Ferguson SEO Consulting

Review: SEO Altimeter by CleverStat.com

SEO Altimeter is a wonderful, very useful traffic rank, Google PageRank, and link popularity tracking software. If you are anyway familiar with CleverStat’s products, this SEO tool is basically their Parameter software on steroids. The wealth of information it provides is extremely helpful for anyone who tracks a large number of parameters such as traffic rank, link popularity, website ranking, and more (see features list below). It will even monitor your competitors so you can see how you compare to them at a statistical level.

I really like how the tool saves your past reports so that it can compare them to recent reports. Also, most importantly, SEO Altimeter gives you the ability to export all the data into a CSV format to do additional in-depth research.

My Favorite Features…

Checks Google PageRank

With SEO Altimeter, you can check Google PageRank on a large number of websites in bulk. Quick tip: Google will cut you off after approximately 1500 sites. If you have a DSL connection, just refresh the IP address. If you are using cable/modem then consider purchasing an IP address cloaker that will update your IP Address at specific time intervals (my recommendation – refresh every 5 minutes if using cable/modem).

Extracts URLs for further analysis

I always need to check PageRank not only for my base URL, but also for multiple (if not every) page on a website. SEO Altimeter’s “Extract URLs” feature gives you the ability to do this.

Features of SEO Altimeter (as listed on their product page):

Checks Alexa Traffic Rank, Alexa Reach and Alexa Page Views parameters
Monitors Link Popularity and URL Popularity
Shows website Saturation and the number of indexed pages
Supports all major search engines to check Link Popularity and Saturation for
Checks Google PageRank
Checks parameters for a large number of URLs at once
Imports a list of URLs from a text file
Exports results to a CSV file
Includes highly customizable tool for web ranking parameters comparison
You can extract all pages from a site for further detailed analysis
Works through a proxy
Keeps detailed history

Screenshots (Click on Image for Larger View):

SEO Altimeter Control Panel

My Control Panel

R.E. Ferguson November 2, 2011 Reviews, SEO Tools seo altimeter, traffic ranking software

AdWords: What Makes a Good Landing Page?

google adwords landing pages Having a well-crafted landing page is a big component of a good Google AdWords Quality Score. From the moment a prospective customer reaches your landing page, everything should be tailored to helping the customer find what they are searching for and assist them towards a conversion.

A successful landing page requires a number of different elements:

Keyword Segmentation - Different types of keywords should take visitors to different landing pages with their own customized offers.
Navigability - Users should be able to easily find what they are looking for and move around your site.
Compelling Offer - If your ad references special products, have those products be front and center on the landing page. You should give visitors a reason to stay.
Focused Page Content - Optimize each landing page by authoring page content around groups of relevant, narrowly focused keywords.

The better the landing page, the more conversions you are likely to achieve. Expertly designed landing pages have a powerful impact on both SEO and PPC marketing campaigns.

Organic Search Benefits: Keyword-relevant content results in higher rankings in the SERPs for the keywords you’re targeting, bringing more visibility and more traffic.
Pay-Per-Click Benefits: Keyword-specific AdWords landing pages are much more likely to earn strong Quality Scores and high conversion rates, as the landing pages will be more aligned with the searcher’s intent.

While a better optimized landing page will help increase conversion rates, depending on what you are trying to persuade visitors to do, what constitutes a “good” conversion rate will vary.

A “good” conversion rate depends on what the desired conversion is. Conversion rates will tend to be higher if visitors are asked to sign up with a simple form to receive something free. If visitors have to fill out a lengthy survey or provide credit card information, conversion rates will be lower. While conversions can range from 0-50%, 2% is quite common.

R.E. Ferguson October 27, 2011 Google, Google AdWords adwords, Google, landing pages, seo charlotte

Review: Site Content Analyzer 3 by CleverStat.com

Rating:

Site Content Analyzer 3 by CleverStat.com has become one of my most trusted tools in my SEO Tool Belt. When it comes to analyzing your site’s parameters (keyword density, keyword weight, etc.), this tool is fast, dependable and most importantly delivers precise results. It also allows me to export results in a PDF report that I can brand with my own company’s logo, name and information.

The tool also has a very in-depth help file that covers jsut about all you need to know about its features and the purpose of those features. The people at CleverStat.com always seem to produce great SEO software, this tool is yet another great piece of software that I will use for years to come (as long as they keep making updates!!!).

Here is a list of features that is listed on the product page for Site Content Analyzer:

Discover the most relevant keywords for your business
Work not only with single keywords, but also with keyword phrases
Analyze websites of your competitors to learn their keywords
Learn the keyword density
Find out which pages are under-optimized
Learn the weight of your keywords and phrases to know if they are relevant to your niche
Investigate the links within your site
Analyze online websites as well as offline pages
Manage different profiles to adjust the analysis according to your needs
Learn site-wide keyword value as easy as single page-wide
Export any acquired info into CSV file for even deeper keyword research
Create branded, highly customizable reports for your clients and send them by e-mail
Discover the bottle-necks of your keyword strategy
Work with pages in any language due to Unicode support
Check any given keyword phrase for its value

I’ve also included some screenshots of the tool in action (click on the image to see a larger version):

Control Panel

: Project Settings

Help Files

R.E. Ferguson October 27, 2011 Reviews, SEO Tools Review, site content analyzer, website analysis tool

Review: Accurate Monitor for Search Engines by CleverStat.com

Rating:

I am in constant need of being able to tell where both my own websites are ranking for certain keywords as well as where my clients’ keywords are ranking for their own specific keywords. I also like to see how rankings have changed since the last time I checked them. However, it always seems that when I find a tool that will help me accomplish all this, the tool never quite does everything I need it to do. Eureka! I have come across a tool by CleverStat.com called “Accurate Monitor for Search Engines” and so far, it seems to do everything I need it to do. I love its capability to choose search engines as well as its capability to use proxies, see results for both organic and paid results and create branded reports in PDF format. It also has a keyword suggestion tool built-in and has controls I can adjust to make it search engine friendly.

You can either purchase a Personal License or a Business License. The main difference between the two is that you can only run up to 100 keywords per project with the Personal License while you have an unlimited amount of keywords you can check with the Business License.

Below are the features that are listed on Cleverstat.com’s website:

Accurate Monitor for Search Engines main features
Click a feature to read more on it
Checks web ranking in all major search engines, including Google, Yahoo and Bing
Checks both free and paid listings
Keeps ranking history for each keyword
Shows top ranking websites, not only their URLs, but also their titles and descriptions (snippets)
Fast and user-friendly search engine database updates keep the results precise
Can work with Google through the Google API 1
Can work with Yahoo through the Yahoo API
Exports results to CSV
Generates web ranking reports that can be exported later
Supports 250+ search engines in over 50 countries
Keeps notes
Keyword filter
Automatically checks web ranking according to schedule
Imports a keyword list from a text file
Suggests all possible keyword combinations
Can work through a multiple proxy
Multilingual interface
Supports Unicode

So, whether you use it for business or SEO services or even just for personal use, Accurate Monitor for Search Engines lives up to its features and capabilities. I would highly recommend this tool to anyone who needs to check keyword rank across multiple engines.

R.E. Ferguson October 19, 2011 Reviews, SEO Tools keyword ranking tool, keyword suggestion tool, rank checking tool, search engine keyword monitor

Google Adwords and Analytics Excel Tools

For those of you working with Google AdWords and/or Google Anlaytics and prefer to work in Microsoft Excel to analyze your campaigns and/or website, I’ve listed three tools below that might help you. Most of them are either free or have a free trial so check them out and if they work for you, shoot me an email and let me know how you’re using the tool you selected, I would love to hear feedback from people about their experiences.

Google AdWords Plug-in for Excel by Tatvic

Tool to import google adwords data in excel using a macro. A great way to analyze analyze Google AdWords campaigns in Excel.

Easy to use interface
Update reports on a single click
Import your analysis into the AdWords Editor
Download and analyze as many report as you want, on a single Microsoft Excel sheet

Website: http://www.tatvic.com/adwords-excel-integration/

Free Trial: Yes

GA Data Grabber

Eliminate time-consuming manual work from data fetching, processing and visualization – GA Data Grabber automates all this and helps you keep up with the latest developments of your Google Analytics profiles and your AdWords and adCenter clients. It is the only Analytics tool which makes it easy to combine metrics for lots of sites into a single report.

GA Data Grabber is designed especially for people working with multiple Analytics profiles or AdWords/adCenter clients. GA Data Grabber works within MS Excel, making it easy do additional analysis and charting.

Website: http://gadatagrabber.automateanalytics.com/

Free Trial: Yes

Excellent Analytics

Excellent Analytics is a simple Excel plug-in that lets you import web analytics data from Google Analytics into a spreadsheet. It’s an open source project and 100% free to download and use for individuals and businesses.

Functionality:

Build queries with all dimensions and metrics available in Google Analytics
Apply filters to create advanced queries
All queries are stored in the spreadsheet

Benefits of reporting and analyzing Google Analytics data in Microsoft Excel:

Get one less tool to keep track of
Use a familiar interface
Combine data from multiple data sources
Use Excel formulas, charts, and pivot tables
Define and calculate customized KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Build dashboards just the way you like them
Share workbooks with other Excel users

Imported data is stored in the spreadsheet so you can sort, manipulate, and distribute data to anyone using Microsoft Excel. Use Microsoft Excel to combine web analytics data from Google Analytics with offline data from any other source. Excellent Analytics makes this easy!

Website: http://excellentanalytics.com/

Free Trial: Yes / (Software is Free)