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Brian Liang

31+ Creative Keyword Research Tools that You Might Not Have Heard of

31+ Keyword Research Tools that You Might Not Have Heard ofIf you want to get traffic from the search engines, then keyword research is often the first step you should take before writing your next article.

On Small Business Ideas Blog, I used keyword research, email outreach and SEO to increase traffic by more than 4x my first two years while only blogging about once a month. I get regular new visitors and to my site and email newsletter subscribers each month even when I’m not blogging.

People use to do keyword research using Google’s tools, but Google only provides limited data. Luckily, several companies have come up with their own keyword research tools.

2017 EDIT: I removed WebSEO’s tool because it doesn’t work any more. Also Content Ideator and Keyword Kiwi as I signed up but never received any response. Replaced with other tools.

Here are a few Google keyword planner alternatives that you may want to consider when doing keyword research.

–Keyword Suggestion Tools

–Other Tools

–SEO Suites

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Starting Over: Revamping My Business and Restarting the Blog

Revamping My BusinessSeveral years ago, I started this business to provide website project and graphic design services to other businesses. The demand for graphic design and website creation services is significant and we were able to find projects right away.

However, the business model had some challenges. This article talks about our journey so far and the direction I hope this business will take in the future.

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Umano Automatically Converts Article to Voice for More Traffic

I discovered an interesting new app recently that automatically converts your articles to voice and can potentially drive even more traffic to your site. The app is called Umano and it literally takes just seconds to use. It can be used from your web browser or mobile phone.

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How It Works

Basically, Umano hires narrators to read articles and convert them into voice. This format allows people to listen to articles instead of read them.

As a user, you can sign up on their site and download either a mobile phone app or web based extension. I downloaded the Chrome extension and when you click on the button, it will allow you to convert the article that you are viewing to voice.

One of Umano’s narrators will then read the article and record it. The article will then be added to your playlist where you can listen to it.

 

Generate More Traffic

I recently published an article on LinkedIn that called “Is College a Waste of Money” that got over 4,000 views and was featured on the Pulse. The folks at Umano found it and one of their narrators converted it into voice.

Each recording is also posted on their website so that people browsing on the web can listen as well. I got an additional 3,000 views from Umano’s voice transcription of my article:

https://umano.me/c/LgyrZ/is-college-a-waste-of-money

 

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These short audio articles can be a great convenience for people that are commuting or would rather listen to articles than read them.

Umano gives articles extra exposure in a couple of ways that I can see. First, popular articles get featured on the home page where people looking for new content can listed to your article.

Secondly, below the comments section of each article, they also display related articles. So when people are finished listening to your article, they can find other articles they might also want to listen to.

umano-related-articles-sm

 

How Much Work Is It?

It appears that all you have to do is download the web app and click the button when you find a good article that you want converted to audio.

They took care of everything else, including creating the web page and transcribing the article. If you want, you can even imbed the downloaded audio on your own website for your own visitors.

This is a neat free app that is easy to use that could generate more traffic to your site. They also have a premium version for $3.99 per month that allows unlimited downloads and playlist size as well as allowing you to listen offline.

I plan on doing some experiments with this app and will write more later.

WordPress Plugin by Elokenz – Most Popular Articles on the Web

I found a neat plugin today, thanks to Ann Smarty for mentioning this on Google Plus. This plugin by Elokenz allows you to place a widget in WordPress that will show your most socially shared posts on the web.

It works by visiting your Google Plus profile and finding all articles tagged with your authorship. Then it will display the top articles by social shares (Twitter + Facebook + Google Plus) on the sidebar.

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like on Ann’s site:

8-6-14-seosmarty-elokenz-widget-final

SetUp

Before using this plugin, you will need to be sure that you have Google authorship set up.

1. Log into Google Plus, click on your About page and scroll down to Links. Click “Edit” and add all sites that you have guest posted on, as well as your own sites.

2. Install an SEO plugin, like Yoast SEO and then click on the “Users” tab. Enter your Google Plus URL under your User ID.

 

Once authorship is set up, simply download and activate the Elokenz widget.

3. Click on “Appearance – Widgets” and find the Elokenz widget.

4. If your WordPress theme is widgetized, then you can drag the Elokenz widget onto the sidebar.

5. Enter your Google+ ID and fill out the other options as desired. Then click “Save” on the widget.

 

The plugin can be found here or by searching for “elokenz” in Plugins after logging into your own WordPress site:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/elokenz-most-shared-articles-for-authors

 

And here’s a more detailed write up on the plugin features:

http://blog.elokenz.com/features/wordpress_widget

Free AdPauser Script Pauses Adwords if Your Site Goes Down

One concern a lot of PPC marketers may have is your website going down while your Adwords campaigns are running. Even the most reliable web hosts can experience down time and if your ads are still running while your site is down, a lot of money can be wasted and potential customers could leave and never come back.

Bronco released an Ad Pauser script that you can download for free to solve this problem. Note that it does not pause product ads as that functionality is not available in Adwords.

 

This script performs the following:

1. Checks all ads, keywords and their associated URL’s and marks URL’s with a 404 as “DOWN”

2. Checks all ads marked as “DOWN” and if it is back up, it will unpause the ad and remove the “DOWN” label

3. Emails a summary so you can check which ads are down.

 

If you are using Adwords to promote your business, then you can download the script here. Full installation instructions are also included in the post:

http://www.bronco.co.uk/our-ideas/website-status-checker-adwords-script