Macronimous Web Blog

Keywords! The very word has gained so much importance in the past few years, in the field of online marketing. To make the work a bit easier for the keyword writers, there are many tools available nowadays. If one gets an idea of the people’s needs and queries that they type into the search engines, it would become easier to create and optimize the content along with getting links to it.

There are various keyword tools whose services are both for free and paid as well. I have listed down the top 4 Keyword tools that are free to be used by anyone.

Google Keyword Tool

A wonderful keyword tool from the house of Google, this site offers many keyword ideas even for the driest of words! When we enter a keyword or phrase, it lists out various related keywords along with shaded bars of the number of advertisers who are tendering on a keyword throughout Google, the search volume of that word in the previous month and the average search volume of that keyword in the previous 12 months. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?! I mean, how many other free tools can boast of these many features?!

Spy Fu

From the house of Velocityscape, this is another useful tool for keywords ideas. This site gives you to spy out on the keywords that your competitor is investing on! Available both in free and paid versions, it lists out the Ads for a particular keyword, the search results which is helpful in terms of SEO, the organic competitors involved and the Ad competitors. A sure check-it-out site!

Nichebotclassic.com

This site provides various keyword ideas with details on the particular keyword used in the past 100 days, the predicted number of daily searches done on famous search engines and the competition numbers on Google Yahoo and MSN. Also if you log in then you have the facility to save the searches that you have made. Cool, isn’t it?!

SEO Book Keyword Tool

Another free keyword tool, this site bombards too much of information! Shows the word tracker count, the daily estimate of top search engines separately, the various Google trends and much much more! This site also provides facility to download the content to CSV.

Search Engine keywords have become very important for a business to flourish online. Such tools give various combinations of keywords, along with search count, the costs involved and search results, thus making keyword writing easier and more effortless.

Social media optimization (SMO), a type of search engine marketing, is a collection of practices used for networking and promotional needs, via word of mouth. This is produced not through family or friends but by the usage of networking in online community sites, video sites, social bookmarking and photo sharing sites. There are various ways of imbibing SMO, for example, by adding RSS feeds, including buttons of various SMO sites, blogging etc.

If you are new to the world of SMO, then there are chances that you might be swept over by many SMO sites. Here are four sites that might be of great use to one who is on the lookout of good SMO sites.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is (part of the Yahoo family) one of the most quondam social networking sites and also one of the best among SMO sites. Also very popular in the US, this is a collection of favorites of its members. This site allows saving links of favorite articles, sharing them with others while also discovering new sites and articles of interest.

Digg.com

Being one of the most preferred and famous social bookmarking sites, this site has become one of the predominant names in the field of SMO. The articles in the site have been segregated into two portions called the “Popular” and “Upcoming”. As the names clearly suggest, Popular means the articles that are popular among the members and Upcoming contains articles that are gaining popularity and importance.

StumbleUpon

Another great way to know and share great websites is through this site. Contributing to SMO to a greater extent, StumbleUpon allows rating of various sites, articles etc, which proves useful for the fellow readers. This site allows discovering new sites and also networking between like-minded people.

Technorati.com

This livewire site is an all time-updating part of the web that includes tagging, blogs and anything that is found of use, by its members. The site also allows commenting on topics by other members, thus developing a community of similar minded people. This site also promotes Blog reactions, which are articles or blogs that are connected or linked to your blogs. Your rank or authority in the site is decided, depending on the number of blog reaction links that your blog has.

 With the field of SMO enriching and gaining importance very rapidly, these sites go a long way in making one understand what an SMO site is and how useful it can be to promote your business online.

Online competition tracking is not as easy as we all think and we don’t know when competitors make different alterations to their websites and fine-tune their keywords to gain top results. The most crucial phase and factor of SEO is competitor analysis, as staying ahead of the competitors is not an easy task. For that, we have various free competitor tools, which can help you track your competitor levels and also help you understand the competitiveness of your industry for success.

(i) TouchGraph.com

You can try it right away! Enter a URL or a set of keywords and then click on the button ‘Graph it!’ However, the following have to be kept in mind:

* It is always advisable to have the latest version of java, minimum Java 1.5. Also popup blockers should be disabled to allow launching websites.
* After typing out the URL or the search keywords, hit “Graph It!” Press the “Run” button when the question prompts as, “Do you want to trust the signed applet?”

(ii) Myriadsearch.com

This is an excellent tool to view competition rankings across numerous search engines that are available nowadays.

(iii) Seotoolset.com - competition research tool

To show the present ranking of the top competitors across the prominent search engines, use this competition research tool. It gives the topmost 25 rankings across the board and sorts the results as well. The site that has the highest ranking is listed in the beginning.

(iv) Spyfu.com

SpyFu allows you to look at the keywords that are purchased by your competitors. It also shows the keywords that they optimize their site for. Once the competition is understood, you can become masters in their own game and at the same time can also tap on their weaknesses as well!.

If you are developing websites collaboratively, say your development teams are working jointly in a project (design or programming) and using CVS or Concurrent Versioning Systems is one good practice to save everyone’s life before they mess up others code.

Assume John uploads his code using FTP  at the  at 6PM, and Dave overwrites it by 7PM with his version from USA, Raj downloads the files uploaded by John  using FTP from and Kumar downloads a Dave’s version, The next day is going to be the miserable day to everyone after all the hard work from the past day - Kumar has clearly overwritten everyone else’s code.

But CVS can solve this issue. A version control system is client/server software to keep track of the work done, allows several developers to makes changes on a set of files on different versions which is finally integrated -  with a server having the current updated version of a project and the client can log in, work on the copy of the project, and sends the updation to the server.  I would like to brief out the 4 most commonly used tools in CVS:

WinCVS (CVSGUI)
The general interface of a CVS is command line client but instead a GUI client can be used as a point and click interface to talk to the server. GUI interface allows easy automation, customization of common tasks and gives up a native lookup and feel on Windows, Mac and Unix/Linux due to its frameworks.WinCVS differs from CVS only in the terminology being used. The initial process of a version system is importing the files to CVS terminology where the import operation involves a “clean” directory structure means the files that doesn’t need versioning are removed. Every file is not versioned for certain reasons, in that case it can be removed during importing and moved after the versioning process is over.

I prefer WinCVS, as I was using it while I was programming in a collaborative projects.

SmartCVS
SmartCVS, a multi-platform client with powerful features is easy and productive to use. While working on a project, each person makes a change on the files; a SmartCVS organizes and groups the files of related changes referred through a change report file which helps to easily identify the newly added and modified files. SmartCVS also sets file permissions to specific users inorder to protect the files from unauthorized users.

CVSup
CVSup, a tool used to transfer files across the network has the ability to understand the CVS files & tags and updates the files on the server supporting all types of file. The CVS files are recognized easily and synchronized to balances the data transfer that occurs between the client and the server through algorithms, in turn compressing the number of data bits for easy data transfer.�
jCVS
This is a Java based client (written in Swings), I never installed it before or tested, But its a poulataly know CVS, your team may want to try. Try any one or more of them; you need to read the installation manual carefully, as sometimes it may be tricky.

At Macronimous we encourage our clients to use CVS (it need little learning though) if they too are allowing their team to work on the code we produce from India. Start practicing a CVS will need little time, but you will certainly appreciate your decision of using a CVS with your client or team.

Did you ever wonder how to work efficiently with your offshore team. I am sure you wish to have some better mechanisms than simple emails back and forth. When you like your customers to interact with your team, without you spending much of your time, But at the same if you can monitor the projects without much of your efforts, I am sure you to need invest on some Web collaboration applications.

Web collaboration tools normally consist of a list web based applications which are capable making people work together via internet. Such suits of set of tools will simplify the communication and information exchange. For example A project team in different locations can work together with Web collaborative tools. Such tools normally consist of shared access to project files, share calendars, schedules and plans. They can have online discussions, share whiteboards and documents.

See my favorite tools below, But I recommend you to evaluate them before you start using them.

1. BaseCamp: Basecamp is a web based project management and collaboration tool, designed for small businesses, lawyers, publishers, manufacturers, and offshore web developers and outsourcing agencies. It has a very clean and interactive web based interface. It presents the clients and projects on one screen, you can make lists, add items, assign responsibility, upload files, categorize, sort and track versions. Message boards keep your communication centralized with no shooting emails back and forth. You can start practicing it with their 30-day free trial.

2. dotproject: This is a opensource application, written by several users, and it has the following features.

• User Management
• Email based trouble Ticket System, (Integrated voxel.net’s ticketsmith)
• Client/Company Management
• Project listings
• Hierarchical Task List
• File Repository
• Contact List
• Calendar
• Discussion Forum
• Resource Based Permissions

3. Twiki: TWiki, a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki, enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system. It is a Structured Wiki, typically used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser. Twiki also has several plugins such as, Actiontracker, Calender, Chart etc.

4. Goplan: GoPlan! has number of collaborative features like Track project progress through task management, calendaring, note sharing and issue tracking. Additionally, real-time in-browser chat lets you converse with team members. Goplan also has developer API which allows you to integrate our system to the rest of your infrastructure.

There are number of free, paid script, and paid hosted solutions are available, finding the one for your team and making your client to use it would be bit challenging initially. But once when you start using it, you will make everyone in your team proud of you.

When you plan to outsource to India, or planning to work with a remote development team like us, these tools make make our colloboration easier on information, project details and file sharing.