Apple Mac SEO and SEM Tools Feed

Negative SEO - Google's Blackhat Bloodbath

MacGizmoGuy — 2012-04-23T23:44:04-07:00

On it's simplest level, 'Negative SEO' is any link building done to a site that results in loss of ranking, authority, keywords and traffic. The effects of Negative SEO activity might be temporary, a long-term penalty, or at it's most fatal - lead to total and permanent de-indexing from all search results.

There's a lot of buzz about Negative SEO recently in the Search Marketing community, with good reason. Google - as the self-appointed Judge and Good-Guy Traffic Cop of what it chooses to show in its search results - seems to have gotten rather zealous in the past year as its ever more sophisticated algos turned a critical eye on a sites backlink profile.

It's one thing to IGNORE weak and low-quality links and pass no value to a sites authority. It's one thing to IGNORE anchor-text and let a site's on-page use of language determine it's relevance. It's one thing to be skeptical of rapid backlink acquisition velocity. But when sites start getting PUNISHED {and that is the right word for it - Punished), you have to wonder if something isn't horribly wrong and broken with Google's world view.

Especially on a young website under a year old - and with few authoritative links propping it up - it's actually quite easy for the site owner to inflict pain and penalties on themselves with careless, aggressive, or high volume and low-quality link building activities. As more and more website owners are discovering - they can inadvertantly perform Negative SEO on themselves.

Now imagine if someone did it deliberately - to a competitor vying for rankings in Google search. Ethical and Legal considerations aside, it now appears easier than ever to inflict pain on a weak, young and competing website - just by building a shitload of crappy links, with duplicate content, horribly anchored, from awful sites, waaaaay to fast. What if you could inflict a -50 Google penalty, or better yet shove ALL their top money keywords to a -200 penalty for months and months dying slowly in a timed, algorithmic hell.

If you think Negative SEO can't or isn't being done, you're kidding yourself. And whatever Google's done since the Great Panda Rollout seems to be making damaging a site's rankings and decimating it's traffic far, far easier than ever before.

Social Media Signals - Do Or Die SEO For Mac Web Masters

MacGizmoGuy — 2012-02-23T22:43:52-08:00

Like it or not, Mac internet marketing folk are either diving in with joyful glee - or being dragged kicking and screaming into… A world of kicking and screaming for Social Media Signal visibility.

If you've only dabbled in Twitter or FaceBook, made a few connections on LinkedIn, or found yourself at Google+ Plus dying of boredom and wondering what all the excitement is supposed to be about - You may have to force yourself to get excited. Because the Rules of Ranking a website in organic search ARE shifting. And Social Media Signals are now increasingly being used as a ranking metric. To what degree is still being debated. To what extent you have to Tweet, be 'Liked', Video-viewed, get Stumbled and Digg dugged, or charm your way through influential G+ Circles has yet to be ascertained.

Many SEO types are riding this wave out of FEAR. Fear that if they don't, they'll never regain traffic losses that may have been caused by Google Panda updates, or slide further down the ranks because they didn't play The New Game In Town correctly. Many fear that they'll be left behind in a new world order of Authority and Social Influence. And some will be, because developing a Name, a Brand, a Fan Base, Niche Authority and more isn't just SEO anymore. It's SMM - Social Media Marketing, it's SMO - Optimization, it's far broader, deeper and more complex than simply chasing keywords, tweaking on-page content, and getting as many good and crappy backlinks as you possibly can.

Too many Hucksters already abound promising to 'Unleash The Secrets' of… winning at this new game. A few can step-by-step you in the right direction. And plenty have long-been selling as many fake and phony Twitter followers and FaceBook Fans and G+ Plusses as your wallet can afford. By many indications, even trying to buy your way to the top may NOT work as ever-more sophisticated algos discern the 'Footprint' of fake Social Graph manipulation.

Gawd help us all. Because all of this is implicitly designed to SHRINK THE WEB another notch. To help the already Who's-Who's and filter out the NOT-YOU's that once were able to crash the party and get onto Page One of SERPs. These Social Media signals are helping Google and Bing do just that: True Influencer - or Big Talker? Natural Attraction - or Manipulated Adoration? Flash in the Pan - or Long-Term Loyalty? These metrics can and are being measured. Many will participate, fewer will Place and Win.

The take-away? Standing on the playground stomping your feet doesn't help. Even if the rules are changed mid-game. Play to win, 'cuz the off-field bench is getting narrower - and shorter.

Where do YOU stand? Visit SharedCount.com for a free tool to do a quick assesment of your Social Media link-graph.

Free Article Submission Service For Mac : Backlinks Kingdom

MacGizmoGuy — 2012-02-07T23:25:32-08:00

Here's a free way to explore an Article Submitter For Mac using FireFox Mac or Safari for web browser based submission. After you've written an original 200+ word article, give it a rewrite using an Article Spinner for Mac like SpinRewriter to give it 50% uniqueness or more. Copy, then paste the resulting spun article code into Backlinks Kingdom using 'The Best Spinner' option of the two presented. (BLKingdom offers two formats to spin an article: Select 'The Best Spinner' option to paste in standard {phrase1|phrase2} bracket and divider format code.)

Note though: Backlinks Kingdom has a somewhat unique and different way of inserting the anchor link into the article body. Use "%LINK1%" in the part of the article where you want your keyword link inserted. If you upgrade to higher level accounts, you'll be able to include up to THREE links per article, but for free accounts just set up the 1 URL and 1 Anchor Text - and then find an appropriate place in the text to insert "%LINK1%". Preview the post carefully to make sure the link and the Spintax are spot on, make sure you spin a few unique Titles for the article too - then hit submit.

Within 24 hours you'll be able to view a report of some the successful article posts. (Free users only get to see HALF of the 15 URL's your article has been published to.) Be sure to ping or build-additional bookmarks or back-links to the resulting live articles to get the most SEO oomph from them. You can also download the list of successful article submits and optionally feed it into a backlink indexing service to automate the process.

There certainly are higher-PageRank and better Article sites you should pursue for some of your lengthier and unspun unique content. But note that many typical Article Sites don't let you include such contextual anchor links IN THE BODY of the article. So, it's worth exploring Backlinks Kingdom for a simpler contextual linking method - without having to write longer articles and a separate Summary and Resource box like many article sites require.

Mac RSS Submitter - RSS Feed Submission Tools

MacGizmoGuy — 2012-01-15T10:47:20-08:00

"Really Simple" Syndication? RSS is far from simple for many new Apple web masters. The notion of RSS and Feed vs. Website URL's and Syndication and RSS Aggregation is a tad bit complex and confusing. Many website owners enjoy successful sites and decent traffic without ever delving into the rather arcane aspects of RSS. But if you blog you _ought_ to have an RSS Feed enabled, and spend some time PROMOTING and SUBMITTING your Feed to some RSS sites to leverage it's potential to help you in your internet marketing efforts.

Simply put - an RSS Feed is a constantly refreshed URL that automatically appends and updates itself with your latest posts as you publish them. Unlike some of your other one-shot link building efforts - if you submit your Feed to a variety of RSS sites - you'll never have to do it again. Just keep posting to your blog and those new posts will get discovered and added to your listing at the RSS sites. One effort, long term payoff - if people searching for your niche or topic come across your entries in a Feed Reader program. At best it'll help drive real human traffic to your site. At the least - it'll help insure your new content get's crawled (and hopefully indexed) by the major search engines. Either way, a Feed works for you 24x7.

Apple webmaster's can leverage Safari or Mac Firefox to do a few RSS submissions themselves using some easy web-based RSS submitter tools - there's no need for standalone RSS submission software for Mac (which I don't think exists anyways.)

The simplest bulk submitter is at : http://tools.950buy.com/rss-submit/ -- You'll need TWO URL's - the actual feed itself, and the URL to your main blog page. BOTH will start with http:// (not feed://) and be sure to VALIDATE your feed URL in the first field to insure you got it right and most feed readers can understand the format. A few errors reported may be normal and nothing to fret about. Also give a title, a description of your blog, an email address and let it submit to about 2 dozen of the most popular feed sites for likely-possible inclusion. No guarantees, but it beats spending hours slogging to dozens of sites and manually registering and verifying an account before you can submit your feed.

For more assured submission, I recommend the free RSS Feed Tool at IMTalk.org. You'll need to register as a forum user first to get access, then go to the IMT TOOLS dropdown menu - IMT RSS SUBMITTER section and SUBMIT NEW FEED. You'll be able to instantly verify your feeds and posts are now live and have been pinged across up to 10 feed sites IMTalk supports.

If you own multiple sites and have a lot of Feeds, also consider outsourcing RSS Feed submission at fiverr.com - Some will let you submit five or more unique Feeds in each gig - and automatically handle the tedium of registering an account and doing the submit for you at 50-100 or more major and minor RSS sites.

Best Article Spinner For Mac - Spintax Made Easier

MacGizmoGuy — 2012-02-02T11:59:38-08:00

Looking for an Apple friendly, easy to use Article spinner for Mac OSX? Nothing is as {GRUELING |PAINFUL|AGONIZING} in a Mac internet marketer's life as Article Marketing. Unless you're an exceptionally prolific writer who can knock-out original content like a machine gun (most of us can't…) the alternative is getting drug into the world of {SPINTAX|USING SPINTAX|SPINNING TEXT} to create sufficiently unique article content to get your message out - while avoiding Duplicate Content issues and penalties.

Manually keying in Spintax code can become a real productivity time-pit in your website promotion efforts. So, any way you can shortcut the tedium and produce meaningful, highly readable variants out of a seed article quickly is the key to productive Article Marketing.

Unlike too many Windows PC only spinning tool applications, Spin Rewriter is a Safari - Mac FireFox friendly web-based spinning tool that's remarkably straight-forward, easy to use and most importantly, INTELLIGENT. It's very smart about grammar and is quite adept at word usage that leaves many other spinning tools in the dust. That said, I don't recommend their "I'm Feeling Lucky" 1-click Instant spin. You'll end up with articles that read like horribly instant-spun garp that will damage your Author credibility, Reputation, Brand. For best practices - use article rewriting tools to judiciously select the BEST phrase variants they offer as you move through your text - and let the rewriter handle the formatting details.

With a 5 day free trial - you got nothing to lose. And very affordable monthly subscription rates make Spin Rewriter a no-brainer tool for Apple website owners and Mac Affiliate Marketers with multiple sites and niches to target with various, more unique articles.

RapidWeaver SEO Tips For Mac Webmasters

MacGizmoGuy — 2012-01-11T00:43:45-08:00

RapidWeaver is a great Mac web design software package that's highly sophisticated

The key to search engine optimization of on-page content in RapidWeaver starts with the SITE Menu > SHOW SITE SETUP

In this dialog you'll see 3 key fields:

The Header TITLE:
This is the on-page Title across the top of your sites page banner. (Not to be confused with your BROWSER Page Title set elsewhere!) In ALL RapidWeaver templates, this is a H1 Header - usually in a large font. Make sure you include your #1 keyword phrase in the Header Title for that page.

Best Mac SEO Software : Apple Webmaster Tools

The Header SLOGAN:
Below the Title is a second line of usually smaller text. Whatever its size, this 'slogan' is a H2 header and very important space to use your secondary #2 and #3 keywords.

Mac Web Design software, Apple SEO Programs and Link Building Tools for Macintosh Website Marketing

The FOOTER:
Although footer content has been deprecated by Google, it's still an important place to put your copyright - and use important keyword phrase variants and optionally add an anchored text link to another related site or blog of yours - or to deep link to a subpage or blog post.

© 2012 - Mac SEO Tools - Mac SEO Software, Apple Web Design Programs and Backlink Building Tips for Mac Internet Marketing

Website Banned By Google? SEO Smarter, Stronger, Longer

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-12-10T22:35:45-08:00

I'll be a Devil's Advocate here and tell you why getting a site banned by Google is a great SEO learning opportunity for multi-site owning Affiliate Marketers. For others, such as businesses with a single Life-Or-Death website or blog getting completely de-indexed by Google is nothing short of fatal: Your baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. If that happens, fix your site's problems (if you can), get on your knees and BEG for forgiveness at the Google Reinclusion Altar - and your livelihood may be given back to you. Maybe. Someday. Eventually. Never.

Cut Your Losses And Move On: Sometimes a new, clean domain may be your best strategy to rebuilding traffic and regaining lost profits. Even if you have a site that's not totally banned - and 'merely' under a Google penalty - there's a lost OPPORTUNITY COST that hurts you and your revenue stream twice over while waiting or hoping to get traffic again from Google. I wasted a year with a Google -50 Penalty before starting fresh with a new, and instantly profitable domain addressing the same niche.

Be Here, Now: De-indexing or Google Penalties happen in a split second. It may take you only hours - or days to realize it. DO NOTHING. CAUSE NO HARM. Spend your initial time assessing the depth and degree of your traffic loss before you take any action.

Enjoy The View: It's actually interesting to see where your remaining traffic comes from without Google 'overwhelming' and dominating your stat logs. Challenge yourself to envision and build a web empire, or business model, or traffic stream - that is steady and profitable without one iota of traffic from Goog's monopolistic grip. It's a noble and achievable goal - to survive the dependency you may have took for granted.

Lean into your Remaining Strengths: SO WHAT if Google dumped you? Your stat's CAME FROM / REFERRING SITES should soon be showing you much more clearly where your supplementary link-building efforts really did pay off. Revisit sites that drove intermittent traffic and figure out how to get them to drive more.

Refine and Improve existing blogs, Lenses, HubPages and Web Presences that already work. Build back links to those posts, articles, pages and profiles to keep them high on Google's radar - even if your own domain isn't listed anymore.

Thrive By Your Wits! Live lean and mean. This is no time for desperate Black-Hat, mega-backlink blasting on a soul-less Zombie who's already eaten your lunch. Dust the gray off your best White-Hat and move forward.

------------

When Google Doesn't Love You Anymore

Stop pining away for love lost and look to friends you do have. And that should start at Bing Webmaster Tools: Verify your site if you haven't, Review the site data if you have. These are your lifelines to free, organic search traffic at those #2 and #3 Search Engines - but also to all the PARTNER SITES who use Bing/Yahoo index data as well. That includes Search Aggregators like DogPile, WebCrawler and many, many others.

Perhaps most important of all, know that Bing and FACEBOOK partnered years ago. Don't underestimate the current - and future - implications of this alliance. This is a secret weapon that these two powerhouses wield discreetly - and may be more powerful in the internet's future than most realize.

Closer to home - Start spending A LOT more time with your website statistics. That means pouring over your StatCounter or G.Analytics or whatever you use to get a clear picture of what keywords are working for you NOW, what levels of traffic Bing/Yahoo/Ask/Etc is capable of sending you NOW. Look for traffic driving strength in all your tertiary site sources. That means Everything Else: From HubPages and Squidoo Lenses, Article Sites, Blog Networks, Directory referrals, Twitter, StumbleUpon, et. al.

Dump Google Back! If AdSense isn't your primary revenue model, remove it and STOP sending them profits if you can live without their nickel and dime earnings.

After studying your site's historical data: YANK Google Analytics and Google Webmaster code off your site pages so you CEASE to give them direct access to your site's metrics to continue to Reward or Punish you with.

Switch your search habits and don't look back. CHANGE your default web-browser search box to Bing or anyone else - and stop feeding the hand that bit you.

REBUILD from scratch. Say it and do it differently - and SMARTER - if you start a new domain targeting the same niche. In particular, be less aggressive with link building. Aim for fewer, higher-quality links initially - and let your keyword research and well-crafted on-page content attract organic search traffic more naturally.

R.I.P. Yahoo SiteExplorer - Hello Bing Webmaster Tools

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-12-10T19:43:20-08:00

With the demise of Yahoo SiteExplorer last month, Mac website owners lost a really valuable, free tool for quick backlink checks. Several Safari SEO toolbar extensions and many free back link checking sites also became non-functional the day SiteExplorer was decommissioned.

Though by no means comprehensive, Yahoo provided a good sampling of many of your site's back links, generally ranked in order of site authority. It also allowed downloading a .CSV file of your current links for use in a backlink indexing tool for the added oomph of secondary link-building.

Bing's Webmaster Tools have had some significant improvements lately. Recently added is the ability to download their view of your backlink data - if you've verified your site with them. And I suggest you do. There's so much to learn from Bing's view of your site's pages, keywords and traffic. It's also helpful to your internet marketing efforts when you see what Authority sites Bing likes to use for ranking your pages. Those sites are very different from what GoogleBot, and even YahooSlurp tended to favor.

Own multiple sites and want to rank better in Bing? Note the referring sites you see in these link profiles. Many are good candidates for trying to get a link from for your other sites. Paying attention to Bing Webmaster Tools data can help all of us improve our sites rankings - and reduce our dependence on Google.

Because you MUST verify your site ownership with Bing - we now lose the ability to easily spy on competitor's link profiles - something SiteExplorer was great for. In that tradeoff, at least other competing site owners can no longer instantly see the highest ranking links BingBot tracks for your sites.

SEO Review : 30 Minute Backlinks by Michelle MacPhearson

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-11-22T21:59:32-08:00

I don't know if 'Guruesse' is a proper term or not, but Michelle MacPhearson is a woman I absolutely respect above all others in the SEO and Internet Marketing field. Elsewhere, there's a raging sea of SEO Squeeze-Page Hucksters (mostly guys) that want your money to unleash a Backlink or Traffic Explosion, Tsunami, Tornado, Landslide, Tidal Wave, Hurricane, Fire Storm… or attach you to a Siphon, Race Track, Floodgate, Super-Highway, Fast-Lane or whatnot on your supposed 'Push-Button' road to riches.

And then there's Michelle, who over the years has sensibly packaged her Best Of The Best website Authority and Social Media participation knowledge into one of the most powerful How-To strategies that I've ever seen. 30 Minute Backlinks presents a step-by-step, process, all broken down into focused, do-able, 30-minutes-or-less daily doses that can take any blog or website - and YOU the human - to the top of Search Rankings and internet visibility. Gently. Powerfully. Effectively.

I had no reservations signing up for 30 Minute Backlinks at it's introductory price. And as I peruse the initial day-to-day and week-to-week sequence of sites she's laying out for the FULL YEAR ahead -- I find myself in new sites and places I'd never heard of, and returning to old stomping grounds I know are top-notch -- or never fully or properly leveraged to its full potential. Keep in mind I'm an OLD DOG who's been promoting sites since the dawn of the internet - and I've taken the loooooooooooooooong, hard road to learn what Michelle presents in bite-sized, digestible chunks. Stepping through the process will teach ANY website owner so much about WHERE you need to effectively be participating in this ever-changing landscape of Internet Marketing.

As I review 30 Minute Backlinks action plan, I'm excited about where it's all heading. The first weeks of content that's already available - are about Laying Tracks: From URL and Directory Submissions, to building a diverse and free Web 2.0 blog network, Profile building, submitting to Article sites, RSS feed submission. 'Staking out internet turf' I like to call it -- Here, there, and everywhere there's a QUALITY link worth building.

As the process evolves, this sort of 'back-fill' supports the Persona, Presence and Authority you're going to become in your niche. Leveraging Real-Time Status sites (like Twitter, Plurk, Identi.ca, FriendFeed, FaceBook etc.) are going to be a huge part of a bigger 'Conversation' you'll be creating as more and more pieces of your content, persona and presence are skillfully placed.

I expect by the end of the 52 week plan I'm going to be rocking the web like I've never done before. Michelle's rollout will allow for new sites and opportunities to be added in the months ahead, and a chance to adapt and fine-tune to WHAT WORKS - TODAY as it evolves.

If, like me, your sites have suffered from the brutal Google Farmer, Panda, Fresh updates this year - It's clear we really need to double-down and get more things right - in more places than ever before. I can already see 30 Minute Backlinks is going to take my Mac backlink building skills back to the basics - and away from some of the low-ball krap-links I've futzed with as of late.

Tip: For those who take advantage of Michelle's offer: Get your copy-paste skills at the ready. Have a few short original articles prepared. Have profile photo/avatars sized and saved, a good 'About Me' snippet of text, Blog feed URL's ready to insert where needed. Yes, it's going to involve manually registering A LOT of accounts across the cyber-sphere. So create a '30-Minute' folder in your Safari or Firefox Mac toolbar - you're gonna want to bookmark EVERY site you visit along the way - so you'll have an easy way to return to them for updates.

Google HATES My Blog : STALE-Mate Leads To Check-Mate

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-11-08T19:31:02-08:00

Been watching your blog's traffic dwindle down a death spiral this past week? Google's 'Fresh' update may be cutting hard and deep - and it's your fault. Complacency may be killing your site's traffic - especially if you're in a trendy or newsy niche.

It isn't just neglected blogs that are seeing traffic drops. Even static pages can suffer for two reasons:

#1. Fresh, time-stamped content is being given more visibility in the top of Page 1 search results. As such, other formerly high-ranking keywords may be getting pushed further down the page - or off to Page Two.

#2. If you haven't tweaked or 'freshened-up' your static pages in a long while - GoogleBot knows that nothing's changed - and as such may devalue it and consider it 'stale' content that is no longer worthy of being included in the Zen of 'Be here, Now' search results.

I'm sure the SEO Gods and Pro-Bloggers are already coming up with 'What You Can Do NOW to Survive Google's Fresh Update' posts. And maybe you should too. Cuz unlike some other quirks to Google's algo that weren't fatal - this one seems to have sharp teeth.

If you don't have 'skin in the game' (especially if your sites don't have true SEO authority like the Top 1000 do….) and prove you're an ACTIVE participant in content generation, well down the ranks you'll go. With no changes to a page's checksum since last crawl, or clearly abandoned blogs revealed by last post time-stamp -- Googles found an elegantly simple and brutal way to separate the chaff from the wheat so to speak - and cast a million more websites into the dustbin of dusty irrelevancy.

Back to the drawing board kids. It's time to revive that old blog with a sequence of new posts. Time to go over some of those long-neglected static pages and give 'em a fresh coat of paint… 'Publish - or Perish!'

Mac MMO - Making Money With Your Macintosh Computer

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-07-31T20:32:34-07:00

There's a 1001 places and ways for an Apple website owner to MMO - Make Money Online. Affiliate Programs, Pay Per Click PPC, CPA earnings for when visitors perform an action, good ol' Adsense graffiti sprayed across your site and blogs... the opportunities are endless. But for many, they're also fruitless. You can spend a lot of energy applying to programs, building links, trying to get traffic -- and be amazed at how LITTLE money you can actually ever earn from much of your efforts. Or, wait months to meet minimum payout thresholds such as the magic $100 mark to get your first-ever AdSense payout, or 60+ days to cash in on Amazon sales. Ugh!

Mac Computer + WordPress Blog + PageRank 1+ = MONEY

Monthly Revenue Generation For WordPress Webmasters

One sure-fire way of reasonably predictable income from month to month is by 'leasing' space on your site or blog for link placements. If you're one of the tens of millions of Mac WordPress bloggers there's some interesting opportunities to get paid for providing room for sidebar links or blog posts with embedded contextual links on a month to month basis. You get free Theme-Related content posts for your site AND get to watch the dollars add up.

Especially if you make serious efforts to increase your PageRank - the value of these link placements earn higher month-to-month income as PageRank increases. With programs such as PostLinks.com - IF you have a PR1+ PageRank you can sell text links on your WordPress blog. And as your PR increases, your monthly payments for each and every link and post grow along with it. A simple WordPress plugin auto-magically handles the monetized link placements for you.

For new WP blogs still at PR0 -- There's still opportunities such as those through BackLinks.com to sell text links on your site by providing space for sidebar links, blog post placements, and in-post contextual links that can still be quite lucrative if you own a half-dozen or more WordPress blogs you're willing to set up in partial or full AutoBlog mode.

Mac Article Submitter - Article Samurai Early Bird Launch

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-07-29T17:09:29-07:00

The good folks at NobleSamurai - makers of the world-class Mac compatible SEO software MarketSamurai - launched a companion product this week with a cross-platform Article Marketing application and DISTRIBUTION SERVICE for Mac or PC. With all the marketing hype you could expect: A teaser of roll-out videos, a limited enrollment 'early-bird' beta test, a time squeeze 'Slots are filling up fast!' and a 'Sorry we're full...' race to get in -- Article Samurai WAS available to the paying public at a discount briefly, and is now closed - until further notice.

So what's in it for an Apple webmaster? It goes way beyond being an article authoring program and spinner for OSX, it goes beyond being mere free article distribution software for Mac. It's tied into an article directory and blog network SYNDICATION SERVICE that goes out to a Partner Network of potentially 'over 50,000' syndication sites to virtually guarantee ArticleSamurai subscribers are going to get more eyeballs, traffic and link-juice than the open, free-for-all mish-mosh that blasting open article directories typically does.

The software offers Keyword Research, SEO Competition, Content Research, Article Creation and ContentBoss(tm) Semantic Spinning, Submission, and Tracking modules.

Did I say subscribers? Yes. Because what NobleSamurai is offering is a monthly SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE at around $197 A MONTH that provides the PC and Mac compatible article submission software, quality approval staff, AND content syndication process services all rolled into one. Those who got in on the early-bird squeeze locked in at $97 a month for life. When registration reopens, it'll be $197 month to month.

I have no doubt (and their reputation is riding on this) that Article Samurai will deliver a ton of sheer SEO ranking power for your article marketing efforts like no other. That is the idea: to give the average Joe access to a powerful Content Syndication Network. That's a strategy the 'Big Boys' of Internet Marketing set up in-house to promote multi-million dollar corporate clients. The real key to unlocking the value of Article Samurai will hinge on whether you have the wherewithal to generate or out-source to obtain the high-quality content needed to continuously feed the system they've built.

Building Backlinks To Backlinks - Smart SEO

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-06-28T18:21:30-07:00

It's not easy getting decent backlinks to your website. If you've been seriously promoting your websites and using various backlink checker tools and tactics, you might be appalled by just how few of your link building attempts even show up! That can be a bit deceptive though, there's usually more links out there than you might think, and far fewer than you'd like to see for all your efforts.

Problem is, many backlinks simply aren't permanent. It's discouraging to see how many links get flushed all to quickly as fly-by-night blogs, directories and social bookmark sites vanish along with their domains. Some links you build will have surprising permanence for years, others will prove to be simply worthless, temporary blips of drivel that may never get indexed, never see the light of day - or stay.

You can make efforts to build link juice to your juiciest links - especially if you buy text links for precise theme and content placement. Any link juice you can pass to them - will flow some of it to your money-site links - no matter where. It's most valuable especially with your highest PageRank backlinks.

Social bookmarking is the tool of choice for boosting. Nearly any type of URL: Root domains, Deep links or Subdomained Pages and Blog like yourname.freeblog.com. You can also bookmark and build links to your RSS Feeds, Profile Pages on various Web 2.0 sites and Forums... More opportunities than you might initially think.

It may seem existential: Building links to links to links that link back to your site. But it is a SUPPLEMENTAL link-building activity you might want to try. It's a core concept of the LinkWheel theory - where you use various Web 2.0 properties to architect a wheel or pyramid of authority that flows link-juice TOWARDS your main money sites. But it doesn't have to be that formal: As you stumble across links to your sites, content, articles or posts - Use something like Ping.FM or OnlyWire to promote it. Or use Social automation tools like SOCIALADR, SocialMonkee or IMAutomator to easily build some links to those links - and then move on to the next.

Unlike pounding hundreds of backlinks 'too quickly' directly to your main site - Link boosting can be done as aggressively as you like, since it's indirect. In fact you can be VERY aggressive with these 2nd and 3rd tier links with impunity.

The effects of boosting is subtle, but real. Ultimately it creates layers of pointers and 'Authority' of varying degrees - all pointing in your direction. I find that in time - it helps make your high-ranking sites unshakable. It helps them rank higher and STAY higher because you're willing to go the extra mile that 90% of other people trying to MMO - Make Money Online don't. That extra mile will help you earn more online income than the other 90% of webmasters who don't make this extra link-building tactic work for them.

Safari SEO Extensions For Apple Web Masters

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-07-03T17:25:45-07:00

A continued dribble of truly handy and unique additions of Apple webmaster tools continue to arrive as the Safari web browser matures. Recently one of my favorite Safari SEO toolbar extensions for Twitter is Buffer - which lets you line up and schedule links you'd like to Tweet. Another is the TypePad extension which lets you select web snippets and send them to a new blog post at TypePad. SEOQuake continues to be the single best SEO plugin overall - and remains critical for PageRank and backlink assessment of competing domains as well as your own sites.

One of my faves - SaveTO pops up an overlay for most of the top services that have the most SEO power and clout on the internet. Proof that sometimes less is more - a focus on that matters. The only problem I have with SaveTo is it's large floating toolbar may interfere with some top-page content or banners and cause quirky behavior.

The Safari 5 Extension Repository at Tumblr keeps up with the literally thousand of Extensions written to date, tho scouring the blog for Search Marketing and Social Bookmarking goodies can be tedious. Apple recently gave a much-needed redesign of their Extensions page with a Sidebar By Category which is a better layout. However Apple isn't listing all, or most, or the supposedly 'best' extensions - it's more like a 'Featured' Extension listing that's a great starting point, but far from comprehensive.

Browser Based Backlink Tool For Mac Webmasters : Majestic SEO

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-03-03T19:33:00-08:00

If you haven't already -- fire up Safari and bookmark Majestic SEO. These folks provide some awesome tools and graphs to monitor your sites linkbuilding efforts with. For those who've relied on the soon to be phased-out Yahoo Site Explorer, this is a BETTER alternative. Be sure to whack in your site(s) URL to get your site crawled and added to their massive database if it isn't already listed. Register and log-in to get even more detailed charts and reports.

Recently, Market Samurai For OSX integrated Majestic's database into it's SEO Competition module. And that's an important and critical move as Yahoo plans to phase-out its SiteExplorer backlink tool in the not too distant future.

Other browser based backlink checkers worth noting? My personal favorite is online-utility.org which groups your sites backlinks by .Edu, .Gov, .Org, .Net, .COM and .Misc etc TLD groups. It's a quick tool to find some links you might have long forgotten about - and remind you how LINK DIVERSITY of domains is an important part of a balanced back-link PROFILE any Mac webmaster ought to be striving for.

Safari and FireFox Friendly Social Bookmarking Submitter For Mac

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-04-03T17:15:26-07:00

Backlink building is a critical part of SEO - SEM (Search Engine Optimization - Marketing) for three reasons. It helps your pages get indexed and crawled regularly. The second reason: it can provide higher SERP rankings by boosting specific anchor-text keywords for your market. And it can get you additional site visitors and diversification that can help protect your traffic levels somewhat from the up and down whims of the major search engines.

Click For Your 25 Free Bookmarks A Day Building Tool

Free and 1-Time Premium Plans for Mac Webmasters

Building backlinks can be a time-consuming process but something you should do across a wide range of sites for a diverse link profile. You can outsource - or do it yourself with the automated help of SocialMonkee - an easy to use, Mac browser friendly backlink builder the lets you to build up to 25 unique Social Bookmark links each day for free.

The free version allows 1 URL per day to 25 sites. Upgraded members are able to promote 3 URL's to 100 sites per day. With the ability to SPIN Titles, Descriptions and Tags - and with these being instantly sent to bookmarking sites on separate IP addresses - you can get the diversification you need without overkill. I think that's important: Spinning gives more UNIQUE bookmarks placed on UNIQUE IP's throughout their network. Premium members have the option DRIP 100 links more slowly. Overall it's the right recipe for Steady and Safe link velocity - without spamming and link dumping. The upgrade option is a very reasonable and low one-time fee - ideal for Mac internet marketers with multiple sites.

Submitting a page or blog post to Social Monkee via the members area takes under two minutes. However, they also created a Mac Firefox SEO plugin that allows you to submit your page to up to 100 sites in just a few clicks using the icon it will place in Firefox's toolbar. Premium Accounts also get access to RSS feeds and link reports, to track your backlink progess.

You'll still want to use OnlyWire, Ping.fm, or other SMO - Social Media Optimization and marketing tools to promote to the top-tier sites with. But Mac friendly tools like Social Monkee can help with anchor text variation and link acquisition the next tier down for a truly strong and diverse link graph.

Mac Webmaster Mastery : Free 1-Way Links Made Easy-er

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-01-26T21:22:16-08:00

Any Mac web master who's tried to promote a site has to do four things: Do good keyword research, build a site that people enjoy, write great content, and promote those sites and content to build backlinks. Even after months and months of effort, you may be dismayed to discover that FEW if ANY of the backlinks you built really have any PageRank power whatsoever. The prospect of trying 25 *FREE* Lifetime Text Links (credits, actually) that _do_ pass PageRank and Authority is something I'm glad I didn't pass up. For the first time, I'm getting PR1-4 advertising links to deep pages, anchored with the EXACT keywords I want, on content and theme related sites of my choosing.

With a bit of legwork, I'm now able to build quality backlinks on my Mac without begging, link-swapping, or hoping. After trying every possible link-building tactic, various systems and services out there -- in the end I've found TextLinks-dot-com to deliver index page Sidebar links with some real 'Oomph!' behind them.

A free trial is a great way to explore the system and do a few link placements yourself. After subscribing the real work began. It's not easy finding sites on the network with good traffic and ranking. But once you do, you should making note of that, and using the BEST blogs on the network to put your links on. That's not such an easy task. There's alot of trial and error involved, and it helps to use certain tools and sites to assess a blog's PR rank, traffic levels, and backlink profile. However, after a few months as a subscriber, I now use my monthly credits VERY wisely and get good bang for the buck. (I particularly recommend SIDEBAR links on the MAIN index page of PR1+ blogs at a cost of 3 credits each - so that they can pass rank to your sites and pages.) If you're tired, like me, of spending waaaaay to much life energy on weak and krappy PR0 links, give TextLinks a try. I'm glad I did: My empire and traffic levels just continue to reach new highs. Yours can too.

Free Directory Submission For Mac Site Owners

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-01-25T21:34:49-08:00

If you have the patience to work through the sequence, the Mac compatible free directory submitter at the IMTalk forums can help you submit to over 2000 web directories in as little as.... well, over 2000 clicks. The only cost for this FireFox and Safari compatible web-browser based SEO tool is registration (and hopefully - participation) at the IMTalk.org Forum - it's one of two free tools they offer to registered forum users.

You simply set up your site's URL, Title, Description and Preferred Primary Category - then work thru the sequence. Some sites you'll have to pull-down on a Category menu to best match the directory's specific structure. Hit submit and it will automagically move onto the next. It works, it's free.

If you have time on your hands, great. But frankly, there's cheap ways to outsource these submissions - and spend your time on more profitable SEO tasks. That's not to say directory listings aren't worth getting. Lately, Social Bookmarking has become so devalued -- that the vast majority of social bookmark efforts won't show up in your backlink counts at all - or stay there for long. Directory submissions seem to have more staying power for the long haul - so they still are an important part of an Apple webmaster's efforts.

The other Apple friendly SEO submission tool at IMTalk SEO Tools is a rather awesome QUICK-INDEXER that can get a new domain indexed FAST! While these are low-grade WHOIS/LOOKUP sites - You might end up with a coupla PR0 backlinks showing up from a select few of these. A free trial version of Market Samurai and it's SEO Competition module can help you ascertain which back-links show up for your sites. This indexing tool is definitely worth a shot while you work on building much higher-quality links elsewhere.

Article Software For Mac OSX : Article Architect

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-01-23T21:13:43-08:00

Like several other pieces of SEO software for Mac - this cross-platform compatible Article software for Mac OSX may be worth a looksee. You may want to download the Mac version and give the 'Lite' trial of Article Architect a spin. It may well be worth the admission price if you're dead serious about dominating the internet from your Macintosh - and have the dedication and writing skills that effective article writing demands. At least there's tools like A.A. to help take some of the pain out of what's still a highly effective way to drive traffic to your websites.

Cheap Directory Submission For Mac Webmasters

MacGizmoGuy — 2011-01-01T13:58:51-08:00

Aren't you glad you visited mac-seo-tools.com and read this? Because I found the BEST DIRECTORY SUBMITTER TOOL you're ever going to find. Just fire up FireFox or Safari - whack in your site details - and for a mere $6.95 you can get your website submitted in Real-Time to 1000+ directories. Any Macintosh webmaster regardless of skill level can do easy directory submission from the comfort of your MacBook or Mac desktop computer. The best part? Many of these directories INSTANTLY publish your link, so you'll be able to verify many of them are LIVE on the internet within minutes. With tools like MarketSamuari or at BacklinkWatch.com - you should see your site's back-link counts increase within a few days.

Just click this link to GTSee's online web-based submission tool, key in your information - and it'll take you to PayPal checkout. It will then kick you back into a REAL-TIME updating submission script you can watch and verify as the submissions are made over the course of the next hour. This is the fastest, lowest cost directory submission process. I've discovered yet. Even dirt-cheap SEO Outsourcing firms would charge $10-300 to submit to this many directories. Best deal out there, bar none.

Tip: Visit a PHPLD-based directory like: http://www.12-step-s.com/ first and study the standardized PHPLD directory categories for your niche.

Do your research beforehand and use the exact Primary and Secondary Deep Category names you researched in your submission. To insure a successful submit process: Don't use any weird punctuation, quotes or apostrophe's in your Description or Title, and be certain NOT to capitalize any letters when entering your URL: enter all lower-case! http://www.yourdomain.com

Mac Friendly Backlink Buillding

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-12-06T23:26:10-08:00

Free Trial - Boost Your Web Rankings

Web-Based Automated Link Building Tools

If you own one - or many websites you'll need all the help you can get to rank higher in search engines. With good web-based internet marketing tools you can use your Mac web browser to manage powerful link-building automation.

Backlink Booster is a complete set of services designed to boost the flow of link-juice to back-links already pointing to your sites. And it does this via Pinging, RSS feed aggregation and submit features, site network links and social bookmarking automation. What's key here is it's really designed to target LINKS THAT ALREADY EXIST so that more power flows to your main site(s).

For those of us who've already done some direct Social Bookmarking, Directory Submissions, Article Marketing, Profile Building, etc - these are the sorts of URLs that you 'boost'. By promoting these 2nd and 3rd tier links you amplify the flow of Page Rank 'juice' in an ever deeper link pyramid that flows towards strengthening your sites presence.

Mac SEO : Backlink Diversification Tactics - Link Networks

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-08-30T21:44:48-07:00

Take your Mac back-link building efforts to the next level - beyond Directory, Social Bookmarking, Article Submission, Forum and Blog commenting. Few web masters have the time and discipline to do all those effectively, and even fewer explore more advanced, higher-value and deeper one-way back-linking strategies. <-- And there is where you can gain an absolute ranking advantage. By simply doing what most of your competitors don't.

With any OSX compatible web browser you can get your links and anchor text into powerful places beyond your own blogs and sites. Back-link building systems like TextLinks.com can get your links inside of blog posts you either write yourself, or that are inserted contextually within related content articles written by others. You can also opt for link placement in the sidebar or footers of a wide range of blogs. A free trial will get you started, and there's both a monthly subscription or pay-per-credit option for those who prefer to pay as you go.

Such services allow you DIRECT control over so many aspects - something you largely lose when you outsource link building. Such placements offer higher value and relevance than Social bookmarking and mass Directory submission, yet are less demanding than full Article Marketing. One small article, with anchored links - in the body of the content - which is exactly where you want it.

DIY Guaranteed SEO Link-Building Using A Mac Web Browser

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-08-17T14:50:51-07:00

It's important to have a diverse back-link profile - One that reaches a wide variety of prospective site visitors, from the casual surfer to deep researchers. To reach them, and to grow predictable, stable traffic - you really need to approach link-building on ALL fronts. After you've tried directories, articles, bookmarking, the random blog and forum post manually -- where do you and your Mac go next?

It can be wise to simply stop acting like a free link 'charity case' and do what real businesses do: Pay for advertising space with low-cost Permanent Text Links - $1 that literally go LIVE within minutes across THEME and KEWORD RELEVANT blogs and contextually within posts. No reciprocal linking required.

These can be a bargain compared to mass directory submission with long time-delays and low acceptance-rates. Too often you have to just hope that someday they'll eventually get crawled and help your site traffic. Social Bookmarking is far more immediate and verifiable. But all too often these fail to get voted up, slide into obscurity and eventually get flushed. DItto with Real-Time services like Plurk, Twitter and Identi.ca that produce short-lived links. They're an important part of the SEM backlink puzzle, but very very few can build a sustainable web-business around real-time links alone.

Check out a free trial of TextLinks. There you can begin to Build Quality Backlinks on your terms, on theme related blogs you chose, with optimal anchor text - all from the comfort of your Apple MacBook or desktop computer, no additional software required.

Mac Compatible Article Submission Software for OSX

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-08-17T22:03:50-07:00

Article Marketing continues to be one of the more valuable backlink building opportunities we have. Armed with only Mac Text Edit and Safari - OSX has everything you minimally need to write, edit, register and submit to any of hundreds of Article sites... Ugh! Manually.

It's hard enough writing truly good content. Add the precision editing that's demanded for acceptance and flawless Spintax formatting makes document preparation even more grueling. Then there's still the excruciating CRAFTING (and I mean the word 'crafting') of a flawless Author Box with functional URL's that are precisely anchored with your TOP target keywords -- That's only the first half of the battle.

Fortunately, there is a FREE article submission software for Mac OS X app out there to finish the rest of the process. While many Mac site owners might opt to outsource the submissions - nothing, nothing will give you direct control, let you spin and modify along the way like you really ought to - to maximize all the effort you've expended so far.

So welcome ArticleSubmissionHelper to the Mac webmaster's Search Engine Marketing toolbox! This program (like MarketSamurai) runs on Adobe AIR software for cross-platform compatibility - and has a reasonably 'Mac-Like' interface. It comes pre-loaded with 100+ article directories in its database. But you'll still have to register at the one's you want to submit to. However, once in place, you can auto or manually submit, spin titles and summaries along the way, and more.... Finally - a Mac compatible article submission tool to help with the powerful - and painful - process of submission.

Mac Favicon Generation Made Easy

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-08-13T21:36:42-07:00

Ah, tiny little Favicons - the last little SEO detail to add polish to the website you've been banging out on your Mac. Check out Paul Dixon's Web Design Blog - He's posted a sweet little collection of links to website Favicon creation tools and galleries.

Google Top Search Ranking Authority Sites Revealed

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-08-16T06:23:25-07:00

For all the wasted life energy web-masters endure hoping to 'Unlock The Secrets' (ahem) of search engine rankings, here's a quirky but awesome little tool - Crowd Mountain's app for Mac SEO that tells you exactly where to build the BEST back-links to get that almighty Google love - where it's best to submit your articles to FIRST, and more.

Watch and learn from CrowdMountain's Michelle MacPhearson - who I think is one of the smartest, most articulate and clear-speaking search engine marketing women on the face of the planet. Her site optimization and internet marketing wisdom is world-class. And I admire her because we hold a similar life philosophy: One has more to gain by sharing what you know - rather than withholding it. So much for the 1001 Internet Schmucks who want your bucks -- before they'll reveal their Incredible Internet Secrets To..... well, Secrets to emptying your wallet.

But back to the SE analyzing software: Unfortunately the Mac compatible Google Rank Decoding Engine app is a bit flakey - It has NO QUIT option in the Application Menu - so you'll need to use 'FORCE QUIT' from the Apple Menu when you're done running it. No big whoop. The cost of the program: Free - It's value: Priceless.

Best Article Submission Service?

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-07-29T21:10:14-07:00

Time is money - and often outsourcing makes sense - especially when it comes to Article Marketing. Using just your web-browser, Mac owners can send articles to hundreds of sites - with just a few clicks. With a carefully crafted Author Resource Box, back-linked with the best anchor-text keywords for your sites, iSnare is a great way to go for Article submission on a Mac.

Nothing can ease the pain of writing, editing and prepping a truly self-written article from scratch. But once you've done the hardest part - there's far better uses of your time to distribute your articles thoroughly, completely, and extensively across the net.

Social Bookmarking 'Software' For Mac OSX Users

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-06-30T21:55:29-07:00

Lacking many of the RSS, Directory Submission and Social Bookmarking programs for Mac OSX that Windows users take for granted, it's nice to see some web-based alternatives that make submitting and bookmarking your sites easy on a Mac computer. IMAutomator is an elegant, if modest tool that takes the right approach to cross-platform neutrality. Any OS, any browser can interact with Automator's interface to add your URLs and RSS feeds, extract your site Title, Description and Keywords, let you assign a category, posting speed - and hit submit.

A free trial to IMAutomator is a great place to start promoting your site's pages and posts. Here you can submit up to 10 URL's to 15 random Social sites in their list. Upgrading to Pro via a monthly subscription adds the ability to submit your blog's .xml RSS feeds and increases the total number of Social Bookmark sites submitted to over 50 as of this writing.

IMAutomator has bigger plans in the months ahead : More and higher ranking sites in their lists, the ability to rotate multiple Titles and site descriptions, and eventually add Directory and Article submission tools. At this point, Automator is a handy tool as is to increase your backlink building power. TIP: Be sure to bookmark every page, every post you have to get maximum deep-linking benefits. If it has a URL - run it through IMAutomator! Mac users who run multiple sites will find a paid monthly subscription to be very worthwhile.

As-is, it's a powerful piece of a much larger link-building and SEO strategy that you should be pursuing. Automated SEM tools are great, but should be combined with the more varied, random and diverse organic links you ought to be building by hand as you do your daily webmaster and internet marketing chores.

-------
MacGizmoGuy
www.mac-seo-tools.com

Safari 5 Toolbar Extensions for Mac Webmaster SEO Folk

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-06-26T18:40:24-07:00

The good folk over at www.seolondon.com are first out of the gate with some simple and helpful SEO Extensions for Safari 5 Mac webmasters. Namely a realtime Google PageRank checker, and a Yahoo SiteExplorer back link count - all unobtrusively displaying in your Safari toolbar while you surf.

Safari 5 Extension For Yahoo Backlinks

Safari 5 PageRank Extension

SEOQuake also has an early version of their Safari 5 SEOQuake Toolbar Extension on their blog page worth a look-see.

Check out the above Extensions for Safari 5 - and note that you must first explicitly enable them in Preferences... and the Develop Menu. Like many plug-ins, you simply click on the downloaded .safariextz file to initiate the installation sequence.

100 Top Search Engine Submissions That Are Basically Worthless

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-06-15T11:49:44-07:00

Any new webmaster or mistress worth their salt has tried 'em: Yeah you know the FREE WEB SUBMISSION game to 'Hundreds of the Top Search Engines' to drive insane amounts of traffic. Perhaps you launched your SEO campaign with free submit-it sites like, oh - www.submissionmonster.com - www.submitexpress.com - www.addme.com -- then kicked back and waited for the backlinks, traffic and profits to roll in. But they didn't.

Of ALL the sites listed below here's the only FIVE I feel worth bothering with: searchsight.com, activesearchresults.com, entireweb.com, cuil.com, and jayde.com - visit their sites, find the Add URL section, and do it. These 5 may help a new site. Most of the others will NEVER add you to their index.

--------------------
Scrub the Web Bigfinder Fyber Search ExactSeek InfoTiger FocusLook WalHello Mixcat SearchSight WhatuSeek e-SiteSecrets Tower Search Burf Feedplex WebSquash Anoox GhetoSearch Abacho FindOnce Splatsearch Acoona Wmgo Claymont Burf Amfibi Active Search Results 2kcity Abacho About Abrahamsearch Acoon Aeiwi Ah-ha Amray Ask2k Bcsave Beamed Bestyellow Bingocrawler Blindmouse Bofinkle Boleh Cipinet Claymont Click4choice Comoestamos Completeplanet Coolpick Cozycabin Crashinto Croccrawler Cuil Datacreek Enter Entireweb Etracking Exactseek Findonce Foundsearch Gasta Gigablast Googley Goto411 Hot Hotrate Houby Hyeguide Idoi Iearthbound Infoapex Infoprobe Intelseek Inter-change Jayde Koolsurf Landoflinks Lincon Linkmania Lookfor Maxban Metaseeker Mixcat Myglobalwebsite Myprowler Mysearchengine Mysearchsite Netpowersearch Netsearchvoyager Noago Onamission Oneseek Oneworldonesite Openfind Patron Peakaboo Phatlinks Pleaseretrieve Poddys Primefind Questfinder Quincyweb Rex Sailory Sawaal Search-central Search4more Search-info Search-the-world Searchalot Searchengine Searchit SearchNetpei Searchuk Sparksearch Splatsearch Stopat Subjex Submit-one Theindex TheYellowpages Topsearchnet Tryamerica Turnpike Uni-search Verygoodsearch Voyagersearch W8 Web100 Webbieworld Webquartet Webs411 Websquash Webtrawler WhatsNu Wheredoifind Wholeworld Worldvoter Woyaaonline WWWRiot Yusearch --------------------
The worst part about 95% of these is that NO NORMAL PERSON EVER VISITS THESE SITES - or even knows they exist: Just desperate webmasters desperately trying to get seen by, uh, as many other desperate webmasters as possible. We're not a good target audience. Been there - Done that. It can't HURT to try - but there's more effective uses of your time than getting top search engine rankings in search engines few people ever visit.

Safari 5 Extensions To Bring SEO Tools To Mac Webmasters

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-06-09T04:16:21-07:00

The iPhone 4 announcement overshadowed a HUGE bit of news of great importance to the Mac SEO - SEM community: The release of Safari version 5 which now supports add-on Extensions.

Unlike Plug-Ins for Safari which are difficult to program and interact in rather undocumented low-level ways with Safari's behavior - Apple's Extensions model provides a vastly simplified and more secure framework. It will provide developers with a simpler and safer method to enhance Safari 5's features.

Although we probably won't see the vast library of Extensions that are available in Firefox - I'd speculate we're likely to get Bookmarking and Sharing Extensions from the biggest and most important web 2.0 services first and foremost.

Perhaps this lag behind Firefox and its extensible architecture is a good thing. A second generation of innovative Safari 5 Extensions for a webmaster's SEO and SEM tasks may come from the Mac developer community with its unique perspective that will take functionality and user experience to the next level.

Apple plans to feature a Gallery of Extensions at it's website later this year. In the interim, here's a sneak peek at some experimental extensions in progress: http://safariextensions.tumblr.com

Best SEO Software For Mac OSX?

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-05-18T11:52:24-07:00

I've spent the last few weeks exploring SEO software tools - both those for Apple's OSX operating system - as well as some of the more popular SEO packages for Windows by running VMWare Fusion on my MacBook laptop. Some SEO apps were cross-platform, other's Windows only. All offered some sort of trial period, some fully functional - other's horribly crippled, returning page after page of faux results that stated 'Only available in the PAID version'.

It's been an interesting experience trying to find the right combination of Apple compatible SEO software that makes keyword research, back link analysis, site ranking, as well as website submission and promotion truly accessible for the average Mac computer user. Many of the SEO apps were clearly powerful, pro-grade tools designed to handle multiple clients, multiple projects for truly Professional SEO project management and extensive report generation. Great - if that's your full-time profession.

Ultimately - for the rest of us Mac folk - clearly MARKET SAMURAI FOR MAC (or PC) is onto something with a clean, approachable interface. This Mac friendly SEO software runs on OS X using Adobe AIR cross-platform authoring technology. With a functional 30-day free trial of Market Samurai available - it's a great choice to explore its many modules. When the demo expires, it reverts to Keyword Research as the only remaining (but still highly useful) working module.

What sets MARKET SAMURAI apart - beyond Mac OSX and cross-platform compatibility - is it's extensive set of video support modules. Team Samurai -- and other people's How-To vids are available on YouTube and elsewhere bringing different perspectives and training styles. Check out Ed Dale's 30 Day Challenge SEO series for some great segments on using Samurai as a starting point for your own site launch and promotion efforts.

Traffic-Bug Automated Website Submission - On A Mac

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-05-02T04:16:03-07:00

Automated site submission software - whether free or low-cost - has appeal to any of use who've slogged through hours of manual link building. But the software tools to do that tend to be for Windows PC's only. Or so I thought, even when I encountered Traffic-Bug's classic squeeze-page showing 3-D box shots of one SEM package after another: Search Engine Submission software, Directory Submit Software, RSS Feed Program, Social Web 2.0 Bookmarking Submitter 'bundle' I could try for free -- just by submitting my email address.

Without having to run any special SEO software at all, Traffic-Bug.com and their 'software' offers a low-cost, web browser based way for Apple computer users to use Safari or Firefox for Mac to set up and submit thier site(s) to search engines, directories, social bookmark, and RSS feed sites. Easily. Automatically. Slow and Steady -- On a Mac.

Hundreds of slowly built auto-pilot backlinks? Unlimited sites , feeds and deep-linked pages for $20-some bucks a month subscription? Killer DIY Push-Button Search Engine Marketing? Sound too good to be true? There's quite a debate raging in SEO forums as to Traffic-Bug's effectiveness - or worthlessness. Especially from sharky-snarky forum posts in 2009 when Traffic-Bug first launched in beta. But that was then. A year later in 2010, it's still in 'beta', but has undergone refinements and fixes - and seems worth a try.

I decided to test Traffic-Bug's link-building effectiveness on a new website. Literally within minutes after registering a domain, getting the 2-page site live and installing StatCounter analytics -- I logged into Traffic-Bug - set up bookmarking Titles, Descriptions, etc to the main index page and let 'er rip. Within hours, I received 2 directory submission emails, and verified that these two directory links were in fact, immediately live.

With no other search engine marketing efforts that I'd normally do IMMEDIATELY on a new site to get it crawled, indexed and ranking -- I'm going to force myself to LET TRAFFIC-BUG SLOWLY BUILD LINKS for me, day after day and monitor my backlink profile growth using StatCounter, Backlinkwatch.com and link popularity checks at SeoCentro.com - No, I'm NOT going to tip off Google by installing their filthy 'We have all the info we need to love or punish you' Analytics code - nor doing site verification at Alexa, Yahoo SiteExplorer or Bing Webmaster Tools. No HubPages, Squidoo Lens, Social Profile Building.... Nuttin' else. For 14 days.

Backlink Building Made Easy On A Mac : 1-Click Broadcast!

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-04-24T16:31:29-07:00
Are you sharing an interesting link with the world? -- Or just spamming the internet? That's up to you to decide. One persons 'spam' is what puts a meal on the table for someone else. When it comes to getting your links out there, especially on the real-time social networks: Apple computer users can build back-links rapidly and across a spectrum of Social web services easily from their Safari or Firefox for Mac browser.

Presuming you have already have accounts set up on a wide range of Social, Realtime Status, Microblogging and Blog services - you can link your accounts at places such as AMPLIFY or PING.FM to broadcast a quick link, 'tweet', video, or post across all your services at once.

Here at Amplify, you can see how one quick post can be sent to a selectable, short list of the most important services - saving a ton of time and energy - making your Mac-based search engine marketing efforts far more efficient.

For even more search engine marketing power at your Mac computer - PING.FM provides the same functionality to an even broader set of social sites and accounts. Their 'Group' option allows additional control to send certain posts to a more specific set of sites when you so choose:

HINT: The image above is telling you something: If you don't have accounts set up at the sites shown, you ought to. They're some of the most influential ones for SEM - Search Engine Marketing purposes -- and each is favored by different search engines. For example, Yahoo owns Delicious, Bing and Google are paying especially close real-time attention to Twitter these days, and so on.

The value of these two services to Apple computer web masters goes beyond just time-savings efficiency. Bing, Yahoo and Google are all shifting our notion of traditional search to include REAL-TIME internet activity. "What's being talked about, what's being linked to - NOW?" Both these web-based services help you do just that - on your Mac - without having to run any special SEO software.

Social Bookmarking Button Tips for Mac Webmasters

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-04-12T07:32:39-07:00
There's alot of value in placing Bookmarking - Sharing Buttons on your websites. It encourages site visitors to do alot of your SEM - Search Engine Marketing legwork FOR YOU.

Here's an example of AddThis Analytics showing how often my sites, pages or posts were bookmarked by site visitors. Additional reports there also tell me WHICH content was bookmarked and an indication of WHERE as well.

A Bookmarking Button presents options for visitors to bookmark, print, email - and more importantly - Socially bookmark your content across the social web of sites like Digg, Delicious, Twitter, FaceBook, Yahoo Bookmarks, StumbeUpon, MisterWong and more. The value in this is significant: your backlink profile becomes much more 'organic' in nature, since it isn't always you whoring your own sites.

Bookmarking Buttons help build backlinks to your sites under other people's accounts, often with them modifying your Title, Tags, Description or Keywords to thier liking. When vistors do that, it helps naturally diversify the keywords used in links back to your site, enhancing the long-tail profile in words and ways you might not think of. This is important because we all have our own 'SEO Blinders'.

My two favorite bottons are AddThis and OnlyWire. Another popular button used widely across the internet is ShareThis - These are ideally placed alongside the specific content you want shared -- or placed in every single page's sidebar. While there are many other Bookmarking Buttons available - there's an advantage to using these 3 most popular ones: Your site visitors will feel more comfortable interacting with them. Familiarity breeds usability.

You want sharing buttons on every page -- not just on your Index / Main page. This will encourage Deep-Linking to your site and content. It's also possible to embed social Bookmarking Buttons into your site's CSS or HTML code to present the button inside the body of every individual Blog post as well.

SEO Safari Tools and Tips for Mac OSX Users

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-04-07T16:44:02-07:00
Without the robust plug-in architecture that Firefox has, many of the search engine optimization, Social bookmarking and website marketing tools for OSX just can't be done in Safari. Apple did this for a reason - most notiably to keep Safari secure - and avoid the possible malicious tracking and privacy issues surrepticious plug-ins might be doing in the background. On the Windows side of things, hundreds of sites want you to install thier Explorer or Firefox toolbars - so they can aggregate your browsing and search data and site visitation habits.

You can still make Safari a powerful SEO tool without all the add-ons. It really hinges on creating a really powerful and useful set of bookmarks and well organized bookmark folders any Apple webmaster can be proud of.

Below, here's a clip of my main 'WEB TOOLS' folder I keep right up in my Safari toolbar. Nested in it are critical sites for any Mac webmaster should have: Notably bookmarks to Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Trends and Keyword research, etc. Yahoo tools to thier website and sitemap submission pages - as well as my Yahoo SiteExplorer account. And Microsoft's Webmaster verification site and URL submit pages as well. That's a good starting point.

My singularly most valuable folder is "SITES THAT MATTER". These are an accumulation of absolutely killer submission sites and directories I know that get me backlinks FAST, get a new site indexed QUICK, and will get my site on the first 5 pages of Google SERPS within a week. These are valuable to get the site traffic ball rolling as Yahoo and MSN generally take 2-4 weeks or more to really come around to a new site for inclusion in their index.

"SECOND TIER DIRECTORIES" are bookmarks of places I like to drop a link for possible inclusion. I do consider these minor: few if any deliver real eyeballs or traffic - but are important as 'backlink backfill' for a site that will someday have hundreds - and not just a few backlinks pointing to it.

"SEO TOOLS" is where to keep any bookmark that helps with keyword density research, meta tag analysis, backlink analysis, favicon creation, website valuation metrics, pinging RSS feeds, and Sitemap creation and submission. These are the sort of sites that help you with the little things that you ought to be doing - that can get your sites ahead of the competition.

Other Safari folders you should create might be 'Social Sites' for all the Social 2.0 sites you have accounts and profiles at. 'My Blogs' for the various Blogspot, Wordpress, Xanga, Hubpages and Squidoo accounts you may have. 'Forums' for all the registered Forum accounts you have that may include valuable links in your Signature. 'Press Release' or 'Article Sites' for those site marketing activities.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. For all the fancy toolbars and plugins that Firefox Mac may support, your success as a Mac webmaster marketer is really determined by the bookmarks you save and use to promote your content. Killer bookmarking can help you build not only backlinks - but a brand, a social identity, and a web presence that search engines can't ignore. It's all about the caliber of your SEO-SEM bookmarks arsenal. Safari's superlative drag and drop bookmark organization and ease of use is the best place to start.

Google Hates My Website - Surviving Penalty

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-04-05T18:54:50-07:00
It happens. You may have a website that GOOGLE HATES for reasons that you might never understand, for something you did or didn't do that was completely unintentional. You may simply have a website that is waaaay too competitive for your niche or keywords - and you find the few hits you do get from Google are only on the most obscure long-tail phrases.

Below is a good example of a MINUS-50 penalty from Google. It's down to position #11 in my StatCounter referring sites where normally Goggle is the #1 traffic driver.

At Google Webmaster Tools, I see the Minus-50 Google penalty: basically the only keywords it shows are in the 40's or 50's -- indicating my keywords can't get above Page 4 or 5 of search results. So clearly this site about Apple Solid State Disk Drives is not banned. It just fell on the wrong side of some Google algorhthm that no amound of keywordfutzing, on-page SEO optimization, DE-optimization, or backlink building can seem to overcome.

So what if this happens to your site? Well, notice the 'No Referring Link' in position #1 in the top graphic. It's still a hefty amount of site traffic. And elsewhere there's strong-enough search traffic from Bing and Yahoo, Blog posting, Forum posts, Press Release, Hub/Lens, Social bookmarks, and RSS feed submissions to fill in the breech and still deliver enough eyeballs to make the site worthwhile.

If nothing else it shows that YOU DON'T NEED GOOGLE - and effective, broad-based link building across the internet is your best defense of the all-too-frequent fluctuations of Google's SERP trends and endless changes.

Maybe some day, Goog will let me out of the prison. Buy why wait and hope? I simply registered a new domain, built another site for the same niche - and Goog seems to like that one better. For the time being anyways...

Lesson: Don't put all your SEO/SEM eggs in one basket. Redouble and diversify your backlink building efforts to seek out traffic elsewhere. Goog ain't the only game in town.

Staking Out Internet Real Estate - Smart SEM

MacGizmoGuy — 2010-03-04T20:09:44-08:00
The internet is alot like the real world. The riches go to those who own and control the lay of the land, who have staked out turf. Establishing your share of internet real estate is done not only by owning several, if not dozens of domains or blogs - but also by establishing your name, a brand or consistent identity across the web.

Dominating the Social Web 2.0 spectrum is wise. Two sites: KNOWEM and NAMECHK stand out as sites that identify whether you have a presence on top Social and blogging sites - and can help you register at them. Many of these sites provide an opportunity to not only build a personal profile, but also an place to link to your website(s) and provide a keyword rich 'About Me' section worth crafting and loading up with your top key phrases and topics.

SEO services companies can be used to outsource this. Some offer basic packages to lock-in accounts for you. This may involve registering the accounts only - and leaving profile building up to you. Others have higher end packages where a more complete profile is built - depending on your budget.

Get Indexed QUICK - Website Submission Kick-Start

MacGizmoGuy — 2009-12-23T23:13:31-08:00
SEOSerp.com has a great little submission script to get a new website crawled and on the internet's radar quickly: This Quick Indexing Tool can help you quickly submit your site to some high-profile sites to send search engine robots your way - fast!

Many of these sites are WHOIS lookups or site valuations -- it's smart to make sure you have solid, keyword-loaded TITLE and DESCRIPTION meta tags in place as many of these lookup sites extract this info and 'build' a permanent page about your domain.

Smart Mac SEO : Out Source

MacGizmoGuy — 2009-11-13T11:27:06-08:00
Beyond initial keyword research and on-page optimization tweaks - building backlinks becomes the #1 way to drive website traffic gains. This really needs to be an ongoing process that you CANNOT rest on. Backlink sites come and go, thier authority goes up and down, your link's freshness ages out of real-time and trend status. Relentless ongoing link building is what will separate your site from the majority of website owners who either passively let thier sites languish - or never did what it takes to get their websites seen in the first place. Do what they don't - and you'll have rank and positioning over 90% of the other web-'masters' who JUST DON'T GET how both quality AND quantity of backlinks is something you build - and not just 'hope' happens.

Cheap Social Bookmarking Service

Social Bookmarking - especially when controlled and done to the highest ranking PR4+ sites is the most RAPID way of establishing a backlink footprint where it matters most. You can rotate Titles and Descriptions: Here you're trying to snag interest, so your Title needs to read like ad copy. Keep it short and punchy anchoring a key phrase - plus something to GRAB attention: "Apple iPad Cases - Protect With Syle and Color!"

Low-Cost Directory Submission

Directory Submission still has it's place - tho often not as a traffic driver. Directories are most valuable when anchoring critical keywords you want associated with your site's essence: Ideally keep submission titles to ONLY 3-4 words - zeroing in on only your top key phrases.

Mac SEO Using Windows Programs via BootCamp, Parallels, VMware

MacGizmoGuy — 2009-11-13T11:06:48-08:00

Many intel Mac owners are enjoying the flexibility of cross-platform use of SEO tools only for Windows by running Apple's BootCamp, Parallels Desktop For Mac or VMware Fusion 3 for Intel Mac Computers

These Windows virtualization packages all require a FULL version of Windows XP, Vista or Windows7 - though with careful shopping and snagging Discount OEM Windows Install Discs you can save quite a chunk over full list prices.
.
A whole world of Windows based Site analysis, Auto submission, Competitive Analysis, and downright dirty Black-Hat SEO software tools and scripts are available for utterly dominating and decimating competitors in SERPS.

Mac OSX SEO - SEM Software Programs

MacGizmoGuy — 2009-11-13T11:04:01-08:00

Rage Software has some great search engine optimization tools for Mac OS X. Some are free and you can have a trial period of the others. They can help you discover keywords, find competitors, check your search engine rankings and create XML sitemaps. For comparing Alexa rank, Google page rank, back-link assessment, etc... check out their product called SERank.

SEM On A Mac : Flock Browser One-Ups FireFox

MacGizmoGuy — 2009-11-13T10:46:05-08:00

A variant of Mozilla's FireFox code, a 'Social' web-browser FLOCK is worth a looksee. With Twitter, Digg, FaceBook and MySpace integration, RSS Feed monitoring, as well as a great built-in blog posting editor -- Flock consolidates more functionality into your browser space.

Compatible with most FireFox addons and tools, you may find Flock helps take your Mac-based web marketing, publishing and optimization to the next level.

Mac Web Browsers : Beyond Safari for Mac SEO Effectiveness

MacGizmoGuy — 2009-11-13T10:43:23-08:00
I'll admit Apple's Safari is my default web browser. For a majority of my keyword research, traffic analysis, site building and optimization tactics - it fits the bill. But Firefox is critical for it's ability to support some Mac friendly SEM and SEO tools and plug-ins that I consider CRITICAL for getting site traffic and search engine visibility to the next level.

The SEO QUAKE plugin is a great tool: At-A-Glance backlink profiles and select site stats of any webpage you visit - whether a competitor's or your own.

For killer keyword research or help finding top short and long-tail keywords to use when posting to a blog - WORDTRACKER'S SEO-BLOGGER ADD-ON puts WordTrackers huge database at your fingertips - and opens right in FireFox's sidebar when you need it. Its another great SEO tool Mac users can leverage whether you're plotting a niche to target, for help choosing a strong keyword-loaded domain name, a blog post title or sub-heading with alot of search engine 'pull'.

SEO On A Mac : With Fewer Software Tools - Work SMARTER

MacGizmoGuy — 2009-11-13T10:42:12-08:00