If you’ve not used Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) search queries to track queries and impressions data for your website, then you are missing an opportunity to gain valuable SEO insight for and about your website, and increase its search rankings.

I know there are many of you that have tried free SEO tools in the past as well as paid SEO tools, but none can compare to GWT.

After all, GWT is a Google product and everyone is racking their brains out trying to figure out how to get their website to page one rankings or how to sustain page one rankings for their website.

For a free SEO tool, GWT packs a mean SEO punch and can hold it’s own as a phenomenal tool to use for webmasters and those with websites.

And today I’m going to let you in on a few secrets and how I use GWT to not only optimize my website, but to drive substantial search ranking changes and increases for my website in Google and other search engines.

If you’ve had any sort of experience with SEO over the last few years, then you should understand the complexity of trying to garner and perfect the art and science of increasing your website’s backlink profile.

Trying to increase one’s website backlink profile is much like or as difficult as trying to get the inside scoop on a news story before it goes public.

There are a number link building methods, both good and bad, one can use to destroy or increase a website’s backlink profile.

One good link building method is writing content that is value-add and worth sharing. A bad link building method is buying links via paid link services or some unauthentic linking approach.

And those are just starters that lead to a multitude of link building strategies.

But what I care to give focus to today is how you can increase backlinks using current events SEO tactics and techniques.

Current events SEO is definitely a great way not to only increase backlinks, but writing about current events in the right way, at the right time, and about the right topic can cause your website to be and remain relevant.

I receive a few domain name inquiries a week. Quite often, most inquiries are tire kickers, yet there are a few that do turn into nice 4-figure sales.

All in all, most domain name inquiries I receive are asking the same question from the same point of view and the question is: how little can I spend to buy a domain name?

I’m not sure of the identity of most inquirers although I do take the liberty to research most emails and names via the internet.

There are those who are *real* people and quite easy to research to see if their story checks out while others play a game of incognito.

Either way, the domain name will cost them. How much it costs is only a matter of who I perceive is telling the truth.

And with that, allow me to share with you how I determine the good, bad, and ugly when assessing domain inquiries.

If you watch the expired domain auctions as I do, you see a wide range of domains expiring regularly.

Some expiring domains are nothing to write about, while others are like finding a needle in a haystack.

So, what’s the difference between the two types of expired domains, you ask?

And in addition, how should you go about finding and buying expired domains of great value in terms of SEO and being competitively priced?

When driving more traffic and business to a small business website, most small business owners dread SEO much like the plague, especially when doing SEO yourself.

I mean, really, where does a small business owner begin when doing SEO themselves?

Rather than determining the real pros and cons of do-it-yourself SEO, most small business owners opt for the traditional advertising methods of magazine ads, banner ads, newspaper ads, Craigslist, AngiesList, HomeAdvisor, etc.

But as the Internet and SEO progresses, your need and dependence on SEO to drive more business or even sustain a business is a looming issue that will not go away and must be addressed cost-effectively and timely.

It’s true that time, money, and labor always seem to find the small business owner holding the short end of the stick on one, if not all, of the previously mentioned.

For those of you that decide never to hire another SEO for anything again in your lives, today’s blog is just for you.

And for every small business owner unable to hire in-house SEO, an SEO professional, or an agency, this blog will help you attack the low-hanging actions of doing SEO yourself.

Let’s get started.

If you own, operate or manage a website, I’m sure you’ve heard the latest craze and buzzword, content marketing, tossed around much like a game of horseshoes or washers.

For some, content marketing has become a science of keyword stuffing their content in an effort to increase search rankings.

Content marketing has become a full-fledge game of creating keyword salad.

A dab of this or that with a pinch of that or this, and this magic combination of subtle keywords is suppose to bring about favorable rankings from SEO gods.

For small businesses that believe this keyword salad business of keyword stuffing is the most effective SEO, Google and other search engines think otherwise.

I’ve had the opportunity in the last two weeks to review the SEO efforts of some small businesses that have a local focus when it comes to SEO.

I received an email from a regular blog reader of Kickstart Commerce.

This person totally stoked about how they read my latest blog about finding and buying domain names.

They found an expired domain name to die for, let them tell it.

I was super excited, as I usually am, to hear from our readers about this reader’s good fortune find.

I was elated until I researched the readers’ good fortune domain name.

The reader did almost everything correctly based on their email.

The one missing piece the reader did not note was performing a search on the domain itself for negative or scam reviews using Google or another search engine.

Had the reader performed this simple step, the reader would have figured out that another company had used their so-called good fortune of an expired domain name to run a scam.

I was surprised and heartbroken for the reader when I searched.