Noble Samurai

Ohayou Samurai!

It’s funny how such a minuscule push in the right direction makes such a massive difference to the level of success that we achieve in life.

Look at something as simple as setting a goal.

It’s such a simple, easy action – but it’s like taking out your GPS and picking a location that you want to travel to.

It gives you purpose, direction, and stops you from travelling in circles – and without it, how would you know what success and achievement in your own life even looks like?

3 Characteristics of Successful Goals

If you’re staring at the blank canvas that is 2009, and wondering how you will make your mark and what you will achieve, let me offer 3 goal-setting tips that have worked for us:

1. Be specific about what you want to achieve;
2. Write down your goals;
3. And share your goals with others.

This is something that we have been doing ourselves lately at the Noble Samurai “Dojo” – 2008 was a big year for us, but 2009 is going to be even bigger.

But there’s one thing that we haven’t done yet… #3 - share our goals with others.

Our Goals for 2009

Here are some of the things that the Noble Samurai team will be achieving in 2009:

• Finalize and release the next (top secret) module in Market Samurai (which will be free to all current Market Samurai owners), as well as the Adwords, Publish Content and Monetization modules;
• Complete a 14-day basic training course that people receive when they sign up to receive Market Samurai;
• Get half of the large set of niche sites that we play with/test with into the top 3 spots in Google;
• Attract 10,000 bloggers using Market Samurai to get more traffic to their blogs;
• Attract 40,000 additional internet marketers using Market Samurai;
• Alpha-test, then [gently] launch our Adwords Keyword-Match Tracking service to the general public;
• Release a top-secret project (currently in early development, details to be released in late 2009);
• Grow a Samurai community of online marketers;
• Continue to publish blog posts several times each month, with valuable content for the Samurai community;
• Communicate more frequently with Market Samurai users via email;
• Connect with 5,000 Market Samurai users via Twitter (@NobleSamurai);
• Test and launch our affiliate program;
• Complete our Adwords campaign by writing ads and researching keywords around each of the 8+1 modules inside Market Samurai;
• Create keyword-optimized landing pages for the best performing ads;
• Hire 1 new staff member in a support / admin role.

So, what are some of the things you want to achieve in 2009? - in your relationships, personal life, career, internet business - in any aspect of your life.

Remember:

1. Be specific about what you want to achieve;
2. Write down your goals;
3. And share your goals with others.

You can start now, and share your goals with us in the comments below - even anonymously if you wish.

We’d love to hear about what you will be achieving in 2009 - and hopefully we can help you achieve some of your internet marketing goals through Market Samurai.

Brent

27 Comments »

Ho-Ho-Ho, Samurai!

This year we’re giving gifts early, and releasing 7 new features - free to all Market Samurai users, as our gift to you.

To begin, open Market Samurai now and update to the latest version.

Note: If Market Samurai doesn’t auto-update, grab the latest copy using your unique download link…

…Or if you’re not a Market Samurai user yet [sacrilege!], sign up for a free trial copy of Market Samurai here to get free access to these new tools.

Once you are running Market Samurai v0.80.6, it’s time to start exploring the 7 gifts that you have received:

Gift #1: Full Foreign Language Keyword Support

Market Samurai has only been able to provide accurate search data for English Language… meaning our friends in Germany, Japan, Serbia, Turkey and South America were left in the dark…

…until today.

SEOs who already know the implications of this new feature are now salivating in excitement, as they imagine the millions of untapped non-english language niches that are out there.

Now, Market Samurai will give them all to you - not just in English, but in German, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Dutch, Danish, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Vietnamese, Urdu, Hindi and about a dozen more languages. [phew!]

Gift #2: Title Competition

By far the biggest SEO ranking factor is whether or not you use the keyword you’re targeting in your title tag.

It’s got to be the most basic thing you can do in SEO - and if your competitors aren’t at least doing this, you can almost guarantee good rankings.

So wouldn’t it be handy to tell, at the keyword research stage, how many competitors were using the keyword in their title tags?

Now Market Samurai counts how many sites use the keyword (in any word order) in their title tags (”allintitle”).

We call this one “the Michelle MacPhearson update” - she’s been hounding us for this one.

Gift #3: Include Additional

Ever received a bunch of keywords inside Market Samurai that weren’t really relevant?

Me too…

Market Samurai’s keyword generation tool retrieves suggests 200 of the most relevant keywords.

But if there are only [say] 50 super-relevant keywords available, you will receive those 50 highly relevant keywords, and an additional 150 related (but less relevant) keywords - for a total of 200 keywords.

Now, you get to choose whether or not you want to see the additional related (but potentially less relevant) keywords - at the click of a button.

Gift #4: Phrase Length Filter

Frustrated that keywords that are 1-2 words long have too much competition? Want to quickly get rid of those 6-10 word keywords?

Just use the Phrase Length filter:

Easy!

Gift #5: Positive Keywords

Sometimes you only want to see keywords that contain certain words.

For example, if you’re looking at the “Dog Training” market, and you only want to see relevant keywords that mention the word “Training” - like “Puppy Training”, “Labrador Training”, “Poodle Training”, “Rottweiler Training” etc.

Now you can set a Positive Keyword Filter, and see only keywords that contain that word or phrase.

You can also use the positive keyword tool to focus your keyword research on a handful of specific keywords.

Gift #6: Import Keywords From a Text (.txt) File

Want to import keywords into Market Samurai for analysis?

Market Samurai can now open lists of keywords direct from the text files at the “Generate Keywords” stage.

Gift #7: Add Permutations

One of the frustrations I have with keyword data is word order.

How do you know which version of a keyword is the best to optimize for?

“web site copy”, “copy web site”, “web copy site”, “site copy web”, “copy site web” or “site web copy”?

The solution: Just create a tab for that keyword in Market Samurai, and hit “Add Permutations”

Market Samurai will now mix-and-match the words inside a keyword, allowing you to get phrase-match traffic data for each permutation (and SEO Competition data), and find out which one really is the best to optimize for.

Enjoy These New Features!

We created them for you to keep - as our gift to you - whether you’re a trial, free, paid or user.

For paid users - we’ll be working hard over the Christmas-New-Year period, bug-testing even more new features that will released exclusively to paid users of Market Samurai.

2009 is shaping up to be another game-changing year for everyone using Market Samurai, and we can’t wait to get you using the rest of the features that we have in store for you.

Brent

P.S. - I forgot to mention… There was one more feature we added… Just something fun to “get into the spirit of things”.

(It should be the first thing you’ll notice when you run Market Samurai.)

63 Comments »

Greetings, fellow warriors.

Today we’ve released (yet) another incremental upgrade to Market Samurai - small but important fixes and improvements to your work-flow - version 0.80.5.

There are a few bugs which we’re clearing up:

There was an issue with saving Keyword Research data which a lot of people were running into.

That’s been fixed, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience that’s caused.  It was a tiny bug to do with the order of loading and saving, but tiny bugs can have big repercussions like that!

Also, many were reporting OCI data failing to come back.

Microsoft changed the way OCI data was offered, which resulted in Market Samurai not knowing how to “read” the results.  We’ve updated the OCI data capture procedure, so you should all be able to gauge the commercial intent of keywords once more.  Let us know how that goes for you.

There was also an issue with the in-line browser not closing properly, leaving videos running (with the sound).  This has been fixed.

What’s new in this release?

Per-Project Settings

If you’re starting a new project, you might notice that new options have appeared!  Or rather - old options?

We’ve moved the Region settings and Adult Filter option from the global Settings menu to per-project.  A few times it’s happened where I had set the Region while working on one project, then moved to a different one and wondering why I’m getting strange results - it was still set, of course!  Now it can be set on every project.

You can set it for your existing projects by clicking “Project Settings” and selecting the Region and choosing to include or not include adult content.

This also means the “Google” menu in Settings has disappeared, since these were the only two options there.

What else have we added?  We’ve changed a few factors around the SEO Competition module, which hopefully you can see for yourself.

But ladies and gentlemen - there’s a lot, LOT more where this has come from.  Expect bigger things soon.

Talk to you soon!

Arlen

EDIT: Oh - one more thing!  You should find that the buttons for adding and removing Negative Keywords are a lot faster now.  Enjoy!

6 Comments »

Ohayou (hello) Samurai!

It’s what you know us for - cutting edge, high-tech tools.

Tools that help make winning in the online profits game easier.

Starting today, we’re kicking things up a notch.

Today, we release a new feature that will make experienced keyword researchers weep tears of joy…

…A new feature that will help even niche marketing newbies to get better results from their keyword research inside Market Samurai…

…A new feature that will triple the amount of keyword data that’s available to you inside Market Samurai…

Today, we unleash Broad, Phrase and Exact Match inside Market Samurai.

Here’s where to find the options:

Step #1: Do detailed analysis of the value of keyword markets, and identify high-value niches using Broad-Match.

Step #2: Next, focus on Phrase-Match to identify the optimal word order you should use to get the maximum benefit from your Search Engine Optimization work.

And finally, use Exact-Match data to discover how many people search for your keyword precisely…. If you so desire

(This is completely optional - I personally don’t worry about Exact-Match traffic because I’m more interested in the phrase-matched long tail, and the broad-matched synonyms… but that’s something I’ll talk about more in a future blog post.)

New Indicator: Phrase-to-Broad Ratio (PBR)

Broad Match is great for checking the value of a keyword market generally - answering the question “How many people are in the market around this keyword?”

And Phrase Match is great for checking word order - finding out “What is the most common way people type this keyword into Google?”

But you didn’t expect to do all the hard work yourself, right?

I mean, to work out whether the keyword (as it appears) is in the optimal combination, you might actually need to click on Broad Match… Then Phrase Match… And compare the numbers to see if the Phrase-Match
“Searches” figure makes up a large portion of Broad-Match “Searches” figure…

But that might actually require some time and effort.

So we made it lazier easier for you.

How Phrase-to-Broad Ratio (PBR) Works:

PBR compares the number of searches people do for the phrase-matched version of a keyword to the number of searches people do for the broad-matched version of a keyword, and gives you this figure as a percentage.

Armed with this data, you can quickly filter out any keywords that don’t meet your minimum PBR criteria … And yes, we made it a filter option inside Market Samurai.

Because the lower the PBR score, the less likely it is that your market is using the keyword in this order.

Da-dah - Magical!

What are you doing? Go play with this now!

There are keywords to be claimed, profits to be made! Go get ‘em, Samurai!

Sayonara (goodbye) for now!

Brent

P.S. - If you’re wondering what PBR ratio I filter based on, I’ve been looking at PBRs of 10% or above. This normally weeds out the phrases with the wrong word orders.

Edit: P.P.S. - If you want to know how PBR (Phrase to Broad Match Ratio), it’s calculated by taking the amount of searches Phrase-Matched, and dividing it by the amount of searches Broad-Matched, and then displayed as a percentage. Nice and easy.

11 Comments »

Ohayo Samurai!

Several people have asked about SEO Competition analysis on specific sites inside Market Samurai.

How do you analyze the Search Engine Optimization factors for a site that doesn’t appear in the first page of Google?

If you’re working with a site that’s on Page 2 of Google’s search results (or beyond!), it’s handy to know how it compares with sites that are already ranking in the top 10 positions in Google… and what SEO weaknesses you need to overcome!

That’s where this handy SEO Competition Analysis trick comes in handy:

SEO Competition Analysis (off-page SEO factors only)
on a specific site using the Market Samurai Software

Note: This is a work-around that will allow you to analyse off-page SEO factors only - you won’t be able to use it to analyze on-page SEO factors.

BUT there will be an easy, better and more permanent solution added to Market Samurai in the future. Stay tuned for this.

Sayonara for now!

Brent

6 Comments »

The awesomeness is coming soon to Market Samurai…

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Konnichiwa to all of the Samurai out there in Internet Marketing Land!

I have something special for you today…

I was going through some videos on YouTube recently, and I found this hidden gem:

(Keyword Research before Market Samurai)

The video was recorded by Eugene Ware, one of the Noble Samurai team and certainly one of the genius minds behind Market Samurai.

The reason this video is such a gem is because of the timing of the video.

It was recorded on the 25th of June on Eugene’s new Flip Mino on the way to work - three weeks before the Alpha release of Market Samurai to the Immediate Edge, and two weeks before Google released their precise keyword data.

Eugene was living, breathing and eating keyword research during this period of the Market Samurai project - and at the end of each night, he’d go home and dream about keyword research.

Revolutionizing keyword research was his life during the initial development of Market Samurai.

So the cutting edge keyword research insights he casually doles-out are pure gold!

The thing that gets me is how nonchalant he is - he talks about some of these principles as if they’re nothing - just a matter-of-fact.

But they’re key parts of the philosophy behind Market Samurai that make it so successful as a keyword research tool - and if Market Samurai’s competitors had have caught onto these principles before our software was created… well, the story for us would have been very different.

Enjoy the video, and sayonara until next time!

Brent

P.S. - Keep a special eye out for Eugene’s awesome reverse parking.

4 Comments »

Last week we beefed up the regional support inside Market Samurai, with the release of Market Samurai v0.79.1

BORING!

I mean - why in the world should you even care about something so trivial and insignificant?

OK, let me be blunt…

It’s because, if you don’t care, you’re missing out on an opportunity to make a STACK of money!

You see, the reason I’m writing this post is because we regularly release really cool new features inside Market Samurai.

BUT they’re not big features.

Usually they’re tiny little new tools that we release - little and unsuspecting pieces of smart technology - but ALL of them can make a huge difference to your internet business’s bottom line.

The crazy part is only a tiny handful of people ever grasp the full power of many of these cool new features, and begin using them!

So let me show you how…

Open Market Samurai now.

Go-on, I’ll wait!

Now that you have Market Samurai open, click File > Settings > Google in Market Samurai, you’ll see a long list of countries.

Previously, Market Samurai could only gather SEO competition and [English-language] traffic data from the 25 most commonly searched regions in Google.

Now, the list has been expanded to around 230 regions and territories (including Ireland, Turkey, South Africa and dozens of other regions .

This is good news for two types of people…

Firstly, it’s good news for niche marketers.

If you’re looking for niches online, rather than looking for a micro-niche, why not promote a larger niche - but in a country where SEO competition is weaker.

It will require you to have some intelligence about how you search engine optimize your web-site, but it can also have some significant benefits.

Secondly, it’s good news if you’re running an offline business in a local area.

Now you can get accurate search and competition data for promoting your business to local customers in your region, and find out specifically what it will take to get rankings in your country or region.

Related Posts on Other Blogs:

9 Comments »

Over the next two weeks, Market Samurai will begin asking all users to enter their trial-version or full-version registration codes.

This is the “outward visible” part of a two-week project for our development team, where they will progressively be “flicking the switch” on all copies of Market Samurai, and requiring all users to enter their registration details.

The reason for the two-week roll out is so that the support team is better able to assist people who have questions about the registration system.

So at some (random) point in the next two weeks, your copy of Market Samurai will receive a message from our server requesting that you enter your registration details in order to continue using Market Samurai.

So what’s the significance of the registration system?

Well, the registration system allows us to deliver on a series of promises that we have made Market Samurai users…

…Like limiting 40-day trials to 40 days; and allowing us to give users whose 40 day trials have expired access to the Keyword Research tools inside Market Samurai; and allowing paid users to receive exclusive full and permanent access to all features inside Market Samurai.

And obviously it’s good business sense for us too.

With all users requiring a valid registration key to use Market Samurai (whether as a paid or trial user), we grow the number of users who are on our database, we prevent piracy, we provide users with greater incentives to buy (by allowing us to limit some features to paid users, and lock other features when trials expire), the ability to “brand” copies of Market Samurai with partner logos, and we give ourselves the ability to make Market Samurai available for free via other sites.

The registration system has always been “coming soon” - you’ll notice that your download link and registration key use the same codes.

In an ideal world, the registration system would have been released inside the original release of Market Samurai, but instead we decided to put our own personal interests aside and deliver enhanced features and fix bugs before we finished the registration system code at our end.

This is not to say there will be no more enhancements to Market Samurai..

You’ll continue to see enhanced features and bug fixes inside regular Market Samurai updates - as well as some new tools released in the coming weeks.

But the release of the registration system is an important milestone in the development of Market Samurai.

15 Comments »

Imagine that you are able to drag together the smartest internet marketing minds from all over the world…

…You bring them together for just one week, and get them to share their ultimate, latest, most cutting-edge strategies for 8 hours a day…

…And then set them loose in a rock-and-roll themed hotel the remaining 16 hours a day…

Picture it, then give it a name… “Over the Edge 2″.

The event is the brainchild of Ed Dale and Dan Raine (of Thirty Day Challenge and Immediate Edge fame).

It holds a special place in the Market Samurai team’s hearts as it was the first “Over the Edge” event (in Beechworth, in country Victoria, Australia) where Market Samurai had its birth - just 6 months ago, in April this year.

This event, the Market Samurai team presented a session on practical keyword research, and how to zone-in and laser-target profitable markets (using the best tool for the job - Market Samurai - of course! )

And there were some incredible insights shared by the other speakers at the event - from Ed Dale, Dan Raine, Marty Rozmanith from WordPress Direct, Master Copywriter Harlan Kilstein, and more!

But, just like last year, the “real” education wasn’t just what was taught from the podium… It was all the insights that all of the smart marketers who attended shared so freely.

To everyone who came up and chatted with Ben Stickland, Eugene Ware and Brent Hodgson (the Market Samurai guys) - thank-you. Your support and feedback gave us a lot to chat about during the 19-hours of flying back home (including some ideas for making Market Samurai even better).

Special thanks needs to go to everyone who made it such a fun, insightful and special time for all of us…

• Dan Raine and Michelle MacPhearson - for the long chats over all-too-short drinks;
• Marty Rozmanith and Emily Becker from WordPress Direct - plotting world domination has never been so interesting!;
• Ed Dale and Rob “GuruBob” Somerville for inviting us, sharing your insights, and bringing us together with so many smart people;
• Steven Clayton and Tim Godfrey - the guys behind Commission Blueprint - fantastic to finally meet you in person!;
• Clay Collins - your incredibly smart, but incredibly simple Social Media strategies blew us all away;
• Lynn Terry - It was wonderful to discover you’re every bit as lovely offline as you seem online;
• Karl Moore - You’re living proof that good things happen to good people - good luck on the wild ride ahead!;
• Sarkis (the International Man of Mystery) - One of the fastest minds anyone will ever come across - always a pleasure chatting;
• Collette W, Andrew Nez, Caro McC - Had a blast, hope to see you in Melbourne or at OTE3;
• Paul Young - Our new professional photographer! Thank-you for the good times and the great pics!;
• …And last, but not least…
• Mike Filsaime and his team members Omar and Frank - Incredible meeting you guys. Your automotive sales stories gave us a lot to think about when it comes to our own marketing.

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