Well knock us over with a feather -- we're surprised and honored to be on Website Magazine's list of the 50 top software solutions to explore in 2012!Funny story: One of my coworkers actually printed out this list to use as a reference, but didn't notice until I told her that we were #13 on the list!According to Website Magazine, here's the methodology that determined the list:Website Magazine’s Top 50 rankings are a measure of a website’s popularity.

Ranks are calculated using a proprietary method that focuses on average daily unique visitors and page views over a specified period of time, as reported by multiple data sources. The website with the highest combination of factors is ranked in the first position.Thank you to Website Magazine for including us among so many great software ... > Read more

 Holy moly, guys. Another year, come and gone. I mean December basically doesn’t count; it’s basically already over, Christmas happened, and you’re all making hungover resolutions. Am I right?This time next month, I’ll be bringing you our best of 2011. But for now we’ll stick to the past 30 days.

Here are our top ten slammingest blog posts of the month:How Does the AdWords Auction Work? – Our latest infographic, a visual explanation of Google AdWords, was a big hit. If it you missed it the first time around, check it out.Small Business Saturday 2011: Tips and Tricks to Make the Most of November 26th – Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, but Meg’s marketing tips for SMBs are worthwhile year-round.Our Top SEO Link Building Posts of ... > Read more

 As you read this, I’m probably on my way to the DC area, leaving the virtually perfect Denver weather for the East Coast blahs. Ah well, maybe I'll spy some foliage. (I still think it's weird that New Englanders call it "leaf peeping!" It makes it sound so dirty.)Before you get your weekend started, check out the top 10 most popular blog posts we published this month.

Ultimate Guide to PPC Metrics: 17 Experts on the Top 3 Must-Check PPC Metrics – This group interview is packed with awesome insights into what metrics actually matter when it comes to analyzing PPC results – and which ones are pretty much worthless. Even if you don’t want to read the whole thing, be sure to skip to the bottom and see the three most popular answers.3 Ways to Scale Linkbuilding with Google Docs –... > Read more

The next Mass Innovation Nights event is coming up on September 14, 2011. We'd be thrilled if you showed your support for WordStream by voting for us to present at the event! Mass Innovation Nights features innovative new products from companies in the Boston area. Here's more information about the event via MIN: We've got a great evening planned for our 30th event! MIN30, September 14, 6-8:30 pm, is going to be part of FutureM, a week of events in the Boston area, celebrating the future of marketing.

Our line-up looks terrific, with a great group of products somehow related to marketing. Join us! Remember, we’re here to help launch new local products, so here’s what you need to do: Check out the cool new products. Visit their websites for more info. Pick your favo... > Read more

For a limited time, we are offering a 15% discount on any subscription to our Keyword Research Suite. You'll save $50 when you purchase a standard subscription to the Keyword Research Suite by June 18 with code JUNE15. That's less than $1 a day for unlimited access to WordStream's full suite of best-in-class keyword tools, including: The Keyword Suggestion Tool: Leverage our huge database to find large numbers of keywords fast The Keyword Niche Finder: Find profitable new niches and clusters of related keywords to target The Keyword Grouper: Quickly turn a disorganized list into a manageable, actionable structure The Keyword Research Suite gives you access to way more keywords than free tools like Google's AdWords Keyword Tool.

For example, if you search on the term "ba... > Read more

WordStream is growing fast, so we're looking to add an enthusiastic and experienced Paid Search Specialist to our team of in-house AdWords experts. If you know someone who fits the below description, there could be $1,000 in it for you. Our ideal candidate for the Paid Search Specialist position will: Be passionate, ambitious, and ready to roll up their sleeves and immediately dive into managing paid search accounts Have at least two to three years of experience and demonstrated success in managing PPC campaigns and other search marketing initiatives Have comprehensive knowledge of building and optimizing PPC campaigns in Google AdWords as well as hands-on experience with content and display networks, phone tracking, and bid management The Paid Search Specialist will be respo... > Read more

Today I’m thrilled to announce the general availability of what I believe to be the World’s most comprehensive and accurate suite of keyword research tools for SEO and PPC – the new Keyword Research Suite from WordStream! You can test drive the tools for free, or read on for more information.

In this post, I’d like to talk a little about what the Keyword Research Suite does, how it’s different, and why I think it’s a must-have for anyone who's serious about search marketing. What Is the Keyword Research Suite? For the past several months we've been gathering feedback from our regular free tool users and buckling down to develop what we think of as the ultimate keyword research suite. We wanted to build a tool that would offer… The Biggest Key... > Read more

February may be a short month, but that doesn't mean we were short on kick-ass blog posts! (Ugh.) Here they are, our top 10 page-view-grabbing-est posts for the month, every bit as awesome as they were the first time (except maybe for the first one): Unsurprisingly, our most popular post this month was Larry’s AdWords promotional code share.

You cheapskates! ;) (Sadly the codes have all been used and are no longer valid.) Larry did a quick analysis of Google’s big JC Penney bust. Tom wrote up a dead simple Google AdWords certification guide covering costs, the different types of certification, study tips and more. Google accused Bing of copying its search results after cooking up an elaborate and nerdy “sting” – Larry asks the burning question, Who cares? Cha... > Read more

DANG, y'all! You just. Can't. Get. Enough. Link building posts. Remember when I said I was running out of pictures of chainlinks? That's why you get a classic NES reference for your image today. So here you have it, our most popular blog posts from January: lots of link building love and a few AdWords and PPC posts too.

Enjoy! Quick and Dirty Link Building Tip Part 1: How to Get Lots of Link Prospect URLs FAST!: This is the first in a three-part series by SEO whiz Tom Demers, in which he lays out a process for a fast link-building campaign.  Quick and Dirty Link Building Part 2: How to Prioritize Your Link Building Efforts: In Part 2 of this series, Tom explains how to sort through the link prospects you gathered in Part 1.  Link Building 101: 5 Simple Ways to Build Links that ... > Read more

Over the next few weeks, we'd like to walk you through some examples of ways you can use the newest evolution of WordStream to supercharge your AdWords account. Whether you're a novice or an expert, WordStream for PPC has tools that can make your job easier and your campaigns more successful. Read Part 1 of the series here.

Scenario #3 "I've had an AdWords account running for quite some time, but my Quality Scores remain low, even after revamping my website and landing pages." There are a number of factors that go into determining your Quality Scores, and the relevance of your landing pages, as well as factors like website load time, do have an effect. But you'll have the most impact on your Quality Scores by focusing on your ads and ad groups. Specifically, you'll need to: Ensure that yo... > Read more

In search engine marketing, as in so many areas of business, time really is money, and that means wasted time is wasted money. That's why it's so important to optimize your AdWords campaigns sooner rather than later, so you're not throwing away money on clicks that go nowhere. And going one better, if you can build a high-power PPC campaign starting on Day 1, you won't have to spend time fixing your mistakes.

We're committed to continuously evolving and improving our software, and we've devoted a lot of energy in the past few months to gathering feedback from clients and prospects, both on our software and their needs as busy search marketers. Today we're announcing a new release of WordStream for PPC that addresses many of the pain points we've heard from you. Along with some impressive n... > Read more

Out of work? Unhappy with your present gig? Interested in Internet Marketing? Consider applying for a Job at WordStream! We're on a mission to build the next generation of Internet Marketing Software solutions to simplify and improve customer success with PPC and SEO, and are currently hiring for the following search marketing jobs in sales, marketing and product development: We're hiring for the following positions and offer a competitive salary and benefits package: Director of Business Development: Become a significant revenue driver for WordStream by discovering new sales and partnership opportunties.

Director of Inside Sales: Have experience selling SaaS products and managing inside sales? Then come help us build and provide leadership for the WordStream sales team. ... > Read more

  Today at SMX East (come visit us at booth 318 if you're at the show, by the way!) we announced a partnership with Acquisio, a paid search marketing and performance media platform designed for agencies. We recently announced a similar partnership with gShift Labs - both software companies will be leveraging the WordStream Keyword Tool API to offer additional functionality to their customers.

Acqusio has a nice write-up on the API integration and what it means to their customers. Not unlike the gShift announcement, the really exciting part of the partnership for us is the chance to work with really smart people and to have a cutting-edge software company leveraging our API and delivering our technology to their customers to help them succeed with paid search marketing. Intereste... > Read more

After meeting with gShift Labs CTO Chris Adams at an SES conference, we realized there was a great partnership fit, and today we're announcing that gShift Labs has integrated the WordStream Keyword Tool API into their Web Presence Optimizer. The team at gShift has built out an entire page dedicated to detailing how the WordStream Keyword Tool API is leveraged within the gShift product.

Here's a screenshot of the implementation: We're really excited about the implementation because it's extremely validating for the WordStream API to have companies like gShift programming against and leveraging our data and our algorithms within their software. We've been able to get a closer look at the gShift software and have gotten to know their team, and they're a very smart bunch solving some interest... > Read more

Search Engine Watch today published a really interesting article called "How to Cut Through the Clutter in Branded Search," using WordStream's keyword tools as the first step in a brand query analysis. In this article, Web Liquid Group's Paul Burani (Web Liquid is a New York marketing agency that measures brand health in the digital space) helps a friend, a chief marketing officer, develop a methodology for obtaining "an objective view on [a] brand's overall performance in digital.

" Paul writes: I told him that one way of answering the question would be to look at the trend in search query volume for the brand name -- if more people are querying keywords related to the brand name this month, compared to last month, that would be one way to answer the CMO's question. Thi... > Read more

Like most of the world, I'm sure you've been on the edge of your seat since we launched our Facebook 6K Fans Sweepstakes (sorry, not allowed to use Facebook in the contest name...ya know, house rules and all...) because you've been dying to find out when we'd reach 1,000 "likes" on Facebook and who the first fan milestone winner will be.

Well, get ready to get excited, because the wait is over.  Congratulations to Stacey Davis who wins a $100 Amazon.com gift card. To our other 999 fans who didn't win and think they've missed out on winning some cool prizes (for basically doing nothing, BTW, since this is THE easiest Facebook contest on the planet...yes, it's official, folks), turn that frown upside down because this sweepstakes ain't over yet, kids. That's right, there are s... > Read more

In an effort to make everyone's life less "complicated" (and to help us hit 6K fans on Facebook...), we've created "the easiest contest on the planet." You don't have to invent anything, solve any riddles or dress up like a goofy robot to win a cool prize in our contest. All we'd like you to do is "like" WordStream on Facebook and "like" Search Engine Journal on Facebook (yes, we really neeeed to be "liked") and you're automatically entered to win.

See...told you it was easy. So come on...our goal is 6,000 Facebook fans. Help us reach it! So It's Like This: We Hit 6K Fans, SEJ Gets More Fans, You Can Win Cool Prizes...Everybody Wins!!! Like I said, to be eligible to win some kick ass prizes, all we'd like you to do is "like" Wor... > Read more

I remember back in my school days it always seemed like Christmas would never come … then it did, and then it seemed like summer would never come. Now time pretty much flies by at warp speed all year. But, paradoxically, winter in Boston always seems interminable! So right now I'm simultaneously amazed that it's almost summer, and already too hot to sleep without the AC on, and pained that it took so long to get here, and dreading its inevitable end.

So it goes. I ate lunch from this exact viewpoint last Friday. Let's revisit some of our most popular posts of the month: R.I.P: Search Engine Optimization is Dead!: Ken pulled the old bait and switch with this one. This isn't yet another post about the death of SEO. Rather, Ken provides data showing just the opposite.   Poll Re... > Read more

WordStream today announced the release of WordStream Keyword Management for SEO, which has an important new feature: the WordStream SEO for Firefox Plug-in. This new plug-in provides seamless access to your keyword research data as you author or edit Web content in your CMS or blog. In this post, I'd like to talk a bit about the underlying design philosophy behind the product, and show how we've developed features that try to simplify various best practices for on-page SEO.

Target the Head When authoring content for SEO, it's critically important that you: Pick a specific, primary topic that is both popular and relevant to your business. Author content that specifically targets your selected topic, making your page more likely to show up in organic search results for those keywords. Word... > Read more

Every year Always On puts together a list that "recognizes companies with game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. " This year they've included WordStream on the list. As a young company, being included on these sorts of lists is validating for a number of reasons, but most notably we're impressed by: The Company We Keep - There are some very, very smart companies on this list solving some incredibly challenging problems.

Included in the list is a series of fellow Sigma Partners backed companies like Nasuni, oDesk, Responsys, and Zetta. The Process - Always On has a very discerning process for the selection of this list, which always makes inclusion more gratifying. Consistent Validation - Winning multiple awar... > Read more

We meant to announce this before it happened, but the pesky time difference got the better us of ... WordStream presented at SES London, and earlier this morning, on a panel on search advertising tools moderated by Andrew Goodman. From the SES agenda: The competition is fierce in paid search! From small in-house accounts to ones with millions of keywords, it's the new advances in SEM technology that might just make the difference between success and failure.

Are there tools you could be using right now to help double your conversions, lower your costs, or save your team hours of time every week? At this panel, top paid search tool vendors will showcase their latest features in bid management, campaign workflow efficiencies, and reveal what the future holds for the industry. As well, t... > Read more

Repeat after me. This year, I resolve to... 1. Get More Organized Is your idea of "keyword research" just a bunch of keywords jammed into in a spreadsheet? Effective keyword organization and keyword management is a foundational component of paid and organic search marketing. In PPC, it means grouping together similar keywords and matching them with targeted ad text and landing pages.

And in SEO, it means effectively targeting keyword niches in order to create and link together original themed content about specific topics, which in turn are more likely to rank highly for targeted organic searches. Start the new year off with strong organizational footing by checking out our Definitive Guide to Keyword Organization. 2. Lose Weight Trim the fat from your PPC campaigns! Negative ke... > Read more

Today WordStream has launched two new, powerful, patented, and totally FREE keyword suggestion tools. The Free Keyword Niche Finder – To use this tool, just enter a keyword and get back structured pockets of keyword suggestions ready to use in paid and organic search marketing campaigns.

The Free Keyword Grouper – Drop in a list of keywords or analytic data and this tool segments your keywords into tightly related semantic groupings. I'd like to talk a little about why we created these tools and why I believe that the future of keyword research for both pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization will involve thinking of keywords in terms of niches, rather than individual keywords. What Is a Keyword Niche? A keyword niche (or keyword grouping), as oppo... > Read more

Keyword research as we know it suffers from a major disconnect. On one hand, you have keyword tools, which provide keyword suggestions and associated keyword frequency estimates. On the other hand, you have web analytics applications, which provide you with the actual search queries that are driving traffic to your site, and the true relevancy of your keywords based on real conversion data.

But there is no reason for these two types of tools to be divorced from each other. In fact, in my experience, successful keyword research largely depends on your ability to leverage and manage data from both keyword tools and web analytics in a continuous fashion. Let's take a look at why neither keyword tools nor web analytics alone is sufficient for complete keyword research, and how the future of ke... > Read more

Despite billions of searches month in and month out (more than 9 billion in July alone), Google continues to report that nearly 20% of all search queries each month are unique—that is, they have never been searched on before. To help address this challenge, we launched a free keyword suggestion tool last week for specialists and agencies providing pay-per-click (PPC) marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) services.

Initial market adoption and feedback have been overwhelming. In the first week we have provided more than 100 million keyword ideas to early adopters of the tool. The Free Keyword Tool’s database of over a trillion search queries, the tool’s ease and speed of use, and advanced features such as related keywords and filters have search experts favorably c... > Read more

Sage Lewis, a frequent blogger at Search Engine Watch and the president and founder of Sage Rock Web Marketing, was nice enough to sit down with me for a quick interview about WordStream at SES San Jose. Many thanks to Sage: (I get paid by the hand gesture, incidentally...)... > Read more