If you’re out today shopping and facing the “black Friday” crowd, all the best to you; however, if you wait, apparently come Monday you’ll be able to find a ton of even better bargains online. (more…)

Tonight, just about the time I’m thinking it’s time to call it a day, a friend from the Firestorm Forum recommended we take a look at Scour.

Though “new” it already has an Alexa ranking of just over 36,000 - and whether you follow Alexa or not it does show proof that other people are aware it exists

So what’s so great about Scour?

Our top priority is “what do we get out of it” (not greedy, just common business sense). Mostly we like to see our efforts reflected in increased visitors and lots of new attention from search engine spiders and bots. Building up those wonderful links online is something we are deadly serious about…

So, will Scour do that? The answer is… (more…)

Simply put, WhamX is a Web 2.0 Social Bookmarking news and article site that allows you to vote on your favorites. (That is a direct quote from their website.)

WhamX.com would like to become (don’t they all) bigger and better than Digg over time. It can be done, if you make enough people aware that you exist.

So how do you use WhamX?

First, you create your account. Update your profile with whatever information you would like others to see, including an Avatar for yourself or use theirs.

Then you click on the Submitted button and at the bottom of the page (still in the white text area), you will see the bookmarklet to grab. Either store it in your favorites, or if you are using Firefox, draw it up to the Bookmarks level and let go.

The other thing to remember is with this and just about every other service like this, in order to submit something (or vote or do anything) you have to be LOGGED IN beforehand.

Our suggestion is to pick the ones you want to be active with on any given day. Say you want to be able to hop in and out of BlogCatalog, Digg, WhamX, and Entrecard (just a few or you’ll drive yourself crazy). First thing in the morning (or after logging on and getting ready to start working), go to each of these sites and log yourself in. Then stay logged in. Usually that means leaving the browser window open down (at least) on your start bar or using the Tabs in IE 7 or Firefox to leave the web sites open.

Then as you go about your day posting your own stuff and reading and commenting and creating back links to others about theirs, you’ll already be logged into your chosen few and good to go

Below you’ll see a screenshot of the WhamX social bookmarking site, and it is good to note that (according to my Firefox browser with its plugin for checking this sort of thing), WhamX is prepared to give you full credit and full backlinks for your time and effort.

Enjoy!

Today is one of those unusual posts, and I owe it to our local newspaper. Not the big city-wide one, but the little Green Valley Home News.

I began reading their article in the Arts & Style section only because it talks about a game I personally enjoy (but haven’t played for years)… Scrabble. Now bear with me, because this post does have a point, and you won’t want to miss it.

Here’s the interesting facts about Scrabble and why this has anything to do with the title of this post “Keyword Research.”

First, a bit of background.

Scrabble is the #1 best selling game in the world. Over 100 million sets have been sold worldwide with one to two million sets sold every year in the United States alone. Scrabble can be found in one out of every three households in America. It was developed by an out-of-work architect named Alfred Mosher Butts during the Great Depression.

When Butts first invented the game he called it “Lexico.” Lexico never caught on so he next tried “Criss-Cross Words.” Yep, you guessed it. No one was flocking to buy this new game with this new name either.

Butts went back to the drawing board (no pun intended) and after revamping his rules a bit, he and his partner, James Brunot, renamed the game “Scrabble.” They trademarked that name in 1914.

Well, as shown above, we know how well Scrabble is doing, to this very day.

Keywords! Ah, very important. With some choices, nothing, while the right ones pull in the money hand over fist!

To further emphasis “what’s in a name” (or keyword phrases in your content or title or domain name), the story of Scrabble continues.

In the early 1950s, while on vacation, the president of Macy’s Department store discovered the game. Of course, the next logical step was a huge influx of orders from Macy’s to Hasboro. Stocking the game became a must-do on Macy’s shelves nationwide.

In fact, to this day, television versions of Scrabble exist, and even online versions of the game can be found. In addition, Scrabble clubs and Scrabble competitions form all over the country on a weekly basis.

Oh, and as if that isn’t enough, Facebook users can enjoy the Scrabulous application on their Facebook websites.

So think your choice of keywords isn’t that important? Think again!

What’s in your name? Did you think it through? Are you thinking it through? Best take a lot of time with both your market research and your keyword phrase research.

It could mean the difference between a “Lexico” or “Scrabble” website or blog for yourself.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?? Scott informs me that perhaps the idea of keyword research for this is a tad confusing, and suggests perhaps “branding.” However, I stick by my original association. Without proper keywords one would never develop the proper brand name. They most certainly go hand in hand, but “Scrabble” did not become a “brand” until the keyword was known by many.

What do you think?? Please comment!

In the last post, we explored the argument of the chicken and the egg with a discussion about which comes first - keywords or market research. As pointed out, the two do go hand in hand. Miss out on either at your peril.

While yesterday’s post (below) talks about finding what people buy first, let’s also give credit to the fact that more often than not, people come to the net to search for information (yes I’ll add it…) first. And, where do they head? Most likely a major search engine if they don’t have a favorite store in mind.

Keyword research is a must - that should go without saying. Obviously with well-researched keywords your website exponentially increases its chances of being ranked higher in the search engines. However, more often than not, we find that many people do not know where to start or even how to start.

The key is to find the right keywords. Our good friend, Vrecc, over at our most favorite Hubpages, has written his unique perspective on keyword research and given you a great tool (free!) to do it right.

Vrecc’s informational article, SEO Optimization and Keyword Research, implements SEOQuake (don’t worry he’s got the download link marked for you). But he doesn’t just leave it at that… you’ll also learn how to use it properly before the end of his article.

Here’s a quick exerpt to wet your appetite though we encourage you to read the entire article (never put the cart before the horse because this is not the “final” part of his article):

“The final step is to actually make a decision on whether or not a keyword or phrase is worth deliberately targeting. The answer depends on your ability to build incoming links into that page. The main way I build links is to write articles and post them to directories. The articles contain a link back to the page I’m targeting. I can get as many links as I can write articles. If I’m willing to write 20 articles then I can get 20 links. It doesn’t really count if someone syndicates my article and puts it on their website with my link in it. Google is likely only to count the link from the article directory. Another great way to get backlinks is social bookmarking. I’ve seen several hubs on this topic. You will find them with a quick search.”

Enjoy!

If you found this post and our “pointers” to great information useful, please take the time to leave your comments below. We appreciate your time and effort!