A quick guide on how to improve your on-line searches
I wrote this mini guide on our writers forum and as I have set a robots.txt file set up so Search Engines won’t crawl and index the forums pages (along with password protection), I thought I’d post this article here which may benefit others 
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I’ve been searching content on-line for over 10 years and consider myself pretty good at finding specific content quickly by searching on search engines. There’s a few techniques that I’ve learned along the way which I want to share with you, so you too can become an advanced on-line content seeker.
A well written article needs to be well researched. You’ll be able to produce a far higher quality article if you know the ins and outs of the topic you are writing about, so hopefully these tips will help and possibly save you time!
I’ve split this guide into 3 sections:
1) Finding keywords to use
2) Where to search those keywords and finally
3) How to search
The importance of keywords
First off, you need to understand that different words you use when using a search engine (like google) will produce different search results. A search for black pen will not produce the same results as pen black. Also, it’s worth baring in mind that more often than not, there are many ways in which you can say a word. Not everyone uses the same words to describe something.
With this in mind, there are a few easy to use tools that can recommend similar words to what you had originally come up with. The idea here is to create a long list of different keywords, in different orders, before you actually sit down and start your researching.
The Thesaurus is a great tool to find related words very quickly.
This tool is used for Google’s advertisers to come and learn additional keywords relating to their product or service. We can use this tool to find out what people are searching for using your primary keyword. Add them to your list before moving onto the next step! (We also use Wordtracker which is a paid keyword research tool)
Where to Search
There are possibly hundreds of different places where you can research on-line but here I’ll list my favorite places that I personally use:
The Big players in Search
google.com google.co.uk yahoo.com and yahoo.co.uk
I guess these giants do not need any explanation! The .com and the .co.uk will produce slightly different results so it’s worth checking both!
Technarati and Google Blog search
These 2 blog search engines lists blog posts from the millions of blogs around the net - by using the search feature you’ll be able to find what bloggers are talking about on your subject and they often include links within their articles - so make sure you check those links out too!
2 of the best news aggregator site on the web! Find out the recent happenings on your subject with these 2 news aggregators.
Check to see if user’s have submitted related content on one of the best social media sites on the web!
Another great social media site worth checking, along with:
Reddit search - http://reddit.com/search
Yahoo Directory and Google Directory
How to search
When searching for content on search engines, you can use additional keys on your keyboard that will refine or narrow your search command. Google already does a great job explaining what these extra keys are so head on over to this article and start to learn the extra search functions quickly!
What other methods do you use to search content on-line?
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