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Niche Finder is a new keyword research tool created by Brad Callen.

The keyword research tool market is very competitive with many products on offer, so how does Niche Finder stack up against the competition and where does it fit in the niche research market?

The first thing to point out about Niche Finder is that it is a tool designed specifically for keyword research without all the extra stuff that can sometimes over complicate a product.  Brad claims that his aim with Niche Finder was to design a tool that was very simple to use, yet very effective.

Has Brad succeeded with that claim?

Niche Finder Overview

Features of Niche Finder

I personally think one of the best features of Niche Finder is that it is very simple to use and find good keywords.

There’s no learning curve like a lot of other keyword research tools.

The interface is very clean as you can see from the screenshot below.

Once all of the data has been retrieved, you can easily sort any of the columns or add filters to narrow down the information.

One feature that is very handy for narrowing down suitable keywords is the difficulty score.  This is a score between 1 and 100 that indicates the difficulty of ranking for that particular keyword.  The first column also shows the niche difficulty with colors.

green = easy

yellow = medium

red = hard

So if you were working on a large set of keywords, you can simply add a filter to exclude all keywords in the “hard” difficulty range, so that you can concentrate on more manageable keywords.

Obviously, you do need a little caution with completely relying on the difficulty rating.  What I do is if I find a good keyword, ie: good amount of global monthly searches and low/medium difficultly, I do a sanity check by cross referencing with some other keyword tools I use, plus a good old Google search and eyeballing the top 10 results.

That said, I’ve found the difficultly ranking to be quite good and is certainly a very handy guide when sifting through lots of keywords.

Demonstration of Niche Finder

I originally wrote this review in Dec 2010.  Since then, Brad has added a number of new features to Niche Finder.   Most notably, getting backlink data from Majestic SEO and domain availability information from Domainface.

Below is the Brad Callen’s video demonstrating the latest features of Niche Finder.

Below is my original review video.  While Niche Finder has changed a bit since I recorded the video, the core functionality of Niche Finder hasn’t changed.

Final Thoughts on Niche Finder

Like a lot of internet marketers, I own and use a variety of tools and services for keyword research.  Most notably, my other favourite keyword research tool is SECockpit.

What I like about Niche Finder is its simplicity.  Generally, if I’m researching a new niche, I’ll fire up Niche Finder first, then when I’ve found some potential keywords, I’ll inspect them further with some of my other tools like Traffic Travis.

If you already have a keyword research tool that you are very happy with and good results from, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest you purchase Niche Finder.  However, if you are looking for your first keyword research tool or another method to compliment your keyword research, then I think Niche Finder is a pretty solid investment.

>>Click here to check out Brad Callen’s Niche Finder Tool<<

Cheers

ArticleRanks is one of the many content distribution systems that are currently around, so is ArticleRanks better than any of the other similar systems?

Firstly an overview of what ArticleRanks is:

In a nutshell, it allows you to publish your articles on a blog network in order to gain backlinks to your site.

ArticleRanks also allows you to receive content for your blog (if you want new content and/or to earn credits).

The process of submitting an article is:

• You create articles in spintax format (either pre-formatted or using the ArticleRanks article spinning options)
• Select your article category and tags.
• Select a distribution date and hit the publish button.

ArticleRanks Overview

How ArticleRanks Works

The best way to demonstrate how ArticleRanks operates is by watching the video below.

Advantages of ArticleRanks

In the past, I’ve been a big user of Free Traffic System (FTS), but after a while I found out that the total number of backlinks you gain is very minimal due to the limit on the number of sites your article is submitted to and the low quality of the blogs (that frequently disappear).

I tried out ArticleRanks early in 2010, as I was looking for an alternative to FTS.  I also considered SEOLinkVine, but the price really put me off.

It didn’t take long to work out why ArticleRanks was so much better.

The number one reason is the quality of the blog network and the quality of the articles.

Firstly, in order to gain credits for accepting ArticleRanks articles on your blog, your blog must have a Page Rank of one or higher.  This means that a lot of the blogs on the network are established sites with existing page rank that helps boost your link juice.

Secondly, there are various anti-spam mechanisms in place to help prevent junk or low quality articles on the ArticleRanks network.  This benefits not just the blog owners, but also the people submitting articles as it means the sites the articles are submitted to aren’t seen as low quality sites that are filled with mostly spam posts.

ArticleRanks also claim to add their own high PR sites into the network each month.

As a blog owner, if you receive articles from ArticleRanks, you have the options to limit the number of articles you receive, whether articles are auto-approved and auto-reject articles that falls below a set threshold of uniqness.

Another very good reason I like ArticleRanks is the number of sites my articles get published to.  Sites like FTS, have a quite low maximum number of sites your article will be published to.

With ArticleRanks, the lowest number of sites my articles has been published on is 72 and the highest is 145.  Also remember that your article can have up to 3 links in it.

Spinning Articles for ArticleRanks

While there are facilities in ArticleRanks for spinning your articles, they are a little clumsy.  What I do is spin my article using The Best Spinner.

However, for some strange reason, ArticleRanks doesn’t use the most common spintax format, so you need to export your spun article from The Best Spinner with the correct format.

This is easy to to with The Best Spinner.  It just requires defining an spintax export format for ArticleRanks.

The screenshot below shows what to define for the ArticleRanks export format:

Conclusion on ArticleRanks

ArticleRanks is currently my number one choice for article submissions.

The ArticleRanks interface is well designed and easy to navigate.

In general, I’ve noticed some good improvements in rankings from backlinks gained from ArticleRanks, and more importantly, most of those backlinks haven’t disappeared a few months later.

Click here to check out ArticleRanks

Cheers

Digi Launch Pad is the latest creation from Andy Fletcher of WP Syndicator fame and creator of DigiResults.

Digi Launch Pad is a specialized WordPress Theme that is designed to make product launches a breeze.

There’s certainly quite a few other products on the market at the moment like Kajabi and JVPress, so how does Digi Launch Pad stack up against them?

Read on to find out…

UPDATE: As of Jan 2011, this specific niche service is no longer available.

Keyword Research

As we all know, keyword research is the most vital element of any successful online business.  However, getting the keyword research right can either be a very tricky task and can take a long time.

Most beginners to Internet Marketing really struggle to get going due to difficulties with keyword research.   Even internet marketing professionals can have days when their keyword research just isn’t working out.

I’ve certain had days, where I’ve spent literally hours hunting down an elusive keyword only to give up due to lack of time to keep drilling down and trying new combinations.

Like a lot of people, I started in affiliate marketing via Google Sniper and my first few attempts at sniper sites were complete failures because I didn’t really have a full grasp on proper keyword research.

With experience and knowledge, my keyword research became much better, but it could still take quite a chunk out of my day.

Keyword & Niche Research Service

Just recently, I discovered a fantastic new keyword research service that really is amazing value (and I’m not just talking that one up)

For just $7, you get given a buyer product niche with the following details:

• Full summary of the how the niche is chosen and what all the numbers mean.
• Niche Keyword.
• Full breakdown of search count, CPC, competing pages etc.
• Available domain names for the keyword.
• SEO analysis and summary of competition.  Only niches that are easy to rank for are chosen.
• Links to related forums for posting regarding the niche.
• Links to Niche forums with good PR.
• Resources to use for your content.
• Summary of what type of approach to use on your site.
• List of affiliate products to promote.

All the niches identified have a very strong buyer intent, which means that you don’t have to go for a hardsell as the person is already looking to buy the product they are interested in.  Typically, buyers like to find some information that reaffirms their decision and that’s where your niche site comes in and makes the conversion.

I initially tried out the service and ordered 5 niche reports as a way of testing out the quality of their information.

I was very impressed with all the reports, and one niche in particular had great figures with over global monthly search count of over 5000 and competing pages of just 13100.  In addition, none of the sites in the top 10 for that keyword were fully optimised for the particular keyword, so it is quite easy to rank highly.

Don’t let the look of their website put you off.  I know their design skills really suck, but if you request their demo report, you’ll see that their skills definitely are in the keyword/niche research area and not website design.

Review of WP Syndicator WordPress Plugin

A few days ago I posted an interview I did with Andy Fletcher who is the creator of WP Syndicator and I’m now giving you my review having used it for a while.

I’ve been using WP Syndicator since its first beta release and it’s become one of my most important WordPress plugins in my standard SEO kit.  I’ve installed it on all my main blogs.

In a nutshell, WP Syndicator allows you to automatically syndicate your blog posts to high value web 2.0 sites and gain a whole lot of quality backlinks plus directed traffic to your site.

The only effort involved is initially setting up the accounts on the various web 2.0 sites before you can syndicate your posts to them.  This task will take around 30-45 mins to complete, but once it is done, you don’t need to worry about it again.

Syndication Sites

The image on the left shows some of the web 2.0 sites that WP Syndicator will post to.  This includes the major blogging sites such as WordPress.com and Blogger.com as well as micro-blogging sites such as Twitter.

As Andy mentioned in his interview, he’s always looking to add new sites if they are valuable.

You can configure WP Syndicator to set the maximum number of characters you want in the syndicated post (default 500 characters).

You can also configure the anchor text per post.  The default is “Read more…”, but you have the flexibility to make it anything you like, so including your keywords can be very useful.

When you want to syndicate your article, you can either set WP Syndicator to automatically syndicate it, or you can go into the WP Syndicator control panel and choose which sites you want to syndicate to and hit the button.

The great thing about WP Syndicator is that you can go back to all of your old posts and syndicate them as well.

WP Syndicator Video Overview

Rather than have me ramble on about how WP Syndicator works, I think the following short video by Shane Melaugh will give you a really clear idea of what it does.

Andy is very responsive to any changes and has made a number of improvements since the original release based on feedback he received from early adopters.

Grab the WP Syndicator WordPress Plugin here.

Backlink Battleplan Overview

Backlink Battleplan is the newest product created by Shane Melaugh.  It’s all about building backlinks, but with a very unique twist.

As you probably know, if you want to get a site of yours ranked in the number one spot in Google for a high-traffic keyword (meaning that a lot of people search for it and you’ll get lots of free traffic by being on page 1), it means that you need to beat some tough competition. The way to do this is to have reasonably good on-page optimization and then build backlinks.  Tons of backlinks, for really valuable keywords.

As a rule of thumb, you need more and better backlinks than your competitors have.  That’s what gets your site to outrank theirs.

And if you want lots of traffic, you’ll often have to build backlinks by the thousands.

Obviously, there’s no way you can do all that by hand, which is why most SEO’ers use different kinds of backlinking  tools that automate and speed up the process for them. And if you want to compete with these guys, you need similar tools.

Problem is, these tools are usually very expensive. Some of them will only cost you a one-off fee of maybe $100 or so, but most of them (most of the ones that are actually effective, anyway), will cost you anything between $70 and $170 each and every month!

What Sets Backlink Battleplan Apart?

What sets  Backlink Battleplan apart from other backlinking courses is that Shane teaches you how to build lots of backlinks using automation tools that are free!   And just because the tools and websites that you use are free, definitely doesn’t mean they are inferior in any way.  In some cases, the free tools are probably much better than the paid equivalents.

Another vital aspect of Backlink Battleplan is that you follow a checklist to ensure you successfully and effectively implement the backlinking plan.  There’s really not much point in having a whole bunch of tools without knowing how to use them and fitting them altogether.  I would be a little like having all the parts of a car engine on the floor and not knowing how to assemble them to make it work.

Background on Shane and Interview

Now while Shane is relatively new to Internet Marketing, the quality of his products is obvious.  I’d suggest you watch some of his free Backlink Battleplan Videos as you’ll soon get a really good idea of the quality of content.  The Free Videos include:

• Video 1: Why You Should Not Waste Money and Time on the Wrong Automation Tools!
  
  
• Video 2: Automatic, Free Backlinks from Web 2.0 Sites
  
  
• Video 3: How to Find Profitable Keywords and Build Backlinks
  
  

Additionally, Shane is a master trainer over at IM Elite and has produced some really useful and informative videos.

You can listen to an interview I did with Shane where he talks about how he got into Internet Marketing, his motivation for creating Backlink Battleplan and future plans.

Listen to the interview with Shane below.

Backlink Battleplan Contents

Here’s what the Backlink Battleplan consists of:

• 17 videos outlining the link-building strategy and explaining how to use the tools
• A complimentary PDF document covering the same material as the videos
• A checklist that can be printed out and used for each website promotion
• “RSS Warrior” an automated RSS directory submission tool.
• Bonus 1: Complete keyword research video training course
• Bonus 2: “Backlinks Quickstart”, an introduction to backlink building (for beginners)
• Bonus 3: A series of bonus videos expanding on the Battleplan concept

Shane does a really good job at explaining things very clearly and his videos show you step by step how to implement Backlink Battleplan from start to finish.

Backlink Battleplan Recommendation

As an Internet Marketer, I never review a product I haven’t used myself and I definitely never recommend a product that I don’t use in my own arsenal.  I very pleased to say that I’ve found Backlink Battleplan an excellent product and more importantly and highly effective and relatively easy way to gain lots of backlinks.

I’ve been using Backlink Battleplan (in conjunction with a few of my own backlinks techniques) on all my main sites and I’m very happy with the improvements I’ve been seeing in my rankings.

Grab a copy of Backlink Battleplan now as I am very confident you’ll find it excellent value.

Instant Article Factory

A week ago, I did an initial review of Instant Article Factory.  At the time I wrote about some of the drawbacks with a note that it would be a really great product if it was integrated with The Best Spinner.  Well, I’m pleased to say that Jonathan Ledger has responded very quickly to all the feedback on the Instant Article Factory support forums and has updated Instant Article Factory with some great new features from when it was initially released.

I initially held off from purchasing Instant Article Factory, but I’m pleased to say that now that the initial shortcomings have been addressed, I was more than happy to grab a copy and having been putting it to good use in the last few days.

Updated Features of Instant Article Factory

There are quite a few new features in Instant Article Factory, but I’ll cover the most important ones.

Templates

The number of templates have grown considerably and there are new templates being added all the time.

Additionally, users can submit their own custom templates to share with everyone or upload a template to use for themselves.

Templates are constantly being written and old ones are retired after a certain number of uses to ensure that you don’t get too many similar articles.

Spinning Support

This is the main area that has really improved out of site.  Instant Article Factory supports full nested spinning to unlimited levels.

You can spin both the text of the article and the template itself.  This gives you the opportunity to create a large number of unique articles in record time.

You can either manually spin the text or you can use the huge synonym database from The Best Spinner.

The screenshot below, shows and example of spinning the text in the article body.

So combining the randomised, unique Instant Article Factory templates with spinning both the article and the template, gives you incredible range of control and ability to produce a large number of unique articles.

When it comes time to generating your article, you have two options:

1. Generate the article with the spun text.  This will use a combination of the unique template and any additional article and/or template spinning you have done.
2. Generate the article with the spintax.  This is useful if you want to import the article into The Best Spinner for further spinning or submit to an article distribution network like the  Free Traffic System.

Final Thoughts

For me personally, my main use for Instant Article Factory is to quickly knock out 300-400 word articles for various web 2.0 sites.  Doing this manually is very time consuming and quite tedious, so any tool that helps speed up the process is fantastic.

Click here to visit the official Instant Article Factory website