Just a quick post for those of you who want to check the speed of your websites and also analyze any issues that maybe causing slow loading of websites and blogs.

Google has a developed a cool free website tool called Page Speed that works with the Firefox add-on Firebug, and it analyzes your websites and offers a list of problems that cause slow loading websites, which we all know are an irritant and can cause visitors to leave before they even enter.

This tool also tells you how to fix these issues for faster load times.

Learn more at Google Webmaster Central Blog - Page Speed and get make sure to get the Firefox Firebug Addon as well as Page Speed, which, has very user-friendly instructions for install as well as use of the tool.

There is so much malware out there that can downloaded to your computer without you even knowing it, referred to as “drive-by” malware that all you have to do is visit a website and if it is infected that virus will infect your PC as well.

I have been infected twice in the past by these  “drive-by” downloads and they had completely damaged my computers when Trojan viruses infected my PC, disabled my Internet browser and I had to have the entire operating system reinstalled, this also cost $100 since I no longer had the original OS disk and I lost all my data. This really sucks!

These days even the most trusted sites are getting infected with the latest iFrame Trojan, that infected, USA Today, ABC News, Target and Wal-Mart websites.

Today I went to a favorite website of mine that I visit often and they too were hacked by the iFrame Trojan and if it weren’t for my excellent virus software it would have infected my computer.

Now, I have used and tried every type of anti virus software you can imagine, Norton, McCaffee, AVG, PC Tools, even the free version of Kaspersky, but I gotta tell you, no one is better than Avast and I MEAN NO ONE and they are FREE!

By the way, I had Norton when those viruses ate my two computers, a total piece of crap!

In the last two days alone I have escaped being infected by serious viruses a total of 10 times, that is 10 viruses just in the last two days, all by just visiting websites. And all because of Avast Anti Virus and their excellent virus real time and drive-by protection.

As soon as I enter a website that is infected, Avast literally sounds alarm bells, with a voice warning me of the danger and then a screen comes up where I can choose to abort the connection to that website, or move the virus to quarantine. In short Avast automatically blocks any virus or malware from downloading onto my computer from bad websites.

Avast is the absolute best real time protection you can get, and their computer scans are accurate at detection and quarantine.

Avast is free for home users. They have a Pro version, but basically the only difference between the home and the Pro is that the dashboard interface is better in the Pro version.

But, the real time protection is the same for both and absolutely fantastic, I highly recommend them for a much safer web surfing experience.

Make sure that you download the Avast FREE home version because they do have a free trial for the Pro version that expires after 30 days and then they will ask you to upgrade. You have to register for the free version so that you get your activation key.

Learn more at Avast.com

Data Backup

Another good resource for computer security is Mozy Online Data Backup, they give you 2GB of online data backup FREE!

This is another highly recommended service. You can set up whatever files you want to back up on your computer, daily, weekly or whatever you choose and Mozy will back them up and store them on their servers.

Online backup is a great way to secure your files and keep them safe and without having to use up tons of CD disks.

Believe me you do not want to be caught without having your files and data secure, especially if you have as much data on your computer as I have on mine. Visit Mozy and get 2GB Free, no strings attached.

Also make sure that you have WP-Database Backup plugin if you are running a wordpress blogs. It will email you a back of your database daily, weekly or whatever you select and if your blog is hacked the back up file can restore all your posts and content. Wordpress blogs are vulnerable to hacking, so better safe than sorry.

Lately, I have been hearing from a lot of people who are struggling with getting higher search engine rankings. Mainly this is happening to them because while they find highly searched for keywords, they are not evaluating the competition correctly. Any Internet marketing campaign starts with keyword research, but doing the proper evaluation of competing sites for those keywords is crucial for rank success.

In a nutshell if you want higher search engine rankings you need to identify the competition for respective keywords in the right way as part of an overall keyword research strategy.

It is not a crap shoot and luck has nothing to do with it. It is true that higher search engine rankings depend a lot on keyword anchor text backlinks, but higher search engine rankings are also closely related to the proper gaging of competition for those keywords.

Higher Search Engine Rankings with Keyword Research

Once you find a keyword, you must look at the competition in two steps, both of which are crucial for higher search engine ranks.

1. Google that keyword like this: allintitle:”keyword”. Many people are not doing this, they just search for keyword, this is a mistake.

Searching with the allintitle “keyword” gives you much more precise results of the true competition for the keyword, because it only includes those sites that are trying to rank for those keywords and the results show you those sites that have the keyword in their header/meta/title tag.

But when you search for just the keyword alone then you get all the sites that just mention that keyword on their site in some way and they are not using it site-wide as their main keyword. Those sites that just mention the keyword are easily overcome, as the SE’s, and especially Google will give your site much more relevance and weight as your site uses the keyword site-wide.

So those sites that just mention the keywords will not be your true competition. The allintitle:”keyword”, will show you the true competitors for those keywords that you will need to overcome for higher search engine ranks.

Example:

laptop = 202,000,000
vs.
allintitle:”laptop” = 18,300,000

Big difference there that can make or break the decision to use a certain keyword and how easy it will be to rank for it.

2. Look at websites on the 1st page results. Many avoid doing this, another mistake! See what sites are sitting on page 1 of SERPS and specifically their Page Rank. If they are mostly PR0 - PR3 then the job to get to page 1 and achieve higher search engine ranks will not be very difficult. But, if page 1 is full of PR4, PR5 + sites then it will be difficult to outrank these sites.

First, time is on their side, they are aged and have authority and logistically it will be difficult to catch up. Second, it will take tons more effort and many more backlinks to get to page 1 because you will have to outrank those those sites. I am not saying it can’t be done, but, it is very hard and any seasoned honest SEO will tell you to look elsewhere.

Also, look at their Yahoo backlinks, age of domain and number of indexed pages, all are good indicators of their strength and how difficult it would be to out rank them.

If you look at page 1 results for allintitle:”laptop”, you will see that it’s all authority sites and no way that a small niche site could ever get to page 1 for that keyword.

These steps should be taken not only for your site-wide keywords, but also for the keywords you will use on your inner and sub pages, that is if you want higher search engine rankings for all your website/blog pages.

Tools for Evaluating Page 1 Results

There are two great browser add-ons that will give you all necessary information to evaluate those sites on page 1 directly from the SERPS. These tools are also vital for any Internet marketer to have because they show all possible information about any websites on the web, including your own.

SEO Toolbar for Firefox - Aaron Wall’s (of SEOBook) SEO Toolbar for Firefox browser shows all pertinent info for whatever site you are viewing, like highlighting no-follow links and pages, page rank, number of index pages in major search engines, site age, Alexa, DMOZ listed, Yahoo backlinks, MSN links and lots, lots more. Must Have!

SEO Quake Toolbar - Similar to the Firefox SEO Toolbar, shows pertinent SEO and Internet Marketing information for any website but this one is available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Both of these when enabled (one click on their icons from the browser status bar) will show all selected information in SERP results under each website listing.

They are both similar, however you really need both, because only the SEO Toolbar highlights all no-follow links in red on any website. And, only Seo Quake places the information toolbar at the top of any website page you are visiting and not just in the SERPS so you can view all those stats on a page by page basis.

Make sure once you installed these, to activate them by clicking their icons in the browser bottom status bar, when they are on they will be in color, when off, they are black and white.

Now go get some higher search engine ranks!

A reader emailed me and asked for some advice about internal links:

“link titles” - that extra fill-in-the-blank box when entering a link in a post? Is there any value or is it just something nifty for the reader to mouse over?”

First, he is referring to Internal Links that are links back to your own home page and sub pages within your site’s content with the keywords you are targeting and want to rank for in the anchor text. Learn more at: The importance of Internal Link Building for On-Site SEO.

Purpose of Internal Links and
Title Tag vs. Anchor Text

1. Internal links are good for SEO. But, for SEO purposes the title tag is useless, the keyword anchor text is key to relate the page you’re linking to for the keyword you want it to rank for.

2. Improve Bounce Rate. Internal linking improves bounce rate (the rate at which visitors leave your site) and gives readers more stuff to browse on the site thereby keeping them there longer. The Title Tag, which shows up when the reader mouses over the link, is used for this purpose and is crucial to captivate reader interest and get them to read the contents of those links.

So, for example, while the anchor text (the keyword I want that page to rank for) may be Website Traffic, the Title will show more detail about the link, such as “Website Traffic that Converts are You Missing Out?”

Also, it is irritating to read a page and see internal links and not have any clue what is there, it is always good to give your readers a sneak peek.

Title Tag Code

Most softwares, including Wordpress have a fill in box within the add link area for the title and then it will automatically code in HTML, but here is how the code looks:

<a title=”Sneak Peek” href=”http://domain.com/”>Anchor Keyword</a>

Here is how it looks live with the title tag appearing with a mouseover:

No-Follow/Do-Follow Link Attribute

In Wordpress and most website software links created within text are automatically Do-Follow. For Google, when links are Do-Follow you are passing page rank juice to the url in the link and in essence giving it a vote of confidence helping their SEO efforts vs. No-Follow simply means that Google will not follow the link nor assign any rank to it based on your link juice to them.

When to add No-Follow:

For internal links you always want to pass your own internal page rank, also for reciprocal links and other sites that you may want to give a Google strong backlink to.

But, in reality there are several links that you may not want to do-follow and those need to be set manually as no-follow.

Examples for No-Follow:
Affiliate Links (should always be no-follow)
Authority/Reference sites cited to support content
Referral sites provided for readers
…and any other sites that you don’t need to waste PR juice on

Manually Adding No-Follow Link Attribute:

To add the no-follow attribute you need to go to the HTML source of your web page, in Wordpress it is done in the post/page editor by clicking on the HTML tab and manually adding “rel-”nofollow” as shown below:

<a title=”Sneak Peek” href=”http://domain.com/”rel=”nofollow”>Anchor Keyword</a>

Free Headers - Must See!

By the way, I did not want to do a separate post on this, but you have to check out this website I found with free website/blog headers at: Free Web Page Headers. They are simply gorgeous with tons of themes and absolutely free, just right click and save image as and then resize to fit your needs in a graphics software such as Gimp Image Software, which, by the way is also free, quite famous and a complete graphics/photo editing software.

By, JR

Google has launched a new keyword research tool intented for Adwords research, to find more PPC keywords, BUT, this tool can be used to find relevant and longtail keywords for any website pages or blogs and blog post titles.

This keyword research tool is different BECAUSE it is based on YOUR SITE, not just on general words.

Lots of Research Options:

1. You can just enter your URL

2. Enter you URL and enter specific keywords to research

3. Set up additional filters, like monthly searches, competition amounts, like low and high and more.

The results are:

• Based on actual Google search queries
• Matched to specific pages of your website

Just log in with your Google info, enter your information and get:

1. Set of keywords related to the pages of your sites/blogs

2. Actual number of monthly searches

3. Competition

4. Cost of PPC bidding for each keyword, this can tell you how valuable that keyword phrase is.

How to Use This Information:

This tool is not meant for researching new site keywords but the best way to use this tool is to get good keywords and long tail keywords when writing blog posts and adding additional pages to your websites using keywords that people are searching for.

This tool is new and still in beta, but I found some cool keywords for this blog, check it out: GOOGLE SEARCH-BASED KEYWORD TOOL

By, JR

Is this you dealing with website content and article writing?

Then here are some really great goodies that will restore some peace and sanity.

As a follow up to my post 16 Website Content Ideas, here is a great resource to get 1000 Free PLR articles that I found when perusing the net, and since I am a cheap skate, I was looking for PLR that was quality and free and I found it!!

What is PLR?

Just to review PLR is Private Label Rights, PLR is usually sold or in this case given away and this is an article license that provides content that you can do WHATEVER you want with, including, edit, rewrite, take credit for and republish verbatim as your own, but DO NOT do the last one.

Goodie #1

1,000 FREE PLR ARTICLES - This PLR pack has tons of niches and topics and many of the articles have really quality information and are pretty detailed.

No Catches just 3 steps: 1. They ask for your email to send the PLR. 2. There is a sales page to some other products (actually look pretty good) that you can skip at the bottom of the page if you wish. 3. Get an email with your PLR download link, well worth that effort!

Using PLR Effectively:

Always, Always rewrite PLR. Keep the substance but regroup sentences, change common words, rewrite in your own words, etc.. to make the articles unique. Remember that you don’t know how many others have used the PLR and they should not be used as exact duplicates but used to make life easier not having to write content from scratch.

I found a couple of articles that I actually cut up and re-pieced together to make a great page of content for my computer niche site.

As long as you rewrite it, PLR can be used for Article Marketing as well as website content.

Hell of a lot easier than writing from scratch!

Goodie #2

Free Duplicate Content Checker

DUPE FREE PRO - Compares articles side by side and gives you a percentage of the duplicity between articles so you can check your original PLR with the rewritten for duplication percentage.

1. Copy and paste original and rewritten article into separate areas

2. Hit the COMPARE button - Bam! the software gives a percentage of duplicity, VERY COOL!!

It even highlights the duplicated phrases for easy changes.

And, this tool calculates keyword density for any phrase or keyword you put in!!!

I would suggest you get your free copy of Dupe Free Pro NOW, I doubt they will be giving it away forever, frankly I am surprised it is free now.

Now, I honestly cannot advise on the ideal percentage, but I shoot for anything below 15%, if anyone disagrees with this number please feel free to comment and give your input.

What do you guys think?