The Maverick Keyword Researcher is a PHP web-based keyword research application that gathers keyword ideas from multiple online sources like Google, auction sites, search engines and shopping sites. To be released in July 2009.

Dallas Yoga Teachers Association
http://www.dallasyogateachersassociation.org/

Dallas Yoga Teachers Association is a Dallas-based Yoga Teachers Association. They wanted a very simple web site and they provided us with a rough design and logo. What we did was to create a template out of the pictures they sent to us and made sure their site had all the features that they wanted. One of the things they wanted was to have multiple authors on the pages. Each author has a different profile and you will see this on each author’s articles.

The keyword research tools of the Maverick Keyword Researcher come in 3 general categories. The first bunch of tools are for generating ideas for a niche/topic. The second group of tools are for getting as many alternative keywords of a niche. The last group is for analyzing the real-world statistics of the keywords.

Saved Searches

Every keyword search you make will be automatically saved into text files. I am working on a project module that assigns keywords to a project. The screen shots above do not have that at the moment. I added a lot jquery effects to make the interface more user-friendly. You may check out the list of keywords, download the keyword files and mass delete them with a few clicks of the mouse. The table design was inspired by WordPress.

Non-Google Search Engines

There are a lot of top searches and buzz lists from some non-Google search engines. I won’t reveal these search engines because I don’t want to receive another letter from them. The keywords from this tool generates the most popular keywords that are being searched on the internet through non-Google search engines.

Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions

Did you know that you get a different set of keywords if you select a different country from the Google AdWords Tool? That was what I discovered. I created a custom tool to import as many keywords from Google AdWords by selecting multiple countries. You may select up to 233 countries but it would take a long time. Most of the keywords are repeated but you may find a couple of gems in there. Usually, I simply click on the “popular countries” link to get keywords from the most popular countries.

Here’s a preview of the Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool:

You need to be gentle with this tool because Google does not like it when you use their free tools too frequently. I created a random search timer that spaces out the import queries every 15 to 30 seconds.

I combined the “Categories with most new buyers”, “Categories with fewer competitors” and “Categories with most products” into 1 page. This saves me space because the menu in the application has limited space. Then you have the “Most searched products”, “Most inquired products” and “Trade Trends” on their individual pages.

I recently stumbled upon Alibaba’s top lists – Alibaba’s Latest Sourcing Trends and Alibaba’s Trade Trends. These 2 lists will be added to the Maverick Keyword Researcher too.

The themes system allows you to create as many custom themes as you wish. There 15 menus to choose from, 3 logos with 3 different colours to match the background colour of your theme. You may upload as many background images as you want. The best backgrounds are wide-screen wallpapers.

This is taking longer than expected because I wanted to get the themes part right so that all my future products may use this framework to save me lots of time in the future. Check out the screen shots below to see how the themes work in all it’s glory.

Maverick Keywords Reseacher Themes

User Accounts, Installation, Password Reminders, Login etc

The first public version of the Maverick Keyword Researcher will not use a MySQL database to store its data. I have developed it to use text files for the time being. It is easier to sort keywords with MySQL than text files. So the first version will have limited sorting features.

The installer is pretty straightforward. You upload all the files to your web server or your local server and launch index.php. The installer will make sure you have certain files and folders with the right permissions. Since we will be using text files in version 1, we need to set the file permissions of a couple of folders and the text files in them. This is the troublesome part but it is easier than creating a database in cPanel.

Maverick Keywords Researcher will be encrypted with ionCube’s PHP Encoder. The industry’s top 2 PHP encoders are Zend and ionCube. Most web hosts have them installed by default. If not, they should be able to install it on your web server for you if you ask them to.

I am thinking of making it more user-friendly in future releases by using ionCube’s Package Foundry. This software will help you to upload and and configure all the folder and file permissions. It may be able to install the ionCube loaders on your web server if you don’t have it installed. I will purchase ionCube’s Package Foundry with the initial sales of this product. I also need to upgrade my ionCube PHP Encoder to a better version to generate license files and stop the licenses of customers who have refunded. I could also give away free trials with limited licenses.

Google Keyword Research

I combined a few Google keyword tools on a single page. I am working on adding Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool too. At the moment, my Google tool grabs related keywords from Google.com home page (Google Suggestions), Google’s related searches, Google Synonyms and Google Insights for Search.

I discovered a way to generate more keywords by searching multiple countries. Most countries will give you duplicate results but if you select the most popular countries (I got this list from the countries listed at the top of Google’s country drop down lists…), you should be able to get a very nice list of keywords. If you’re up for it, you could select all 233 Google-supported countries.

I am still working on getting keyword suggestions from Google AdWords. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool has to be on a different page because it requires a captcha. It would be irritating for the users to mix it with the other Google tools that don’t require a captcha.

KwBrowse Keyword Research

This KwBrowse tool took me a long time to complete. I could not find a way to automate it completely because it returns a lot of unrelated keywords. I created a select box on the right to filter out the unwanted keywords that are returned from the searches.

It isn’t easy or fast to get a complete keyword list from KwBrowse but it is worth the effort because you will get a huge list of related keywords.

Wordtracker Keyword Research

Wordtracker has a free keyword tool that generates the top 100 related keywords of the keyword you enter in their form. Sometimes, this keyword tool requires a captcha before you are allowed to search. I have programmed the Maverick Keyword Researcher to deal with that issue. The problem with a lot of free keyword tools online is that they don’t give you an easy way to copy and paste the keywords. With my tool, they are returned nicely in a text file.

Others…

I created a list of categories that can be easily copied and pasted for mySimon and Shopping.com. You could grab these keywords and find potential niches for your online business. This list has over 500 keywords and you should be able to find a few profitable niches in there.

I also created keyword suggestions from Alibaba, Ask and Yahoo. Some of the keyword suggestions cannot be copied and pasted in the browser. For example, if you enter a keyword at Yahoo.com or Google.com, the web page returns a list of related keywords in your browser. The only way to get that list manually is to type the keywords you see on the screen to some application on your computer. That’s just stupid and a waste of time. I figured out a way to get these keyword suggestions quickly and easily.

Alibaba, Ask, Yahoo and Google all have a suggestion list when you type in a keyword at their home page. Ask.com has additional keyword suggestion on their search pages and I have added those into the Maverick Keyword Researcher too.

I am thinking of adding keyword suggestions from eBay and DHgate.com. Another source would be Keyword Discovery. For version 1.0, all the keyword sources would be free. I might include paid keyword sources from Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and Wordze in the future. Maybe I could make it a monthly subscription thing at a lower rate than the amount you pay for these keyword tools every month.

Although I have not used Internet Explorer 8, I hope it does not create more bugs for web developers like me. I was hesistant to install Internet Explorer 8 because I want to keep Internet Explorer 7 for testing purposes. I could keep Internet Explorer 7 on another PC and upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 on my main development PC. The cool thing about Internet Explorer 8 is the versioning feature that allows developers to emulate a previous version of Internet Explorer within Internet Explorer 8.

Microsoft has planned for the inevitable viewing problems their new software will create. Here’s a list of related web pages that might help you debug all the Internet Explorer 8 problems.

• Internet Explorer 8 Versioning
• Some Web sites may not be displayed correctly or work correctly in Windows Internet Explorer 8
• Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility
• Internet Explorer 8: Defining Document Compatibility

Related Articles by Zemanta

• Internet Explorer 8 Officially Releases at Noon EDT [Internet Explorer] (lifehacker.com)
• IE8 Automatic Update Starting Soon (sitepoint.com)
• Internet Explorer 8 Arriving on Thursday (technologizer.com)
• Microsoft Bids to Reclaim the Web with Internet Explorer 8 (wired.com)

• An installer to install the application.
• User management system to have a user account and a lost password reminder.
• Saved searches of all searches done and a way to sort these searches.
• Validate the forms to make sure no error input is made.
• Usability enhancements like forms without page refreshing during searches.
• Theme creation, editing and deletion.

After all this is done, I still need to create a sales page… The good thing is I shall re-use most of this application’s interface for future products therefore this product would be the hardest to create.

Check out the latest screen shots of the Maverick Keyword Researcher and let me know what you think about it.

I am 100% sure it looks way better than the previous previews.

I have submitted a report to the Twitter API team about this issue and I hope they can tell me why it isn’t working.

My script is able to upload the background image to Twitter but it does not get displayed instantly. I end up seeing no background image and just my Twitter background colour. My Twitter account’s XML file does not display the right background file but if I click on the “save changes” button in “settings -> design”, the background magically appears.

Check out my video of this strange background image bug below. Click on the full screen button for a better view.

I hope this issue would be fixed soon because I would love to automatically update my Twitter profile’s avatar automatically with 3rd party services like Daily Mugshot and Gravatar. It would also be great to randomly update my Twitter background everyday too.