Best Keyword Research Tool Benefits

• No software to install, it’s just a Firefox plugin
• No membership required, no joining, just download it
• It’s free
• It’s the best free keyword research tool, so a must have in your arsenal of tools

To use it, you launch Firefox as your browser, then go here: Download the Firefox Plugin. Then simply go to google.com and perform a search for your preferred keywords. Under each of the sponsored ads at the top, you’ll see a small “view keywords” button – click on this and you’ll instantly see the keyword list that the advertiser is using to drive traffic to their website, all in a really neat popup window that appears. And if that weren’t enough, it also exposes to you the keywords that any Adwords advertiser is bidding on, as well as a TON of other information, like how much they’re paying per click and so on!

You can shave hours off your keyword research time and simply steal those keywords your competitor spent hours researching – and use them for your own webpages and content to generate a higher income for yourself immediately.

Easy peasy!! Download it Now!

Essentially there are two types of backlink checkers:

• A regular backlink checker that will count how many websites have a backlink to your website.

• A backlink checker that checks for reciprocal links, to see if they are still in place.

I want to check backlinks of the first sort: who is linking to my website.

If you want your website to do well – and be ranked well with Google and other search engines, then the more relevant, inbound links, you can get to your website, the more important Google will think it is.  This is known as offpage optimisation (I won’t mention anchor text here, just links).

You need to know who is linking to your website, so you can see where your referral traffic is coming from – and possibly improve or build on those links.  Links can come from three sources:

• A directory listing, possibly as something you requested (even paid for)
• A forum signature, from forums and similar you belong to  Also any social networking profiles.
• Somebody randomly linking to your website because they thought it was good.

List of Free Backlink Checkers Reviewed

1. http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ This was straight forward to use, you simply key in the domain name, press the button and let it run… although it does take some time. It found 437 backlinks to the domain I was checking. Scanning down the list I found some interesting sites linking to mine that I didn’t know about. The list it supplied was in a nice, simple layout, all the backlinks were hyperlinked so I could click and see – and it also showed which are nofollow links. This produces a great list to save or print as it’s all on one page.
2. http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker This backlink checker found 429 links. The resulting list is displayed in chunks of 50, so you have to press the NEXT button to see the next lot. For each backlink found, it tells you the PageRank of that link. It was a lot faster than backlinkwatch, almost instantaneous – but it’s annoying the results are spread over multiple pages. Also, as a free backlink checker, you’re limited to 5 queries/day, which actually turned out to mean 5 pages of results, so I’ll never know what the last ones were.
3. http://www.checkbacklink.com/ This backlink checker was almost instantaneous – and it found 428 links.  It does, however, run in a frame, from the iwebtool website, which is interesting as it didn’t seem constrained by the “5 searches” limit – I could go through the whole lot of 428 links here!
4. Link Assistant is software you download and run on your PC.  There’s a free version and a paid version.  For today, I decided life’s too short to download/install and run some software – so I’ll be back to update this list once I’ve got round to it
5. http://www.searchenginegenie.com/backlink-checker.html This was much better.  It was virtually instantaneous and showed me how many links each search engine had.  It told me I had: 434 in Yahoo, 0 in Google, 368 in MSN, 239 in AltaVista, 239 in AllTheWeb. The 0 in Google is suspect though.  However, it didn’t give me the links, so I have no idea where those backlinks are unless I go to each search engine and perform the relevant search.  So, nice, but not really a helpful backlink checker.
6. Backlink Analyzer Two other websites with backlink tools were using this backlink checker.  It was super-fast to run and I could choose to check the links just into one page, or for the whole domain.  Also, I could choose the number of results to be returned. This one gave me the most information and seemed most useful.  It told me there were 1660 links to my domain, 525 links to my homepage, 1310 pages indexed.  These links were from 72 unique domains. The percentage of links which were deep links was 68%.  There was a link available for me to download the whole list as a CSV if I wanted to.  This was easily the best of the bunch in my opinion. Update: This has now been developed further and there is some free backlink software you download and run on your PC, which I’ve not done yet, but I’m sure it’s even better than the previous version. Here’s the backlink analyzer software: Backlink Analyzer

I still have to download the software listed above and try that out, but for me Backlink Analyzer was a clear winner and quickly gave me exactly the backling information I was after. Having the “download as a CSV file” option is great because that means you can drop that into a spreadsheet and keep an eye on how things change over time.

Another way to use a backlink checker is to find out which sites have a link to your competitor’s website, then see if you can get a link from there too.  Some will be paid directory listings, but you might find a gem in their results!

Remember to keep adding backlinks to your website – it’s fab when other people do that for you, but you do need to create links yourself. Don’t buy links and don’t hire somebody to add hundreds of links for you. The links need to grow organically – over time. If Google wakes up tomorrow and finds 2000 websites have linked into you it’ll assume you paid for/bought those links and it’ll not be impressed at all, your time/money will have been wasted and you’ll have just given yourself a backward step in getting to number one in Google!

Link Checker Software

Here are the two free link checker software packages I’ve mentioned above:
Backlink Analyzer
Link Assistant

Update: Wordtracker also have a free trial of their link checker software available, here: Wordtracker Link Builder. This will give you 7 days’ trial, but their software is a lot more powerful, with more features: enabling you to quickly and easily build link building into your strategy as it analyses all your competitor pages and yours and suggests the most effective sites for you to get links from, concentrating your efforts where it matters most.

Here’s my list of 9 things that annoy affiliate marketers

Affiliate Programs That Close Down When You Have Money In Your Account

These are annoying. Especially when the product you were promoting has, say, $71 in and the minimum payout’s $100 … and they’re still in business, just not for that product – and nothing else they sell is something that’s right for your audience. It’s especially annoying if you’ve been logging onto your affiliate account every month for the last two years watching it grow to that amount. I’ve never actually had one go bust on me, but I do have two where money’s “trapped”.

Affiliate Programs That Change The Rules

Now, I am tempted to name names here… but I won’t. There was one some time back that paid affiliates $0.50 per download of their free book. I got up to $31 and they changed it as some idiots had been trying to defraud them. Three years on and I log on and that $31’s still sitting there.

Another affiliate program I’ve been working on slowly for the past three years was a bit of a winner. It’s a freelance website. If I introduced somebody to them that became a gold member, I’d get the gold member fees for life. If I introduced somebody to them that didn’t become a gold member, then I’d get a %age of the fees, for life. All that changed when they got taken over and I no longer get the gold fees – and the fees I do receive are only for a few months, then nothing. I’d been slowly building that one up into a nice residual for a couple of years before I realised I wasn’t getting any gold member fees any more and started digging around.

Affiliate Programs with Ad Networks That are Turned Off at Short Notice

For the past 2-3 months, one particular company have had their ad network sending out emails almost weekly, telling me the offers on … then it’s off. Not many affiliates actually have the time or resources to track down everywhere they mentioned/promoted that company … to remove it … then add it again. You’re on my banned list now, I don’t want to promote your stuff, it’s too high maintenance.

Since I started using an ad server, I am more in control of these things – at least now I can log in and turn off banners with a couple of clicks, but sometimes you just want to go on holiday for two weeks and not annoy your website visitors.

Ad Networks Making Me Wait to be Accepted

We’ve all been there – you sign up and you want to log on and grab those creatives, check out what an ad network has to offer … and then they tell you you have to wait 72 hours for approval. Well, guess what, in 72 hours I’ll be in the middle of something else and will have completely forgotten you and why I wanted to join. I have fixed this a bit now, by using my password manager software to keep notes on who I’ve signed up with and why/what I was after…. I’ve created a group called “awaiting authorisation”. Right now there are 30 companies listed in there… 30??? You all said wait 24-72 hours and you lied. For some it’s now 3-4 months on (or even 2 years) and I’ve heard nothing.

Ad Networks Rejecting Me

Hey – I know we all get rejected, but it’s a bit of a downer, when you receive a standard rejection email. Oh how I want to fight back but I’m a small fish … hey guys – I just want to promote your client’s products. No big deal … just let me in hey! Lots of big names are fine with me and you should be too!

Ad Networks That Make you Register Every Domain You Have/Use, Get Approval for Each One – Then Give you Different Creative Code for Each One

Hey guys – you’re wasting my time here!!!

All I wanted to do was sign up, grab some stuff that I felt was relevant … and see how it went… now you’re giving me all this work to do that’ll take me 3 hours to set up instead of 10 minutes.

Invalid Links Report

Every month, without fail, I get an invalid links report from one ad network. Yes, I know, somewhere in my empire I’ve sent you one click for a campaign that you stopped running 2 years ago … I know … but I just can’t find it. Yet every month I’ve had that nagging email. Now, tonight, I did suddenly remember I have an old forgotten domain … I bet it’s there… but generally, if you’re going to send me an email telling me I sent you an invalid link … then why the heck aren’t you giving me a clue where it is! You know where that traffic came from – tell me, it’s not rocket science is it!

Not Telling Me Where My Traffic’s Coming From

Now, a few use iDevAffiliate to run their affiliate programs; a nice piece of software that always shows me the last 500 traffic sources. I love those. But so many simply don’t give me a clue where my traffic’s coming from, or my conversions. Really annoying.

And finally ….

Not Converting

Hey guys, I did my bit. I sent you traffic … now, your conversion rates are appalling. Really … sort it out will you! Obviously you’re going to be binned the second I go through my stats. Rubbish banners, appalling landing pages and inadequate follow ups. Now, as an affiliate, I do my bit, I drive traffic to you, I do a spot of the old pre-selling … now you’re supposed to do the thing you’re good at: converting – only it’s not always happening is it. Even you top gurus! Yes, even you. Lots of traffic, do I see a result? No. Now, there’s one where I’ve been sending you over 500 hits for the last 3 years – and what’ve I got?? A $7 residual. Well, whoopee doo… as soon as I can find a replacement for you, you’re binned.

Rant Over, I Think

I think that’s it…. oh there’s more, much more …. and this is why, for me, Google Adsense pretty much wins all the time. It just bl00dy works. Place the code …. forget it. It works, you get paid. Job done.

Apart from all the above, I still think being an affiliate marketer is a great way of earning a living. There’s a recession on, nobody’s hiring, yet I don’t have to waste 60+ hours/week looking for jobs or applying for any, or being interviewed to only ever come second. I also don’t have to work 60 hours/week sitting in one building that I have to be in for specific hours, wearing specific types of smart clothes. Instead, I do actually work hard, but the hours I choose, on my terms, with no commuting costs and often in my PJs. So, ranting aside, I’d not swap it for the world!

Did I forget anything that will annoy you as affiliate marketers?

I explained back in 2008 what the purpose of article spinners and article rewriters was, so I won’t go into it again, except to say that if you have one lovely piece of content which you’ve slaved over (or bought as a PLR package, or hired a freelancer to write), but you want to upload unique content to a bunch of different sites, you can use article spinners or article rewriters to re-jig your words so you end up with a fistful of unique content ready to upload. The main problem with most of them is usually that they’ll want a bit of a tweak when you’re finished as they don’t make as much sense as the article you started with.

This time I decided to dig out a list of free article spinners and free article rewriters, because I do like to provide lists of free stuff for my readers. So here it is:

List of Free Article Spinners and Free Article Rewriters

1. Free Article Rewriter From Matt Callen. This is a brilliant way to get started. It’s free so it gives you a chance to find out what it’s all about. With the free version you’re limited to how many times you can spin your article and how many versions you can download per day, but there’s an affordable Pro version too, so check it out.
2. FreeArticleSpinner.com – online article spinning software, completely free, but you do have to register.
3. Free SEO Spinner – with this one, it’s all on one page and you simply list the synonyms of the words you want to change. Looks a bit wordy when you first load the page, but it does work… of course, some won’t make sense at the end of the spin!
4. Wordflood 2.0. Free Trial available. $37 to buy.
5. Article Rewriter – simple to use copy/paste article rewriter. Simply paste your content in and press a button.
6. Jetspinner. Cost $0. Jetspinner is completely free as a promotional item to introduce you to their company, hoping you might like some of their other products!

If you are creating content for your website, then it’s an easy thing to then use article spinners to create a new, unique version of that and promote your website or blog or business online by submitting your rewritten content to article directories, or even adsense revenue sharing websites, such as Hubpages, where you can insert up to two links back to your website simply by ticking the “commercial use” box. Or, use SheToldMe and take just your initial paragraphs to create a link back to your original article. The hardest part is getting your first article, after that it can be a breeze to get it rewritten and simply submit it around the Internet for all to see! This also provides those all important backlinks that your website or blog needs to get ranked by Google. This means: free traffic!