Posts Tagged ‘Search Tools and Resources’

A programmer by the name of Webmasterbrain has just put out a neat Firefox extension tool for SEOs.

“The SEO Links extension gives you tooltips specially enhanced for SEOs. When enabled, hovering any link in Firefox will show you Yahoo, MSN, and Google link popularity and ranking data for the URL and anchor text pair. For times you just want regular surfing and tooltips, the extension can be quickly toggled on and off in a single click.”

Check it out and see a screenshot of the tool in action.

Yahoo and MSN are working to bridge he gap between their two instant messengers making them compatible with each other. For years now Trellian has offered an instant messenger that integrates with other IMs, but this is a first time that the actual IM services have chosen to work together.

This is something that should have happened a long time ago. Imagine if your Sprint cell phone could only call other sprint customers. Or that your T-Mobile cell phone would not allow you to call your friends that use Verizon. We’d be carrying multiple cell phones just to be able to take calls from all our friends and family.

This is the mess that instant messengers have been in. Some people have messenger accounts for MSN, Yahoo, AOL, GoogleTalk and ICQ. Trellian had been about the only way to combine all of these into one service, but the downside to that was you had to register for an IM account at EACH one.

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A Cannadian search engine, Search for it has added a handy little tool to their arsenal. Search For It has “developed their own fraud-prevention technology for their advertisers.”

“Click fraud is an elusive problem for advertisers, and even industry experts disagree on the extent of the problem. Studies estimate that click fraud accounts for anywhere from 10 percent to 30 percent of all clicks.”

They call it “Fraud Print” and it runs a series of tests on the user’s computer’s electronic “fingerprint” to try to determine if the click was legitimate or not.

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I love analogies. I just thought of another one to describe search features such as Yahoo’s Instant Search and Google’s Suggest.

I think of it as walking into a library, asking for information on X and the librarian handing you a book and saying, here you go. Sure, the book may be just what you want, on the other hand, it might only provide you a fraction of what you need. Aren’t you better off being directed to the section of the library that contains dozens of book about your topic, rather than just one?

Recommendations are nice, but they should never be allowed to substitute the full spectrum of sources available.

PRESS RELEASE: Pole Position Marketing Releases Advanced ROI Calculator for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Online Marketing Clients.

Reno, Nevada September 1, 2005 – Pole Position Marketing (www.PolePositionMarketing.com), a leading provider of online marketing and search engine optimization solutions, has announced a major upgrade to its ROI (return on investment) calculator. The upgrade is designed to give their SEO clients greater leverage in tracking their online advertising campaigns.

An essential component to Pole Position Marketing’s client reporting suite, the ROI calculator now features comprehensive tracking capabilities that summarize expenses and results across a broad range of online campaigns including radio buys, sponsored ads and more.

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A recent study suggests that most SEO/Ms are not using the proper metrics for measuring their client’s online marketing campaigns.

[F]our out of 10 search marketers are being evaluated based on business goals, such as ROI or total sales generated. Instead, most marketers are being measured against intermediate metrics, like Web site traffic volume or top search engine ranking.

For years rankings and traffic have been the de facto measurement for online marketing campaigns, however that trend does seem to be changing. Obviously not quickly enough. While I think its impractical to get away from measuring rankings and/or traffic, those should not be the only measurements used to gage success.

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This article by Dave Davies is the first part in a two-part lesson on analyzing the competition in terms of search engine rankings.

The first part explains onsite factors while the sencond part will explain offsite factors such as PageRank.

“Onsite factors of your website are the easiest to address as they are factors which are under your complete control. You have the power to change anything within your site from the content, internal linking structure, and even the design structure itself.”

“In analyzing the titles and meta tags essentially you are looking for the optimal keyword density of those tags. A KDA tool will let you know what percentage of your competitions tags are made up of the targeted keywords.”

Wordtracker just released a keyword reasearch guide which is “a practical guide that features nine marketing experts as they advise a fictitious vegetarian dog food company.”

You can also download the whole report. It’s pretty interesting to read and there’s some tips on how to use Wordtracker and its advanced features. Check it out.

Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts explains how links, RSS feeds, and blogs help in search optimization. This is really kind of basic stuff, but it just helps emphasize how important these things are for rankings.

“The major search engines — Google, in particular — seem to love blogs, which are the personal or professional diaries that number in the millions online.”

“By providing one or more feeds on your Web site, you can get syndicated onto other sites that wish to use your content to augment their own. This will result in deep links into your pages of late-breaking content.”

Lil Waldner tells us “How To Test A Keyword For Success”. She explains the processes needed in order to find good quailty keywords that get traffic to your site. She also names some good, free tools you can use to find and test your keywords.

“You need to find out what people are looking for on your website. What are the relevant terms to search for the information or offers on a certain website?”

“You will create a list of keywords and you will need to test how popular and useful they are. You may use these keywords on your website, within the meta tags and in the description and keyword list of your submissions to directories and search engines. The internet offers some useful and free tools to test them. Testing keywords is recommendable.”