The Softnik Blog

Domain Name Software Products - New Releases Coming Soon!

We are getting ready to release newer versions of our domain name products. These include Domain Punch Professional, Watch My Domains ISP and Professional and Domain Name Analyzer. These will be released in a phased manner during May, 2008.

The code-base for all the products have been fully re-written. Here is a screen shot of the new Domain Punch Professional v2.

Updates for Existing Customers

The new versions will be free for customers who purchased after 2007 January 1. Some more customers will be eligible for free upgrades based on some of the special deals we had offered in the past. Details will be announced after the products are released. Other customers can obtain upgrades at special prices.

Price Revision Coming Soon

We will be increasing the prices slightly (15-20%) after the new versions are released. So it might be a good idea to purchase the current versions now (at the current prices) and then get a free upgrade to the new versions.

New Features

We are not yet ready to announce all the new features. But it will include the ability to handle many more domains (even in the non-database versions). We have been able to use the new version of Domain Punch Professional with about 50,000 domains!

Some of the other new features include...

• Ability to add, rename and delete domain categories.
• Vastly improved interface.
• Ability to manually edit the data.
• Ability to check and monitor domain MX records.
• Create PDF reports from within the software.
• Easier whois setup and configuration.
• Data exportable to MySQL.
• and more...

New Software

We are also releasing a new software called Domain Strategy Studio. This will be integrated into the upcoming Internet Strategy Studio. More details will be announced soon.

Filtering Large Keyword Lists Using Keyword Strategy Studio

While studying our own log files I often extract the search terms used by visitors to our sites. These lists normally contain a large number of keywords. I then use Keyword Strategy Studio to categorize these keywords based on the terms present in each phrase.

Here is a small example - a sample list extracted from this blog's log, that contain the terms "PHP" and "redirect". Notice that some are misspellings!

multiple domain names php
multiple domain redirection php
multiple redirect url in contact form script
php multiple redirect
php multiple redirect how
php multiple url redirection
php redirect
php redirect multiple domains
php redirect script domain name
rederict php script
redirect multiple sites php
redirect script php based on keyword
redirect.txt
redirecting multible domains php
redirecting to multiple domains
simple blog php script
simple php redirect

(I used this just as an example. We don't really have any PHP related products. The above is the consequence of a blog post that offered a simple PHP script for redirecting to multiple domains)

Keyword Strategy Studio is very handy when it comes to peeling away the required keyword phrases from large lists.

Simply add your full list to one of the "My keyword Lists" in Keyword Builder. Then use the "Filter" button and select "Containing Terms Anywhere". Type in all the terms into the box that pops up (one entry per line) and click OK. For the above, I typed in

PHP
redirect

This will highlight all the keywords that contain the words PHP or redirect. Now use one of the options under "Export" to transfer the highlighted keywords to a file or to another list. You can use the "Filter" to do other things like finding keywords that contain terms only at the start or end, phrases that contain more than a specified number of words etc.

The main advantage here is that you can pull out all keyword phrases that contain "any" of the terms you specify. You could be trying to find all phrases that contain any of 50 different terms. All you have to do is paste all the 50 terms into the box and click OK. The entire thing gets done in just one step!

The main keyword list can come from anywhere and not really from your own logs. Keyword Strategy Studio can handle very large lists containing tens of thousands of keyword phrases and the filtering is extremely fast.

If you are familiar with Google Adwords you will quickly see that the Filter option is very useful for creating precisely targeted Ad-groups.

How to capture full length screen shots of the web pages you monitor

Did you know that you can use Web Page Monitor (part of IM Toolpad) to capture full length screen shots of the web pages you monitor?

The software displays the thumbnail views of the monitored web pages in one of the docked panels. You can then right click on the URL list and select Export Screen Shot to save the full sized screen shot (actual size, not thumb-nailed) to your hard disk.

Competition Research Using Keyword Strategy Studio

There are a number of reasons why you would want to study your competition.

• To improve your products and services and make them better than that of your competition
• To find your competition's weak points and and exploit them
• To learn the way your competition operates so that you can always stay ahead of them.
• To generate your own ideas that are better.

Using Keyword Strategy Studio For Competition Research

When you do any keyword lookup using Keyword Strategy Studio, a list of top competing sites and top competing URLs are automatically generated. You can access these using the Competition and Top URLs tabs.

Right click on any of the URLs and select Open in Browser to view site in your default web browser.

Once you have your competition's site open, first check if it really is a competing site. Many top ranking web pages will be Made For Adsense (MFA) sites created using automated software.

If you think you have a found a competing site, it is time to dig a little more... Here are some of the things you can do...

• Use the web archive to learn more about the history of the site. When did they get started? How did the website look when they started?
• Use the Site Link Pop Meter or other on-line sites like Compete or Alexa to study their on line visibility
• Check their web pages. Do they make it easy for their customers? Is your website better? If not how can you improve?
• Do they have third party advertisements on their sites? What do that tell you?
• Do they have a blog? If yes, subscribe to their blog feeds. What do their blogs discuss? Do they allow blog comments? What do people comment on their blogs?  Do you have a business blog?
• Subscribe to their newsletters.
• Buy their products and study the way they handle the purchase process, post purchase handling, back end products, etc. How do you compare with them?
• Go to Google News and search for the competitors. Are they in the news?
• Do they have any recent press releases? Do you do PR?
• Are they hiring? What kind of Jobs are on offer? Job openings often reveal their future plans and directions.

Use any information you learn to make your own plans and improve your products.

Our upcoming Internet Strategy Studio software suite will help you organize and tabulate information such as the above.

How To Manage Redirections For Multiple Domains

Are you an affiliate marketer? You may have registered a large number of domain names and made them point to your affiliate URLs.

Do you sell your own products and services?  You may be redirecting many of your registered and unused domains to other web pages.

Do you remember all your domain names and where they point to? Are they all pointing to the right places? Are all the affiliate products you promote still alive?

In reality, it is very difficult to keep track of all these!

A previous blog post explained how you can easily redirect your domains to different web pages using a simple PHP script.  That script will allow you to quickly change any URL for any domain by simply editing a text file.

Once you setup multi-domain redirects you will need to monitor the domains at regular intervals. You can do this using Domain Punch professional or Watch My Domains ISP. These domain name management software products will allow you to add / import your domain names and then monitor various information including expiry dates, DNS (for the corresponding IP address), HTTP page status, PING status, etc.

The details are displayed in a  neat table (see screen shot below)

For each domain you can see the HTTP page status and the destination URL (if the domain is being redirected). There are other screens that show the registrar data, expiry dates, last modified dates, etc. These also support email alerts when the registrar status changes or if the website corresponding to a domain fails a ping test.

Recent Posts Related To Domain Name Management

• Support for the new .ASIA Domains
• Ever lost a domain name because you forgot to renew it?
• Eleven Steps To Safeguard Your Domain Names
• A simple PHP script to redirect multiple domains
• Filtering Large Domain Name Lists

Competition Research - How To Find The Traffic To Your Competing Websites

It is not really possible to find the traffic to your competing sites unless you have access to their log files. This will happen only if your competition is naive enough to make their server logs public!  There are many site owners who  have left their server logs public... But this post is not about that!

You can find the relative (and approximate) data about the traffic to sites using third party resources like Alexa and Compete. These services extrapolate the data based on sample visitor statistics obtained from participating ISPs, browser toolbar logs etc.

If you use Keyword Strategy Studio, you can very easily find the top competing sites for any keyword phrase and then use the Site Link Pop Meter Pro to check the basic site popularity data for the main competitors. You can find Site Link Pop Meter Pro at the IM Toolpad premium download area (available only to registered IM Toolpad customers). A freeware version of Site Link Pop Meter is also available.

Generating Hard Copy Outputs from Keyword Strategy Studio

This blog post is in response to a customer email asking about the hard copy options available in Keyword Strategy Studio.

Direct Printing

Keyword Strategy Studio supports direct printing from within the software. You can print most lists generated and displayed within the software directly from the software itself (the File Menu has a print preview option also).

Export to Text / CSV File and Print From any Third Party Software

You can right click within most lists and select Copy to clipboard and then paste the data to a text file. Now open the file in a spread sheet software and print from there. This option is best when you want more control over the formatting and layout.

Create PDF / HTML Reports and Print

Keyword Strategy Studio (build 032308 or later) supports creation of various reports in PDF / HTML formats. An upcoming enterprise version will support advanced customized report generation.

Easily Manage Large Text Lists Containing Keyword Phrases, Domain Names, etc.

The Keyword Builder in Keyword Strategy Studio and the free Keyword Pad are mostly used for generating long-tail keywords. However, these are also excellent tools for handling large text files containing thousands of entries (separated by linefeed / carriage return).

You can use these software tools to...

• Quickly sort the text entries
• Remove duplicates
• Split into smaller files (just select the range you want, copy to clipboard and paste into a new text file)
• Look through the contents and manually remove unwanted entries
• Search and replace, automatically.
• ... and a lot more ...

Both these tools are very fast and handy with large text files. Use any of these tools to manage your keyword lists files, domain name lists and so on.

Creating Long-Tail Keywords By Re-Ordering the Words in Keyword Phrases

You can use Keyword Strategy Studio or the free Keyword Pad to create thousands of new long-tail keywords by recombining the words in existing keyword phrases. This technique is useful when you want to use Pay Per Click advertising with [exact] or "phrase" match options.

For example, you can use this technique to convert a phrase like

time management ideas

into six different keyword phrases...

ideas management time
ideas time management
management ideas time
management time ideas
time ideas management
time management ideas

In Keyword Pad, the option is available under the Multiply > Recombine... menu option.

In Keyword Strategy Studio, this is available from the Keyword Builder tab under the Multiply Keywords > Recombine ribbon bar option. You can use it to recombine the words in the existing keyword phrases.

Finding Negative Keywords Using Keyword Strategy Studio

You want your advertisements seen by people who are looking for a product or service similar to what you offer. You certainly don't want clicks from people who are looking for some thing else, especially when you have to pay for those clicks.

The easiest way to achieve this is by using negative keywords. Your advertisement will not be shown to people who type in one or more keywords present in your negative list. One way (and probably the best) to find the negative keywords is to go through the web-logs of visitors from Google Ad-words and pick out the keywords that you don't want visitors for.

You can also use Keyword Strategy Studio to find negative keywords.

Just use it normally and brainstorm your base keywords. Now go through the list of suggested keywords and pick the terms you don't want associated with your product or service. Add these as your negative keywords. You can also print out the keyword suggestions from within the software and then do it on paper.

For example, if you are a web design company and lookup "web design" in Keyword Strategy Studio one of the keyword suggestions it brings up is "Flash web design". If you don't offer Flash based designs you should add "flash" into your negative keyword list.