How to Create an Effective Viral Marketing Campaign

Sometimes it seems the most difficult things look easy, and that is because the person doing them is so good – and viral marketing is a lot like that analogy. All you or anybody else can do is learn more about what contributes to producing a viral campaign, and then you do your best and [...]

Source: http://www.trafficmystic.com/220/how-to-create-an-effective-viral-marketing-campaign/

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PageRank Lookup

lets you check the PR of up to 100 sites at a time. Now all you have to do is cut and paste you list of
webpages and there you have it all before you with one click. Very nice!

Source: http://www.webmasterbrain.com/get-multiple-pagerank-values-without-google-toolbar--tool12.htm

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Keyword Density Analyzer

gives you keyword density for 1, 2 and 3 word combinations.

Source: http://www.stargeek.com/keyword_density.php

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Niche Finder

The Free Keyword Niche Finder is an innovative tool that returns structured keyword suggestions rather than a disorganized list. Just enter a keyword to find your most relevant and profitable keyword niches for pay-per-click advertising and SEO.

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-niche-finder/

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Google Rank Position

allows you to enter a search term and the domain to search for. It returns the position that search term has on Google WITH, the number of entries that search term is indexed for, the PR of your home page, the size of file, the number of inbound links the site has and lets you know if you are in the DMOZ or Google Directory.

Source: http://www.prsearch.biz/

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Search Term Research

requires an username and password but it has lots of features. They claim to have the biggest database, with over 9 billion searches compiled from 37 sources that include major international, pay per click, meta and regional engines. You can search on spell:keyword, related:keyword, like:keyword and crawl:keyword . The tool will search Overture's data from 16 different countries. There is just too much to list here. Go sign up and get take a peek.

Source: http://www.prioritysubmit.com/research.html

see book link building use seo seo tools seo tool land

Frequently answered questions

What the main services we provide?
-Answer: We just only provile the backlink profile services including normal packages and custom packages you chose. Your link will be built with other high page rank website including personal profiles, blog post, article...etc. All link is under the text link.

Source: http://goodbacklink.info/faqs.html

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Google vs Yahoo Graph

Shows a graphic display of top 50 in Google & Yahoo with the sites that are in both SERP linked.

Source: http://www.seobench.com/google-yahoo-graph/

seo tool land seo leaders online traffic mystic good backlink see book

Code to Text Calculator

helps you avoid diluting your keyword relevancy by letting you know the ratio of your text to code. The higher the ratio of text to code in your webpage's the better.

Source: http://www.stargeek.com/code_to_text.php

see book link building use seo seo tools seo tool land

Alexa Related Rank Check

gives you 10 seperate fields to enter domains and gives you the same day, 1 week ago and 3 month average Alexa Rank. It also shows the movement up or down in the last 3 months.

Source: http://www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/alexa-related-rank-check.php

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Frequently answered questions

What the main services we provide?
-Answer: We just only provile the backlink profile services including normal packages and custom packages you chose. Your link will be built with other high page rank website including personal profiles, blog post, article...etc. All link is under the text link.

Source: http://goodbacklink.info/faqs.html

link building use seo seo tools seo tool land seo leaders online

Free Broken Link Checker

check domain wide for broken outbound links. Very very very nice!

Source: http://www.dead-links.com/check_links.php

use seo seo tools seo tool land seo leaders online traffic mystic

Google Suggest

will offer completions when you type in your keyword for searches. I have found this very helpful in keyword mining.

Source: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1

seo tools seo tool land seo leaders online traffic mystic good backlink

Google Longtail Keywords Infographic

Sharing is caring!

Please share :)

Embed code is here.

Categories: 

google

Source: http://www.seobook.com/google-longtail-keywords-infographic

good backlink see book link building use seo seo tools

PageRank Lookup

lets you check the PR of up to 100 sites at a time. Now all you have to do is cut and paste you list of
webpages and there you have it all before you with one click. Very nice!

Source: http://www.webmasterbrain.com/get-multiple-pagerank-values-without-google-toolbar--tool12.htm

traffic mystic good backlink see book link building use seo

Uptime Bot

Off-page (popularity) stats. Great for keeping track of your progresses.

Source: http://uptimebot.com/sql/one.php

seo leaders online traffic mystic good backlink see book link building

Google Suggest

will offer completions when you type in your keyword for searches. I have found this very helpful in keyword mining.

Source: http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1

traffic mystic good backlink see book link building use seo

Choosing Email Hosting Services Free Or Paid

In the olden days, when technologies such as emails and text messages haven't been invented yet, people communicated in person, by letter, and for some upper classes, by telephone We can only imagine how hard it must have been during those times

Source: http://www.mkpitstop.com/Art/154080/94/Choosing-Email-Hosting-Services-Free-Or-Paid.html

seo tools seo tool land seo leaders online traffic mystic good backlink

Google Longtail Keywords Infographic

Sharing is caring!

Please share :)

Embed code is here.

Categories: 

google

Source: http://www.seobook.com/google-longtail-keywords-infographic

good backlink see book link building use seo seo tools

Pagerank Calculator

is quite a bit different than WebWorkshop's Page Rank Grid Calculator and to tell you the truth I didn't find any use for it. I will spend some more time on it later but I thought it should be in here as Mark Horrell has a lot of good things to say about Pagerank.

Source: http://www.markhorrell.com/seo/pagerank.asp

seo tool land seo leaders online traffic mystic good backlink see book

MSN Position Search

You can search up to 15 keywords for the entered domain and from the top 100 to the top 500.

Source: http://www.prsearch.net/msnmass.php

link building use seo seo tools seo tool land seo leaders online

Marketing For Today

Now with many advertising tactics around, as well as a substantial variety of promoting tools getting introduced, companies tend to be often left lost as to precisely what technique they will need to utilize. Gorilla promoting is becoming an exhilarating method for men and women to be able to market their own products and services. [...]No related posts.

Source: http://www.seo-leaders-online.co.za/seo/marketing-for-today/

see book link building use seo seo tools seo tool land

How To Ensure You Get More From SEO

If you are trying to get an online business off the ground then you will probably be aware of how important SEO can be for your business. If you want your business to be a success then you will have to get more visitors to be able to find your website and this involves getting [...]No related posts.

Source: http://www.seo-leaders-online.co.za/seo/how-to-ensure-you-get-more-from-seo/

use seo seo tools seo tool land seo leaders online traffic mystic

Free Broken Link Checker

check domain wide for broken outbound links. Very very very nice!

Source: http://www.dead-links.com/check_links.php

good backlink see book link building use seo seo tools

SMX East 2011 Recap for SEOBook

Useful Links:

SMX Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/searchmarketingexpo
Twitter # activity for the conference: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23smx

Another successful SMX East is in the books. From all accounts, the event seemed to go through flawlessly and without a hitch. Kudos to Danny Sullivan, Claire Schoen, and crew as the caliber of speakers, sessions, and attendees was top notch, as always. Judging from the event, search marketing is alive and thriving more than ever before. There was a healthy mix of industry experts, consultants, large corporations, agencies, and small businesses. The sessions covered a broad range of topics from beginner link building fundamentals to more advanced technical SEO sessions covering site architecture, technical coding optimization and everything inbetween. A huge thank you goes out to the organizers for a job well done.

It seemed there were two themes that surfaced regularly - Panda and Google Plus/+1. Clearly, there are still many webmasters struggling with Panda and how to properly handle content in the new post-Panda world . The search engines are addressing this and giving webmasters and SEO?s more tools and information to organize their websites correctly. After some of the presentations, it seems Google is very dedicated to their Plus and +1 initiatives which will have a large affect on SEO should end user usage continue to increase.

Below are tidbits and takeaways from the conference, from an SEO perspective. Enjoy!

Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging For 2012

Panelists:
Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo http://twitter.com/#!/janetdmiller
Topher Kohan, CNN https://twitter.com/#!/Topheratl
Jack Menzel, Google http://twitter.com/#!/jackm

Microformats where the original snippet format, however, they have been replaced by the new and evolving standard, microdata (which is Schema.org/Google/Bing are developing for and placing resources towards). Some notes from the presentations:

• General consensus is rich snippets can greatly help in getting your content noticed.
• In one example given, Eatocracy added the hRecipe tag to their pages, and immediately saw a 47% increase in their recipes being picked up and indexed into Google (which does support this in their recipe search). Additionally, they saw a 22% increase in their recipe traffic.
• CNN started using Yahoo SearchMonkey / RDFa, and saw a 35% increase in their video content on Google Video search, and saw a 22% increase in overall search traffic. However, they removed the additional code from their site as it increased their page load time. The take away on that is that you should think to integrate this into your down dev cycle, your cms, or your template.
• Per Google, their studies show that sites w/ rich snippets have a better CTR as well. Rich Snippets Engineer at Google, RV Guha noted, ?From our experiments, it seemed that giving the user a better idea of what to expect on the page increases the click-through rate on the search results. So if the webmasters do this, it?s really good for them. They get more traffic. It?s good for users because they have a better idea of what to expect on the page. And, overall, it?s good for the web.?

• Rich snippets only work for one site (no cross site references).
• Sites like LinkedIn and Google Profiles still use microformats. Google has also provided a tool in WMT, but it is a bit buggy and may throw false errors. If you don?t see your snippets show up in the SERP?s, it?s likely caused by longer than preferred latency load times, errors in your code, or a random Google bug - (per Google).
• The current types of rich snippets: reviews, people, products, businesses & organizations, recipes*, events, music

Session - ?Ask the Search Engines?

Panelists:
Tiffany Oberio - Google http://twitter.com/#!/tiffanyoberoi
Duane Forrester - Bing http://twitter.com/#!/duaneforrester
Rich Skrenta - Blekko http://twitter.com/#!/skrenta

• One audience member asked how to handle ?subcategory? pages that are often created in ecommerce sites such as ?Sort Prices $0-$5?, ?Prices $5-$25? etc. The question was whether or not to use the ?rel=canonical? tag and point the pages back to the main page. The panelists agreed that those pages should be blocked completely and should not use the canonical tag. The Google representative said not only do these pages not add value to the engine?s index, but they also eat up the sites crawl budget.
• If you see the warning "we're seeing a high # of URL's" in Webmaster Tools, most times its a duplicate content issue.
• One audience member asked: do you look at subdomain as part of the main domain?
• Blekko - no inheritance from main domain
• Google - "it depends". Sometimes it is inherited, sometimes not.
• Bing - we look and try to determine if subdomain is a standalone business/website and will get treated differently based on that determination
• One question touched on removing URL?s from Google?s index. Google advised that a removed URL may or may not stay in the index for a period of time, and that to expedite removal of a URL one should use Webmaster Tools remove-url tool
• Duane from Bing was adamant about keeping your submitted sitemap clean. The threshold is 1%. If there are issues in your submitted sitemap >1%, Bing will ?lose trust? for your website
• Panelists advised to make your 404 pages useful to the user
• It may not be breaking news, but Bing and Google both said unequivocally - duplicate content does hurts you
• Google commented they are big fans of HTML 5 technology

• At this point it seems Google will crawl a page if +1 is present, regardless of the robots.txt. This could possibly create issues with trying to not crawl certain pages to avoid dup content. More information found here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4358033.htm

• Panelists advised to spend a lot of energy ?containing urls? on your website and to be thoughtful about which URLs you are getting out there
• Bing and Google confirmed that ?pagerank sculpting? is misunderstood and not effective. For example, if a page has 5 outgoing links and link juice is spread 20% to each of the 5 links, if you no follow one of the links, the link juice distribution will not become 25% to the remaining 4 links. It will remain 4 x 20%. In essence, you have just evaporated potential link juice

Google Plus and +1

These were hot topics at this year?s SMX East. Multiple session covered Google Plus and +1 in depth.

• Speaker Benjamin Vigneron from Esearchvision covered the basics of Google Plus and +1 . He noted a +1 to a search result will +1 the ppc ad/landing page, too.
• With PPC, +1 could have a significant affect on Adrank by affecting each of the Quality Score factors including quality of the landing page, CTR, and the ad?s past performance.
• Interesting that Adwords could conceivably add segmenting on all information in Google Plus (similar to FB) ie males, ages, etc.
• Christian Oestlien, the Google Product Manager for Google Plus, spoke about Google Plus features and fielded questions. He mentioned Google is testing and experimenting with celebrity endorsements +1'ing and showed an example SERP with a +1 annotation under the search result (for example ?Kim Kardashian has +1?ed? Brand X or search result X). He noted Google is seeing much higher CTR with the +1 annotation and that usage for the ?Circles? feature is relatively high.

• Google software engineer Tiffany Oberoi was also present on the panel. She noted +1 is NOT a ranking factor, but social search is still of course implemented in search results. She confirmend Facebook likes have no impact on rankings but also noted regarding social signals, ?explicit user feedback is like gold for us". She also touched on spam with +1 and said she is currently working with spam team. Regarding +1?s and spamming, she said to think of +1?s similarly to links. The same guidelines could apply. Google wants to use them as a real signal. Using in an unnatural way will not good for you.

Hardcore Local Search Tactics

Panelists:
Matt McGee - Search Engine Land
Mike Ramsey, - Nifty Marketing
Will Scott - Search Influence

Panelists here gave an encore presentation of the session these folks put on at SMX Advanced in Seattle. The content was excellent and definitely deserved another run through. Here are the notes:

• July 21st, Google removed citations from their Places listings. While they have been removed for public viewing, they are still used. Sources like Whitespark (link: http://www.whitespark.ca/) can be very helpful in uncovering citation building opportunities.

• Citation accuracy is among the most important factors in getting your business to rank in the O or 7-Pack. Doing a custom Google search of ?business name?+?address?+?phone number? will help determine what other sources Google sees as citation sources.
• Average number of IYP reviews of ranked listings vs non ranked listings showed to be a large gap, indicating that IYP reviews do in fact provide quite a bit of listing weight.
• Offsite Citation?s / Data appear to be the no. 1 ranking factor in Places listings
• Linking Root Domains appear to be the no. 2 ranking factor in Places listings
• Exact match anchor links appear to be the no. 3 ranking factor in Places listings
• Links are the new citations for local in 2011-12
• Building a custom landing page to link your Places Listing to appears to be a huge success factor. Include your Name, Address, Phone (NAP) in the title tag
• Design that landing page to mirror a Places listing on their site w/ a map, business hours, contact data, etc.
• If needed, submit your contact/location page as your Places URL/Landing Page which will create a stronger geo scent
• When trying to understand how users are searching for your client, Insights for Search is a great tool as you can find Geo targeted data w/ KW differentiation (ie Lawyer vs Attorney, which is used more in that area)
• Local requires a different mindset from traditional SEO
• Optimize location (local SEO) vs Optimize websites (traditional SEO)
• Blended search is about matching them up
• PageRank of Places URL does NOT seem to affect Local ranking -(source: David Mihm)
• Multi-Location Tips
• Flat site architecture beginning w/ a ?Store Locator? page
• Great Example, lakeland.co.uk/StoreLocator.action
• Give each location its own page
• Great Example, lakeland.co.uk/stores/aberdeen
• Cross link nearby locations w/ geo anchor text
• Ensure the use of KML Sitemap in Google WMT
• Encourage Community Edits - Make Use of Google?s Map Maker
• Include Geo data in Facebook pages and article engines

Panda Recovery Case Study - High Gear Media

Speaker Matt Heist from High Gear Media covered their experiences over the past 8 months with recovering from Panda. High Gear Media is an online publisher of auto news and reviews.

Heist walked through the company?s strategy pre-panda and explained their contrasting new post-panda strategy. The original strategy was many auto review niche sites across a broad range of auto makes, models and manufacturers. The company originally had 107 sites and 20+ writers and dispersed content amongst all the sites. The content was "splashing" everywhere, unfocused. The ?large network of microsites? strategy was working and traffic was climbing each month. Then Panda hit - hard. Traffic plummeted beginning this past Spring. Leaders at High Gear was forced to reevaluate their strategy and concluded that a more focused approach was better for users and consequently would help search traffic recover.

High Gear took the following actions:

• Eliminated most of their properties completely (301'ed) and pared them down to 7 total sites with 4 being ?core?: FamilyCarGuide, Motorauthority, GreenCarReports, TheCarConnection.

• Properly canonicalized duplicate content
• Aggregated content with strong user engagement was KEPT, but not indexed
• The made the hard decision to eliminate content that could be making money but not good for the long term
• Dedicated significant resources to redesigning each of the 7 sites remaining sites

Their strategy seems to be working. Heist noted traffic has ?flipped, plus some?. According to Heist, here are the learning's:

• High Gear Media believes that premium content will prevail and that Panda will help that

• Advertisers like bigger brands - it is now easier to sell ads and for more $ with fewer, more powerful sites
• With evolution of Social (joining Search from a distribution perspective), premium content that is authoritative AND fresh with flourish

Raven Tools

We were able to meet up with the friendly staff over at Raven Tools, sit down with them, and learn a bit more about their product. We personally have been using Raven for about a year now, and highly recommend it. There are several features in the works that will make this even more of an incredible product. If you haven't used them, we would HIGHLY suggest giving the tools a run. They are partnering with new companies constantly, and as such, are building out a best in class seo management product.

Upcoming Features:

• A new feature they are working on is a Chrome Toolbar to compliment the current Firefox toolbar
• Another feature coming is ?templated messaging? for link requests and manual link building which will include BCC?s back to records. Templated Messaging will be built into our Contact Manager, but they are working on making that functionality available in the toolbar.
• Another upcoming features is file management. RavenTools engineers are looking at integrating Dropbox into the system to allow files to be associated with other data and records.
• The Co-Founder Jon Henshaw alluded many times to the idea that link building and consequently their toolset will continue to become more and more based on relationships in the future. He also alluded to the idea that traffic can or in some cases should be associated with PEOPLE as the referrer, rather than a website (ie x amount of traffic came from person A, whether it be their facebook, twitter, blog, or website). In other words, a relationship management system looks to be a integral part of the future of Raventools.
• For future updates, Raventools takes explicit user feedback greatly into account. If you have a feature request or a software integration request, please contact: http://raventools.com/feature-requests/

• A new feature called ?link clips? was released last week just before the SMX show. You can find details about this powerful update here; http://raventools.com/blog/new-feature-raven-link-building-with-link-clips/

• Regarding MajesticSEO and OSE/Linkscape, they will be more fully integrating it into the Research section of Raven. That means they?ll be adding as much functionality into Raven as their APIs will allow. In addition to getting more full access to that data, users will be able to easily add that data to other tools, like the Keyword and Competitor Managers, Rank Tracker, etc...

• Speed is the number one priority right now. They have full-time staff that are solely dedicated to speeding up the system. The goal is to make it run as fast as a desktop app.
• Long term - 3rd party integration will be a constant (and should accelerate) for the platform for the foreseeable future.
• Screenshot of "Social Stream" prototype design http://cl.ly/1b2h0u3P3U441w000o1K/o
• AdWords Insights: Flagged Pages: http://cloud.raven.im/9v8d
• Link Clips link checker results with historical results: http://cloud.raven.im/9zgK/o

Other Notes

• Regarding Panda, one panelist referenced what he called a website?s ?Content Performance Ratio? referring to the % of content on a site that is good versus bad or ?performing vs non performing? and using that as a gauge as to the health of a website.
• Panelists also noted in his experience it takes 3-4 requests on a 404 before search engine believes you and removes it from the index.
• Panelists in the ?Ask the SEO? session said to pay close attention to anchor text diversity and human engagement signals

Author bio:
Jake Puhl is the Co-Founder/Co-Owner of Firegang Digital Marketing, a Local search marketing company, specializing in all aspects "Local", including custom web design, SEO, Google Places, and local PPC advertising. Jake has personally consulted businesses from Hawaii to New York and everywhere in-between. Jake can be contacted at jacobpuhl at firegang.com.

Categories: 

conferences

Source: http://www.seobook.com/smx-east-2011-recap-seobook

use seo seo tools seo tool land seo leaders online traffic mystic

Link Price Calculator

This tools will help you determine the appropriate amount you should be paying (or charging) per month for a text link (ad) from each and every page of the specified website.
The tool takes into consideration factors such as number of pages, Pagerank, backlinks, Alexa traffic rank, and age of the website.

Source: http://www.webconfs.com/link-value.php

seo tool land seo leaders online traffic mystic good backlink see book

Search MSN Toolbar

is a toolbar that installs on Internet Explorer and has a popup blocker and a number of other features.

Source: http://toolbar.msn.com/

link building use seo seo tools seo tool land seo leaders online

SMX East 2011 Recap for SEOBook

Useful Links:

SMX Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/searchmarketingexpo
Twitter # activity for the conference: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23smx

Another successful SMX East is in the books. From all accounts, the event seemed to go through flawlessly and without a hitch. Kudos to Danny Sullivan, Claire Schoen, and crew as the caliber of speakers, sessions, and attendees was top notch, as always. Judging from the event, search marketing is alive and thriving more than ever before. There was a healthy mix of industry experts, consultants, large corporations, agencies, and small businesses. The sessions covered a broad range of topics from beginner link building fundamentals to more advanced technical SEO sessions covering site architecture, technical coding optimization and everything inbetween. A huge thank you goes out to the organizers for a job well done.

It seemed there were two themes that surfaced regularly - Panda and Google Plus/+1. Clearly, there are still many webmasters struggling with Panda and how to properly handle content in the new post-Panda world . The search engines are addressing this and giving webmasters and SEO?s more tools and information to organize their websites correctly. After some of the presentations, it seems Google is very dedicated to their Plus and +1 initiatives which will have a large affect on SEO should end user usage continue to increase.

Below are tidbits and takeaways from the conference, from an SEO perspective. Enjoy!

Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging For 2012

Panelists:
Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo http://twitter.com/#!/janetdmiller
Topher Kohan, CNN https://twitter.com/#!/Topheratl
Jack Menzel, Google http://twitter.com/#!/jackm

Microformats where the original snippet format, however, they have been replaced by the new and evolving standard, microdata (which is Schema.org/Google/Bing are developing for and placing resources towards). Some notes from the presentations:

• General consensus is rich snippets can greatly help in getting your content noticed.
• In one example given, Eatocracy added the hRecipe tag to their pages, and immediately saw a 47% increase in their recipes being picked up and indexed into Google (which does support this in their recipe search). Additionally, they saw a 22% increase in their recipe traffic.
• CNN started using Yahoo SearchMonkey / RDFa, and saw a 35% increase in their video content on Google Video search, and saw a 22% increase in overall search traffic. However, they removed the additional code from their site as it increased their page load time. The take away on that is that you should think to integrate this into your down dev cycle, your cms, or your template.
• Per Google, their studies show that sites w/ rich snippets have a better CTR as well. Rich Snippets Engineer at Google, RV Guha noted, ?From our experiments, it seemed that giving the user a better idea of what to expect on the page increases the click-through rate on the search results. So if the webmasters do this, it?s really good for them. They get more traffic. It?s good for users because they have a better idea of what to expect on the page. And, overall, it?s good for the web.?

• Rich snippets only work for one site (no cross site references).
• Sites like LinkedIn and Google Profiles still use microformats. Google has also provided a tool in WMT, but it is a bit buggy and may throw false errors. If you don?t see your snippets show up in the SERP?s, it?s likely caused by longer than preferred latency load times, errors in your code, or a random Google bug - (per Google).
• The current types of rich snippets: reviews, people, products, businesses & organizations, recipes*, events, music

Session - ?Ask the Search Engines?

Panelists:
Tiffany Oberio - Google http://twitter.com/#!/tiffanyoberoi
Duane Forrester - Bing http://twitter.com/#!/duaneforrester
Rich Skrenta - Blekko http://twitter.com/#!/skrenta

• One audience member asked how to handle ?subcategory? pages that are often created in ecommerce sites such as ?Sort Prices $0-$5?, ?Prices $5-$25? etc. The question was whether or not to use the ?rel=canonical? tag and point the pages back to the main page. The panelists agreed that those pages should be blocked completely and should not use the canonical tag. The Google representative said not only do these pages not add value to the engine?s index, but they also eat up the sites crawl budget.
• If you see the warning "we're seeing a high # of URL's" in Webmaster Tools, most times its a duplicate content issue.
• One audience member asked: do you look at subdomain as part of the main domain?
• Blekko - no inheritance from main domain
• Google - "it depends". Sometimes it is inherited, sometimes not.
• Bing - we look and try to determine if subdomain is a standalone business/website and will get treated differently based on that determination
• One question touched on removing URL?s from Google?s index. Google advised that a removed URL may or may not stay in the index for a period of time, and that to expedite removal of a URL one should use Webmaster Tools remove-url tool
• Duane from Bing was adamant about keeping your submitted sitemap clean. The threshold is 1%. If there are issues in your submitted sitemap >1%, Bing will ?lose trust? for your website
• Panelists advised to make your 404 pages useful to the user
• It may not be breaking news, but Bing and Google both said unequivocally - duplicate content does hurts you
• Google commented they are big fans of HTML 5 technology

• At this point it seems Google will crawl a page if +1 is present, regardless of the robots.txt. This could possibly create issues with trying to not crawl certain pages to avoid dup content. More information found here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4358033.htm

• Panelists advised to spend a lot of energy ?containing urls? on your website and to be thoughtful about which URLs you are getting out there
• Bing and Google confirmed that ?pagerank sculpting? is misunderstood and not effective. For example, if a page has 5 outgoing links and link juice is spread 20% to each of the 5 links, if you no follow one of the links, the link juice distribution will not become 25% to the remaining 4 links. It will remain 4 x 20%. In essence, you have just evaporated potential link juice

Google Plus and +1

These were hot topics at this year?s SMX East. Multiple session covered Google Plus and +1 in depth.

• Speaker Benjamin Vigneron from Esearchvision covered the basics of Google Plus and +1 . He noted a +1 to a search result will +1 the ppc ad/landing page, too.
• With PPC, +1 could have a significant affect on Adrank by affecting each of the Quality Score factors including quality of the landing page, CTR, and the ad?s past performance.
• Interesting that Adwords could conceivably add segmenting on all information in Google Plus (similar to FB) ie males, ages, etc.
• Christian Oestlien, the Google Product Manager for Google Plus, spoke about Google Plus features and fielded questions. He mentioned Google is testing and experimenting with celebrity endorsements +1'ing and showed an example SERP with a +1 annotation under the search result (for example ?Kim Kardashian has +1?ed? Brand X or search result X). He noted Google is seeing much higher CTR with the +1 annotation and that usage for the ?Circles? feature is relatively high.

• Google software engineer Tiffany Oberoi was also present on the panel. She noted +1 is NOT a ranking factor, but social search is still of course implemented in search results. She confirmend Facebook likes have no impact on rankings but also noted regarding social signals, ?explicit user feedback is like gold for us". She also touched on spam with +1 and said she is currently working with spam team. Regarding +1?s and spamming, she said to think of +1?s similarly to links. The same guidelines could apply. Google wants to use them as a real signal. Using in an unnatural way will not good for you.

Hardcore Local Search Tactics

Panelists:
Matt McGee - Search Engine Land
Mike Ramsey, - Nifty Marketing
Will Scott - Search Influence

Panelists here gave an encore presentation of the session these folks put on at SMX Advanced in Seattle. The content was excellent and definitely deserved another run through. Here are the notes:

• July 21st, Google removed citations from their Places listings. While they have been removed for public viewing, they are still used. Sources like Whitespark (link: http://www.whitespark.ca/) can be very helpful in uncovering citation building opportunities.

• Citation accuracy is among the most important factors in getting your business to rank in the O or 7-Pack. Doing a custom Google search of ?business name?+?address?+?phone number? will help determine what other sources Google sees as citation sources.
• Average number of IYP reviews of ranked listings vs non ranked listings showed to be a large gap, indicating that IYP reviews do in fact provide quite a bit of listing weight.
• Offsite Citation?s / Data appear to be the no. 1 ranking factor in Places listings
• Linking Root Domains appear to be the no. 2 ranking factor in Places listings
• Exact match anchor links appear to be the no. 3 ranking factor in Places listings
• Links are the new citations for local in 2011-12
• Building a custom landing page to link your Places Listing to appears to be a huge success factor. Include your Name, Address, Phone (NAP) in the title tag
• Design that landing page to mirror a Places listing on their site w/ a map, business hours, contact data, etc.
• If needed, submit your contact/location page as your Places URL/Landing Page which will create a stronger geo scent
• When trying to understand how users are searching for your client, Insights for Search is a great tool as you can find Geo targeted data w/ KW differentiation (ie Lawyer vs Attorney, which is used more in that area)
• Local requires a different mindset from traditional SEO
• Optimize location (local SEO) vs Optimize websites (traditional SEO)
• Blended search is about matching them up
• PageRank of Places URL does NOT seem to affect Local ranking -(source: David Mihm)
• Multi-Location Tips
• Flat site architecture beginning w/ a ?Store Locator? page
• Great Example, lakeland.co.uk/StoreLocator.action
• Give each location its own page
• Great Example, lakeland.co.uk/stores/aberdeen
• Cross link nearby locations w/ geo anchor text
• Ensure the use of KML Sitemap in Google WMT
• Encourage Community Edits - Make Use of Google?s Map Maker
• Include Geo data in Facebook pages and article engines

Panda Recovery Case Study - High Gear Media

Speaker Matt Heist from High Gear Media covered their experiences over the past 8 months with recovering from Panda. High Gear Media is an online publisher of auto news and reviews.

Heist walked through the company?s strategy pre-panda and explained their contrasting new post-panda strategy. The original strategy was many auto review niche sites across a broad range of auto makes, models and manufacturers. The company originally had 107 sites and 20+ writers and dispersed content amongst all the sites. The content was "splashing" everywhere, unfocused. The ?large network of microsites? strategy was working and traffic was climbing each month. Then Panda hit - hard. Traffic plummeted beginning this past Spring. Leaders at High Gear was forced to reevaluate their strategy and concluded that a more focused approach was better for users and consequently would help search traffic recover.

High Gear took the following actions:

• Eliminated most of their properties completely (301'ed) and pared them down to 7 total sites with 4 being ?core?: FamilyCarGuide, Motorauthority, GreenCarReports, TheCarConnection.

• Properly canonicalized duplicate content
• Aggregated content with strong user engagement was KEPT, but not indexed
• The made the hard decision to eliminate content that could be making money but not good for the long term
• Dedicated significant resources to redesigning each of the 7 sites remaining sites

Their strategy seems to be working. Heist noted traffic has ?flipped, plus some?. According to Heist, here are the learning's:

• High Gear Media believes that premium content will prevail and that Panda will help that

• Advertisers like bigger brands - it is now easier to sell ads and for more $ with fewer, more powerful sites
• With evolution of Social (joining Search from a distribution perspective), premium content that is authoritative AND fresh with flourish

Raven Tools

We were able to meet up with the friendly staff over at Raven Tools, sit down with them, and learn a bit more about their product. We personally have been using Raven for about a year now, and highly recommend it. There are several features in the works that will make this even more of an incredible product. If you haven't used them, we would HIGHLY suggest giving the tools a run. They are partnering with new companies constantly, and as such, are building out a best in class seo management product.

Upcoming Features:

• A new feature they are working on is a Chrome Toolbar to compliment the current Firefox toolbar
• Another feature coming is ?templated messaging? for link requests and manual link building which will include BCC?s back to records. Templated Messaging will be built into our Contact Manager, but they are working on making that functionality available in the toolbar.
• Another upcoming features is file management. RavenTools engineers are looking at integrating Dropbox into the system to allow files to be associated with other data and records.
• The Co-Founder Jon Henshaw alluded many times to the idea that link building and consequently their toolset will continue to become more and more based on relationships in the future. He also alluded to the idea that traffic can or in some cases should be associated with PEOPLE as the referrer, rather than a website (ie x amount of traffic came from person A, whether it be their facebook, twitter, blog, or website). In other words, a relationship management system looks to be a integral part of the future of Raventools.
• For future updates, Raventools takes explicit user feedback greatly into account. If you have a feature request or a software integration request, please contact: http://raventools.com/feature-requests/

• A new feature called ?link clips? was released last week just before the SMX show. You can find details about this powerful update here; http://raventools.com/blog/new-feature-raven-link-building-with-link-clips/

• Regarding MajesticSEO and OSE/Linkscape, they will be more fully integrating it into the Research section of Raven. That means they?ll be adding as much functionality into Raven as their APIs will allow. In addition to getting more full access to that data, users will be able to easily add that data to other tools, like the Keyword and Competitor Managers, Rank Tracker, etc...

• Speed is the number one priority right now. They have full-time staff that are solely dedicated to speeding up the system. The goal is to make it run as fast as a desktop app.
• Long term - 3rd party integration will be a constant (and should accelerate) for the platform for the foreseeable future.
• Screenshot of "Social Stream" prototype design http://cl.ly/1b2h0u3P3U441w000o1K/o
• AdWords Insights: Flagged Pages: http://cloud.raven.im/9v8d
• Link Clips link checker results with historical results: http://cloud.raven.im/9zgK/o

Other Notes

• Regarding Panda, one panelist referenced what he called a website?s ?Content Performance Ratio? referring to the % of content on a site that is good versus bad or ?performing vs non performing? and using that as a gauge as to the health of a website.
• Panelists also noted in his experience it takes 3-4 requests on a 404 before search engine believes you and removes it from the index.
• Panelists in the ?Ask the SEO? session said to pay close attention to anchor text diversity and human engagement signals

Author bio:
Jake Puhl is the Co-Founder/Co-Owner of Firegang Digital Marketing, a Local search marketing company, specializing in all aspects "Local", including custom web design, SEO, Google Places, and local PPC advertising. Jake has personally consulted businesses from Hawaii to New York and everywhere in-between. Jake can be contacted at jacobpuhl at firegang.com.

Categories: 

conferences

Source: http://www.seobook.com/smx-east-2011-recap-seobook

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Understanding How Ranking Works When It Comes To SEO

It is not going to be possible to give you the exact details about how the different search engines work. The search engines do not want you to know how they do their work and they also change their procedures quite regularly. SEO tools that work one day may not work the next day because [...]No related posts.

Source: http://www.seo-leaders-online.co.za/seo/understanding-how-ranking-works-when-it-comes-to-seo/

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Copyscape

Copyscape is dedicated to defending your rights online, helping you fight against online plagiarism and content theft. Copyscape finds sites that have copied your content without permission, as well as those that have quoted you.

Source: http://www.copyscape.com/

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Dogpile Search Comparison

based on a study that only 1.1% of the top results for Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves are the same their tools gives you the top results from any 3 of the top 4 search engines.

Source: http://comparesearchengines.dogpile.com/

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Advanced Meta Tag Generator

Advanced meta tag generator that give you fields for 19 different mata tags and generates the meta code for you.

Source: http://www.optimization-services.com/meta.asp?ID=4

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Keyword Density

will analyze your entered URL, and return a list of key phrases with their corresponding density values for one, two, or three word key phrases. You can choose whether you want the longs key phrase to be 1, 2 or 3 words long.

Source: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/

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Is Google Too Big To Fail?

We are better off if we ignore what Google is saying and follow one thing: Google wants more money for Google. When we make this assumption, everything Google does makes sense. Deception and doublespeak are logical and expected rather than shocking and upsetting.

When it comes to scale, as pointed out with Groupon, all of these rules go out the window. If you look at the biggest advertisers, replace their account with one with no history and the brand "Geico" with "SEOBook auto insurance" and the campaign will simply not run. You are spam. In some cases larger advertisers are able to run ads which are clearly deceptive and go against guidelines which they actively enforce on smaller advertisers. I have a strong suspicion now that this is in fact institutionalized in Google's rating process rather than any employee going out of their way to overturn some sort of penalty.

Google will not disrupt a site or advertiser that will negatively impact their own quarterly earnings. When Google does disrupt one, it is because they have a backup in place. That backup may be their own internal project or a competitor of yours who sends 95% of their advertising through Google's ad platforms. When Google claimed they were going after content farms, and Demand Media's properties (which are explicitly spam) were spared, the reason was obvious, because it would have visibly impacted their bottom line.

Brand is a deceptive concept. A hairy, smelly drug addict that compulsively molests women is not a sex offender but rather a globally famous rock star. Much the same holds true to many of the biggest brands. As long as a brand spams, that spam is opaque to Google's customer base and their customers do not bring a negative association with Google's brand. However, when that same hairy, smelly drug addict is anonymous he is a nuisance which destroys your reputation when you publicly associate yourself with him.

Google is like an oil company which not only dictates the price of oil but also chooses where an oil field will exist. Google is now "too big to fail" as indicated by the recent DOJ investigation which could have resulted in a felony charge for their co-founder, and most certainly would have for a smaller firm without $500m of liquid cash. We should be thankful that visitors are still directed to our websites when they could simply receive excerpts of what they are searching for.

My conclusion: first, I monetize my existing sites with Google's own products as much as possible. Second: I no longer invest my time or money in new businesses that require Google's traffic. Google should expect more walled content gardens in their future. Google's biggest challengers such as Facebook and Apple recognize this, and their platforms are very much walled gardens. That is too bad for the web as we know it today.

As a consumer I want Google to have the best, most trustworthy experience possible. They can fight SEOs and affiliates all day long and it doesn't bother me. I fully expected the innovative waves that helped the web destroy old media do the same again to itself. But, when Google lies, and do things that in fact damage that consumers experience no longer can I defend Google (when eHow first started popping up in 50% of the searches I did I was shocked; I am absolutely appalled they still show up on page 1 for anything, the articles are obviously written by authors that re-hashed another article in 10 minutes and often factually incorrect on top of it.)

---

Andrew Johnson submitted the above (less the image) as a comment here, but we thought it deserved to be its own post on the blog so more people get to see it.

Categories: 

internet

Source: http://www.seobook.com/too-big-to-fail

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Multi DC PageRank Checker

This tool will query the various Google Data Centers to check for any changes in PageRank values for a website. Helps you get a peek at your websites NEW PR during a PageRank update.

Source: http://www.seobench.com/multi-dc-pr-check/

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Datacenter Quick Check

lets you add you URL and check all Google datacenters for BackLinks, PR and Ranking of keyword.

Source: http://www.mcdar.net/q-check/datatool.asp

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Google Rankings

searches for the entered URL and keyword in the first 1000 pages.

Source: http://www.googlerankings.com

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Cloaking: Survey Says?

In the below video Matt Cutts states that "there is no such thing as white hat cloaking" ...

... yet Google is testing a new ad unit where users have to fill out a survey before they can view the content.

How long until the surveys include something like:

• did you vote in 2008
• what presidential candidate did you vote for
• how do you feel about issue x
• how strongly do you feel about your opinion on x

Then after the survey: "Thanks for your feedback. Candidate y supports your views on issue x."

Advertisers then get a report like: "in Ohio, 84% of the 289,319 swing voters with an average household income between $32,400 and $67,250 think issue x is vitally important and have a 6:1 bias toward option A. They respond to it more strongly if you phrase it as "a c b" and are twice as likely to share your view if you phrase it that way. The bias is even stronger amongst women & voters under 50, where they prefer option A by a factor of 9:1."

Couple that ability to flagrantly violate their own editorial guidelines with...

• knowing user interests (and many other pieces of vital information)
• search personalization
• ad retargeting
• quality-based ad pricing / selective price gouging
• arbitrary editorial discrimination
• active investments in various content channels
• let us scrape your reviews or you die bundling
• offering online safety tips & labeling anything Google can't get away with doing as something like malware in the search results (or spam in the editorial guidelines)
• political donations
• the ability to define or redefine any word or phrase as convenient & selective enforcement of defusing Google Bombing
• the "I know what you searched for last night" factor
• enhanced search yield from pushing desirable illegal ads & using that increased income to help buy marketshare to further reinforce network effects
• relevancy algorithms that can overweight content sources that Google profits from (eg: YouTube + ebooks) to create additional economic yield from search

... & Google is in an amazing position politically.

It is thus not surprising to see how politicians have a hard time being anything but pro-Google, as they are the new Western Union.

This isn't the first time Google experimented with cloaking either. Threadwatch had a post on Google cloaking their help files years ago & YouTube offers users a screw you screen if they are in a country where the content isn't licensed - yet they still show those cloaked pages ranking in the search results.

?The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.? ? Friedrich Nietzsche

It is common knowledge that you shouldn't mix business and politics, however if one looks at history, many of those who gave us those sage words did precisely the opposite - and often illegally so - selling us down the river.

What is so obnoxious about Google's survey trial is that a big site that was hit by Panda was hit because they used scroll cloaking & didn't let the users get to the content right away. Googlers suggested users didn't like it & voted against it, and then roll out the same sort of "wait 1 moment please" stuff themselves as a custom beta ad unit.

And today Google just announced that they might create an algorithm which looks at ad placements on a website as a spam signal outside of Panda:

?If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it,? asking publishers to consider, ?Do they see content or something else that?s distracting or annoying??

On the one hand they tell you to optimize your ad placements & on the other they tell you that those were not optimal & are so aggressive that they are spam.

For a while there was a period of time where you could use something like "would Google do this" as a rule of thumb for gray area behavior.

In the current market that won't work.

?No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.? ? Ansel Adams

As ad units get more interactive & Google keeps eating more verticals the line between spam vs not will keep blurring.

Perception is everything.

?We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.? ? Oscar Wilde

Categories: 

internet

Source: http://www.seobook.com/survey-says

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Google vs Yahoo Graph

Shows a graphic display of top 50 in Google & Yahoo with the sites that are in both SERP linked.

Source: http://www.seobench.com/google-yahoo-graph/

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Advanced Meta Tag Generator

Advanced meta tag generator that give you fields for 19 different mata tags and generates the meta code for you.

Source: http://www.optimization-services.com/meta.asp?ID=4

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Recommended SEO Tool- PageRank Lookup

You can check the PageRank of the URLs (max 100) by using this tool.

Source: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-lookup/

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Panda 2.5...and Youtube Wins Again

On September 28th, Google rolled out Panda 2.5. Yet again Youtube is the #1 site on the leader board, while even some branded sites like MotorTrend were clipped, and sites that had past recovered from Panda (like Daniweb) were hit once more. In the zero sum game of search, Google's Android.com joins YouTube on the leader board.

It doesn't matter what "signals" Google chooses to use when Google also gets to score themselves however they like. And even if Google were not trying to bias the promotion of their own content then any signals they do collect on Google properties will be over-represented by regular Google users.

Google can put out something fairly average, promote it, then iterate to improve it as they collect end user data. Publishers as big as MotorTrend can't have that business model though. And smaller publishers simply get effectively removed from the web when something like Panda or a hand penalty hits them. Worse yet, upon "review" search engineers may choose to review an older version of the site rather than the current site!

With that level of uncertainty, how do you aggressively invest in improving your website?

Over a half-year after Panda launched there are few case studies of recoveries & worse yet, some of the few sites that recovered just relapsed!

If you look at search using a pragmatic & holistic view, then this year the only thing that really changed with "content" farms is you can now insert the word video for content & almost all that video is hosted on Youtube.

To highlight the absurdity, I created another XtraNormal video. :)

References for the above video:

• early Google research about ad-driven search engines being biased toward the interest of advertisers & a post about Youtube counting their ad views as editorial views
• Google bought YouTube *then* rolled out universal search
• image of Google's internal "change copyright" propaganda strategy
• recent Google advert showing Youtube as the #2 search engine
• Compete.com's Google downstream search traffic stats are available with a premium membership to their site, & they do a good job of showing the actual traffic impact of the aggregate algorithmic changes. YouTube's growth is also well reflected in numbers from firms like SearchMetrics
• Here is an article about the Google $500 million fine for ads promoting sketchy pharmacies & here is an ad I just saw on Youtube warning against fake Viagra

Categories: 

google

publishing & media

Source: http://www.seobook.com/panda-25and-youtube-wins-again

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Keyword Research Tool

will generate a list of keywords and keyword phrases used in other web sites based on the keyword or keyword phrase you enter into their tool. This tool searches other sites with your choice of one of the 9 listed search engines and displays what other web sites that are optimized for the keyword phrase you entered are using for keywords on their site. Very helpful tool!

Source: http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml

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C Class Backlink Analyzer Tool

Shows how many sites with different Class C IPs your first 1000 backlinks come from. Shows unique domain names, unique IP addresses and unique C classes and there ratios.

Source: http://www.webuildpages.com/cclass/

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Endless AdWords Profits

"To thine own self be true"

In a word?

Prescient!

10 links in a single AdWords ad unit!

Then more ads below it. Then a single organic listing with huge sublinks too. And unless you have a huge monitor at that point you are "below the fold."

Negative advertising in AdWords is not allowed. So long as you build enough brand signals & pay the Google toll booth, public relations issues & reputation issues won't be accessible to searchers unless they learn to skip over the first screen of search results.

While it is generally against Google's TOS for advertisers to double dip in AdWords (outside of the official prescribed oversize ad units highlighted above), Google is doing exactly that with their multitude of brands.

BeatThatQuote is back yet again.

The line between ads & content is getting blurry. Mighty blurry.

Is it time yet for a new slogan?

Google: the sales engine!

Categories: 

google

Source: http://www.seobook.com/the-sales-engine

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Link Price Calculator

This tools will help you determine the appropriate amount you should be paying (or charging) per month for a text link (ad) from each and every page of the specified website.
The tool takes into consideration factors such as number of pages, Pagerank, backlinks, Alexa traffic rank, and age of the website.

Source: http://www.webconfs.com/link-value.php

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Domain Age Tool

Source: http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/6-domain-tools.html

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Del.icio.us - Social Bookmarker

Social bookmarking. One of the newest trends in SEO.

Source: http://del.icio.us

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What Makes SEO Important For Blog Writers

Even though you cannot be guaranteed that your blog will get to the top of Google or any of the other search engine results pages by using search engine optimisation (SEO), you can definitely be sure that it will help. The reality is that there are no guarantees but you want your article to have [...]No related posts.

Source: http://www.seo-leaders-online.co.za/seo/what-makes-seo-important-for-blog-writers/

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Search Results Compared

Search in all three major SEs at the same time and displays the results on a single page. Very useful when it comes about comparing top SERPs.

Source: http://www.yahoogooglemsn.com

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Yahoo-Google Search

gives you the top 100 Yahoo results and noting the Googles position on the side. After Yahoo top 100 it then shows the remaining Google results. Very nice!

Source: http://www.yahoo-watch.org/cgi-bin/proxy.htm

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Link Assistant's Rank Tracker - A Complete Review

Link Assistant's Rank Tracker Reviewed

Link Assistant offers SEO's a suite of tools, under an umbrella aptly named SEO Power Suite, which covers many aspects of an SEO campaign.

Link Assistant provides the following tools inside of their Power Suite:

• Rank Tracker - rank tracking software
• WebSite Auditor - on-page optimization tool
• SEO Spy Glass - competitive link research tool
• Link Assistant - their flagship link prospecting, management, and tracking tool

We'll be reviewing their popular Rank Tracking tool in this post. I've used their tools for awhile now and have no issue in recommending them. They also claim to have the following companies as clients:

• Disney
• Microsoft
• Audi
• HP

Rank Tracker is one of the more robust, fast, and reliable rank checking tools out there.

Is Rank Tracker a Worthy Investment?

Rank Tracker offers a few different pricing options:

• Free
• Pro
• Enterprise

All of the editions have the following features:

• Unlimited sites
• Unlimited keywords
• Customizable reports (you can only save and print with Enterprise level however, kind of a drawback in my opinion. Pro accounts should have this functionality)
• API key's
• Human search emulation built in
• User agent rotation
• Proxy support
• Proxy rotation
• Google analytics integration
• Multiple language support (English, German, Russian, French, Dutch, Spanish, Slovak)
• Runs on Windows, Mac, Linux

All editions offer access to their keyword research features, with all the features included, the only difference here is the free edition doesn't allow KEI updates.

Rank Tracker Feature Set

Rank Tracker offers a keyword research tool and a rank checking component within the application. A more thorough breakdown of the feature set is as follows:

Keyword Research

I prefer to do my keyword research outside of tools like this. Generally specific tools seem to excel at their chosen discipline, in this case rank checking, but fall kind of short in areas they try to add-on. I like to use a variety of tools when doing keyword research and it's easier for me, personally, to create and merge various spreadsheets and various data points rather than doing research inside of an application.

However, Rank Tracker does offer a one-stop shop for cumbersome research options like various search suggest methods and unique offerings like estimated traffic based on ranking #1 for that specified term.

Overall, a nice set of keyword research features if you want to add on to the research you've already done.

Rank Tracker also gives you the option to factor in data from Google Trends as well as through Google Analytics (see current ranking for each keyword and actual traffic).

Rank Checking

As this is the core piece tool it's really no surprise that this part of Rank Tracker shines. Some of the interesting options here are in the ability to track multiple Google search areas like images, videos, and places.

In addition to the interesting features I mentioned above, Rank Tracker also includes a wide array of charting and design options to help you work with your data more directly and in a clearer way:

Usability is Top Notch

While the interfaces aren't the prettiest, this is one of one most user-friendly rank tracking tools that I've come across.

First you simply enter the URL you wish to track. Rank Tracker will automatically find the page AND sub-domain on the domain ranking for the keywords chosen, so you don't have to enter these separately.

You enter the site you want to check (remember, subpages and subdomains are automatically included)

Choose from a whole host of engines and select universal search if you wish to factor in places taken up by Google insertions into the SERPS:

Enter your keywords:

Let Rank Tracker go to work: (you can choose to display the running tasks as line views or tree views, a minor visual preference)

That's all there is to it. It is extremely easy to get a project up and running inside of this tool.

Working with Rank Tracker

Inside of Rank Tracker the data is displayed clearly, in an easy to understand format:

In the top part you'll get to see:

• the keywords you selected
• current rank compared to last rank
• overall visibility (top rankings) in each search engine selected
• custom tags you might decide to choose to tag your keywords with for tracking purposes or something

On the bottom chart you'll see three options for the selected search engine (bottom) and keyword (top):

• ranking information for each search engine for the selected keyword
• historical records (last check date and position)
• progress graph (visual representation of rankings, customizable with sliders as shown in the picture)

The ranking chart shows the chart for the chosen keyword and search engine:

Within the ranking results page, you can select from these options to get a broader view of how your site is performing on the whole:

Customizing Rank Tracker

Inside of Rank Tracker's preferences you'll see the following options, most of which are self-explanatory:

This is where you can take advantage of some of their cooler features like:

• adding competitors to track
• adding in your Google Analytics account
• customizing your reporting templates
• changing up human emulation settings
• adding in a captcha service
• scheduling reports
• adding in multiple proxies to help with the speed of the tool as well as to prevent blocks

You can track up to 5 competitors per Rank Tracker profile (meaning, 5 competitors per one of your sites).

Key Configuration Options

Rank Tracker has a ton of options as you can see from the screenshot above. Some of the more important ones you'll want to pay attention to begin with their reporting options.

You'll want to set up your company information as shown here: (this is what will show on your reports)

On a per profile basis you can customize client-specific details likeso:

You can create new and modify existing templates for multiple report types here as well:

Emulation settings are important, you want to make sure you are set up so your requests look as normal and human as possible. It makes sense to check off the "visit search engine home page" option to help it appear more natural in addition to having delays between queries (again, to promote a natural approach to checking rankings/searching).

One thing that irks me about Rank Tracker is that they have emulation turned off by default. If you don't adjust your settings and you try and run a moderately sized report you'll get a Google automated ban in short order, so be careful!

In addition to emulation, search approach is also worthy of a bit of tinkering as well. Given how often Google inserts things like images, products, and videos into search results you might want to consider using universal search when checking rankings.

Also, the result depth is important. Going deep here can help identifying sites that have been torched rather than sites that simply fell outside the top 20 or 50. 100 is a good baseline as a default.

Successive search gives you a more accurate view as it manually goes page by page rather than grabbing 100 results at a time (double listings, as an example, can throw off the count when not using successive search)

Finally, another important option is scheduling. You can schedule emails, FTP uploads, and so on (as well as rank checks) from this options panel. Your machine does have to be on for this to work (not in sleep mode for instance). In my experience Rank Tracker has been pretty solid on this front, with respect to executing the tasks you tell it to execute (consistently).

Software versus Cloud

There are some strong, cloud based competitors to Rank Tracker. Our Rank Checker is a great solution for quick checks and for ongoing tracking if you do not need graphical charts and such (though, you can easily make those in excel if you need to).

Competitors and Options

Raven offers rank tracking as a part of their package and there are other cloud based services like Authority Labs (who actually power Raven's tools) you can look into if you want to avoid using software tools for rank checking.

There are some drawbacks to cloud-based rank tracking though. Some of them do not have granular date-based comparisons as they typically run on the provider's schedule rather than yours.

Also, most cloud rank checking solutions offer limits on how many keywords you can track. So if you are doing enterprise level rank checking it makes sense to use a software tool + a proxy service like Trusted Proxies

Pricing and Final Thoughts

Rank Tracker offers a generous discount if you grab all their tools in one bundle. If you want to customize, schedule, and print reports you'll need the enterprise edition.

I think requiring the purchase of your top tier for the basic functionality of printing reports is a mistake. I can see having that limitation on the free edition, but if you pay you should get access to reports.

You can find their bundle prices here and Rank Tracker's specific pricing here. Also, similar to competitors, they have an ongoing service plan which is required if you plan to continue to receive updates after the initial 6 months.

Despite my pricing concern regarding the reporting options, I think this is one of the top rank checkers out there. It has a ton of features and is very simple to use. I would recommend that you give this tool a shot if you are in the market for a robust rank checking solution. Oh I almost forgot, rank checking is still useful :)

One More Note of Caution

Be sure to read the below complaints about how unclear & sneaky the maintenance plan pricing is. This is something they should fix ASAP.

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seo tools

Source: http://www.seobook.com/link-assistants-rank-tracker-complete-review

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