Top Free and Premium SEO Tools

Here are some of the most popular SEO tools and platforms on the market to help you monitor and analyze your SEO efforts on link building, keyword research, page analysis, rankings, authority, and tracking:

SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer allows you to analyze a website’s linking profile by providing you with detailed information (link anchor text, page authority, and domain authority) for the first five backlinks of a domain. Open Site Explorer is an extremely overpowered tool that can provide detailed link information such as: Inbound Links, Top Pages, Linking Domains, Anchor Text, Compare Link Metrics, Advanced Reports, and Just-Discovered links. Link data can be used to analyze Page Authority, Domain Authority, Link Equity, Followed/No Followed Links, and so much more.

According to SEO Tools Review,

“SEOmoz Pro is, by far, the best SEO tool suite on the market today, handily winning our TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award. With great link building tools, industry-leading on-page analysis, a massive database of links and authority metrics that powers several other tools, and a community that is unsurpassed in the SEO world, SEOmoz pulls far ahead of the competition.”

Free users are limited to three reports per day but you can run unlimited reports, view up to 10,000 backlinks, export backlinks to a CSV, and use the other suite of SEOmoz tools for $99 USD per month. Free and Premium.

Ahrefs Site Explorer

Ahrefs.com is an independent tool for SEO analysis with a wide range of features. It is designed, first of all, for SEO specialists and site owners but may be of interest to other concerned Internet researchers. It has its own crawler and index, collects and arranges all data without any use of third-party services, and has the largest base of actual data on the links. Their crawler can index up to 6 billion pages per 24 hours. They help to find certain issues on your websites. They can provide social metrics like the number of tweets, Facebook likes, Facebook shares, Google +1 for your pages and referring pages (for all paid subscriptions). They also have a tool, Ahrefs Rank, aimed at solving the same tasks as Google PR. Ahrefs Rank measures the impact of all backlinks with different link juice to a given page. Free and Premium Version.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools, founded in 2007, is a one-stop SEO tool that brings all types of SEO tools, social media tools and advertising tools all under one roof. You can manage paid search advertising (AdWords), link building, keyword research, competitive analysis, social media analytics and basic reporting all in the same place. Raven integrates essential data from Majestic SEO, SEOmoz, Google AdWords and more. Raven’s SEO research tools also pull dozens of metrics, analyze thousands of pages and compile reports in minutes. Its Link Manager keeps your outreach organized, efficient and simple to report and it stores, organizes and tracks every detail for fast reference. 30-day trial.

According to SEO Tools Review,

“One unique feature of RavenTools is its integration with Textbroker, an article composition outsourcing service that can help you bulk up your site’s content. While it can be risky delegating your content creation in large part to external contributors, it can be a useful way to supplement your content needs.”

HubSpot

HubSpot Inbound Marketing Software helps customers generate traffic and leads through their websites, and convert more of those leads into customers. HubSpot is an integrated inbound marketing software that includes tools for: tools to attract visitors, tools to convert leads, and tools to close customers using various methods that cover blogging, landing pages, lead nurturing and management, marketing analytics, content management, social media, SEO, CRM integration, email marketing, and more.

According to SEO Tools Review,

“One of the unique and appealing features of HubSpot is its keyword research integration across the board; you can research keywords and compose blog posts focused on those keywords all within their comprehensive platform. It becomes exponentially easier to optimize for the correct keywords when you can focus on writing great content and leaving the keyword optimization to HubSpot’s platform.”

SEMRush

SEMrush is created by SEO/SEM professionals for SEO/SEM professionals with knowledge, expertise, and data to help you take your projects to the next level. They collect massive amounts of SERP data for more than 95 million keywords and 45 million domains, including: AdWords ad copies and positions, organic positions for domains and landing URLs, search volumes, CPC, competition, number of results, and so much more. SEMrush tracks an immense amount of organic data in Google and Bing SERPs. You can therefore see where your competitors are ranking in the top 20 Google and Bing results for the top 95+ million organic keywords. They collect data on both a domain level as well as landing page rankings for all of the keywords that they track, and they can provide you with an in-depth look into how a website really stacks up in search. Premium.

According to SEO Tools Review,

“SEMRush is the industry standard SEO tool for keyword research, giving unparalleled insights into competitors’ PPC keyword targeting, rankings and traffic data. The tool is amazing in its own right, earning it a spot on our lineup of the best SEO tools.

One of the most useful features of SEMRush is its ability to tell you what other major web properties are trying to rank for your keywords. After you drop your URL in the search box and click the button, you’ll be inundated with useful insights about your organic and AdWords competitors. Armed with this information, you can analyze their strategies to see what’s working for them, or even approach some of the big spenders in your niche and pitch a display ad campaign. SEMRush gives you all the tools you need to evaluate pay-per-click advertising competition.”

Google’s Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites on the following: site data, keyword data, sitemaps data, message center messages data, and crawl errors feed. Google Webmaster Tools shows traffic for each keyword separately; it gives more information about website performance according to Google search query. Google Analytics shows total traffic for a website, such as clicks to your site, regardless of where they came from and what search terms were used. It shows whatever search terms brought up your site in the listings. Free.

Authority Labs

AuthorityLabs was built to be easy and simple enough for the average business owner, but scalable enough for those responsible for large organic search efforts. AuthorityLabs helps you gain an understanding of how search engines are displaying your brand over time. Consumers start at search and often experience a brand for the first time within search results. Easily add domains or pages to be tracked from anywhere, track thousands of keywords within each domain and get ranking data every day for Google, Yahoo! and Bing, monitor multiple related sites in mind. 30-day Free Trial.

21 Steps Sales Letter – A Sales Presentation Formula by Perry Belcher

Perry Belcher is a well-known Internet marketing speaker, author of several books, and a recognized sales guru. He was a guest speaker in the Traffic and Conversion Summit held earlier this year where he shared his famous 21 Steps Sales Letter originally based on David Frey’s 12-step foolproof sales letter formula. Below is the list of secrets shared during the conference. Perry recommends that these steps be followed in sequence because sequence is critical.

According to Perry, “poor copy in sequence is better than good copy out of sequence”.

The 21 Steps Sales Letter Formula:

1. Call out to your audience

Address your audience (Attention: insert your audience here) at the top of your sales letter.

2. Get their attention

Grab the attention of your reader with a big promise headline. (example: Everything You’ve Learned About ____ is a Lie!)

3. Backup the big promise headline with a quick explanation (sub-headline).

Support the headline to give it believability. Write out 100 or more headlines and trim it down to your best 5. (example: How To + insert benefit here)

4. Identify the problem.

Identify the audience (who they are, how they feel) or tell a story about a problem, a struggle, or a challenge.

5. Provide the solution

Reveal a solution to their problem and prove that this solution is the best option out there.

6. Show pain of and cost of development

Let your audience know the pain and cost you and others went through to develop the solution to the problem. Establish empathy and affinity with your audience.

7. Explain ease-of-use

Let them know how easy the solution is to use.

8. Show speed to results

Give them an idea how fast it is to achieve results.

9. Futurecast

Explain how their life will improve or be better because of your solution.

10. Show your credentials

Establish your credibility and demonstrate your expertise.

11. Detail the benefits

Use bullet points to enumerate benefits. Tip: Describe the feature, then use the words “…so that” to describe and emphasize the benefit.

12. Get social proof

Use outside authority or third party validation (example: research statistics, quotes from credible or authoritative sources, etc.)

13. Make your offer

Tell them exactly what they are getting.

14. Add bonuses

Bonuses need not be relevant to the offer. People only need to want them.

15. Build up your value

Build up the value of your offer. Tell them how much everything is worth.

16. Reveal your price (pop by button)

Add prices together to calculate value, then reveal price that’s much cheaper. Explain why the price is what it is and why it is such a great value.

17. Inject scarcity (if any)

Offers that don’t have scarcity don’t sell as well, but it needs to be genuine or you’ll destroy your business. (example: change the price, limited time, take away a bonus, etc.)

18. Give guarantee

Remove, eliminate, reverse, take out perceived risks. Longer guarantee = less returns.

19. Call to action

The call to action is a command. Be specific and tell them exactly what to do. Use visuals, screenshots, and other tools to guide them to do the next steps until completed.

20. Give a warning

Warn them against the consequence or what’s going to happen if they don’t buy.

21. Close with a reminder

Recap the whole offer and remind them what they are getting. Summarize the problem, the solution, the offer, the guarantee, and the benefits and consequences they will be experiencing.

If you’re stumped as to how to begin writing your own sales letter, try these simple steps, apply them, and give them a try. It’s a great way to jumpstart your writing technique. If you do, let us know whatever the results are. We’d love to hear from you.

25 Excellent WordPress Tumblog Themes

Tumblr is a popular micro blogging platform where people can make small posts, share links and images with others, reblog the posts of others, etc. It is a platform that sort of combines the features of a blog with social networking.
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WordPress Themes for Mobile and Tablet

Majority if not all of the recent WordPress theme releases have included responsive design as a staple feature. This ensures that these themes will display well on mobile and handheld devices. Below is a list of WordPress themes that have been created and designed primarily for mobile and handheld devices. These themes are meant to cater to a mobile audience but some of them can also function quite well even on desktop browsers.

Here’s a roundup of the latest WordPress themes for mobile and tablet:

Provocateur°

Provocateur° is a cool and interesting theme built using jQuery Mobile, HTML5 and CSS3, especially for mobile phones and particularly optimized for Apple devices. Main features include a portfolio, a blog, a customizable main page, custom menus and widgets, shortcodes (accordion, portfolio, contact form, tags, YouTube), and even a QR-code sharing option. This theme has a unique slide down menu, email and social networking sharing (twitter & facebook) options, and a changing flip animation.

Touch

Touch is a “lighter than air” WordPress theme that shows power can be packed in a light mobile theme. You get a straightforward blog, an optional static front page, a touch gesture-enabled gallery, a portfolio, a unique comment form along with a validation-enabled contact form, plus sliders, short codes etc. all in one neat, little package. This theme has been thoroughly tested on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, including desktop browsers.

Brave

Brave is an elegant and feature- rich dark theme created for mobile devices. This awesome theme has everything your desktop theme offers and can be used alongside your desktop site. it is ready for localization, can ‘install as web app’ on iOS, contains a beautifully unique menu, comes with comment/contact forms, has a touch/swipe enabled gallery, comes with multiple color schemes, and a variety of extremely customizable short codes to design the mobile website you need.

Resans

Resans is a highly advanced WordPress theme for creatives designed especially for tablets and mobile devices. On larger devices, Resans presents posts on a 4 column grid (Masonry style). As display sizes shrink, the number of columns reduce until a lone column is displayed mobile-style. Resans supports several features such as swipe gestures, responsive layout, 5 page afterload animations, animated loading of new pages, unlimited colors for fonts and backgrounds (header, footer, content, menu), and so much more. Resans can be used alongside with your desktop template and can be set up using Resans AP.

Hero

Hero is a super clean, feature packed WordPress theme built for websites with lot of mobile following. This theme has the power of a regular desktop theme adapted to the smaller devices. Hero gives you impressive blog and portfolio pages similar to a regular desktop version in a more compact form to encourage interaction from your mobile visitors. Theme features include: provisions for two different slider plugins, tons of shortcodes, 9 post formats (Aside, Quote, Image, Video, Audio, Gallery, Status, Link, Chat), translation ready, “install as web app” functionality, and so much more.

Spartan

Spartan is a fully featured WordPress theme for mobile devices created with the goal of being flexible enough to adapt to any and all types of WordPress sites and yet still function as a stand alone theme. One of the many cool features tucked into this theme is the menu that goes beyond just listing a number of links in predetermined styles. This feature allows you to build and color a unique navigation system of your choice. Other cool features include: the comment button that also serves as a visual indicator (grayed out when comments for a given post are disabled, or shaking itself ever so gently to remind the user to read and leave comments when comments are enabled), and also the amount of customization available via shortcodes.

Secret Selling System – Notes from Perry Belcher

Early this year, Perry Belcher spoke in the Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013 and shared his Secret Selling System strategies during the seminar.

According to Perry, “Selling is not evil. Selling is power – a great skill to have”. Here are some of the highlights of what he shared during the event.

Important parts of selling:

Targeting

– getting in front of prospects who are most likely to buy

  • 60% of any successful promotion is in list selection
  • Getting leads – getting interest
  • Getting sales
  • Increasing profits per sale
  • Frequency

Know your buyer

– what you like is not necessarily what your customer likes.

  • Personal attention. Create a customer avatar ( Name. Age. Gender. Marital status. Children. Location. Occupation. Combined household income. Current business income. General info.) After you come up with your avatar, write your message to that person, not your whole audience.
  • Be talking to one person, not a group of people
  • Find out their demographics and where they hang out

Find the right list.

  • Wide and shallow – advertising (such as network TV) is difficult because it’s hard to localize the message to your audience, location, et cetera.
  • Narrow and deep – advertising is by far the way to go. List selection isn’t only about emails or direct mail, but it also applies to advertising.
  • Google ad planner – finding websites your niche visits and their interests. Enter in your competitor’s websites

Make them “glow in the dark”

– (From Dean Jackson – ilovemarketing podcast)

  • Use list-building bait- cheese or whiskers principle. Make those particular people in the market “glow in the dark”. (list building bait – followed by cheese or whiskers). Find out what their “cheese” is and use that instead of “whiskers” (Realtor example of standard ad that is all about the person vs. “Find out how much your home is worth for free”).
  • Offer lead magnet that resonates with potential customers.

Create an irresistible offer

  • Why people buy – gain, fear, pride, value (makes them feel smart), imitation (people want to imitate celebrity). No matter how good the offer is, if you send it to the wrong audience it isn’t going to work.

Sequence is critical

– mistake is selling too early.

  • Don’t be out of sequence, because if you are, people will mostly reject your offer.

Points of belief.

  • If your current sales message is not working, ask yourself how many things are you asking prospect to believe. If more than 4, it’s probably a failure. Ideally, you only want to make them believe 1 thing.

More Perry Belcher next week!

Beautiful WordPress Technology Themes For Inspiration

Imagine a world without technology. Difficult, isn’t it? No Internet, no computers, no cell-phones, no TV. Surely technology makes our lives easier and more technology makes our lives even easier. New inventions are made every now and then and they need the word to spread so that more and more people will know about them and may use them. In today’s world the Internet is one of the best options available to spread the word about anything. Other aspects like TV commercials, print media ads, posters, etc. are somewhat limited in the sense that they do not provide the “complete information” about a product.

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Creative WordPress Themes – May 2013

Portfolio, photography, and artistic WordPress themes are always popular. The ability to showcase images, videos, and text in one theme make it ideal for different web applications that can serve both artistic and corporate specifications. Here are some of the latest creative WordPress themes available in the market today:

Bloq

Create a lasting first impression with Bloq Premium WordPress Theme – a highly customizable theme with a fully responsive layout. The modern flat graphics and block layout format gives you that high-end graphic designer look perfect for creative agencies and freelance design professionals. This theme’s dedicated control panel allows users to configure the majority of the theme’s aesthetics and functionalities like color choices, page templates, and features such as post-formats, page templates, custom widgets, shortcodes, other theme elements that can help you create the look and branding you need.

PurePress

PurePress is a responsive and retina-ready theme that is packed with customization tools to help you create a multi purpose portfolio site. It is fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices. Features include slider choices, 6 skins, boxed and wide layout options, 8 layout options (with or without sidebar), tons of page templates. This theme is also capable of “password-protected” posts – a useful feature especially for professional photographers.

Awsm

AWSM is clean and simple, fully featured WordPress theme, perfect for creative people, freelancers or agencies. This unique theme reminds you of popular networking sites such as Facebook and Pinterest with a twist using familiar features such as the Facebook timeline and Pinterest’s masonry style grid layout. This theme is ideal for the creative freelancer who wants to display his work, projects, skills, services, and other interesting information (professional or personal). AWSM uses responsive design, stylish CSS3 and jQuery animations.

It is highly customizable with powerful theme options panel and many custom features. Another feature highlight is the option to use either a one-page layout which means your pages will scroll to its content, or the standard menu navigation which means that every page will open as a separate page on your website. You can even combine both without affecting any of your website content. AWSM is a unique and fresh take on the traditional portfolio styled theme.

Ideanosse

Create an impressive repository of your personal work using Ideanosse. Personal or creative websites need not be boring or look cookie cutter-ish with the usual predictable layout. If you are a little bit bored with what’s out there, check out this minimalist , responsive, single Page HTML5 WordPress Theme designed on Bootstrap Front End Framework. It is designed for specially small agencies to show their business online in more modern way with maximum coverage of clients. This theme can also be used for modern designers, developers & freelancers to show their works in a creative way.

The Barbershop

The Barbershop is a One Page Responsive WordPress Theme with a clean, unique retro/vintage design. The theme is packed with great Custom Post Types and Theme Options to display any kind of work on your website. Taking its playful design cue from the iconic Marx mustache, The Barbershop is a solidly designed theme that (although primarily designed for Barbershops) can be used for other website applications including your personal portfolio. This theme’s responsive development displays perfect on any tablet and mobile device and is easy to edit and maintain.

Conversion Hacks: Increasing Opt-In Rates

How many of you have tried several email campaigns but have wondered why they aren’t so effective? How many of you are actually clueless as to how to maximize the power of email marketing and how you can use it to your advantage? Let’s take at the look at the ways you can increase your email list using these tips and tricks on increasing your Opt-In rates. Check out these terms – Opt-In, Confirmed Opt-In, Double Opt-In, and Opt-Out:

Opt-in:

Sometimes referred to as “single opt-in,” basically means that people are only added to an email list if they actually fill out a registration form. They are given the “option” to receive email with their permission. Otherwise, the unsolicited email is referred to as spam.

Confirmed Opt-in:

This is similar to the opt-in method, but after someone signs up for your email list, you’d send them a “thank you” confirmation email that contains a link to unsubscribe from your list (just in case they were signed up by someone else without their permission).

Double Opt-in:

Someone signs up for your email list. You send a confirmation email with a link that they must click before they’re added to your list. If they don’t click the link, they don’t get added to the list. When users confirm that they want on your list, you should store their IP address, and confirmation date and time in your records. Some say this is the best way to handle your email list.

Opt-out:

This is an old-fashioned way of building your email list where you’d typically have some form for people to fill out but with a hidden or not so obvious pre-checked box at the bottom, with something like, “Yes, please sign me up for your email newsletter!”

Tips and Tricks:

The headline, call to action (CTA) and opt-in box must have good headline. Write 100 headlines and pick the best one.

If you’re using a photo of a person in your landing page, have person looking at opt-in area

Simple plain flat book cover or graphic + opt-in box converts well

Other things that can make a big impact:

  • Have live chat on your site. You can outsource for approximately $300. 1 in 3 chatters buy. Set up a special follow up series for chatters because they are engaged prospects
  • Your best affiliate is your customer service. They know the your customers the best. Turn customer service people into sales people. Give customer service reps affiliate link. Create an email signature for customer service emails with what you’re promoting.
  • Use an Upsell formula
  • Make a “bucket offer”. Offer them more of what they bought at a greatly discounted price. (ex. Buying an apple for $1, then being offer 10 apples for $3)
  • Don’t worry about profit. Try to break even.
  • Send buyers additional offers via Direct mailing buyers additional offers. If someone buys from you but doesn’t buy upsell, direct mail a sales letter for the upsell
  • Telephone follow-up – Calling webinar attendees after webinar can increase your sales if you call your webinar attendees and ask them why they didn’t buy.
  • Ditching the progress bar on checkout process can cut cart abandonments in half

Keep testing your landing pages and keep tab of people’s responses to your marketing strategies to find out which method works best for your company. As you continue to understand your target market’s behavior the better you will be able increase your Opt-in rates and eventually your sales.