Here’s what I’ve found…

Hosted SEO Software for US$79/month or more

At the high-end, there are SEOmoz which will cost you US$79 per month and KeywordSpy for US$89.95 per month.

I tested the trial version of both services and I think they did a great job. However, at those prices, I feel that they are for the professional/company users and not many individual SEO practitioners could afford the monthly subscription fees.

SheerSEO.com: Free SEO Software for 90 Days

Recently, I discovered an affordable SEO software, SheerSEO.com, which offers you 90 days free trial. No, you don’t have to pay a cent or reveal your credit card number to use it for the next 90 days.

You can select the countries to localize your SEO report. Yes, there is the option for Singapore and a host of other countries.

To me, localized results are very important and I need information not just from the .com search engines but also the .com.sg search engines because Singapore is where my targeted visitors reside.

Professional SEO Software for $10/month

And after the 90 days free trial, you pay only US$10 per month to continue using it. I think it is well worth the money. You get professional SEO reporting and don’t have to worry about your IP being banned by the search engines for making excessive queries.

SheerSEO is probably the most cost-effective SEO software for Mac or Linux or Windows machines. Unlike many desk-top SEO software which run on Windows only, you now can access the SEO reports from anywhere with a web browser using any operating system.

To find out more about SheerSEO features, visit this link now:

www.sheerseo.com/seo-software/overview.html

I have been using WordPress for about 2 years now. All this time, I left it to WordPress default settings to get my latest blog post updated with the major blog directories and blog search engines.

However, I didn’t realize that every time I save a published blog post, a ping is sent to http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ and this may cause ping spam or sping. So I installed the Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger to ensure that it will only ping once when I published my post and will not ping again when I edit and save the post.

So far, I found http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ very effective. In additional, I added http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 to make sure that Google pinger server is updated with my latest post.

Here’s the step-by-step guide to verify that you have http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ in place and also add http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

WordPress 2.5 and above

1. At the Dashboard, click settings then select Writing
2. Scroll down to find the section Update Services, you should see http://rpc.pingomatic.com/ in the box
3. Add http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 to the line below http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
4. Click Save Changes

Caution: Don’t use blogflux ping server, it is not working.

A Quick Tutorial on Keyword Research using Google Suggest

In the example above screen-shot, I type in “singapore” and Google suggested a list of popular search terms that begin with “singapore”. Now, I know “singapore airlines” is one of the most highly search phrase. Also, more people search for “singapore airlines” then “singapore airline”.

You see, Google Suggest is really a convenient keyword suggestion tool for quick keyword research and I use it very often when I write, especially useful for getting the related keywords for use in my blog posts.

Keywords Suggestion for Singapore Shopping

Let’s say you have a website on shopping and you want to attract visitors who are looking for shopping information on Singapore. In order for you to get higher ranking for shopping terms related to Singapore, you will have to create more information on Singapore.

Now, you can use Google Suggest as a keywords generator to compile a list of popular keywords that start with “singapore“.

You can use the Google Suggest search terms as the keywords for your articles to be published at your shopping website.

Here’s my selection of keywords to use:

• Singapore Airlines (also Singapore Airlines check in)
• Singapore airport (also Singapore airport shopping)
• Singapore map (also Singapore map of MRT)
• Singapore hotels (also Singapore hotel deals)
• Singapore time zone and Singapore time difference

Google Suggest is a very handy keyword tool to find multi-term keyphrase.

And if you do not have Google extension installed yet, you can visit Google Suggest for Firefox to download the extension now.

Alternatively, you access the Google Suggest page directly to do your research at:

www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

However, do take note that this is a handy keyword suggest tool for you to do quick search. It is by no mean a replacement for more sophisticated keyword research tools such as WordTracker or Nichebot.

Pagerank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page’s importance by the number of votes it receives.PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value…

Now that we know what pagerank is, let’s see how we can improve our web pages pagerank values.

Pagerank is important as a measure of votes of confidence. It is important that you get as many links from other web pages as possible. Note that I said web pages and not web sites. Pagerank value is given to individual web page, not to the web site. So it is important that you get links from pages that share the same topic as your web page.

Usually, you will solicit backlinks to your homepage. However, you should also get backlinks to your internal pages. As a rule of thumb, you can spread your inbound links in the ratio of 60:40 – 60% to your internal pages and 40% to the main homepage.

In order to get links to your internal pages, these pages must have useful and interesting content. It is important that all pages are planned before you starting writing your first word. This is to ensure that your web pages are linked in a relevant manner. So that you can score better for Google’s Hypertext-Matching Analysis:

Google’s search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google’s technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user’s query.

Well, let me emphasize that you should focus on getting more quality links than worrying about your pagerank value. Google usually updates the pagerank value for all web pages every 2 to 3 months so you will be stuck with your current value for a long time before you’ll see any changes. However, as you are building your backlinks, the SERP of your web pages may have already improved and you will see increase in traffic before you’ll see an increase in your pagerank value.

The Old Ways of Getting Links

Traditionally, you can get backlinks by submitting to free and paid directories, include partner links or resources pages and solicit for reciprocal link partners.

Don’t get me wrong, these traditional methods are still effective and can grow your link popularity over a period time.

Links building is a tedious process. So you may want to make use of reciprocal link partners software and link analysis software such as SEO Elite, Arelis, Optilink, Traffic Travis and etc. to help you save time and automate some of the tedious process.

Links Building – There are Better and Faster Ways:

• Link Bait
• Press Release
• Article Distribution
• Blog Trackback

Since these are advanced techniques, I will discuss more in depth each of these methods in my future posts.