Noble Samurai

Most people still don’t reap the huge benefits of properly tagging their blog posts and videos.

Maybe it’s because they’re not sure of the best way to do it or maybe it’s becasue they’re not aware of the traffic returns good tagging can actually yeild.

The fact is: Tagging gets results!

With that in mind we’ve made the process of tagging even easier, and heaps faster, so you can experience the benefits of increased traffic to your website with very little effort.

(See video below)

There’s no excuse now not to tag your videos and blog posts with juicy search engine loving tags since Market Samurai practically does it for you.

Enjoy.

-Ben

P.S. If you haven’t already, get your free trial of Market Samurai here and see for yourself how easy it can be.

7 Comments »

Hi Team,

After my last blog post on the new clickable results arrows inside Market Samurai, I wanted to give you some insights into search engines that will save you a lot of unnecessary confusion and frustration – and give you a better understanding of the way search engines work.

Now that you’re getting closer to the raw data sources, and doing deeper analysis, it’s important that you know about the way that Google, Yahoo and other search engines keep their data.

Otherwise, some of their “quirks” can cause confusion.

The Beast with 1,000 Heads…

Most people believe that Google is a single mega-computer.

This is untrue.

In fact, it’s a series of perhaps thousands of computers (servers) – all working together to provide Google users with results for their search queries.

Keeping thousands of computers up-to-date with all of the changes that are happening online is a mammoth task!

These thousands of servers are constantly being updated with new information – but it doesn’t all happen at once.

This means, depending on which server Google gets your results from, you can see slightly different results server-to-server.

Which Data Source is Correct?

It can be confusing for some people, when they see an SEO Competitor count of [say] 104,000 for a keyword inside Market Samurai, and 102,000 when doing a search manually on the same keyword – in “quotes”, just like Market Samurai does.

They ask “Which data source is correct?” or start to wonder if they can trust Market Samurai results since they’re different to what they see manually.

It can be confusing for people if they don’t understand the way servers are structured – but the truth is simple if you know…

Both numbers are accurate.

They both come from the same data source (Google) – and an end user is just as likely to see either.

When you’re doing analysis, it’s rare that the numbers will be substantially different (normally they’ll be fairly close to one-another if there is ANY difference at all.) So it shouldn’t make too much difference to any analysis.

However, if you have concerns, it’s wise to use the more conservative number – the number that works least in your favor.

And now that you know this little tit-bit about how search engines operate, you now know more about the technology behind search engines than many professional SEO’s.

Brent

25 Comments »

Hi Team,

Market Research creates Market Understanding.

Market Understanding creates Market Leaders.

Market Leaders create opportunities in their markets – including the opportunity to choose the direction of your market, and the opportunity to make the greatest profits in a market.

But it all stems from Market Research.

If you’ve been reading Ed Dale’s blog recently, you’ll know that I’ve borrowed the “Market Research; Market Understanding; Market Leadership” mantra from him.

But today, I want to start making it “real” for you.

I want to show you a recently-added feature inside Market Samurai, and share with you some specific strategies for how to get the most value out of something that is so deceptively simple that practically everyone will overlook it…

…That is, everyone except you – because you’re reading this blog post right now.

So let’s open up Market Samurai, and open up some opportunities for Market Leadership…

Getting a Deeper Market Understanding

These new arrows appeared in the latest versions of Market Samurai.

Many of you have noticed them already (you’ll see them inside the SEO Competition and Keyword Research modules) – and their function is very simple…

Click them, and they will open up the raw data sources for you in a web-browser.

This means if you click on the Adwords Advertiser (AWA) numbers in the Keyword Research module, you’ll see the Adwords Advertisers for that keyword.

If you click on the Page Backlinks (BLP) you’ll be taken to a list of the external backlinks pointing to that page.

If you click on the SEO Competition (SEOC) counts in the Keyword Research module, you’ll see all of the web pages that mention the keyword phrase on their sites (all of your SEO competitors)

…And so on!

Simple, yes.

Important? Very.

The value of Digging Deeper

I’ll go into some specific examples of how to use this feature in a moment.

However, as I’ve mentioned already, the real value of going through this raw data manually is to become immersed in your market.

(Obviously this is for people who have already chosen a market – because if you did this for every market that potentially interested you, you could spend forever learning from other sites!)

By working out where, and how, your competitors are getting their links;

By working out what they are selling, how they’re marketing it, and what their price points are;

By working out what value your competitors are delivering to potential customers…

…You will understand the market better, and equip yourself to be the market leader.

And market leadership may be one of the few more valuable opportunities to you in your internet marketing.

What To Do Next

Open up Market Samurai, and start by clicking on the SEOC or AWA results in the Keyword Research module.

Use the results to “dig deeper” into your market and find out what you can discover about your competitors:

• What products do they sell, what price points are they selling at, and how are they pitching their products?
• Are there opportunities to improve your marketing strategy, and use some of their good ideas?
• Are there opportunities to get links from their sites? (Blogs, forums, links pages, etc)
• Are there opportunities to work together with the people who are already making money in the market?

Analyze the top 10 competitors in the SEO competition module too:

• What sites are they getting their backlinks from? Can you get backlinks from those sites too?
• Do they have any Government / Educational backlinks (.gov/.edu)? Can you also get links from the same places?

And analyze the content on the top sites in your market:

• What great information do they have, that you should also be talking about on your site?
• How are they communicating with their market / customers on an ongoing basis? (Feeding the flock)
• What value are they delivering to their market? How are they delivering it?
• With all this in mind, how can you deliver the greatest value to your customers? (Search engine rankings favor the value-makers)

This is how to cross over from using Market Samurai for SEO, to using Market Samurai for Market Understanding and Market Leadership.

So open up Market Samurai now, and play with this tiny new feature.

What do you discover about your market?

Brent

13 Comments »

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 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 »

“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 »

I want to share this with you…

The unassumingly brilliant Michelle MacPhearson has been giving away killer keyword niche ideas inside her “Steal This Niche” video series – and I mean literally “giving them away”… As in, for free; in public; without even asking you to opt-in to see them.

So far, she’s given away two juicy niches…

…But more importantly, her videos also give you a good insight into her very clever strategy for using Market Samurai.

Here are the first two videos in the series:

Video #1: a Backyard Barnyard?

Video #2: One for the Shorties

You can find these videos (as well as future videos) on her blog at MichelleMacPhearson.com

Who Is Michelle MacPhearson?

As I say – Michelle is unassumingly brilliant as an internet marketer.

Over the years, she has developed some very clever strategies over the years for achieving the results she wants online.

One of my all-time-favorite SEO strategies over the years would have to be her “3-Minute Backlink” strategy (if you know this one, you’ll realize how perfect this strategy is for Market Samurai – and why I’m itching to use it right now).

You can tune in to listen to Michelle as one of the four hosts of the Internet Marketing This Week podcast (one of the few podcasts I listen to religiously).

If you want more of Michelle’s strategies, including more resources on how Michelle uses Market Samurai to do keyword research in her business, Michelle also runs CrowdMountain.com – where she gives away the software and techniques that she uses in her own niche marketing business.

But whatever you do – make the time to watch these videos!

Brent

18 Comments »

In mid-2008, I was playing with some SEO strategies and created a blog that received 41,457 visitors from search engines in its first 8 days online.

The crazy thing is – this simple strategy took literally 2 minutes to apply…

If you knew a strategy that could increase the traffic to your blog posts and web-pages, and give you more value from backlinks, would it be worth your time spending a few extra moments applying that strategy – for every blog post and web-page you create?

Absolutely – yes!

I want to share with you a simple strategy that you can use to get more traffic to your web-site, better search engine rankings AND better keyword-value out of your links:

You’ll love this technique if you’re posting content to a blog, if you’re social bookmarking sites, doing just about any sort of link submission – or even choosing keywords for meta tags – because of what it does for your site…

Firstly, by mentioning additional (relevant) keywords on your web-page, you increase the NUMBER of keywords that your site can rank well for.

Secondly, by mentioning similar relevant keywords on your web-page, you increase the RELEVANCE of your page around your tight-knit group of relevant keywords.

Thirdly, by tagging blog posts and YouTube videos with relevant tags, your content is much more likely to be picked up by a broader number of sites.

And finally – by tagging social bookmarking links with relevant keywords, and having lists of relevant keywords in directory submission keyword lists, you increase the value of those links by increasing their relevance.

And the reason is simple…

By mentioning related keywords, your links and web-pages can seen to be more relevant to that topic.

After I first started my own personal blog, this was the FIRST strategy that I applied that substantially increased the number of visitors that my blog received.

And hopefully it will help you too.

Brent

P.S. – Not all sites will get 41,457 visitors in their first week online

To be fair (and open) the reason I received so many visitors was because I had deliberately targeted a low-competition, newsworthy keyword.

39 Comments »

I wanted to share a video that Eugene Ware (chief troublemaker at NobleSamurai) and I recorded just before Christmas with Alister Cameron.

Alister Cameron is an old buddy and colleague of ours – a real smart cookie when it comes to social media and blogging (and also a truly brilliant designer!)

In this casual video, Alister chats with us about Market Samurai, some recent discoveries we had made around keyword selection and optimization, and increasing blog visitor traffic.

Here’s the link to the video:

Alister Cameron interviews Eugene Ware and Brent Hodgson from the Market Samurai Team

There are a few things that we probably shouldn’t have given away (we’ll try not to be so loose-lipped about things next time ) – but it means that if you’re a Market Samurai user, this video makes for interesting viewing.

Brent

P.S. – The video was published in a blog post announcing the finalists for a Twitter-page design competition, which is currently being judged by internet monolith Guy Kawasaki.

P.P.S. – If you DO use Twitter, you can find us at @NobleSamurai, @EugeneWare and @BrentHodgson

7 Comments »