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Search Engine Weekly Round-up #33

The Search Engine Weekly Round-up is where I look at the finest articles, talking points and news from the week from the worlds of SEO, Marketing, Social Media, etc. This week looks at the value of long-tail keywords, tools mentioned at Mozcon, the results of a link building survey and alternatives to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

The Value of Long-Tail Keywords
Tom Roberts
Follow @tjproberts
Whilst a lot of SEOs put plenty of effort into going for the big terms in order to bring in traffic and conversions, Tom Roberts tells us how targeting long-tail keywords can prove to be much more efficient in the long run. Though a long-tail term will bring in a fraction of searches as opposed to what a short-tail term brings in, as Tom states in this post, they’re much easier to rank for, and can be done on a much larger scale, and can certainly convert.
This post looks at the conversion funnel, a seasonal example of how targeting a long-tail term is infinitely quicker, easier and overall better than targeting a similar short-tail term as well as how you can find these long-tail terms through tools such as Ubersuggest.
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Mozcon 2013 Tools
Kane Jamison
Follow @KaneJamison
Throughout this week (8th – 10th), the annual SEO extravaganza that is Mozcon has taken place, and during this event, several of the finest in our field of work gave presentations on their specialities. During these presentations, plenty of SEO tools have been cited and recommended, and Kane Jamison has been kind enough to list all of them on the Content Harmony blog. Thomas Hogenhaven maintained the same list during last year’s Mozcon, though he wasn’t able to do so this year, so Kane took the reigns.
The tools are broken up into different categories such as analytics tools, link building tools, et al, and the person who mentioned the tool in their presentation has also been cited.
On top of this, Kane has also whipped up a list of quotes and highlights from the 2013 Mozcon, which is certainly also worth looking at.
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Link Building Survey 2013 – The Results [Infographic]
James Agate
Follow @jamesagate
A range of different link builders, team managers and agency owners answered a survey which was recently conducted, and this post from James Agate looks at the results of this survey, including a full analysis of each particular question posed to them. It really is interesting to see the thoughts of various people within the industry on subjects such as this, considering all of the change that goes on within our field. The survey found out things such as:

• Broken link building is seen as the most powerful link building method
• 35% spend between $0 – $1k on link building over the course of a month
• 41% will be focusing on guest blogging in the coming year

As well as some other highly interesting stats and information, all presented excellently in an infographic as well.
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The 10 Best Alternatives to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Rohan Ayyar
Follow @searchrook
As you may have noticed over the past month or so, Google’s new Keyword Planner has seen quite a push, seeing as it looks like Google’s ever so handy Adwords Keyword Tool will be heading to the great Google graveyard. This has been seen as quite a poor decision within the SEO community, considering the efficiency and efficacy of the Google keyword tool.
Not to dwell on this, Rohan Ayyar has provided us with a list of 10 possible alternatives for this tool, seeing as the new Keyword Planner isn’t quite to a lot of people’s tastes. Tools included within this post include the likes of Mergewords, Keyword Eye and Ubersuggest, the latter of which is a personal favourite of mine.
If the Keyword Planner doesn’t quite meet expectations, it’ll probably require a mixture of these tools in order to get a similar level of productivity as we could get from the Adwords Keyword Tool. Will any of you guys stick with the Keyword Planner, or will you go for one of these?
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That’s all for this week’s round-up. If you fancy sharing the content which has been mentioned in this blog, click the corresponding Tweet buttons. So, what have been your favourite articles of the week? Feel free to leave your comments below