3 Major Functions Of Google Webmaster Tools For Better SEO Practice

Google Webmaster Tools is a non-paid web service from Google dedicated to webmasters. With these tools, webmasters can check their indexing as well as optimize their website's visibility. There are several ways webmasters can perform to enhance their SEO. Some given here are the most common SEO methods a webmaster carries on:

1. Link Building

It is not a secret that the number of inbound links on Google Webmaster Tools is commonly more than what a search query can discover. Often, you will be surprised that even orphaned pages or pages that don't benefit much from linking to your website get the inbound link. How this can possibly happen, those geniuses at Google still keep it zipped. Often, some pages that are linked to your site are no more than automated sites, but sometimes you will also find the really good ones from the long list of inbound links. When you find these good links, you can utilize them for better traffic and inbound links. Focus on finding authority sites as your inbound links, as they are worthier than any automated links combined.

2. Keyword Research

Besides for building significant links to your website, you can also examine the affability of keywords. Indeed Google provides you with some keyword research tools for your convenience, but Google Webmaster Tools do better. The service not only does examine keywords, the tool finds which keywords would suit your website. The concept of the service's keyword research is finding out the reachable keywords that are already ranked near the top five. Using effective low-level SEO practice, the keywords are enhanced to rank better and get a high ROI. Most practitioners are focusing on keywords with high traffic, important queries, and high profit. This kind of SEO method is a good way to save your money and time as you don't have to battle with other website competitors for better visibility.

3. Conversion Rate Optimization

As customer behaviors are hard to predict, webmasters may use conversion rate optimization to improve customer's awareness of their websites. Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO is a method to increase the conversion of the visitors of a website into the website's customer. But before you can turn the visitors into customers, you should change your searcher into visitors first. Using Google Webmaster Tools, you can find your converting keywords; all the best and the worst. As not all keywords get high Click Through Rates (CTR), you will be surprised when finding out that some unpredictable keywords may get higher CTR than those that seem more appropriate.

Keywords Are It! Seven Powerful & Useful Keyword Marketing Tools

After years of running websites and earning a full-time online income, I am constantly reminded that it all comes down to keywords. Actually, it all comes down to obtaining top rankings for your profitable keywords in the search engines, mainly Google.

And that statement has to be refined even further, it's all about obtaining top keyword rankings and keeping them at the top. You must consistently keep your keywords in the top spots on that all important first page of SERPs since your keyword rankings can make or break your online marketing.

If you're targeting extremely competitive and profitable keywords you will have your work cut out for you; unless you have tons of money to buy your way (links) into the top spots, expect to spend months if not years, getting to those top listings. Google has frowned upon link buying and has taken steps to fight it, but this practice is still widespread throughout the web.

Most beginning and honest webmasters want to take the proper route and earn those top rankings by providing good quality content that web users will actually find helpful and useful. They build those links the natural way by offering viral link bait in the form of videos, ebooks, articles, reports... all branded with backlinks to their sites.

Gradually over time, these links will build up and your keyword rankings will go up in the search engines. People will find your content and bookmark it in all the social bookmark sites like Digg, Facebook, MySpace... and your rankings will climb even faster.

However, since keyword marketing has become extremely competitive, you do need a little help with achieving those top rankings. Over the years I have tested and used many keyword tools and I have listed some of the best ones below. (Just Google to find links to these tools and programs.)

Internet Success Spider

One of the first keyword tools I ever used was The Internet Success Spider by Neil Shearing which is now free. The Spider is a very simple, yet powerful keyword tool because it shows you the major players in your keyword niche. It slowly works in the background to give you valuable information on your keywords. I realized very quickly, with online marketing (like most things in life) information is what separates the losers from the winners.

Keyword Elite

Later, I tried and am still using Keyword Elite by Brad Callen, it remains one of the best keyword research tools on the market. I can directly link many of my keyword successes to my early use of this tool.

Brad Callen simply creates some of the best marketing tools for online webmasters and marketers. KE is no exception. It will do some very comprehensive keyword research for you and let you easily arrange that information. Keyword Elite has earned a well deserved reputation as a very useful marketing tool.

Brainstorm It - Site Build It

Another, perhaps even more powerful keyword tool is Brainstorm It! which is offered through the Site Build It marketing/hosting system run by Ken Evoy. This is a powerful keyword analyzer and finder, which is now in its third version.

SBI run by Ken Evoy creates many tools for webmasters and Brainstorm It, Version 3 is simply one of the best. This keyword tool will do both Vertical and Lateral keyword research to give the most comprehensive array of information for your online marketing. Only negative, you only get so many Wordtracker credits and you have to pay extra when those run out. Actually, Wordtracker should be at the top of any keyword tool list, but I have mainly used it in conjunction with other programs like Brainstorm It.

Google Keyword Tool

Then again there is the Google own keyword system run through it's AdWords program. Like everything Google does, this keyword tool can be very helpful especially for the novice online marketer.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

MSN Commercial Intention Of Keywords

Not to be outdone, another helpful tool is Microsoft's Online Commercial Intention tool, which tells the probability your chosen keyword has a commercial value to it:

http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx

SeoBook Online Keyword Tool

For very quick keyword references, I like using Aaron Wall's keyword tool on his Seobook site. It's quick and gives very good stats for your chosen keywords.

SeoQuake

Still yet another SEO (sort of related to keywords) is the SeoQuake Toolbar which you can run on Firefox. It will slow down your browser but it will cough up valuable information about your own site and more importantly, it will give you valuable information on your competitors' sites. One feature that I find very helpful is the SEM Rank and SEM Price, which tells you how much your Search Engine keyword traffic is worth.

Plus, you must not ignore your website stats and traffic logs for they can supply you with your most valuable keyword information regarding your site. Closely examine which keyword phrases are bringing in the traffic and/or sales. Develop these keywords with your online marketing, especially any "long tail" keyword phrases visitors are using to find your site or products. These longer keyword phrases have proven to be the most profitable because many times consumers using these phrases already have their minds made up on what they're going to buy.

Why am I using all these keyword tools?

Simply because obtaining and keeping top rankings for my chosen keywords is my livelihood. Unless I can keep that targeted traffic coming from these keywords via the search engines; it's game over. Therefore, I use all the tools and information I can gather in order to keep those keywords at the top.

Google is always changing, you really have to stay on your game if you want to keep your keywords at the top. It all boils down to producing quality content web surfers need and want. The SEO pretty much takes care of itself as long as you keep promoting your keywords with good viral branded content like videos, articles, ebooks, PDF reports... and you must mix up your online link building to include links from such places as Facebook, Digg, Google Bookmarks, MySpace... I have always used the free "Addthis" button to all my important content and this has resulted in 100's of free links that your visitors will build for you!

I also believe you have to be careful when using viral articles to vary your anchor text (clickable part of a link) so that you don't have the same keyword phrase repeated 100's of times across the web. Just use different versions of your keyword phrase and if you can, get those keyword links in the body of the article, as near to the top of the page as you can. This will make your link building look much more natural in the eyes of the search engines, especially Google.

Overall, you must have hundreds, if not thousands of keywords that you're targeting with your online marketing. You must constantly keep building links for those keywords from related sites on the web. Sometimes it is helpful to truly view your keywords as organic, something that keeps growing naturally on its own. But you must first build a solid foundation with good quality content and then keep nurturing those keywords with good quality link bait so that others will bookmark, recommend and link to your keyword content.

Over the years, if there is anything I have learned about keywords which always holds true, it is this: you must be persistent. You must keep at it: building links, building content... it will usually take months, if not years, to get those top rankings for very competitive keywords and it will take some further work to consistently keep those keywords in the top positions. But you will quickly learn keywords are well worth it since they can easily make or break your online marketing.

Is Ranking in Google As Easy As Using Google?

Google's algorithm which helps websites rank, or boots them out of the search results entirely has many variables to it. The thing is - Google can only use what it knows. If you think about it - using as many of Google's services like Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Email, Google RSS Reader, Buzz, and the rest of it - makes sense if you want to rank in Google.

Google has access to heaps of data through these services they offer for your website. Do you think they're using the data from them to decide how you should rank? They are screening emails to decide what ads you might like to see above your email inbox... I think it's a pretty safe bet to say they are using whatever information they have to decide where your site is ranked for top terms important to you.

Google employees like Matt Cutts have said again and again that Google wants to index the best pages online and answer the queries that Google users type into the search engine.

Google wants the best sites to rank very highly because it shows the world that Google's service is irreplaceable. It shows that they know which sites will answer your query. If they had AOL, Geocities, or MySpace profiles showing up in the top results for a keyword searches - how would that look? Not so good.

By using Google's services you are telling them everything about your site possible. You're telling them how many people are using it, what the bounce rate is, the demographics of the people using the site, whether the site is for ecommerce or other use. Whether it's being updated frequently, and many other variables Google must be using to decide how well your site compares to other sites.

Currently Google has a long list of services - nearly all free, that you can put to use for your business.

Here are some:

Analytics Calendar Checkout Documents - including presentations, docs, spreadsheets, forms Email Maps Photos Reader Sites Webmaster Tools YouTube

Why would using Google applications give you a jump on other businesses that don't employ this tactic?

For the simple fact that Google created all these tools to help you create quality content online. For instance, in Google Webmaster Tools there are many tips that can help you better format your site to be optimized for Google. Someone not using these must be losing out. In webmaster tools you can configure many options too.

You can tell Google:

every page you want indexed by using a 'sitemap' which country you prefer your site to be found in above all other countries whether your website should be know as http: //www.yoursite.com or just yoursite.com how quickly the Google bots (spiders) should crawl your site in case you have a server that is subpar.

One of Google's top tools you could use to add content to your site is by embedding YouTube videos directly onto the pages of your site. Google loves multimedia.

If Google is using all the information they have from customers that are taking advantage of all Google has to offer with the services mentioned above and how they relate to website ranking, they will probably never tell us about it. We can only guess that they are doing it because it just makes a whole lot of sense, and enables them to give us the best results for our Google queries.

Use Google for everything, all their services are free - and  they offer some great ways to beef up the content and formatting of your site so it's more easily found.

6 Free and Useful Backlink Checking Tools

Backlinks are one of the most important and influential factor that determines your websites online success. Hence it is always better to have a healthy number of backlinks to your site. The backlinks also should be from good, relevant and quality sites, other wise your site may lose its reputation and may not get help from these backlinks.

It is always a tedious task to track your backlinks and you cannot ignore it as you need to have an eye on your backlinks on a regular basis. You need to check your backlinks to find out whether your link building campaign is working up to the expectations, whether any bad sites are linking to you, how many authority sites are linking to you etc. There are many paid and free tools for checking your backlinks and they have different advantages based upon your requirement. Here I would like to mention around 6 Free backlink checking tools that are useful and easy to use.

1) WebRank Toolbar - This is a Firefox Addon to check your website's backlinks and shows backlinks as per Google, Bing and Yahoo. Once you install this Addon in your browser you just need to open any website and you can see the backlink details on the browser itself. This toolbar also gives you Google Pagerank, Alexa, Compete and Quantcast Rank and pages indexed.

2) SEO Quake - SEO Quake is another powerful Firefox Addon which helps you to get the number of backlinks for your site. Similar to WebRank Addons, this is also easy to install and use.

3) Backlinkwatch - Backlinkwatch is an online backlink checker and provides you the total number of backlinks your site has got. It give additional informations such as the anchor text used for linking, the PR of the site providing the link, the number of links on the page giving the backlink and the type of the backlink (follow or nofollow)

4) Yahoo Site Explorer - Yahoo Site Explorer is another online tool which lets you see the number of backlinks to your site. You just need to enter your site details and Yahoo will show you the number of backlinks your site has got.

5) Google Webmaster Tools - Google Webmaster Tools is yet another powerful tool by Google which helps you to find out the number of backlinks your site has got and it gets updated on a regular basis. You just need to to have a Google Webmaster account and your site must be verified with the Webmaster account, in order to see the backlink results.

6) SEOCentro - SEOCentro is an online tool for checking your backlink popularity and this tool gives you results from Google, Yahoo, Bing etc and usually send you the report via email.

My First Website - Using Sitemaps

When you create a new website it will be indexed as soon as the crawlers encounter a link to it. In general, you don't have to submit any information to search engines because the web is based on links. If there is a page then there must be also some links that point to this page. Otherwise the page is probably not worth indexing. However, there are situations where crawlers can not discover all the pages you have. This is where you can help them with sitemaps.

Sitemap is an XML file with defined structure. It contains information about all the pages of the website. All major search engines provide a way to submit sitemap files. Google, for example, uses Webmasters Tools as a place where you can submit sitemaps.

The main purpose of the sitemap is to inform search engines and crawlers about all the pages you have. Using this information bots, spiders and crawlers can visit pages even if there is no link pointing to them. But there is also another more important function. By submitting a sitemap file you can track how many pages are indexed by the search engine. This information is very important because in the case you find out that not all pages are indexed you may have a problem. In many cases pages with little or no content will not be indexed. This is normal. Less "normal" is when some article page is not indexed. In some cases you have to wait for a while, while in other cases the reason may be duplicate content or any other reason that makes search engine to think that this page is not worth indexing.

You can also add images, videos, code and geo information to the sitemap file. This way you can inform Google, Yahoo and Bing with all the stuff you think is worth indexing. More information about this possibility can be found at the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Creating a sitemap file is pretty easy. All popular content management systems including Wordpress and Joomla have an extension which can automatically create a sitemap file from all the pages of the website. This way you don't have to worry about the file structure and links. There is also a possibility for websites that have no such automatic solution. There are many scripts that can crawl the site by following internal links. Using this information they create the file which can be submitted to search engines.

How to Check Google Pagerank Using Online Tools

Google pagerank is one of the most important factors used to determine the quality of the domain. High pagerank means good chance to rank well in Google for your keywords. No wonder that many webmasters would like to know the pagerank value of their websites. This article will show you how to check Google pagerank using online tools.

There are 3 ways how to check Google page rank Using Online Tools:
1. Online pagerank checker
2. Long-term pagerank checker
3. Google toolbar

1. Online pagerank checker
Online page rank checker is a tool where you enter URL of your domain and the script will contact Google server using API. As a response the pagerank value is displayed. Some Google pagerank checkers offers the textarea where you can paste multiple URL's and the tool checks pagerank of all domains in the same time. If you run a lot of websites you should search for such online tool.

2. Long-term pagerank checker
Long-term pagerank checker works like membership website. After signing up for the account you will set up URLs of your domains. The script will check the pagerank periodically (every day, week or month). As a result, you will be able to watch the graph.

3. Google toolbar
Google toolbar can be installed to your browser (it works in all major browsers, not only in Firefox). When you surf the internet you can see the pagerank value of the website which you are currently watching. If Google toolbar doesn't work for you for any reason you can search for some SEO extension for Firefox.

Search Engine Advertising Advice - 4 Powerful Free Tools You Cannot Miss

Search engine advertising and marketing sounds like a very complicated process especially when you start talking about the tools required. Here are 4 powerful free tools that you cannot miss.

Google Keyword Tool

Before you start most of your campaigns, you must select a list of keywords which are well searched for and highly relevant to your offers. This is a really good keyword tool and it can work for both paid search advertisers and organic search advertisers.

Google Website Optimizer

There are quite a few good split testing software available on the market today and many of them are not cheap. You will be surprised that this free tool beats all of them hands down. It is so simple to use that you can figure out in a few minutes. Free tutorials are also easily available.

Google Webmaster Tools

Would you like Google to give you suggestions on how you can improve your website, which keywords you are ranking for and what position they are at? This is it! It will do all that for you. This is another simple yet powerful tool and I like the fact that it is absolutely free of charge.

Google Analytics

Google bought over a company with web statistics services and gave us the full access for free. There is a lot more functions in this service than you can imagine. You can even look at your sales funnel, where your visitors are coming from and much more. Take time to check it out and you will find out more.

Now that you discovered these useful and practical tips, here's where you can get more useful content for FREE...