Category: Blog

3 Powerful Steps To Kick Start Social Media Automation
We are living in the Internet age and by now, the advantages of social media are just too obvious when it comes to the blogging community. And with so many social media platforms nowadays, we are always short of time and I am sure you can’t deny that either.

I don’t know about you, but creating the right social media automation is not always a piece of cake. Let’s face it guys … you are here because you want to know:
1. What is social media automation really is
2. How to make your social media campaigns easier
3. How to save more time but produce better social media results
The most important part for me isn’t any of these 3 above. Instead, my biggest concern is to ensure that social media automation is returning the biggest return of investment (ROI).

For me, social media automation is all about using technology with lots of planning.

The main goal is to create quality social shares and most importantly, sharing them at the right time!

Social media automation is never about quantity but what matters most is the audience and quality. However, don’t ever put aside the fact, ‘The larger your reach is, the better chance your articles will be receive better responses’.

Basically, you need a healthy dose of quality content to be shared, a large number of reach and of course, timing.

Sounds confusing right? I will explain them in a moment.

Social media automation helps you in time management

Do you find yourself always short of time thanks to the countless social media platforms?

I certainly do and it is rather annoying when you are trying all your best to ‘go out’ and the only thing that holds you back is time.

Here is where social media automation comes into play. To ensure that it works, you definitely need to have a proper social media plan and the right marketing automation softwares to work for you.

The goal is to ensure that you are maximizing your ROI with the minimum time spend on each social media. In other words, making your 24 hours works like a 36 hours or so.

Still don’t get it? Don’t worry as what you need now is to watch this video:

[Video] What is Social Media Automation really means to me?

Step 1: Basics before creating an out-of-this-world social media plan

The goal is NOT to create just any type of sharing but to create highly optimized, specific and high value social media shares.

To start up, you need to use the right social media analytics tools to help you with no other than … social media research.

I am pretty sure you are wondering what should you be finding when it comes to social media research right?

Here are a few information you should know (hint: social media research) when it comes to social media:
1. Targeted audience
2. Time of share
3. Constructing killer social shares
Targeted audience

This is where you understand the type of audience you have and what they are looking for. It is absolutely pointless to share information with a group who are not even closely related or interested with the said topic.

You need to analysis:
- What are the information the visitors are looking for?
- Who are you targeting (readers who are looking for information, recommendation or reviews for example)
This is one of those three parts which is very tedious and time consuming.

However, if you are able to work out a social media plan according to the analytic you had gathered, chances are extremely high where you will be able to perform not one but numerous and successful social media automation.

Sharing information at the right time

Planning your tweets or Facebook shares are very important too. The above technique would be able to provide you information on who to share and this in particular, will give you a hint on when to share.

At this point, I know the who, what, where and which are really making you nuts but hang in there with me! We are already halfway there.

When you are thinking of doing ‘social media’, it is always important to know when your readers are active.

Yup. What’s the point of sharing a shout if majority of your readers are asleep right?

That’s the whole point!

You want to make sure that every social media campaigns that you do are giving you the best results. Period.

Killer titles help to increase the click chances

You may have:
- 1.5k words article
- Highly optimized keywords and facts
- Shared on 15 different social media platforms
And … you ain’t getting any clicks. Not even one damn click.

Okay, what the hell is wrong?!

Personally, I’ve been there and I experienced it daily to be very honest. I had a few thousands followers on various social media platforms and I am always wondering; “why 95% of my tweets aren’t getting any clicks at all?”

Yup, no resharing, no favorites, no comments … nothing!

I read through some of the tweets (like a few hundreds of them) and I was like , “Hey, these aren’t good social shares at all” and the biggest issue was the title itself.

Check this title out:

Guys! I wrote a damn good article on Google Hummingbird and you should definitely check it out! (link) #SEO

What do you see from the above? Go on … I will wait.

…

…

…

The problem was … I wasn’t engaging enough at all. I was just merely telling others that I wrote a great blog post (which no one is able to clarify) on a specific topic.

For the readers, they wouldn’t know what to expect or … the shout wasn’t specific enough.

Here are two simple examples for better call-to-action social media shouts:

In short, my shouts and shares are not social media optimized.

I could easily get more clicks simply if I have added sentences such as “How to beat Google Hummingbird …”, “How did I hack Google Hummingbird …” and many more.

Of course, don’t use these as they are purely examples and you can’t beat or hack Google Hummingbird either 🙂

The above images are great examples. Simple call-to-actions or CTA would make readers think and wonder … which eventually some of them will click and read.

Recommended read: 500 Social Media Marketing Tips by Andrew Macarthy

Step 2: Which social media analytics tools to use?

Using the right social media analytics tools will actually help you to build a better marketing plan and believe it or not, they play more than just huge roles when it comes to social media automation.

There are probably a dozen more social media analytics tools you can use but here are a couple of them which are in my favorite list.

Followerwonk

Honestly speaking, I don’t really know how many of you are actually using Followerwonk and for me, I used to think that this is rather a ‘less useful’ analytic tool. And yes, I was wrong.

Followerwonk offers free membership (plus premium plans as well) and is highly focused on Twitter only. Well, since I am heavy user on Twitter, I think this rather self-explanatory right?

Features on free Followerwonk account:
- Search Twitter bios
- Compare Twitter users
- Analyze followers/follows
- Overlay your social graph
I am sure the above features are already very clear cut and I do not need to go any further with those. However, what really makes me to use Followerwonk is the third feature above; Analyze followers/followers.

Followerwonk provide detailed information on the best time to share information on social media

By allowing Followerwonk to analyze my Twitter account, I could easily determine the best time most of my followers are active on Twitter. This means that, sharing any information during that period would have the biggest impact and reach.

Remember that when it comes to social media, it is never about the quantity but the quality.

And if you think that it is all, you are absolutely wrong!

You can also use Followerwonk to ‘export’ those hot time periods to your Buffer schedule. Now, that’s what I really call as social media automation!

Google Analytics

If you are thinking of social media strategy, Google Analytics is definitely one of those analytics tools you need to use. Furthermore, it is runned by Google and thus, it should be trusted right?

So, how do you actually uses Google Analytics for your social media analysis?

You don’t use Google Analytics to learn about your followers (even though you could) … but instead, you should use it to focus on your social media campaigns.

For example, Google Analytics would be able to tell you which social media platform is the best and biggest contributor for your social media campaigns and blog traffic.

With this information, you would be able to perform the right social media optimization by focusing more energy and time on the right social media platforms that gives you the best results.

Personally, I would call this the “lesser work, more impact” social media strategy.

Does this make sense to you?

Step 3: The best social media automation tools

When it comes to social media automation, it is important that you uses the right tools for the job. In today’s world, there are probably a dozen or more social media marketing automation softwares out there but for me, I only stick to these three which are definitely proven to be working for my social media.

Buffer

BufferApp or Buffer is one of those tools that puts your social media marketing into 5th gear. For starters, Buffer has a free and paid version which is called Awesome plan.

Personally, Buffer is one of the best social media tools I ever used and their customer service team are top notch.

Buffer allows you to have a free account to manage one Twitter, Facebook (page or profile), and LinkedIn account with up to 10 updates in your buffer, aka scheduler.

If you are a heavy scheduler like me, you can easily signup for Buffer Awesome plan at $10 per month to manage 12 social profiles, have unlimited posts in your buffer, and even add two team members to help manage it all.

Buffer is really easy to use and what you need to do are:
1. Connect your social media accounts to Buffer
2. Select Schedule tab and assign dates and times of the share
3. Input the post or social share and hit the Buffer button
For your info, scheduled social shares will only take place once in an account. This means that if you would want to reschedule the same post more than once, you need to redo it again.

This is great as it ensures that each of your social shares does not sound ‘robotic’.

Sound complicated? Of course not. Sign up for a free account on Buffer now!

Related article: How do you schedule social media updates using Buffer?

HootSuite

Personally, I had used HootSuite for over a year now and am totally loving it since it worked well with scheduling and socializing. This means that you are able to schedule social media shouts using HootSuite and even use it on a daily basis.

HootSuite is all about having a balance of work and play. Imagine ‘working’ and ‘playing’ all under one roof!

Alike Buffer, HootSuite has both free and premium plans depending on your requirements. Using a free account, you are able to connect to 5 social media profiles and 2 RSS subscriptions (plus basic analytics reports).

If you would require additional features, you can subscribe to its Pro plan at $8.99 per month which offers 50 social media profiles, team members (up to 9) and most importantly, advanced analytics reports.

Scheduling a post on HootSuite is great and these are the steps needed to get the scheduling up in place:
1. Connect your social media accounts to HootSuite
2. Input your post and select the social media accounts to share with
3. Click on the Scheduling icon and select the time to share it
4. If you are planning to share more than one post, you can easily enable Auto Schedule feature on HootSuite
Through my experience, HootSuite is a good social media automation tool and it works extremely well with some of the best social media platforms such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter.

Don’t just sign up for a free account. Take full advantage of the free 30-days trials of HootSuite Pro and revert back to normal if you don’t like it.

Socialoomph

If you are looking for a ‘set once and forget’ feature, this is one social automation tool you must definitely consider. What makes Socialoomph so popular is the scheduling process.

Basically, Socialoomph brings social media automation to the next level.

For example, both Buffer and HootSuite only offers one posting per schedule. On the other hand, Socialoomph offers you the ability to control the number of social shares per scheduled post.

Still puzzled? Allow me to explain further.

Imagine setting Post A to go live every Tuesday at 10pm. Socialoomph will be sharing the same post every week at the same time … FOREVER!

Yup, I bet now you get the total meaning of the ‘set once and forget’ feature. Well, this could easily be spamming right? This is where Socialoomph had integrated article spinner in it!

Article Spinner is a tool used to spin the same article or sentences into several different versions. To read more, here’s an example of The Best Spinner which I am currently using. Basically, it spins a string of sentences into a newly formed sentences that totally make sense upon reading.

What makes Socialoomph different from the rest is the feature where it has the unlimited shares and scheduling feature. Socialoomph is a paid service which could cost you around $25 per month for unlimited social media accounts.

It is in fact one of the most expensive social media tool but I totally love the service they are providing. Personally, if you are running a small blog and doesn’t want to pay any extra for it, you can try out Socialoomph for 14 days just by clicking here.

Your account will revert back to the free account upon the end of trial and therefore, you have nothing to lose. For your information, free account do not have the auto scheduling feature.

Over to you …

Are you putting your social media campaigns into automation? If yes, what are your tricks and tips for it? Otherwise, what do you think of this topic?

I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I do. Feel free to tell me what you think using the comment form below plus, please hit the red button below to share it too!
January 20, 2024
Google Hummingbird Update And SEO Techniques To Boost SERPs
Google Update on Small Sites or Google Hummingbird in short could possible be the biggest overhaul done by this giant search engine after Caffeine update. We all know that the latest Google Update took place on 21st August 2013 and at that time, Google didn’t break the news which left everyone wondering.

On the eve of Google’s 15th years celebration, the search engine giant decided to break the ice and basically, took the world by storm; Introducing Google Hummingbird Update.

What is Google Hummingbird?

The Hummingbird update is said to be a major update in terms of how the search engine index works and linking of search queries. Here’s a snippet from a very popular SEO site:

Hummingbird is a definite expansion of Google’s semantic capability evident at the search interface level that reveals, significantly, two things,’ said David Amerland, search engine expert and author of Google Semantic Search, ‘First, Google has increased its ability to deal with complex search queries which means that it also has got better at indexing entities in Web documents. Second, it has got a lot better at relationally linking search queries and Web documents which means that its Knowledge Graph must be considerably enriched. – Search Engine Land

And my take on Google Hummingbird update are as below:

Hummingbird update was rolled out to focus more on the meanings behind the words. For example, search queries will now concentrate more on each word in the search query instead of the keywords only. This means that Google will take account what the whole conversation, sentence or question is all about with the hopes to return more exact search results.

What do you understand from the above? Personally, I love SEO and been a huge fan of it since early 2010. This update seems to be very focused in several parts and which will affect us all dearly;
1. Choices of keywords
2. Possibility of new requirements to get blogs and articles indexed faster
3. The importance of human factor (human intent)
Behold~ Here’s my disclaimer: The above are just the icing of the cake. I will also share with you not one but three simple SEO techniques which can (and possibly) help you rank better on search engines below. So yes, expect this to be a long article. Bookmark this right now and come back for more, from time to time.

Google Hummingbird’s search queries update

How did Google Hummingbird affected user’s search queries?

As seen above, Google said that they had updated the search queries and for me, this affected a lot on micro niche sites. Before we go deeper into the topic, here’s a simple food for thought question.

How often do you type a two letter words on Google? Possibly one out of ten times maybe?

That’s the whole point!

Nowadays, we are typing nearly a complete sentence whenever we are searching for information. Google algorithm update affects how the search engine figures out what you are actually searching for. In other words, this makes Google better at solving complicated search queries.

This also means that every blog or website has a greater chance of ranking well on search engine if you are using the right keywords. And this my friends, is just one part of it.

Using the right keyword does have its advantages in terms of ranking but there are also many factors you need to consider such as keyword density, using the related keywords and most importantly, the overall SEO practices for the whole website.

Did Hummingbird update really affected the way a blog or website get indexed?

How fast can your website get indexed by Google?

Honestly speaking, I have no idea and if I would, I could possibly be working with Google right now!

I did a quick test recently and I noticed that some of my articles got indexed rather fast (faster than usual). I am not talking about weeks but in terms of days!

So, is this really the effects of Google Hummingbird? What do you think?

Personally, I think there is a strong connection here. Basically, sites who gets lots of ‘publicity’ and social signals could prove to the search engine that “Hey, people are sharing my writings and so should you (Google)”.

More social shares could help to speed up the time needed for search engine indexing.

Like what I said above, there are many factors affecting how a blog or article get showed up on search engines but it is safe to say that proper keyword usage is more important than ever.

Google understands that everyone (including you and me) are often using specific keywords to rank an article. However, the biggest question for this is how far does that particular keyword helps in enriching the article?

Just because we had used that keyword a dozen times doesn’t prove that it is related to the article at all.

Top SEO techniques to counter-attack Google Hummingbird

If you got hit by Google Hummingbird, how do you recover from the impact?

It doesn’t matter if Hummingbird affected your website but you are here because you want to rank your blog better. If you are not, please … please click on the ‘X’ button on the top right of the screen now.

Before I disappoint you, allow me to be completely honestly with you. These are not your usual SEO techniques but they work extremely well for me.

My goal is to have a balance mixture of psychology (human intent), content and authorship to boost the overall SEO ranking. Personally, I call this indirect SEO.

These SEO techniques I am about to share with you are mostly two sided blades. A wrong move could easily crumble your SEO strategies and even backfire on your blog. However if practiced correctly, you stand a good chance to skyrocket your blog traffic.

1. Content do not need to be SEO rich

Over optimizing your website is not good in terms of SEO

Yup, you hear me right. If you have focus a lot on your blog or website content and positing well on search engines, you do not need to pay thousand of dollars to SEO agencies to do it for you. Plus, you can get all the basic SEO strategies using Yoast SEO plugin.

Seriously!

Gone were the days where SEO is the only factor when it comes to blog ranking. It is not debatable that SEO still plays a factor in terms of blog ranking but there are far more important factors which could affect it.

If you are about to publish a blog post, ask yourself these, “Will my readers be happy with what they read? Is this what they are looking for?”

You see, building a good and strong presence is vital when it comes to surviving in this blogging industry. This is why you need all hands on deck and making sure your content is not only able to fulfill but to satisfy your readers which leads to point #2.

If you want to score well in SEO, then you need to know the basics and you can start off by checking out these articles:
- Complete Search Engine Optimization for Dummies
- 8 Explosive Blogging Tips Other Clever Bloggers Won’t Share
2. Rich quality content is definitely needed

Content still plays an important role in terms of SEO

This is some sort of a no-brainer. Words around popular search engine forums are saying that Google is looking for more unique content than just plain articles.

Now let’s see this in the perspective of a reader, shall we?

Imagine reading through 5 different blogs and all of them are sharing the same information. The only difference between them are the titles and headings. Does this really enrich your search experience?

Definitely not!

When you are blogging, make sure that you are NOT doing what others are doing … or at least try not to. Of course, with over 60 million blogs out there, this is rather insane and impossible to accomplish but at least, you don’t copy and paste everything that you read.

Readers love to read contents which are unique and they could possibly not find any of those anywhere else (yet). Do this and you will find them coming back for more and if Google sees good traffic coming from your blog, it is a signal to send even more traffic towards your blog.

Take a moment to think about this. Does this makes all the sense to you?

If you want to read more about this, I highly recommend you to read this article, Top 6 Blogging Tips To Build Better Blog Ranks.

3. The love-hate authorship factors

Do you agree that Google Authorship plays a role in terms of blog ranking?

Let us go back memory lane for a moment. When Google+ was first announced, it was a huge hype and everyone was trying to enable Google Authorship on their blogs.

We all thought that it was a good way to boost SEO and so long live the hype until recently. A long discussion was done recently among Google+ community and it was confirmed that Google Authorship doesn’t affect SEO at all.

So, here’s the question, “What is the relationship between content authorship and Hummingbird?”

This is because content seems to be the biggest emphasis for Hummingbird update, it is very likely that authorship (which is rather useless somewhere now) will become an important factor when it comes to optimization.

We all know Google had long been trying to compete with Facebook and thus, Google Authorship could be the only thing that distinguish both the social media platforms.

With proper Google authorship settings, Google is able to attribute the content back to the author and yes, publishing a pretty face right below the URL.

And you might be thinking … you ain’t got the time to enable Facebook graph, fail to enable Twitter cards or probably, had no idea what Google Interactive Post is all about. I got it, really.

Personally, I have always wanted to enable these features with some coding but thanks to my limited knowledge on the matter, most of the time it ended up as a disaster until recently.

I came across WPSocial thanks to Ana Hoffman from Traffic Generation Cafe when she published Schema Markup. I wouldn’t even thought of bringing this up until Hummingbird update and all the hype about Google Authorship plus the open graph features.

Then it struck my mind on how important Open Graph and all these microdata is for bloggers. Thank God I was using WPSocial SEO Booster.

In short, WPSocial SEO Booster is used to make sure that proper markups are done correctly for your blogs. It may and may not have a difference when it comes to the naked eyes but this is a whole different scenario when it comes to search engines.

If you have read above, you would know that authorship is important and it is a great way to prove to search engines that you are genuine. WPSocial SEO Booster will help you in terms of:
1. Creating correct microdata for your blog
2. Enable authorship markup
3. Facebook Open Graph integration
4. Twitter cards
5. Increase site performance
6. Review features, social sharing button and Google Interactive features included
7. And a dozen more features …
The main reason for me to bring this up is because it had helped me a lot in terms of additional marking up features. Don’t get me wrong. I love Genesis Framework and the HTML5 markup is extremely useful.

However in this SEO and blogging industry, I need more than that to compete and therefore, I opt to try WPSocial which turned out to be great!

You can try WPSocial today for only $29.60 and ask for a refund if you are not happy with it. No strings attached and there’s an offer Mike (developer of WPSocial) is throwing in … a whopping 20% discount if you try it out during October 2013.

Again, don’t take my word for it as it might be biased. However, I see no reason why you shouldn’t give it at least a try since you are given a guaranteed refund and a nice discount right?

Try WPSocial today and get additional 20% discount of your total bill now!

So, what is the future that lies in Google and search engines algorithm?

The way I see it, Google is trying to make its search queries even easier to manage and control. This means that producing better search results for all of us.

And if you ask me, I dare to say Google Hummingbird have affected many sites. I noticed is that many micro niche and general blogs were hit pretty bad from this update even though I know some survived the impact.

Personally, I know a few niche bloggers who had huge drop in traffic from about a thousand visitors a day down to 250 or less.

Here’s my take on this. Google is trying to reduce the number of micro niche blogs showing up on search engine result pages and I totally understand it. Not just any micro niche blogs but those with low quality.

From Google’s perspective, it could mean that bloggers are trying to ‘influence’ the search engine rankings just to earn extra income. And trust me, it is rather easy to rank well on search engines as long as you are able to find low competition keywords.

Furthermore, how many micro niche blogging sites that are really that good in terms of quality? Most of them are living of affiliate sales or Google Adsense. So yes, go figure!

From the point of a blogger myself, running a micro niche blog doesn’t mean that we are doing any black hat SEO. We are just trying to rank well using low ranking keywords. Of course, we are sharing information that we might not know at all and practicing keyword stuffing which isn’t really right.

Well, I am not saying that all micro niche bloggers are bad as I know quite a number of bloggers who are really experienced and sharing specific niche blogs to help others.

It’s just that there are many other bloggers who are trying to replicate the same success with the hopes of earning more money online and indirectly, affecting the search results one way or another.

So, Hummingbird update could be a way to control the number of micro niche sites showing up on search engines. This means that Google want those niche blogs to rank well only if they have quality contents.

For me, that’s a very good deal indeed. Okay, I know this is going to spark a lot of controversial and thus, I am going to leave it as what it is right now.

Did I miss out anything?

Let’s face it guys. Google is continuing its journey where ‘Content is King’ and understanding user search intent is the end goal. It is all about improving the search engine results and I think it is doing very well indeed.

However, this had a great impact on bloggers and the latest update from Google really says it all. SEO is ever changing and the biggest question now is, “Are you (and your blog) up for the challenge?”

What do you think about this? Agree to disagree? Hit the reply button below and let’s discuss.
January 20, 2024
Guest Crew Review – Community for Guest Bloggers

It doesn’t matter if you are a novice or professional blogger, looking for advertising opportunities or trying to find websites accepting guest postings. Guest Crew is one of the communities for bloggers out there.

Guest Crew welcome page

Guest Crew is maintained by no other than Uttoran Sen. I first met up with him when I was at Blog Engage. He is very active there and somehow, we got connected. He makes a good living especially when it comes to providing quality guest postings and he had written for some of the big sites such as ProBlogger, Kikolani, Life Hack, Write To Done and even John Chow’s website. To read more about him, just head over to this link here.

So, what makes Guest Crew so special from the rest? Without much delay, let’s dive in and see what Guest Crew have to offer, shall we?

What it looks like inside Guest Crew?

Guest Crew offers many possibilities and opportunities for both bloggers and advertisers

What is it for guest bloggers?

As you can see from the above image, this is one community that helps bloggers to post on nearly any blogs regardless of the niche. It helps you to connect with other fellow bloggers and most importantly, promoting your own blogs!

Bloggers can easily share their links, ask for advise and even build relationships with other bloggers. More on that as you read further below.

Spaces for blog owners too

Let’s say you hate guest posting and you rather blog on your blog. Fine! Join Guest Crew now!

This is because Guest Crew works as a forum for bloggers and you can easily drop questions or help other bloggers out. Oh yes, do I need to mention that it is free too?

This is what the forum looks like on Guest Crew

So, what makes Guest Crew unique?

By now, you would probably be thinking why you should be using Guest Crew. Here’s the juiciest part among all; guest posting.

If you are a guest blogger and looking for guest blogging opportunities, then you are in luck. You can earn easy money through guest blogging with the help of … yup, Guest Crew.

Browse your way to a list of advertisers who are willing to pay for your guest posting services and you can easily make some good money from them. Let’s say you have a good pagerank blog with above average blog traffic. You could easily be looking for at least $20 per blog post and if you really ranking well, you could even demand for hundreds of dollars when it comes to guest posting.

Why would I possibly use the word ‘demand’? It is because you are ranking that high … and you in demand. Obviously!

Back to the topic, do you see where I am heading to now when it comes to guest posting and the opportunities lies within this blogging community?

Okay. How about being an advertise on Guest Crew?

Literally speaking, all you need to do is to create a campaign and start hunting down for potential guest bloggers. Here’s a snippet taken from the FAQ page:

If you have checked out the site, you might have seen the term ‘coins’. This is highly related to advertisers where you uses the coin system to pay for advertising. There is also the ‘donate any number of coins’ for those who plan to give donation or giving a helping hand to other bloggers who urgently need the coins.

What else is on Guest Crew?

There are several sub forums you can choose from such as the marketplace (buy sell forum) and promotion forum. Market place is rather clear cut where you can put your domains or services for sale or even buy some of those. Unlike other domain selling websites, Guest Crew forum takes commission for any sales done.

Promotion sub forum is one place you MUST not miss. All you need to do is to place a link there, add some description on it and other members will help to share it. However, you have to remember that as this is an absolutely free service, it is not advisable to ‘hope for too much’ and I would always advise to ‘give it back’.

If you want to community to grow, always focus in helping others to share as sharing is definitely caring!

Over to you …

I am a member of Guest Crew and it doesn’t cost you a dime for that. To register, all you need is to click here and follow the instructions.

Personally, Guest Crew is a great place to build reputation and authority as a blogger. You are also able to build bonds and relationships with other bloggers with a huge plus point; paid guest posting.

January 20, 2024
Transforming Google Keyword Planner in a massive keyword scrapper
Recently, Google decided to drop the bomb and ended the famous (and trusted), Google Keyword Tool from service. It was replaced by the new version which is called Google Keyword Planner.

I would be lying to you if I say that I love Google Keyword Planner at first. In fact, I hated so much due to so many obvious reasons. When I heard that Google Keyword Tool is going ‘off’, I told myself to stick to a few SEO tools such as Scribe, Long Tail Pro and SEMRush.

Early this month, I decided to try on it and promised to sit in front of my old HP Pavilion laptop trying to learn everything about it.

Without much delay, this blog post is all about Keyword Planner and how you can really use it for your advantage when it comes to keyword research. I am not going to deny that for starters, it has slight learning curve compared to the previous version.

What is Google Keyword Planner?

It is the new replacement of Google Keyword Tool (duh!) and it is said to provide great experience for bloggers who are trying to find quality keywords.

Now, how true is this?

Google Keyword Planner is a double edge blade. It works pretty well if you know what you are looking for. If you are hoping that this keyword planner will give you some good keywords with just some clicks, then you better stick to premium SEO tools like this one.

Here are a few things I like about the almighty Google Keyword Planner:
- Chances of finding long tail keywords
- Easier keyword finding once you get used to it
- Multiple ways to search for a specific keyword or niche
- Merging Google AdWords with Keyword Planner is great for paid advertisements
Google Keyword Planner – The basic

There are four very easy but different ways you can find perform keyword research on Keyword Planner which are:
1. Searching for keywords and ad groups ideas
2. Enter or upload keywords to see how they perform
3. Get traffic estimates for a list of keywords
4. Multiply keyword lists
This is probably the place where most bloggers and keyword searchers give up!

Everything looks so complicated here and for newbie, this can be a very huge disappointment considering that Keyword Planner is said to be better than the previous keyword tool right?

Yup, that happened to me too and continue reading the below for more information.

4 different ways to use Keyword Planner for keyword research

1. Searching for keywords and ad groups ideas

Advantages: Finding long tail keywords and possible keywords to use (using ad groups)

Disadvantages: Figures are not specific and there is a possibility of having a low searched keyword in the ad groups

This is the part where you can find groups of keywords which could be very useful for you in blogging and each groups of keywords would have roughly between 5 to 12 different long tail keywords.

For example, you are searching for the keyword ‘blogging’ and Keyword Planner gives you probably a dozen or more keyword groups.

Now, let’s take the first keyword group with an average of 71,000 average monthly searches. The group is consisted of several keywords such as:
- Blogging software
- Blogging tips
- Blogging jobs
- How to blog
- What is blogging
- Paid blogging
- Blogging tools
- Blogging for dummies
- Personal blogs
- Blog maker
- Blog software
- Blogs
- Blogs about life
This means that, these are some keywords which are highly related to the term you are searching, ‘blogging’ and has a total of about 71,000 searches monthly.

Now, read the above sentence again and tell me what you had actually read.

The total number of searches on this ad group is 71,000 and it is a combination of all the above keywords. This means that there is a high chance that some keywords are actually searched more than the other.

Does this make any sense to you?

Here’s what it looks like for a clearer picture:

Step by step guide when it comes to finding keyword groups using Google Keyword Planner

2. Enter or upload keywords to see how they (keywords) perform

Advantages: Able to determine the exact number of searches and CPC for that specific keyword

Disadvantages: Slightly complicated as it highly dependable to symbols

I uses this more than the previous one. In fact, this is a great SEO tool if you want to have exact (not estimated) keyword search or CPC cost per keyword.

Here are the legends you need to know in order to use this function:

Broad match – Blogging

Phrase match – “Blogging”

Exact match – [Blogging]

In broad match, keywords found could be related and non related to blogging. This gives you a general result and honestly speaking, it doesn’t help much when it comes to finding the exact keyword.

Keywords found using phrase match are highly related to the term ‘blogging’. This means that it could have the basic word of ‘blog’ in the keyword or simple having the same meaning as ‘blog’ or ‘blogging’.

Exact match keywords is what we are looking for. For example, searching for the term [blogging] would give us 14,800 searches. This is a strip down of the whooping, 71,000 searches that we had found earlier.

When it comes to finding the best or the most profitable keyword, it is highly recommended that you uses Exact Match feature to get the best results.

Does this look similar to the old Google Keyword Tool?

3. Get traffic estimates for a list of keywords

Advantages: This feature provides bloggers with number of clicks, impressions and cost per day.

Disadvantages: It is very ‘sales oriented’ and is more focus to Google Adwords users.

I would say this is pretty clear cut. Enter a keyword or more and Google Keyword Planner will give you an estimation of traffic.

Regardless of the disadvantages, I would still consider this as a great tool especially when you are looking to invest into into Google Adwords.

Google Adwords is easier to manage and bid with the help of Keyword Planner

4. Multiply keyword lists

Advantages: This is good for cross matching keywords

Disadvantages: Chance of wrongly matched keywords is high and this is a rather ‘advance’ feature

Basically, this particular Keyword Planner feature helps you to create multiple keywords and in some ways, this increase the chances of finding long tail keywords.

All you need to do is to place two different sets of keywords in List 1 and List 2 as seen in the image below. After that, click on the ‘Get search volume’ as below:

Multiple keywords lists are great when it comes to finding long tail keywords

This feature is great especially when you are trying to find different keywords (mix and match) and if you are lucky enough, you might land yourself a low competition keyword.

How do you find keywords using Google Keyword Planner – Video form

Did I miss out anything about Google Keyword Planner?

I hope the above explanation would be worth a little especially when it comes to keyword research. Personally, Keyword Planner is a great tool especially when it has several more features compared to the previous version.

What do you think about Google Keyword Planner? Hit the reply button below and tell me what you think.
January 20, 2024
6 No Brainer Reasons Why AWeber Is The Best Email Marketing Service
You probably have heard me saying this a few times now, “You need a mailing list even if you are a blogger” and I will repeat if I got to.

A mailing list is extremely important especially when you are trying to build an audience and creating not only website traffic but a very sustainable one instead.

A good mailing list is important for both novice and professional bloggers as it will help to:
- Increase the number of return visitors
- Keep loyal readers updated with important updates and information
- As a medium to communicate with your loyal followers
- And probably a dozen more
We all know how hard it is to build a great mailing list and there is obviously no reasons why you need to make the process even harder. Setting up multiple signup forms and email autoresponders could indeed be a very tedious job. Therefore, choosing the right email marketing solution is a must!

Still not convinced? Take a look at these slides on the importance of a mailing list.

By now, you should have probably hear about AWeber from either your friends or on the net. Some call AWeber the best email marketing solutions and honestly, I really think so!

In this blog post, I will be sharing with you some reasons why I rather use AWeber compared to any other email marketing solutions out there.

Before that, let’s see what AWeber really is, shall we?

*p/s There’s also a video at the bottom of this post to show you how AWeber really works.

What are the features AWeber are offering?

AWeber is an email marketing software and autoresponder tool that is easy to configure and use.

What makes AWeber so popular is the fact that it is highly affordable and with the price tag of $16.17 per month, you might think that I am out of my mind.

At least, I would definitely have something under my sleeves right?

When you signup for AWeber (click here to signup for $1 for the first month as trial plus a 30 days money back guarantee), you are not only paying for their services but as well as the rich email marketing features.

And, I believe ‘rich’ could be a very understatement of the day!

Here are a complete list of what AWeber is offering to all its members:
1. Ability to create custom professional email newsletters within minutes
2. Multiple ready-made signup forms available to use instantly
3. Segmenting subscribers to different categories for easier management
4. Automatically deliver sequence messages to new subscribers according to date and time of your choice (autoresponder)
5. Over 600 beautiful HTML email templates to create great looking emails
6. Ability to perform split testing in anyway possible (title, names, colour, Call-To-Action etc)
7. RSS to email ability – Automatically create emails from your newest blog posts
8. Email analytics to track on number of clicks, opens and delete
9. Easy to integrate to popular WordPress mailing list plugins such as OptinSkin and Hybrid Connect
10. Extremely high email delivery rate thanks to the Anti-Spam policy
11. 24/7 customer support through phone and email
12. A wide variety of free training and guides for bloggers to build more subscribers
13. Free access to live webinars for mailing list building strategies
I got to admit this; When I first saw the features, I was like “Okay, this sounds like the right email marketing solution for me” but I wasn’t sure if I should get it.

The price tag of $16.17 per month does sounds a little pricey for me (I bet you are thinking of that right now too!).

So, what really makes me use AWeber?

1. The $1 deal for the first month trial and a 30-days money back guarantee is a no-brainer for me

Yup, you hear me right. The $1 deal is too good for me to say no to. Go ask around and many bloggers will tell you that they are using AWeber for their email marketing.

I am sure that if I wouldn’t like it, I could just hit the refund button. Furthermore, it’s just $1 right?

If that $1 doesn’t convince you, here are a list of famous using Aweber email services:
- Neil Patel
- Glenn Allsopp
- Kristi Hines
- Ileane Smith
- Adam Connell
Now, tell me if you are convinced enough to try on AWeber right now 🙂

2. AWeber email marketing tool comes with autoresponder ability

If you have no idea what autoresponder means, I would be delighted to share with you.

Autoresponder is a feature where you can set a sequence to send emails (within a specific time frame) for every ‘trigger value’.

For example, you can set the autoresponder to send a welcome email to all new subscribers after one day of signing up for your newsletter.

Isn’t this cool? Basically, you don’t have to type a new welcome email numerous times every time a person signs up. And, you don’t even have to copy and paste the scripts as well.

Here’s a video of the autoresponder feature on AWeber:

Try AWeber’s Autoresponders for $1

3. Professional signup forms and templates

Creating a professional mailing list form is easy with AWeber. All you need to do is:
- Choose a template or design as the base of your email
- Choose the colours, fonts and even words to make your signup form more ‘lively’
- Select any redirection such as to a thank you page or back to the current page
- Copy the codes and place them on your blog
You can easily produce beautiful email templates with the help of AWeber

4. Easy integration with nearly all WordPress mailing list plugins

I don’t call myself a ‘techie’ and thus, I love to have things simple and straight forward. This is where I rather use AWeber as my email marketing provider since it is extremely easy to use.

Upon completing a custom design, you can choose to either:
- Install the codes personally
- Send to your web designer to do it for you
- Or asking AWeber to host the form for you
For example, I am using Hybrid Connect and I could easily integrate AWeber codes with it and build my followers close to immediately.

As for the record, I tried both FeedBurner and MailChimp email marketing solutions before using AWeber and to be very honest with you, I felt that AWeber is the best email marketing tool especially when it is so easy to integrate it.

Well, at least for me!

5. Detailed analysis for your newsletters and followers

With the simple but detailed dashboard, AWeber users are able to easily analysis their email strategy to increase click and open rates.

For those analytics lovers out there, this is probably the best feature AWeber can ever offer. On the dashboard, you are able to see simple yet complete report at one glance.

This means that you are able to see the number of new subscribers, scheduled broadcasts and even broadcast history on email clicks and opens.

Not only that, AWeber offers a very indepth information on the report tab which I will show you in a video shortly below.

6. RSS to email

Simple RSS to Email by AWeber Communications

Honestly, I am not a fan of automated stuffs and recently, my buddy Gilbert asked me why I didn’t use this godly feature.

I told him that I rather have something ‘not automated’ for my mailing list but that question really struck my mind.

Since Neil Patel (I am a huge fan of his) is also using the RSS to email service provided by this lovely mailing list tool, I see no reasons why I shouldn’t right?

Truthfully, I haven’t REALLY use this feature much but this is one feature that will save you a lot of time.

Imagine that you want to keep your blog followers updated on your new post and creating a new newsletter could be very time consuming. With AWeber RSS to email feature, you are basically putting technology on good use!

To think about it, having a tool to that automates email notifications to your readers at any time of your choice is indeed indispensable.

Why should you REALLY use AWeber for your mailing list building?

Now, I know how tired it is to read such a long blog post right? So, here’s another video which I had done personally explaining what AWeber is and how it can actually save you more money (plus improving your sign up rates).

Basically, I will be showing you around:
- What AWeber autoresponder is all about
- How the dashboard looks like
- How to create a broadcast on AWeber
- How to setup simple but beautiful signup forms
- AWeber analytics as well
Back to you

What do you think of this blog post? I hope you enjoyed reading this article and watching the video as much as I do. So, tell me. What is your favorite email marketing tool?

It doesn’t really matter if you have one right now as you can easily signup for AWeber for only $1 with a full 30-days money back guarantee right now!

All you need to do is to click right here: Try AWeber today for only $1 or 100% money back guarantee!
January 20, 2024
The Truth Behind Google Panda Update On Small Sites (Hummingbird)

Some of you might not have realized this but Google Panda Update on Small Sites (Hummingbird) took placed approximately on 21st August 2013. Yes, it happened and I’m not joking.

This basically went live right after Matt Cutts gave a quick shout on Twitter as seen below:

According to my sources, this particular Google Panda Update (Hummingbird) was reported not a few but from all of the major SEO blogs in the world. However, there was no comment given by Google on the matter.

Latest update by Google on 26th September 2013 on the update as below:

Google announced the Hummingbird update. We believe this update maybe associated with what we’re calling the Panda Small Sites update.

Q: How big a change is Hummingbird? Singhal (a Google engineer) says it’s as big as the change to the last algorithm, known as Caffeine. It happened about a month ago (late August).

Q: How specifically is Hummingbird better: Singhal says it’s essentially to better answer the much more complex queries people are making. It impacts all kinds of queries, but far more effective on long, complex questions that we’re getting many more of now.

Q: Examples? Hard to be specific, but essentially, with more complex queries, the algorithm can better understand concepts vs. words as well as relationships between concepts.

Q: How is this different in nature from Caffeine? This is clearly more focused on ranking sites better for relevance, while Caffeine was more focused on better indexing and crawling of sites.

Hummingbird gave us an opportunity to rethink how we can reuse all these new services to improve search results.

Before we discuss further, I want to take the opportunity to share with all of you one of the best SEO tools I could not leave without … Fruition.

What is Fruition?

Introducing Fruition – freemium SEO / analytic tool for bloggers

Fruition is a tool used by several bloggers (including me) to check on our blogs’ analytics. Basically, this is a great tool if you are a SEO enthusiast or running an SEO agency.

For a normal blogger, you might find this tool rather useless (seriously speaking).

What Fruition does is that it offers you the ability to check on Google Updates or any penalty slapped by Google.

Fruition data or chart is pretty straight forward with accurate data and colours. It calculates the probability of a Google update towards your blog by measuring on the data (especially traffic) collected from Google Analytics.

Basically, the data collected are then compared with the ‘before and after’ stats from the date of the update.

Obviously, you could do this manually but I would rather have a SEO program or tool to that for me. Fruition doesn’t only collect data from your Google Analytics but as well as comparing the data with other big SEO websites to verify on the information.

One of Fruition’s stats sorted out by date

What I love most is the colour schemes provided by Fruition.

Green – positive impact

Yellow – no impact

Orange – high likelihood of negative impact

Red – negative impact

This means that for every news release, you are (indirectly) bound to understand how Google works if you do your ‘homework’. I will explain more on this in a moment time.

*Looking for Fruition link? Free link is given at the bottom of the page 🙂

Want to learn more about Google Analytics? I highly recommend taking some time reading Advanced Web Metrics by Brian Clifton.

My blog stats using Fruition

Fruition stats showing a huge chance of Google Update impact

As you can see above, my blog has a 99.4% chance of being affected by the ‘mini’ Google Update.

Now, let’s have a look at my Google Analytics for the stats.

Green is the date where Google update happened. Red was the impact towards my blog

Google Panda Update on small sites was said to happened somewhere close to 21st August 2013 and therefore, I will take 7 days in advance as the starting point for some blog traffic comparison.

Search engine traffic before the Google Update was around 136 hits per day on average.

Right after the update, traffic from search engines were slowly reducing and everything started to fall right after 23rd August 2013. Yup, my search engine traffic reduced closed to 50% of what I am usually getting.

So the biggest question was, “Did Google Panda Update on small sites really took place?”

Honestly, we had no idea (I wish I had though) but it certainly looks ‘happening’ to my blog.

What did I do (wrong) to get ‘hit’ by Google Panda Update?

I did thought about this and to be exact, it took me 72 hours to finish my ‘small research’.

Basically, I did nothing wrong (no black hat SEO if that’s what you are wondering at the back of your head) and of course, if I am not doing anything wrong, why would I be ‘penalized’ right?

I would blame this on my approach. Yes, my blogging approach.

When I started this blog, I was determined to rank fast using white hat SEO. I did my homework on the types of keywords to use on each article and even calculated the keyword density of specific keywords on my blog (to name a few).

By now, you can call me a SEO freak and I wouldn’t mind.

There are also a few more white hat SEO techniques I used to rank well on search engine result pages (which I can’t disclose for obvious reasons).

The results? Ranking 242 keywords to be exact on search engines and about 15 of my articles are on the first page of Google.

Important disclaimer: I am not boosting but I am just sharing my experience (plus stupidity).

Imagine 90 days blogging and ranking 242 keywords on page one of Google (SERP’s). What do you think?

…

…

…

Yup … It does look so obvious that I am using some black hat SEO technique right?!

That’s what I am talking about. I was ranking my keywords too fast on search engines using white hat SEO.

Ouch!

Black hat SEO … is so not my type

Did I really use black hat SEO to rank my keywords?

I know this sounds funny but that’s the fact. I really didn’t use any (yes the big word ‘ANY’) black hat SEO techniques at all. And, I didn’t manipulate the search results too.

However, the results for me to be able to rank so many articles on first page Google does sounds very illegal I would say!

At times, I would simply blame myself for being over ‘enthusiastic’ when it comes to search engine optimization.

What did I learned from this Google Panda Update on small sites (hummingbird)?

I am a strong believer that it is easy to rank on search engines as long as the plan is right. Now, rushing to rank so many keywords on first page of Google is definitely a crazy thing to do (honestly speaking).

When it comes to SEO and overcoming any Panda Update, it is best to leave it as natural as possible. You can’t really beat Google and every updates done by Google is to ‘compliment’ the previous updates.

Search engine optimization is indeed, very simple as I had previously wrote. All you need to do is to ensure that those backlinks you are getting … are coming from natural sources (no paid links etc).

Another thing I learned from this Google Update (hummingbird) is that big daddy Google is focusing on very minor and petty stuffs like blog’s domain age and the numbers of articles able to rank well on Google.

Does this article makes any sense to you?

Using the comment form below, tell me if this article makes absolutely logic to you. For me, it is a lesson well learned.

It was fun being able to rank pretty good on search engines but again, it come with a huge sacrifice too!

For those are interested to try on Fruition, here’s the link for it. All you need to do is to link up to your Google Analytics and the stats will start rolling in.

Of course, I am off to ‘lick my wounds’ but guys, tell me what you think below 🙂

January 20, 2024