Archive for the ‘SEO Tools’ Category
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 |
In 2007 I wrote a SEO tip every week. Okay, sometimes I was a little late but at the end of the year I had compiled 52 pretty good search engine optimization tips. A few are out of date, but I have listed which ones and given some information to explain why. Of course you can see all the tips in the 52 SEO tips category on this SEO blog, but to make things easier and to fulfill a few requests I have placed them all in a PDF.
Finding software that would build the PDF easily was not an easy task. In the end, the software did a credible job, but it isn’t exactly like I wanted it. But rather than tweak it endlessly I have decided to release it as is. The good news is it is free and I think most of those in the SEO industry can learn from it. I certainly learned something while putting it together.
So please visit the download page: 52 SEO Tips Download. Give a link back to us if you find it helpful.
Shell Harris
http://www.bigoakinc.com/
Popularity: 20% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 |
A very resourceful gentleman by the name of Andrew Baron put his Twitter account on ebay. This account has 1,400 followers who have also been put on the auction block whether they like it or not. You can see the auction on eBay. It was up to $1,550 when I took this screen shot, with 7 days to go. Amazing!
Why is he sellng his account? From his own words:
I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven’t been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven’t been able to utilize the medium the way I want to. I also participate in another Twitter account over on Rocketboom so I’m thinking I’ll post more over there and start up a new account to do what I want to do next.
So I guess Twitter does have monetary value and you can throw your “twits” under than bus when you sell it. I would personally be a little upset if I was following him, but you have to appreciate the genius of this auction. What is your Twitter account worth?
If anyone has a twitter account they think I might like to follow please submit it in a comment. I’m still not sold on its value.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Posted in Out on a Limb, SEO Tools, Social Media Optimization | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 |
Update: 4/20/08, Of course as soon as I post on my blog about Alexa’s inaccurate ranking system they decide to update their system. Time will tell if it is an better.
SEO companies are at the front lines when it comes to educating customers and potential customers about what is important when looking at web statistics. I guess I’ve hit my breaking point, which is usually when I start blogging, about Alexa rankings. We have clients that ask why there Alexa ranking is so high (which is bad) and even though they are ranking in the top 5 for their most treasured keyword phrases. They have high traffic that is converting above their industry standards, but still they Alexa ranking rears its ugly head too often.
So I want to put this issue to pasture and definitively state that we do not care about Alexa ranking and do not monitor Alexa rankings, other to see estimated trends for pure entertainment value. They are of little importance an not worth the time to view them. Not only are the extremely inaccurate, but they can also give a false sense of security when they inflate your importance. You must remember that unless you have the Alexa toolbar on your site, your web visits won’t be counted in the Alexa stats. What does this mean for the numbers that Alexa shows you? Well, think about who would have the Alexa toolbar installed: mostly people involved with Internet marketing such as SEO people, webmasters, consultants and other people whose job it is to track statistics. These aren’t your normal site surfers and they skew the traffic numbers higher for Internet-related sites. If you have been reading this blog long enough you know I’m a big believer in actual case studies and real data to prove a point. To that end I have done some research to show the Alexa Ranking Myth and break its spell.
The first chart shows stats from Alexa for this site (BigOakInc.com, a Internet marketing site) and a smoothie recipe site (Smoothieweb.com, a non-Internet related site) and you can see that Alexa shows the Big Oak site with more than double the traffic of Smoothie Web. If you were to view or stats on Alexa it reports our site as being in the top 100,000 sites on the web, specifically we are ranked at 94,204. My, aren’t we so important! Now,don’t get me wrong, we have a nice number of visitors, but to think we are in the top 100,000 sites is a bit much. While SmoothieWeb.com, a highly trafficked site is only ranked at 310,192.
Now that we know what Alexa is reporting, let us look at actual site statistics as reported by Google Analytics. If you look at the graphs below you can see the dramatic difference from Alexa’s reported rankings in traffic over the same 3-month period. BigOakInc.com has 20,311 visitors which is a very respectable number for a B2B site. But when compared to SmoothieWeb.com’s 210,190 visitors you can easily see that Alexa rankings are highly skewed towards technical and Internet-related websites. SmoothieWeb.com had 10x the visitor traffic according to Google Analytics but less than half according to Alexa’s estimates.
The BigOakInc.com site obviously pulls traffic from our competitors, webmasters in charge of finding a honest SEO company and research types for our informative SEO blog. And these users are more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed, if only to inflate their own Alexa ranking by visiting their own sites daily. And before you ask, no, I do not have the Alexa toolbar installed and neither does any of the staff at Big Oak. I think you can agree more web users would be looking for a delicious smoothie recipe.
To sum up, do not look at Alexa rankings with any more than an passing curiosity, for that is all it is. Instead look at your site’s analytics and try to see where you are getting traffic and what traffic is converting. Look at the keywords your site is ranking for and how the visitors from those terms are using your site. In short, look at all the data you can around your actual visitors and leave the estimated numbers based on a toolbar installation to those who need the ego stroking of a high Alexa ranking. And if anyone asks you about your Alexa ranking, please refer them to this post.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Posted in Choosing SEO Company, SEO Mistakes, SEO Research, SEO Tools, Website Conversion | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 |
Google has updated its advanced search page. While most people probably don’t look at the advanced search page very often, it has some nice features, especially for an SEO Expert. One of the best features is the ability to see 100 results at a time rather than the usual 10. Add the CustomizeGoogle Addon for the Firefox browser and you can view numbers beside your listing-now you don’t have to count to find you are at position 67, there will be numbers beside each listing to show you.
Also, selecting the Language as English will more realistic results. (You can also select the English language in the preferences.)
For example searching for ‘big oak seo’ returns 77,900 English pages with results when English is selected language. If you search with Any Language selected the results return 88,100 pages. Not a huge difference, right? It gets worse with more generic phrases. Searching for ’search engine optimization’ with English shows 1,900,000 and without shows 36,900,000. These number will fluctuate, but using English as the language will get you more accurate resutls, especially when you are trying to factor the level of competition for a key phrase you may be targeting.
Of course you can filter your searches through the Advance Search form in a variety of ways and that’s for the for the power user as well as the Mom looking for the best place to groom her pet. Getting familiar with the advanced features can help you do research for keywords as well as finding information about how to grow an avocado plant or a video on growing an avocado seed.
For the SEO enthusiast or the small Internet business owner you can search by date, usage rights and even where the keywords show up on the page. All helpful information when trying to create your SEO plan. Google provides a wealth of information you just have to know where to start digging. The Advanced Search page by Google is a great place to start.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted in Google, SEO Research, SEO Tools | 4 Comments »
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 |
Before you begin watching this video on RSS, I have to give a HUGE recommendation to the company that produced this remarkable piece of work, Common Craft. They have created some very creative and helpful videos to help people understand a variety of technologies and ideas, such as RSS. They say it best themselves:
We use a simple format and real-world stories to make sense of complex ideas.
We’re interpreters. We present your products and services in plain English using short, unique and understandable videos in a format we call Paperworks.
They have many more videos for you to see and I wish them the best and hope they succeed. The idea is wonderful and the delivery is even better. The Internet needs more companies like them.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in Out on a Limb, SEO Tools, Social Media Optimization | 3 Comments »
Friday, December 14th, 2007 |
Well, I’m almost done with my 52 SEO tips, only 3 more to go so I’m trying to finish strong. And since going green is the theme lately, I’m following the trend. Recycling links can be an important part of your link building campaign.
We often overlook the links we already have or links we didn’t actively build ourselves. Your site may already have links pointing to it, but if those links aren’t keyword-rich links then you are missing out on potential SEO benefits.
Let me give you a great example of a missed opportunity. SnagAJob.com is a leading job search website and the have thousands of links pointing to their site. A large number of links is a good thing, but the majority of their links have the link text ‘Snagajob’ in the anchor text. Many of these links are on EDU sites which pass along wonderful link popularity but so much is wasted when the anchor text is your domain name, or worse, your website address (www.snagajob.com).
As part of our strategy for SnagAJob we have been contacting sites with SEO-unfriendly links asking the anchor text to be changed to keyword terms they are trying to rank for such as part-time jobs, jobs, job search, etc. Our success rate is much higher than seeking out new links. And keyword-rich links that have age is a great combination for moving up in the search results.
Do a backlink check with MSN for your site. MSN allows you to search for anchor text too which you can see how to do in my MSN backlink check post. Look for links that could be improved such as those using just your domain name and start contacting those sites linking to you. Requesting changes to your anchor text is a worthwhile investment of your time that could reap better rankings in the search engines.
‘Going Green’ never felt so good and your site may thank you with an influx of new traffic.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, Live Search (MSN), SEO Strategies, SEO Tools | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 |
Having the best blog in the world, won’t do any good if no one knows it exists. Make sure Google visits and indexes all your posts with a few simple plugins. These are for Wordpress only, but why would you be using anything else? The following Wordpress plugins will help provide numerous links to older posts on your blog that might otherwise be buried. The added benefit is your blog readers will also be inclined to read more posts when using these plugins.
Similar Posts
URL: http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/
This plugin will search the text of all posts and display other posts which are similar or related. This will help provide links to older posts making them more accessible to the reader and to the search engines.
All in one SEO Pack
URL: http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/
This plugin is a must have SEO plugin and combines all many SEO features in one plugin, where beforehand you needed two or three. You can control the following options with this plugin:
- Define your home page title, description and keywords
- Define your post, page, category, archive, tag and search title formats
- Use categories for META keywords
- Avoid indexing of duplicate content (prevents indexing of category, archive and tag archive pages)
- Autogenerate descriptions
This particularly replaces the SEO Title Tag many blogs use.
Top Posts
URL: http://www.macalua.com/2007/02/01/top-posts-by-category-plugin/
This plugin will post your most read blog posts automatically a blog page, providing a good starting point for new readers. While giving new readers some direction if you have an overwhelming number amount of posts, this will also provide the search engines with a direct link from a top level page to deep posts in your blog. Think of it as a super sitemap.
You can also create a smaller top post list that can be shown on every post of you blog in the right column.
Making sure your blog is well read by readers and well known by search engines is a critical step towards increasing your blog’s popularity.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Blogging, SEO Tools | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 |
I have been a subscriber to Search Marketing Standard for a while now, and I am pleased with the information and topics discussed. Now is a great time to try it and get a 67% discount, so a 1 year U.S. subscription would be $4.95 (International - $6.60).
The coupon is: HOLIDAY67 and here is the link to the subscription page.
This promotion is for new subscribers and will remain active until Dec. 10th. At that time, they will also send a donation check to Toys for Tots - $1 for every subscriber that used the coupon code during registration.
Great information and a great cause.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted in SEO Research, SEO Tools | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 |
How well does Akismet stop comment spam? The Big Oak SEO Blog has been running since October 2006 and as of today, November 28, 2007 it has protected this blog site from 10,608 spam comments
Nicely done, Akismet. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Of course it does say a lot about the pervasiveness of comment spam today and how active it still remains, sadly. But it is also a confidence builder for using the DoFollow Wordpress plugin without the fear of comment spam overrunning your site. Akismet can protect you from comment spam 99% of the time even with 10,000 spam attacks.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Out on a Limb, SEO Tools | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 |
Update 1/15/08: This feature is no longer working with MSN Live.
Check on the backlinks from your competitors is part of the competitive analysis of any good SEO consultant or “expert”. Up until recently using Yahoo to research competitor backlinks was the only search engine you could do this in effectively. Well, now Live.com is also back in the game and showing you backlinks to websites. But they also have a nice trick for using keywords to narrow your search.
If you visit Live.com and search for the following: +linkdomain:www.bigoakinc.com “seo tips” you will be show search results that have links pointing to bigoakinc.com and also have the phrase ’seo tips’ on that page that links to bigoakinc.com. Be sure to include the plus sign (+) at the front or else you won’t get any results. You can click this link to see the Live.com search results for yourself: +linkdomain:www.bigoakinc.com “seo tips”.
This can be an extremely useful research tool and adding the keyword phrase to the search makes it a even more valuable tool in your SEO toolbox.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Live Search (MSN), SEO Research, SEO Tools | 5 Comments »
Sunday, November 11th, 2007 |
Any good SEO campaign will put the emphasis on ranking your site for the content of the site. But overlooking the images on the site can be a big mistake especially if your site is selling products which naturally use imagery as part of the sales pitch. So why not use those image to draw visitors through organic image search?
Your first step should be to set up a Google Account where you can use Webmaster Tools. Inside the Webmaster tools you will find an option under Tools named “Enable enhanced image search”. When this option is enabled Google will start cataloging your images for placement in the search engine results for images which can increase your traffic, especially if you can show in the search results that show images above the organic search results. (See example of Google search with images above organic results for the search term ‘oak tree’)
After you have instructed Google to look for your images, you want to be sure your images are telling Google and the other search engines exactly what they are about. How do you do this? Here are some things to pay attention to and think about when using images. I’ve listed them in order of “my importance”.
- Image Size Does Matter - Larger images tend to rank better. Most image results that show in the top three I have done test searches on have been over 280 pixels in both directions. Bigger images make sense to show first, all other things being equal. I would shoot for 300 x 300 to be safe.
- Image Close to Relevant Text - Keyword above or below the image in the same DIV -or- keyword in the same paragraph as the image, close to the image. Keyword should be in the same <td> (table cell) as the image.
- Page Title & Page Theme - The title, content and image should all be connected.
- File Name - It can be difficult to add the name of the image to the file name, especially if the shopping cart software doesn’t allow it, but when you can, be descriptive.
- Alt Tags - Alt tags are designed to provide alternative text when the images cannot be displayed. They should be descriptive of the image. Example: <img src=”oak-tree.jpg” width=”200″ height=”350″ alt=”Oak Tree”>
- Image Title Tags - This text shows up when you rollover the image in a popup. They should also describe image. Example: <img src=”oak-tree.jpg” width=”200″ height=”350″ alt=”Oak Tree” title=”Oak Tree”>
- Image Sitemap - Okay, this is an idea which may or may not be of any help, but it certainly can’t hurt and if you feel your images are important enough to help your rankings then creating a sitemap with descriptive links to your important images might be the extra boost to get your images to the top of the search engine results.
Alt/Title for images have been spammed too much (like Meta tags) so I don’t think they play much of a factor at all anymore in images search.Please share any successes you may have had with image search or ideas you have tried. I’m especially interested in anyone who has tried an image sitemap or what you think of this idea.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization | 3 Comments »
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