I have not been around much because I have been further investigating Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. They tend to go hand in hand in most situations if not all.
Now being a web developer I was always quite versed in SEO and especially the core of it Keywords and have code semantically correct.
What I have not spent a lot of time on until the last couple months is the actual analysis of it all. Competition, the actual keywords, tracking of the keywords to see the trends and even go as far as testing the different testing techniques. Most of it I all ready used in practice but my resent studies have helped me tune my ways of analysis.
Also something to note is that some of the best tools out there are free tools from Google.
Keyword Research The starting point for finding keywords.
Google Search Is genuinely the starting point.
Google Analytics You can fine tune this wonderful tool to do all sorts of tracking if you spend some time on investigating what it has to offer.
We did not even tap into paid systems and tools. These are just the simple necessities and Free.
Something that I have been playing with is Google Analytics and all that it has to offer. I am actually building a bunch of new features into my custom WordPress Framework that will leverage a large amount of the Analytics features that most people don’t even know are there.
Keep in mind the newest kid on the block Bing, they also have a full Webmaster Toolbox. I will get into that on the next SEO / IM article.