One of the most challenging and crucial tasks for any SEO is what keyword suggestion tool to use. Each one is based on each vendor’s keyword database, therefore there is no “perfect” tool and is wise not to rely on a single one only but try to combine a few ones as each one can provide very different results for the same set of keywords (as they pull data from different sources).

There is a vast choice between paid and free keyword suggestion tools. Three of the most commonly used ones, along with their advantages and disadvantages, are the following:

Google AdWords External Keyword Tool (free)
(+) They have a huge database of search activity so they offer great keyword depth
(+) Handy for seasonal products as it provides search history results for the past 12-months
(+) A good starting point for your niche as it will generate a large number of keywords (ideal for brainstorming)
(+) Returns country specific results depending on your location
(-) Does not give exact numbers search volumes of searches but bars
(-) It is very likely that your competitors are using it too so it doesn’t give you any strategic advantage.
(-) The most competitive keywords are usually the most expensive ones (Although not always the ones that will increase your traffic)

Word Tracker (Paid, Free)
(+) Separate UK-based research database which is really handy for UK businesses
(+) More useful features than most keyword research tools
(+) Offers a 7-day free trial as well as a limited free keyword suggestion tool
(+) Ideal for newcomers to keyword research as it comes with great resources (articles, case studies, guides etc)
(+) Ideal for deep long tail keyword indentification if your niche is big enough
(-) Sometimes the results seem a bit spammy and irrelevant
(-) Their database is much smaller than Google’s.
(-) A bit steep learning curve for beginners as its functionlity is not always strightforward.
(-) Keyword Discovery data is not always accurate as they are based on estimates

Keyword Discovery (Paid)
(+) Search activity results are based on over 200 search engines worldwide
(+) Built-in a keyword density tool that measures the density of any given page
(+) Shows seasonal trends throughout the year so it is handy for seasonal producs
(+) Enables you to identify the market share held by individual engines for each keyword
(-) Quite expensive
(-) Sometimes it is a bit slow
(-) No avaialble PPC data

Not too long ago I had a chat with a graphic designer who told me about that amazingly easy to use CMS that will leave all developers sooner or later unemployed but I did not feel that threatend to try it out until recently that I needed to come up with a solution for a models agency website that required only a few pages to be frequently updated, consisting mainly of text and images. I thought to try that miraculous thing, whose name reminded me of Sushi, that allows non developers to offer CMS solutions to their clients just out of curiosity and because I found it totally uneccessary to install a big full-on CMS or write a bespoke one.  By nature I am not easily convinced that things are as great as they sound, and in every case I try to discover imperfections and disadvantages so I make my life a bit harder than it deserves to be. However, in the case of CushyCMS, I was taken by great suprise and started being worried about graphic designers taking over the whole world being able to offer complete web sites with both great looking front-ends and functional back-end solutions.

The big advantage of Cushy is that it is very fast to set up as it only requires registration (which is free), rather than any sort of installation. It is ideal for small web sites that users want to update text and images in some parts of their site e.g. news, events or even the homepage. The only thing the designer has to do is to provide the FTP details of the site, specify which parts and pages will be editable and who is going to edit those. Cushy will then create the WYSIWYG editors and the CMS is up and running! I have never come across any CMS that can do the job so quickly, absolutely stunning!

Unless your client has a big site with lots of different content types, it is not really worth installing one of the big CMSs such as Joomla or Drupal. But even if this is the case, you would be better off developing a proprietary CMS that does exactly what your client’s requirements are, rather than install an all-in-one solution that will result in unnecessary server processing, slow response times, let aside bugs that are very hard to find and fix given that those applications have been written by so many different people using totally different coding styles.

Wordpress is getting more and more popular as a CMS lately apart from being an excellent blog platform. It is much more light-weight and clean compared to Joomla and Drupal and with the recent release of the Pods framework it can easily(?) turn into a powerful CMS. What is great about Pods is that you can create and display your own content types, and even build relationships between them, unlike Cushy, which make it really powerful while at the same time it retains all the Wordpress advantages: simplicity, SEO benefits, excellent plugins that increase functionality without having to tweak the actual code (normally). No wonder Wordpress won for the first time the ‘Best Overall  Open source CMS’ award in the 2009 Open Source CMS awards.

You need to bear in mind though, that Pods is made for developers who are familiar with PHP.  For non developers, there are a few alternatives s that can help significantly turning Wordpress into a CMS but with some limitations. The most interesting ones are:

• Custom fields built in functionality – assign custom fields to a post (requires editing templates / php files).
• More fields plugin – add extra (custom) fields in the write/edit page – more powerful than custom fields.
• WP-CMS Post control plugin – control your admin write options and hide unwanted items from content authors.

There’s many other interesting light-weight open source CMSs for small websites many developers claim they are easy to use and set up such as XOOPS, concrete5, SkyBlueCanvas, Perch and MODx. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to try them yet but once I do I will write another post about them.

This was perhaps best put on the Rixstep blog

News this good doesn’t happen everyday

http://rixstep.com/1/20090708,00.shtml

As all web design firms will know, the implications of this announcement from Google can only be good for web developers. We will all doubtless be madly brushing up on our web 3.0 skills – software as service anyone ? The more business you can “web-ize” the better (and thankfully we have had a few years of practice here!)

I feel a little vindicated for my years of preaching about alternatives to the overly complicated operating systems in use in 99% of companies. (In truth though I bought into it, and got paid to help other people use it for my sins)

Google make this point well – companies invest vast sums of money, energy and time into hardware and software maintenance. Why not leave that to the experts ? It will be vastly more efficient all round. Good for your stress levels. Good for business. Good for the planet. And well, yes, good for Google. But, I think, good for us too.

During my first day at work the first challenge I had to go through was to prove my tea making skills.  So I had to memorize the way each one  prefers it which was very easy, even for someone with a such a poor memory as mine:  no sugar, just milk and mission was accomplished!

Second task was to upgrade a blog using Wordpress which was quite easy probably because the application is getting better and better so you don’t have to be a geek to make it work within minutes.

Third task was to get to know the technical jargon people use in here which was not that easy as new names and terms were appearing every single second and I had left my voice recorder at home.

Last but not least, I had to create some forms using existing libraries, templates and coding standards which was quite complex taken into account that after lunch there was not much blood circulating around my brain.

My impressions so far are very positive as there is definitely a high degree of professionalism and a tremendous amount of new things to learn.

<!– Shall I mention that I even had to write a post? –>

I guess it’s true for a lot of businesses, but it’s a sad fact that the busier we are (and the more we have to tell you about) – the less time we get to add blog entries.

We’ve just finished up a couple of big new sites, My Wish Wand and Complete Models and effects in Merb.

Geeks like Merb because it’s an “agile, platform agnostic MVC framework that plays nicely with Ruby” (as Simon and Rob will explain in altogether too much detail if I ever let them out of the back room). But developing sites in Merb also results in huge benefits for our clients.Using Merb drives costs down and slashes development timescales.   So how does it do this? (And why should you care?).

A lot of it comes from the MVC approach used by Merb. MVC stands for Model (the end-user data we’re interested in using on the sites), View (how the data should be displayed) and Control (the actions we perform on both). This means that Simon (Mr. Model), myself (Mr. View) and Robert (Mr. Controller), can all work simultaneously on a section of a site without constantly getting in each other’s way or (thanks to our recent adoption of Git) overwriting each other’s files.

Merb is also much leaner and more flexible than Ruby on Rails (our previous MVC framework of choice). Merb 1.0 has only been out a couple of weeks, so it hasn’t hit the mainstream web design community yet. This gives us (and our clients) a real competitive edge.

It really is Merbaceous!

Just thought I would add my own little observation to our blog – regarding the incredible Nintendo Wii. OK, this may well be old hat for some people out there (life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and…[fb]) but they have really created something incredible here. It also does something that I think no other game or device has done – it makes the game playable by anyone, and accessible to all the generations.

Over the summer holidays my family were the perfect promotional tool for the Wii. There ‘wii’ were having a tennis tournament (Wiimbledon) and someone thought to take a picture. The youngest player was 3 (she was admittedly much better at the boxing) and the oldest player was 67. The best player, and eventual winner, was 11 years old – I guess that figures.

A few weeks later my 92 year old grandfather came over and watched us all playing. He wanted a go. Another fantastic aspect of the Wii is that (most of) the games are very easy to learn how to play. In his first round of golf he shot 1 over par. Not bad at all. He then went out and bought a Wii for himself – on the Internet.