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    Personalization of search results is very important to the future success of any search engine, and its an effort well underway with many of the big 3 search engines as we speak.

    If its true that the key success factors of search are:

    a. reliability
    b. ease/speed of use

    Then it stands to reason that the more often a search engine provides searchers with the exact information they are looking for, the more often they are to use that search engine in the future, and the less likely they are to switch to another search engine.

    Crystal Ball

    Personalization is not however, a magical phenomenon or crystal ball interpretation. It is purely based on observed patterns, and resulting probabilities. To put this into perspective, here are a number of patterns that search engines are likely to track, and that will permit search engines to calculate probabilities - namely the probability of increasing either reliability or speed of use.

    1. Location Based Personalization - serve you personalized results based on your current location (eg. pizza).
    Eg. search engines have a very good idea where you are (based on IP) when you perform a search query. So someone searching for “pizza” from a location in London, is very likely looking for a pizza location within 10km (6 miles) of their inferred location. This works well for some types of keywords, and not as well for others (eg. paper manufacturers).

    2. Interface Based Personalization - serve you personalized results based on the interface you are using.
    Eg. if a search engine knows you are performing a search for “hospitals” from a BlackBerry, they can typically surmize you are looking for a hospital within a given radius of your current location, and could reorganize the results with the closest hospitals first. Keep in mind, small screens aren’t great for general surfing or researching. Large screens are much more efficient.

    3. Query History Based Personalization - serve you personalized results based on a logical sequence of keyword queries.
    Eg. if you performed a search for “crayons” 10 minutes prior, and now search for “pens”, personalized results should show gel pens results above Mont Blanc pens.

    4. Input/Output Mode Based - personalize the mode through which you receive your results.
    Eg. if you use Goog411 and input your search query by voice command, then you’re more likely to want to receive the results via voice also (or at least a combination of voice and visual output). This will become more of an issue going forward.

    5. Time Based Personalization - serve you personalized results based on times it perceives you are typically working.
    Eg. searching for “Trains” has a different meaning at the office (think - book train tickets to Montreal), then when you’re at home with the kids (think Thomas the Train). Perhaps Google has identified the pattern that most of your queries are business oriented between 9:00am and 6:00 pm, and more child oriented in all other hours.

    6. Individual User Behaviour Based Personalization - serve you personalized results based on your actions in the past.
    Eg. Did you click on this site in the past in response to a similar query? Did you abandon it immediately, or stay on it and interact with it? Your previous interaction with the site offers insight into whether its a better match this time or not.

    7. Group Based Behaviour Based Personalization - serve you personalized results based on the actions of all who have made similar queries in the past.
    Eg. If 90% of people who click on a certain search result in response to a specific search query abandoned it after 5 seconds (while others hold user attention much longer), then there’s a high probability that the listing in question is not highly relevant to the search query and the search results should be reorganized as a result.

    8. Social Search Based Personalization - imagine Google or Yahoo knowing who your friends are (perhaps through Facebook, gmail, or any number of social media sites).
    Eg. Then imagine the search engine can either:
    a. aggregate all friends positive and negative reviews of certain sites, and reorganize the search results with those sites with the most positive reviews first.
    b. aggregate all friends user behaviour patterns associated with sites appearing in the search results, and then reorganize your specific search results accordingly

    9. Virtual Personas/Assistants Based Personalization - serve you search results through a virtual persona you created.
    Eg. Think of Star Trek or Terminator if you will. When you talk to a computer, it feels uncomfortable. We often feel the need to assign a personality and persona to it. Now imagine we can customize the appearance and sound of that persona. You can choose the accent, the sex, the age, and much more.

    Conclusion:
    While it is possible to improve the efficiency of search through each of the personalization methods above, they infact work best when operated in conjunction with one another, acting as a checks and balances mechanism. When used in conjunction, the inferences truly become more probable, and lead to dramatically better search results.

    If you think this type of personalization is a long way off - think again. Google, Yahoo, and MSN all are trialling various means of personalization. See for yourself - perform a few search queries, then ask a friend in another part of the country to perform the same searches and compare results.

    Toronto SEO Firm and internet marketing company offers search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media marketing and reputation management. When looking for SEO representation in Canada, consider Search Engine People.

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    Get A Free Page Rank Checker Button And Impress!

    Written by Macone157 on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization.

    If you are keen to find out the page rank on your website, get a free page rank checker button and impress your visitors.

    It’s great for SEO purposes, attracts visitors, helps with link exchange and demonstrates what a quality site you really have.If you visit free-pagerank-checker you can download a small piece of code in 10 minutes, install it and you’re away and start mixing with the big guns.

    What is page rank and how come it’s so valuable?
    You might have chanced upon a few articles and sites saying the page rank is not as crucial as experts make it seem, but do not be duped by such calls. Your page rank is a critical element of ascertaining how well favoured you are amid your website visitors.

    Search engines appraise your website founded on numerous standards. Once you abide by these measures, search engines specify a rate to your site, which converts to your page rank.
    Google innovated the PageRankTM and the page rank property is frequently reasoned according to what they have designated, which is similar and adopted all over the internet as standard.

    First off, let’s check why the page rank is so important to a site. Fundamentally, your website’s page rank increments your site’s significance amid the search engine listings. A site with a superior rank acquires a greater precedence among the results generated on a specific associated search enquiry.

    Coming out in the top ten Google results signifies you have a fuller potency of acquiring visitors to your site. Google grades web pages on a rise scale of 1 to 10 and every fresh web site commences with a value 0. As you continue bettering your page rank, you gain in importance within Google too.

    How can you attain a beneficial page rank? It’s not so effortless, but continuous work and perseverance will gradually take you there.
    A website’s rating is regulated by the additional websites linking to it. This implies, if a site with a Page Rank 7 links up with your site, you’ll be reckoned as a more crucial site as a different significant site has linked to you. These links are called back links and the vitality of the sites are fairly apportioned between all of the linked websites.

    If you get several sites with page ranks over 5 to link to your site, then throughout a couple of months, you will develop an effective rank too, because Google accredits you as a respectable website with some degree of significance and relevancy for what people are looking for. Inferior rank sites give too, but not as much as the superior ranked sites.

    Acquiring a PR compels you to get sites to link to you. Composing rich quality content on your site pages will get you more acknowledged by other important websites and they will link to you.

    Link up with a few authoritative sites too and after a few months, several sites will begin linking to you too. Never purchase links though, because your authentic repute isn’t assertive through purchased links and Google will sooner or later discover what you have done and bring down your rank.

    If you are looking to move your web site above the rest, then I would recommend placing the pagerank checker on your site, after all, it’s easy to install,great for your SEO and it’s free.

    Den Collins frequently writes on SEO issues and see how you can install a free page rank checker and improve your sites visibility in 10 minutes today.

    http://www.free-pagerank-checker.com

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    Clean Red Widgets Search Engine Optimized

    Written by dwepproductions on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization.

    If you found this than you are more than likely trying to make some money online, I will show you how to make money online using the keyword clean red widgets. As here I will simply explain to you how to do this, though there are many ways that you can do this. You can do this through ads like google adsense and ad brite, selling affiliate products, or even just building links for a site that is willing to pay you to do so.

    But in this case this will be an SEO contest, and the generic keyword that was chosen was clean red widgets. Now how am I going to rank for such a crazy off the wall keyword that is never searched. Very simple, I am going to tell you everything that I will do to rank for clean red widgets.

    With me telling you how I am going to rank for a keyword will benefit you and it will benefit me, now this is where we will get into a little bit of search engine optimization. When it comes to SEO there are two types, onsite and offsite search engine optimization. Since I want the search engine robots to know that my page is about clean red widgets I am going to start with the onsite.

    I choose to optimize my page first, because when I start doing a little work offsite I want the spiders to know what my page is about, in this case it will be clean red widgets. The first thing that a spider or bot will see when it reaches your page is the URL. In this case I cannot use my keywords in the URL, so I will have to move to the next most important thing about onsite SEO.

    That is the H1 tag, the second thing that the search engine spiders and bots will see, so if I am trying to rank for clean red widgets what do you think I am going to put where the H1 tag will go? Clean Red Widgets, and they you have H2 and H3 tags, here I will mix in clean red widgets with some of my keywords but I will vary it up a little bit.

    For instance, seo for clean red widgets, how to rank for clean widgets, etc. I do not want to set off any search engine alarms and be marked for spam, so I will vary the title tags as much as I can. Another good thing to do when performing onsite seo is to bold or strong your keywords, though this wont benefit you to the number one ranking but it will help a bit.

    Last step to some great onsite seo would be the content, but do not go overboard when it comes to using your keyword. You want to use your key word about 10-15 times for every thousand words you write. That is right, you want to give the search engine spiders a lot of content to chew up, and when I say key word, in this case it would be clean red widgets.

    I am writing this article exactly how I would write one for my page, not trying to keyword stuff the crap out of it, keyword stuffing will work but it will not last long if you are trying to make some long term income online. Another thing about content, make sure that it is original just to be on the safe side, the more original it is the more that search engines will like you, and that is about it for onsite seo.

    Offsite seo is nothing more than building backlinks to your site. This is where other web pages are pointing to your site using either your website URL or your chosen keyword anchor text. Some of the ways you can build backlinks to your site are directory submissions, article submissions, making good comments on niche related blogs, writing content to where you get a readership and people will bookmark your site.

    All of those are great ways to get links pointing back to your site. In my case I am going to try and rank for clean red widgets, so I will get an anchor text for the word clean red widgets 33 percent of the time, with the other anchors I will use other related anchored text. This is very important, if every link pointed to your site is anchored the same it triggers the spam filter, and your site could be penalized or banned altogether from the search engines.

    The most important thing you are looking for when anchoring your keywords are that the tag is do follow, meaning the big G will give you credit for your link and increase your pagerank. If you are fighting for number one position in Yahoo or MSN then ignore that, they will accept almost anything. That is the basics for onsite and offsite seo, and this is exactly how I am working my generic keyword clean red widgets, and hopefully by January 20th I will be ranked number one.

    Dave Spates can rank with the best of them when it comes to seo, especially when it is a low searched key work like clean red widgets.

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    Search Engine Optimization Online Tips

    Written by bizzero3 on Monday, December 1st, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization.

    When we attempt to rank a website within a major search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other, there are a number of search engine optimization techniques that we can use in order to ensure that our website gets the best ranking it possibly can.

    One of these techniques is known as increasing inbound links which works due to offpage optimization. Of course there are a variety of other techniques that are important as well, such as the age of a site, its page rank, and various other forms of optimization.

    One of the greatest things that many search engine optimization sites won’t tell you is that the age of an external backlink is incredibly important. You see, a lot of sites out there may link to you for a short period of time, however if the link, for whatever reason, ends up being removed, then any benefit it passed to the target site will also be removed.

    Now the longer a link stays linking to another site, the greater trust there will be between the other site and that link. Eventually the trust will get to a higher level until finally the full weight of the link is passed on to the other site. This is a valuable technique of passing page rank and keyword authority and is one of the best forms of search engine optimization.

    A common misconception today is that an excessive amount of links is somehow a great thing. This may have once upon a time have been the case, however today Google views such an inordinate number of links as being more spammy than anything, and therefore will be less likely to give the same weight to these non related links as it used to. It is not uncommon to see the search engines such as Google place a site into what’s commonly referred to as the sandbox as a sort of ‘cooling off’ phase that many new sites must go to, in order to determine their worth.

    So at the end of the day, it is possible to have your site ranking highly within the SERPs through Search Engine Optimization techniques, however you must abide by Google’s policies, do as they say, and make a good quality site that will attract natural links to it in order to obtain any form of long term presence within the search engine results page.

    John Hubert maintains a page on some Search Engine Optimization tips. His site also teaches ways to Make Money Through Online Business.

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    There are several reasons for actively pursuing article marketing: to establish yourself as an industry expert, to increase awareness of your products and services, and to build backlinks to your website. In this article, we will focus on the third purpose, building backlinks to your website.

    It is possible to engage in article marketing and yet achieve absolutely no linking benefit to your website or weak linking benefit to your website - and its amazing how many people are doing just that. In this article, I’ll show you how to optimize an article with the topic of “article marketing” for maximum SEO benefit.

    Know Your Keywords

    Keywords are essentially the search term that your readers and/or customers use to find your website. Knowing which keywords you wish to target is one of the most important components to your Internet marketing campaign. Proper keyword research should be able pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in your campaign, what keywords your competitors are targeting and which keywords are more easily mastered than others.

    Choose one primary keyword to target in the article, as well as 2-4 related keywords to sprinkle throughout. Using related keywords helps search engines to get an even clearer idea about the topic of the article. Search technology has become highly advanced and continues to improve all the time. Search engines know the difference between a keyword that appears on a page of many unrelated terms and one that appears with terms that are related to the topic.

    Using Keywords In The Title And Summary

    Use the keyword in the title of the article whenever possible. If you can, try to position the keyword toward the first part of the title. For example, a title that reads:

    Article Marketing: 3 Things Strategies for Achieving More Visibility

    Vs.

    3 Things Strategies for Achieving More Visibility with Article Marketing

    Using keywords in the title is important because the title often becomes the title tag and/or the URL of the web page. The title tag and URL are two of the most important pieces of a webpage in terms of helping search engines to identify the topic of the content. Not only does the title tag give the search engines a critical tip as to the topic of the content, the title tag usually becomes the dark blue title that appears in the search engines results page. This is why it is essential to create article titles that not only include keywords, but that also captivate readers. A good, solid, intriguing title can make the difference between your article being seen and being overlooked.

    The summary of your article often becomes the Meta description for the page on which it’s published. The Meta description is usually the short summary that appears in the search engine results page beneath the title. The same logic that applies to writing captivating, keyword-rich titles also applies to writing summaries.

    Using Keywords In The Body And Author Bio

    When writing articles for article marketing, a good target keyword density is between 1.0% and 1.3%. Trying to ‘over optimize’ by using keywords at a higher percent density can cause the article to be rejected by many publishers.

    It is also very important that you use your main keywords as anchor text whenever the online article distribution site will allow. Google uses anchor text to determine page ranking. When you use your keyword as an anchor text, you are essentially telling Google (and the reader) what your website is all about.

    The author bio is the most important place to use keywords. Many article submission sites allow for anchor text in the ‘about the author’ bio - and taking this opportunity critical. When creating a bio with anchor text, it is beneficial to include two links: one to the homepage in a main keyword, and one to an internal page using the keyword the internal page is targeting.

    It is very important to build links to a site’s internal pages, however, many people only concentrate on building links to their homepage. In fact, I recommend that whenever a new page is added to a website, that an article should be written and distributed linking to that new page. The backlinks generated by that article will help establish the new page with the search engines.

    By choosing to target the right keywords, using your main keyword in the titles and subheads of an article and of course linking to your website with anchor text keywords, you will effectively be using article marketing to build a backlink campaign for your website.

    Christine O’Kelly is co-owner of SEO Content Solutions, a leading SEO copywriting firm. The company provides SEO press releases, articles, blog content and web content to resellers and end users alike.

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    How To Rank Flash Websites Well

    Written by karlsmth on Monday, December 1st, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization.

    If your website homepage is totally in flash, it’s like there’s no content for spiders. They cannot read content in images or flash.

    So if you have an intro video before, that visitors have to click skip to go to homepage - that’s not going to help rankings.

    Your option to use to get rankings for long tail keywords (because high competitive you probably need content - it will be difficult without)… is to obviously make use of one way links or link exchanges, in other words do the offpage optimization strategies.

    You can of course get it ranked, but have that slight disadvantage of no content on your homepage. Assuming your other pages are not completely flash than you can still add content to your website.

    But for competing for very competitive keywords, you need content on homepage and everywhere.

    For other keywords though, so called long tail, keywords with multiple words and low competition, like 2 million or less, you can get it ranked just the same.

    Offpage factors are more important, that’s the reason why you can still get it ranked. The backlink number, quality and other factors are considered more important than content on homepage.

    So, you should start by optimizing for those long tail keywords, first and foremost. Obviously whenever you can make that flash site at least half flash half content better for search engines. But just make sure you use meta tags, and internal linking and site structuring just the same, plus the other onpage optimization strategies.

    Your only disadvantage is no content. Think of it as an advantage, you can spend more time on link building. No content to worry about. A forum is just as well content, actually one of the best ways to generate content. It’s free content and people submit the content for you.

    Article directory on your website is also good, but you give away lots of pagerank and site authority. In articles people will link to their site, even though you gets lots of content (but most duplicate of content elsewhere) you have lots of external links. That’s why article directory is not my favorite for content.

    A forum however, you can make use of nofollow on signature links. Most will not join for the backlink obviously.

    So having a flash site, or some other similar problem, like trying to rank an affiliate link… you should go for low competitive keywords. If it works well for you, go ahead and optimize for higher competitive keywords.

    Click Here to get a $139 Value Mini-Course FREE, SEO Gossip. Discover Karl’s search engine optimization program now!

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    Deadly Google Mistakes For SEOs

    Written by karlsmth on Monday, December 1st, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization.

    Although I am exaggerating a bit, there are mistakes that can get your website banned, or penalties.

    Most common things webmaster do may be all well for your visitors, with good intentions but remember spiders are computers. They are not perfect though.
    Some of these things that spiders are programmed to detect and put a penalty to the website include the following list.

    Keyword stuffing in meta tags, on content, in anchor text of internal links or backlinks, the use of redirects, hidden text, a hacked website, duplicate content, link exchange with banned site, use of subdomains with same content as homepage or a website with viruses. There may be more…

    Remember these will cause a penalty, these are not things you do that won’t help your rankings - but they will actually decrease your rankings.

    There is a difference between a penalty, or something you are not doing quite good that may results in a difficulty in getting indexed for example.

    To fix a penalty which most often is decrease in rankings, just find out what’s wrong and stop doing it or fix it. A penalty on your site will then after some time be removed.

    If on the other hand you cannot get your site indexed, that’s not a penalty, that’s something you are not doing right. Maybe it’s brand new and it has only couple backlinks. Just learn more seo, to find out why and how to fix it.

    In extreme cases a penalty can result in totally removal of your website from the index. In the case like for example your site is hacked, or has viruses or adware. You have to fix once again your site, Google even warns you of such events if you have a Google Webmasters Tools account, and makes sure that once you fix your site is back in the index very quickly.

    If you don’t fix, if you don’t know what to fix then you remain out of the index, of course. It’s bad for the searcher to find a website that’s hacked. That’s why obviously your site is removed.

    As an seo you need to remain up to date on what’s going on in the seo world. Grab the wisdom and knowledge, so you know what’s right to do and what’s wrong to avoid.

    Search engine algorithms may seem to be changing often, but truth be told nothing really changes. Only slight changes, like for example, if before keyword density was important, now it’s more good idea to have good quality content.

    So content is still very important, what can change may be that search engines will prefer a site completely with alt tags, rather than one without. And things like that. Your goal is to give search engines what they want.

    Click Here to get a $139 Value Mini-Course FREE, SEO Gossip. Want an instant improved search engine placement now?

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    How Many Articles Should You Write On A Weekly Basis

    Written by karlsmth on Monday, December 1st, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization.

    The more the better as a general guideline. Again it depends how you are going to use the articles.

    For article submission or for your website, in any case write articles related to your website. Start with that first, only then move to writing articles closely related to your niche.

    If I have an anti spyware software, I first write everything I can about spyware, adware, trojans and slowly start moving to related topics like spam, scams, popups, buying online safe and so on.

    One article submission a day has a very positive impact on your rankings. It’s the best way because it’s not very few submission or a lot of submission.

    But if you think you cannot write one quality article a day, either hire someone to do it, or write one every two days.

    Do not use article spinners, your articles will hardly get approved in article directories. You can generate a thousand articles, with few different words between them with article spinner. But you will not have a good reputation, not only will visitors reading your article instantly notice it, it gives you a bad image.

    But article directories will delete and possible even delete your account.

    Quality articles get approved, webmasters use them on their website or blogs. You get links from people who like them as well.

    Here’s something important.

    If you are submitting articles for backlinks, do not submit to just the top 5 or 10 directories.

    Not enough.

    Use a software or a service, and blast the quality articles to as many article directories as you can. That gives you maximum backlinks.

    Doing that, I bet a boost in your rankings. Though you should make use of the anchor text in the bio, not always same anchor text. For best results change it often. I create a list of keyword variations of my keywords, and use those. A pretty big list of say twenty to thirty variations of my main keywords.

    Search engines love to see that, it looks natural. It does not look as if you are trying to spam the keyword. If you use always same keyword in anchor text, you look like you are trying to spam it. So if doing one submission a day to a thousand sites. That means a possible seven thousand backlinks all with same anchor text. How worse can it look?

    Note that article submission is good, but not all article directories will approve your articles always.

    So that’s another good reason why submitting to a lot of them is the right way. If you just submit to ten sites and two reject your article, you have submitted to eight sites only.

    But if a handful sites reject your article, and you submitted to hundreds it won’t even matter at all.

    Click Here to get a $139 Value Mini-Course FREE, SEO Gossip. Discover how to do natural search engine optimization now!

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    How Fast Should You Build Links To A New Site

    Written by karlsmth on Monday, December 1st, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization.

    You should get your website links, at first it really does not matter the quantity. Just do not exaggerate like 1000 links in a day.

    The faster you get high pagerank links from authority sites like the top directories the better. It’s an advantage because Google considers the age of links. But top directories are not free, so it’s optional so to speak.

    But your goal is 70% related and 30% unrelated link exchanges, I don’t mind getting a lot of them fast at first. But then keep doing it daily, regularly for like 15-30 exchanges a day.

    But to get indexed fast, I do use all methods for one way links instantly. Directory submission and rss submission is something you do once, only once.

    So keep it moderate that’s the key here.

    Once you do directory and rss submission if you have a blog with your website also blog directory submission but optional - then start the normal precedure. I would do also submission to top paid directories if you can.

    Normal procedure is the best link building methods, and goal is doing it regularly. Article submission and link exchanges are the top two ones that you can do daily.

    You cannot do daily directory submission, they are not infinite in number. But the things you do once like directory submission I do them as quickly as possible. As your site gets older these links become always more quality according to Google. So do them first.

    So there is no secret. We take in consideration Google’s age algorithm so we do certain link building methods first thing. But them we start seo the normal regular way, there are many ways to get more one way links, which you can use as well.

    But I don’t rush, you really don’t need to worry too much. Moderation again is the key here. Not just links after all, you want content added as well.

    Google also considers the way you add content - how often it is updated. So adding one article every two days or three is great. The more and more often you added the better - always assuming they are of quality.

    You don’t want to get a thousand articles you got from plr membership, or generated by article spinner. That’s not content, that’s not quality, you get better results if you don’t add something similar at all.

    The duplicate content and so many other theories all are the results of a poor website. Poor design, poor quality, in other words most often it’s because you’re not thinking of your visitor, and the repeated visitors if you have a big site.

    Check out Karl Sultana’s natural search engine optimization tips. He has plenty of free resources on his blog, including a free newsletter, Karl’s SEO Gossip.

    Popularity: unranked [?]

    Why Top Ranked Sites May Have Few Backlinks

    Written by karlsmth on Monday, December 1st, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization.

    There are many reasons which I shall identify.

    One is that, the particular keyword may seem competitive for you, but it’s not, so few backlinks are going to make the “trick”. You just found a gem maybe.

    Did you make the search with quotes? You will not see the top competitors when using quotes with your keyword. Visitors nowadays do not use quotes to search. When entering keyword in search box to see the competitors do not use quotes.

    The other answer may be that you used an outdated tool to check for backlink count for your competitors. Google does not show all backlinks - so you should use Yahoo Site Explorer. Google hides most of the backlinks in the supplemental index.

    I guess Google will do something specifically for Webmasters in their Google Webmaster Tools to check backlink count for any website.

    Their search engine, doing a link:domain search will return backlinks for that particular website, but it’s intended for research purposes. Not for webmasters to know the actual number.

    Just enter the domain name in Yahoo Site Explorer and click Search site. It will tell you how many indexed pages, plus how many and which sites are linking to it. The pages and inlinks. You can also see backlinks for a specific webpage, or just the homepage of the website.

    It’s really a research tool, you can dig deeper and check out the backlink count and indexed pages for the backlinks as well. You can also see the cached copy of each website.

    It will absolutely give you a great idea on how well optimized your competitors are in terms of offpage factors.

    When I do keyword research I don’t look at how many backlinks the top competitors have. I check the competition number, and the sites themselves. If they are wikipedia, yahoo answers, or some big site, you instantly know it’s not the easiest keyword.

    But the backlinks count, if you have good tools you can outrank any website. The giant ones are the ones with so many backlinks, especially one way links that it will not be an easy one.

    But the other common ones, I never seen one with an exaggerated number of links. Giant sites get links for free, automatically everyday from people who just talk about them on their websites, forums, blogs, everywhere.

    That’s why they are top ones. They get one way links without lifting a finger. Yet still, you can outrank them for certain keywords of course, since not all backlinks they get will be optimized with anchor text. They may be unbeatable for certain keyword but rank good or average for others.

    Take for example lavasoft the free anti spyware software. It may be unbeatable to outrank for free spyware software, because most of the backlinks they get have those three words.

    But for remove adware and spyware, remove spyware, spyware eraser, even though they may be first page, it is not difficult to outrank them as it may sound.

    Check out Karl Sultana’s search engine optimization tools software. He has plenty of free resources on his blog, including a free newsletter, Karl’s SEO Gossip.

    Popularity: unranked [?]



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