Big List of FREE Keyword Tools - 'Net Features - Website Magazine

Big List of FREE Keyword Tools - 'Net Features 

For websites that are interested in improving their SEO or advertising on paid search, there is one absolutely crucial thing that they’re going to need to make their efforts a success.

If you haven’t guessed what that one thing is, yet (or read the title of this post), I’ll go ahead and tell you. It’s a keyword list, of course! 

Since there are thousands of ways that people can begin searching for content or a type of product or service online, creating your own extensive and useful list can be quite the chore. No worries, though, because there are plenty of great keyword research tools on the Web that you can use RIGHT NOW that won’t cost a cent.

That’s right – all of the online keyword research tools in the big list that follows are totally free. So what are you waiting for?

Google AdWords Keyword Tool
Easily the most popular entry on this big list, Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool lets users enter a keyword from their niches and look for those exact terms or for phrases containing them through advanced options and filters.

Open Site Explorer
This service from SEOmoz is ideal for researching your competitor’s keywords.

SEMRush
Use SEMRush to get data on the top 10 keywords that your competitors are getting traffic from on both paid and organic search.

SEOmoz Term Extractor
Another SEOmoz tool, Term Extractor lets users enter a competitor’s URL to receive one, two and three-word search phrases that the site is targeting. 

Alexa
Alexa lets users see search engine queries from their competitors and the percentage of traffic that those terms bring to their sites.

Wordtracker Keyword Questions Tool
The majority of the full set of tools provided by Wordtracker are totally free to use, and they allow users to fine tune and get specific data about the relevance and popularity of certain topics within their niches.

SEO Book Keyword List Generator
This keyword research tool is actually powered by Wordtracker and generates a list of related terms for a user’s search and provides links to keyword suggestion tools from major search engines.

WooRank
The Website Review tool from WooRank offers – no surprise – a free review of a user’s website that shows the top keywords that the site ranks for on Google search, in addition to a list of its competitor sites.

KeywordSpy
This tool is also meant to help users track their keyword competitors by showing them the keywords their competitors use in their advertising campaigns, which includes AdWords, the Bing Adcenter and Yahoo Search Marketing.

SpyFu
SpyFu will analyze a site’s competitor’s paid search campaigns on AdWords to generate a list of organic and paid search keywords they are using.

Keyword Discovery
Keyword Discovery from Trellian lets users analyze a list of over 100 search terms related to their chosen keywords.

WordPot Free Keyword Tool
This tool will also provide users with a list of the most popular keywords in their niches, and features “Exact Daily” and “Total Daily” lists so that users can easily separate their data.

WordStream Keyword Tool
Users can get free keyword suggestions for the target search terms that they enter into the WordStream Keyword Tool.

Soovle
Speed is the name of the game with Soovle, which will return quick keyword suggestions from Google, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, YouTube and the always-popular Answers.com, along with statistical data graphs to compile all of that information.

UberSuggest
Similar to the Google Suggest tool, UberSuggest takes your base keyword term and adds a digit or letter next to it that suggests (see?) probably search term combinations.

SEOquake
This is actually an add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser that helps user find keyword data based on keyword density.

KGen
Short for “Keyword Generator”, KGen (pretty clever, eh?) is another Firefox add-on that scans the Web page a user is on to determine its keywords, making it perfect for competitor and keyword density research.

Ranks.nl
This online tool offers users a plethora of different variations and combinations of their keywords and phrases.

TweetVolume
Built for social media campaigns, TweetVolume lets users see how many times a specific keyword or phrase has been mentioned on Twitter.

Keyword Typo Generator
Not everyone spells every word right every time they try. That’s why the Keyword Typo Generator from SEO Book comes in handy, as it generates a list of the most common misspelling for a particular keyword, just so you know.

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence
This PPC research tool and Microsoft Excel add-on requires a Bing Ads account and helps users discover new keyword ideas by entering the URL of their website or a list of keywords.

Google Trends
Another Google tool for the list. Trends lets users compare multiple search terms by separating them with commas. Who knew such a simple punctuation mark could be so powerful?

NicheBot Classic
With NicheBot Classic, users simply have to type in a keyword or phrase to receive the top 50 most popular keyword listings for that particular term.

The Best Marketer in Silicon Valley Is Doing Everything You're Not Supposed to Do

The Best Marketer in Silicon Valley Is Doing Everything You're Not Supposed to Do

by Dan Lyons

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has done something amazing. In 2008, he took over an electric car company that was in danger of going out of business, and he’s turned it into one of the hottest companies in the world.

Tesla’s stock has tripled in the past six months. Its sexy Model S sedan is selling as fast as Tesla can make them, and the company has even posted a modest profit.

But more interesting than Tesla is Musk himself. He’s 41 years old, grew up in South Africa, and made a fortune as a co-founder of PayPal. In addition to running Tesla, he’s CEO of Space Exploration Technologies (aka SpaceX), which makes rockets and spacecraft and has won contracts from NASA.

But most important, Musk is a brilliant marketer, both of himself and his products. He’s so good, in fact, that lately people have started comparing him to another marketing genius -- Apple’s late CEO, Steve Jobs.

Like Jobs, Musk can be strong-willed, obnoxious, arrogant, and sarcastic. And, as with Jobs, a lot of what Musk does runs completely counter to conventional wisdom about marketing -- and yet, it works.

I would argue that right now Musk is the best marketer in Silicon Valley. I’d even argue that Tesla’s $12 billion market value (up from $3 billion a year ago) owes as much to Musk’s marketing skills as to anything related to revenues, earnings, or any other financial fundamentals.

How He Does It

Here are some of the ways Musk bucks convention and still manages to win:

He picks fights with journalists.

PR 101 says that when a story doesn’t go your way, you try to keep things quiet and deal with the editor, and maybe try to get a correction -- things like that. What you don’t do is go nuts and draw even more attention to an unflattering story.

Yet when the BBC show Top Gear ran a review of the Tesla Roadster that Musk didn’t like, Musk made a huge stink over a show most people (in America anyway) had never even heard of. Musk sued the BBC for libel. He lost in court, but won in the court of public opinion. The fight raised awareness of Tesla.

(Full disclosure: Back in 2008 I too became the subject of Musk’s ire because of an article I wrote in Newsweek that said Tesla was "losing its juice." No lawsuit, just an angry note to the editor. And now, five years later, lots of egg on my face.)

In February of this year, when a writer for the New York Times penned a negative piece about Tesla and claimed the battery in his Model S test car had died on a long drive, Musk went ballistic on Twitter, accusing the writer of fabricating his results. “NYTimes article about range in cold is fake,” he tweeted, following up with a blog post in which he wrote, “When the facts didn’t suit his opinion, he simply changed the facts.”

Steve Jobs also had a love-hate relationship with the press. In 2008, he started off an interview with New York Times columnist Joe Nocera by calling him “a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” Not what they teach you in PR school. And yet, I would argue more people came away from that exchange siding with Jobs than with Nocera.

How do Musk and Jobs pull this off? My theory is that most people hate journalists, so when a CEO bashes one of them, the world roots for the CEO. Plus, when Musk attacks his critics, he looks like a proud papa defending his kid. People admire him for sticking up for his product.

He taunts Wall Street.

Conventional wisdom is that CEOs should not rock the boat when it comes to investors. If the market’s running against you, you grin and bear it. Not Musk. For a long time, Tesla’s stock has been haunted by short-sellers -- people who have bet the stock will go down, and sometimes bash the company to help that process along. Last year, asked on Fox Business about the huge short interest in Tesla shares, Musk declared "there’s a tsunami of hurt coming for the shorts." Recently, when Tesla shares began rising, Musk took to Twitter to taunt the short-sellers who were getting crushed, writing, "Seems to be some stormy weather over in Shortville these days."

He likes to drop hints and build suspense.

Jobs was a master of suspense who would dodge questions about future products but do so in a way that only fueled more speculation. He knew that people love a mystery.

Musk does the same -- only he does it on Twitter. And every time he does this, the tech press jumps to write up the news that Musk just tweeted a hint about a new product. Then when the product is announced, the press all covers that, too. So Tesla gets loads of press for what otherwise might just be a press release that nobody would even write about.

“Announcement of new @TeslaMotors strategy tomorrow. Tesla owners will like this,” Musk tweeted on April 25, setting off a mini-frenzy of speculation about what Tesla might announce.

He gloats about his victories.

Sure, every CEO likes to announce good news. But Musk likes to go a little further and really rub it in. In the May 22nd press release announcing that Tesla had paid off its government loans ahead of schedule, Tesla also mentioned that “Following this payment, Tesla will be the only American car company to have repaid the government.” Tesla also pointed out that the money it got was not the same as the money spent to bail out big car makers. Tesla’s money came from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program, which “is often confused with the financial bailouts provided to the then bankrupt GM and Chrysler, who were ineligible for the ATVM program, because a requirement of that program was good financial health.”

He thinks big and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.

Conventional wisdom says a CEO should stay “on message” and talk about whatever product(s) the company wants to tout right now. At the recent D11 conference, where Apple CEO Tim Cook was criticized for doing just that -- he ducked questions and was too bland -- Musk wowed the crowd by talking about putting people on Mars and a high-speed transportation system called a Hyperloop that could zip people from LA to San Francisco in half an hour. Sure, he also pulled the conversation back to Tesla. But now Tesla and its electric cars were set in the context of a space-age future -- great brand positioning.

He turns customers into evangelists.

One thing you learn very quickly as a tech journalist is that if you ever say anything even remotely negative about Apple, you will be attacked by legions of fanboys rushing out to tell the world that you’re stupid, or dishonest, or both. That’s because, over its 37-year history, Apple has built an army of fanatics who love the brand and everything it represents, so much so that they will stand in line for days in advance of a new iPhone release just so they can be first to get Apple’s new toy. (And also, I would argue, because they want the world to see them standing in line outside an Apple store. Now that is brand power.)

Tesla has started to become the same thing. Its customers don’t just like their cars; theylove their cars, and they love Tesla, and they want everyone in the world to feel the same way. When that negative story ran in the New York Times in February and Musk took to Twitter and his blog to complain, he unleashed an army of Tesla lovers who swarmed theTimes website and every other blog or website that ran an article about the kerfuffle. One group of Tesla owners actually spent the weekend driving the same route that the Timesjournalist had driven, in an attempt to discredit his story by proving that their cars didn’t run out of juice on the same trip.

More recently, when my friend and former colleague Scott Woolley penned a piece for Slatearguing that the government got a poor return on its investment in Tesla, he was taken aback by the vitriolic comments that came swarming in.

The lesson? Tesla is a beloved brand with incredibly zealous fans. Those fans include loads of people who love Tesla even though they haven’t even bought a Tesla, and probably can’t afford one. (The Model S starts at $70,000 and can go over $100,000.)

Can you imagine having an army of people who love your company so much that, even though they can't afford your product, still feel the urge to defend you against critics?

Now that is what I call good marketing.

28 Free Fonts to Beautify Your Content

28 Free Fonts to Beautify Your Content

You don't always need graphics, photos, or images to make your design pop -- sometimes the right font does the trick. But going to every corner of the internet isn't feasible for most designers and marketers. You've got projects to create, often on deadlines that are way too tight. You've also got a fairly strict budget that you can't blow trying to find a font here or there that might work with your designs. 

So to help out, we've scoured the internet for you and compiled 28 of the most beautiful and useful fonts to use in your marketing. Bonus: you won't break the bank trying to find one that works best for you. Here's what we found.

Serif

1) Playfair Display

You don’t have to stick to Times New Roman to have your marketing taken seriously. This font is the perfect balance between professional and creative.

2) Gabriela

If you’d like a casual and soft version of a serif font, give Gabriela a try.

3) Della Respira

This serif font is versatile -- it could fit perfectly in a ancient fairy tale or on your latest ebook cover.

4) Neuton

Like Playfair Display, Neuton is a fairly classic font. Because of its larger, yet more compact width, the font is perfect for mobile.

5) Junge

Inspired by calligraphy, this font is elegant, yet flexible. It works for both headers and body copy -- whichever works best with the rest of your design.

6) Esteban

If you want a serif font with some personality, this font is for you. It has varied widths in the font stems (the main vertical strokes in each letter) so it comes across as more playful than typical serif fonts.

7) Dubiel

This font makes me think of Vogue -- it’s elegant, stylish, and timeless. It could be a great font to spice up your next event invitations.

Sans Serif

8) Quicksand

This sans serif font is thin and delicate, but it would work well in both body copy and headers.

9) Lato

Serif fonts aren’t the only ones that can feel serious. Created specifically for a corporate client, this font is both solid and warm because of its sleek and rounded letters.

10) Abel

This font is modern and condensed, created originally for posters and headlines. Maybe it could work for your next infographic headline?

11) Tuffy

A fairly standard, easy-to-read, and fun sans serif font, Tuffy would work perfectly in a long block of text.

12) Colaborate

A little bit thinner than Tuffy, Colaborate is another fairly classic sans serif font -- with a twist. I love how some of the letters’ tails round out at the end, and some don’t.

13) Ruluko

This sans serif font could pass for someone’s very neat handwriting -- perfect for adding a human touch to your marketing without looking like you scribbled it yourself.

14) Josefin Sans

This font is thin and very geometric, with a surprise in the letter “z.” Check it out below:

Handwriting

15) Amatic SC

This hand-drawn font would be perfect for a poster or header that needs an artistic feel.

16) Zeyada

If you’re going for that grocery-list-scribbling look, this font is perfect for you. Whatever it lacks in “cleanliness,” it makes up for in personality.

17) Dancing Script

Sometimes it can feel like you’re trading font personality for readability. Not with this font -- it’s both lively and readable.

18) Calligraffitti

This font is inspired by the designer’s experience with calligraphy and a “rare encounter with the mood-altering music of Santana” … can you tell? It’s both classic and funky -- perfect for your next SlideShare slide cover.

19) BlackJack

Another cursive-style font, BlackJack is friendly and elegant. Can’t you just imagine this on a Parisian café’s menu?

20) Pacifico

Though the cursive letters in this font are bold and close together, it’s fairly easy to read. I’d suggest using this font in a header or subheader as it is too bold and condensed for body copy.

21) Carrington

This font is one of the most detailed in the “handwriting” category. I love the small space between some of the lines within letters -- check out n, m, or h to see what I mean.

Decorative and Display

22) Autour One

This font looks like a modern take on medieval calligraphy -- check out the diagonal points at the bottom of most of the letters. This font is a great way to add an older feel to a new design.

23) Gravitas One

Want to grab someone’s attention NOW? This bold font makes you perk up and listen to whatever the copy says -- right this instant.

24) Londrina

This font reminds me of those block letters you draw in grade school on a science fair poster -- though the font is way more proportional and neat than mine ever were. The hand-drawn feel of the font makes you feel like there’s a human behind the design.

25) Monoton

This font shouldn’t be used for small designs -- it’s made to be large, loud, and proud. It’s kind of trippy with all the three parallel lines in each letter, but it could look great on a Facebook cover photo or Pinterest pin.

26) Fascinate

This font reminds me of the font used for Broadway show posters. It combines thin and thick letter weighting, which is much easier to read in larger font sizes. This font could be a great way to change up your next webinar invite. 

27) Gorditas

Though it’s another take on hand-drawn block letters, this font is more compact and versatile. Bonus: It has hearts above lowercase i’s and j’s for an extra dose of adorable.

28) Miltonian Tattoo

This tattooish font has lots of intricate details to make your designs look unique. For example, there are little embellishments of curls and points on most of the capital letters -- the perfect way to make your design stand out.

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County taps augmented reality to drive interaction - Mobile Marketer - Software an

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County taps augmented reality to drive interaction

June 3, 2013

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is using augmented reality in its posters throughout the city to offer consumers exclusive content and prizes.

“To celebrate its centennial anniversary year, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has partnered with Blippar to bring four different NHM 100 posters to life,” said Lisa Hu, vice president of business development, North America at Blippar. 

“When visitors blipp the images, they unlock an interactive 3D experience and are able to take their picture with a T. Rex and share it with friends,” she said. “By creating a memorable way to interact with its target audience, the museum is driving its association with fun, interactive discovery.

“And, by layering in an incentive to blipp – as each user who uses the app will receive a discounted admission offer and sweepstakes entry – potential patrons have yet another reason to stop by the Museum for their next family outing.”

Driving engagementTo interact with the posters, users can download the Blippar mobile app.

From there, users can hover their smartphone device over any of the posters so that the image fills the screen.

Then, the 3D experience begins.

While in the application, visitors are encouraged to click through several options including a feature where users can take a photo with a T. Rex, and share it with friends.

As an incentive, each user will also get a discounted admission offer and entry into a sweepstakes with prizes that include free family memberships and NHM merchandise.

The grand prize is a night at the museum sleepover and behind-the-scenes VIP tour with three friends.

“There’s a perfect synergy between the Natural History Museum and Blippar – we’re both all about discovering new things and creating exciting interactive experiences,” Ms. Hu said. “For example, when users blipp the T. Rex poster, they can click on the arrows to read more about the dinosaur specimen that’s housed at the museum, and they’re prompted to visit the exhibit in person to learn more.

“These stunning augmented reality images enable us to bridge the gap between the past and the future, essentially breathing life into creatures that are now extinct,” he said. “We believe we’re creating wow moments that will resonate with all ages, sparking both curiosity and wonder.”

Word of mouthBoth companies are getting the word out about the mobile effort throughout the Los Angeles area by posting four different designs on posters and postcards, which can be found all over the city, including at the museum, at several Westfield and at local schools and libraries.

Moreover, visitors are encouraged to pick up their free poster while visiting the museum or to check out the images online.

“We’re looking forward to building on our momentum in the U.S. and partnering with a wide range of companies and organizations,” Ms. Hu said. “Our goal is – and will continue to be – to make blipp the next verb in our vernacular and synonymous with the experience of instantly unlocking something valuable from the static, physical world simply by looking at it through a smart device.

“We’re continuing to improve the speed and the breadth of our image-recognition platform while enhancing the user experience on the Blippar app,” she said.

Final TakeRimma Kats is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York

29pc of consumers would choose a smartphone over a wallet when going out: PayPal - Mobile Commerce Daily - Research

29pc of consumers would choose a smartphone over a wallet when going out: PayPal 

June 3, 2013

Consumers are becoming frustrated with the limitations of cash, with 29 percent of Americans saying they would choose a smartphone over a wallet if they could only bring one item when going out, according to a new survey from PayPal.

The findings suggest that American consumers are eager to move to a digital payment future but that businesses are lagging behind, with 68 percent of consumers reporting that they have been unable to pay for something because they did not have cash. For 30 percent of Americans, this has happened frequently.

“The study talks about if you could choose one, which one would you take, your smartphone or your wallet, and almost a third of consumers told us they would leave their wallet home,” said Anuj Nayar, senior director of communications at PayPal, San Jose, CA. “That is significant – I don’t think it would have been that high just a couple of years ago.

“What this shows is that consumers in the five markets that we surveyed are all moving away from their reliance on their physical wallet,” he said.

“Consumers are now looking to ditch their wallets in favor of something digital.”

Solving shopping pain points
The key takeaway from the PayPal survey is that digital wallet services are not about replacing a consumer’s cash or credit card with a new payment method but about using technology to solve real shopping pain points.

For example, PayPal and Jamba Juice are giving customers in some stores a way to check-in and order ahead via the PayPal app.

As a result, users are able to pay for their order with a few clicks and a picture of their face on their smartphone or have their paid-for order waiting for them when they arrive at a location.

“Mobile is going to be one of the key devices that consumers use to shop in the future, but not the only one,” Mr. Nayar said.

“The problem that needs to be solved is not payments at point-of-sale,” he said. “The problem that needs to be solved is moving complexity that exists in our lives away from the consumer and onto the back-end with the technology.

“It is not about tapping your phone over swiping your credit card in-store, it is about having things like all of your gift cards automatically taken care of when you are at point-of-sale or even something as simple as managing all of your receipts so that they are easily accessible.”

Being wallet-free
The survey found that British consumers are even more enthusiastic about a wallet-less future, with 32 percent saying they would choose a smartphone over a wallet when going out.

Additionally, consumers across several countries wish they could leave their wallets at home.

The survey was conducted in the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany and Australia.

Key findings include that 86 percent of Americans wish they could leave their wallet at home, and 90 percent of Germans, 87 percent of Canadians, 80 percent of Australians and 76 percent of Brits said the same.

Additionally, 75 percent of Canadians say they have been unable to make a purchase because they did not have cash with them while only 57 percent of Germans said the same.

The beach topped the survey in every country as the place most people wish they could go without a wallet followed by the gym or when they are exercising.

Canadians were most likely to wish they did not need their wallet at a bar. Germans and Americans were most likely to wish they could attend concerts or sporting events without a wallet.

Other places named as places consumers wish they did not have to use a wallet to pay include the laundromat, grocery store, restaurants and parking meters.

Spare change
Digital wallets and other solutions can also help consumer solve other money-related problems, such as when a friend does not pay his or her portion of a bill – person-to-person payments can help here – or when consumers need to cash in their spare change.

PayPal is working with Coinstar on a solution that would help consumers convert their spare change into a PayPal balance at select Coinstar kiosks nationwide.

“These are some of the key consumer problems that we think mobile wallet can solve,” Mr. Nayar said. “The technology is there, but the merchants are just now starting to adopt.

“We think it is going to change very rapidly,” he said. “It is about saving consumers time and money.”

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York