The use of anchor text linking back to a website has been part of the search engine ranking algorithm for a considerable amount of time and is likely to remain so (to some extent) for the foreseeable future. Your website needs a natural looking linking profile in order to avoid any of the recent penalties as a result of the recent search engine updates (Google Panda and Penguin to name a couple).

Using Keyword Eye Pro, you are now able to visualize all external linking anchor text to a website in just a few seconds. This is a useful SEO report on quite a few levels. You are able to see what keywords are used when linking to a website and the individual counts for these keywords.

In the usual Keyword Eye fashion the report returns a keyword cloud where the size of the keyword reflects the amount of times this particular word or phrase is linking to the entered website. Hovering over a keyword displays the anchor text count.

You are able to sort the cloud by:

• Random (no particular order)
• Anchor Count Descending
• Anchor Count Ascending

A simple pie chart shows the share of anchor text per website.

The grid view reveals the data in a sortable grid which can be exported easily.

This is a simple, powerful report which we hope will assist you with your SEO strategies. It can be used in SEO audits, presentations and reports to name a few.

If you have any feedback or suggestions regarding this report please leave a comment or email us directly.

We are generous people here at Keyword Eye HQ. We are feeling very generous today because we are giving away a lifetime subscription of Keyword Eye Pro to one lucky winner!

Keyword Eye Pro is an exciting, evolving set of PPC, SEO & social media tools. This competition will give the winner full access for life including any future updates. In addition, the lucky winner will get special recognition on our blog and social media accounts.

To enter please follow the instructions below. Don’t hesitate - the competition ends on the 15th of May 2012. The winner will be notified shortly afterwards.

To learn more about Keyword Eye Pro visit our plans page.

If you haven’t heard of or used the SEOTools Excel Plugin by Niels Bosma then it’s definitely something worth investigating. It is a powerful plugin containing a number of useful functions to help you collate SEO data. Bringing this data into Excel opens up a vast amount of data handling and analysis possibilities.

Using this plugin we have created a free to download SEO audit template for you to use, edit and improve as you wish.

1. To begin with, please download and install the SEOTools Excel Plugin.
2. Download and open the Keyword Eye SEO Audit Template

To start, please go the ‘config’ tab of the spreadsheet and enter the following details:

• SEOmoz Access ID and Secret Key. These are free to generate and are available here.
• Alchemy API Access Key. Again, this key is free to generate and is available here. Please do not share these details with 3rd parties.

Specific functionality within the spreadsheet requires these API details. Once entered, you are able to begin using the audit template for your own websites.

1. Click on the ‘Setup’ tab
2. Running this audit within Excel can increase CPU usage significantly so please define which elements of the SEO audit you wish to run prior to entering specific website and keyword information. This can be done by using the drop down menus in the load section of the ‘Setup’ tab. These can be turned on at any time.
3. Enter the XML sitemap URL of the website you wish to run the SEO audit. The audit spreadsheet will then capture the individual URLs from this file. If you don’t have an XML sitemap yet, they are free and easy to generate here. Once generated simply upload it to the root directory of your website.
4. Enter up to 5 keywords. These are the keywords which you are optimising for.
5. Click on the individual tabs of the spreadsheet to view the results of the audit once it has finished loading. These tabs consist of meta, heading, content, domain, page load speed and broken link reports.

Let’s go through the reports generated within the audit.

• Meta - This report captures and analyses the title and meta description tags used on pages within your website. The length and keyword usage within these tags are checked. If length is over a specified limit the background colour changes to red. If you wish to edit the predefined title and meta description length please do so in the ‘config’ tab.
• Headers - This report captures and analyses heading 1 and heading 2 used on pages within your website. Keyword usage is checked.
• Content - Clean, navigation free content is gathered from your pages. Keyword usage and density is analysed.
• Domain - This report records top level domain statistics such as pages indexed, Google PageRank, SEOmoz Domain Authority and social metrics from Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
• Page Load Speed - This report captures the page load speed of your homepage in seconds. If the page load speed is over 2 seconds the background changes to red.
• Broken Links - This report captures the URL status of your web pages to check if there are any 404 not found errors. If any errors are found then the background colour will change to red.

This is our first release of the SEO Audit so if you have any feedback or addition requests please let us know.

digital-diva:

Nielsen has released the results of a new study showing that social ads are recalled 55% more than those that don’t allow people to share ad content with friends. “Social ads are those served to users who have friends that are fans of or have interacted with the advertised brand and prominently call the relationship out,” Nielsen says, “while non-social ads are served to the remainder of the Facebook population”.

Read more

We have recently added a number of new & useful shortcuts to the right click menu of a keyword within the cloud.

Simply right click on any keyword to open up the menu. Let’s go through each of the items below:

• Open in New Keyword Cloud - This opens up a new report in Keyword Eye for the clicked keyword.
• Image Search - This opens up a new image report in Keyword Eye for the  clicked keyword.
• Delete Keyword - This removes the keyword from the cloud. Please note that this also removes the keyword from the pie chart visualization and grid view for the report in question.
• Google Search - This performs a Google search for the clicked keyword within a new browser tab.
• Google Search - allintitle: - This performs a Google search for the clicked keyword using the ‘allintitle:’ search operator within a new browser tab. This is a popular SEO query for identifying competitor numbers for a keyword.
• Google Insights for Search - This report displays search trends for the  clicked keyword within a new browser tab.

This menu can be expanded. Are there any Google search operators or 3rd party tools you would like adding here? Please get in touch with any suggestions.

Skyrocket SEO is a company to look out for in 2012. These guys create great content strategies for companies looking to create a buzz online.

Last year Skyrocket initiated a popular SEO survey for 2011, gathering insightful user statistics on the use of SEO software around the world. Due to the ever changing SEO software market the survey is now being repeated this year. Keyword Eye has been nominated and to stand a chance of making it onto the final survey we really need your votes! Please give us the thumbs up on the 2012 SEO software list or on the embedded list below.

If we could only attend one search engine conference this year, the Search Marketing Expo in London would be our number one choice. Chaired by Danny Sullivan, undoubtedly one of the most knowledgeable and respected guys in search engine and online marketing, we can’t stress enough how much we have learnt from attending previous conferences. It’s perfect for picking up advanced knowledge in the world of SEO, PPC and social media. The agenda is full of useful and insightful information led by expert speakers. Having checked the agenda for 2012, this year it looks better than ever.

Keyword Eye is pleased to be a blog partner of SMX London in 2012. As a result, we can offer you a 15% saving on entrance passes to this years event held on the 15th and 16th of May at Chelsea Football Club. Simply use the code KEYWORDEYE012 when purchasing a pass online. If you wish to make further savings, purchase an early bird ticket in conjunction with the code above before the end of March (before the full rates kick in). We look forward to seeing you there!

We are excited to announce a new social media based report into Keyword Eye Pro.

What does this report do?

This report returns popular and / or recent Tweets containing shared URLs based on your criteria. This criteria can be a keyword or something more advanced which we will talk about later on in this post. In addition to returning just the content of a tweet, this new report also returns the:

• Twitter username
• Profile image of the user
• Klout score of the user (a score from 1 to 100 used to measure the influence of the user)
• Full, unshortened URL shared in the Tweet (useful for eliminating the many URL shorteners used on shared URLs)
• URL status (useful for detecting if the final URL returns a ‘404 not found’ error for example)
• URL image preview
• SEOmoz Domain Authority

The returning Tweet criteria can be advanced. For example you could return tweets:

• Containing a keyword
• From or to a specified user
• Including a hashtag
• Including a positive or negative sentiment
• Containing a question

What is this report useful for?

This report opens up a number of possibilities. Primarily you could find content that people are sharing including a specified keyword. The following points are ideas on how else the report could be used.

• To find shared content which results in a 404 not found page. You could then proactively contact this user, alert them of the mistake and build a relationship
• To find influentional Tweeters on a certain subject
• Find content to inspire you
• To monitor and proactively answer questions containing a keyword. This is great for interaction, building relationships and increasing the effectiveness of your presence on Twitter
• As a tool to preview shared content

This report is available as a standalone report in Keyword Eye Pro. It is also integrated into the standard keyword suggestion reports. Simply right click on a keyword, click ‘Twitter Content Discovery’ to find Tweets containing this keyword.

You can create a short-list of Tweets in a similar fashion to that of keywords on Keyword Eye. Simply select your Tweets and click ‘Add Selected to Selected Tweets’.

Any thoughts or questions on this new report? Please get in touch or comment on this post below.

We have added a small but useful addition to Keyword Eye in both the Basic and Pro plans.

If you right click a keyword within the cloud and click ‘Image Search’ it will return images for this keyword in a new tab directly from Flickr.

Clicking on one of the images will open the full version directly on Flickr.

This addition can:

• Act as a source of inspiration for keyword and content ideas
• Show images for a keyword you may not have encountered before

As Keyword Eye is a visual keyword tool, image search seems to fit in nicely!

Please try this out yourself in either the Basic or Pro interface.

We are pleased to announce a new feature to the Domain Ranking Report available within Keyword Eye Pro. It now allows you to get PPC (pay per click) keyword and ranking data for a domain. This report previously returned keyword data based on organic search engine keyword rankings for a domain. Simply enter a domain and the report would return:

• Keywords that the domain ranks for
• Keyword search volume per month
• Keyword competition level
• Keyword average PPC cost per click
• Keyword search engine ranking
• Domain keyword ranking URL
• Number of search results for the keyword

This is a great way to gather research for the paid results for your own or competitor domains.

Enter a domain, select the ‘PPC’ type and see what keywords your competitors are bidding on. Analyze the associated keyword data for these keywords including the average cost per click, search volume and competition level.

Upgrade to Keyword Eye Pro today to start using this new report. If you have any thoughts or feedback please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us :)