Free SEO Resources To Take Advantage of

Luckily for us, there are some great free SEO resources out there that can help us with our daily SEO. Because they each perform a unique task, it can be difficult finding the ones that could be the most helpful, so I did a little research and this is what I found. Today I’d like to break down 8 free SEO resources that can help you gain traffic, exposure, and an SEO advantage. These aren’t your typical websites – we aren’t talking back site explorers, backlink checkers, Adwords tools, or anything not already talked about.

• Paywithatweet.com

Here’s a great tool that any marketer should think about using. If you develop an e-book, app, or even a PDF that has value, you can use this website to make it downloadable only if the customer tweets about it. This can create some great exposure – when they tweet about it, others get curious, and they want to download it. Then they tweet, and the next set of eyes look into it, and you’ve created a ton of exposure. This is an easy tool to use, customers can tweet about it in seconds, and in the end, you get more downloads and more views on your website. Obviously, you want to make it only downloadable from your site to get maximum exposure. Of course, the tool is totally free.

• Evernote.com

This is a great tool to keep track of some of the ideas you have. A lot of us reading have to upkeep a blog, and sometimes we have great post topics we think of, but over time we forget about them. You can use this tool to save your ideas, and your ideas can be easily searched. It also works on mobile devices.

• Icerocket.com

This is a tool that helps you search blogs, twitter, Facebook, news, images, and social buzz for different keywords. By typing in “SEO” on the twitter option, you can find tweets about SEO, Twitter profiles about SEO, and anything else SEO related on twitter. This is a great tool for finding twitter followers, blogs to comment on/build relationships with, Facebook profiles to like/interact with, and beyond.

• Followerwonk.com

Like Icerocket, this tool can help you find twitter followers. Since this website is only designed for finding twitter followers, you have a lot more capabilities and success than Icerocket. This is great for those lowly twitter profiles with little to followers & interaction.

• Trunk.ly

This website lets you create a profile and save links from twitter and any other links you want to add. You can add RSS feeds, interact with other users, and build relationships. You can turn this into a great library of searchable links.

• Pingomatic.com

If you ever update your blog, this is the tool to use to let blog services no about it. Pingomatic is a ping service that is simple and to the point. It saves your blog’s information so each time you visit after the first, just click “Send Pings” and your done. There are other ping services, but in most cases I only use this one when I update my blog.

• Postrank.com

This unique website helps brands and websites connect with influential online publishers to help get the word out. It also gives you analytics & data on your content, social media presence, and more. It’s a great set of tools for maximizing your content’s exposure. Recently Post Rank has been acquired by Google, so we’ll have to wait and see what direction these tools are heading in.

• Bit.ly custom links

Lastly, we have Bit.ly (but we all know about Bit.ly!). You may think bit.ly is just a URL shortening website, but little did you know how much SEO value bit.ly links can have when you customize the links. Bit.ly allows you to add keywords in the shortened URL to help your content rank for the terms it wants to. This is a powerful tool – by using this in twitter and other social media sites, the more these links get passed around, the more you’ll see your content skyrocket up the SERPs.

Hopefully you can put some of these free SEO resources and tools to work, because they all offer something that can be extremely useful. If you have any other free websites/tools like the ones, please let me know in the comments below. I love feedback from my readers :).

Thanks for reading! If you like my stuff, feel free to subscribe to my RSS, +1/like this page, or check out my featured content (sidebar).

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Dofollow Blogs List – Blogging & SEO Blogs

Pic from A2ztricks.com

If you didn’t already know, luckily for us there are some blogs out there that managed to remove the rel=nofollow tag from their blog comments. This means you can get quality, dofollow links from just commenting on a blog! Yes, you do have to contribute 3-4 high quality sentences relevant to the subject, and still your comments might get rejected, but nonetheless this is a great way to learn SEO & gain some dofollow links at the same time. So, I did some research and created a high quality dofollow blogs list.



When I created the list I wanted to make sure they were blogs that YOU could comment on – some people have lists with all types of dofollow blogs, like financial, small business, and even a yoga blog, and not all of us can provide helpful comments to those blogs that can get accepted. Chances are that if you’re here on this SEO blog, you know a little bit of SEO. This means that I’m providing a list of dofollow blogs that YOU can relate to - mostly SEO, Internet Marketing, Blogging, and personal blogs. I made sure to only choose dofollow blogs that are updated frequently. I checked each one manually to make sure they’re dofollow. So, here’s the dofollow blogs list, organized as such: URL, Page Rank, and subject of blog (updated 7/18/11).

Dofollow Blogs List

1. adsenseurdu.com – 2 – Adsense, Blogging, SEO
2. affordable-internet-marketing.com – 4 – Internet Marketing, SEO
3. another-blogger.com – 3 – Blogging, Making Money Online, SEO
4. barrywise.com – 3 – programming, SEO, web development
5. betterbloggingforbloggers.com – 3 – Blogging
6. blog.articlesnatch.com – 5 – Article Marketing, SEO, Social Web
7. bloggeruniversity.blogspot.com – 4 – Blogging, Internet
8. bloggingwithoutablog.com – 3 – Blogging
9. bluehatseo.com – 5 – SEO
10. bosmol.com – 3 – Social Media, Web 2.0
11. clicknewz.com – 4 – Internet Marketing, Blogging
12. corporateraiter.com – 1 – Advertising, Internet
13. currybet.net – 5 – Personal Blog, Journalism, Digital Media
14. deardrmoz.com – 4 – Personal blog
15. dougchampigny.com – Internet Marketing
16. dreamsystemsmedia.com/blog – 4 – Internet Marketing, SEO, Social Media
17. freelanceseoindia.co.in/seo-freelancer-india-blog – Internet Marketing, SEO
18. grokdotcom.com – Internet Marketing, SEO
19. hellboundbloggers.com – 0 – Technology, Social Media, Wordpress
20. idowebmarketing.com – Internet Marketing
21. kikolani.com – 5 – Blogging, Blog Marketing, Social Media
22. kimrandall.me – 3 – Internet, Social Media
23. marketing-results.com.au/blog – 4 – Internet Marketing, SEO
24. markrushworth.com – 2 – SEO
25. memwg.com – 4 – Adsense
26. seoaddicted.com – 2 – Internet Marketing, SEO, Web Development
27. seobythesea.com – 5 – SEO
28. seo-expert-web-design-services.com – 2 – SEO, Web Design, Wordpress
29. smuggecko.com – 5 – SEO
30. thebitbot.com – 3 – SEM, SEO
31. theopinion.in – 1 – Blogging, Social Media, Technology
32. wassupblog.com – 4 – Blogging, Making Money, SEO
33. wordpress-websitebuilder.com – 4 – Wordpress

Now here’s a short list that use nofollow links for your commenting name, but they use CommentLuv – a tool that creates a link to your latest post on your RSS feed, and it’s a dofollow link.

1. comluv.com – 5 – Blogging, Guest Blogging
2. geeks4share.com – 4 – Blogging, Internet Marketing, SEO
3. seocopter.com – 1 – SEO
4. techpatio.com – 3 – Blogging, Social Media, Technology

This last section is of blogs that I think have dofollow links, but I’m not sure. If you can find out, please let me know in the comment section below so I can remove it from the list if necessary.

1. blog.mofuse.com – 5 – Content Management, Internet, SEO
2. blogging-techies.blogspot.com – 0 – Blogging, Internet
3. dumblittleman.com – 6 – Productivity Advice
4. seodiva.net – 3 – SEO

Yes, I know you can find another dofollow blogs list with a larger number, but who has time to comment on 50+ blogs? I made sure only to feature blogs that you can relate to & comment on, as well as ones that are high quality and are updated frequently (for the most part). If you are having problems with any of the blogs above, please let me know in the comment section below.

Thanks for reading! Please subscribe to my RSS or stumble this page. Do you think there are any high quality dofollow blogs that I left out? Please let me know in the comments below!

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Small Business Local Search Essay

A couple days ago I came across an SEO contest on Bruce Clay's website that was giving out prizes for the best entry on this question:

How would you advise a small business owner on how best to use SEO, PPC, or Social Media to drive conversions to a local business? (You had to pick either SEO, PPC, or Social Media).

So, naturally I was bored and had enough desire to write an essay on the subject. I was then thinking about sending my entry in and competing for the prizes that were being given away, but then I realized something. Chances are, I wasn't going to win this contest, and this piece of content would find a better home on my blog instead of his. Secondly, if I did submit, I wouldn't get any links in return, just an entry into the contest. So, here's what I wrote. I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below, and tell me anything I missed.

SEO is beautiful. Imagine a lead generating technique that costs little of your time to learn, and can target the largest concentrated audience this world has ever seen. Every day millions of people are searching for your product through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and all you have to do is to get noticed by them. Yeah, it’s not as easy as it sounds, and it will takes hours and hours to make it all pay off, but this isn’t exactly marketing; you don’t need a big budget, you won’t have to worry about revenue offsetting fixed costs, you just have to worry about how creative you can get. Through search engines your business can get exposure that local advertising and business cards can’t compete with.

As I said before, you have to get creative, but first you have to get to the point where you can do that. Your goal is to have the search engines be able to read (index) your site, understand what each page is about, and help it understand just how truly important your content is.

To help search engines index your page and make it worth featuring in their search results, you have to make your website SEO friendly. This is basic, yet 100% necessary. I don’t care how great of an SEO you are; if your page isn’t readable by the search engines, it won’t make it to the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This would take too much time to explain every detail, so I suggest using online sources, free e-books, or even an actual book on the different things to make your website readable to the search engines. If you have this done, you’re on the same playing field as all your top competitors.

By Definition, Search Engine Optimization is the practice of using the search engines to feature your content when different keywords or phrases are searched. Therefore, you want to designate different pages for different keywords on your site. This is called creating a landing page. A landing page could be your home page, a blog post, or an article on your site. Once you choose which page is your landing page for a specific keyword, you need to optimize it for the search engines. You can do this by featuring the keyword in the Title of the page, the meta description, the content (I recommend a 2-5% keyword density), and even in the Alt Text of a picture. This is letting the search engines know that this is in fact a page about *Your Keyword*.
How serious are you about local search?

I say this because when you create the title of your home page, lead generation pages, landing pages and beyond, you have to figure out just how focused you are on local search. If local is your undoubted #1 and only goal, consider putting your location in your home page title. For example, if I wanted to rank high in local search in Tampa for SEO Services, I would make my home page title something like “Tampa, FL SEO Services provider”. This has it’s advantages and disadvantages – if you put the location in the title, you rank a lot higher for local search, and get higher quality traffic. At the same time, on global search you will have a lot lower CTR (Click Through Rate) because the majority of searchers are not from Tampa, FL. This is a vital decision – you need to figure this out before you start any type of Off Site SEO.

Now, the single most important aspect of SEO that separates Rand Fishkin from the average SEO is creativity. Creativity is HUGE – it doesn’t get talked about much because it is such a broad subject. Here’s what I mean – creating a landing page can take a day, but promoting it is an endless process. The top analytic that Google uses to show a page’s importance is through how many links it has pointing to it. This is called link building. You want to build a link profile that features diversity, quality, and bulk. You want links from as broad a range of websites as possible, you want high quality links on pages viewed by large audiences, and in general a large amount of links. There are a number of specific link building techniques local business owners can take advantage of immediately. Here’s a quick list.

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Free Stumbles, No Strings Attached

Recently I have discovered how truly amazing StumbleUpon is and how it can bring some serious traffic to your site’s most interesting pages if you know how to use it. StumbleUpon is a discovery engine to help you find content on the web you would be interested in, so by typing in your interests, you can start stumbling upon new exciting web materials. My goal through this post is to get you in on some StumbleUpon traffic by giving out free stumbles.

First things first – if you don’t have the StumbleUpon add on for Firefox, you need to get it here. This will give you all the features of StumbleUpon while you are surfing the web, so if you like something, you don’t have to go to StumbleUpon.com to stumble it, you can just hit the “I like it!” button.

So, here’s the plan. I will stumble any website/page you want me to. If you’re lucky, other people will find your stuff, and if they like it, they will also stumble it, revealing it to more and more people. The ideal situation is to have your content being stumbled so more people get their eyes on your website. If your content is good enough, this means lots and lots of traffic.

For all those here just for the free stumbles, all you need to do is comment on my free stumbles post in this format:

Jon,
Stumble my website: *insert URL*
Thanks for the free stumbles, I always thought you were the greatest.

Now, will I still stumble your website even if it’s not in the above format? We’ll find out :).

OK guys, I want to let you in on a little link building secret (well it’s not a secret, but it’s pretty cool). Hopefully your site has at least one piece of link bait that people would openly link to and generally like. But chances are, you’re having a little trouble getting it seen by lots of eyes. This is where StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery comes in: You can get Paid Stumbles for $0.05 a piece, which is at least 10 times cheaper than advertising it through Adwords. Now, for each time someone likes your stumble, you get a free stumble, so all you have to do is get the ball rolling, and if your stuff is enjoyable/linkable, people will like it and BAM, your racking up free stumbles and tons of exposure. If you want to, check out Wiep Knol's post on the subject and how successful this technique can be. UPDATE: Just found out that you have to choose either the $0.10 or $0.25 paid options to be allowed to earn free stumbles.

Currently I’m testing the above idea out on my link building techniques page. I’m going to start off by using $20 worth of credit, with a $2 limit a day, and seeing if I can get some free stumbles and more importantly a few links. Yeah, it’s not a lot of money at all, but I’m going to see what happens and blog about the results right here on my site.

Thanks guys for the read, and I hope you guys enjoy me stumbling your content at no cost. If you are a kind hearted person, you can do one of three things: Link to or Stumble this page, read my other posts on my blog and get involved by commenting and telling me your thoughts, or subscribing to my RSS Feed.

Remember, this blog post is not giving out free stumbles, but if you go to this free stumbles post, you can get some by commenting.

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My Strangely Efficient Article Marketing Technique

One of the first ever challenges I had to tackle as an SEO was manually submitting articles for one of my clients. They didn’t want to take any chances with any auto submitting software, and in their small uninteresting niche, there were few off site SEO tasks that needed to get done. So, I had to develop a system to efficiently submit articles to 50-100 article directories, as this was one of the white hat ways to get links when your website’s niche is as bland as theirs was.


My system is based solely off of a plain text pad. Almost every article directory asks for the same information, but the only significant difference from site to site is the amount of links allowed in the article body and about the author/resource box. Because of this, I would take all the information for one article, and make several copies, each with a different combination of links in the article body and about the author box.
Here’s an example using one of my blog posts:





First of all, excuse my atrocious use of Paint. Now notice the different parts all set to go in this file. You have the title, description, body, resource box, and tags/keywords all ready to copy & paste. Now, notice at the top what the name of the file it is: “What Does Google Like To See 0 0”. I use the first 25 characters or so of the title, then I write two numbers at the end. The first number is the number of links in the article body, and the second number is the number of links in the resource box. This makes things handy when I’m looking through a long list of text files; I look for the title, then the appropriate amount of links based off of the allowed amount for that specific article directory.

If you don’t get the idea by now, the point is to make it really easy to copy & paste each article with the appropriate amount of links in each. But wouldn’t a folder of all these text files take a long time to make? Well, not necessarily. Here’s the method I use to create these in a time friendly manner:

1. Copy and paste the title, description, body, a default resource box, and tags/keywords in the format as shown above. Save the file as “*Title* 0 0”. (Make sure you replace *Title* with the title of your article.)
2. Open your spreadsheet of premade anchor text links (wait, did I forget to mention to have this created?).
3. First start by putting one anchor text link in the default resource box (try and make sure this is your highest targeted keyword). Save the file as “*Title* 0 1”.
4. Repeat this process, adding one anchor text link at a time, and continually adding 1 to the second number in the file name. Do this until you get to the highest number of anchor text links you want in your resource box; I usually limit myself at 5.
5. Now, because most article directories that let you put links in your body also let you put 2 links in your resource box, open the file “*Title* 0 2”.
6. Add anchor text links into the body one by one, each time saving a new file.
7. Once you reach about 4 or 5 in your article body, you’re good to go.

About making a spreadsheet of premade anchor text links – this helps expedite the process. Look at the picture below for how I format something like this in a very simple way:


This sounds complex, but once you do it a few times, you get into a good rhythm. Because your only adding one link at a time and then saving, you get multiple versions of the same article as text files.

For all you out there doing manual submissions, I highly suggest you try this technique. I’ve had to submit 1000’s of articles, and by doing this I have saved not only my time but also my client’s money.

Here’s my last tip: Take advantage of article directories that let you save Drafts. If you submit all your available articles at once on each site as drafts, then all you have to do is login each week and click submit on 2 more articles. It sounds time consuming at first, but if you can set aside a few hours or a day depending on how many articles you have ready to submit, you should go ahead and do this. I know sometimes I don’t have time to submit articles when I know I have to, and by doing this it takes me under a minute to submit 2 new articles on each site (I like to limit 2 new articles/a week per site, but if you crank out more content than that on a daily basis, then you can up that number to your liking).

Well as always, I really appreciate you reading. If you have a heart, then you’ll subscribe to my RSS Feed (just kidding, but seriously).

Here’s my question to my readers: Do you see any flaws in my technique, and if so, how could you improve them? I’d also like to hear any other ways you guys submit articles.

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