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.

Before we get too far down the path on this post on social signals, let me start by saying do not attempt to take anything from this post as the law of the land for manipulating search rankings.

In the last few days, I’ve received a few emails from potential customers in regards to certain SEO strategies they stumbled across on this blog not *working*.

Of course, not *working* is a vague term with wide boundaries depending upon whom you speak with.

As for the emails, potential customers had read a few blog posts making mention that social signals are important to search rankings for websites.

They then took to Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, and began posting content in an attempt to boost their website traffic and search rankings.

After a few posts and only days within their first couple of posts on each social network, potential customers were a bit frustrated by the following:

• Their website traffic did not increase
• Their search rankings decreased instead of increasing
• Their numbers on each of the social networks didn’t increase in any aspect

I mean, they had a few likes and a couple of followers, but they expected a monsoon of activity to boost their social signals and in return, increase search rankings for their website.

And of course without hesitation and not acknowledging the part they played, potential customers wrote me to inform me that I was fake and imposter SEO professional by their standards.

Recently, I assisted a long-time client in migrating their redesigned website from manual php files to a dynamic WordPress website with WordPress hosting to boost website speed.

As I do with most redesign launches, I attempted to determine the existing architecture by reviewing the various website directories.

The goal was to move their website to WordPress to allow for easy management of the website.

Unlike their manual website, which was crafted by hand and highly prone to human error, moving to WordPress would allow for fewer hierarchy issues and challenges by harnessing the power of WordPress automation.

In addition, moving to WordPress would help to preserve the existing website page and domain authority they had built over the last 12 or more months.

Are you in the dark as to why your website recently lost search rankings?

Maybe you once had page one rankings and now find your website search rankings in the toilet.

Or maybe you’ve been working to optimize your site now for a year or more, and have yet to rank within the top 50 search ranking positions.

If you don’t closely follow SEO algorithm updates on a regular basis or are new to SEO in general, then you could very well find yourself SEO’ing in the dark.

Well, it’s time to shed light on your SEO woes and rehab your website’s search rankings.

Today we’re going to talk about one method to do so: using the link disavow tool in Google Webmaster Tools.

We won’t get into the nuts and bolts of how the disavow tool works, but we will discuss when it’s best to use the disavow tool to rehab search rankings.

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.

Let me start by saying that as much guest posting and blogging craze that there is all over the web, I’m not real big on guest posts and blogs, period.

I’ll tell you why, but first a customer story.

If only I could rank #1 on page one of Google…

This long time customer once had stellar SEO rankings for multiple money keywords and long tail keywords in their industry.

For years, they owned search rankings with well-optimized pages and website in general.

In fact, this customer ranked so well across search engines that they didn’t have to participate in pay-per-click advertising although it would have been a benefit.

That all came to end after experiencing two failed SEO efforts and relationships with other companies.

In truth, all this customer wanted was establish their web presence as the number one spot in search rankings.

But is this not what we all want for our websites?