my site is the best." If you cannot honestly answer yes then it's time to get back to work and/or go back to the drawing board.Give the Search Engines What They Want
The biggest mistake that many newbie SEO's make is to try to "game the system" by "outsmarting Google/Bing". Even if we put aside the ridiculous notion that any one person can consistently outsmart a team of highly paid and highly intelligent engineers for any amount of time let's just first realize that if one truly wants to make a substantial amount of money with their website(s) then they will have to do one thing. Work hard.Yup, I said it. W-O-R-K. So if it's going to take a lot of hard work either way then why not put all of that hard work into actually building a great web property? Why try to scam and trick your way into getting your site ranked ahead of other sites that are much higher quality websites than your auto generated splogs will ever be when you can work hard and build a website that people can look at and honestly say SHOULD rank #1 because it is the BEST?Assuming that Google wants to make money by having people continue to use Google instead of BING (and vice versa) then it is in Google's best interest to want to provide the best results possible and the best user experience possible so that people will continue to use their web search rather than jumping ship to BING or another competitor. If this is the case then why not build the absolute best (honestly now - the best) website for a given niche and give users and in turn the search engines exactly what they want? (HINT: If you do this then that means that you will get what YOU want: loads of traffic and in turn hopefully you can convert that into loads of $$$)Questions to Ask Yourself
It's pretty easy to tell with some sites whether they are a top tier web property and deserve to rank for a competitive keyword phrase. Conversely, it's also very easy to tell when a given site has no business ranking for anything (i.e. MFA "Made For AdSense" websites, auto generated "splogs" spam blogs, etc). However, most sites are not really one of the extremes. Here are some questions to ask yourself about YOUR website as you compare it to some of it's competitors to see how it stacks up:- Does my website cover the topic (topic = main keyword phrase that you are trying to rank for) in terms of content as thoroughly or more thoroughly than any other website? - For example, I own a website that has information on anything and everything to do with credit cards. I am constantly adding new high quality information to the website so that the websites will have every possible piece of useful credit card related information on it including credit card reviews, interactive calculators, humorous feature articles, etc. BUT what if I thought that I could just launch up a quick 10 page website and expect to outrank many of the other great websites in the credit card market that have thousands and thousands of high quality pages? Yea, fat chance.
- Does my website LOOK just as professional, creative, polished, etc as my competitors? - This one is not as important as the meat of the website (the content) but all the same the design of your website speaks volumes.
- Does my website have all of the functionality as my competitors? - For example, if you want to compete in one of the ultra competitive niches like travel, financial software, etc. and your website can't even come close to a Hotels.com or a Mint.com then you are probably in trouble (which just goes to show that there are solid reasons why each of those sites deserve to have such high rankings in their respective niches).
What do YOU Think?
Do you find yourself tending to think short term and focus on quick results rather than on a long term focus on quality?What are some other ways that one can evaluate their website to determine if it is best in class? by Nick Throlson | Aug 10, 2010 | Guest Post
Inevitably, at some point in your life you've had a head-slapping, stop in your tracks moment where you say to yourself, "Why didn't I think of that???". Every year thousands of creative entrepreneurs come up with a new product, or service, or website idea that makes it big, earning the creator either a giant paycheck or boatload of publicity, or both.So why isn't that person you? It can be.Now is the time to act! Still not ready? Maybe you just need to hear about some people who have done it in order to get your juices flowing. Here's a run down of some of those people who took their ideas (crazy as they may seem) and turned them into gold.Jason Sadler is another one of those Web-entrepreneurs that have taken a silly or creative idea and turned it into Web gold! Jason created IwearYourShirt.com, a site that features him wearing a new shirt every day, each one sponsored by a new advertiser. In 2009 Jason successfully sold 365-days of sponsored shirt wearing, earning him just under $70,000.Yes, you read that right. Jason made almost $70,000 for wearing a different t-shirt every day. Doesn't sound so silly now, does it? Kyle MacDonald bartered his way from a single red paperclip to a house in a series of online trades over the course of a year. That's right, he used the power of the Internet and a creative idea to trade something of almost zero value, for something (a house) of actual real value. Alex Tew is the guy who came up with The Million Dollar Home Page.A student at the time, Tew needed to find a way to pay for his education, so he took a chance and created a web page that sold 1,000,000 pixels for $1 each. Hence, 'The Million Dollar Homepage". In fact, Tew did sell all 1 million pixels and earned himself a nice paycheck, and tons of publicity in the process. These projects illustrate that even the simplest or craziest or weirdest or unusual idea can be turned into reality, and Web gold. It should also be pointed out that for every one of these types of projects that succeed, ninety-nine other similar projects never get off the ground. Personally, I've taken two stabs at viral glory with two sites that never did catch on.If you want to see them in action visit AwesomeMillion.com and BigBrownBox.com. But just because success doesn't come doesn't mean you shouldn't stop trying. As all-time great Wayne Gretzky so famously quoted once, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take". It's time to take your shot. What's the worst that could happen? It becomes a hit and all your dreams come true? For inspiration, here's a quick list of some risk-takers you probably know about that turned an idea into reality and into a huge success.Red Bull energy drink ? The idea was to create a super-caffeinated carbonated beverage and market it to athletes and the party crowd. Through some creative and unusual advertising, Red Bull now has $3.4 billion in sales.Amazon.com ? Who wants to have to go to a bookstore to buy a book? Jeff Bezos created Amazon because he realized that driving to the bookstore was an enourmous hassle and there could be a better way.Polo ? Ralph Lauren thought to himself, "What if we take a regular polo shirt, and add a little horse decal on it and price it at $50?" In 1994, he sold 28% of the company to Goldman Sachs for $138 million.
For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, "Attention! This Book Will Make You Money", as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.
If you?re into Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Marketing, then you should be into SEMrush because it can help you stay ahead of the game.SEMrush is the only tool of its kind currently scraping over 88 million Google SERPs a month for the most popular keywords. It then takes that data and translates it into easy to follow charts, reports, and stat summaries for each keyword, phrase, or domain you plug into the search box.When you open the SEMRush page, you?ll see the search box. Once you type in either a domain name or a keyword, a navigation menu on the left will list out the various reports you can browse through. These reports are based on both Google Organic search results and Google AdWords data.Reports available include:
For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, "Attention! This Book Will Make You Money", as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.
