Break Free of Bad SEO Advice – Optimize for Customers

Despite years of warnings from Google and especially from search quality guy, Matt Cutts, there’s a certain segment of internet marketing consultants that continue to give out bad advice:  SEO shortcuts, tricks and loopholes with manufactured content and buying links to gain an artificial advantage that runs contrary to Google’s Guidelines.  Complicating matters is the fact that large numbers of companies are taking that advice in their rush to win traffic and sales.

The result? Getting penalized, removed from the index or other consequences affecting visibility of their content in search. From the Florida update almost 10 years ago to the Panda and recent Penguin updates, it’s clear Google is committed to narrowing down what kinds of SEO tactics can have an explicit impact on search visibility in their quest for quality.

In my opinion the issue is not as much about complying with Google’s rules, but about managing risk and creating a sustainable marketing effort that bears fruit over and over again. The effect may be the same, but I’m in business to make our clients money, not Google. Serving our clients’ interest is #1 and since helping them connect with prospects and existing customers is the goal, our approach to optimization emphasizes customersas the priority over search engines.  That said, a focus on both is essential to be competitive.

Webmasters and website owners need to not only comply with Google guidelines (which can seem a bit ambiguous with advice like “create good user experience”) by avoiding spammy tactics, but those operating in a competitive category will need to think about how to create a competitive advantage without putting their online business at risk with Google’s increasingly conservative approach to SEO tactics.

To Google’s credit, they have done an increasingly good job of creating content for webmasters on SEO basics, like this recent video from Maile Ohye “SEO for Startups in under 10 minutes”.

But those are the basics and a better understanding of the integration of search, social and content is necessary to win in competitive markets.

Content and social media are important means to connect with customers that also results in rewards from search engines in the form of better visibility. Unfortunately, many SEO tactics that are focused on rankings objectives rather than customer acquisition and engagement limit social media participation to pushing content out through social media channels. In those situations, there’s less of a focus on creating engagement or community, which can actually produce the signals that search engines really value: content, interactions, sharing.  The good news is that many smart SEOs are educating social content producers on the use of keywords and other optimization efforts to improve visibility of social content within search. The win is to do both: optimize for search and social engagement.

Many SEOs are getting on board the content bandwagon, except the common approach so far is to produce “more” content or “great” content (what does that mean?) in order to cast a wider net within search results. This makes sense: The more web pages, the more potential entry points via search or shared links.  But how much more effective would those ranking-centric efforts with content marketing be if there was more consideration of target audience needs during the buying cycle? What about optimizing for customers and business outcomes vs. keywords and rankings?

The best SEO advice isn’t about SEO. The basis of the book Optimize and what we write about here at Online Marketing Blog is to combine best practices SEO with a more customer-centric approach to developing content.  With a strong base of purposeful content, bring in keyword and social media optimization strategically to reach business goals for any kind of content, not just getting products and services pages to rank on page one with Google and Bing. The outcome is a more efficient, effective and scalable online marketing effort that attracts and engages more customers through search and/or social, is risk free and helps grow social networks at the same time.

Successful search marketing isn’t about following the rules, it’s about creating your own rules that satisfy the needs of the market you’re doing business in to grow your own business. At the same time, it’s about managing risk and knowing what the boundaries are. Sometimes that means you have to push to see what pushes back. Ongoing testing and marketing program optimization will be your best source of information, not solely search engine guidelines or industry experts. There is a time and a place for any type of SEO, social media or other online marketing tactics. Just be sure to quantify or clarify advice that seems too good to be true and cross check with your own ability to test and analyze.

Source: http://www.toprankblog.com/2012/06/break-free-of-bad-seo-advice-optimize-for-customers/

A Look at SEO Reports & SEO Analyzer

Last week we introduced a significant update to our Webmaster Tools. In the coming weeks, we’ll take a deeper look at the features we now offer to help you understand what they do and how to use them. For this week, we’ll start off with a couple of the new favorites folks seem to like. Let’s dive in and explore the SEO Reports and theSEO Analyzer.

It’s important to note the order we cover these in, as there’s some logic behind that.

We’ll run a scan of all URLs found in each domain verified in your Webmaster account every other week. This scan is filtered through our SEO Best Practices and is what’s used to build the SEO Reports automatically for you. As you navigate through these SEO Reports, you’ll find a list of URLs which we’ve flagged as having a particular issue. When you click on one of the URLs noted, you’re brought to the SEO Analyzer, which scans the URL you clicked and builds a real-time report of the issues we’re seeing for that one page. You should expect to find yourself at the SEO Analyzer when you start digging deep into the SEO Reports.

If you like, you can also go direct to the SEO Analyzer, bypass your SEO Reports, and ask the Analyzer to simply scan and report on the URL you type in. The SEO Analyzer is an on-demand tool which works in real-time.

It’s worth keeping in mind that when you want to see bulk details around SEO compliance issues, head over to theSEO Reports. If you need to test something quickly, use the SEO Analyzer.

SEO Reports

These reports are based on a set of approximately 15 SEO Best Practices. The reports will be run automatically every other week and be available through a webmaster account. They run the same SEO best practices as ourSEO Analyzer tool (more below), but for these reports we scan all domains listed in an account and build reports for each domain. Other than checking the reports for what should be looked at or worked on, there is nothing to do as this system does the scanning of all pages (that appear in our index) and reporting automatically.

Domains must be verified, though, as we can only provide data on the verified domains in a webmaster account. These reports provide aggregated counts of all the issues found, across the entire website scanned. Clicking on an item shown in the report takes you deeper into the SEO Analysis Detail, where we explain the issue and show the individual pages affected by this non-compliance with the SEO Best Practice.

SEO Analyzer

With approximately 15 SEO best practices in place, this tool will scan any URL you enter from one of your verified domains and build a report to let you know if the page scanned is in or out of compliance with each best practice. This tool is an on-demand tool which can scan a single page at a time making it great for checking new pages to understand where more work may be required. The user simply types in the URL they want scanned and clicks the Analyze button. The tool fetches the page, analyzes the page against our best practices and displays a compliance report in seconds.

· The left side of the page displays the SEO Suggestions based on items we found out of compliance with our Best Practices scan.

· Error Count tells the viewer how many items for that particular suggestion have been found on the scanned page.

· Clicking on any Description filters the view on the right side to showcase only warning “buttons” associated with the SEO Suggestion selected.

· The right side of the page displays a view of the site with the compliance items noted where they reside on the scanned page. They are noted by the colored “button” with the + in the middle. Hovering on any button will expand the button to explain the issue at that location. Clicking on Expand within the text box will expand the box to show the full explanation for the flag. Click the – symbol in the button to close the text box completely.

· Clicking Clear Selection clears the filters and displays the page view with all buttons present.

· Selecting Page Source across the top of the page viewing window on the right side will display the page code we found when scanning the page.

· Selecting Original simply shows the page we scanned as it would appear on the Internet.

Source: http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2012/06/19/a-look-at-seo-reports-amp-seo-analyzer.aspx

Google’s Computer Brain Learns to Identify Cats

It takes 16,000 computers working as a brain to tell if a cat is a cat. We know this thanks to an experiment to create a computer brain carried out in the Google X laboratory, where the machine capable of of recognizing felines was created.

The results of the machine learning study won’t be released formally until later this week, so for now we must be content with a sneak peek via the New York Times.

The neural network made up of 16,000 processors was let loose on the Internet and given the opportunity to learn. What it learned is what a cat looks like.

There is more to it than that, of course. After all, even a dog knows what a cat looks like. What else does it mean?

Despite being dwarfed by the immense scale of biological brains, the Google research provides new evidence that existing machine learning algorithms improve greatly as the machines are given access to large pools of data.

In their abstract the researchers said that the work will also have benefits for face recognition systems.

“Contrary to what appears to be a widely-held intuition, our experimental results reveal that it is possible to train a face detector without having to label images as containing a face or not. Control experiments show that this feature detector is robust not only to translation but also to scaling and out-of-plane rotation,” it said. “We also find that the same network is sensitive to other high-level concepts such as cat faces and human bodies.”

You can check out Google’s official blog post on the subject, “Using large-scale brain simulations for machine learning and A.I.”

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2187299/Googles-Computer-Brain-Learns-to-Identify-Cats

Bing Redesigns Image Search: Trends, Filters, Suggestions & More

Just a day after a completely redesigned Yahoo Image and Video Search experience came out, Bing has announced their own new Image Search, complete with larger thumbnails, hover-over previews, search filters, search suggestions, and trending searches.

Image searches account for 7 percent of all Bing searches. Now the experience is more immersive, beautiful, and fun, according to the Bing Multimedia Team Program Manager, Jon Noronha.

A small icon depicting three squares of different sizes allows users to find different sizes of any given image. Once on the sizes page, users can hover to see a larger preview as well as the URL where the image is hosted. Choosing a picture and clicking through allows users to preview the entire page it came from (see details below).

Clicking on an image from this page takes users to a second preview pages, with different image sizes arranged in a horizontal bar across the top of the page. A warning box lets users know that selecting an image will take them away from Bing and to the site at which the image is hosted.

Bing Image Search Filters

Users can filter Image Search results by the following parameters:

• Size: All, Small, Medium, Large, Wallpaper (default)
• Color: All, Black & White, Color Only, or choose specific tones
• Type: All, Photograph, Clipart, or Line drawing
• Layout: All, Square, Wide, or Tall
• People: All, Just Faces, or Head & Shoulders

Filters can be combined to drill down to specific image types, and reset, as necessary. SafeSearch controls still appear in the top right and can be used to set Strict or Moderate search safety levels on Image Search.

Other Image Search Page Features

Related searches are suggestions that appear in a vertical right sidebar, as thumbnail images with the query in text beside them. Users can also link to See All Trending Searches (which is also the default view for the Bing.com/Images home page, as seen above) from the bottom of this list.

Below Related Searches, users can view their search history, which can also be cleared or turned off from this area.

At the bottom of the page, users can find links to Privacy & Cookies, Legal, Advertise, About Our Ads, Help, and Feedback, but infinite scrolling means they move down the page too fast to actually catch them and click on them.

The infinite scrolling issue corrects itself once users click through to an image. On the actual image page, users can preview the entire page on which the image is hosted before clicking through, as seen above.

Image Search Latest Component in Bing Redesign

“We hope the new look will entertain, inspire, and inform you about the world,” Naronha wrote in the blog post announcement. “Give it a spin, and then come back to see all the new features,” which seems to indicate more changes are in the works.

The Image Search redesign is the latest is a number of aesthetic changes at Bing. On May 2nd, they launched their new, simplified search results page layout. Shortly after, Bing introduced a new three-column layout, with snapshots and a social sidebar.

The new Image Search didn’t revive Visual Search, which Bing began phasing out last fall.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2186628/Bing-Redesigns-Image-Search-Trends-Filters-Suggestions-More

8 Ways to Find Old URLs After a Failed Site Migration – Whiteboard Friday

In this week’s Whiteboard Friday, we are going to be going through some different ways you can track down old URLs after a site migration. These tactics can be incredibly useful for new clients that have just performed a redesign with less than ideal preparation.

I’ll be presenting eight ways for you to track down these old URLs, but I would love to see some of your own methods in the comments below. Happy Friday everyone!

Video Transcription

Greetings and salutations SEOmoz fans. My name is Michael King. I’m the Director of Inbound Marketing at iAcquire. I’m also iPullRank on the SEOmoz boards and on Twitter.

So today what we’re going to talk about is eight ways to figure out old URLs after a failed site migration. I know you have this problem. You get a new client, they just redesigned, and you have no idea what the old URLs are. They didn’t do 301 redirects. They have no idea what the social numbers are anymore, and you have no idea where to start. Well, I’m going to show you how.

Now one of the first tactics you want to use is the Wayback Machine. You just put the site in there, the URL, the domain, what have you, and see what it has in that index. Once you get that, you can easily just pull off those URLs on the site through the links using Scraper for Chrome or whatever tool you want to use. You can actually pull down a code and pull them out using Find and Replace, whatever you want to do. That’s just one of the tactics that we’re using.

A lot of times people will also not change or update their XML sitemap. So you can just download that XML sitemap and then open it in Excel, and it puts you in these tables. You can just take that first column and copy and paste it into a text file, open it in Screaming Frog, and then crawl and list mode to see if those URLs still exist. Anything that’s a 404, that’s a URL that you can use, and you can easily map those ultimately to the new URLs on that site.

You also want to use your Backlink profile. When I say that, I don’t want you to essentially use one tool, I want you to use as many tools as possible. So definitely start from Open Site Explorer. Also use Majestic, Ahrefs, whatever you want to use, and collect as much link data as possible. Also Webmaster Tools has your links, so use those as well. Then crawl all those links, all the targets of those links and make sure those pages are still in existence. All the 404s, again, you know these are old URLs that you can then redirect to new pages.

Then you also want to check the 404s from Google Webmaster Tools and map those pages to new pages as well. Then you can also use analytics. So pull your historic analytics from before the site redesign and find all those URLs and see which ones are still in existence. Again, go back to Screaming Frog with list mode and make sure that they’re 404ing or 200ing. The ones that are 200, you don’t have to worry about. The ones that are 404s are the ones that you need to remap.

Then you can also use CMS Change Log. So, for example, when you make a change in WordPress to a URL, there’s a record of that, and you can actually pull those URLs out and use those again for mapping.

Then, for those of you that are a little more adventurous, you can go into your log files and see what URLs were driving traffic before it. Same thing as what you would do with the analytics, but just from a server side standpoint rather than just your click path stuff.

And also social media. So people share these URLs. Any shared URL has equity beyond just link equity. So you definitely want to make sure that you’re pushing those social shared numbers to the right URLs that you’re mapping towards, and I wrote a post on that on Search Engine Watch for how you can do that. But you can use the Facebook recommendations tool. So it’s not really a tool. It’s a demo for widget that goes on your site. But essentially, you can go through this tool and put in the domain name, and it’s going to give you all the shared URLs, all the shared content. The way it comes in the box is it’s 300 pixels tall, but if you expand that to a 1,000 pixels, you’ll see the top 20 pieces of content that were shared. So real easily identify a popular URL that you can then redirect.

Also you can Topsy the same way. If people have tweeted these URLs, you can just put that domain name in there. It’s going to search for them. It’s going to give you all the URLs that Topsy has indexed. You can also use Social Mention, any social listening tool you can use the same way. And then also social bookmarks, so things like Digg, Delicious, and such, look and see what people have actually shared and bookmarked for your site.

So that’s a quick one. Hope you guys found that useful, and I’d love to know how you guys have found this to be worthwhile. So holler at me in the comments down there, and thanks very much. Peace.

Introducing Yahoo! Image and Video Search Re-imagined

With the World’s Most Recent and High Quality Photography from Getty Images

Searching for images and video on the Web should be the most visually stunning experience possible. After all, sometimes a photo or video can tell a story better than words.

Today, we are taking Yahoo! Image Search and Video Search to an eye-catching new level. Through an extension of our partnership with Getty Images and some reengineering (and redesigning) of our multimedia search experiences, we are delivering a more timely experience, supported by the most recent, and often never-seen-before content.

That’s right, thanks to Getty Images, Yahoo! Image Search will have access to some of the highest quality digital images on the planet. And these are not just any photos, they are the crème-de-la-crème, from the collection of more than 20,000 new Getty Images added every day by Getty Images’ award-winning network of photographers. Of course we also help people find top quality images of the very latest headline news, sports and entertainment events within minutes of being taken.

Optimizing Your Results – New Image Search and Video Search Results Pages

With this amazing influx of new content, we thought it was only fitting to juice up the entire experience. So we’ve introduced awesome new features to help people take a closer look at the images and videos they want.

• Thumbnail Viewing Experience –Users can now get a fantastic thumbnail viewing experience of images and videos. The new search results page sports a neatly tiled look, with each image and video squarely sized, then becoming larger when you hover over it.
• A New Video Search Results Page, with preview on hover and continuous scroll

The new Video Search results page introduces continuous scroll, and each video equally sized, then becoming larger and playing the preview when you hover over it.

• High Quality Badge & Latest Filter – We have introduced two prominent filters on the left rail to help you find the highest quality and most recent images. For images, the HQ badge identifies photos with at least 2 megapixels and a 1024 x 768 aspect ratio. For Yahoo! HQ videos, we use adaptive streaming technology to optimize your viewing experience by continuously adjusting the quality of the streamed Yahoo! hosted video to match the capabilities of your network and device. The Latest filter allows you to discover the most recent photos and videos available on the Web, so you can always keep up to date.
  
  
  
• Search While You Watch – For those of us interested in a lot of different topics, we now have a “search while you watch” option, to search for a video without going back to the search results page. For users who want to look at interesting video search topics, clearing of the search query on the full image page now shows recommended & trending topics to provide them with an experience of continuous discovery.
  
  
• Full Screen Viewing – Since we have built on the power of the HTML5 browser, we’re now providing a full screen option and cross-device support to help you discover the content you are looking for more easily.
  

Now more than ever, it’s easier to discover the images and video you are looking for on Yahoo!. We could not be more excited about these enhancements, and so is the Getty Images team (check out their post). Give us a try next time you want to find top quality images and video.

Source: http://www.ysearchblog.com/2012/06/20/image-and-video-search/

12 Questions to Ask a Prospective Link Building or Contact Marketing Client

If you’re an SEO/SEM/inbound marketing/content marketing agency that offers link building or content marketing services independent of other services (such as keyword research, a technical site audit, etc.), you’ve probably gotten an inquiry from someone who wants “link building” services but isn’t exactly sure what that entails.

Obviously, if a prospect has a very specific request (i.e. they know that they want X guest posts placed per month or Y articles created and promoted), that’s easy enough to figure out, but what if they have a list of target keywords they want to drive more traffic around, and they are asking for “link building” while expecting you, the vendor, to help them sort out what they need?

Questions You Can Ask to Help Structure a Link Building Proposal

There are some core questions we’ve found to be helpful in customizing a proposal for someone who is interested in link building services in one of two core areas:

• Goals & Budget – There’s almost an infinite number of things you could potentially do for a site under the link building and content marketing “umbrellas.” By understanding the specific goals and budgetary constraints of the client, you can better comprehend the tactics that will help you get a desired result.
• Internal Resources – Understanding what resources the potential client has available can help you determine which tactics will be possible and where you might be able to leverage existing internal assets to help the client achieve their goals while conserving budget.

Goals & Budget

1. Are there any specific goals we should be aware of (i.e. you’d like to increase organic traffic by X% by Y date, or you’d like to rank well for the following terms, etc.)?
2. How many different keywords and/or pages are you planning on targeting?
3. Will the link building efforts be focused solely on your core site, or do you have microsites you’re also planning to target?
4. Do you have an idea (even a range) of where you’d like to be in terms of budget?
5. Is there anything we should know about current traffic levels, value per lead, or conversion rates as we’re evaluating the opportunity for you? For instance, if you’re converting traffic at 1%, and each lead is worth $10, then for us to be a profitable expense for you, you’ll need to get around 100 additional unique visitors for every $10 spent.

Internal Resources

1. What sort of content resources do you have in-house? Do you have people who could write a blog post or an in-depth guide that would be compelling to writers/bloggers in your niche?
2. Is there any content you have (PDFs, brochures, engaging videos, interesting charts, graphs, etc.) that is primarily informational that you haven’t previously promoted online? Some things we commonly find are really in-depth guides on topics that are in PDFs, but they haven’t been “pitched” to bloggers, or a tool or widget or calculator that you have on your site that you haven’t done a lot of promotion around, etc.
3. Do you have any development resources in-house? Mainly, we want to know if there’s someone who would have the bandwidth to develop a free tool or widget.
4. Do you have any graphic design resources in-house? One tactic we may want to leverage would be data visualizations (a.k.a. infographics). Is there someone who could execute on a design concept?
5. Do you have any video content or the capability to easily create video content?
6. Do you do any industry studies or surveys?
7. Are there any hurdles to publishing content on your site that we should be aware of?

Depending on the prospect and the conversations you’ve had with them, you may not need to include all of these questions. And, of course, depending on the client and the services you’re offering, you may consider asking additional questions beyond this list.

The main thing, though, is to try to create a framework for gauging as quickly as possible exactly what questions will get you to a detailed proposal that will allow you to get the client as close to their goals as possible with the budgetary constraints they’ve outlined.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/12-questions-to-ask-a-prospective-link-building-or-contact-marketing-client/45067/

55 SEO Productivity Tools We Use at Single Grain

Looking for a new tool that will help you get the most out of your SEO campaigns?  Consider any of the following programs that we use at Single Grain in order to maximize the efficiency of our SEO activities and our general productivity:

Keyword Research

Tool #1 – Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool

Although the free Keyword Research Tool offered by Google’s Adwords doesn’t offer as many features as standalone SEO programs offer, this resource is a great option for checking general search, competition, and CPC metrics on the fly.  Be sure to check out the feature that allows you to brainstorm keywords by URL in order to uncover the keywords your competitors may be targeting!

Tool #2 – Google Trends

With Google’s new freshness update in effect, picking up on and capturing breaking news stories and trends is a must for SEO.  Google Trends is one of the best places to find this information, so make it a habit to regularly monitor this service for trends in your industry.

Tool #3 – Buzzfeed

Another site we use to identify the hot trends within our industry in order to rank highly for QDF (query deserving freshness) SERPs is Buzzfeed, a popular news aggregation site that covers a wide variety of niches.  It’s also a great place to keep up on the latest memes and popular sayings floating around in Internet culture.

Tool #4 – Google Insights for Search

Before you launch any new SEO campaign, check out Google’s Insights for Search tool to confirm that there’s consistent demand for the particular search terms you’ll target.  A few minutes of research on this free service can save you a fortune by preventing you from going after the wrong keywords!

Tool #5 – Google Related Searches

Any time you conduct a search in Google, you have the option of selecting from a number of other potential queries that Google considers to be substantially related to your original term.  This data can be found in the left-hand sidebar of any Google SERP (under the “Show search tools” menu), and it provides a great opportunity to find potential LSI keywords for your blog posts and content marketing articles.

Tool #6 – Google Correlate

One final Google tool to take a look at is Google Correlate, which will help you determine if trends that exist in your target keywords’ search volume variation correspond with trends in the real world.  This can be especially helpful when understanding unexpected SEO behavior or when predicting the potential variability of search volume for future projects.

Tool #7 – Alexa

Although the Alexa ranking system itself has some weaknesses, the service’s webpage offers website owners data on visitor demographics, top search queries, potential target keywords, and other helpful SEO metrics.  Simply enter your URL into the company’s homepage search bar to get started!

Tool #8 – Keyword Discovery

Keyword Discovery is one of the most widely used, standalone keyword research tools on the web, and its breadth of features easily demonstrates why this site remains dominant in the competitive field of market research programs.  Give the site’s free Search Term Suggestion Tool a try, and then consider signing up for a free trial of the site’s paid keyword research and competitive intelligence tools.

Tool #9 – Keyword Questions

Wordtracker’s free Keyword Questions tool is a godsend whenever you’re struggling to come up with article topics for your site or for your marketing campaigns.  Simply enter your target keyword into the engine, and it will return specific questions that people have entered into the search engines that relate to your topic, providing you with instant article-writing fodder that’s guaranteed to interest your audience!

Tool #10 – SearchStatus plugin

Yet another SEO aggregation toolbar, the SearchStatus plugin deserves special mention for its keyword density measuring feature, which allows you to quickly measure the specific keyword usage rates found on other industry websites for your own competitive analysis.

Tool #11 – KGen

Want to know which words on any webpage will be deemed most important by the search engines?  Then install the KGen plugin for Firefox, which enables you to view websites through the eyes of the search engines and uncover potential opportunities to outrank your competitors for valuable keyword phrases.

Tool #12 – Soovle

Another fun keyword research tool to take a look at is Soovle, which pulls search suggestions from the seven top search engines.  Simply start typing your target keywords into the site’s free engine, and you’ll automatically receive related keywords that can be used to power your own SEO campaigns.

Onsite Analysis

Tool #13 – Google Analytics

If you carry out any SEO activities at all, you simply must have a web analytics program in order to measure the impact of your campaigns.  Google Analytics is by far the most commonly used option, and it’s easy to see why.  The program is free to use and provides a wealth of data, including advanced event and goal tracking features that allow you to conclusively measure the ROI of your SEO campaigns.

Tool #14 – SEOQuake

SEOQuake is one of many different SEO extensions (available for both the Firefox and Chrome browsers) that return information about individual web pages, as well as about the listings within individual SERPs.  Use this tool to check things like web page PageRank, Alexa traffic rank, site age, number of backlinks, and more crucial pieces of information to uncover when conductingcompetitive research.

Tool #15 – SEOBook browser extensions

By signing up for a free SEOBook account, you’ll gain access to the site’s selection of free SEO tools, including “The SEO Toolbar,” “SEO for Firefox,” and “Rank Checker.”  Much like SEOQuake, these Firefox plugins pull several different SEO metrics that can be used to identify potential link partners, uncover weak spots among industries and competitors, and much more.

Tool #16 – SiteTrail for Chrome

The SiteTrail for Chrome plugin allows you to pull up various website SEO metrics, including site rank, site traffic, and site analytics, from a simple link within your right-click menu.  The tremendous amount of information this tool provides and the speed with which it generates SEO data make it a great option for conducting market research on the fly.

Tool #17 – SEO for Chrome

One final SEO research plugin to consider is the SEO for Chrome plugin.  In addition to providing data on key SEO metrics from within the Chrome browser, this tool takes competitive web marketing research one step further by providing information on a given site’s social media presence.

Tool #18 – SEOTools for Excel

Although Microsoft’s Excel program may seem outdated, it can be turned into a productivity powerhouse with the addition of the free SEOTools for Excel add-in.  Once installed (see the instructions here for tips on setting it up correctly), you’ll be able to use this tool to conduct on-page analysis, monitor backlinks, pull Google Analytics data directly into Excel for further exploration, and more!

Tool #19 – SEOSiteCheckup.com

Want to get a feel for whether your site’s SEO is on track compared to established best practices?  Enter your URL into the SEOSiteCheckup.com analysis tool and get a free custom report measuring a number of different SEO factors.

Tool #20 – Hubspot Marketing Grader

Formerly Hubspot’s Website Grader, the new Marketing Grader service provides free reports that measure your site’s progress in three key areas: your promotional efforts, your on-page conversion optimization, and your website analytics.

Link Building

Tool #21 – Majestic SEO

When it comes to competitor backlink research, a tool like Majestic SEO, which lets you view and analyze all the links pointing at other websites within your industry, is an absolute must.  Although you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version for full access, even the free version provides some data on both your own site’s backlink profile and your competitors’ link collections.

Tool #22 – Open Site Explorer

The Open Site Explorer provides similar type of information as Majestic SEO, but since the two tools pull from different data sets, it’s worth comparing the results between both services to get a better feel for the health of your site’s off-page SEO activities.  Again, the program offers both free and paid versions with different levels of access and functionality to suit your specific needs.

Tool #23 – Affiliorama SEO toolbar

While the Affiliorama SEO toolbar pulls many of the same pieces of information as the previous plugin recommendations, this free extension deserves a spot in any SEO’s tool chest as a result of its dofollow/nofollow feature, which highlights link attributes that are crucial to consider as part of your linkbuilding campaigns.

Tool #24 – Google Alerts

Google Alerts, which allows you to receive email updates whenever your designated keywords are mentioned online, can be used for a number of different SEO needs, including identifying potential backlink sources that reference your target keywords and uncovering negative brand mentions that should be fixed using Linkception.

Tool #25 – Onlywire

When used correctly, social bookmarking can be a good way to reach new followers and build brand awareness for your website, but since the process of hand-submitting links to multiple sites can be time consuming, take a look at the free Onlywire service. It will automatically post your links to the networks you participate on.

Tool #26 – Seesmic Ping

As another automated social bookmarking service, Seesmic Ping is a similar option to consider for your web promotion and SEO needs.  Expanding on its predecessor’s (Ping.fm) weaknesses, the new Seesmic Ping service allows users to post from their iPhone, iPad, Android device, or email, in addition to providing advanced spell check and preview capabilities.

Of course, this is only a small selection of the thousands of SEO productivity tools out there.  If you have other recommendations you’d like to share, please include them in the comments section below!

Rankings

Tool #27 – SEMRush

SEMRush is the “Mac Daddy” of the SEO world when it comes to understanding the true monetary value of your traffic or the potential of your target keywords.  It’s pricy, but it’s often worth the cost, given the amount of information made available through the service.

Tool #28 – Traffic Travis

While there are plenty of SEO tool suites out there, there aren’t many free ones that are as fully functioned as Traffic Travis.  Whether you’re a beginning user or a more advanced SEO, Traffic Travis’s free collection of keyword research, search engine, PPC, and page analysis tools can help you to compile a significant amount of SEO data quickly and easily.

Tool #29 – Market Samurai

Market Samurai bills itself as a comprehensive SEO suite, and with good reason. Not only does this single program include keyword research tools, rank tracking, link sourcing, and more, its one-time fee makes it a great value compared to similar programs that require a paid monthly subscription.

Tool #30 – Raven Tools

According to the company’s website, “Raven’s SEO, advertising, and social media tools help you work faster and smarter.”  And there’s really no arguing with this statement when you take a look at the breadth of SEO information that’s pulled from SEMRush, SEOMoz, MajesticSEO, WordTracker, Google, and other services for aggregation in the program’s “Research Central” dashboard.

Starting at $99/month, it’s a more expensive SEO productivity solution, but the ROI of a toolset like this could be high if you’re able to secure higher SERPs rankings as a result.

Tool #31 – SEOMoz Pro

One final comprehensive SEO tool suite that you should consider is SEOMoz Pro, which combines the expertise of the SEOMoz community with top-of-the-line SEO monitoring and social media marketing products.  Of special note is the service’s “Q&A” feature, which allows you to get expert answers to any SEO questions you encounter, a “must have” for new SEOs and webmasters.

Tool #32 – SEO SERP Workbench for Chrome

If paid SEO programs aren’t in your budget right now, check out a fun, little tool called the SEO SERP Workbench plugin for Chrome.  It won’t do everything that the paid services listed above will, but it does give you a quick and easy way to check the position of multiple sites (including both your page and your competitors’ pages) for a given keyword in the SERPs.

PPC

Tool #33 – Spyfu

While Spyfu primarily offers paid services that allow you to “spy” on your competitor’s PPC campaigns, the free edition of the company’s “Spyfu Classic” service also provides free information that’s valuable from an SEO standpoint, including top organic keywords and top natural search competitors.  Give the free tools a try, and then investigate some of the more complex options available in order to improve the effectiveness of your PPC advertisements.

Tool #34 – Google Adwords Editor

Once you start getting into PPC advertising on a serious level, you’ll likely find that manually creating campaigns, ads, and keyword groups within your Google Adwords account becomes tedious and time consuming.  A better alternative is to download Google’s free Adwords Editorapplication, which will allow you to bulk edit your campaigns from your desktop and then automatically sync them to your online Adwords account.

Tool #35 – Microsoft Adcenter Editor

Similarly, if you advertise your website through Microsoft’s AdCenter program as well as Google Adwords, the Adcenter Editor program is a “must have.”  In addition to allowing you to edit your PPC campaigns more efficiently from your desktop, the program offers performance alerts that will notify you whenever key campaign metrics dip below a certain level.

Social

Tool #36 – SocialOomph

As social media continues to play a larger than ever role in search rankings, building and establishing your profiles on these sites should be considered a primary SEO priority. Since carrying out social networking marketing campaigns can be time consuming, consider adding an automation tool like SocialOomph, which allows you to schedule tweets for future updates, set up “following” rules, and more.

Tool #37 – Tweriod

In order to improve the effectiveness of the messages you send to your social networking followers, you need to know when they’re most active, and, therefore, when they’ll be most receptive to your offers or conversations.  For this purpose, check out Tweriod, which will compile data on your Twitter followers’ online activities and provide you with recommendations on the best times, by the hour, to engage with your community on this social site.

Tool #38 – Twiends

If your social networking following isn’t as robust as you’d like, take a look at services like Twiends, which will allow you to quickly connect with potential new community members based on your shared interests.

Tool #39 – Triberr

Similarly, the Triberr website enables you to multiply the reach of your social marketing efforts through the formation of teams that automatically promote each other’s content to their own followers.  Look for existing networks within your industry and request an invitation, or simply start your own “tribe” to effectively expand your social networking reach.

Project Management/Coordination

Tool #40 – Google Documents

Whether you collaborate with virtual workers around the world or simply need to share files with your colleague down the hall, Google’s free document editing and storage solution offers a great way to share and collaborate on files.  As an added bonus, the program’s easy-to-navigate permission settings allow you to control exactly who can see and edit each file in your account.

Tool #41 – Dropbox

Another alternative for sharing files across teams is Dropbox, one of the web’s top file storage solutions.  After you sign up for a free account, you’ll be able to automatically sync files from your desktop computer to your online account, allowing for enhanced backup protection as well as easy collaboration with other Dropbox users.

Tool #42 – Basecamp

Basecamp is the “Mac Daddy” of online project management and collaboration programs.  It’s expensive, but the features this tool offers in terms of detailed task tracking and delegation across multi-person teams is unparalleled among free competitors.

Tool #43 – Evernote

Evernote is a great option for capturing ideas on the fly, whether that includes potential web development opportunities you encounter while working on your SEO campaigns or new target keywords you think up while running errands on your day off.  We at Single Grain especially love the fact that the program syncs easily between mobile, web, and desktop applications, making it nearly impossible to forget the brilliant ideas you have while on-the-go!

Tool #44 – Skype

If you work with team members or clients in various locations, installing Skype is an absolute must.  Not only does this free tool enable you to quickly set up text-based chats, phone calls, or video conferences, it’s also easy to record your Skype conversations for later reference (additional add-in tools may be needed).

Tool #45– Trello

Trello is a free project management utility that allows you to collaborate across teams through the use of project boards, activity cards, and task lists.  Although it doesn’t offer all the same features as Basecamp, it’s one of the best free alternatives available today, and it’s one that we use frequently at Single Grain.

Tool #46 – Notable App

If you manage SEO campaigns for clients, you’ll occasionally run into situations that require you to obtain feedback on different web activities. Instead of asking clients to type out lengthy comments and explanations, the Notable App enables you and your clients to capture shared screenshots and add notes in an intuitive click-and-drag format, resulting in huge time savings for both you and your customers!

Tool #47 – HipChat

If you’re still using AIM, Gchat, or other free internal chat services to share messages among your team members, take a look at HipChat, a business-oriented solution for group chat needs.  We love the fact that it operates across platforms, as well as the professional environment the app creates for business communications.

General Productivity Tools

Tool #48 – Excel

Excel and the rest of the Microsoft Office suite might seem like dinosaurs in this new world of online apps and cloud-based programs, but don’t count them out yet. When paired with the SEOTools for Excel add-in discussed earlier, this comprehensive data management program can be transformed into an SEO powerhouse that’s capable of providing many of the same features found in expensive paid SEO programs.

Tool #49 – Adobe Reader

Chances are good you already have this standard program installed on your computer, but are you really using its full capabilities?  The Adobe Reader package can be used to search PDF documents, track comments across multiple parties, and even verify digital signatures, making it an important tool for any SEO’s arsenal.

Tool #50 – Jing

Jing is a free screen-capture utility put out by Techsmith (the makers of the popular Snagit and Camtasia programs) that can be used to take screenshots, record screen-capture videos, and collaborate on images taken by the tool.  While it won’t substitute for a full-fledged image or video editing program, it’s a great option for visually sharing quick ideas between team members.

Tool #51 – Photoshop

While it’s true that Photoshop has a pretty sizable learning curve compared to Jing, it’s worth learning this full-featured program for a variety of SEO campaign needs.  Whether you’re simply resizing images for web deployment or creating custom graphics for use on new websites, Photoshop has the advanced features needed to make your SEO activities more visually appealing.

Tool #52 – Filezilla

Every SEO worker needs an FTP program, and Filezilla is by far our favorite. It’s free, easy to install, and offers plenty of options for controlling the security of your remote web connections, making it an ideal solution for your file sharing needs.

Tool #53 – Boomerang for Gmail

The Boomerang extension for Gmail can help you take control of your inbox by allowing you to schedule outgoing messages, as well as set archived messages to be returned to your inbox at set times.  It’s a major time saver over digging through your email account to find that one important piece of information you archived months ago!

Tool #54 – Gist

These days, professional networking requires more than just contact information, which is why you need a social CRM system like Gist.  This tool integrates with your mobile devices and email accounts to pull additional social data on your contacts, including their most recent social networking activities, blog posts, and more.  It’s a great way to get the conversation rolling with new and existing business contacts!

Tool #55 – Notepad++

Finally, when it comes to modifying code to improve a client’s on-site SEO, our favorite tool for the job is Notepad++.  This free tool goes above and beyond the standard Microsoft Notepad editor, offering a number of features, including support for multiple coding languages and higher execution speeds, that are critical for efficient code editing.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/55-seo-productivity-tools-we-use-at-single-grain/45050/

Proper SEO and the Robots.txt File

When it comes to SEO, most people understand that a website must have content, “search engine friendly” site architecture/HTML, and meta data (title tags and meta descriptions).

Another meta element, if implemented incorrectly, that can also trip up websites is robots.txt. I was recently reminded of this while reviewing the website of a large company that had spent considerable money on building a mobile version of their website, on a sub-directory. That’s fine, but having a disallow statement in their robots.txt file meant that the website wasn’t accessible to search engines (Disallow: /mobile/)

Let’s review how to properly implement robots.txt to avoid search ranking problems and damaging your business, as well as how to correctly disallow search engine crawling.

What is a Robots.txt File?

Simply put, if you go to domain.com/robots.txt, you should see a list of directories of the website that the site owner is asking the search engines to “skip” (or “disallow”). However, if you aren’t careful when editing a robots.txt file, you could be putting information in your robots.txt file that could really hurt your business.

There’s tons of information about the robots.txt file available at the Web Robots Pages, including the proper usage of the disallow feature, and blocking “bad bots” from indexing your website.

The general rule of thumb is to make sure a robots.txt file exists at the root of your domain (e.g., domain.com/robots.txt). To exclude all robots from indexing part of your website, your robots.txt file would look something like this:

User-agent:
* Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /junk/

The above syntax would tell all robots not to index the /cgi-bin/, the /tmp/, and the /junk/ directories on your website.

Other Real Life Examples of Robots.txt Gone Wrong

In the past, I reviewed a website that had a good amount of content and several high qualitybacklinks. However, the website had virtually no presence in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

What happened? Penalty? Well, no. The site’s owner had included a disallow to “/”. They were telling the search engine robots not to crawl any part of the website.

In another case, a SEO company edited the robots.txt file to disallow indexing of all parts of a website after the site’s owner stopped paying the SEO company.

I also remember reviewing a company’s website and noticing that several directories that were part of their former site were disallowed in their robots.txt file. The company should have set up a 301 permanent redirect to pass the value from the old web pages on the site to the new pages instead of disallowing the search engines to index any of the old legacy pages. Thus, all of the value was lost.

Robots.txt Dos and Don’ts

There are many good reasons to stop the search engines from indexing certain directories on a website and allowing others for SEO purposes. Let’s look at some examples.

Here’s what you should do with robots.txt:

• Take a look at all of the directories in your website. Most likely, there are directories that you’d want to disallow the search engines from indexing, including directories like /cgi-bin/, /wp-admin/, /cart/, /scripts/, and others that might include sensitive data.
• Stop the search engines from indexing certain directories of your site that might includeduplicate content. For example, some websites have “print versions” of web pages and articles that allow visitors to print them easily. You should only allow the search engines to index one version of your content.
• Make sure that nothing stops the search engines from indexing the main content of your website.
• Look for certain files on your site that you might want to disallow the search engines from indexing, such as certain scripts, or files that might contain email addresses, phone numbers, or other sensitive data.

Here’s what you should not do with robots.txt:

• Don’t use comments in your robots.txt file.
• Don’t list all your files in the robots.txt file. Listing the files allows people to find files that you don’t want them to find.
• There’s no “/allow” command in the robots.txt file, so there’s no need to add it to the robots.txt file.

By taking a good look at your website’s robots.txt file and making sure that the syntax is set up correctly, you’ll avoid search engine ranking problems. By disallowing the search engines to index duplicate content on your website, you can potentially overcome duplicate content issues that might hurt your search engine rankings.

One last note: if you aren’t sure whether you can do this correctly, please consult with a SEO specialist.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2064412/Proper-SEO-and-the-Robots.txt-File

Bing Adds More Yelp to Local Search

Bing and Yelp are teaming up to provide more local information when you search. Starting today, Bing’s U.S. users will see significantly more Yelp data included directly on Bing search results pages in the center column.

This information is now being provided using rich data markup and includes images, reviews, star ratings and more. Bing Local searches also include even more information powered by Yelp on local place pages.

Yelp is one of the leading resources on the web for local restaurant information and reviews. Bing previously contained some public information gleaned from Yelp’s firehose.

“Bing’s approach is to partner with leading content providers and services from across the web to provide people with more relevant results from the websites they trust,” a Bing spokesperson told Search Engine Watch. “By teaming up with Yelp, Bing is able to provide searchers with richer local data – including review snippets, photos and business attributes – from one of the web’s leading local listing services.”

The increased Yelp information is being provided to Bing is clearly labeling content provided by Yelp’s data. While no details are available about the partnership, it is apparent Bing is looking to not reinvent the wheel and utilize the expertise of other sites in their respective verticals.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2184596/Bing-Adds-More-Yelp-to-Local-Search