Search Engine Strategies

A Black Hat Debate

There was an interesting discussion about the difference between "Black Hat" and "white Hat" SEO, and how their meanings change over time. This led to talk about Google's place as the enforcer of rules.

What's Better: PPC or SEO?

If you've ever wondered whether you should focus your efforts on PPC or SEO, some experts looked at the pros and cons of both, which could help you in your decision. Of course using both is always an option, but does one fit your plan and budget better than the other?

Ranking In Real-Time Search

Real-time search has been the subject of much discussion throughout the industry in 2009. Now the year is almost over, and Google has finally introduced its version right into its regular search results. What does this mean and how can you optimize for it?

The Future Of Online PR

PR tools change over time, but the principles remain relatively consistent. In the age of social media, many PR professionals have discovered just that, and many more marketers continue to do so as time progresses. That said, PR must still evolve to utilize the evolution of tools and go where the people are.

Lessons from Political Social Media

Social media has changed politics. There's no question about it. The last U.S. Presidential election really highlighted it, but you can expect that every election from here on out will accentuate that point further. Dan Siroker, former Deputy New Media Director for the Obama Presidential Transition discussed the topic at the conference and pointed to five lessons that should be taken away.

Be Proactive to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content is one of those topics in search engine marketing that comes up over and over again. It never really goes away. Though Google has come right out and said that it doesn't exactly get you "penalized" in their search engine, there are still reasons it should generally be avoided in most cases (though there are exceptions). Experts discussed ways to better manage your content to avoid duplicate content issues.

Small Businesses And Social Media

The big companies often make social media look easy, but let's face it. Small businesses just don't have the same resources. That doesn't mean that small businesses can find a tremendous amount of benefit to using social media channels to connect with the customers and the general public. Need some advice?

Moving Beyond Google

There's no question that Google is a dominant force on the Internet. You can hardly ignore Google as a marketer or webmaster. Still, it's not the only thing people use on the Internet, and it's not the only way they find content, products, and sites. It shouldn't be your only area of focus. At SES, some tips on moving beyond Google were discussed.

How Marketers Can Find Success Via Search

Search is getting harder for marketers all the time. Search engines frequently change how they deliver results. Google has really driven this point home in the past week with the announcements of personalized and real-time search. Search marketers have to constantly adapt. Still, there are some things that never change. Experts discussed how marketers can find success with search in one session at the conference.

Optimizing for Mixed Media Search Results

One of the ways search is getting more challenging for marketers is the inclusion of mixed media search results like Google's Universal Search. Google sometimes delivers news search, image search, blog search, local search, and other kinds of results (now real-time results) in SERPs, and while this can be great for users, it also means less focus on organic search results. That means as a search marketer, you really can't ignore the mixed media result being pulled.

This is to aid SEO BONDS Followers.

Courtesy of  Chris Crum "Webpronews"

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SEO Ten Vital Factors

             Here's a compiled list of 10 vital things in SEO - from choosing an expert to instructing your web developer - that every marketer needs to consider when undertaking search engine optimization as part of their marketing mix.

1. Strategy First

             Please, don't ask for a full SEO proposal from an agency until you have set your strategy. Too often, agencies will respond with a full proposal, including lots of articles to be created, sites to be built and links to be implemented without a clear strategy.

Some sites are more straight forward but others are complex and would benefit from asking a couple of agencies to get involved at the research stage - ask them about the strengths and weaknesses of your site, what they think of your competitors, and what strategic approach they would take with your site.

            To get the best advice from this process, expect to pay the agencies involved. A small percentage of your online budget spent on good strategy will save you dollars in the long term. Even better, pay two agencies for a strategy recommendatíon and then choose the best one for your business!

2. Choosing a Consultant

           You need to work with someone who can communicate about SEO in plain English, someone who can take complicated ideas and techniques and turn them into something you can understand, then make a decision on - especially as there are often many possible solutions to choose from.

           Someone with experience in your vertical - such as travel, finance, retail - as well as several other verticals is important. An SEO consultant with experience across multiple types of business, as well as experience that is directly relevant to you will have better problem solving skills and more exposure to technologies. Experience in your sector will mean the consultant will be very helpful in defining your strategy, understanding terminology, and knowing what your competitors are doing.

3. Expectations

What are realistic expectations from your investment in SEO?

            Too often, we see marketers defining their keyword set or crazy goals for their site without any basis in how SEO really works. If you are a law firm, for example, and you want to rank highly for terms such as "lawyer", or "barrister", then you have to take into account that these are extremely popular and competitive terms. It might not be achievable, and even if it is, it's probably a very hard road to get there.

           Be open to advice when setting the goals for your website (which should be a part of the keyword research period of your SEO project). If you have a PPC campaign running first, you can use the keyword data from that campaign to gain an understanding of what is important for your website.

4. Using the Right Language

          Optimizing begins with keyword research that helps you understand the language your customers are using to find your products and services.

           Be realistic. It may sound obvious but, if the words your customers are using to search are not on your website pages, then you won't be found in the search engines for those words.

          Similarly, brand words and buzz words are all very nice in marketing, but if people aren't using those words to search, then again you won't be found.

          Be ready to change the language of your site. Be open to the idea of conforming your website to the language people use. Optimization is about including those words in the right areas of your pages (such as navigation, links, headings, meta tags and content) so the search engine sees all the right signals to understand what your site's pages should be ranked for.

5. Measurement

            Rankings are not the only measure of success! For many years, SEO firms have measured everything on rankings. However, we recommend using analytics similar to a PPC (paid) search campaign for a more comprehensive measure of success.

            Here is a simple description of how to do that: Take what you are spending on SEO and put it against traffic and conversions to work out cost per unique browser, cost per click and cost per conversion. It's best to analyze these over a period of six and/or twelve months to allow for any changes in SEO to come into effect. This is because the major difference between SEO and PPC is the implementation time - for SEO, the results will take months, rather than days.

6. Moving Variables

             There are so many moving variables in SEO that it would be impossible to find one person who knows everything! But a good SEO consultant is worth their weight in gold. Their value is not necessarily in the implementation, but in tapping into their experience to find the right implementation. One tiny piece of advice from them which may take 10 minutes to explain could be worth more than a copywriter producing numerous articles for your site each month.

7. One Agency or Two?
           

                 Some agencies have two separate teams working on SEO and PPC. Some marketers choose two completely different agencies to handle their SEO and PPC campaigns.

                 However, the two are very closely related and the results from one can be useful to the other. For instance, the keyword data from your PPC campaign can help with your SEO keyword research. On the flip side, optimizing pages for SEO will usually provide your PPC campaigns with a better quality score. When PPC and SEO listings are seen together on a search engine, they usually improve the click-through and conversion rates for both campaigns.

                They go hand in hand, and each can have a positive effect on the other if done well. And with one agency on both campaigns, they will have a greater depth of experience with your business, which can only help you to succeed.

8. Web Developers are not SEO Experts
            

                Finally, a word on expertise. Most web developers say they are experts in SEO. There is no doubting that many of them do a reasonable job, but they are not truly specialists in the area of SEO.

In the same way, I wouldn't recommend that an SEO specialist designs your website. They are specialist skills, which both contribute to the success of your business.

9. Use of Java Script

               Those pesky robots that the major search engines rely on to rank web pages have until recently imposed some limitations for web development. While useful code such as Java Script can make your website really functional - a simple example is a loan calculator, and many websites' navigation and links - and thus attractive to users, the robots often couldn't follow the code properly, and thus skipped over it. The major problem was that commonly, web developers didn't know that Java Script wasn't being read or followed by the robots.

              That has changed recently, with Google updating its technology so that the robots can read and follow Java Script. When the robots can follow a website's navigation and links properly, the SEO rankings are greatly influenced.

10. Flash

               Potentially any Flash file can now be indexed, according to Google, but it still depends on how that Flash site is constructed. Generally older Flash sites are not seen in the most effective way by the search engines, though it depends on the practices of the Flash developer. Many older Flash sites have overcome this problem by building an underlying version of the site in html - though this method too has its drawbacks.

               Flash sites need to be built like html sites, with multiple files that optimize each keyword. If you are building a new Flash site, be sure to consult with an SEO expert before the developer starts on the build.

About The Author

Gavin is one of Australia's leading search engine optimization experts having optimized hundreds of small to large websites over his 11 years in the industry and having worked at 3 large Australian publishers, his own home-based business and now as SEO Manager at dgm Australia. 

This is taken from a newsletter and can also be seen in WebProNews! 

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Google SEO Tools

             Some people, even at Google, still think that Google hates SEO. In some cases it really does. At the same time Google loves SEO as actions speak louder than words. Google provides not a few, not several but by now 10 free Google SEO tools everybody should use. I remember the times when we had none of them. Today we have an abundance of data Google allows us to mine.

            You know, I’m often quite critical of Google but when there is one thing the search giant does right then it’s the plethora of tools it offers. So here is the list of 10 free Google SEO tools everybody should use. Most of these SEO tools are good for keyword research and on page SEO. Please read to the end, I guess some of you won’t know all of them.

So, here are the 10 free Google SEO Tools Everybody should use.

Starting with......

1. Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster tools is the equivalent of a mechanic looking after you car daily but for websites of course. Identify broken links, malware and other issues and find out what search queries lead to your pages even with clickthrough statistics. It even checks your website speed and tells you why it’s too slow.

2. Google Analytics

In case you still don’t know GA you have probably slept for years. Some SEOs don’t use it due to paranoia of being controlled by Google though. You have to decide yourself what’s more important, a very useful analytics tools or the fact that Matt Cutts can look under your skirt.

3. Google Website Optimizer

With Google Website Optimizer you can test different versions of your pages. This way you can determine the best converting ones. It’s called A/B split testing or multivariate testing and is all the rage lately in SEO circles and beyond.

4. Google Zeitgeist

Google Zeitgeist is not a tool in the strictest sense but you can use it keyword research nonetheless. In fact it shows the most popular queries so it’s a good starting point in your SEO campaign. Take the Zeitgeist popular keywords and then test some keyphrases containing them with the other tools that will follow in this list. Also checkout the current Zeitgeist aka Hot Trends.

5. Google Trends

Google Trends lets you compare traffic for popular search terms and websites. This way you can determine whether a topic is rising in popularity or not. Works gret combined with Google Zeitgeist and Google Insight for Search

6. Google Insights for Search

Insights for Search is like Google Trends on steroids. You can look up most keywords here, even those that aren’t popular at all. Compare up to five keywords and their ensuing traffic.

7. Google Traffic Estimator

This is a classic tool. It says “Adwords” but you can use it to find out the probably number visitors a keyword can bring to your site.

8. Google Keyword Tool

The Keyword Tool is like the Traffic Estimator but from a differnet angle. Some people prefer this others prefer that. You’ll want to check both to make sure you’re on the right track with your keywords.

9. Google Search Based Keyword Tool

This very neat tool allowas you to find out related keywords to a site or existing keyword or rather both. It’s connected to Google Insights for Search is a very useful way.

10. Google Ad Planner

Google Ad Planner is like Alexa and SpyFu in one. Use it to screen popular sites or your competitors for keyword intelligence or both.

While using theses tools remember to take the numbers with a grain of salt, they are never completely accurate but in many cases thy are the best numbers we can get. As you can see Google facilitates both keyword research and on page SEO. We get even some assistance with link building by Webmaster Tools.

So does Google hate SEO? Maybe some engineers are rooted in the past or prefer prejudice over judgment but based on the tools Google works together with webmasters and SEOs the best it can. Don’t ignore the tools Google offers. You lose money right now when you do.

On a side note: Guess what the Google Search Based Keyword Tool suggest me when I add my site onreact.com and SEO? The first result is: Google SEO tools. This is just coincidence, I didn’t check the tool to get inspired to this article but the other way around. So in a way Google knows what I will think next.

This blog post is taken from Gunakesh Parmar
Original Link track: http://seoglory.ning.com/profile/GunakeshParmar

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Firefox SEO Tools

SEO Quake

If I had to lose all but one of my SEO tools - this would be the one I'd keep which is why it gets listed first. This little tool allows me to quickly look at the top 10 results in the SERPs and within seconds see all the PageRank, indexed page numbers, backlinks to that page, domain backlinks, the age of the site and much, much more.

This tool doesn't provide any revolutionary information in that it's all data that can be accessed directly. However, it reduces the time taken for tasks that would take minutes to seconds. It then provides easy links to more detailed information. A fantastic tool.

Oh, and it also adds a line through all nofollowed links. Very handy when link building.

SEO for Firefox

Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has added a great tool to the mix that duplicates a lot of functions of SEO Quake but which has enough additional features to be very useful. Basically - neither is a replacement for the other.

SEO Link Analysis

A HUGE thumbs way up (two of them in fact) to Joost de Valk who made all our lives simpler when this tool launched. What this tool does is display the PageRank and anchor text of every link when you perform a backlink check on one of the major engines. I suppose you could visit every single site and get this information yourself and there's value in that to be sure, but when you need a quick analysis of a site's backlinks - this tool is invaluable.

As a sidenote – it works VERY well with SEO Quake.

Web Developer

With this tool we're getting a bit more advanced. For those of you who understand coding or are learning (and you should be), this tool is incredible. It allows for quick testing and viewing of a site's structure including, image info, table and cell information, W3C compliance, CSS details and MUCH, MUCH more.

I can't possibly list off all the functions this tool offers and admittedly I don't use them all but I use enough of them regularly for this tool to make my top 10 list.

IE Tab

This is an odd tool to add and it's purely a convenience tool but like adding a second monitor to your system - once you have it and realize that it saves you just a few seconds dozens of times per day you quickly realize that your productivity relies on it.

With a simple click of a button, this tool loads Internet Explorer into your Firefox tab so you don't have to go back-and-forth between browsers when testing. I could survive without it, but since you have Firefox anyways...

Search Status

This is another tool with many uses. On the surface it simply displays PageRank, Alexa and Compete rank and mozRank data but with a right-click of the icon you get access to a whole slew of additional information, including fast links to whois, the robots and sitemap files, keyword density information, Archive.org info, and it will even highlight nofollow links.

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Best SEO Keyword Tools

Here are some of the key tools you need to use to help insure the successful optimization of your website.

Google Keyword Tool

Many of you are likely familiar with Google's keyword tool, but it needs to be noted. This is a great resource for researching keywords. As with all keyword tools, it has its limitations and most would agree that it seems to overestimate search volume but nonetheless it is probably the best of the keyword tools out there, especially at the price.

Keyword Discovery

No individual set of data is perfect and no stage of the SEO process is more important than keyword research and selection. Keyword Discovery is a great tool to compare with the Google keyword data. Where you find commonalities you know that 2 independent sets of data agree. With a free tríal that may itself work for many - it's certainly worth looking into.

Keyword Spy

While the paid version of this tool is more than the $100/yr. max I noted previously - the free version provides some great data. Simply enter a competitor URL and you'll find out some valuable data about the keywords they rank for both organically and in AdWords. This is great for competitor analysis as well as for finding keywords you might not have thought of.

Xenu Link Sleuth

A fantastic free tool that crawls websites, reporting back all the broken links. Over time, almost all sites get broken links. Running this tool periodically will help you find them so you can fix them.

Google Webmaster Tools

Arguably one of the most important of the SEO tools. Google Webmaster Tools allows webmasters (and SEO's of course) to see their website the way Google does. With this tool you'll get to see what your site is appearing for in the results, what pages on your site are linked to but don't exist, and a wide array of errors and statistics.

Page Prowler

Page Prowler is a backlink research tool that allows the user to collect large amounts of potential backlink information, sort that data by site strength, and then proceed to pursue those backlinks. The value of this tool is primarily in the time it saves. It has no function that could not be done manually, but it can compile data that would otherwise take a person hours or days to collect quickly and easily.

Full disclosure – Shawn (the developer) asked me to advise on the development of this link building tool and I'm also assisting in it's marketing. I was extremely impressed with Shawn's first version of PR Prowler which includes some great functions and information. I felt the need to note this, but I'll also note that we at Beanstalk use this tool regularly. I would not include it here if it didn't deserve to be and I'd include it here if I had nothing to do with it other than my using it.

Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking is probably the most affordable of the better rank checking software programs. It has a ton of great features including scheduling and auto-report generation. You can set the searches to take place slowly to reduce the impact on the search engines. I still recommend to run it in the evening to further minimize your impact during high-volume search periods.

Multiple Keyword Rack-Checking Tool

This is probably one of the most popular tools on the Beanstalk site. One of the pet peeves I always had with online rank checking tools was checking rankings one-at-a-time. This tool allows you to check your rankings on Google ten at a time. Apparently others agree as it's the most used tool of our set.

136 SEO Tools

While we've tried to include a solid set of very affordable tools in this article, you might find value in tools we don't use. The "136 SEO Tools" page is regularly updated and includes some very interesting (though not part of my daily arsenal) tools. Highly recommended to visit at least once. I have it in my bookmarks and check back every couple months to see what new tools have been added.

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Effective Link Building Methods

   

    "Link building is the process of building backlinks to your site. More backlinks (link form other sites to your site) a site has, higher it ranks on the search engines. Link building therefore is a mission of all money making webmasters."

Link building methods have changed form time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today anymore. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore.

It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way.

There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today's popular links building methods that work to some extent:

Article Submission

If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your own article in article directories. Not only do you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you will get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There might be many reading your published articles as well.

Article submission is a great way of building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.

Directory Submission

Directory submission used to work lot better before but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many directories are out there as of this date is anyone's guess but one thing is certain: that most of the directories aren't worth submitting to.

Google considers a Yahoo Directory link as a quality backlink so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submitting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no guarantee that your site will be approved!

DMOZ is another directory that is worth submitting to and can come to great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval form DMOZ and the chance of getting approved is pretty slim. Lot of small directories use DMOZ directory categories so getting listed with DMOZ would mean getting bonus listing on many other web directories.

Another good directory to submit to would be BOTW directory that cost $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing.

Other than the above ones, you should look for quality directories where you can submit your site. You can judge the quality of the directories by analyzing the number of sites listed, number of backlinks the directory has, PR, age of the directory, etc.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking worked like charm only a few months ago. If bookmarked on authority and quality bookmarking site like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc, then you can still make good use of social bookmarking. Other than backlinks, social bookmarking also offers you some bonus traffic depending on where you submit to. If you can manage to put together or collect a good bookmarking site list, then social bookmarking can still be a useful link building method.

Blog Commenting

This is a link building method where lots of spamming have already been done so to make the best of it, you need to work a little harder here. It is best to find quality blogs related to your own category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only do your comments add value to the blogpost, you now have a greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blogposts.

Press Releases

Submitting to press release sites can get you some backlinks as well. It is however hard to put together a list of good press release sites that's worth submitting to. If a good list can be managed, then this method can offer some quality relevant backlinks as well.

Social Media and Web 2.0 Pages

There are a lot of quality social media and Web 2.0 sites where you can publish your articles for backlinks. You should write articles that are relevant to your site and publish them on these social media and Web 2.0 sites with your keywords hyperlinked to your own site. Some of the authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, Wordpress.com, etc.

Social media and Web 2.0 links are very popular these days as they work great. They offer quality relevant contextual backlinks that Google and other major search engines love. There are lots of other link building methods out there but if you can utilize the above ones to their fullest potential, there is no need for any other methods.

For more information on Link Building and to learn on outsourcing your link building campaign, visit this Link Building Service site.

 -

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The Battle for Search

     

    Bing unveiled new and improved tools like Wolfram Alpha integration, Facebook Previews and full-page weather reports. Then Google hit back with enhanced movie listings and yet safer SafeSearch. Before that Bing unveiled an overhauled maps interface, the next day Google announced Street View was now available in all fifty states. Last month during the Web 2.0 Summit, the two search engines sent out competing press releases bragging about Twitter integration, and on and on it goes.

    Google may be the leading search engine, but Bing is doing its best to push its way up the popularity charts.

It's nothing new to try and suck the life out of a competitor's product by making a competing major announcement around the same time. Palm and Sprint tried to do that to Apple with the launch of the Palm Pre. Not to mention that Google Wave launched on May 28, the same day that Bing made its debut. But lately, the battle between Google and Bing is getting to be like a tennis match that never ends, just a constant rally back and forth as each side tries to outmaneuver the other.

    Look at Wednesday: Bing announces some interesting new features that integrate the computational power of Wolfram Alpha into its search results. As an added bonus, Bing gets limited Facebook integration and tweaks its weather results.

    How does Google respond? An announcement about tweaked movie searches, and password protection for your SafeSearch settings--Google's filter for explicit content. Improved SafeSearch is worth talking about and likely a welcome improvement, but the Google Movies announcement looks like a desperate plea to prove that Google can be just as consumer oriented as Bing.

    Although competing announcements can get a little tiring, there's a lot to love about the heavy competition in the search market. Google and Microsoft realize that search is where the online money is, which is why they spend so much time on new features and products that will keep you coming back for more. Increased competition could lead to helpful technologies emerging like improved semantic search, hyper local features, voice activated search on your PC and who know what else?

    It's an exciting future for search--I can't believe I just said that--and Google and Bing are working hard to deliver the latest and greatest features to their loyal users. I just hope they don't lose focus on basic things like filtering search spam and phishing detection in the rush to deliver new features before the other guy does.

Bing Vs Google

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Google's New Ranking Factors

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's "Next Generation" search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages on the wonderful world wide web. According to all indications, this is not just another one of Google's infamous Updates, but a major "Overhaul" of its index and algorithm, the complex formula and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages, including yours.

This post is from Titus Hoskins of Free Marketing Tools & Internet Marketing Tools.

If that doesn't sound ominous enough, according to Matt Cutts (Google Spokesperson) one database is already showing Google Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the holidays. The reasoning behind this, Google doesn't want to upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come around this time of the year, most notably the "Florida Update" which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.

Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how it indexes its pages. This time around, webmasters were even given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released last summer ('09) where webmasters could check to see how well their keywords and site would fare in this new search index. This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down by Google.

Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google's new search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have observed, but please be aware it is often very foolish to draw conclusions and make predictions from your own small sampling of results. You can end up with egg on your face very quickly, especially when you consider Google is probably still making adjustments and refinements on Caffeine as it analyzes the results.

However, there are certain ranking factors that even Google is telling us about, mainly "Site Speed" or how fast your site loads will play a part in how it's ranked. We have also heard a lot about "Broken Links" and if your page or site has them, then it will probably be ranked lower. Of course, linking out to "Bad Neighborhoods" will probably still not be a good practice if you want higher rankings within Google.

It should not come as a shock or a surprise, that "Over-All Page Quality" will play a greater role in how well your page ranks. Keep in mind, Google is like any other company putting out a product, if that product doesn't have a high standard of quality, it reflects badly back on everyone concerned. Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is the key to all their online revenue, they must do everything in their power to keep that product fast, relevant, current and above all, something of high quality.

Therefore, expect "OnPage Factors" to play a much greater role in Google Caffeine. Quality unique content, page design, good navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. A perfectly optimized keyworded page, with the keyword in the title, description, meta tags, alt tags, on the page... will probably get you ranked higher in Caffeine, as well as most search engines on the web.

This may be pure speculation on my part, but one of the areas Caffeine will be addressing or incorporating is "Social BookMarking", that is the number of social bookmarks a page receives will determine how high it is ranked. I also believe one of the major reasons these bookmarks will become much more important has to do with the whole nasty issue of link buying.

Now, the integrity of Google's index is not in question, but any savvy marketer or webmaster knows any individual or company with deep pockets and huge resources can buy their way into the top spot. Despite Google's attempt to stop it, link buying and keyword positioning is a thriving industry on the web. Rightly or wrongly, money and unlimited resources will get you or your company to the top in organic search, regardless of which search engine you're targeting.

All moral and ethnical issues aside, the small webmaster and/or online marketer is stuck right in the middle, with Google on one side and these major multinational competitors on the other. Looming on the horizon is Google Caffeine, a new sheriff in town!

What new rules will this sheriff bring?

The major question here is this: has the importance of backlinking been downplayed in this new index in favor of the keyworded domain and onsite content and optimization? Has there been a major shift to listing more quality content rather than relying on the number of backlinks a site is receiving, even from important related themed sites? The major problem and question to Google is this: if links can be bought, how do you keep your organic results democratic and fair, which was the original intention of Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they started Google in 1998.

One possible solution is social bookmarking.

Will we see an ever growing importance of social bookmarks and links in this new index. It is quite easy to buy 1000 links, but getting 1000 or 10,000 "re-tweets" is a little more difficult, similarly getting two or three thousand "diggs" may be a little harder to pull off. Same goes for Del.icio.us bookmarks, Facebook fans... well you get the picture. Will Google's use of these new social sites make Caffeine faster, more relevant, more current and most importantly of all, can it bring some democracy back into their index?

Of course, nothing in Google's new index will be that cut and dry, that black and white. Other ranking factors such as age of site, past history and reputation, traffic numbers, authority branding... will all play a role in whether your site gets listed on that all important first page. However, on page factors may play a greater role - title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. Website speed or how fast your site loads may also be a new ranking factor.

Underlying this whole issue is the fact which many experienced webmasters/marketers already know, Google's SERPs is not a one-trick pony anymore. For very lucrative (monetized) keyword phrases, Google's results are broken up into Five categories... Info listings, Video listings, News Listings, Shopping Listings and Corporate Listings. Forget Caffeine, this is probably the fairest move Google has made in the last few years to make its SERPs more democratic.

Another even more puzzling issue for me concerning Google Caffeine is how much emphasis or ranking power will it place on "Keyworded Domains", domain names which have your keyword or keyword phrase in them. Will these domains be ranked higher? Webmasters and marketers for years have been telling us we should always pick domain names which have our major keywords in them. Just common sense really, someone searching for "brown widgets" will more likely than not find that item at a domain called brownwidgets(dot)com or brownwidget(dot)com. The major SEO reasoning, all your backlinks will inherently have your searched keyword in the URL, thus bringing it up in the rankings. Against this whole backdrop, everyone has to realize the web itself is evolving, new sites like Twitter, FaceBook... have changed the whole cyber landscape. Likewise, the web user is also changing and becoming more web savvy in how they use the web. Will search engines, not only Google, take a back-seat role in how we find stuff on the web? As major sites are branded into the web user's psyche, will these users go directly to these sites, by-passing the search engines altogether? As the web evolves, keyworded domains will become more valuable and this value will be reflected in the quality of the site. If you're making thousands or even millions from your keyworded domain, you can afford to invest in quality content and design. Cream rises to the top. Gradually, as these domains become more valuable, they will probably be snapped up by marketers and companies who know just how to exploit them. Thousands upon thousands of keyworded domains will probably be bought up by multi-billion dollar corporations who finally realize what the web has to offer. This new evolved web will probably be much more narrower in scope and very topic specific. In the "next generation" web the re-direct shall be king! Will the role of the search engines, whether it be Google or Bing/Yahoo, become less and less important, as savvy web searchers go directly to a site by typing in the keyworded domain to find what they're looking for on the web? Cutting out the middleman may just become a world wide passion as big multinational and fully funded corporations snap up all these valuable and lucrative keyworded domains, will we see these domains grow in importance and the search engines take more of a back-up role? Human nature dictates we always take the fastest route to our destination, and the web will be no exception to this rule. Have all the smart people at Google figured this out already, and designed the new Google Caffeine to reflect the growing importance of the keyworded domain? Of course, we can only speculate when it comes to just what Google is planning and doing with its next generation search engine, but will onsite factors and your domain name play a greater role in their organic SERPs? Regardless of what the new sheriff actually does, when the dust finally settles on all these latest developments, the keyworded domain will probably be standing tall, watching the sun rise on a brand new day. About the Author: Titus Hoskins is a full time online affiliate marketer. His livelihood is derived from & depended upon search engine marketing & daily monitoring of targeted keywords, mainly within Google. He runs numerous sites, including: Free Marketing Tools & Internet Marketing Tools.

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Google SEO Rules

1. Is there any fixed rule for Google as far as SEO is concerned? If so, what are the steps?

If only! There are no fixed rules because every website is different and has different needs. There are basic things that all websites need to do in order to improve their chances of showing up in Google search results for relevant phrases, but no magic formula.

See "The Art of SEO" article for more on this.

2. Do the following play important roles in website page ranking and positioning?

    • PR

Yes, real PageRank (PR), the kind that only Google knows about plays a very large part in websites showing up (or not) for search queries that are relevant to it. But toolbar PageRank is another matter entirely. What you see there doesn't correlate very well to where your page will show up in the search results.

See: "Getting Into Google" (Scroll down to the "Google Still Loves Its PageRank" part.)

    • The number of incoming links

Not so much in and of itself. Real PR, as mentioned above, is calculated not only on the number of links, but also on the quality of those links. A handful of links from authoritative, trustworthy, relevant pages should far outweigh hundreds of links from so-so sites.

See the High Rankings Link Building Forum.

    • Keyword density

Not in that there's some special percentage that you need to aim for. Certainly it's helpful to have the keyword phrases that you'd like to show up being used within the content of your page. But that's just common sense, if you ask me. Surely, if your page is about a certain something (your keyword phrase), how could that phrase NOT be on the page?

See the various threads on keyword density on the High Rankings Forum.

• Page response time

This is important only because if it takes too long to load, it might not be properly (or completely) indexed.

    • Bounce rate

It's doubtful that this matters, because there's no way for Google to know the bounce rate of every site. And it wouldn't be fair for them to only count the bounce rates of those sites that have Google Analytics installed, so my guess is that this is not a factor.

See various High Rankings forum threads.

    • Time on site

Like the above answer, they don't know this number unless the site has Google Analytics installed. That said, they may sometimes incorporate the old trick of seeing if a searcher clicks to another site in the search results after clicking one result, and how long it took them to click another. In other words, if they find that lots of people who clicked to one site in the search engine results pages (SERPs) always end up back at Google to try another site, then perhaps that first site wasn't a great answer to the search query after all.

    • Domain page / Page age

From what I can tell, this can often be a factor. But it doesn't seem to be as prominent a factor as it was a few years ago.

3. Is there any special technique for content writing?

There's no special technique, but I highly suggest hiring a professional marketing copywriter. You will see a positive return on your investment very quickly if you do. In addition, the tried and true SEO copyediting techniques in my "Nitty-gritty of Writing for Search Engines" may come in handy if you're not sure how to integrate your keyword phrases into your professionally written content.  

4. Should we cater to code-to-text ratio while developing websites?

There's not one shred of evidence that this would have an effect on where a page would show up in the search results for a relevant search query.

5. If active scripting is a must for webpage development, how harmful can it be for PageRank and positions?

It's typically not harmful at all because it's usually done before a browser (or search engine spider) sees a page. To users and search engines, your dynamically generated pages are just static HTML by the time they get to them. Still, not all dynamically generated pages are created equal. There are some ways of developing your site that are less search friendly than others. For example, some JavaScript menus, some AJAX, etc.

See "Diagnosing the SEO Health of Your Website".

6. If a webpage is ranking top for a specific keyword, if we make textual changes in that webpage, is there any chance that we lose the rankings?

Any changes you make to a page's content can affect how relevant the search engines believe it to be for any particular search query. That doesn't mean it definitely will change the search results, but it could. The only way to know is to try it and see. Usually, if you're rewriting your page to be more useful to your site visitors and you don't remove all the instances of the keyword phrase, you should be fine. Because nothing is permanent with SEO, if you don't like what you see you can tweak it until you do.

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Link Building Tips

Find Relevant Links

The first thing you must do when you begin your quest to build links to your website is find relevant websites that will link to you.

How I classify a relevant link is this: the page where your link will appear either mentions your keyword or a synonym to that keyword.

As of right now, it does not appear that Google, Yahoo and MSN are using relevancy in their ranking algorithms but, trust me, they soon will.

So why not start preparing for the coming changes now? Then when the changes are made, you will be ahead of everyone else – and your rankings will show it!

Here are some more reasons to start building relevant links now:
1. You may actually receive traffic from those links if they are related to the theme of the site they are on.
2. In the future, these links will be viewed by the search engines as more valuable and will make your web pages appear more relevant for your target search terms.

Anchor Text Variety

Non Natural Anchor Text

The anchor text is the readable portion of the text that is usually underlined and in blue. Here is the html:
Job Search

The portion that says “Golf Clubs” is the anchor text. This is important because this anchor text is how the search engines determine relevance for search terms. So if I want to rank for “Golf Clubs,” I would need to obtain some links with this in the anchor text.

Now this is where some people get carried away and shoot themselves in the foot.
You see, many people go out and get 1,000 links all with the exact same anchor text. The problem is that this would not occur naturally. If you were to analyze the backlinks for some of your competitors, I am sure you would find that their backlink anchor text is not 100% pure.

They might have “click here” or “http://jobsadvisor.instantspot.com/blog”, etc. It looks very suspicious to the search engines if your anchor text is all exactly the same.

Natural Anchor Text Linking

In order to appear natural you need to ensure you build links using a variety of anchor text. Don’t be afraid to junk up your anchor text a bit. You may find it actually helps you in your rankings ☺
I would recommend you use your top target keywords as anchor text using some variations with other keyword phrases. Also, throw in some “click here” and some “www.mydomain.com” … this will ensure your links look natural.

In fact, you should come up with a list of anchor text variations that you can rotate through for each of your site’s pages. This will ensure your link portfolio looks as natural as possible to the search engines.

Deep Linking

Non Natural Inbound Linking (100% of the links go to the home page)
This is an important tip and could be the difference between success and failure of your newly launched site(s).

Deep links are links to internal pages of your website. Most people will aggressively build links only to their homepage … but this is definitely not the most natural looking linking profile.
Instead, I would recommend you split you inbound links between your home page and your internal pages.
You should still have about 50% or so of the links point to the homepage, but spread the other links out across your other pages.

Natural Inbound Linking

This has a couple of benefits.
• This will result in your site getting deeply spidered which in turn will cause the search engines to find and index more pages faster.
• You will also start to notice that your internal pages will begin to rank better for their target keywords.
• I believe if you do this on newly launched sites you can keep yourself out of the “Google sandbox.”

Unique IP Addresses

Non Natural Linking from single IP address

Every website is assigned to an IP address. An IP address can also be thought of as the equivalent of a street address or a phone number for a computer or other network device on the Internet.

Just as each street address and phone number uniquely identifies a building or telephone, an IP address can uniquely identify a specific server or a website.
Here is an example IP Address:

123.456.789.000
A Block: 123
B Block: 456
C Block: 789
D Block: 000

Natural Linking from various IP Addresses
When building your links you want to ensure you get links from a variety of IP sources, this will ensure you have the most natural looking backlink portfolio.

This may sound like a simple tip, but getting site wide links from a high PR website is not a good idea for this reason. You may get 1,000’s of links, but they are all from the same IP and will in short order hurt your rankings instead of improve them. This of course is mostly in Google, MSN may still give you some love.

Link Building Velocity

One of the things that I learned from reading the Google Patent is that Google pays attention to the speed at which you aquire your links.

This is why it is highly recommended that you build your links slowly and at a consistent velocity, or speed. The reason to do this is because a site that is naturally popular will consistently gain new links just from people wanting to share what they have found.

In order to duplicate this, we must resist what can be a very strong urge to acquire as many links as we can as fast as we can.

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Online Link Building Tools

This Tools page has links to the best Link Building related Tools on the internet and these tools will help you check your website periodically and how your links are performing with respect to search engines.

	Backlink Tools
		Backlink Checker Tools
			Anchor Text Backlink Check Tool
			Backlink Checker
			Backlink Checker
		Backlink Analyzer
			Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer
			IP C Class Backlink Analyzer Tool
			Backlink Analyzer Tool
			C Class Backlink Analyzer
	Link Exchange Tools
			Online Free Reciprocal Link Checker
			Site Link Analyzer
	Link Popularity Tools
			Link Popularity Checker
			Link Popularity Check Tool
			Link Popularity
	Text Link Ad Value Tools
			Keyword Difficulty Tool
			Link Value
			Link Price Calculator
	Page Rank Checker
			Page Rank Tool
			Datacenter Quick Check
			PageRank Search
			Page Rank Checker
			Bulk Page Rank Checker
	Alexa Tools
			Alexa Page Ranking
			Alexa Traffic Ranking
			Alexa Rank Tool
			Alexa Rank Comparison Tool
	Compare Search Engine Ranking
			Dogpile Search Comparison
			Thumbshots Ranking
			Myriad Search
			Google vs Yahoo

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Webmaster's SEO Tools

Backlink Builder This tools help you build a LOT of quality backlinks, it searches for websites of the theme you specify that contain keyphrases like "Add link", "Add site", "Add URL", "Add URL", "Submit URL" etc. Most of the results could be potential backlinks.

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BackLink Checker  Backlink Checker will check from where you are getting all your backlinks, whats the PR of the page, if that has nofollow tag and how many outbound links it has. Great Too!
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The Neat-O-Backlink Tool This tool is to check your backlinks and the anchor text used in those backlinks.
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Search Engine Positioning Enter URL/Keyword - Displays top 100 for 5 Search Engines. This will tell you exactly what page are your site in Google, MSN, Yahoo,etc.

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Adword Keyword Generator Combine words script with stemming for PPC systems.
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Link Popularity Checker Lists inbound links from 7 search engines & provides history.
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SEO Links Extention  A totally new and smart way to check SEO stats while you surf
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Sitescore Sitescore is a free tool which rates how well designed, popular and accessible your website is.

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Search Engine Ranking Report Input key phrase list & get Google & Yahoo Rankings.
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SEO TEST This test is a preview version of our SEO Doc tool. Input your URL and keyword and the tool will check your page optimization.

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Free Website Submission Submission script will submit your website URL to 20+ top search engines for free, including Google
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Config Security and Firewall CSF is  SPI iptables firewall that is comprehensive, straight-forward, easy and flexible to configure and secure with more checks to ensure smooth operation.
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Fake Page Rank Checker Analyze if the Pagerank of a website is Valid or not with other information like number of backlinks, indexed pages, alexa ranking etc.

Is your IP Blacklisted Great tool to check if your IP / Domain / Mail server etc. is Blacklisted.
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Free Blacklist Monitoring Blacklist monitoring:  Email alerts if your server shows up on any of 150 email blacklists
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Check for No Follow  This is one of the very important tool in the industry. This tool helps you to check " No Follow " tag.
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Keyword Forecasting Tool by MSN Adsence  Tools has following features : Number of searched over the past year, A forecast of number of searches in the coming months, Keyword age distribution, Keyword gender distribution
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Google "Supplemental Results" Identifier  A supplemental result is just like a regular web result, except that it's pulled from our supplemental index.
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Page Strength  The tool is designed to satisfy the curiosity of webmasters, surfers and web marketing professionals seeking a better metric to quickly assess a site/page's relative importance and visibility.
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Google Trends  Google Trends allows a user to compare among two to five keywords with respect to how many times users have searched, and how many times such have appeared on news items, as keywords and topics.
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Top Ten Analysis SEO Tool  Top 10 Analysis SEO Tool: For a search phrase, finds the top 10 results (and your URL) in Google, and for each of those sites, finds Yahoo rank, MSN rank, number of pages indexed, backlinks (page/domain/.edu), alexa traffic rank, allinanchor rank, age of the domain (whois), age of the domain (wayback machine), a count of the search phrase on each page, and a link to find related pages in google.
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Link Suggestion Tool Use this link popularity suggestion tool to find possible pages

from where you can get a link to your page .
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Google Datacenters Popularity Checker Tool This free seotool will show how many links are pointed to your website on different Google datacenters .
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Page Rank Decoder The PageRank Decoder allows you to visually see how Google factors PageRank based off of link structure. Be sure to view the Demo first.
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Search Engine Decoder  Search Engine Decoder.

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Visual PageRank  The Visual PageRank - Tool shows all links and there corresponding PageRanks.
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Bulk Google Page Rank Checker Tool Bulk Google Page Rank Checker Too, check up to 25 link at one time.

Top Competitor Tool This tool shows the top domains for a particular keyword in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
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Live Page Rank Live Page Rank Update.
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Alexaholic Alexaholic blends Alexa website traffic graphs with a lightweight ajax-enhanced interface to satisfy hard-core Alexa traffic chart junkies – aka Alexaholics.
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Sandbox Detection Run this tool to determine if your site is in the sandbox
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Google Analytics Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. Focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors.
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Link Value This tool calculates the link value per month of a given website.

This value can be used for your decision you should purchase a link on that page.
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Cloaking Detector This tool simulates the Googlebot (based on User-Agent) to detect cloaked content.
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Pagerank Script for your website Page Rank Script of Google and Alexa Ranking for your website.,
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Website Analyzer The Website Analyzer's Keyword Density allow you to quickly determine the correct keyword density mix on the top scoring pages using spider technology similar to the search engines.
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Google vs Yahoo Graph Graphic display of top 50 in Google & Yahoo linked.
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Keyword Density Analyzer Enter URL, determines density of 1, 2, and 3 word phrases.
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Multi DC PageRank Checker Check PR values across all Google datacenters.
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Retrieve SERPs Google datacenter SERP checker.

Kontera Ads Preview

This tool allows you to preview Kontera Ads on your website.
Kontera is considered as one of the good alternatives to google adsense.
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Page Strength The tool is designed to satisfy the curiosity of webmasters, surfers and web marketing professionals seeking a better metric to quickly assess a site/page's relative importance and visibility.
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IP Location Lookup This is not an SEO tool, but is very useful in determining the geographic location of an IP address using a bit of AJAX and Google Maps.
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Keyword Difficulty Used to analyze the competitive landscape of a particular search term or phrase, this tool issues a percentage score and provides a detailed analysis of the top ranking sites at google and Yahoo.
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Strongest Subpages Tool This tool will find 30 of the strongest subpages of the domain entered, and will show how many other sites are linking to those pages.
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Deep Link Ratio Tool This tool was created to analyze how the deep link ratio of a site affects its rank in search engines. We can use this tool to compare the DLRs for the best ranking sites for a search phrase.
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Speed Tester This tool shows the duration of a given website.
This value can be used for showing how long a website take to load and
if it is better to optimize the website or change a (slow) ISP.
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Alexa Page Ranking Cut & Paste or browse file for domain list - Displays Alexa Ranking.Good for checking large number of domains.
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Alexa Rank Tool 3 month, 1 week, today Alexa Rank.
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Alexa Ranking Cut & Paste or browse file for domain list - Displays Alexa Ranking.Good for checking large number of domains.
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Alexa Related Rank Check Input up to ten domains - get 1 week, 3 month average & 3 month up/down Alexa Ranking.
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SEO Checklist There are "over 100 SEO factors" that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). What are the search engine optimization rules?
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Backlink Summary This tool will give you get a summary of your competitors backlinks.
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Backlink Anchor Text Analysis It is not enough just to have a lot of backlinks, it is the Quality of backlinks along with the Quantity that help you rank better in Search Engines. This tools help you determine the backlinks of your website and the link text used by your backlinks to Link to your website.
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Atom & RSS Feed Validator RSS feeds validator
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W3C Markup Validation Service Official W3C compliance validator
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Adword Keyword Generator Combine words script with stemming for PPC systems.
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Combine Words Combine words script for PPC systems.
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Search Engine Placement Check Enter URL/Keyword - Displays top 30 for 11 Search Engines..
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Search Engine Position Checker Enter URL/Keyword - Displays top 50 for 9 Search Engines.

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Dogpile Search Comparison Shows top results from 3 search engine.
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Google vs Yahoo Graph Graphic display of top 50 in Google & Yahoo linked.
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Search Results Compared Google, Yahoo, MSN results in one search
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Yahoo-Google Search Shows top 100 Yahoo/Google results together.
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Free Broken Link Checker Tests all links site wide and reports any broken links.
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Free Link Checker Tests all links for entered URL page and reports any broken links.
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One Way Link Verify Track your one-way links - Shows status and PR.
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Online Free Reciprocal Link Checker Enter links - Reports back which ones are up, down or unreachable.
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Site Link Analyzer Lists internal and external links for input URL.
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Free Google Keyword Ranking Tool Search with list of keywords from differnet Google search sites
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Advanced Google Search Methods Enter domain/keyword and do different Google searches like site etc.
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Free Keyword Search Tool Displays keyword data using Wordtracker and Google search results.
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Free Meta Keywords Tool Reads meta keywords and hotlinks them to 3 keyword mining tools.
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Google Keyword Suggestions Queries Google for related relevant and popular terms.
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Keyword Generator Keyword searches from Espotting Media's (UK) PPC database.
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Keyword Popularity Tool Search Overture & WordTrackers database - Mines these terms with dictionary, thesaurus etc.
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Keyword Research Tool Tool returns similar keywords found in the meta keywords of sites searched by your choice of 9 search engines.
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Keyword Suggestion Tool Keyword searches from Overture and Wordtracker (Wordtracker displays singular/plural & correct order).
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Keyword Suggestion Tool How popular are your keywords? This tool will show you approximately how many daily searches your keywords would get. Use this tool to pick the best keywords for your website.
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Website Keyword Suggestions Provides keyword suggestions along and keyword traffic estimates for the entered website.
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Check BL URL & IP & Find Age Tool Shows unique domains linking to you.
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Link Popularity Checker Lists inbound links from 7 search engines & provides history.
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Link Popularity Checker Shows inbound links for Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Allintheweb & Hotbot.
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Link Quality Assessment Shows IBLs, dir.yahoo, DMOZ, EDU, & GOV links.
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Cool Cache SEO Tool This tool checks whether URLs have been cached by Google, and if so, shows the date they were last cached.
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Backlink Checker Input webpage - Returns number of inbound links for each PR position.
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Page Rank Search Results Displays Google results with PR - Simular as the Prog tool.
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Google PageRank Calculator Input keyword - Shows PR and Backlinks.
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Robots.txt Syntax Checker Checks your robots.txt file for errors.
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Robots.txt Validator Checks your robots.txt file for errors.
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Robots.txt Generator Creates simple robots.txt file.
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Google Toolbar For Firefox Download File - Toolbar displays PageRank has Google Search.
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Yahoo Toolbar For Firefox Download file - Toolbar for Yahoo Search.
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Advanced Meta Tag Generator Sophisticated meta tag generator.
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Yahoo Rank Position Shows Yahoo rank position, numbmer of entries indexed.
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Search Engine Spider Simulator Enter URL - Displays page content minus code.
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Search Engine Optimizer Enter URL - Webpage optimization stats.

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to be updated SubmitEdge.com

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