Writer’s Block for WordPress
Hey folks, some of you probably noticed two lower quality articles that I published earlier this month to the Frequently Asked Questions section of the site. No, my fingers weren’t taken over by a wizard who is terrible at SEO, rather I was fooling around with a new wordpress plugin that I had recently created, Writer’s Block. Writer’s Block is a very simple WordPress Plugin that allows you to get recommendations for content to write on your blog when you are just having one of those days without inspiration. You type in a keyword you are interested in and it delivers questions that people are searching for on Google related to that topic. If you were to ask about Gardening, it would likely return questions like “which gardening zone am I...
GrepWords is Mine, All Mine, Muhahahahaha…. well, also Carters, but still, close enough.
So, it is rare that I make the foray into paid tools, but I finally decided to bite the bullet and jump in. About 4 months ago I was reached out to by the folks at GrepWords as I was working on a post on YouMoz and had put out a request over Twitter for any ideas on keyword tools. At the time, like many of you, I had never heard of GrepWords. They were a beta API at that point and only really offered 2 things. Lots of keyword data, fast. Interestingly enough, that is what I needed. That is what I have always needed. Unfortunately, they needed a lot of work. They couldn’t really do payment processing well because they were outside the U.S., they didn’t really have a nice design or any tools tied to it. They built up a decent group of beta users who...
Possibility, Probability and Proof: On Case Studies, Correlation and Causation in SEO
I wanted to spend a bit today dealing with a pretty big issue that I see regularly in our industry, bickering over the state of research in search engine optimization. Rarely a week goes by where someone doesn’t say something about correlation does not equal causation in response to the mere sight of the word. So today, I’m going to write about 3 types of SEO research we see in our industry quite regularly and what I believe the appropriate response should be… Case Studies This one is actually my pet peeve. We tend to let this one go with a pass nearly every time despite the fact that it is likely the least meaningful SEO research presented. I was particularly drawn to this issue after a series of case studies coming out of Link Research Tools...
An Appeal to Conferences: Matt Cutts, Not Provided, and the Google’s Relationship to our Community
Matt Cutts has always shared an interesting relationship with the SEO industry. It was always strange to have the head hen visit the fox’s parties, but – then again – it seemed like a fair trade. His relationship to our community generally seemed quid-pro-quo. He would learn much about industry players, our tactics, and give a human element, while sharing some amount of information useful to us. Of course, this often came with a good deal of FUD, but it seemed worthwhile. There have been plenty of SEOs, like myself, who have questioned that relationship for some time. The balance has seemed to tip more and more in favor of Google over the years, as a “relationship with Matt” has been reduced to “fill out a reconsideration...
Keyword Research on Regular Expressions Steroids in Grepwords
There really hasn’t been much innovation in the keyword research space for a while and for good reason – the largest problem of getting good data has long been answered by top providers like SEMRush, Trellian KeywordDiscovery, WordStream and others like KeywordSpy. The data they provide is wonderfully useful, but the one thing that always felt limiting was the way we could get at their data. While they might provide accurate estimates for Google traffic, or useful data on large numbers of keywords, getting at the data required clumsy querying techniques no better than exact, phrase and broad match. As a developer, I found this cumbersome. Recently, though, I have found a better solution – Regular Expressions. At Virante we have long had access...
Adding Keyword Data to Google Analytics
Here is a quick little Chrome extension I had thrown together to get keyword data added into Google Analytics. [Install] At present, it has the following features on the Organic Keyword Traffic section of GA, you will see 4 additional columns with new data… CPC: The estimated cost per click of the keyword in google adwords Search Volume: The estimated monthly local (US) traffic for the keyword Traffic Value: The value of the traffic you received (CPC*Your Traffic) Estimated Rank: The estimated rank of your site in Google for that keyword over the previous 30 days For this tool to work, you will need an API Key from Grep Words. I am thinking about adding in SEMRush as well, but it is a bit more expensive than GrepWords. If a lot of you use it, let me know...
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