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URL Redirection (also known as URL Forwarding, Domain Redirection and Domain Forwarding)  are used extensively on the web for great variety of purposes.

Simply put, URL redirection is when a request to a particular URL results in the request being redirected to another URL.

In some cases, a redirected URL will in turn be redirected to another URL and you end up with a chain of redirects.

Common uses for redirects are:

• Directing users and search engines to a new page after a website redesign or a move to a new domain to avoid 404 page not found errors.
• Masking affiliate links by presenting a “friendly” looking link that redirects to an affiliate link.
• Temporarily presenting a specific page when a website is down for maintenance.
• Redirecting from the www to the non-www version of your domain, or vice versa, to ensure both versions are seen as the one website.
• Shorten long URLs to an easier to remember and easier to type URL.

It’s not always easy to see exactly where a redirected URL ends up without actually clicking on the link.   Additionally, if there are a number of intermediate redirections, these generally happen too fast to see in the browser status bar.

I wanted a tool that would visually display URL redirects.  After checking out existing tools, I didn’t find any that worked correctly and I wanted something that would display the different redirection types in a specific way.

After investigation, I decided to develop my own free tool called Redirect Detective.

Redirect Detective recognizes, the following types of redirects:

• 301 Permanent Redirect
• 302 Temporary Redirect
• 307 Temporary Redirect
• Meta Refresh
• HTTP Refresh

Additionally, it will also detect:

• 403 Permission Denied
• 404 Page Not Found
• 500 Internal Server Error

The following screenshot shows an example of an affiliate link that uses a variety of redirects to reach the final destination:

The different server responses and redirects are colour coded to make it easier to see what type of redirect is being used.

Additionally, if cookies are being set at any particular point, the cookie item will be displayed and if you hover your mouse over it, the number of cookies being set will be displayed.

Video Overview of Redirect Detective

The video below gives short overview of the types of things you can use Redirect Detective for.

I hope you find the tool useful and I welcome any feedback you may have regarding use of Redirect Detective or any enhancements you would like.

Cheers

With such a huge range of WordPress plugins to help build your mailing list, you might wonder what Hybrid Connect has to offer that makes it different to all the other similar plugins.

Over the last few years I’ve used a number of popular plugins to handle email opt-in forms, popups, popunders etc, but I’ve settled on using Hybrid Connect for all my sites.

You’ve probably already noticed that I use Hybrid Connect forms in various locations and designs on this website.

To find out how I came to the decision to use  Hybrid Connect exclusively on all my sites (and for clients), read on…….

Hybrid Connect Summary

Official Website:   http://hybrid-connect.com

Publisher:  IM Impact – Shane Melaugh & Paul McCarthy

Price: $39 for Single Site, $57 for Multi Site and $127 for Professional License

Guarantee: 30 day money back guarantee

Video Review

For those of you that prefer the visual medium, the video below gives a good summary of using Hybrid Connect.

Hybrid Connect Features

I’m not going to bore you with all the features of Hybrid Connect, as it does a lot of the stuff most other similar plugins do.   Instead, I’m going to cover the features that I considered to be major factors in my decision to purchase Hybrid Connect.

Facebook Sign Up

Firstly, the main selling point of Hybrid Connect is its ability to show an opt-in form with either the traditional email address sign up, or Facebook connect, depending on whether the visitor is logged into Facebook or not.

Note that this hybrid feature is entirely optional.   On one of my client websites, I turned off the Facebook option as their target audience weren’t big Facebook users.

You have complete control over how you want Hybrid Connect to operate.

Form Designer and Customization

While my web design skills are OK, anything that makes the task easier is most welcome.

Hybrid Connect comes with a range of pre-designed templates that you can use as your starting point for building your forms.

The screenshot below shows a small selection of the various templates.

Once you have chosen your template, you can edit the text and images.

To get the form looking exactly how you want, there is an extensive list of customization options that you can tweak.   If I was being nitpicking, I’d say that the customization options might be a little overwhelming for some people and it would be nice to see a basic/advanced settings for customizing.

The screenshot below gives you an idea of the types of elements you can change.

It is important to note that while there are a large number of options to tweak, as you get a preview of the form that instantly updates whenever you change the settings, you can easily see what affect each option has.

Flexibility of Form Placement

I really like that you can display Hybrid Connect forms pretty much anywhere you like on your site, either via the built in settings, shortcodes, widgets  or the raw code you can insert anywhere on your theme.

Hybrid Connect allows you to create:

• Forms on any post/page
• Forms at the bottom of any post/page
• Widget to add forms to the sidebar
• Lightbox form
• Squeeze page
• Slider Forms

Hybrid Connect Support

Quite often, one major factor that is commonly overlooked when purchasing software is the level of support and upgrades you get.

Too many times I’ve purchased software from seemingly reliable sources, only to find that when it comes time to get a response to a support ticket, the reply is either not helpful or in a lot of instances, it is non-existent.

I’ve been using Hybrid Connect since it was initially released as a beta product.   As it was an early release, I did find some bugs and limitations with it, but I was highly impressed with the level of support I received and a number of suggestions I made to improve Hybrid Connect were incorporated into later releases.

Additionally, because  this product was created by Shane Melaugh, I have a very high level of confidence that the support and development of Hybrid Connect is solid.   I can base that opinion on Shane’s previous excellent track record with looking after his clients.

Summary

Given my very favourable impressions of Hybrid Connect so far, I have great confidence that you’ll find it one of the best list building plugins out there.

I encourage you to try it out for yourself.

[button size=”large”  link=”http://umstrategies.com/hybrid-connect” linkTarget=”_blank” color=”blue”]  Click here to visit the Hybrid Connect website [/button]

Cheers

Given the huge popularity of the SEOPressor plugin, I thought I’d do a comparison with some recent competitors.

The basic premise of an on-page SEO plugin is that it gives you suggestions for improving on-page SEO and an overall score.

In theory, if the score that is reported by the on-page SEO plugin is high, then you should have a highly optimized page.

The six on-page SEO plugins I’m comparing are:

1.  SEOPressor – This is the most well known on-page SEO plugin.  It was developed by Daniel Tan and has been on the market for some time.

2.  BloggerHigh SEO – This is a free clone of the SEOPressor plugin.

3.  ClickBump SEO – This is a recent entrant into the on-page SEO plugin space.  It is developed by Scott Blanchard.

4. WP SEO Beast – This on-page SEO plugin arrived on the screen just after ClickBump SEO.   It is developed by Prashant Sharma.

5.  Easy WP SEO – This is the highly popular on-page SEO Plugin that is developed by Chris Landrum.

6. Measure My SEO – This is the newest on-page SEO Plugin on the market and is developed by Jason Fladlien and Wilson Mattos.

Demonstration of the On-Page SEO Plugins

The following video gives a brief overview of what each of the plugins do and how they compare to each other.

Please note that when I recorded the original video, WP SEO Beast wasn’t available, so the WP SEO Beast review is in the video below:

The video below shows a quick overview of the Easy WP SEO plugin

Note that in the Easy WP SEO video above, this was using Easy WP SEO version 1.5.  Since then Easy WP SEO v1.6 was released and has a number of major improvements, including:

• Copyscape checking
• Export/Import of Easy WP SEO settings
• Ability to check membership/protected pages
• Ability to check any URL on your site, eg: archives, categories etc
• Ability to fine tune what SEO checks are used in the ratings
• Better SEO report option.

Looking at the Plugins In More Detail

SEOPressor

I was a reluctant purchaser of SEOPressor as I really didn’t think $97 was particularly good value for what it does (particularly if you already know the elements of on-page SEO).  However, given I review products, I ended up buying a copy as at the very least, it’s a useful reminder for particular on-page SEO elements I might have forgotten.

Good Points

• Has a central administration menu for defining keywords and viewing page/post scores and descriptions.
• Works with auto-blogs by giving it a list of keywords and SEOPressor will automatically “decorate” the keywords, ie: bold, underline, italics.

Bad Points

• Price!  In my opinion, $97 for a plugin like this is way over priced.  I think somewhere between $30-$50 is much more reasonable and realistic.
• Nags you about not having an H1 tag, when the vast majority of WordPress themes automatically use H1 for the post/page titles.  Of course you can ignore the suggestion, but it’s something that really irks me.

Click here to access the SEOPressor website

BloggerHigh SEO

BloggerHigh SEO is essentially a rewritten version of SEOPressor.

The actual author and origins of BloggerHigh SEO is a little mysterious.   It appears to be a product of the “Masked Guru”.  Whatever the origins, the big plus of BloggerHigh SEO is that it is free and rebrandable.

Good Points

• Can’t argue with the price as it’s free!
• The plugin is rebrandable, so you can rebrand it yourself (with some limitations) and give it away or sell it.
• Pretty much does the same things as SEOPressor.

Bad Points

• No central administration page.  You need to go to each individual page/post to check the score and suggestions.
• If you don’t have the “hide attribution” option checked, then you’ll have an ugly footer added to each of your pages that have links to the various BloggerHigh sites.  Although, to be fair, as it is a free product, you can’t really blame them for wanting backlinks to their sites.

Click here to access the BloggerHigh SEO website

Clickbump SEO

I recently bumped (bad pun) into Clickbump SEO on the Warrior Forum.  The plugin itself is not currently promoted so much as a standalone plugin, but usually offered as part of the Clickbump Engine Bundle.

Scott did mention that he had registered a domain for Clickbump SEO, so it will be offered as a standalone product very soon.

As I wasn’t that interested in the Clickbump Engine, I purchased just the Clickbump SEO plugin.

Good Points

• It’s less than half the price of SEOPressor.
• Is aware of WordPress themes that use H1, H2 and H3 tags for headings.
• Doesn’t have any overheads of processing a page to add auto-decoration.
• Has a LSI function to grab related keywords.  Very handy reminder of what keywords/phrases to sprinkle into your article.
• Customisable keyword density settings.
• Keyword/Score summary from the Posts/Page manager.

Bad Points

• Can’t really think of any.

Click here to access the ClickBump SEO website

WP SEO Beast

I bought the WP SEO Beast plugin when it was first released so that I could add it to the list of other plugins to compare it to.

I found a few issues with version 1.0 of the WP SEO Beast plugin, so I contacted the author (who was very prompt with his responses) and waited until version 2.0 was released.  This is the version I’m basing my review/comparison on.

Prashant Sharma has obviously studied the other on-page SEO plugins that are available as WP SEO Beast seems to borrow a few ideas from all of them.

WP SEO Beast is probably best described as a cross between ClickBump SEO and SEOPressor.  It does however, have a SEO settings option (similar to all-in-one SEO) which none of the other plugins don’t have.   This has good and bad points as I’ll detail below.

Good Points

• Costs $37, for a plugin that offers more than SEOPressor at more than twice the price.
• Has an option to generate LSI keywords.
• Is aware of WordPress themes that use H1 tags for the post/page title.
• Has summary pages for post and page scores.
• Has support for mobile devices.
• Has inbuilt SEO options to set the meta Title, Description and Keywords so no additional SEO plugins are needed, eg: all-in-one SEO.   Note that I’ve also listed this feature in the bad points

Bad Points

• Probably my biggest gripe with WP SEO Beast is that it forces you to use it’s SEO settings for title, description and keywords.  This means you have no choice to use another SEO plugin like all-in-one SEO or Platinum SEO.  If you do have one of these plugins active, you will end up with two sets of clashing SEO meta data.
• Your score is marked down if you don’t use SEO Beast title, description and keywords, but more importantly, your score is marked down if you don’t use the auto-decoration options (bold, italics, underline).  That means if you manually decorate your keyword, WP SEO Beast doesn’t recognise it.

I think it is only fair to point out that Prashant Sharma is extremely keen to take on board any suggestions to improve the plugin (unfortunately he didn’t address my gripe with the plugin recognising manually decorated keywords though), so you may well find the issues I’ve brought up have been dealt with.

Click here to access the WP SEO Beast website

Easy WP SEO

Easy WP SEO was the latest of the on-page seo plugins that I had a look at.

My first impressions were very favourable as Easy WP SEO has a very professional and polished look and feel.   This certainly extends through to the very extensive documentation that is available with the plugin.  There are instructional videos for every single function of Easy WP SEO.

One big feature that only Easy WP SEO has, is the ability to specify multiple keywords.   This is really useful as most of the time, you want to optimize for your main keyword plus a selection of secondary keywords.   With Easy WP SEO, you can easily select which keyword you want to see the analysis for.

Good Points

• Very clean and professional design.
• Ability to handle multiple keywords.
• Has an LSI function, where you can list LSI keywords and drag/drop them into your article.
• Able to fine tune a large number of settings, eg: keyword density, minimum number of words, title length etc.
• Only on-page seo plugin to include a readability index.
• Has a Copyscape check function.
• Extensive documentation including a manual and video guides.

Bad Points

• Can’t think of any.

Easy WP SEO is not currently available to the public via the main website, however you can grab a discounted copy below.

Click here to access the discounted copy of Easy WP SEO

Measure My SEO 

I recently came across the Measure My SEO plugin, but haven’t had time to personally review it.  I’m including it here for completeness.

Note that I’m basing my information about the Measure My SEO plugin from the Measure My SEO website.

At first glance, Measure My SEO looks like a much more pretty version of SEOPressor or BloggerHigh.  The core functionality doesn’t appear to be much different, but there are a few key differences that make it stand out.

Good Points

• The settings page allows you to control exactly what SEO features you want to measure.
• Has a live checker that automatically updates the SEO page score without you having to update the page.

Bad Points

• Not as fully featured as WP SEO Beast, Clickbump SEO and Easy WP SEO.

Click here to access the Measure My SEO website.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is an important part of on-page SEO, but you should be aware that there are a few different ways to calculate it and you will get different results depending on what tool you are using.

There are two main ways to calculate keyword phrase density.

A=Total occurrences of the keyword phrase in the article

B=Total number of words in the article

C=Number of words in the keyword phrase

Keyword density calculation 1 uses:

(A / B) * 100

Keyword density calculation 2, uses:

(A * C / B) * 100

Let’s have a look at an example and the difference in the keyword density score those two formulas can make.

Let’s say we have a article with 1000 words and using keyword phrase of “search engine results page” (4 words) where there are 10 occurrences of that phrase.

So using the first formula, that gives us:

(10 / 1000) * 100 = 1% keyword density

and using the second formula, gives us:

(10 * 4 / 1000) * 100 = 4% keyword density

That’s quite a difference depending on which formula you use.  (Note: the differences only apply to keyword phrases and not when you use a single keyword).

All the on-page SEO plugins I tested use the first formula apart from BloggerHigh SEO.

With Easy WP SEO you have the option which keyword density calculation to use, where the default is the first formula.

There is a good explanation of keyword density calculations on Wikipedia.

So Which is the Best Plugin To Use?

My recommendation is if you already have SEOpressor and are relatively happy with using it, then there’s probably not a compelling reason to throw it out in favour of BloggerHigh SEO, ClickBump SEO,  WP SEO Beast, Measure My SEO or Easy WP SEO.

If you are on a tight budget, then BloggerHigh SEO is a good option.

Of the other four plugins, my pick would be for Easy WP SEO.  With the version 1.6 update, Easy WP SEO is now well ahead of the pack.

Of the other on-page SEO plugins, my next pick would be ClickBump SEO,  followed by WP SEO Beast or Measure My SEO.

Hopefully all these on-page SEO plugins will be further developed and I’ll update this review page if there are any major changes.

If you come across any other similar on-page SEO plugins, let me know and I’ll add them to this review.

Cheers

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

Easy PayPal Shortcodes is great plugin that allows you to easily add shortcodes into your WordPress pages that will generate all the required code to display and set up the buy buttons, product name, price, paypal email account, thank you and cancel pages.

You are freed from having to generate multiple buttons for each product you are selling and having to copy/paste HTML into your WordPress page (which can be a real pain at times).

The plugin is very flexible and very easy to configure.

Overview of Easy PayPal Shortcodes

The video below shows you how to install, configure and use Easy PayPal Shortcodes.

Raising Money For the Red Cross Christchurch Earthquake Appeal

The main motivation for creating and selling this plugin was to raise money for the Red Cross 2011 Christchurch Earthquake Appeal.

After the plugin was launched, I donated 100% of proceeds raised during the donation period  (ending 24 March 2011) to the Red Cross.

Following up with my original statement that I would provide full financial disclosure, the details of the amount donated are below.

There were a total of 31 sales (some at the full price), which came in at $282 (includes DigiResults processing fees)

Then using the US to NZ conversion rate on 24 March 2011, this came to NZ$380 (rounded up).

A big thank you to everyone who purchased Easy PayPal Shortcodes.

Where to Get Easy PayPal Shortcodes

You can purchase Easy PayPal Shortcodes via:

* Easy PayPal Shortcodes Sales Page

Cheers

 Spintax Generator For Hyperlinks

Like a lot of marketers, I use a variety of tools and websites for generating and submitting spun articles.  Software like The Best Spinner, Article Marketing Robot and blog submission sites like Article Ranks.

One task I often found to be very clumsy and prone to formatting errors, was creating links in spintax format.

I hate doing any processes manually, so I decided to create a simple tool called Spintaxer which makes the process of creating hyperlinks in spintax format a breeze.

Click here to access the Spintaxer tool (it’s completely free)

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.