Being in the SEO business and needing to rank lots of websites, I have naturally tried pretty much every single rank tracking software and service on the market.

While there are some “good” rank trackers out there, it always seemed like they were missing a feature (or three) so I usually ended up having to use three to four different rank tracking programs to get the information that I wanted which became very expensive and time consuming. Then, someone told me about AWR and that is what changed everything.

There are many different SEO ranking software based solutions, subscription solutions, free options, paid options, and much more. Until finding AWR, I had yet to find one solution that did everything I needed but I am happy to report that AWR fits the bill and is the best rank tracking tool available…by far. There is even a free 30 day trial and AWR is also the perfect seo software for Mac.

What I Like About Advanced Web Ranking

• Local Search – You can customize the Google search location which is super important because local search is becoming more and more prevalent
• Safe To Use – Rank checks can be done using human emulation which is the safest and best way to do regular rank checks without raising any red flags
• Keyword Suggestions And Reports – This feature is AWESOME. I have found excellent keywords that I never thought of just by putting my website in and letting AWR do the rest. It suggests other keyword possibilities for you!
• Thousands Of Search Engines – Many rank trackers only search the top 3 but with AWR, you can search over 2,000 different search engines and get a much bigger (and better) picture of where your sites stand
• One SEO Tool To Rule Them All – Everything in one place – page rank, keyword suggestions, current and historical rankings, charts, graphs, reports, and MUCH MORE. This tool takes the place of all other rank trackers out there.
• Proxies for safe searching – Allows you to use proxies to stay under the radar
• Customizable Reports That Are Printable – Perfect if you offer SEO services for clients
• Consistently Accurate – This is another big factor in why I use AWR. In the past, some rank trackers have consistently given me inaccurate ranking information which I hated. AWR gives accurate rankings every single time and this fact alone makes the software worth every cent and more.
• Competitor Tracking – When using AWR, you are not just tracking your own rankings but also those of your competitors and other sites ranked in the top 10 for your keywords.

How I Use Advanced Web Ranking

I thought I would share my workflow and method in using AWR and show you how it works (see video below).

I start by putting in my website that I want to check rankings for and then, AWR shines. It automatically suggests many different keywords that I might want to rank for. I can also add my own keywords in and/or edit the keywords that the software suggests. Once I setup the project, I can then schedule it to run and check my rankings on a regular basis, even every single day if that is what I want. I don’t have to manually do this which is a HUGE time saver!

Once my project is setup and AWR does it’s magic, there is a wealth of valuable information before my eyes:

I can see what my rankings are for each keyword in the search engines that I selected

I can see where certain competitors rank compared to my own site for each keyword

For each keyword, I can see who is ranking in the top 10 and how I compare

I can pull link reports to see how many links my site has coming to it and compare to competitors

I can get more keyword ideas that could help me rank higher and monetize my website better

After a short amount of time, I can get historical ranking data to see how my site has improved (or worsened) in the search engines

I can see how my site ranks in a specific local area which is a huge feature that many other rank trackers do not have

And MUCH more!

Watch my video below to see it in action:

AWR does so much that I could probably write an article that would take you three hours to read but the better thing is for you to try it out for yourself. You can grab a free 30 day trial over at http://www.advancedwebranking.com (that is not an affiliate link) and take a full test drive of their software.

In my opinion, it’s the safest, most complete, best rank tracking software solution available today and it’s also very affordable.

It’s no secret that publishing books on the Kindle is HOT right now. Just a few months ago, Amanda Hocking took the internet by storm when it was reported that she sold almost 500,000 books in the month of January on the Kindle and without a publisher!

In the past, one of the things that had stopped me from trying to do my own Kindle Ebooks was not being able to get the ebook to look right on the Kindle.

The formatting is not easy to do and that is a huge roadblock that prevent many people from getting their own ebooks on the Kindle.

How can you potentially be the next Amanda Hocking if there isn’t an easy way to not only get your books on the Kindle, but also having them formatted correctly and looking amazing?

After looking at and trying all of the various options for converting text to Kindle format online, I realized that there really wasn’t a good solution out there. Anything decent was $200 or more and the free stuff made your Kindle books look awful on the Kindle and/or the formatting was off and Table Of Contents didn’t work.

Because of all of that, I wrote and created my own ebook template which will give you perfectly formatted ebooks for the Kindle that look amazing, just as good as a New York Times Bestseller, every single time.

My Kindle Ebook Template is a Microsoft Word template that works on all versions of Word. You can start with the template and type your book in from scratch or take existing text from another document, program, pdf, whatever, and paste that into my template for perfect formatting.

There are very few good Kindle templates out there, anything that is any good at all is $200 or more and at that price it’s worth it. However, I decided to price MY template really low in hopes that it will help lots of people create their own Kindle ebooks quickly and easily.

In addition to the template, I also give you over 10 video tutorials showing you step-by-step how to use the ebook template and publish your own Kindle ebook.

You can view my ebook template here: Ebook Templates 101

This has happened more than a few times…I get a frantic email from someone who just got de-indexed by Google.

Sometimes, it’s not quite as bad, instead of getting de-indexed, they go from a top 10 ranking to 532. Then again, if you are in position 532, you might as well be de-indexed anyway.

Over the past few years, I have studied many different websites that have lost major Google rankings to see if there was any kind of a common thread, identify how it happened, or spot some kind of trend.

In just about every single case, things were done on those websites to try and “shortcut” the system. In this blog post, I will share some of the common elements that turned up in those websites that were either de-indexed by Google or at the very least, lost major rankings.

Before I get into specifics, I first want to say that I understand where some of these people were coming from in terms of trying to shortcut the system. It’s not easy trying to get top 10 rankings, especially for competitive keywords. Furthermore, Google isn’t right about EVERYTHING and it can be frustrating to see low quality, crappy sites outranking your quality site.

How To Lose Ranking or Get De-Indexed By Google

OK, let’s talk about some common threads in many sites that lose ranking or get de-indexed in Google. Some of these are pretty obvious but even so, it doesn’t stop many people from trying to do this.

1. Low Quality Sites
Duh right? lol. Obviously having a low quality crappy site won’t do much good for you. Heck, even if you enjoy some temporary good rankings, if your site isn’t high quality, it probably won’t do you much good anyway.

Even after all of the Google algorithm changes, why do people STILL create low quality sites?

The answer is simple…because it’s fast, easy, and almost anyone can do it. But in this case, that is also a bad thing.

Now, there are still many low quality sites that receive great rankings….until they suddenly lose them overnight of course. If you have a niche site where losing a good ranking overnight won’t hurt you because you don’t make much from it that is one thing, but if one of your PRIMARY sites that generates a good percentage of your income suddenly vanishes, your business world could crumble very quickly.  

This next sentence will be the most important line in this whole article….Build your business and SEO on a strong, solid foundation. Think marathon, not sprint.

Instead of building a low quality site, think outside the box a little bit. What works for me is thinking about what I would want to see if I were searching for that particular keyword that my site is about.  Don’t JUST think monetary value here, think about what you can offer (free and/or paid) that will benefit people who search for your keyword term.

Here is an excellent example from a great blogger that I highly recommend, Pat Flynn. If you look at one of his niche sites (which ranks #1) security guard training, what you see is a high quality site. Sure, he could have just put up a site with a little bit of information and called it a day, but what he has done is taken the time to actually create some value for people visiting the site.

He has a newsletter, Youtube video, job board, information from various States, images, and lots of solid articles on his topic. This is a great example of a niche site that not only works well for the site owner, but also makes the internet a better place. Awesome job Pat!

Whether you are building a niche site or a website/blog for your main business, building a high quality site will go a long way in helping you not only get solid Google rankings but also help you from suddenly losing them overnight and potentially ruining your business.

2. Lots of Low Quality Spammy Backlinks
This is another strategy that was widely used by every single site that was de-indexed. Look, backlinks are important, in fact, CRITICAL to achieving solid search engine rankings however, low quality spammy backlinks can hurt you very quickly.

A few weeks ago I had someone come to me who had a site that was about 6 months old and he purchased a 10,000 backlink package from some forum and to make a long story short, his entire site was (and still is) completely de-indexed in Google.

Here is what NOT to do, unless you want to risk getting de-indexed:

Use software or services (or pay someone who does) to automatically create blog comments with a link back to your site on high PR do follow blogs. This is SPAM and while you may see some short term benefits from this, it’s definitely a good way to set yourself up for total failure.

What You Need To Do:

Like I said above, backlinks are very important IF THEY ARE DONE RIGHT.

The best backlinks are “real” ones that you create through LEGITIMATE forum profiles and posts, blog comments, social media, guest blog posts, and things like that.

I have seen numerous website owners get de-indexed by doing lots of spammy blog comments as well. Blog commenting is an EXCELLENT way to get backlinks but only if it’s a legit comment.

Solid Backlink Methods:

• Blog commenting is a great way to get more backlinks if you actually read the blog post and make a relevant comment that adds value to the blog. Find some well read blogs with topics that interest you and spend time reading and commenting on various posts but like I said, make sure your comment is good and isn’t some spam post like “great post, I will bookmark your blog”.

• Social Media is a great way to get more legit backlinks and legit visitors to your site.

• Guest Blog Posting is an under-used method that works wonders

• Youtube videos

• Discussion Forums

What you want to shoot for is lots of high quality, legitimate, varied backlinks that you build over time.

In future articles, I will share more tips of what to do in order to raise your rankings with Google as well as what NOT to do….Follow these tips and you can build your website and business on a solid foundation and sleep well at night without worrying about getting the dreaded Google slap.

So let’s say that you are starting a website from scratch. Whether you are considering a website for Google Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, or to sell your own products, one of the most important things you can do that will save you months of time is to start with an aged domain name.

What is an Aged Domain Name?

An aged domain name is simply a domain name that is at least one year old, preferably even older. I have purchased domain names that were as old as 11 years old.

Kick It Up A Notch:

In addition to looking for an aged domain name, you can also buy an aged domain name that also has PR, which stands for Page Rank. If you purchase an aged domain that has a valid page rank of say 2 or 3, you will save yourself months and months of time and the $35 or so that you pay for the domain is WELL worth it.

Advantages Of An Aged Domain Name:

The primary advantage of an aged domain name is that you can promote your new domain much harder without worrying about getting too many links to it which could negatively affect a brand new domain name.

Another great advantage is that aged domain names usually rank higher and much faster in the search engines, especially when you are targeting competitive keywords.

Where To Find Aged Domain Names:

While there are numerous places to get these aged domains, I highly recommend using Go Daddy Auctions. This is where I have purchased all of my aged, high PR domain names and it has worked out great. There have even been times where I have found excellent, .com aged high PR expired domains for as little as $7 on clearance which is a STEAL!

If you are starting any kind of website, I highly recommend starting with an aged, high PR domain name. It’s what I do for many of my new projects and it can save you lots of time and money. If you have any specific questions about buying aged domains, please let me know by using our “Contact Us” page above.

This is a hot topic and I have researched many different sources on this as well as tested hundreds of domains and positions over the last few years so the figures I am about to share with you may not be exact, but they are definitely in the ballpark.

Based on the graph above, if you are ranked in the #1 position for a keyword on Google, you are likely to get about 40-42% of the clicks. I have seen some people say possibly even 50% so I think 40% is a very safe figure here.

This kind of answers the question when people ask me why they have no traffic even though they may be on the 2nd or 3rd page of Google. It doesn’t matter if you are competing with, and ranking ahead of hundreds of thousands of websites, what matters is the top 10.

The shocker is looking down from there. Normally, you would be pretty happy with a #2 ranking. Heck, most people would be ecstatic with a first page #10 ranking, but look at the distribution of clicks.

If you are in the #2 position, you are getting about 12% of the clicks which isn’t bad, but a huge difference from #1.

If you are in position #9 for example, which is still a great position, you are only getting about 2-3% of clicks or so.

So, what does this all mean?

It means that unless you are in the top 10 of Google, you are pretty much invisible. It means that you really need to be shooting for positions 1-3 for your main keywords. It will give you a fairly realistic assessment of how many clicks you might expect (by position) so you can use the Google Keyword tool to estimate the amount of potential traffic/clicks/profit.

Other Ways Around It?

I know I said earlier that you are pretty much invisible if you are not in the top 10 of Google but that’s not entirely true in all cases of course. First, there are other search engines, like Yahoo and Bing, although Google dominates them.

These days, in addition to going for a top 3 Google ranking, you can definitely do a lot of different things to get noticed. There is Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, other people’s blogs, forums, and much more, so don’t worry if you are on page 57 of Google. Keep building your business and building your relationships and your rankings (and business) should grow.

Using The Google “Wonder Wheel” For SEO Keyword Research

A little known trick that I use to find great keywords is to use the Google Wonder Wheel. I mean think about it, who better to suggest keywords that matter than Google right?

How To Find The Wonder Wheel

Type your desired search term in Google and then after hitting search, locate the additional search options on the left sidebar of the page and click on “Wonder Wheel”

For example, for a Google search on “lose weight” here is what the Google Wonder Wheel suggests as additional similar search terms:

The power of this is that Google knows the keywords that get searched the most in relation to your original keyword so Google is basically telling you what the most popular (similar) keyword phrases are to your original search phrase.

This is like GOLD!

Now, let’s take it to the next level:

Once you see the first wonder wheel options, you can also click on any search term on the spokes of the wheel and it will open up another wonder wheel with keyword phrases related to THAT term!

Using the Google Wonder Wheel is a great way to start your keyword research. Once you have identified some phrases from using the wheel, you can then take them into this tool for some further research.

Psst…Here is a tip for you…don’t be an idiot like I was and not backup your blog.

I lost two year’s worth of posts and thousands of comments all because I did not backup my blog. Learn from this and make sure that you always backup!!!

Don’t worry, I will still post great content every few days, nothing will change except that for the time being, I have closed blog comments because we were getting so many that it was slowing the blog down and may have had something to do with losing everything. We are researching the issue and I hope to have blog comments turned back on within the next few weeks or so. Please be patient