Unlock your website’s potential with SEO

Do keywords really matter?

The answer, according to Google, is a resounding yes. Search engines use keywords to direct organic traffic to your website. Without the right keywords, your business has little hope of attracting the right customers and converting leads into sales.

If you’ve never done it before, keyword research can seem overwhelming. These six tools will help you build a keyword list and increase your visibility on the web.

1) WordTracker

WordTracker is a well-reviewed tool that will help you create a solid SEO strategy. Its automated search system saves you time and generates up to 2,000 keywords in mere minutes.

Using WordTracker, you can build keyword lists and optimize pay-per-click advertising. The tool stores your searches remotely so you can view your keyword lists anytime and anywhere. The best keywords have a low level of competition, but a high volume of traffic. WordTracker will help you find these search terms, along with up to 300 related keywords per search.

Rather than struggle with complicated spreadsheets, you can view your keyword results in an easy-to-read format. WordTracker’s database, which includes 320 million entries, also helps you identify the keywords your competition is using.

If you’re new to keyword research, WordTracker offers top-notch training in the form of webinars and ebooks. With a free seven-day trial, you can explore most of these features. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive SEO tool, WordTracker offers three paid subscription plans with additional keyword results and competition metrics.

2) Search Combination Tool

The Search Combination Tool is a great way to generate long-tail keywords for your content. Long-tail keywords, which are highly targeted and more than two words in length, will help you target a more specialized niche, and they often lead to more sales. Because long-tail keywords tend to have less competition, it’s important to include them in your SEO strategy.

The Search Combination Tool is unique because it blends different lists of keywords. To get started, simply enter two lists of keywords that are relevant to your niche. The tool will then generate new and unique phrases you can use in your online content. For example, if you enter animal names in list one and descriptive adjectives in list two, the tool will generate a third list of keywords that encompasses all possible combinations of keywords.

Search Combination Tool was developed by Internet Marketing Ninjas, a renowned SEO company with years of experience in the business. Its tools are free to use and are recommended by content-marketing experts from all over the world.

3) Wordpot

When you’re working on SEO, you need a tool you can trust. With over 60 million search-engine queries in its database, Wordpot is a dependable service that helps increase your site’s visibility and click rate.

Wordpot ranks keywords by total daily searches, making it easy to determine the best-ranked keywords at any given time. Because a website’s ranking can vary from one day to the next, it’s important to get up-to-date results on keyword trends in your industry.

While doing keyword research, you must keep in mind that Google, Bing, and Yahoo rank websites differently. Wordpot filters keywords by search engine, helping you plan a more diverse optimization strategy. With Wordpot, you’ll receive a full list of synonyms and related words for every keyword, so you’ll always know what potential customers want to find.

You can use the basic Wordpot tool for free, but paying for a subscription provides additional features and benefits. As a subscriber, you’ll be able to do more searches per day and will receive extra synonyms, related word matches, and projects.

4) Research Central

As a world-class company, Raven has something to offer anyone looking to bolster their web presence. A part of Raven’s suite of marketing tools, Research Central draws on comprehensive data from web services such as Moz, Majestic, Calais, and Google to construct a full profile of your website.

Using Research Central, you can pinpoint the needs of your ideal client. The tool uses Google AdWords to evaluate search terms and generate keyword suggestions that will optimize your online content. All this information is displayed in a user-friendly interface that allows you to explore your results with ease.

Successful marketers know how to get a handle on the competition. Research Central is the perfect tool for competitor analysis because it allows you to view the analytics profile of up to five different websites at once. Using this information, you can analyze any website’s quality by looking at its domain authority and the number of backlinks. You can also check which keywords your competition is ranking on major search engines.

You can try Research Central today with a free 30-day trial. If you like what Raven has to offer, you can purchase a subscription and receive unlimited website analytics, additional user accounts, and free training and support.

5) KeywordEye

KeywordEye is a creative tool with a fresh take on keyword research. Using KeywordEye, it’s easy to brainstorm ideas for your next pay-per-click or SEO campaign.

Lists and rankings are useful to most, but for the visual learner, KeywordEye takes a different approach. Unlike other keyword tools, KeywordEye displays search results in a cloud format. More popular search terms appear in a bigger font, making them easy to identify. This lets you make your own connections and play with the keyword combinations that are right for your market.

For even greater control, you can also filter results by search engine or country. KeywordEye’s Grid View displays keywords in a more traditional list that can be instantly downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet.

As an added feature, KeywordEye lets you see which queries your competition is ranking. With a trial account, you can do up to 20 keyword searches per day for free. KeywordEye’s paid Pro subscription is more suitable to larger marketing campaigns because it provides unlimited keyword searches, a competitor analysis tool, and several other additional features.

6) ÜberSuggest

ÜberSuggest is a free keyword tool with an easy-to-use interface. It’s a great place to start if you’re new to content marketing or if you’re looking to expand into another industry.

ÜberSuggest is similar to Google Suggest, which generates multi-word phrases that users are searching for online. ÜberSuggest replicates this process by combining your keyword with other popular search phrases. This unique algorithm can produce thousands of suggestions for your business website. By clicking on a keyword suggestion, you’ll discover even more long-tail keywords related to your industry.

To find the most popular keywords, you need to focus on different types of content. ÜberSuggest lets you search for a keyword using multiple sources, including images, news, and recipes. This broad scope makes ÜberSuggest one of the most useful search tools on the market today.

Keywords add the sparkle that makes your content shine

When it comes to ranking on search engines, there’s no better way to succeed than optimizing keywords. Keywords function like a treasure map, pointing users from all over the world to your content. If your goal is to find more customers, be sure to make keyword research a regular part of your content marketing strategy.

Learn about new accounting tools available for small businesses

Have you ever wondered what the term “cloud computing” means? Simply put, it means you use software that is not residing on your own computer. Instead, you access the program over the Internet. The benefit of this type of application is that you do not have to worry about installing or setting up the software, so you can’t get it wrong. It also means you don’t need a very large device to access all the functions of your business software, so you can do all your business documentation on a smartphone or a tablet. The accounting tools explained in this review are all available online, so you can zoom your accounting tasks up to the cloud.

You don’t have to be a qualified accountant to compile and file your accounts with FreshBooks Cloud Accounting. FreshBooks Cloud Accounting represents a collection of accounting tools for small businesses. All the documents the system produces for you will show your company logo and contact details once you have finished the initial setup of your account. The package starts with an invoicing module, which you can access from anywhere with an Internet signal, so you can compile your invoice from your smartphone directly after leaving a client’s premises. If you travel abroad for work, you can issue invoices in other currencies. You can even accept payments through the system via credit card or PayPal. This sort of facility would be particularly useful in situations where billing and payment occur together, such as in hotels and restaurants. You can email out your invoices straight from the system, and FreshBooks automatically logs late payments with invoice aging reports and can send reminders for overdue invoices. Consultants would benefit from the time tracking and expenses reporting facilities. A particularly neat feature of the expenses system is that you can take a picture of your receipts with your phone and store that image in the system. The system integrates with QuickBooks (see below) to enable you to finalize your accounts.

As the name suggests, Expensify specifically manages expenses. A key feature of the system is SmartScan, which enables images of receipts to be stored. As it specifically focuses on expenses, Expensify has a much more limited scope than other accounting tools on this list. However, its focus on one area of accounting and cost tracking means it covers that subject comprehensively. Expensify can handle expenses from several different countries, and that includes identifying local currencies and sales taxes. Expensify can feed data into other management and accounting tools, including QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite, Dynamics Salesforce, and FinancialForce.

As a sole trader or small-business owner, you will likely appreciate that Wave was specifically designed to serve businesses with fewer than 10 employees. Much like FreshBooks, you can customize your invoice template with your own logo and contact details. You can also compile and send invoices from any device, such as a smartphone or tablet. A nice touch with Wave is that the electronic invoice carries a “Pay Now” button, which leads to a credit card payment processing system. Wave also includes payroll and accounts assembly features. This is probably the most comprehensive of all the accounting tools on this list, yet it is free.

4) Zuora Finance

If you don’t know what “chart of accounts” means, then Zuora Finance probably isn’t for you. Zuora’s presentation and use of accounting terminology suggests that it is aimed more at the professional accountant than the distracted small-business owner. If you run a small accountancy firm or if your partnership includes a qualified accountant, you might find this package appealing.

Probably the nicest feature of Hiveage is its dashboard. Navigation around the features of this collection of accounting tools is easily done via buttons with icons on them. Like other accounting tools on this list, Hiveage is heavily focused on invoicing and includes the ability to process credit card payments. The system handles multiple currencies and produces beautiful and easy-to-understand reports in tabular and graph form.

You probably noticed mentions of QuickBooks in the descriptions of FreshBooks and Expensify. QuickBooks is a comprehensive accounting package that is well known and trusted. QuickBooks Online offers access from remote devices. You can issue invoices and track payments through the system. The package also includes expense reporting and receipt scanning. The QuickBooks Online system doesn’t include payment processing, however, so if you haven’t already got a credit card processing merchant account with a bank, you will need to do some extra work.

Cloud-based accounting tools enable you to share your books with a widespread management team and a remote or even home-based accountant. Deciding which of these tools would be best for you depends on whether you already have a basic accounting package into which you would like to slot additional features or if you are looking for a fully comprehensive bundle of accounting tools.