People have been emailing me web marketing questions today. After hitting send, I thought of something that Chris Mickens said "Don't waste a good conversation by having it in private." So here are the questions and answers from my inbox today. Names have been changed...
Q: Keyword Research Tools
Hi Andy!
Wanted to ask you a question: what keyword research sites/tools do you recommend? I have been using Google Adwords, but since your presentation, I've been doubting its usefulness.
Despite the irrelevance of the 'competition' info, do you think it's a useful tool? What do you use? You mentioned Spyfu, which I checked out, but I noticed that you have to pay to see most of the helpful information. If you use Spyfu, and assuming that you pay to see all the info/keyword results, is it worth the fee?
I did some searches of free keyword research tools, and I'm not impressed so far. I guess you get what you pay for! Just wondered if you had any advice on what the best keyword research tool is. What do you use?
Thanks so much Andy!
[Girl Seeks Tool]
A: Keyword Research Tools
Hello, [Girl Seeks Tool].
There are many keyword research tools, but I really only use Google's. I figure they have the most data. I don't mind that it doesn't show organic competition. I think that's one of the hardest things to gauge, so I want to do it myself, manually, by looking at search results.
Spyfu.com is really more of a competitive analysis tool. It's fun to see what competitors are ranking for, but it's never the first place I look. Compete.com and Alexa also have some competitive analysis data.
OK, [Girl Seeks Tool], get ready for this... here is the Mother of All Lists for SEO Tools. The list is curated by Annie Cushing of SEER interactive. She's also an excellent writer. I hope to one day have her do a post for my blog....
With great power comes great responsibility. Use your new powers for good! :)
Andy
Q: Guest Bloggers Here or Guest Blog There?
Andy, all going well this week? I hope so.
Since you have mastery in guest blogging, I have this question about strategy.
I posted a message in a private group inviting people to exchange guest blogging. 3 people have asked to guest blog on my site. None have asked me to do the same. One of the 3 doesn't have a blog. Should I be at all concerned? I'm not looking for equal tit-for-tat but I'm looking at the overall. Could it be a bad thing to have 10 guest bloggers on my site and I'm a guest blogger on 3?
[Guest Guess]
A: Guest Bloggers Here or Guest Blog There?
Hello, [Guest Guess]
Great question. Actually, it's possible you'll get more benefit from having guest bloggers on your site, rather than you guest blogging on their site. Here are some of the factors...
They blog at your place! Good for you if...
- They're a great writing
- They have a good social network and they promote it
- They write something search engine friendly (Bonus!)
You blog at their place! Good for you if...
- You get a link back, especially if the link includes a keyphrase and their site has a higher domain authority than yours
- They have an active readership: comments and tweets
If you blog there, and they blog here, and the posts go live at the same time, Google may think you just traded links. This kind of reciprocal linking is obvious to Google. You would both lose some of the benefit. I don't necessarily exchange posts with people. I just find places I want to blog and pitch. And I find bloggers I like and ask them to submit. They're not necessarily connected...
Hope this helps!
Andy
If you'd like to meet Andy and ask him your questions in person, you can find him at the following upcoming events:
- Big Ooga! (Oct 2)
- Crains Small Business Week (Oct 4)
- Marketing Hackathon (Oct 26, 27)
Hope we'll see you there.
