Researching Keywords With Google Suggest

Google Suggest can help you build a list of hundreds of long-tail keywords in minutes.

Begin by visiting Google. Search for anything and click the Gear button on the results page. Select Search Settings on the drop-down. Click the Never Show Instant Results radio button under the Google Instant Predictions heading. Finally, click the Save button at the bottom of the page. Disabling Google Instant doubles the number of keywords that Google Suggest will show you.

Return to Google’s front page. Type your primary keyword, insert a space and type the letter “a.” Google Suggest will display as many as ten different keyword suggestions in a drop-down. Back over the letter “a” and type “b.” As you go, I suggest using Excel or a similar program to record all of the keyword suggestions displayed for each letter. Don’t forget to try numbers as well. By using a few different seed keywords, you can get hundreds of different keyword suggestions in this fashion with little effort.

Once you’ve created your list of long-tail keywords, you’re going to want to organize them in some way so you know which keywords you should tackle first. I like to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool for this; simply copy the keywords out of Excel and paste them into the GAKT. If you organize the keywords in a single column, each will appear on its own line when you paste them into the GAKT. This way, you can simply paste and click the “Search” button. You’ll then see how many people have searched for each keyword, both within your own country and worldwide. Export the list as a CSV file and paste it back into Excel.

Although the GAKT will not show how many people have searched for certain keywords if they don’t receive consistent search volume, the fact that a keyword appears in the Google Suggest drop-down means someone has searched for it. If you search for some of these extremely long-tail keywords, you’ll probably find that there aren’t currently any good results. If your website has a decent amount of authority, you should easily be able to claim the first position on the results page by providing good content about that keyword.

Using Google Suggest Automatically

Übersuggest finds keywords automatically using Google Suggest.

Admittedly, using Google Suggest for keyword research can get a bit old after you’ve run through the alphabet with a few different keywords. When you get tired of performing your keyword research manually, give Übersuggest a try. This tool runs through the entire process I’ve described above automatically and generates a plain text file that you can easily paste into Excel, the GAKT or another tool.

1. Log in to your 1&1 account using the address and customer number included in the welcome email sent when you created your hosting account.
2. Scroll down to the Communication & Online Storage heading and click the E-mail Administration link.
3. Click the Create button.
4. Enter the desired account name for the new email address in the E-mail address field.
5. Click the drop-down menu next to the field and select the desired domain.
6. Click the drop-down menu next to Type and select Mailbox. This tutorial assumes that you want to create a real, functioning email account that also forwards incoming messages to a central address. If you only want to forward messages but do not need the ability to reply from the created email account, select Forward instead.
7. Type the first, last and display names for the email account.
8. Type the desired password for the email account.
9. Click the check boxes below the password fields if you want to enable 1&1 anti-virus and anti-spam protection.
10. Click the Add button near the bottom of the page to create a forwarding rule for the new email account.
11. Enter the address to which you want to forward messages in the Address field.
12. Click the OK button to create the new email account.

You have successfully created a new email account with 1&1, and messages sent to the account will automatically be forwarded to your main email address.

1. Open a browser and navigate to WordPress.org. Click the blue Download WordPress button, save the file to the location of your choice and unzip it.
2. Log in to your 1&1 account using the link provided in the welcome email.
3. Click the MySQL Administration link in the box titled Domains & Web Space.
4. Click the New Database button.
5. Type a name for the new WordPress database in the Description of the new database field.
6. Type the desired password for the database in the Password and Repeat Password fields.
7. Click the Set Up button.
8. Click the Go to Overview button. Until 1&1 is finished building the WordPress database, this screen will display the phrase Setup Started next to the name of the new database. You’ll need to refresh this screen until it displays the word Ready before you continue. Record the password that you selected when creating the database as well as the Database Name, User Name and Host Name displayed on this screen.
9. 

   Modify these fields in your wp-config.php file.

   Open the folder in which you unzipped WordPress. Right-click the file wp-config-sample.php and select Rename. Change the name of the file to wp-config.php.

10. Open wp-config.php in Notepad++ or another text editor.
11. Add the Database Name, Database User Name, Database Password and Host Name to lines 19, 22, 25 and 28 of wp-config.php as shown in the screenshot on the right.
12. Click this link to open the WordPress Secret Key Generator. You’ll notice that each time you refresh the page, these secret keys change. They are randomly generated and should not be shared with anyone. Copy all of this information and paste it over lines 49-52 in wp-config.php.
13. Save and close wp-config.php.
14. Connect to your 1&1 server with FileZilla or another FTP client and upload all of the WordPress files to the root directory of the domain on which you want to install WordPress. If your 1&1 account has only one domain, upload WordPress to the top directory.
15. Navigate in your browser to mydomain.com/wp-admin/install.php. If you installed WordPress in a subdirectory such as blog, you’ll need to add that to the address. If everything up to this point has been done correctly, you should now see a screen titled Welcome.
16. Type the desired name of your WordPress website in the Site Title field. Like the other items that you will need to enter going forward, you can always change this later from within the WordPress interface.
17. Type your desired login name in the Username field.
18. Type your desired password in the Password, twice fields.
19. Type the desired administrator email address in the Your E-Mail field.
20. Click the check box next to Privacy if you want search engines to crawl and index your WordPress website.
21. Click the Install WordPress button. If everything went correctly, you should now see the message Success.
22. Click the Log In button to log in to your new WordPress installation.

1. Click the link in the welcome email sent by 1&1 when you first activated your account. Enter your customer number and password to log in to the 1&1 Control Panel.
2. Click the Domains link under the Domains & Web Space heading in the upper-left corner of the menu. This screen shows all of the domains currently attached to your 1&1 account.
3. Click the New button above the domain list.
4. Click Add Domain on the drop-down menu.
5. Type the desired domain name and click the Check Domain button. The 1&1 interface checks to confirm that the domain is available, and finds that it is already registered.
6. Click the Point DNS to 1&1 name servers and keep your current registrar radio button.
7. Click Next. The next screen displays a message notifying you that the 1&1 mail servers will be used for your domain. Assuming you aren’t already using the domain, this isn’t a problem. However, if you are already receiving mail on the domain, it is important to note that when you change the DNS information for the domain, some mail may be lost for the next couple of days while the domain propagates.
8. Click Next. The next screen displays the server addresses to which you need to point your domain name on your registrar’s website.
9. Click Order.

Remember that you must change the DNS settings at your domain registrar’s website before you will be able to access it on your 1&1 account. Sometimes, DNS changes propagate almost instantly. Other times, it may take as long as three days.

1. Log in to your 1&1 account using the information provided in the welcome email. This brings you to the 1&1 control panel.
2. Scroll down to the Website/Applications heading and click the Click & Build link.
3. Hover the mouse over WordPress and click the Install Application button.
4. Click the I accept the terms of use check box, and then click Next.
5. Type the desired name for the WordPress blog in the Name field. This is not the same as the blog’s title; this is simply the name that will identify the WordPress blog on your 1&1 account’s list of installed applications.
6. Click the drop-down menu next to Domain and select the desired domain for the new WordPress installation.
7. Type the desired login name in the Administrator’s login field.
8. Type the desired password in the Password and Repeat Password fields.
9. Type the administrator’s email address in the Administrator’s Email field. This will be the main email address attached to the WordPress blog.
10. Type the desired title for the WordPress blog in the Weblog Title field. Like the administrator’s email address, you can always change this later through the WordPress dashboard.
11. Select your language on the Interface Language drop-down menu.
12. Click the Install button to install WordPress on your 1&1 account.

This begins the installation process. During this time, 1&1 automatically installs WordPress on the domain you selected. When this process is complete, you will receive a confirmation email. This may take several minutes.

1. Audit your affiliate jump script for dead links.

Dead links harm the user experience and your bottom line.

One of the reasons why I love using an affiliate jump script is because you can link to the same affiliate offer from multiple locations on your website, and if you want to link to a different product or landing page — or fix a dead link — you can change the link in every location simultaneously by changing one entry in the script. If you deep link to product pages, though, you’re going to find that occasionally merchants will change their product URLs without notifying you. In many cases, they won’t even bother redirecting the old URLs to the new ones. This means that when a potential customer clicks your affiliate link, he’ll see a 404 page. This creates a very negative impression and drastically lowers the chance of making a successful conversion. Prevent this by periodically testing every link in your jump script to make sure that they all still work. Out of all the WordPress cleanup suggestions in this article, this is perhaps the one that has the most direct impact on your bottom line. Don’t neglect it.

2. Consolidate tags and check for orphans.

If you use post tags liberally, you may find that you have 3-4 times as many tags as you do posts. Because of various changes made after the creation of a new tag, some tags may no longer have posts linked to them, while other tags may have multiple variations. For example, let’s suppose you operate a blog about films; you might have a “Scorsese” post tag as well as a “Martin Scorsese” tag, with your content about Martin Scorsese split between the two. You may even have a misspelled version that you created by mistake. Choose one variation of the tag, link all relevant posts to it and delete the rest. If you allow Google to index your tag pages, increasing the number of posts linked to a tag can potentially increase your authority on that topic. More importantly, it creates a better experience for your users by improving navigation and reducing the size of your database.

3. Check Google Webmaster Central for crawl errors.

Are you sending PageRank to your 404 page?

In Google Webmaster Central, you can find a list of the URLs on your website that Google attempted to crawl and was unable to find. In most cases, you can safely ignore these; for example, you’ll see a crawl error when you delete a post tag, but it will go away as Google re-crawls all of the pages that used to link to it. However, you may occasionally find errors that exist because of internal links you created that are no longer correct because of other changes you made later. You may also find external links to URLs that have been changed or no longer exist. Clean these up by fixing the broken internal links and redirecting the broken external links or contacting the webmasters who link to you and notifying them of the new URLs.

4. Spruce up your old content.

Your old content is gold; give it a good polish.

If your content is designed to be evergreen, some of your older posts may no longer be quite as correct as they once were. As this content becomes older and less relevant, readers will find it less useful and it will start to slip on search engine results pages. Sometimes, making an old post accurate again can be as simple as changing a few words. Then, you can encourage extra clicks from Web searchers by adding a phrase such as “updated for 2012″ to the post’s meta description. This simple part of WordPress cleanup maximizes the long-term value of your older content. While you audit your old posts for correctness, take advantage of any opportunities that you find for creating new internal links. Internal linking is great for SEO because it helps reinforce to Google what your posts are about. It also keeps people on your website longer by helping them find the content that interests them.

5. Fully update WordPress and all plugins.

WordPress periodically releases updates for security, stability and usability. If you’ve been holding off on updating your website because you’re afraid it will break something, now is the time to bite the bullet. Back up your WordPress database as well as your hosting account, and apply all available updates. If you use Elegant Themes, I provide instructions for updating Elegant themes as well.

6. Clean up your WordPress database.

You’ve deleted dozens of orphan tags, maybe axed a few irrelevant posts, and overall made WordPress leaner and meaner. This creates slack space in your database that you need to clean up for the changes to have a positive impact on your website’s performance. Clean up the WordPress database by removing this slack space in your host’s phpMyAdmin console. If you haven’t done so already, disable post revisions and delete the unnecessary content that the revision system generates before cleaning out your database.

Photo credits: eyeliam, moosealope, digitalmoneyworld, Flickr

I have the fortune of living with the single worst enemy of the Internet marketer: my wife. In fact, I give her most of the credit for the modest success that I’ve managed to have as an Internet marketer. This is a person who runs ad blockers to avoid seeing AdSense, refuses to read product reviews and even clears her cookies before she buys products to prevent anyone from earning affiliate commissions on her purchases. If I present an idea to her and she seems even slightly interested, I figure it must be a thing of genius. However, recently I saw a new marketing tactic that has power over my wife like I have never seen before. That tactic is kitties, and my extensive research has confirmed that kitties are the future of Internet marketing.

Influence of Kitties on Video Marketing

Observe, if you will, the power of the YouTube kitty video. A video with just a moderate amount of cuteness will be viewed millions of times, and even mediocre videos receive tens of thousands of views. My wife has watched her favorite kitty videos multiple times. She’ll sit through non-skippable commercials to watch them, and since YouTube presents her with a variety of adorable options to click after a video is finished, she never watches just one. To illustrate, I have prepared a graph showing the number of views you can expect to receive on YouTube if you produce an adorable kitty video, an average kitty video, or a video with real informational content.

Conclusion: To make a video go viral, you don’t need to hire journalists, provide real information, hold a lengthy brainstorming session or hire a creative agency. Get a camera, press the record button and aim it at a kitty.

Next, I used SEO SpyGlass and Cubestat to look at the effect of kitties on a website’s ability to attract inbound links, gain PageRank, get traffic and earn income. What I discovered was shocking; if you hire writers capable of conducting thorough research and produce informative and engaging content, you’ll have a slight possibility of earning more than you spend, but you’ll never earn as much as you could by simply publishing pictures of kitties. Eureka!

Influence of Kitties on Website Earnings

In summation, I have conclusively proven that kitties are the ultimate untapped marketing niche, and this will be my last post on The Affluent Blogger. In its place, I would like to announce the release of my eBook, Kitties: The Ultimate Untapped Internet Marketing Niche. This incredible 500-page eBook and 12-disc audio set are now available exclusively on ClickBank for the low, low price of $399. Get your copy now, before I come to my senses and pull it from the market.

Release the kitties.

On another note, happy April Fools’ day.

Lead photo courtesy of ICanHasCheezburger.com. I guess this is backlink number 35,396.

After logging in to the affected website to do a little WordPress Spring cleaning, I noticed that the Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner had an update available. I found that odd, since I thought the Timthumb vulnerability was a thing of the past. I updated and ran the scanner, which presented me with a nasty surprise, “Suspicious Files.”

A hacker used the Timthumb vulnerability to plant a PHP backdoor on my WordPress website.

The name of the malicious PHP script was 2e1a01b3bbe6d83313a92d1b48f74478.php, and a hacker had used Timthumb to plant it on my server, giving him a back door that he could access through his Web browser to wreak all kinds of havok on my server. If you haven’t used the Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner, another clue that your website has been hacked is the presence of an unusual file when you enter the Appearance/Editor screen in WordPress, as shown on the right. So, a vulnerability in Timthumb — combined with my poor website maintenance — had resulted in WordPress getting hacked. This is the story of how I recovered WordPress and patched the vulnerability, and I hope that you find it useful. During the recovery process, I learned a great deal about how the Timthumb vulnerability works and how to be certain that your server isn’t still hosting a back door for hackers after you delete the suspicious file.

1. Evaluate the suspicious file.

My first step was to use the Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner to update Timthumb. I then connected to my server via FTP, downloaded the suspicious PHP file and deleted it from the server. The file was located in the folder /wp-content/themes/(Theme Name)/Cache. Upon opening the file in Notepad++, I found that it began with the string “eval(gzinflate(base64_decode(.” Following this was a long string of random characters which I assumed must be compressed and encoded in a base 64 format. I used an online gzinflate base 64 decoder to decode the compressed content and pasted it back into Notepad++ for evaluation. Although my coding knowledge is limited, I could see that the file was a PHP login page that would give the hacker a back door into my server and direct access to the database containing my website’s content. Apparently, the most common payload of this backdoor is to redirect an entire website to a spam website in Russia, which didn’t happen in my case. So, now we know the enemy, and we’ve removed the possibility of a hacker exploiting WordPress through that same vulnerability again. However, there is still quite a bit of work ahead.

2. Scan for a backdoor.

Now that you’ve removed the original vulnerability, your next step is to scan your server to see if a backdoor still exists. You can dothis automatically or manually; I suggest both.

Automatic Backdoor Scan

Connect to your server with an SSH client and open a terminal prompt. Type the following command:

This command  searches your server for other base 64-encoded content. The server will respond with a list of files containing this string. What you’re looking for is another very long base 64 string, which you can then plug into the gzinflate base 64 decoder to find out what it is. Remember that some of the other files on your server — particularly Timthumb itself — also have base 64-encoded strings; you’re looking for something about as long as the original malicious PHP script. If you don’t find anything, your website most likely doesn’t have a backdoor.

If you’d like to run a more thorough search, use this command:

This command searches your server for additional strings that could signify a backdoor. If you find anything on the results list that looks suspicious, download the file and examine it in Notepad++. If you don’t see anything suspicious, again, you’re most likely fine.

Manual Backdoor Scan

A manual backdoor scan can be far more time-consuming, but may be necessary if your hosting provider doesn’t allow SSH access (HostGator does allow this). Essentially, what you’ll need to do is connect to your server via FTP and dump all of the files to your computer. Examine every PSP, ASP and TXT file for suspicious code and sanitize as needed.

3. Change all of your passwords.

WordPress assigns a password to your admin user account, and you may have created other accounts on your website as well. However, the recovery of your hacked WordPress website doesn’t stop there; the wp-config.php file in your WordPress directory contains the password that WordPress uses to log in to the MySQL database containing your website’s content, and the password is not encrypted. If the hacker was able to download this file, he has that information. You’ll need to change the WordPress database password, and for good measure you should also change the passwords for all of the FTP accounts on your server as well as the master password for your Web hosting account.

4. Protect or stop using Timthumb.

If you use a premium WordPress theme, chances are that your theme provider has already fixed the Timthumb vulnerability. For example, Elegant Themes no longer uses Timthumb at all. If you use a free theme, however, support may be limited. I’d advise switching to a theme that offers support, but if that isn’t an option you can modify Timthumb to prevent it from pulling data from any website other than your own. Connect to your server via FTP and look for the file timthumb.php, usually in the same folder as your WordPress theme. Download the file and open it in Notepad++.

Find the following string at line 32 and change TRUE to false.

Next, find the following string at line 33 and confirm that it is already set to false. If it isn’t, change it.

Finally, find the following at line 124:

Remove all of the external websites, changing the code to this:

Upload the file back to your server. Timthumb should now refuse to pull any data from a website other than your own. Note that if you used Timthumb to generate thumbnails from an external image hosting site, you may need to host the images locally and create the thumbnails again.

Code Garage Review: The Basics

I found out about Code Garage’s Locker service through the Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner, which Code Garage developed. For a long time, I had a sense of security stemming from the false belief that, because my operations are relatively small, hackers would most likely be more interested in going after the big guys. In fact, I should have realized that people who hack websites are just like people who hack into computers; they don’t target individuals, they simply run scripts that scan thousands of potential targets for vulnerabilities automatically. Clearly, I’m no security expert, and even if I were, I want to focus on what I do best: developing websites and writing great content. I investigated Code Garage’s Locker service because I was impressed with the vulnerability scanner and wanted to find a WordPress backup service with similar simplicity and ease of use. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of money. The Locker service starts at just $10 per month, and I was inspired to write this Code Garage review because to date, I’ve been very happy with the investment.

Code Garage Plans

Code Garage has five plans for the Locker service depending on the number of WordPress websites you need to protect:

• Two websites: $10/month
• Five websites: $25/month
• Ten websites: $50/month
• 25 websites: $100/month
• 50 websites: $150/month

Enterprise plans are also available if you need to protect more than 50 websites, but the basic feature set of Code Garage remains the same regardless of the number of websites protected.

Code Garage Features

WordPress Backups

Code Garage makes daily backups of all your protected websites and maintains them for a rolling 30-day period. So, for example, if you have a disaster and need to restore your website, you can restore from yesterday’s backup or any other backup created in the last month. The backups don’t just include the text content stored in your website’s database; they also include your images and other files. It’s a complete backup solution, and if you aren’t sure how to restore from a backup on your own, Code Garage’s staff will walk you through the recovery process.

Security Monitoring

Code Garage scans your website four times a day for warning signs that it may have been hacked, such as unexpected changes to the content or new outbound links to websites known to host malware. If a change raises a warning sign and it turns out that the security of your website has been compromised, Code Garage will assist you with scanning your website’s code and removing the vulnerability.

Availability Monitoring

Your Web host may promise uptime of more than 99%, but do they deliver? Twelve times per hour, Code Garage pings your website to confirm it is available. If no response is received, Code Garage notifies you to make you aware that it might be time to look for a new hosting provider. Although the WordPress backup and recovery features of Code Garage are well worth the $10 starting price on their own, you shouldn’t scoff at the security and availability monitoring features; if I had subscribed to Code Garage before the WordPress Timthumb issue occurred, I would have known about it before it had become a problem.

Code Garage Review: Conclusion

The money earned from your website is the result of months or years of work researching, designing, writing, testing, networking and link building. If running a website isn’t your full-time job yet, it probably still consumes the equivalent number of hours. I spend all of my time growing my websites and starting new ones, and at the time that I fell victim to the Timthumb vulnerability, my most recent backup was several months old. It pains me to think of the amount of work I would have lost. If you’re like me, I urge you to give Code Garage a try. You can cancel anytime within the first seven days, there are no contracts and your backups remain available until the end of the subscription period if you decide to cancel.

Why do I need a free backlink checker?

If you’re here, you probably already know why checking your website’s inbound links is so important. It allows you to gauge the popularity of your website with other webmasters and find out who is talking about you and what they’re saying. It also allows you to monitor the success of your link building campaigns and can even help you detect people who are scraping your content without permission.

However, the most important reason to use a backlink checker is that is allows you to see what your competitors are doing. Do you have a competitor who consistently outranks you for your most desired keywords? Using a backlink checker allows you to find out exactly where your competitor is getting his links. Often, you’ll find that you can use the exact same strategy — along with whatever you’re already doing to get backlinks — to compete on more even terms.

So, what is SEO SpyGlass?

Quite simply, SEO SpyGlass is a free program that uses a variety of different search engines to scan the Internet for inbound links pointing to your website, or a website owned by a competitor. After finding links, SEO SpyGlass analyzes each one to find the anchor text, see which page it points to and determine whether it has a nofollow tag. In addition, it checks the PageRank of the referring page and domain and estimates the value of each link based on these and other factors. When you scan a competitor’s website, the link value given by SEO SpyGlass can tell you at a glance where his most important links are coming from. All of these features are in the free version of Spy SpyGlass; the only limitation is that you can’t save the information you collect. You’ll need to scan for backlinks again each time you use it.

SEO SpyGlass backlink analysis -- click for a larger view.

Above, we see a portion of the SEO SpyGlass backlink analysis for my favorite WordPress security service, Code Garage. However, this is only a portion of the information displayed; as you scroll to the right, you’ll see a variety of other factors including the age of the linking domain and the number of other outbound links on the same page.

What else can SEO SpyGlass do?

If all you ever do is use SEO SpyGlass as a free backlink checker for your own website and those owned by your competitors, I think you’ll be extremely happy with all of the things it can do. However, it also has a wealth of advanced features, a few of which bear mentioning in this review. The first of these is a really cool feature for SEO professionals. After analyzing a website’s backlinks, you can export the data to an attractive PDF report in just a couple of clicks. Take a look at this sample report — this is just a quick report that I threw together for this SEO SpyGlass review. Because the website has thousands of backlinks, I didn’t bother analyzing them all. However, the report certainly gives you an idea of what SEO SpyGlass can do to help you report your progress to your clients, not to mention win a few new ones. You can imagine the impact one of these backlink reports might have if you attached it to your email when contacting a potential client for the first time.

Sample backlink report from SEO SpyGlass -- click the link above to view the original PDF.

The second feature I really like is the ability to import your backlinks from Google Webmaster Central. You may have noticed when looking at the Links to your site area in Webmaster Central that Google actually shows you all of the links it has found pointing to your website. However, it’s virtually impossible for you to do anything with this information manually if you have hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. With SEO SpyGlass, you can analyze those links automatically and gauge their true SEO value.

SEO SpyGlass Review: Conclusion

I’ve written hundreds of words here and barely scratched the surface of all that SEO SpyGlass can do. SEO SpyGlass is an incredibly powerful SEO tool that scales incredibly well with your level of knowledge. If all that you need is a free backlink checker, it’s certainly the best that I’m aware of. However, as your knowledge grows and you need more advanced SEO features, SEO SpyGlass will grow with you as you discover more and more of what it can do. SEO SpyGlass gets my highest recommendation. SEO SpyGlass is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Download your free copy now.