Noble Samurai

Hi Team

This is something I’ve never told you about.

Some people have already worked this out for themselves…

And it’s the reason Market Samurai works the way it does today.

In Fact, Market Samurai was Built Around This…

Before Market Samurai was released to the public, we were using the same tools ourselves to do semantic site structure analysis for sites that we were building.

The reason was simple – with the right site structuring, linking and keyword use (all using semantically relevant keywords) we could achieve rankings with fewer links, less PageRank and less site-age.

And that meant a better return on investment from any SEO work we did.

“Better Results? Less Effort? How do I get this!?” I hear you say.

Well, let me show you what we were doing – and how you can do it yourself.

How to “Sharpen” Your Site – Samurai Style!

First, thing’s first…

You need to find a core site keyword – something that has high levels of traffic, high levels of value, and relatively low levels of competition.

Everything will revolve around this one core keyword.

Finding a Core Keyword

You’re looking for high-traffic, low-competition, high-value keywords here.

I like to set my Market Samurai filters to these levels: Above 80 hits per day in SEOT, below 100,000 competing pages in SEOC (although below 30,000 is best), above 15% phrase usage in PBR and over $1 in SEOV.

However, I personally like to see something that is better than the bare minimum levels.

SEO Analysis on your Main Site Keyword

Next, you’ll also want to do SEO Competition analysis to make sure you’re competing in a market where young, low PageRank, poorly optimized sites with few links are already ranking.

What I like about this example is the low PageRanks of pages appearing in the top 10, the lack of on-page optimization on most sites, and the low levels of Page Backlinks to the pages.

The ages of some of the domains, the fact that most sites have DMOZ or Yahoo! Directory backlinks, and the high number of domain backlinks make me think twice about this keyword.

I might still try it out – but with these factors working against me, my chances of getting that illusive top spot easily might be more difficult – and that means it may take a lot more work to get there.

Refocus your Keyword Research

Once you have this core site keyword, create a New Project in Market Samurai for your main site keyword this keyword – because we’re going to refocus our analysis onto this one keyword.

Start by generating keywords around this keyword using the Google Synonym Tool option with “Include Additional” selected.

Find Category Keywords

By tapping into Google’s Synonym Tool to generate keywords, Market Samurai is able to show you up to 200 related “branches” around your core keyword.

You’ll want to (again) filter out high competition, low traffic, low value keywords. The keywords we’re left with will be good for our web-site categories.

In this example, I performed almost identical analysis to before, when I was finding a core site keyword – however, I dropped my minimum traffic filter to an SEOT of 10 or above.

And then, there’s a little manual labor…

Remove any keywords that you see as being irrelevant to your core theme by clicking the “X” on the far right hand side of the keyword. And you’ll be left with a nice list of relevant, valuable, high traffic, low competition keywords – like I have above.

Article Keyword Research

Click on the key icon beside any of your category keywords it to open it up in a new tab – and do some more keyword research to find content topic areas within each category.

For this step, it’s handy to use the Google Search Keywords option, as well as the Google Synonym Tool with the “Ignore Additional” option selected. This will give you a nice “long tail” list of topics.

The next step is researching and creating web-site content in each one of these topic areas.

But how do you research these topic areas?

Find Content: Research or Republish

Market Samurai’s “Find Content” module is purpose-designed for this!

It was built to research the content that is already published on the web to help you to write your own articles, or to find articles that you can legally republish (although check the site terms and conditions before doing this.)

Click on the key icon beside the keyword, go to the Find Content tab, and begin research.

We can analyze the content based on authority factors here.

Content that has high PageRanks, Backlinks and Age might be a sign of good quality information – and a good article to research before writing your own article on the same topic.

Content that has low PageRank, Backlinks and Age might be content that you can republish on your site for testing the niche (because writing content is one of the most time-consuming parts of setting up a niche web-site) – and see if you can get rankings using someone else’s article on your site (a very promising sign if you do!)

(This is something unique to Market Samurai. I’m yet to come across any other software that analyzes the authority of a piece of content in this way.)

Next, we need links…

Get High-Quality Backlinks

Finding backlinks is easy. Focusing on the high-quality backlinks, the ones that will give you the best result for your time and effort, is difficult.

The Promotion module helps here, by showing the PageRanks, Backlinks, and the use of Follow/Nofollow on pages where you can receive backlinks.

You’re starting to see how all of this ties-in, and how each step impacts on all of the others.

And by putting it all together, we can get faster rankings in search engines, more traffic sooner, a better return on our time and effort on SEO, and better results in the long term – with less time and effort required.

But we didn’t do it for you.

We created “Market Samurai” originally (well before we released it) because we were doing these things ourselves – and we wanted to achieve the best results, faster, with less time and effort.

The Next Step

The next step is to just do it!

Market Samurai will give you the semantic keyword relationships you need for site structuring, for internal linking, for link-building, for tagging and more if you use the keyword research procedure I’ve described above.

If you don’t have Market Samurai yet – get it. You can download a free 12-day trial here.

If your trial has expired, you’ll be able to use the Keyword Research features still – but you will need to get the full version of Market Samurai to use the other features. You can purchase Market Samurai for lifetime access to all Market Samurai features here.

As I say, these semantic site structures can help you to get better results in search engines, with far less effort, and fewer links. So I challenge you to try using them for yourself using Market Samurai, and see the results you get.

Brent

53 Comments »

Hi Team,

Lately we’ve been sharing with you a bunch neat strategies for using some new keyword tools and resources.

We’ve looked at:

• Long Tail Keyword Research;
• Semantic site structures, and;
• Finding Niche Business Ideas.

I wanted to go into more detail about one tool that I mentioned briefly in my post on semantic site structuring (and by others in their recent comments here on the blog.)

The Google Wonder Wheel

This is the Google Wonder Wheel – another freakin’ incredible tool that Google has released recently that shows the semantic relationships between keywords – so it’s another great resource for semantic site structuring.

Essentially, if you want to know what the branches of your site structure should look like, this is a great resource to get ideas on what Google thinks your site should look like.

How To Get Access to the Google Wonder Wheel

Next time you’re searching in Google, look for the “Show Options” button.

Click this, then “Wonder Wheel”.

…And you’ll be able to play with the Wonder Wheel for yourself.

I Still Can’t Get Access

The Google Wonder Wheel hasn’t been widely released yet, (unlike the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool,) but Google Blogoscoped was able to work out how to give everyone access.

If you want to try out this experiment yourself, that’s possible. All you need to do is go to google.com and paste the following into the address bar, and hit return – that will set a cookie telling Google you’re taking part in the prototype:

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=4a609673baf685b5:TB=2:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1227543998:LM=1233568652:DV=AA:GM=1:IG=3:S=yFGqYec2D7L0wgxW;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

This should unlock the Google Wonder Wheel for you, which will now be accessible via the steps above.

How to Use The Wonder Wheel for Semantic Site Structuring

Because you’re using the Wonder Wheel to analyze keyword relationships for site structuring, the obvious place to start is with your site keyword – or the topic for your site.

From there, the “branches” off the keyword may be logical category ideas – the branches off them may be logical subcategories – and so-on.

(Obviously, by then analyzing the traffic, value and competition around the keywords in Market Samurai – and focussing on high traffic, low competition, high value keywords – you’ll be able to focus your site structure onto the most profitable keywords.)

Have a play with this – it’s a fun tool to have a play with and will give you a good idea of keyword relationships. But, as you’ll see, it can be slow way to do keyword analysis (because it only shows highly relevant keyword relationships – not the traffic strength of the keywords.)

So tomorrow, I’ll show you an even faster way to analyze keywords, and develop semantic site structures.

Brent

13 Comments »

Hi Gang,

When I first came across the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool, and did what I’m about to show you for the first time, I was gobsmacked.

It blew my mind.

I’ve never seen such an incredible resource full of ripe ideas for niche online marketing.

So if you’ve ever struggled to come up with a new idea for a web-site, this is going to blow your mind too:

Here’s How It Works…

You tell Google what you’re interested in, and it comes up with up to 800 relevant, high-traffic keyword ideas that you can put into Market Samurai to begin your research.

Now, imagine if you were getting in on the first wave – that many of these ideas lay untapped online – and that you’re one of the first people to be using the data in this way.

I know – it’s freakin’ awesome, isn’t it!

Brent

P.S. – One more handy tip. Obviously you want markets with relatively high levels of traffic (because a site is worthless unless it has traffic!)

So when you’re picking potential niches, keep an eye on the Monthly Searches column inside this tool, and focus on keywords with several thousand searches per month (they’ll generally be at the top of the page).

P.P.S. – After I stopped the video, I looked at the results that Market Samurai found for that keyword – the keyword I picked at random.

I found 14 of the keywords Market Samurai found around that niche idea had over 200 searches per day (SEOT of 80 or above, PBR of 15% or above), and fewer than 30,000 competitors (SEOC).

Random. First one I picked. Blind.

Did I mention? …Freakin’ awesome.

64 Comments »

WARNING: Advanced SEO Concepts Ahead

Q: What’s the fastest way to cause a riot at an SEO conference?

A: Just mention the words “Latent Semantic Indexing”.

It’s true.

Just about half of the people there will tell you it’s an incredible way to get top search engine rankings; the others will say LSI is a lie or a myth.

What I’m going to share with you today is probably going to cause some controversy, because I use the words “Latent Semantic Indexing” (or LSI)…

…So after I show you this technique, I’m going to put an end to these stupid LSI arguments once-and-for-all.

Perfect LSI Structuring

If you’re creating a site with an LSI silo structure, you can receive a big boost in the rankings that you receive in search engines – put simply, because search engines see you as being more relevant to the topic.

What I’m talking about when I say “LSI silo structure” is categorising content in a logical keyword structure, and grouping content on similar topics together, in a way similar to what search engines expect to see.

And, for the most part, they expect to see tree-like category structures – with categories, sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories all branching off one-another.

The problem is finding the right structure.

If you’re developing a new site, and you’re trying to get the best search engine boost from LSI, how should your content be structured?

What keywords should go where? What should your categories be? What topics should you be building content around?

Or, if you’re actually doing it as part of your core web-site, no-doubt you’re finding categorising content is a pain. You write an article, and then wonder where you should put it to get the maximum benefit.

So you’re always second-guessing the way that the content should be categorised for maximum SEO value – should it go in one category? Or another? – particularly when content can be related to multiple categories.

And once you’ve built categories, how do you know what other topics should go into that category to fill it with the “right” sort of content?

The Google Search-Based Keyword Tool isn’t just good for finding long tail keywords – it’s also fantastic for categorising and grouping keywords.

That’s because the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool is showing you structured, categorised, hierarchical keyword relationships – and blog/site structures tend to be structured, categorised and hierarchical.

And, where keywords are related to multiple categories, it shows you all of them.

Debunking LSI Myths

There’s a lot of confusion about whether or not “LSI” (or Latent Semantic Indexing) is used by Google or not – so let me clarify things.

There’s a lot of convincing evidence suggesting that “LSI” is NOT used by Google – largely because it doesn’t scale well.

(We did our own research and testing months ago to find out for sure. The more information you give it, the bigger, slower and less manageable the structure becomes. With the amount of information Google indexes, LSI doesn’t seem to be a logical solution.)

However, there’s also a HUGE amount of evidence proving that they at least use something similar – another way to work out common relationships between keywords, (as Stompernet also suggested recently.)

And there is a growing amount of evidence that suggests that LSI’d internal site structures, and the way pages are linked (from both within and beyond the site) “turbo-charge” search engine rankings. (Although this is something we won’t go into now.)

If you want to see LSI-style keyword relationships in practice, you don’t need to look far.

You only need to look at Adwords broad-match keyword matching, Google’s new Wonder Wheel, use the Google Synonym Tool, or watch some of the little-known Google Tech Talks where they show their internal related keyword generator being used, talk about how they developed it, and discuss organising information on the semantic web.

So even though “LSI” isn’t a technically correct term to describe the system that is being used, it’s still a de facto name for describing structured relationships between keywords. So if we say LSI, this is what we are referring to.

Back to the Nuts and Bolts…

I wanted to share this with you, even though there’s no financial benefit to us, because we made a commitment to equip you with the best internet marketing tools available…

…And not all of those tools can fit inside Market Samurai.

Tomorrow, I’m going to be releasing one final video in this series – and show you the#1 thing that blew me away when I first came across the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool.

So make sure you’re subscribed, watching your inbox, and ready. You won’t want to miss this one.

Brent

Edit: Here’s the link to Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool – http://www.google.com/sktool

59 Comments »

It was our secret shame – the biggest failing of Market Samurai:

Long tail keywords.

You see, Market Samurai was never built to find the long tail.

Instead, it was built to find relevant groups of keywords – so that we could use it for Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), or Referential Integrity, or Keyword Siloing, or whatever you want to call grouping of relevant keywords.

And to find high-traffic keywords.

Not to mess around in the “shallow end” of the keyword pool – where all the long tail keywords sit.

But when Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool swung open, and offered up-to 800 of the top long tail keywords in ANY market, we jumped on it!

We made this part of Market Samurai almost immediately.

As a result, for the past few weeks, you’ve had a new way to generate keywords – this time, long tail keywords – and today I want to start showing you how to use it.

This is particularly useful when you want to tag a blog post, video or social bookmark with relevant, long-tail, low competition keywords.

OR

If you find a keyword with very high levels of traffic and competition – and you want to “dig deeper” into it to see if there’s a better, lower-competition, still high-traffic long tail version of the keyword.

Try it out!

Open Market Samurai now, and try this new keyword generation source out for yourself.

It will give you up-to 800 of the most popular search long-tail searches that contain your original keyword.

And watch the blog over the next 2 days – because I’m going to show you two more ways to use this one incredible tool.

Brent

65 Comments »

Have you ever been so close to something that you overlook something obvious, or take something for granted?

And then when someone points it out, you slap your head and yell:

“Of course! – How did I overlook that!”

I’ve been too excited in showing you the cool ways to use new features inside Market Samurai that I’ve been overlooking cool ways to use the features that are already inside Market Samurai – like this:

5 Tips For Using Market Samurai’s Generate Keywords Screen

Check it out – it has some really great tips.

(Thanks Isha for the great resource! )

Brent

2 Comments »

“The days of 5 cent Adwords clicks have been dead for years!” they say…

…Or maybe we just haven’t been looking in the right places?

“AWA” (the Adwords Advertisers count) is a recent addition to the latest version of Market Samurai – and one of the sneakiest ways to use this tool for your own advantage is to find the keywords that your competitors are overlooking.

Check it out…

Being able to filter out keywords with high levels of competition means it’s easier (and cheaper!) to get your ad into one of the hallowed top ad positions for your keyword – meaning more exposure and more clicks, for less money.

That’s because you can often sneak in underneath competitors who are paying excessive cost-per-clicks – and pay just a fraction of the amount for almost as many clicks.

You can find this feature under the “competition” section in the keyword research module as seen below.

From here all you need to do is filter out the high competition keywords, thus revealing the low competition keywords.

(click here to view a larger version of the image above)

But before you rush out and start bidding on keywords with low levels of competition, remember: Even though this new AWA feature is cool, it’s cool because it gives you a more complete picture when analyzing Adwords keywords.

Make sure you analyze the Adwords Traffic estimates (AWT), and Adwords Value (AWV) to get a feeling of the size and value of the keyword – and, like always, test keywords before committing a big Adwords budget to them.

Now go put this new Market Samurai feature to good use!

Ben

17 Comments »

Ohaiyou Samurai,

Recently we received some tweets from users asking – What does it mean when I see keywords highlighted in green inside Market Samurai?

So now is the perfect time to share with you these new features.

“Already Open” Keyword Lines are Highlighted in Green

Market Samurai users told us that they found it difficult to see what keywords were open in other tabs whenever they had a lot of tabs open.

So in the latest update, we made a minor change to the design of Market Samurai.

Now, a keyword will appear in green whenever it is already open in another tab.

(Click for a larger version of the image to the right)

Open Keywords in New Tabs

A lot of users who were doing substantial amounts of keyword research told us that opening a lot of interesting up in new tabs individually, and having to flip back to where they came from, was a pain.

So we made the process easier.

Just place a tick in the new tick-boxes beside the keywords you want to analyze further, then select “Open in New Tabs” – and Market Samurai will open all of your selected keywords in new tabs automatically.

Here’s what it looks like:

(Some users have already asked for this to be taken to the next step – automatically beginning keyword research or SEO analysis for those keywords when they’re opened in a new tab. At this stage, it’s not yet technically possible – but you have been heard!)

And Zebra Stripes!

Finally , we made a simple change that makes it easier to read keyword data.

Zebra Striping!

Now, every second keyword inside Market Samurai is shown in a slightly different colour.

It’s a subtle change – but it makes it easier to quickly scan your eyes across rows of keywords and keyword data.

And that makes Market Samurai a little bit easier to use

What’s Next?…

After 4 blog posts, and 8 videos revealing new features inside the latest release, we’ve still only scratched the surface of the new tools that are now available to you inside Market Samurai.

If you’re reading this, hopefully you’re already subscribed to the blog (via email or RSS – on the right hand side of this page).

If not, make sure that you’re subscribed – because there are a lot of new tricks and features that we still have to share with you.

Brent

13 Comments »

Ohayou Samurai-san!

Today, a Market Samurai update was released.

Market Samurai version 0.81.4 addresses several key issues and bugs that were reported in the improved Market Samurai engine – including a freezing issue.

Plus, it includes an upgrade to the way notification messages are displayed inside Market Samurai.

New Notification Messages in Market Samurai

Previously, when Market Samurai was unable to retrieve data on the number of competitors (SEOC, SEOTC) for a keyword – rather than stopping to wait and see if the data would eventually come through, it would simply skip to the next keyword.

It’s rare – and only ever happens if a piece of data is too slow coming back from a data source or can’t be found at all.

And in almost all cases, hitting “Analyze Keywords” again would retrieve any missing data.

But something changed recently…

A Deeper Look at Your Competitors…

In our most recent updates, we added a LOT of new competition metrics.

These included the number of Adwords Advertisers (AWA), Localized SEO Competitor counts (SEOLC), and Localized SEO Title Competition counts (SEOLTC).

Plus, we added a notification message – to let people know if even a single piece of competition data was missed so that they knew to hit “Analyze Keywords” again to fill in the gaps.

And something happened that we didn’t expect…

Here’s What Happened…

With EVEN MORE pieces of competition data than ever being retrieved in Market Samurai…

…And with the ability to analyze HUNDREDS, even THOUSANDS of keywords now without receiving a “Google Time-Out” message…

…And new keyword sources that retrieve up to 1,000 keywords (instead of the old 200 keywords…)

Well, the chances of EVEN ONE tiny individual piece of data being “too slow” increased from “miniscule” to “small”.

And now the small percentage of users who might experience slow and skipped data received a popup message.

Except our notification messages popped up in the same way that error messages do. So instead of seeing the notification as informative, it freaked a lot of people out.

So we received a lot of emails from worried Market Samurai users.

Introducing Smarter Notifications

Now, instead of a big ugly worrying pop-up notification message that shows a technical explanation, we have something simpler and less invasive…

If any data was too slow coming back, not responding, not found, or data threatens to hold Market Samurai back from getting other pieces of data that you need – you will receive this happy little notification message.

Chances are you’ll never see this friendly little thing.

…That is unless you’re analyzing zillions of keywords and stumble across some slow pieces of data, are on a slow internet connection, or your connection with a Market Samurai data source drops out…

But if you do see this notification, in most cases all you need to do is hit “Analyze Keywords” again.

If it’s a temporary issue standing between Market Samurai and the data it’s looking for, hitting “Analyze Keywords” again will make Market Samurai go back to “fill in the gaps”.

You Mentioned New Keyword Sources? And Adwords Advertiser Counts? Tell me more!

Yes!

We’ll be talking about these more in some upcoming blog posts (including sharing some great new strategies that these new features open up to you!)

So make sure you’re subscribed to our blog so you don’t miss out.

In the mean-time, Adwords Advertiser counts, and a new keyword source, are just two of the new features that we snuck into the latest batch of updates. See if you can find the others!

Stay tuned for more!

Brent

8 Comments »

Hi Samurai,

Ben Galt here again.

I want to share with you another Market Samurai feature from inside the “Find Content” module.

This one involves RSS feeds.

What Is RSS and Why Is It So Powerful?

If you haven’t heard of RSS before, it’s a simple yet very powerful tool for collecting specific content automatically from all over the web, and either having it delivered to you to read – or republishing it.

This means you can use RSS to stay up to date with the latest news “from the inside” of your niche. OR keep your web-site updated with fresh content from all over the web (something that Google loves to see) – without lifting a finger!

And using Market Samurai, finding relevant content feeds inside your niche has never been easier.

There is now one button for all your RSS needs.

One button gives you all the feeds for your chosen content sources

When previously selecting your RSS feeds, each content source required it’s own RSS button.

We’ve simplified this process by merging all of those buttons into one.

The “RSS for selected” button now does everything with one click. No matter what content sources you have selected above, the RSS feed will be displayed inside the popup window.

What To Do Now…

If you’re wondering how to use these RSS feeds to research your niche, or republish content onto a web-site, the Thirty Day Challenge has created some great videos on Using Google Reader as an RSS Reader and Re-Publishing RSS Feeds from Market Samurai onto the web these topics.

Just a Quick Reminder…

Just a quick reminder – the “Find Content” module is a part of the full version of Market Samurai – so if you’re inside a current trial, or if you own the full version of Market Samurai, then you WILL be able to access these new features.

But if your trial has expired, then you will no longer be able to access the RSS features inside Market Samurai.

To access these features, you can upgrade to the full version of Market Samurai here.

Enjoy!

-Ben

9 Comments »