So the holidays are over, everyone is getting ready for ASW and the various new years parties taking place… annnd I just got myself a shiny new iPad 2.  So far I’ve been looking far and wide for the best apps to increase productivity in the daily grind of an internet marketer. Here’s the best i’ve found thus far (open to debate) so take a peek, and feel free to drop a line if you have a recommendation for an app I haven’t mentioned.

The Best iPad apps for Internet Marketing

Dropbox (Free) – This app needs no introduction as I’m sure many of you are aware and have used dropbox by now, at least the for-PC variant.  Dropbox’s iPad app is no different, allowing you to share and send files from anywhere. Great for outsourcing & working VA’s.

Evernote (Free) – Easily allows you to sync all your notes to the cloud and access them via any PC, iPad and iPhone. Mainly used to keep track and organize everything, from to do lists, to receipts, to campaign updates and everything in between.

HootSuite (Free) – If you’re a serious internet marketer, then you need to be able to update, post, follow, tweet, like and completely immerse yourself in social media. Hootsuite makes this a breeze by connecting you to Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn to manage all your social media from one easy to use platform.

Dragon Dictation (Free) – Those of you who are familiar with Dragon Naturally Speaking will have no problems diving right into Dragon Dictation.  This app allows you to convert speech to text and works well if you like to overly pronounce words for long periods of time.

GoToMeeting (Free) – Same as what you’d expect from GoToMeeting, allowing you to view webinars from your iPad as well as host conferences and generally get shit done.  Great for collaboration and working remotely with others abroad.

GoodReader ($4.99) – This is bare none the best PDF reader for the iPad.  Its easy to use and you can drag and drop pretty much any eBook via iTunes and your off and reading.  I’ve loaded 100′s of books onto my iPad and this makes reading them a breeze. Worth the $5.

WordPress (Free) – Allows you to manage all of your WordPress blogs in one easy to use interface. From here you can edit and write posts straight from your iPad.  This is great for anyone who runs WordPress blogs and wants to manage them on the iPad.

1Password ($5.99) – Makes it easy for you to keep all your passwords in one place, which is awesome considering how hard it is to remember passwords these days.  Not to mention the hassle of entering special characters and long alpha-numeric passwords on the iPad.

Analytics Pro ($5.99) – Very intuitive analytics app that allows you to view all of your sites metrics and statistics on the fly.  Similar to Google analytics and on a clean easy to use interface, what’s not to love?

SEM Calculator (Free) - This application gives you multiple calculators which allow you to figure out everyday Search Engine Marketing equations (ROI, EPC, CPM etc.) These calculators are also applicable for professionals who do online media buying of banners or emails. Extremely useful app and easy as hell to use.

iSSH ($9.99) – This was recommended to me and makes it virtually a cakewalk to manage your website servers and file details.  Easily telnet, ssh with a tunneled VNC client, RDP client and an x server.

Textastic ($9.99) – This is similar to notepad++ only for the ipad.  Great app for coding up landing pages and websites on the go.  Easy to use and a nice and clean interface to work on. Highlights the syntax of more than 80 different types of files while you’re typing. All the good stuff in this one.

SplashTop HD ($4.99) – This app is great, it basically gives you full access to your remote PC on your iPad.  While it may seem clunky to work your way around your desktop on a touchscreen, once you get used to it and realize the potential application of this app, the possibilities are limitless.

Honorable mentions:

• Paypal (Free)
• MailChimp (Free)
• KeyNote ($9.99)

Overall I’m trying to make the most of my iPad in terms of productivity, and while i’ve never been a fan of Apple, the iPad is starting to grow on me.  I recently picked up a Logitech Tablet Keyboard and hopefully this added with the aforementioned apps and some creativity will help produce some quality work for 2012.  Remember these apps are only tools to aid you in your work, thinking outside the box and getting creative can make some processes MUCH easier if you apply yourself correctly.  Good luck and a prosperous 2012 to everyone!

Have you noticed your site(s) dropping in the rankings recently as of late and wondered why?  There is a variety of factors at play here since Google implemented its Panda 2.0 update and more recently relevance has been placed on social links with much more penalization taking place for links that appear spammy or come from low quality sites.

Google’s Ben Gomes discusses some of the most recent changes to Google’s algorithm here:

Sell Health has also compiled a handy infographic based on that leaked Google quality rating pdf and some known Google Panda facts. I found it quite intuitive and any SEO worth his weight should take a look.

Google Panda SEO InfoGraphic

An interesting look at how Google quantifies their AdWords campaigns, broken down into quality score, ad rank and exactly how their auction system works for ad placements.

How does Google AdWords work?

In an age where social media is the norm and people are constantly jumping ship to the next big social platform, it is interesting to see which companies have stuck around for the long haul and which have started to bottom out. While Facebook may be the mainstay in social media and social networking, there are a plethora of other sites on the come up which may give competition to the social giant.

Check out this infographic from the social media agency Ignite Social Media as it outlines and shows the various underlying trends in social networking as well as demographic information as to which users, education level, income level and even gender are categorized in an easy to view manner.

Today the brand new totally revamped Senuke launched with their new name “Senuke X”. Currently they are offering a 14 day trial so you can try out their software and then from there you have two options for a lite version or the full version both on monthly subscriptions at $67 and $127 respectively.

Outline of the various differences between the two:

Get your FREE Trial of SENUKE X Today!

Obviously there is a ton of value in getting the full version if you are a hardcore online marketer like me, however some of you will probably find value in the lite version if you are just looking to utilize their social networking functionality and do basic niche research/pinging etc.

There is a third option to buy a lifetime license outright for $1997, but not sure how long that will be available. If you consider the lifespan of the old senuke (2+ years) then perhaps the $2000 option might be justified for you as two years worth of monthly payments would equal $3048.

And finally they even offer a yearly license for $997 so you can save a little bit more too by locking in for a full year ($527 total savings (This might be the best option for senuke x as the industry changes theres no telling how effective the software will be a year from now once its inundated with 1000′s of WaFo’s and DP trolls)).

While I havent had a chance to test the new software extensively I will vouch for their software as it has been one of the most effective tools for automated link building and is a great addition to any marketers toolbox. Either way you have nothing to lose as you can try it out for 14 days and if you don’t like it simply cancel your subscription.

As an internet marketer I am always on the lookout for productivity tools that make my life easier and speed up my work.

Keyword research is one of the more mundane tasks and while there are great tools out that like Keyword Spy that can handle most tasks, until now I haven’t had a solution for building long-tail keyword lists from a set of distinct qualifiers.

This is where MergeWords comes in with an easy to use interface and more power than I’ve seen before in a keyword tool. And while you can do most of the things with other products on the market like combinewords, I just enjoyed the interface with MergeWords so much that I felt I would share it with you all.

With a clean intuitive interface and a pretty jquery backend, MergeWords worked flawlessly in my testing and I had no problem generating 1000+ long-tail keyword lists that were ultra-targeted to my geo locations and demographics.

MergeWords is a great tool you should definitely utilize when building out your campaigns as it will save you a ton of time and will allow you to merge words for Linkbuilding, AdWords as well as Domaining. My only quarrel is to maybe add an export feature for easily saving a .csv, .xml or other popular types of text documents.

All in all MergeWords looks like a great tool to use for anyone looking to quickly build out campaigns or domains or even to help in your link building efforts. Now get back to work!

Google and Yahoo have compiled their lists of “Top Rising Keyword Searches for 2010” and other social media hubs like Facebook and Twitter have followed suit with thier own trending searches and status’ for 2010.

A great way to think outside the box is to jump on rising social trends, so what better way to expand your campaign portfolio by branching out into new trends like these.

Take a look below:

Google Search Trends for 2010

Yahoo Search Trends for 2010

Twitter Trends for 2010

Facebook Status Trends for 2010

The latest news from the guys that brought you the original tracking 202 and prosper 202 not to mention made millions for affiliate around the world, is that there is a new tracking 202 coming soon.

Its almost ready to be launched public but they will be doing an early invite only beta test to work out any bugs and kinks in the new system.  The new interface is smooth and looks great so be sure to check it out at: http://beta.tracking202.com

They only accepting a small group of users and invitations and it will be on a first-come first-served basis so dont delay and check it out now!

Want to know what makes the New Tracking202 so much better?

There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s start with some highlights:

• Unparalleled Flexibility – Track everything in ways not yet available on any of the tracking systems in the market.
• Lightning Fast Redirects – We all know slow redirects cost you money and conversions, so we’ve optimized the new Tracking202 to serve up redirects in the blink of an eye
• Fully Open and Expandable – We built this from the ground up to allow you to modify and customize the software via the powerful API we expose
• Enhanced Workflow – You shouldn’t have to spend hours setting up your links, and with our new enhanced workflow, you won’t have to. We’re talking bulk uploads and automation galore!
• There’s more to share – Like the new robust offer rotator, impression pixels, path analysis, enhanced reporting, tons more data points tracked so you can slice and dice things just the way you like it, and the list goes on!

So check it out, get your name on the list, and look forward to vast improvements from Wes and the guys @ tracking 202.

So the Google Instant service was launched yesterday and you can now see the live changes if you do a search on Google.com. Now you will no longer have to wait to press Enter while searching, the search results will start to begin updating Instantly as you type. Neat trick huh? Google describes it as a fundamental shift in seach and will apparently allow you to shave 2-5 seconds off of every search.  My productivity is already soaring.

The benefits as listed by Google are as follows:

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Google Instant

The question is will this have any affect on SEO and internet marketing as a whole? And the answer is arguably, yes. While SERP listings may not be affected, the search results are now being updated on the fly, so if you can target a phrase like “buy viag” specifically, would your results appear before the full term and gain traction from users who dont bother to finish typing viagra?

I guess only time will tell, but it will be interesting to see how this gets played out and what type of advantages/disadvantages this will have for marketers.  While this service hasnt rolled out for mobile search quite yet, Google states that it will be available on smart phones this coming fall.

I’d have preferred it if Google had actually spent time improving the search functionality instead because I dont see this change as something that will totally revamp how we search. Despite this change they’re still lagging behind the competition in many areas and this is something that bing has done already since their inception, they just werent using ajax to make it look snazzy.  If you havent seen it yet, check it out, you might save 2-5 seconds of your life.

Coined the “Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance”, it looks as if the search engine platform that has been pushed under the carpet by Google is looking to re-emerge. Now marketers will be able to control all their Yahoo! Search Marketing efforts as well as their Microsoft adCenter ads under the same platform as the integration finishes up later today.

No word yet as to whether or not this will be fully functional through the Microsoft adCenter Desktop tool, but my guess is that they will add that functionality shortly, if its not already available. Combining these two search behemoths will no doubt give Google shareholders a stirr but I feel like this is a great thing for internet marketing. It will allow for advertisers to effectively double their search traffic and make for a more valuable media buy for agencies.

How Yahoo! and Microsoft will work together:

• Search ad inventory from Yahoo!, Microsoft and their respective partners will be combined into a new unified search marketplace. Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10-year license to certain Yahoo! search technologies.
• Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic and paid search results used by Yahoo!
• Full implementation of the terms of the Search Alliance is expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory clearance.
• Yahoo!’s Sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and managed resellers, and Microsoft will support self-service advertisers.

The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance does not include each company’s display advertising, web properties and products, email, instant messaging, or any other aspect of the companies’ businesses, so rest assured they still want to maintain some of their own value with the network they’ve built. Microsoft is undoubtedbly pleased with the deal as they need all the help they can get making Bing! more socially acceptable, and why not start with the advertisers.

All in all I look forward to testing the new transitioned ad platform and I feel it will be a positive thing for advertisers everywhere. For more info on this change over check out the Yahoo/Microsoft transition page.