Entries Tagged 'SEO Tools' ↓

Just caught this nifty little tip from Blind Five Year Old where those of you who dont like the new Google Keyword Tools design can revert back to the old UI by using the following address:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?forceLegacy=true

Personally I love the new design and think the directory is insightful even tho i do often have to turn off Googles suggested additions to my keyword pool.

Right, back to it

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Heres the second great little tool created by the Virante team. This time, the tool checks for inbound links from 3rd party sites that are targeted at 404 pages on your site. Whats really great about this tool is that it not only gives you a pretty comprehensive list but also gives you the ability to generate 301 redirects for each url to the page of your choice via a .htaccess file generation tool.

The tool also gives you an idea of what MOZRank will be recovered should all of the links be fixed… nice!

Here’s a great little tool created by Virante that produces a report telling you which of your existing links have ceased giving you juice or have dipped in their juice giving abilities.

Simply enter your URL and get a list of links that need looking at. If they grey-bar or the pagerank has dropped significantly then the links need pulling as it could be detrimental to your sites SERPS and should be your first port of call should you notice a significant drop in rankings overnight.

New and improved, Google have enhanced the Top Search Queries report in their Webmaster Tools to show a more Analytics style report with both keyword and click-through information.

This is great as it gives you another datasource to view CTR information.

Tip: trevorweir.com

Always keen to verify my own theories, I used my SEOMoz pro account to ask what metrics the SEOMoz team advise to use to determine the best possible source for links in a link building campaign using Open Site Explorer as the key data source. The reply was to use DA (Domain Authority) as the key indicator tho’ I had to be wary of Directories which may appear to be ranked highly without providing any real benefit.

Digging a little deeper, I’ve also noticed that when using this approach, Open Site Explorer also favours any sub-domain driven sites i.e. sub-domained blog URL’s and other such sites with the echelons of DA ranked sites being made up of these sites.

So what does this mean to the lay SEO? Well it means that unless you’re prepared to wade through tens of thousands of results, there’s still not short-cut to finding great quality links.

Heres how I get started in sourcing links from our competitors listings.

1. Use Open site explorer to download CSV’s of all EXTERNAL links that are dofollow/301 from a big ass list of competitors domains
2. Combine all of these CSV’s into one document
3. Clean the list using the DATA > Remove duplicates filter in the source URL only
4. Sort by Page Authority
5. Highlight all PA on domains with a PA over 50
6. Sort by Domain Authority
7. Highlight all DA on domains with a DA over 50
8. Sort by External Links
9. Highlight by External Links over 100
10. On a page by page basis quickly scan the list removing RSS feeds and other uninfluencable links
11. Add a column for PageRank
12. Go through each listing adding the PR for each site (n/a for grey bars)
13. Build links where possible.

Since Open Site Explorer has an API, has anyone thought about automating this process as i’d pay for a tool that did this and more as it would save me HOURS!

Another things thats not new, however it is now linked from the standard Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal).

Note this doesn’t appear to work in Chrome!

New Google Keyword Tool

So what’s new here?

Overall the tool feels more intuitive and I get a better sense as to how the options relate to the data. Things like filtering Exact Match terms has moved to the bottom left of the screen, trend information is shown to the right of the keyword lists and additional filters allowing you to delve closer into a niche are provided.

It says you get more information if you log into adwords, however it doesnt really show the organic search specialist anything worthwhile.

Give it a try.

I’ve just come across this freebie web tool that gives you a quick and dirty method of checking if your site is under a duplicate content ‘penalty’ i.e. is your content being pushed into the supplemental results because the pages are too similar.

Give it a try

Oh, and don’t forget you can always use copyscape.com to check your sites content against your competitors which is a great way of ensuring your saying something unique and discovering who’s poaching your sites content.

I’ve been having a play with a nice little tool from bad-neighborhood.com which goes through a page on your site and checks if your site is linking out to a bad neighborhood.  When used as one of your qualifying metrics in a link building campaign you can quickly appraise a link source and determine if you’re going to receive a penalty.

For a freebie tool its pretty good, it shows you sites that are ‘blog spam’, has a 1-5 metric of severity and a tick and cross indicator showing if the sites clean or not.

Give it a try.

Just got an email from Will at Distilled letting me know that they’re setting up a USA office due to SEOMoz quitting the SEO consulting game :O

It seems that as the search engines reduce their tool set, SEOMoz think that they’ll be able to make more money as an ASP (Application Service Provider) selling SAAS (Software As A Service)… and by speaking at conferences and expo’s.

As some one who got out of the client services game I can appreciate that not having to manage demanding and often irrational clients is a mighty big attraction, however, unless they can bull some big hitters out of their hats, the current SEOMoz pro tool set just isn’t good enough to justify the price tag (I bought my subscription in their sale for 1/2 price).

All I can say is good look Rand et all… fingers crossed this works out for you and as for Will, I’m sure SEOMoz will pass you some leads – it might also be time for you to think about improving your brand and starting your own community… it worked for Rand.

Heres the official announcement:

I wanted you to be one of the first to hear our big news – we are opening an office in Seattle. Our US online presence is going to grow at DistilledConsulting.com (Twitter: US, UK).

Our long-time associates, SEOmoz, are quitting SEO consulting to focus on their world-leading SEO tools and resources. Distilled LLC was therefore created to take over their consulting responsibilities and to service the demand for bespoke consulting generated by their tools and services.

Over the last couple of years, we have worked together to deliver impactful SEO campaigns for household names including Microsoft, Real Networks and fast-growth VC-backed companies including Scribd.com, Avvo.com and Etsy.com.

To celebrate, we are opening up free access to a conference call we are running on 24th February for all our contacts. You can sign up to get dial-in details here. Entitled "how to get the most from your SEO" it will cover:

•    the best tasks to keep in-house vs. outsource

•    combining SEO effectively with PPC, PR and marketing

•    integrating SEO into other processes (e.g. development, business development)

•    how to get the most from your agency

•    how to be a great SEO client and get even more out of your agency

Sign up now.

You can read more about the US announcement in my blog post – the summary is:

•    Distilled Limited now has a wholly-owned subsidiary, Distilled LLC registered in WA

•    Rob Ousbey, one of the lead SEOs at Distilled here in London is heading West to brave the frontier and begin the process of establishing our US office

•    We will continue writing for SEOmoz, answering Q&A and contributing to product decisions and testing (in exchange for which we will get loads of access to powerful tools, data and expertise)

•    We will manage the SEO consulting page on the SEOmoz website and handle bespoke consulting needs for any of the SEOmoz community who would like to work with us

•    We will all continue to refer to the recommended list where appropriate

•    We are now hiring in the UK and the US for a talented SEO and a great marketing administrator

•    Yes, we are also wondering if we did this just to make ourselves into a case study in international domain strategy.

So, we are now open for business on two continents. Please get in touch if there is anything we can do for you – US contact form, UK contact form – or email our Business Development Manager: Caitlin Krumdieck.

Sorry if you hear this news via more than one route – we’re pretty excited about it all so we would appreciate any extra publicity you can help us out with on this big day for Distilled.

Don’t hesitate to give me a shout if you have any questions or if there is anything we can do for you.

 

At last! A feature ive been waiting for for an eternity (and had originally built into a previous in-house analytics package) has arived for Google Analytics – Annotation.

This is a great little feature that takes the hassle out of monitoring events on the timeline.

With Annotations you can add notes to the timeline which makes it great for:

• Tracking PR activities
• Promotional Sales
• The effect of any high value link (purchases?)
• SERPS changes i.e. Caffeine

The only issue I can forsee is that the notes wont go far enough. I’d like the ability to have different, user defined note types as I can see my Annotations becoming the dominent factor of the visual display.

This feature was originally mentioned in the Google Analytics blog post of December 7th, but has taken until now to be implimented on the UK analytics.

Check the OP here.