geeky tutorials, tips, guides and reviews
Ever wonder how much your web site empire is worth? Well, mind is worth $9,530.88. How can somebody find that out? Just check out cubestat.com. Plug your URL into the lookup tool and they will analyze your web site to see how much you could ask for it, financially speaking.
Where Google used to be alone in giving you tools to see how they are indexing your web site, each of the three big search engines now have their own set of webmaster tools.
The newest kid on the block, Bing gives you access to keyword research tools, a robot.txt validator, and a HTTP verifier tool right out of the box. Once you get your site listed, you get details like your domain score, feedback on any crawl issues Bing might have had on your site, your top five pages and a lot more. I have to say, Microsoft really impressed me with their tool set.
Poor Yahoo!, does have a site explorer, and it does pay to sign up and list your web sites on it – just to confirm that Yahoo! is watching you. The problem is that they don’t offer much when it comes to tools you can really get much use out of. Also, why do they think I want a badge to show everybody how many people are linking to a page?
Google’s webmaster tools selection is still top dog as far as features and ease of use. They give you a wide selection of diagnostics tools, your top search queries, keywords, subscriber stats, and more. You can also add a new tab to iGoogle to get instant access to all the tools they provide right on your start page.
Which webmaster tools set does the best job? I think Google still wins hands down, however Bing’s selection of tools for webmasters is rather impressive. I am afraid though, that puts our friends at Yahoo! in third place. With that said though, I suggest you sign up for all three so that you can keep tabs on how well your site is being indexed in each.
Now we all want to get to the top of the search engines, as it has been drilled into our brains, we must to have a successful web site. However, I have found one service that just seems to make it a little too easy. Automatic Backlinks promises to be an easy and automatic way to exchange links between sites.
The best way I have found to summarize this would be you have a large number of web sites, and they are all exchanging links to each other – but not exactly ever between each other. One web site might link to another, but that doesn’t mean the “another” would link right back. They would be linking to a different one.
I don’t like it, and can’t recommend it. It seems like a big link exchange web site, and that type of service has been frowned upon via the search engine overlords before. You get more “link credit” to place more links on other people’s web sties depending on your Google PageRank. That alone should be enough for Google to hate it right there.
So stay clear of this one for right now, would be my best advice.
Now, no matter if you believe search engine optimization is a bunch of horse hockey or a real science, there is no doubt that there are a lot of great tools built to help you check into your SEO needs.
Here are some of the Web’s best tools for checking online popularity.
Have another search engine optimization popularity checker to add to the list? Drop in a comment and share with the group!
The main problem with content management systems (or sometimes referred to as CMS) is that many people find them complicated, too technical and way over their head. If your searching for an “every man” way of managing your content take a look at CushyCMS. A hosted CMS solution.
Hosted by them and edited on their servers, you can quickly create your content, with no worry about installing software or learning any programming languages. They say that your final product will be a standards compliant (and search engine friendly) masterpiece that can not be beat.
CushyCMS promises to be the easiest way to get a web site up in no time at all. I do have to say it is an interesting idea (and I wish them all the best). Curious to see how many people will turn to these types of solutions over your normal web hosting account and Joomla install for example?
There is no doubt in my mind that Internet marketing and search engine optimization are playing a larger and larger role in a webmaster’s life. A few years back, you would put up a web site and hope for the best. These days though, you must really study and learn several aspects of the marketing game if you want to stand a chance.
Marketing in general has really always excited me, so I thought it might be a good idea to talk with somebody who does this as their day to day business. Daryl Kennedy is the VP of Operations over at TechWyse Internet Marketing. When approached about the interview – my first thoughts were “Whoo hoo! Now I can pick the brain of somebody who really understands this Internet marking stuff” and I have to say I was not disappointed.
How did you find yourself in the Internet marketing world? Most people on the web want to get to the top themselves in popularity. You guys specialize in helping other people make a name for themselves.
Daryl: Getting into the Internet marketing world for myself was quite by accident. I have always been a resourceful person. I have always enjoyed efficiency and understanding new technology. After being in the business of developing web sites, I decided it would be far more resourceful to learn and understand the newer search engine phenomena then hit the streets cold calling which was far more traditional.
After studying search engines for about 6 months, I quickly found that by following search engine principles I could get our own company on the first page of Google, Yahoo! and MSN rather easily. Ironically, many other companies across North America and especially Toronto, Canada began noticing themselves! Since this was clearly a way for companies to begin to generate revenue they began asking me to help them in the same way.
While there are many approaches to Search Engine Optimization one can take, I have found that a few simple tips can help you keep your site ranking well with minimal effort. I will only focus on SEO related to your page structure and content in this article, for brevity.
Topic specific content: Place content on pages that is uniform. For instance, if you are a web host, create a full page just talking about dedicated hosting. This gives the specific page an edge over other companies who discuss all of their plans on one page (because of your higher percentage of topic-specific keywords). Continue Reading →
We all have a paranoid search engine optimizer inside of us, don’t we? From day to day we worry about making it to the top of the search engines and we’ll sell our liver for a better spot than the guy down the street. Before you wake up one day in a bathtub filled with ice – let me give you a few suggestions for good SEO friendly WordPress plugins.
SEO Title Tag – In a nutshell, this plugin allows you to edit your titles across the board with your WordPress plugins. If the Web page on your Web site has a title – this thing can help you edit it. I just noticed the other day this one was upgraded by leaps and bounds from the previous versions so if you haven’t tried it out before – do so today. It also supports the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin too.
Google Sitemap Generator – Some say that creating a Google sitemap is about as much fun as doing ninth grade algebra in a freezer filled with dead bodies. Ok, maybe that is a little extreme – but why should you do all that heavy lifting yourself? The Google Sitemap Generator gives you an easy one click way of creating and updating your sitemap for Google.
Ultimate Tag Warrior – No this one has nothing to do with that wrestler from the late 80s and early 90s. It is however the best tagging you can get for WordPress at the current date and time. Why add tags? It gives the search engines a few new ways to crawl through your content (as well as users) and gives you a few more places where you can rise to the top – if you have written enough good topics for a certain tag.
If you have several mildly successful Web sites, how can you gain even more attention and readers without doing much work? Well, one technique I have been doing since day one is self promotion. Think of it as loving yourself when nobody else wants to do so.
Learn to Love Yourself
Now we all put links back to our own Web sites and projects. There is nothing new or different about that advice. If you have several dynamic Web sites though, you can plug links in that will lead to real content and not just give you another link or two. Let me explain.
Thanks to a few WordPress plugins here and there, I have at the bottom of my three major Web sites links where you can find “other work” I have done. So if somebody was reading this for an example and thought, “Damn that Mitch is pretty cool, where can I find more of his work?” they have it right there for them.
Thanks to that and to me linking to my other projects – I bring more links into myself than anybody else on the Web. In a way, I guess you could think of me as my own little “network” of Web sites with each one promoting the next one in the circle.
No Super Tool To Help You Here
There is no special extension or super plugin that will help you make this happen. You just have to use a little imagination and the tools that are available to you. Remember you are giving your visitors just a little more content – not an advertisement.
Is there any special voodoo magic you must do before your Web page ranks at the top of Google?
Well I will give you a few quick tips, a few thoughts on the matter and my own ideas on how you should and could get to the top. Do you think there are too many Web hosts? Should we start getting rid of the small guys to make room for big business?
All that and oh so much more on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
