Whitespark is Edmonton based full service agency. You could ask why would we write about competitors in our own country? Well, because these guys created a very cool local backlink research tool that we took for a spin yesterday and loved it. The tool is called Local Citation Finder Tool.

How it this SEO tool works:?

Identify Competitors: This is where the tool really excels. We tried to search for “Plumbers Toronto” and the tool found 10 competitors from the first page. The thing is though, that this is from a first page that would be displayed for someone who is searching from Toronto – which allows the tool to find real competitors.  We used a lot of tools in the past that would try to automate SEO research process, but would not identify the right competitors – as a result all the automatic findings had no value.  So we loved how it found exactly the guys we are trying to compete with.

Find Unique Citation: Instead of trying to search for every website that links to a competitor – a tool find a unique citation: phone number. The idea for it the local SEO, so if a website includes competitor’s phone number there is a high possibility that it is either a local directory or a blog.

Find all the links with citation: The tool then searches for all the websites that have competitor’s phone number. Searching for these websites as opposed to all the websites that link to a competitor really helps with localized SEO campaign.

Organize Links: A tool then organized links by the amount of citations, so for example if YP is linking to 7 of your competitors (assuming each competitor has only one link) it would show up high in the list, then would be a directory that links to 6 of your competitors.

Bottom Line:

The tool is free and is a convenient add on to your research for local SEO campaign. Of course it won’t identify all the potential link opportunities, as you don’t want to just copy your competitors – you want to be the best and do better. However, it is a great time saver as a starting point. Guys from Whitesprak did a great job, thank you!

This is part 1 of how to successfully create a PPC campaign. In order to make easier for novices we mainly concentrate on Google Adwords. This chapter describes all the PPC terms you should know before diving in to latter chapters.

PPC (pay per click) or CPC (cost per click) -is contextual advertising that is targeted either by a prospect searching for keywords within your campaign or visiting pages with a relevant content to your campaign. Advertiser pays when a prospect clicks on the advertisement.

Click through Rate (CTR) -ratio of clicks on an ad to impressions of the ad. Higher CTR rate means that advertising campaign is highly targeted and can lower your CPC costs within ad networks such as AdWords

Conversion-term used to describe an action needed to be performed by a visitor to achieve website’s final goal. Examples of conversion can be: registration, completed sale, information request. Good SEO companies will use the amount of Conversions as a key performance indicator

Conversion Rate -is a percentage of website’s visitors either paid or organic that perform the action defined as a conversion. Most of the tracking systems like Google Analytics and Google AdWords allow you to track your conversion rate, by setting appropriate goals

Conversion Optimization -set of techniques used to increase conversion rate. Techniques can include: creating more targeted ads, creating more targeted content, creation of customized landing pages, usability tweaks and creation of strong call to action

Cost Per Acquistion (CPA) -also known as Cost Per Action. A ration total cost to bring a traffic to the website to the amount of conversions. For example if you spent $100 on AdWords campaign and two people converted from the campaign, your CPA will be $50

Click Fraud – is illegal technique to manipulate CPC by either competitors or publishers to increase their revenue. It is estimated that at least 5% of any CPC campaign is click fraud. A good SEO company will try to monitor these clicks and file for refund

Quality Score-an arbitrary score from 1-10 given by AdWords to determine the relevancy of your advertising campaign. The higher the score is the lower amount an advertiser pays for a click. All of our advertisers have a Quality Score 7-10

Keyword relevancy – Every campaign starts with keyword research and success of the campaign depends on it. It is a rookie mistake to try and stuff couple of thousand somewhat relevant keywords in one AdGroup. In reality successful campaigns have up to 25 highly relevant and well searched keywords in one AdGroup

Ad Relevancy – Once relevant keywords are found and broken up in small groups a highly targeted ad needs to be attached to every group. Again it is a rookie mistake to use same ads for each group. Successful ad will include keywords inside it and will have a strong call to action

Landing Page- Google goes as far as checking your website in order to determine how relevant your ad campaign is. One of the common mistakes is to point advertising campaign to a home page. Targeted landing page for each AdGroup allows an advertiser not only to optimize their conversion rare, but also to maximize their Quality Score.

Related:

Part 2. Quality Score Factors

A lot of people ask me how to learn SEO and I always respond that there are many experts who freely share their advice on Internet. This is a list of SEO experts on Twitter that I personally follow and find useful. SEO is very dynamic field and while fundamentals stay the same -intricacies change all the time. Keep your hand on a pulse of SEO and follow these experts on Twitter. I organized them in alphabetical order and shamelessly plugged myself in

@aaronwall – Aaron Wall is a creator of SeoBook.com

@davenaylor – Dave Naylor is a head of Bronco Search Marketing Agency, one of the top agencies in UK

@dannysullivan – Danny Sullivan is again a veteran of SEO business and is an editor of SearchEngineLand.com

@DerekEdmon – Derek Edmond is a managing partner of KoMarketing Associates, one of the top SEO firms in the world

@graywolf – Michael Gray owner of AtlasWebServices and a blogger at Wolf-Howl.com

@jillwhalen – Jill Whalen CEO of High Rankings – one of the SEO companies around

Google’s Chrome is our browser of choice due to its speed, slick design and extensibility. More and more useful plugins are being developed for Chrome. This is a short overview of two plugins we are using to quickly determine on-page SEO factors. We use these plugins mainly to quote potential clients or to get a quick data about potential competitors.

SEOQuake

Overview: Powerful plugin for on-page seo analysis. Includes a toolbar that displays: PR, Indexed Pages, Yahoo Backlinks, Alexa Rank, Domain Age, Delicious Bookmarks, WhoIs, Link Ratio and Keyword Density. The toolbar is also displayed for each result on SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

Favorite Features:

• Free
• SERP statistics
• Ability to export results into CSV
• Keyword Density Tool
• Very fast
• Easy to disable

Cons:

• If you leave Toolbar always on, you will receive a message from Google that your machine is sending automatic inquiries. Only use the Toolbar when you are actually performing SEO work and not doing your regular browsing.

Chrome SEO

Overview: Useful on page analysis SEO tool. The data is being displayed in a sidebar with a click on a plugin button. Data includes: Indexed Pages, Backlinks, Traffic and Rank, Search Stats, Social Bookmarks, Cashed pages, On-site Html data and Domain Data. Plugin also includes a keyword research tool and ability to show nofollow links.

Favorite Features:

• Free
• Fast
• Sidebar on demand display instead of  Toolbar

Cons:

• No SERP integration yet
• No on-page keyword analysis

SEO Site Tools

Overview: Plugin that is similar to Chrom SEO as it sits in a sidebar. Has a very intuitive UI. Displays following information: External Page Data, Social Media, HTML Validation, SEO suggestions, Domain Info and a suite of tools to evaluate the page.

Favorite Features:

• Free
• Suggestions page – goes over every element on the page, very useful especially for SEO beginners.
• Amazing UI

Cons:

• No SERP integration
• No Keyword density report inside the plugin itself

You should use at little plugins as possible for your WordPress installation. However, the beauty of WordPress is that if you don’t know how to code something there is probably a plugin out there that does just what you need without coding. That is why have decided to create a list of essential plugins to run your website on WordPress and divided them into groups: Comments, Design, Grammar,Mobile, SEO, Security, Social.  We do not suggest installing all of them, just most of them.

Comments Plugins:

DISQUS: One of the most advanced commenting systems that allows your visitors to sign in with different social media accounts. Free version is loaded with features. Visit their website for a demo.

CommentLuv: This plugin entices people to leave more comments on your website. It pulls up your visitors latest blog posts and includes them in their comments. This plugin can increase the community feel of your blog and the number of comments.

WordPress Thread Comment:This plugin enables visitors to reply to each others’ comments. The discussion then can be displayer threaded or nested.

TwitterLink Comments: This plugin adds an extra field to your comment form, so your visitor can add their Twitter name. “Follow Me” link is then displayed along with their details on all their comments. Again this plugin encourages to leave more comments on your blog.

Design Plugins:

NextGen Gallery: This plugin helps you manage images on your blog. It has tons of options available that help both your SEO and the look of your blog. It also includes Flash slideshow options and CSS tweaking capability.

Shockingly Simple Favicon: This plugin does just what the name says. Easily adds a favicon to your blog or website.

TinyMCE Advanced: This plugin includes 15 different plugins inside it. It allows your to be format text in your blogs. It imports all the CSS classes into a drop down menu for you to use while styling your blog post. It also supports making and editing of the tables.

Grammar Plugins:

After the deadline: This plugin makes you write better it provides you with contextual Spell Checking, Advanced Style Checking and Intelligent Grammar Checking. Very useful for people whose English is a second language – like myself.

Mobile Plugins:

WordPress Mobile Edition: This plugin identifies when your visitors view your website from a mobile phone and displays a custom mobile theme to them. Having a mobile version of your website is a must for 2010.

WPtouch Iphone Theme: This plugin creates a special Iphone theme for those visitors who browse your website or blog from an Iphone. It is designed after Apple’s app store design specs.

SEO Plugins:

All in One SEO Pack: This plugin helps to improve your SEO, but providing advanced controls over every area of your website: Meta Tags management, Duplicate Content Issues it even works with WP e-commerce websites.

WP Super Cache: This plugin speeds up you page load time by converting php into html. Google identifies page load time as one of the SEO factors and this is where this plugin can help you.

Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin will generate an XML sitemap that can be submitted to Google and Bing webmaster tools. Sitemaps help search engines to crawl your website deeper and index more of your content. Plugin has tons of options for priority and updates.

Broken Link Checker: Plugin monitors your blog or website for broken links and lets you know when they are found. Broken links make search engine not crawl your website, that is why fixing them is an essential SEO technique.

Simple 301 Redirects: Plugin provides an easy method of creating 301 redirects for the broken links you found with the previous plugin. It is especially useful when you move websites and you can’t preserve URL structure. 301 redirects allow search engine to understand where pages are and most of the link juice flows through them.

WP-PageNavi: Plugin adds a more advance paging navigation for your website or blog. You have a better control of how you want search engines to crawl your website.

Security Plugins:

WP Database Backup: Allows you to easily backup core WordPress database files. This is essential precaution against hacker attacks, malware and server crashes.

Limit Login Attempts: Limits the number of login attempts both through normal login as well as using auth cookies. Essential in preventing hackers attacking your WordPress website through a brute force attack.

WordPress Exploit Scanner: Plugin searches posts, comments, plugins for any exploit pages or links. A user then can check the files brought for attention and decide if they need to be removed.

Antivirus for WordPress: Checks your WordPress installation for exploits and spam injections. It is updated frequently and even protects from WordPress permalink back door attack.

Social Media Plugins:

Add Twitter @Anywhere: Allows you to add Twitter’s @anywhere functionality on your blog or website easily. For example hover over @romanz and follow me

WP Facebook Like Button: The Like button enables users to “Like” any page of your website and link it back to their Facebook profile. Plugin allows you to easily implement Like button on any page of your website and has lot of options.

Sexy Bookmarks: There are tons of sharing plugins for WordPress, but this is one is probably the slickest one and it was the first one to use Google Buzz.

Twitter Publisher: Automatically shares your new blog post on Twitter using awe.zm or bit.ly shortener.  You can even include your own Google Analytics tracking code in order to monitor clicks.

Tweetmeme: Integrates one of the most famous retweet buttons used on blogs. With this plugin you have lots of control of where and how the button is displayed.

There many plugins out there, we selected these ones because we either use it on our website or our clients website. If you have your favorite plugin why not leave in the comment section?

@damnheels Presentation.

Cool product targeted to women: ballet flats you can always take with you.

Website: http://damnheels.com/

Twitter: @damnheels

Click here to view the embedded video.

@WeGoWeGo Presentation.

Semantic search engine that is centered around discovering things to do in the city, so far only Toronto. Very nice presentation will have to check it out next time we are planning an evening out.

Website: http://wegowego.com/

Twitter: @wegowego

Click here to view the embedded video.

@Kenseto presentation.

Showcase of their Endloop Studios first Ipad application. These guys rock, they managed to develop the application in three weeks, drive to Buffallo to buy and Ipad, then fix the application bug. Key advice: make fast videos.

Website: http://endloop.ca/

Twitter: @endloopstudios

Click here to view the embedded video.

@kunalfrompolar Presentation.

Inspiring story of Polar Mobile based out of Waterloo, ON. Our favourite part is them closing 4 major deals in one week. Key advice – have enough of right people and be persistent.

Website: http://polarmobile.com/

Twitter: @kunalfrompolar

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Basic Website:

These prices should give a general idea for a basic website without any flash, eCommerce or API integration. Please request a free interview or send us your request to proposal to get a custom quote in 24 hours.

Branding Package:

Search Engine Optimization:

These prices should give a general idea. If you would like to learn detail information about our SEO services please request a free interview or send us your request for proposal to get a custom quote in 24 hours.

Pay per Click Campaigns:

These prices should give a general idea for the pricing on set-up part of PPC campaign. We charge 15% of a marketing budget for ongoing PPC management. If you would like to learn more details about our PPC creation service send us details of your project and get a custom quote in 24 hours.