"PPC is average price per click you have set for yourself. For those using this for SEO, this can be left blank. The PPC can be changed or added at any time, allowing you to re-calculate your PPC using new information.

"CONV is number of conversions you have received from that particular search engine. The details about number of conversions are at next level.

"You can define what a conversion is:

-A "SALE" -A subscription -Downloading a file -Filling out a form -Or anything you consider to be an acquisition

"The CONV% is where KeywordTool calculates percentage of conversions based on number of referrals received from that search engine. It's really just a performance guide of search engine for keywords you have listings for.

"PPA is `price per acquisition.' It tells you how much each new customer costs you for that particular search engine. The number indicated is rounded to closest dollar.

"ROI is your potential return on investment. It's based on information provided and referrals and conversion rates recorded.

"Some of rows don't have information, because we haven't defined cost per click or estimated profit on that particular search engine. This can be added or updated at any time.

"Start next section by clicking on column marked `Clicks' to sort SE's from highest referrals to lowest. Yahoo US has highest number of referrals, so it comes to top of list.

"Click on `Yahoo.US.' It will then take you to next screen where there are 2 sections marked `search words' and `categories.' Search words are referrals from SE', and categories are from directories. Yahoo displays both so KeywordTool separates results.

"Click on `Search Words.' The next screen will display exact results and performance for each keyword phrase. Click on CONV to sort to highest conversion keywords in this section. This is section where you can start seeing which keywords are working well for you and which ones are not.

"The keywords that work well are ones that you can focus on to ensure they are also listed on other search engines. You can quickly see which of your initial chosen keywords are working well and which you might want to consider dropping or reviewing. You can then work to get improved listings on other search engines for a small select group of keywords that you are confident will give you highest ROI. The numbers provided in KeywordTool's reports could be used to make better, informed decisions.

"If a keyword phrase is not working well, it might either be wrong keyword for product offered or sales presentation is not working well on that page. Knowing that this keyword is not working well, you can then start to make changes to improve performance. For anyone who has tried tweaking your Google AdWords Select based on your copy and click performance, this works in much same way. With KeywordTool, it's fairly easy to know which keyword phrases to work on and which ones are working well for you already.

"The information KeywordTool provides will tell you how much potential a keyword phrase has, allowing you to know how much to invest in SEO or PPC.

"All information in KeywordTool sections can be exported to Excel easily so you can manipulate data and quickly determine what your strategy should be for getting better returns from your work. If you notice Expert to Excel link at top right of page, it's a very handy little tool."

(Continued in Part 2)

Different domain names for different markets - you might also want to reference your site by different names in order to target different markets. You could, for example, have a site about search engine optimization and want to target both SEO and web designers. Thus domain names like seo.com and webdesign.com would make sense.

www - Any good webmaster knows his or her site needs to be referenced with and without www.

Okay, so what's smart thing to do? Well, it is possible that search engines do compare a limited number of pages to check for duplication. They could certainly check if someone reported something, and they might check directly linked pages (although this is still a heck of a lot of overhead for very little benefit).

Of course, Google and other search engines can account for a hefty percentage of traffic received by a site. In fact, sometimes number can exceed 70 percent. So it's wise to spend some time ensuring that you are totally clean when it comes to search engine optimization. In other words, a technician from any search engine should be able to examine your site down to it's smallest detail and find no evidence of any kind of search engine spamming (attempting to get higher rankings by unethical means). This is absolutely critical to a site's survival for long term.

Keeping that in mind, here's what I tend to do.

Multiple domains - Using multiple domains to same site has a tremendous number of advantages. Thus, I tend to follow advice given by others: take advantage of permanent redirection. In other words, set up a redirection (a 301 status code) which simply tells browser "this page has moved, proceed to this page, and move is permanent. This tells spider about redirection with no possibility of misunderstanding, yet allows for multiple domains.

Republished articles - I allow others to republish many of my articles, and at this time I have records of over 10,000 of them all over internet on thousands of web sites. This is not a problem, as these articles are sent in text format. The webmaster must then drop this text into his site, which requires some reformatting and shuffling around. Thus, finished articles may have same text but formatting is very, very different. This is a highly respected method of gaining a large number of incoming links: I give you something (an article, i.e., content) and you give me something (a link back to my site).

Mirroring - I haven't needed to do this yet, so I have no advice as to what to do if a site requires actual, physical multiple versions of itself. I would tend to just do it overtly (out in open) and not worry about it.