Ann Smarty just wrote a real smart (I know the pun’s corny but I couldn’t resist!) post about comprehensive keywords analysis. There she outlined some ways that will help you do a more in depth keywords analysis sans the usual keyword research tools.

Some of the tools she mentioned included”

• Dictionaries;
• Lexicons;
• Twitter search; and
• Synonym listing tools such as Google Adwords External and Synonym.com.

In the post she described how each tool can be used to come up with a more comprehensive list of keywords that will make for richer content.

Obviously this type of keywords research is only for those that are really committed to learning more about their own content AND doing the best possible SEO job. The great thing about this is that you will not only be relying on popular user data but will actually be learning about the words meaning, synonyms, and context. Due to the exhaustive nature of the research Ann does not advice that you do this for each and every keyword you wish to target but only for the core keywords in your site, the ones that you have already deemed to be most important.

In the end even if you do not end up optimising your site at least you’ll be smarter with all those words and their origin crammed in your head. ^_^

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Just recently, one of my blogger friends asked me again about how to remove the no-follow attribute in her blog comments. She read about the “do follow” movement and wanted to be part of that. That got me to reading up on new developments with regard to no follow and do follow…

I found an interesting article at Econsultancy, which promotes the use of the no follow attribute as part of your SEO best practices. Naturally, being a do follow enthusiast, I had to read the whole article in an effort to understand the rationale behind the statement. This is what I found out:

While the concept of ‘PageRank leak’ – the idea that you can potentially ‘dilute’ your PageRank by linking out too much – has been widely debated for years, there’s no doubt that good linking practices are important to maintaining PageRank.

Linking to third party websites that Google thinks are ‘spammy’ can harm you. As Google itself advises, “avoid links to web spammers or ‘bad neighborhoods’ on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”

This is where using the ‘nofollow’ attribute on outbound links can be a valuable SEO tool.

One of my personal blogs has had no PR for months now – after having a halfway decent PR of 3. Perhaps I am leaking out PageRank because of not using the no follow attribute. I should take a look into this. Maybe you should, too.

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Let’s face it. SEO can take a lot of tedious work before you see results. This is especially true if you’re starting a new site on a fresh domain. Many articles have been written about the Google sandbox. Supposedly, this is the place where new sites go before they can start ranking for more competitive terms. Basically, this means your new site won’t have a lot of organic search traffic for awhile – a couple months even. That’s a lot of time to lose when you could be getting search traffic and making profit.

So, what can you do to combat the sandbox effect? Simple, buy an old domain. If you don’t have the cash, this should be one thing you should be saving up for.

Older sites have a huge advantage over newer sites. In fact, in a survey done by 37 SEO experts, the 4th most important SEO ranking factor was the age of a site. To be more specific, this factor referred “not [to] the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines.”

By buying an older site, think of all the time you would be saving. Time building links, time producing content, time looking for a domain name. At first, when I first learned about Google using age as a huge search ranking factor, I thought it was unfair. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. Just like new employees have to prove themselves in a company, new sites need to prove themselves to have a spot in the SERPs.

You can use this to your advantage by “hiring” (buying) that older, well-proven employee (site). And what’s great about buying sites is there are many great deals out there. You just have to do proper research to make sure you’re buying a quality site.

Here are two things you should do before purchasing a site.

* Use our PageRank tool to see if the PageRank is not fake.

* Use our backlink checker to examine the backlinks.  Does the site have a lot of backlinks?  Are the backlinks coming from quality, high PR sites?  Also, go to the sites giving the backlinks and check to see if the backlinks are still there.

Further resources:

Aged Domains: What you need to Know
Great article. It inspired me to write this blog entry.

Terrible Web Presence Creates Opportunities
This article is more about flipping sites, but there’s also good information about buying them.

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Keyword research is a vital part of any SEO plan. Keywords are the foundation of search engines. Search engines account for most of the traffic online, so finding great keywords can drive a lot of visitors to your site.

What should you look for in a keyword? What makes a keyword worth targeting?

Here are the 3 basic things I consider before targeting a specific keyword.

Search Volume

Search volume simply means how many people search for the keyword. You can hit the top 10 of Google for the search term, my favorite cat fifi. It won’t do you any good though, because no one is searching for that keyword.

Make sure internet users are actually searching for your keyword. This is where keyword tools can help. I personally like using Google Adwords keyword tool because it’s based on Google’s database.

Don’t fully rely on keyword tools. Keyword tools don’t predict the future search volume. For example, more people will search for a movie or a gadget after it’s been released. In this case, keyword tools will not be very accurate, because they don’t take account future events.

Competition

Just because a phrase has high search volume doesn’t mean you should target it. If you have a new travel site, you shouldn’t target travel. This keyword is super competitive. There’s over 700 million results for that term. Each of the top 10 sites have a PR7 or higher. You may never rank for this term in your lifetime!

Some people determine competition by the number of search results for the keyword. However, I think that method doesn’t give an accurate portrayal of the competition.

Here are 2 tips for being more accurate in determining the competitiveness of a search term.

Research the top 10 sites. The tool, SEO for Firefox, helps greatly in this. The most important things to look for are PR, Yahoo links for the domain, and Yahoo links for the page.

Use the allinanchor and allintitle command and search with quotes. This shows you how many pages are optimized for the keyword. For example, if you want to know the competitiveness of the keyword cheap real estate, enter these two searches in Google:

• allinanchor:”cheap real estate”
• allintitle:”cheap real estate”

The allinanchor command tells you how many pages have the anchor text cheap real estate. The allintitle command tells you how many pages have cheap real estate in their title tags.

Value

Here are three methods to find out the value of a keyword.

Use the Google Adwords keyword tool to figure out the estimated cost per click for a specific keyword. To use this keyword tool, follow these steps.

1. Enter a keyword in the text box.
2. In the field “choose data to display”, find the text box that says “Cost and Ad Position Estimates.”
3. A new text box will appear for dollar amounts. Enter “100.00″ in text box and click on “recalculate.”
4. After Google crunches the data, a bunch of keywords with their click values will show up.
5. If you don’t see your keyword, hit Ctrl+F and use the find command to locate it.

Do a Google search on your keyword. Count how many ads show up on the SERPs. The more ads, the better.

Look for affiliate offers that relate closely to your keyword. If there are affiliate offers with a high commission and a high conversion rate, you have a valuable keyword.

Conclusion

Let’s wrap this up. When dealing with keywords, keep these 3 simple things in mind:

• The higher the search volume, the better.
• The lower the competition, the better.
• The higher the value, the better.

Most keywords will not have all 3 characteristics. But at least target keywords with 2 of the qualities. If a keyword does not have a high search volume, make sure it has high value and low competition. Don’t target a competitive keyword unless it has high search volume and high value. And go ahead and target a low value keyword if it has high search volume and low competition.

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Data center services play a critical role in the operations of many businesses worldwide, and in this area, you can’t get any better than NTT Communications Corporation.  The company has recently acquired Secode AB, a northern European group that has consistently been in the lead when it comes to data center service security.  The acquisition was announced earlier this month, although terms of the deal were not released to the general public.

What is known is that Secode AB will become a full subsidiary of the much larger NTT Communications.  This move allows Secode AB to continue providing its services to its clients – old and new – as well as to improve them.  At the same time, the resources of NTT Communications will be behind the subsidiary a hundred per cent.

NTT Communications is already an established name in the world of data centers.  It currently offers services all over the world, and has proved to be reliable. Some highlights of their data center services:

• Full-scale preparations for power outage and fire disaster.
• Green data center equipped with efficient cooling facilities.
• Security system installing the latest authentication methods.
• 24 ⁄ 7 operation and maintenance system.
• System redundancy in power supply, air conditioning and network.
• Stable network achieved by using backbones and access lines from multiple carriers.
• Quality is certified by NTT Communications Data Center standards.

While the acquisition allows Secode AB to continue operations (as well as expand them) in Nordic countries, its centers will be absorbed by other NTT Communications security operation centers located in the US, Japan, Germany, and Singapore.  Bottom line: data center service security will only be strengthened.

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