Ristvin Marketing Blog

Keyword Results Analyzer Pro (KRA Pro) has been one of the best purchases that I have made lately. I can’t begin to tell you about how much time and frustration it has saved me when it comes to organizing my keywords and making themed blueprints for the websites and web pages that I have been developing for me and my clients.

To tell you the truth, I hesitated quite a while before I purchased Keyword Results Analyzer. I had no doubts that it worked as well as Andy Williams describes on his site, but I already knew enough to do simple sorting and things like that manually with Excel. So… it didn’t make sense to me buying another program that would do what I could do already with Excel.

Plus… I had already bought Keyword Elite and it was doing me well with my keyword research. But, I have to admit, making sense of the keywords and phrases that I was getting through Keyword Elite was a bit confusing. (I’ve written about this in other posts on this blog).

When I was first deciding which Keyword software tool to buy, I had gone to Andy Williams’ website and taken a look at his Keyword Results Analyzer - WT version. At that time it looked like it was well worth the money, but I didn’t have a Word Tracker account. Nichebot was and still is my favorite online keyword research tool and Nichebot results couldn’t be imported easily into KRA-WT (although that was remedied with version 4).

A couple of months ago my feelings about Andy’s Keyword Results Analyzer changed when I received an email from Colin McDougall that linked to a video he made about how he’s been using KRA Pro’s new features to write web content that has been ranking on the first page in Google. I decided to take another look at KRA and the new KRA Pro. I ended up buying the Pro version and have been tickled to death with what it can do for keyword research.

Here’s what I found out about Keyword Results Analyzer Pro:

It’s great for Keyword Database management. In fact, I wonder why I spent hours managing my keywords with Excel. It does this by allowing you to import keyword data from just about any keyword research tool or service, including automated imports from Nichebot, and quick email imports for Wordtracker if you use that service. I can even import data from my Keyword Elite, although I have to do that manually.

With KRA Pro I can sort, then order and use advanced filters to pull out exactly the keywords I need from my database using any criteria I feel appropriate. For instance, I might have a database of “ski vacation” keywords. I can type in “family” as a filter and get just those keywords that are for family ski vacations.

I can then sub-filter those results and pull out only those that let’s say have less than 1000 competing pages, but 5 or more searches in 24 hours. Or with some niches I can pull out only those phrases that contain “question words” like “how”, “what”, “which”, “where”, etc. These make ideal topics for articles.

The main reason I purchased KRA Pro (for $167) instead of KRA v.4 ($97) was some of the special features that it has. Colin McDougall used the “Keyword Spider” feature to find theme words for any phrase based on those theme words found in the top pages of Google. By knowing which theme words Google is looking for you can write content that gets you on the first page in no time.

Another feature I like is the “Synonym Generator”. I use this when I want to know what Google thinks are synonyms of my keyphrase. This tool finds them for me. This is quite handy to have at times and definitely helps rank better because they satisfy latent semantic indexing (lsi) the the search engines are now looking at.

KRA Pro can do “Keyword Combinations”. It will combine your phrases with prefixes and suffixes. All I need to do is enter a list of my phrases, plus a list of prefixes and/or suffixes that I choose, and KRA Pro will give me a list of all the combinations in seconds.

Another cool feature of KRA Pro helps Find niches within your keyword research. This is the powerful “Niche Within a Niche” tool. Whether you are building VRE sites, or looking for phrases to base your main niche pages on you will find this tool a great help. There’s also a tool called the “Niche Spike Detector”. This tool allows you to see which niches have seen surges in traffic in the past few days.

One of the features that I have fallen in love with is the “Site Blueprinting”. This tool uses the keyword spider I just described to find theme words for each page I’m going to make in a website I’m working on. The site blueprinting is a major feature that allows you to map out entire websites. I just have to define which main phrase I want to use for each page, (I can even define which folder I want the pages to go into).

KRA Pro then finds the theme words online for all phrases using the keyword spider (or I can spider my database of keywords for theme words), then automatically creates a blueprint of the entire site. I love being able to map out an entire site in minutes. What a great time saver and organizing tool.

One nice thing about the site blueprinting tool is that my websites have become much more themed and Google loves them. Latent semantic indexing is taken care of for me by this wonderful tool. The keyword spider used by itself or within the site blueprinting tool has become one of the features that I use the most.

I could go on and on about the features of this software and how it has helped me save time and reduce the confusion of my keyword lists but this post is getting rather long and I want to say one important feature that isn’t actually a part of the software package. What I’m referring to the the excellent tutorials and information that comes with KRA Pro.

If you’re familiar with SEO, you may already know about Andy Williams. He publishes the ezSEO Newsletter. Andy provides a full range of videos that explain each feature in the software and how to use those features. The training is easy to follow and implement. When I did have a problem with the automatic updating tool, I logged on to the support section and Andy emailed the answer to my problem back to me within 15 minutes. You have to love software support that’s on the problem quickly.

Being a search engine optimizer himself, Andy knows what marketers are looking for in a keyword research tool. And it shows. He has designed this software with the tools he knew web designers, SEO specialists, and marketers were looking for. He built this software based on his own experience and expertise in the field. You can be reassured that if you are looking for the best tool to analyze your keywords and put them into a workable order, Keyword Results Analyzer Pro (KRA Pro) is the tool for you.

Tags: keyword elite, keyword research, Keyword Results Analyzer, keyword spider, KRA, KRA Pro, latent semantic indexing, lsi, NicheBot, site blueprinting, synonym generator, theme words

I’ve been spending the past day or so cleaning up my email accounts. I’ve been evaluating all the emails that I opted-in for and unsubscribing to many, others I marked a spam so that I can keep track of them a bit longer, and the remaining I felt were valuable to continue on the list and keep reading.

Here’s the thing - permission email marketing with its opt-in lists came about because of the Can-Spam laws. Spam had become unbearable for most people with an online email account. The law was definitely needed to come to these people’s aid and to help the email providers with some relief. I don’t think any of us would disagree with that.

Permission email marketing grew out of this time and seemed to be a good compromise for marketers. It works well if you continue to receive information about what you opted-in for, but for this to work right, you have to keep providing a good percentage of valuable information on the subject.

Then came the product launch era. Product launches have made millions for marketers but have also flooded email accounts with hundreds of the “same type” or identical emails. I look at the subject lines of emails on certain days and they are all those provided by the JV Partner and affiliate of the launch.

Needless to say, all those emails have gone into the spam filter or I’ve unsubscribed if I see that I’m constantly being bombarded with one product for sale after another with no good content or information in between.

Marketers need to realize that when they just want sales through their affiliate links, the campaigns they are running through their emails amount to nothing more than Marketing Spam. There’s nothing worse than opting-in to a list to get a free report and once the report is downloaded, all you get is offers.

Marketers need to continue giving valuable information in their emails, not the hype that most send. You need to figure out a percentage ratio of information to offers that makes you a trusted friend. Without being a trusted friend, your offers will go unheeded.

And, it’s not just permission email marketing that’s spammy. Social networks have become part of my email spam problem. So and so on Facebook has invited me to …. A personal message from so and so through Twitter. It goes on and on.

The lesson is the same though, give more information and less hype and offers. Become that go to person for the information that people opted-in for. Become that trusted friend…

P.S. As an afterthought, I look eagerly for some emails from marketers. The information they have provided me on marketing, copywriting and other aspects of business have been valuable and worth my time reading.

Tags: marketing spam, permission email marketing, spam

Those of you that have been to my website or have read this blog know that I believe in testing your pages for the highest conversion rates. You also know that I test just about everything. From the headline to the opening, paragraphs in the copy, colors on the page, opt-in forms, sub-heads, the offer, the page layout, like I said EVERYTHING.

John Reese, through his original Traffic Secrets course drove the point home to me that you have to test sales pages to truly be successful as an online marketer… And Gary Halbert, the “Prince of Copy” tested like a maniac with his offline direct marketing sales letters. Testing is something that you have to do.

That’s why I like multivariate testing software, although it was those simple A/B split test software like Paul Hancox’s PowerSplittester that really got me hooked with testing copy. Multivariate testing does the job faster and allows you to test so many variables at once.

Simple A/B split testing software has its use, especially when you’ve got the basics done and are fine tuning a page. And when you have the time to test each element of a page separately. It’s great when you’ve got two pages that are performing about the same to narrow the final version down.

Multivariate testing software can be expensive, especially the software that does true Taguchi testing. Split Test Accelerator is one such a software. I use it all the time and consider it the “cream of the crop”. But it is a bit pricey for some folks. Especially those just starting out.

Lately, I’ve been testing out a new kid on the block called Evolutionary Splittester and have found that for those that want an economical multivariate testing software, this might fill the gap for you.

Evolutionary Splittester was developed by Tim Robinson of “Down Under”. You can use it to test 20 different page elements with up to 20 different variations at one time. Although it isn’t quite a Taguchi test, it comes darn close to one.

When comparing it to a free online multivariate tester like Google’s Website Optimizer, it’s hands above. I tested one of my client’s sales pages and went from an original 2.3% conversion rate to 17% conversion in a little over a week (we drove a PPC campaign to the page). Now that’s success! My client had originally used Website Optimizer to get to the baseline conversion rate.

Evolutionary Splittester could do the job faster and more efficiently. You will have to know how to connect the software up to a database (don’t worry, Tim gives you nice instructions on how to do this), and Tim tells me that he’s working on a php driven version that will come out in the future (and all upgrades are free).

So, if you are looking for an economical split testing software that does multivariate testing like the expensive pros, Evolutionary Splittester will fill the bill for you.

Tags: A-B split testing, multivariate testing, split testing software, Taguchi testing

Whether you’re creating new web pages, doing search engine optimization or setting up an online marketing campaign, keyword research is generally where you start your endeavors. After using various software to find good keywords, whether for myself or for my clients, I’ve found that it’s often confusing how to make sense of what I’ve found.

When I started out on the internet, I did all my research manually on Google and the other search engines. Then I broke down and bought Keyword Elite. I loved this software. No monthly costs what so ever. Keyword Elite has done me well over the years.

I still use Keyword Elite for figuring out my PPC campaigns. That’s where it excels. But as I took on clients, I felt like I needed the services offered by more sophisticated services to dig deeper and find the profitable long-tail phrases and LSI keywords.

Did I want to pay WordTracker or NicheBot? I settled on