Tag: bloggers

  • How To Spy On Competitors Keywords With SEMrush?

    How To Spy On Competitors Keywords With SEMrush?

    You stare blankly on your WordPress blog for over 30 minutes and you have absolutely no idea which keyword you should be using to crush your competitors. They are making tons of money (and traffic) and you are dying for that.

    Yes, I have been there before one too many times. I tried to use the same keywords that my competitors are using but honestly, I’m no where near their success. I probably do more backlinks and wrote better than most of them but I’m struggling hard to hit the first page of Google, what else about the top 3 spot.

    The biggest question is “What had you done wrong?”

    Today, you are going to learn exactly how to spy on your competitors keywords and literally crush them (yes, you hear me out loud).

    Tools you need:

    1. SEMrush (register for free here)
    2. Excel sheet or blank paper

     

     

    Why on Earth should I be choosing SEMrush?

    There are a zillion keyword tools out there including Long Tail Pro which I highly recommend. Why I would go for SEMrush this time?

    The answer is really, really simple. SEMrush provides more information than any other tool out there. In the hands of a beginner, the tool is useless but imagine the power it holds when it is used by an advanced user.

    Yes, it is like calling a knight in shining armor cook a full 5-course meals.

    I use SEMrush for several reasons:

    1. Advanced keyword research
    2. Analyzing competitors keywords
    3. Determine the keyword difficulties

     

    Advanced keyword research using SEMrush

    Let’s assume that you’re a complete newbie … and you hate Google Keyword Planner until death makes you apart. This is where SEMrush comes into play.

    On SEMrush search box, fill in the keywords you are interested in and within seconds, SEMrush would provide you a list of advanced data which includes:

    • Keyword summary
    • CPC distribution
    • Trend
    • Phrase match report
    • Related keyword report
    • SE keywords
    • Ads
    • Ads history

    search for quality keywords using SEMrush

    Take a moment and compare to any keyword research tool out there. I don’t think any of those can match what SEMrush can offer. Period.

    Here’s a little summary of the important functions only.

    Keyword summary (importance: 6/10)

    Providing a general outlook on the keyword you are searching for. The report is based on exact keyword search.

    CPC distribution (importance: 2/10)

    If you are not an Adword publisher, this is pretty useless for you. It gives you an idea on one thing and one thing only which is CPC.

    Trend (importance: 7/10)

    The chart will show you how that specific keyword is trending during a 12 months duration. I mark this 7/10 due to the fact that we need to know what’s trending and what’s not for better control and monetization.

    Phrase match report (importance: 5/10)

    Okay, this is important but due to the fact that the information is all about the number of phrase matches search based on per month basis, I give it a 5/10.

    Related keywords report (importance: 8/10)

    Love this. It gives you a detailed rundown on the keywords you can use to further enrich your blog post. By default, SEMrush will show only the top 10 keywords. Click on the Full Report button to see the full list or Export button to download the list.

    SE keywords (importance: 9/10)

    This is a simple chart that shows who is ranking for that keyword (root and article domain). Want to spy on your competitors or simply knowing who are your targets is extremely vital in this business.

    I got eyes on you!

    Ads & Ads history (importance: 1/10)

    Another feature for Adwords publisher. Since I’m not using it, I would skip this part.

     

    Here’s an example of what SEMrush looks like when you search for keywords. Detailed reports are what you’ll 100% get.

    how to use SEMrush to find competitors keywords

    Analyzing competitors keywords with SEMrush

    This is probably the juiciest part of SEMrush which I got to admit, I’m in love with it.

    For any blogging business, you need to know your competitors and I would be assuming you know that too. Well if you don’t, just refer back to the SE keywords by SEMrush and you get the top 10 and even top 20 results. Those are your competitors.

    To kick start, fill in the domain URL (you can ignore the ‘www’) on SEMrush search bar and hit search.

    And the magic happens. You will be spoilt with a HUGE report about the site you had chosen which includes:

    • Organic search
    • Paid search
    • Backlinks
    • Top keywords
    • Keyword position
    • Main competitors
    • Backlink data

    And those are just the icing of the cake. You can further check on each categories and further analyze from it. For your information, it would easily take you a few hours to completely analyze your competitors.

    How do you spy on competitors’ keywords with SEMrush?

    1. List down at least 3 competitor websites
    2. Use SEMrush to determine the exact keywords they are ranking for ~ I focus on the top 10 keywords
    3. Check on the Keyword Difficulties (more on this below)

    With SEMrush, you are going to see what your competitors are doing exactly and how you can monetize them.

    • Let’s take an example that you know your competitors are ranking on ‘spy on competitors keywords’ term.
    • Focus on how they are ranking this keywords (where they get the backlink from, what anchor texts are used etc)
    • Replicate (yes, copy them) and improve by further enriching them (build more backlinks, improve anchor text, using long tail keywords etc)

    Now tell me. Do you think you can crush your competitors while they are sleeping? Yes, you certainly do thanks to SEMrush.

    SEMrush review

    Determine the keyword difficulties with SEMrush

    This is another good add-on for SEMrush; keyword difficulties.

    For those who are wondering, this feature compliments the above (competitors keywords research) perfectly.

    1. On the sidebar panel of SEMrush, search for Tools > Keyword Difficulty.
    2. Fill in the keywords (one per line and max 100 keywords per time) and click Show difficulty.

    You will a report like this:

    Find competitors keywords difficulty with SEMrush

    SEMrush keyword difficulty is shown in percentage where bigger percentage would be harder to compete compared to smaller percentage.

    At the same time, you will also see the number of searches (volume tab), number of results, trends and SERP results.

    Personally, my rule of difficulty recommendations would be anything below 70% (competition is tough with anything above 50%).

     

    SEMrush in a nutshell

    In short, I can’t imagine life without SEMrush. It is probably one of the most comprehensive SEO keyword research tool I ever seen until date.

    You can grab a free SEMrush account here which will give you limited access for life and you find this useful, you can easily upgrade to Pro plan which costs $69.95 per month or Guru plan which costs $149.95 per month.

    There you go, my summary wrap up on how to spy on competitors keywords using SEMrush. Tell me what you think using the comment form below and feel free to share this around with your friend!

    Want to give SEMrush a run? Click on the banner below and create your free account today!

  • Top 5 SEO Trends To Follow In 2014

    Top 5 SEO Trends To Follow In 2014

    SEO i.e. Search engine optimization it’s a term which has people crying and many a webmasters losing their hair as they lose all of their traffic overnight. The future of SEO is something which can’t be predicted just by looking at the major search engines or the people who are ranking well these days. With lots of non predictive algorithms in place we can’t even tell which strategy might work well in the long run. With the recent Hummingbird algorithm update by Google things have become more unusual than ever. People who were on the top of their game have lost significant traffic.

    Players who were nowhere to be seen are on visible everywhere now. But one thing is for sure these days, what’s most necessary is to have a coherent strategy. Everything has to be taken into account from the ground up. Once you have a proper strategy in place things might become a little easier. So what are the top seo trends to follow for 2014, let’s discuss them in detail.

    Top seo trends to follow in 2014: The points to keep in mind.

     

    top SEO trends in 2014

     

    1.) Social media integration with content: What once was an optional point for people while doing SEO is now one of the pillar points in SEO.

    The emphasis now is on shareable content. People want to read stuff that hasn’t been written anywhere else already. They are not interested in the news rather they are interested in what a particular writer thinks about something. That’s the trend these days. The social media strategy for any website should be in alignment with the content strategy. Posts should be shared on different platforms according to the platform relevance. Job specific posts and career related opportunities and professional updates should be front lined for networks like LinkedIn. Real time content which is relevant only for one or two days should be promoted only on Twitter and other real time update platforms. Engaging content which can draw out user response should be shared on Facebook and Google+. Gear up your site for easy pinning on Pinterest and social sharing should be included for easy sharing options. Don’t make them stand out too much or don’t go other way and make them too bland. The right social buttons are those which are easily accessible and fit in with the user interface (UI) but still entice the user enough for clicking on them.

    2.) Making really awesome content: The whole of 2013 passed with people screaming on the top of their voices that ‘Content is the king’ . This statement has carried itself forward in 2014. Content marketing is still the dominant strategy for getting lots of promotion in a limited time. Awesome content also helps in building a unique brand profile for your own. Awesome content can include anything from Infographics, interview series posts of experts, simple memes about any topic to analytical content which includes surveys and questionnaires.

    3.) Focus on building your own brand: Building your own brand requires time and patience. You have to make sure you are visible everywhere and on every platform. A single branding strategy should be in place. What kind of brand image do you want to convey? Is your website a self help website with focus on helping the user, then your brand should inculcate qualities like supportive, easy to access, user friendly etc. By clearly defining what you offer you can stay in the user’s mind for a long time and decrease your reliance on search only traffic. Creating a cool brand image requires you to be active on mediums people use for various activities. You can use Instagram to upload cool photos so as to build your brand identity.

    4.) Ensure you update old content: What is visible these days is that people time and again focus on the new and forget the old. You must update your old content weekly in order to make sure your old posts get that edge in SERPS. Google loves fresh content and so does everyone else. By regularly updating your old content you gain over the people who had posted articles on the same topics a year or two ago and haven’t updated it since ages.

    5.) Clean your design:  What’s the use of having a website loaded to the brim with UX elements and features if the user doesn’t like it. Minimalism and flat design are trends that are here to stay. What is needed should be used on the site, and the whole site should have a coherent design. There should be proper call to action buttons like sign up for our newsletter, download our eBook, buy our product and other stuff like that! The typography plays an important part in the whole user experience. Make sure your design is well structured on the inside and outside.

    Related: Find out why StudioPress themes are used by over 112,000 website owners around the world today. Read more here.

    On the inside you can check the layout of your site by adding missing schema components, you can add DC i.e. Dublin core code and apple touch icon to improve your site’s seo score.

    These are some of the top SEO trends to follow in 2014. To read more about great SEO tips and money making tutorials, keep visiting ReginaldChan.net

     

    This post was contributed by Aditya Nath Jha and sponsored by MyRefers.com, a unique peer to peer referral based job search platform.

  • FormGet Review: A Powerful Contact Form Builder For Creating Forms & Collecting Payments

    FormGet Review: A Powerful Contact Form Builder For Creating Forms & Collecting Payments

    Guest Blogger

    Deep Wadhwa blogs at BloggersDog. I believe in helping people around. You can call me thinker; believer or exceptional writer.

    Today I am going to share my review about a new yet potential product that I came across recently. It’s FormGet– an application that helps you create any kinds of online forms.

    From Contact Forms To Guest List Planner Forms, it can be used to create any of them, in whichever way you want. So let’s take a look on how it works! Check this video that shows instant form building.

    Why it grabbed my attention???

    Its POWERFUL INTERFACE

    FormGet has got such a powerful yet easy interface that you will not get stuck anywhere from adding fields to embedding it on your site. It’s all in a flow all hassle free. The smooth interface makes your form building easy. Just clicking on the form fields will do the work. After adding form fields, you can rename them, give your form a new title relevant to your form and further drag and drop fields if you want to adjust their positions. Now click on “Next” and your form is ready.

    Setting up FormGet contact form builder

     

    Grab the Eyeballs

    The overall look of the form is elegant and attractive. It will surely grab your visitors eyeball.When your form gets ready, it gets navigated to a page where you will find different default “Design Templates” which you can use on your forms or else you can customize the form colors and your form footer section manually within the tab “Form Colors” and “Footer Settings”. You can even insert Paragraphs, Video , Images on your form Once the form is completed , you can use the Embed Code and embed the form on your site. Its as simple as that..

    You also can use them as tabbed widget, which looks cool when you put it on your website.

    Types of forms on FormGet

     

    Get Notified

    Every time you get an entry on your form you will receive an email-notification notifying you about the entry. The user also gets an email confirming about his form submission. The acknowledgment is necessary and FormGet has this feature.

     

    Share Your Forms

    The next amazing feature that caught my attention was its usage for those who don’t own a website. Everyone out there who thought about creating website and then create forms to collect information can just opt for FormGet blindly. It gives you a form URL with which you can share your form anywhere you want. Also it has social sharing options where you can share your form on different social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. So, all those who want to collect leads without website, you must surely give a try to this app.

     

    Do Smarter Email Marketing

    Its Email Integration with all major email marketing service providers makes it even more compelling and robust. If you have an account with any of these email marketing providers like MailChimp,

    Madmimi, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor etc. then you can easily store the leads coming through your forms to your mailing list. And now since you have the target customers information with

    you, shoot your marketing strategies with email campaigns. Not just this, it can also be integrated with Dropbox which can help save and manage the file uploads coming through the forms. Turns out to be really helpful..isn’t it? You can go through the videos for integration here.

     

    Make Money Out of Your Forms

    FormGet is integrated with payment gateway PayPal and so now you can collect payments via Forms. It’s easy, just add a Payment field to your form and rest it will do. So not just leads, you can make some good cash too, with these online forms. Its beneficial for those who want to create Hotel Booking Forms, Online Order Forms, Fee Registration Forms etc.

     

    Assign Forms

    Amidst trying this app I wondered, what if I have to create multiple forms for multiple sites. How will I manage all forms together? And then I stumbled upon its Agent Feature. This amazing feature allows you to assign forms to your team members and get the work shared. The team members or agents can handle the leads coming in through their assigned forms and manage them easily making the work much simpler and elementary. Its beneficial for large businesses where multiple forms are to be handled.

    FormGet Sharing Features

     

    Analyze Your Forms

    The form statistics is definitely a turn on as you can track how good is your form doing. It will show your form statistics according to views and entries, which can help you analyze which of your forms is better in collecting information.

    Apart from all these highlighted features, FormGet has got many tiny yet substantial features, like you can track the entry users details on your dashboard like country, OS and browser. You can also track the point of contact at which they entered on your form. Language Translation that enables you to create forms in your native language will also help your forms to penetrate in your local regions. Field validations, captcha to help avoid spams, real-time conversation with entry users etc are some of the other features.

     

    FormGet review

     

     

    Conclusion:

    FormGet is definitely promising when it comes to its features and management. It’s easy to use interface and robust features will make you form building experience better. It will not make you regret if you want to create effective online forms effortlessly. You can sign up for the free trial here and see if it will help you with your form creation.

  • ReginaldChan.net Is One Year Old!

    ReginaldChan.net Is One Year Old!

    First Year Anniversary

    Today, 12th June 2014, marked my first year anniversary for ReginaldChan.net.

    And I’m pumped. It has been a long road; probably a very tough one but I’m glad I made it through.

    Phew!

    Of course, I met with many friends down the road in blogging and thank you all for being there.

    In this article, I’ll expose all my secrets that I had experienced with for the past 12 months:

    • Traffic
    • Success and failures
    • Events

     

    How did ReginaldChan.net score in building blog traffic?

    Blog traffic report from Google Analytics

    My traffic isn’t huge and I am a strong believer that quality over quantity. This means that I focus on a very simple blogging strategy; more targeted traffic.

    As seen from the image above, I managed to gain 111,648 visits which equals to 306 visits per day. Personally, not much of an achievement compared to blogs who makes thousands of traffic a day.

    Google is still my main powerhouse for traffic followed by social media and email marketing. Contrary to what others claimed about social media being the main generator of traffic, if search engine (Google in particular) isn’t your main drive in traffic, you’re definitely doing something wrong!

    Want to build more blog traffic? Follow these steps:

    1. Do aggressive keyword research (my personal favorite tool ~ Long Tail Pro | Read my Long Tail Pro review here)
    2. Write articles over 1,500 words and highly optimized (I uses Scribe SEO for the matter)
    3. Perform on-page and off-page SEO strategy (very important)
    4. Share it on blogging network such as DoSplash, Klinkk, BlogEngage and Blokube
    5. Publishing on social media using social media automation (my personal favorite tool ~ HootSuite)
    6. Build a newsletter and even a small list is better than none. I highly suggest GetResponse since it is an extremely versatile email marketing services (and easy on your wallet too). I also have a GetResponse tutorial which will guide you to setup your first campaign.

     

    ReginaldChan.net successes within the first 12 months

    Income report from blogging

    I believe the biggest success is still my blog earnings. Here are my current (average) earnings:

    Affiliate sales ~ $500 +/- per month

    Ad banners ~ $150 +/- per month

    Business consultations services ~ $1,500 +/- per month

    Featured posts ~ $50 +/- per month

    Total estimated earnings per month ~ $2,200 per month

    On a bad month, I earn a mere $1,500 which is pretty A-okay to cover my spending especially with premium plugins, tools etc.

    And if you think I’m making big bucks out of this, think again. There are many ‘gurus’ out there who earns at least 10 digits per month compared to my little blog here.

     

    Honorable mentions is my second biggest success. I was mentioned many times in various blogs which I’m truly thankful of. Some of the biggest names that I can remember are:

    • Harvard University’s Blog
    • Yahoo Small Businesses
    • SEMrush
    • Shareaholic
    • UpCity
    • Traffic Generation Cafe
    • Referral Candy

    Not to forget, I was extremely lucky to be included in The Top 100 Bloggers on Triberr by Dashburst. It was a honor and thank you!

     

    In the past 12 months, I was also able to meet up with several top guys in the market. Of course, I kick started my first experts share on SEO 2014 and it was one hell of a challenge!

    On top of that, I was lucky to be able to connect with the decision makers in WP Engine, SEMrush and even landed myself some opportunities for beta testing apps.

    And recently, I have just secured a place with a publisher to publish my first book!

     

    ReginaldChan.net failures

    Blogging mistakes to avoid

    Yup, we all have them and I will be lying if I tell you that I didn’t.

    For starters, I wasn’t focusing on my blog enough to convert it into a business.

    I wasn’t offering my services when I started my blog. I only did it down the road; after 3 months. Until date, providing consultation services easily land me at least $1,500 per month which is huge.

    My failure? I didn’t start much earlier and didn’t capitalize my knowledge in blogging.

    Moral of the story: Use your skills and knowledge to monetize your blog!

    My second failure is that I was focusing too much on social media traffic. Don’t get me wrong, social media traffic (some call it referral traffic) is good but you are required to be active all the time just to get some quality traffic back.

    Seeing my situation, I know I wasn’t able to cope up with all the work and I changed my plan to focus slightly more on search traffic.

    The third mistake was a little odd (to be honest). I was focusing so much on specific traffic (for better ROI) but I left out the opportunity to make more money out of it.

    Take it an instant where I have only 300 traffic per day. Advertisers aren’t interested with these low traffic figures. They want huge 4 or 5 digits traffic a day … even if you have a 90% bounce rate!

    Specific traffic is good for affiliate sales but when it comes to Google Adsense or advertising, you’re on a huge losing side.

     

    Celebrating ReginaldChan.net first year anniversary

    Yes, I’m not letting you go empty handed. I’m giving away 6 months FREE hosting for you!

    I have several reseller hosting accounts and I believe it is time to give back.

    So, how do you claim your free hosting?

    1. Signup for my newsletter (skip this if you have already subscribed) | Sign up right here!
    2. Email me at reginald[at]reginaldchan[dot]net with the title “6 months FREE hosting”
    3. Sit back and relax (while checking out my cheap web hosting plans)

    Important note:

    • Free hosting is only applicable for yearly hosting
    • The cost of hosting per month is $4.99
    • You will entitle for 50% discount for the first year (you only pay $29.94 upfront)
    • All hostings come with a full 60 days money back guarantee
    • Free website migration if you need
    • Free website speed optimization and recommendation if you need

    I hope you enjoy this (small) celebration of mine. Again, my success isn’t huge and I am looking forward to grow even biggers.

    Thank you guys for all the support and I really appreciate it!

  • 115 Bite Size SEO Tips and Resources

    115 Bite Size SEO Tips and Resources

    Looking for the best SEO tips and resources guide? Well, you don’t have to look any further.

    In this article, I’ll be sharing 115 SEO tips and resources that you can instantly use for any SEO campaigns.

    And these are not your average tool to be honest. I use each and everyone of them at least once a month.

    So, yes! Rest assured that these are the real deal!

    I hope you enjoy reading these bit size SEO tips and tell me what you think using the comment form at the end of this article.

    Simple but actionanle SEO tips

    Google Webmaster Tool

    1. Determine top landing pages and find ways to monetize them
    2. Find current backlinks and check for any penalized sites
    3. Using Fetch and Render features monthly to have a fresh crawl
    4. Submit Sitemap to Google for post indexing
    5. Crawl error provides issues on the website that could lead to 404 errors and page not found
    6. Check for manual web spam penalization
    7. Check for HTML improvement and recommendation from Google
    8. Determine the top keywords and phrases for your website as indexed by Google
    9. Using Data Highlighter to help Google understand the website layout
    10. Unshow or disable sitelinks which are not relevant to search queries
    11. Determine which is top performer in terms of keywords
    12. Information on Click Through Rates (CTR) and adjust title to boost CTR rate
    13. Getting specific keyword ranking on Google
    14. Checking if the site is HTML ready and if structured data is enabled
    15. Blocking URL which are not relevant or links that you do not Google to index
    16. Setting up demographic features and targeted country (optional for bloggers but useful for eCommerce websites)
    17. Setup website to redirect to www or non www to avoid duplicate contents

    Google Analtics

    1. Determine demographic traffic
    2. Data of traffic source; referral, direct or search engines
    3. Provide information of age and gender
    4. Detailed information of visitors (new vs returning)
    5. Learn the engagement level of visitors with the duration of the blog visitors
    6. Provide information of the technology used to visit the blog (smartphones, tablet or desktop)
    7. Understanding general flow of visitors (sales funnel)
    8. Find the best keywords that provides the most clicks and traffic
    9. Determine which page or post that are providing the most CTR and traffic
    10. Insight of landing pages and indirectly, providing ways to improve conversion rate
    11. Creating custom reporting to track traffic and conversion changes

    Google Keyword Planner

    1. Find keyword ideas based on seed keywords
    2. Providing an estimated search volume per month
    3. Providing historical search volume and trends
    4. Determine the average number of competitions for Adword users
    5. Provide an estimated value of Cost Per Click (CPC) for those who are bidding for keywords
    6. Availability of keyword search based on geographical value or general
    7. Find new keywords based on keywords, related phrases and even websites
    8. Filtering keywords based on specific requirements
    9. Get search volume using specific codes (example: [exact match keywords], “related keywords” and general keywords)
    10. Free keyword suggestions by using keyword lists and suggestions

    Google Places (Local SEO)

    1. Extremely vital if you’re running an eCommerce website
    2. Placing a map and even enable Google Places could boost local search
    3. You can increase local SEO by using directories but it should not

    SEO tips for homepage, posts and pages

    1. Using heading tags of H1 to H4 for markup value
    2. Focusing on keyword density (recommended below 3%)
    3. Using keywords which has search value
    4. Using Bold, Italic and Underline to boost readership
    5. Providing valuable and relevant tags
    6. Permalinks to be clean and readable
    7. Make use of alt tags and image title
    8. Using caption and description on images to create value
    9. Focus in using one main keyword and several other related keywords per article
    10. Providing short but quality meta description
    11. Avoid keyword stuffing
    12. Each post should have a balance internal and external backlinks
    13. Avoid sharing external links which are low quality
    14. Avoid link exchange
    15. Use NoFollow tag for low quality or non related links
    16. Articles should be at least 600 words

    The importance of blog marketing for SEO

    1. After publishing a blog post, market it around to get a faster indexation
    2. Submit blog posts to content syndication sites
    3. Build links to the blog posts but providing value (indirectly increases the chance of trackbacks)
    4. Share the posts on social media and receive temporary traffic (and ranking) boost

    Guest posting

    1. A great way to get more backlinks but submit guest post with moderation
    2. Only accept quality guest post
    3. Avoid link drop at all cost
    4. Only write for quality and authority sites
    5. URL shared should only be your best articles

    SEO tips that you need to do for your website

    1. Use quality hosting for better loading speed
    2. Domain name to be short and memorable
    3. Avoid rude words on the domain name
    4. Exact match domain isn’t compulsory but recommended
    5. Focus on mobile SEO (mobile responsive themes, layouts etc)

    Looking for backlinks tips? Here are 7 to get started with!

    1. Focus in creating quality backlinks instead of numbers
    2. Getting one backlink from authority sites values more than hundreds from spammy sites
    3. Avoid black hat SEO unless you REALLY know what you’re doing
    4. Use a mixture of exact mach anchor text with related and general ones
    5. Focus in building a large ‘range’ of anchor texts
    6. Avoid over optimizing specific keywords
    7. Certain social media platform provides DoFollow backlinks

    General SEO tips for beginners

    1. If you’re just starting up, avoid the ‘try to dominate Google’ thinking
    2. SEO is usually overrated; just enjoy the whole SEO process
    3. Not doing SEO for a day won’t kill your traffic overnight
    4. If you want to master SEO, you need to read … A-L-O-T
    5. SEO results will not happen overnight; it takes time (months)
    6. Follow as closely as possible with Google guidelines and you’ll be pretty safe from any penalization
    7. Not all SEO tips works for everyone; just choose those which are relevant
    8. Avoid sitewide URL (placing URLs on footer or sidebar for example)
    9. Use robot.txt to ‘guide’ crawlers on your website
    10. Avoid stuffing over 1,000 links or files in your sitemap (you can have more than one sitemap)
    11. SEO plugins and tools like Yoast SEO, Raven Tool and Scribe SEO doesn’t guarantee good ranking; they just help to optimize your website by providing suggestions
    12. There are over 200 ranking factors to consider according to Moz (read more)

    Recommended free SEO plugins and tools to use in 2014

    1. Google Keyword Planner (general keyword research)
    2. Google Webmaster Tool (check for any crawl errors and keyword ranking)
    3. Google Analytics (general data on keywords and geographical research)
    4. Bing Webmaster Tool (alternative to Google Webmaster Tool)
    5. WordPress SEO by Yoast (helps to provide simple SEO insight and analytics)
    6. All In One SEO (alternative to WordPress SEO)
    7. Google XML Sitemap plugin (good combination to All In One SEO)
    8. Squirrly SEO plugin (freemium SEO plugin to help with advance SEO analytics)
    9. Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool (test your website if it is HTML5 and markup Schema.org)
    10. Google Trends (a great way to see what is trending and what’s not)
    11. MozCast (my personal favorite when it comes to checking Google algorithm changes)
    12. SEOquake (great FireFox plugin to check on on-page SEO)
    13. MozBar (alternative to SEOquake and great on Chrome)

    Best premium SEO plugins and tools (evergreen)

    1. Long Tail Pro (my personal keyword research tool ~ Download it for free and get $20 off if you decide to buy)
    2. Market Samurai (my second go-to tool for keyword research ~ Try it for free here)
    3. Scribe SEO (the best SEO plugin that provides excellent analytics and keyword suggestions by CopyBlogger ~ Read more about it here)
    4. SEOpressor (the best worth-for-money SEO plugin for beginners ~ Free trial)
    5. SerpBook (easy to use keyword tracking which updates twice a day ~ Check it out here)
    6. SEO PowerSuite (value for money and all-in-one SEO tool ~ Free download)
    7. Genesis Framework and child themes (the only WordPress themes that comes with superb inbuilt SEO setting ~ See StudioPress themes gallery here)
    8. AhRefs (this is my main backlink checker and probably the one that provides the most accurate data)
    9. MajesticSEO (a good alternative to AhRefs)
    10. Moz Pro (the pro version provides extremely detailed information and most of the time, comparable with Raven Tools)
    11. Raven Tools (excellent competitor to Moz Pro and this is also a great all-in-one SEO tool for agencies)
    12. SEMrush (a good alternative especially when you are need deep insight of your competitor and high CPC keywords ~ Try SEMrush here)

    Is there really the best SEO tools?

    Best SEO tips and resources 2014

    The answer is no. Each SEO tool or plugin works in a very different way. For example, I uses Scribe SEO for serious SEO analysis but it has lesser usage for beginners or leisure bloggers.

    In the end of the day, it all depends on what you really need and from there on, choosing the best SEO technique to fit your style is the best way out.

    Do you have any favorite SEO tools you would like to share? Tell me using the comment form below.

  • How To Import WordPress Comments To Disqus?

    How To Import WordPress Comments To Disqus?

    Disqus is a popular comment platform after the default WordPress comment system and CommentLuv (read more about CommentLuv). For many bloggers, the thoughts of exporting hundreds or thousands of comments from WordPress system to Disqus could be a very daunting experience.

    Lucky for you, I’m going to share how you can easily import all your WordPress comments straight into Disqus … without hassle.

    What is Disqus?

    According to Wikipedia, Disqus, Inc. is a blog comment hosting service for websites and online communities that uses a networked platform.

    What are the advantages using Disqus compared to CommentLuv or WordPress default comment system?

    Disqus is one of the best WordPress comment system

    Here’s a real fact.

    I know tons of bloggers who swear NOT to step foot onto my blog just because I don’t have CommentLuv.

    Yup, seriously.

    And the simple is really simple; they were looking for simple / easy backlinks (even though it’s pretty obvious that links on my comments are strictly no-follow).

    Here are some reasons why I changed to Disqus from the beloved CommentLuv:

    • Good by spam (Disqus help me clear over 200 spams a day)
    • Easy moderation of comments on various blogs with just the Disqus admin page
    • Disqus allows blog monetization (Yes!)

    Here’s my confession. The reason of me changing to Disqus is simply because I hated the number of spams I receive daily. On a good day, I receive around 200 and on bad days, I get over 500.

     

    How to import WordPress comments to Disqus?

    The whole process of importing and exporting comments into Disqus are fairly simple. There’s no need for hair pulling if you are worried of that.

    Just follow the steps below and you should be just fine.

    1. Download the Disqus plugin from your WordPress dashboard.

    Download Disqus plugin for WordPress

     

    2. Install and activate the Disqus plugin.

    3. Go to Disqus settings to configure the plugin.

    Setting up Disqus for WordPress

     

    4. Enter your Disqus shortname (you need to register first before you can get the shortname – Register here). The shortname can be anything. For me, I choose something that is easy for me to remember. One shortname represents one website and thus, you may create more shortnames if you have more than one website.

    What is Disqus shortname?

     

    5. Once you acquired the Disqus shortname, you should add it to Disqus and it will show automatically on your setting page.

    6. The next step is to setup Disqus login for your visitors. See the image below. All you need to do is to click on the hyperlink to get your API.

    How to acquire Disqus API

     

    7. The last step is to export all comments from WordPress default commenting system to Disqus platform. This can be done easily using the ‘Import and Export’ option on Disqus.

    Import WordPress comment to Disqus

    All you need to do is to click on the Export Comment button and just wait for it to complete. The more comments you have, the longer it will take for you to get the exporting comment done.

    Grab a coffee or a smoke while waiting for the comment to be exported to Disqus.

    It took me about 20 minutes to export over 2,300 comments from WordPress to Disqus.

    Once that is done, the Disqus comment system is ready for using and you can turn off any comment system you have on your blog.

     

    Do you find this tutorial useful?

    Importing WordPress comments to Disqus is pretty easy and it wouldn’t take long to get the job done.

    Do you have any issues with Disqus? Just fire up your questions using the comment form below and I’ll get back to you real soon!