Best SEO Services & Tools For Mac And PC (Part 1)

Like many web developers, I love Macs, too.  It’s a lot easier for me to write and test web applications on Macs than on other kinds of computers. However, when it comes to the SEO world, the majority of Internet marketers would prefer using a PC. This is due to the simple fact that there aren’t as many good SEO tools for Mac as there are for the PC. Many Internet marketers who own Apple computers have to install Windows on top of their Mac OS in order to run their best SEO tools. As more SEO companies are moving towards cloud computing and more standalone applications are becoming web-based services, the claim “Mac is not good at SEO” holds less true today than in the past. As a search engine optimization strategist, I have been doing SEO work using a Mac for years now. As a counter argument to my colleagues’s claim “…for SEO, you need a PC.”, I decided to write a 3 part blog posts highlighting some of best SEO services and best SEO tools I use daily to get my job done. As you will see, you can do SEO equally well on a Mac as you can on a PC. It’s all about choosing the right SEO tools or services and how to best use them. In part 1, we will take a look at keyword research tools.

Best Keyword Research Tools

As the saying goes,”failing to plan is planning to fail”.

For most successful SEO professionals and Internet marketers, keyword research is a critical step to be completed before employing any other SEO strategies. However, some Internet marketers focus on creating fresh content and establishing links to promote their websites, only to fail before they’ve begun by targeting the wrong keywords after finding a niche that is either too competitive, or has very little traffic.

One of the keyword research tools that has proven critical to my success in choosing highly targeted traffic and high profit/low competition keywords is Market Samurai, which I first purchased 3 years ago. Since then it has proven its worth many times over. Market Samurai uses “Four Golden Rules” to perform the task of choosing the right keywords to address your niche, and helps you save on your Adwords campaigns. Though you can do keyword research and analysis using Google Traffic Estimator and the Google Keyword Tool, the data doesn’t help you choose better keywords. Market Samurai finds keywords that are highly relevant, have good levels of traffic, acceptable levels of competition and high levels of commerciality. Market Samurai is not just a keyword research tool, it comes with 7 additional modules:

1. Rank Tracker: Track all your search engine rankings.
2. SEO Competition Analysis: Analyze your 10 top-ranked competitors and their link strategies.
3. Domains Research: Choose a domain that will boost your rankings in the search engines.
4. Monetization: Find products and services to promote and earn money.
5. Find content: Research articles that are relevant to your keyword.
6. Publish content: Write, schedule and publish content straight to your blog.
7. Promotion: Find high-quality buckling opportunities.

Market Samurai is developed using Adobe Air, and it runs on both Mac and the PC. Unlike some other SEO tools, Market Samurai is a one-time investment. There is no monthly cost and it comes with a lifetime software update. You get all the features for a single payment of just $149! Market Samurai is still in beta, that’s why it is insanely under-priced, for now. They will definitely raise the price considerably to reflect the market value of the software once the release candidate is finalized.

Get Market Samurai Here

If you need keyword research tools that can get you a list of more accurate and comprehensive keywords, you would do well with Wordtracker.

Unlike Market Samurai, and many other keyword research tools, which produce results based on the data from Google Adwords Tool or Google Traffic Estimator, Wordtracker uses its own keyword database which pulls data from multiple sources (Google, Bing, Yahoo and others). Wordtracker delivers you more long-tailed keywords and can assist you uncover more related keywords that are listed in Google’s Keyword Tool results. I would suggest any Internet marker who is serious about keyword search to take a look at Wordtracker today.

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