Plug in SEO

The Paint-by-numbers Guide to Link Building

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:36:00 +0000

The second in our series of Paint-by-numbers guides concentrates on Link Building.

In just 3 pages we give you the SEO knowledge to build the most effective links to your content, and a step-by-step guide to effective link building techniques.

The Paint-by-numbers Guide to Link Building by Plug in SEO is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Also in this series:

The Paint-by-numbers guide to Creating Linkworthy Content

Quick! free SEO, analytics, social media workshops in London

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:19:00 +0000

MiniBar, the monthly London tech meetup, has organised a series of really useful (...and free) workshops covering their most often requested topics of SEO, analytics, social media, online marketing and more.

Daniel Sim, CEO of Plug in SEO, will be presenting the SEO workshop in London on March 10th. It's going to be a practical session looking at how to get more visitors to your website using tried and tested optimisations. And, don't worry, it'll be really simple with an interactive discussion about your business.

Better register fast as spaces are sure to go quickly.

Image by Earl - What I Saw 2.0 via Flickr

Customers of Plug in SEO aren't just in London, UK, so we'll post video of the search engine optimisation and analytics workshop here on the blog. Subscribe so you don't miss it.

Would you like a workshop in your town? Ask us, provide biscuits, and you never know...

The Paint-by-numbers Guide to Creating Linkworthy Content

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:49:00 +0000

SEO is a confusing field, full of buzzwords and jargon, and here at Plug in SEO we want to change that. You've told us that you want guidance on what to do, and how to get started.

So here's the first in our series of Paint-by-numbers Guides - in just two sides of A4 we're condensing the key steps you need to take in order to tackle a particular aspect of search optimization.

First up is our guide to Creating Linkworthy Content. Learn how to pick topics and get ideas for creating innovative content that will invite other sites to link to yours.

If you like this guide, please feel free to pass it on to any friends and colleagues who might find it useful - and do let us know if you have any feedback.

The Paint-by-numbers Guide to Linkworthy Content by Plug in SEO is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Localizing your SEO. Are three quarters of the world passing you by?

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:35:00 +0000

How do you SEO for non-English locales, and why would you want to? Christian Arno is Managing Director of Lingo24, a global translation services provider. In this guest post he tells us why he thinks it's important to localize SEO and how to do it effectively.

Multilingual marketing, localisation and SEO

Countries where English is the official or de facto official language

English has emerged as the global language of commerce and the lingua franca of the internet, but it’s worth pointing out that three quarters of the world’s population speaks no English whatsoever.

So the need for businesses to speak to international consumers in their own tongue can’t be overemphasised. Even though English is the most widely spoken second language, the fact remains that most consumers will search for services/products in their mother tongue first.

So for any business looking to go global, the need to ‘think local’ means you should consider the multitude of cultural and linguistic complexities that you will face when entering new, emerging markets.

Dialect difficulties

For example, the French in France and the French in Canada (Québéquois) is largely the same, but there are enough dialectal distinctions between the two forms of French to mean that separate marketing strategies are essential when targeting each market.

By way of illustration, ‘email’ is simply email in France, but in Canadian French it is courrier électronique (literally, ‘electronic mail’). And déjeuner means ‘lunch’ in France, but ‘breakfast’ in Switzerland and Belgium.

There are many such differences between the French dialects in France, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium which help to highlight the importance of properly localizing your services for each specific target market. The same can also be said for German (Germany)/Swiss German, Portuguese (Portugal)/Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (Spain)/Latin American Spanish and, closer to home, US/UK English.

How to localize your SEO

So assuming you intend to properly localize your website for international markets, there are a number of issues you must consider when optimizing the content so that you gain as high a position on search engines as possible.

Firstly, there is the domain name. Your choice of name is entirely up to you, though you may want to consider something that is suitable for the country that you’re targeting – your brand name may work just as well abroad, but you are best using the services of a specialist translation/localisation company who can research any potential negative connotations of your name in your target market.

Equally important is your choice of web host as the server they use should be located in your target country – Google considers the IP address of the server in its algorithms, so make sure you ask where their server is based before committing to using their services.

Then there is the issue of keywords. There is a strong argument that says you should NEVER translate keywords, simply because even a direct dictionary translation may not be what people use to search for a service or product locally. They may use colloquialisms, abbreviations or acronyms instead.

In the same way as you would use something like Google’s keyword tool when identifying the most popular industry keywords in English, you should thoroughly research the key search phrases that are incorporated into your new foreign language website too.

Localisation and SEO should underpin any international online marketing strategy, as it will not only help ensure linguistic and cultural nuances don’t impede your entry into new markets, but also your visibility is maximized on foreign search engines.

About the author
Christian Arno is founder and Managing Director of Lingo24, a global translation services provider that specialises in website localisation. Lingo24 has over a hundred members of staff working across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Panama and clients in over sixty countries. They are on course for a turnover of £3.65m in 2009.

Thanks to all our beta testers

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:08:00 +0000

Today's a big day for Plug in SEO. We have just emailed all our wonderful beta testers, so that they are the first to know about our new pricing plan.

We've done our best to come up with a plan that's fair to our users, whether they are just starting out with a brand new website, or have an established site with many thousands of visitors. Here's what we're doing:

Firstly, you'll only pay if your traffic increases. The whole point of SEO is to drive more traffic to your site, so we have to help you do that - and if we're not, it's only fair if we don't charge you.

Secondly, you'll pay according to the amount of traffic to your site. And if you have less than 1000 visits in a month, we won't charge you anything at all.

Finally, every user gets 30 days free usage to try out the product and see if it suits their needs.

In all, this is a no risk pricing plan for our users. As always, we invite your feedback.

We'd once again like to thank all our beta testers, who have generously shared their experiences and feedback over the last few months. We wouldn't be here without you.

A paint-by-numbers guide to building inbound links

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Our 15 minute link building webinar shows you how to create linkworthy content and build relevant links: boosting your SEO.

You'll see Yahoo! Site Explorer, uberVU and Plug in SEO in action, with brief appearances from BackType and Majestic SEO. Tools that make creating great content and finding linkers as easy as paint-by-numbers.

Take My Keywords, Link Suggestions and Competitor Links for a spin in Plug in SEO.

The Camtasia Studio video content presented here requires a more recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. If you are you using a browser with JavaScript disabled please enable it now. Otherwise, please update your version of the free Flash Player by downloading here.

Webinar - building inbound links

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:13:00 +0000

As I'm sure you all know, getting inbound links from relevant sites is critically important to improving your site rankings, but finding those link sources can be non-trivial.

Join us for a webinar on Thursday 5th November, when we'll be discussing how you can identify meaningful, high quality link sources.

Update: We're having a few technical difficulties with the webinar widget below. If it's not working for you, please simply email us on hello at pluginseo.com and we'll make sure you get an invitation.

Update: come back soon for the webinar recording!

Seedcamp + You + Plug in SEO

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:26:00 +0000

We've been selected as one of the 21 finalists for Seedcamp Week '09! And you, dear Plug in SEO customer, will be feeling the benefits over the next couple of months.

Seedcamp

Seedcamp nurtures European technology start ups by connecting companies like ours with "over 400 mentors from a top-tier network of company builders; including seed investors, serial entrepreneurs, product experts, HR and PR specialists, marketers, lawyers, recruiters, journalists and venture capitalists."

These leading lights in their areas of expertise will be mentoring us from 21-25th September to make Plug in SEO even better. We'll also be building relationships with some of the coolest and most useful products emerging in Europe.

You

We've had some great suggestions (many now implemented) through feedback.pluginseo.com so keep them coming and keep voting. Tell us what you think: fantastic, good, bad and ugly.

We really mean that. Every comment that comes to us by the feedback tab and hello@pluginseo.com is read and considered. You can shape our decisions.

Us

This week traffic increased by 600% to pluginseo.com (nice!), causing a short period of time where my.pluginseo.com was slow and timing out (sorry). Please bear with us as we tackle these issues and follow @pluginseo on Twitter for updates.

The coming months are going to be very busy for us with the hectic Seedcamp Week, demanding release schedule and ambitious targets. Come along for the ride by subscribing to this blog, following our Twitter, and receiving our customer email (by registering for the beta).

Seedcamp + You + Us: making Plug in SEO your indispensably simple SEO app.

Image by paulamarttila via Flickr

A paint-by-numbers guide to SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:16:00 +0000

Here's a recording of today's webinar - this will give you an introduction to some different tactics you could use when you tackle SEO, and how Plug in SEO provides the tools for a paint-by-numbers approach, where the emphasis is on building genuinely relevant and interesting content.

If the video isn't embedded here, please click here

The Camtasia Studio video content presented here requires a more recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. If you are you using a browser with JavaScript disabled please enable it now. Otherwise, please update your version of the free Flash Player by downloading here.

Webinar - a paint-by-numbers guide to SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:25:00 +0000

Dan recently presented at MiniBar, and it went down so well that even Esther Dyson thought it was interesting! So it seems only fair to make it more widely available, and we're doing so by turning it into our first webinar.

The title is "A paint-by-numbers guide to SEO" and it's a short introduction to SEO concepts and how Plug in SEO can help you optimize your content to improve your rankings. We're keeping it brief so it's suitable for busy people!

This is taking place at 4pm on Wednesday 2nd September, and you can register here (please click on the Register link underneath our logo). Hope to meet you there!

Plug in SEO Beta: Now open, but what are we?

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:25:00 +0000

Registration for the Plug in SEO Beta trial started on Monday. Not too many bugs later we're inviting you, our blog readers, in too. We like to think we've built a different kind of SEO tool: one that allows you discover keywords, unearth insights using keyword groups (more on that in our next instalment) and then do something about it.

Discover keywords

Real keyword searches that drive traffic to your site arrive in Plug in SEO Keyword Suggestions fed from our real-time Analytics tracking.

Unearth insights using a keyword groups hierarchy

My Keywords is the heart of Plug in SEO. Here you can easily build a keyword hierarchy containing hundreds (or even thousands if you like) of keywords from Keyword Suggestions or entered by you.

Within My Keywords learn what are your best, worst and flat performing individual keywords and, more insightfully, keyword groups. Check individual and aggregate organic rank, visits and conversions to discern where to focus your SEO efforts.

Do something about it

Once you've determined the keywords and keyword groups to target, Business Blog with Link Suggestions enables you to create internal links in your blog post with a single click. When one of your My Keywords is found in the blog text, Link Suggestions will highlight it along with the relevant URL. One click and the keyword anchor text becomes a link. Simple.

We're just getting started

This is our initial beta but already we've built something a bit special that we hope you'll find useful in improving your search engine optimization.

To get instant access to Keyword Suggestions, My Keywords and Business Blog with Link Suggestions, not to mention real-time Analytics, Twitter monitor, Descriptive URIs, Dashboard, an extensive API plus software updates every week simply create an account for the inaugural Plug in SEO Beta.

We'd appreciate your good and bad feedback which you can easily give us using the feedback tab on every page. Subscribe to the Plug in SEO Blog to catch our upcoming post "Be Surprised with Keyword Groups".

The SEO tools you need - and the pro's you don't trust

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000

We started building Plug in SEO because we're convinced that there is a need for a better integrated, more complete suite of tools to help web professionals optimize sites for search and conversion. But in order to build a good product you have to understand the problems your users are facing, and you only do that by communicating with them. We've just completed our first piece of user research - a survey - and we thought it would be nice to share some highlights.

As well as exploring the tools people use and the problems they encounter, we also wanted to investigate people's attitudes to the SEO community - and we had some disturbing responses.

A massive 91% agree that there are too many self-proclaimed SEO experts on the internet, and 45% don't trust others in the industry.

We asked people to tell us the first three words they think of when considering the SEO industry. "Snake oil", "cowboy", and "ridiculously expensive" were not uncommon sentiments! (Our view is, let's get analytical about proving results through hard data. If you can demonstrate better sales or better conversions through SEO activities, then its value is clear.)

There is demand for more communication within the community - 80% agreed they would like more opportunities to exchange ideas with SEO professionals, and only 44% said there are plenty of local events for the industry. Maybe more communication would help build trust? In fact, we're thinking about the options for another SEO-oriented meetup in London - what are your views?

Now thinking about the more pragmatic elements of what SEO professionals get up to on a daily basis...

It's not a surprise that over 85% spend time tuning keywords and content to optimize organic search results.

A hefty 93% spend time on URL rewriting, so it seems the power of descriptive URLs is well understood in the SEO community. (Plug in SEO provides ready-built code to enable this, so if you're planning to develop URL-rewriting in house, why not have a chat with us first?)

Only 60% spend time on inbound link management. Perhaps that's because 63% haven't yet found an effective tool to help them with this?

100% of our professional SEO respondents know how well they rank on Google.com, and 77% know their rankings on country-specific Google searches such as Google UK. (96% of our respondents are based outside the US.)

Knowing how well they rank drops to 50% for Yahoo and 33% for Live search, but 64% would be interested in a better tool for integrating search results across different search engines.

Mobile search isn't that important (yet?) to our sample - 54% said they don't care about their rankings on Google mobile, rising to 77% on other mobile search engines.

Congratulations to Stephen B., who is the lucky winner of the Amazon voucher draw amongst our survey respondents.

We're using these and other results to help us prioritize new features that are coming to Plug in SEO over the next few months, but that's by no means the end of user input - we'd love to hear your comments. If you're part of our beta trial (and if you're not already, why not register here?) you'll find a Leave feedback link on every page. These links open a widget (powered by CrowdSound) that you can use to post suggestions, report bugs or ask questions. We'd love to hear what you think, so we can build the product you need.

We're just getting started: Chris Sherman on Search Marketing

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:15:00 +0000

Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of SearchEngineLand.com talks to Plug in SEO at SMX London

Read the transcript or watch the Plug in SEO video interview

How's SMX London 2009 gone so far?

Today's gone really well. We're very pleased at the turnout. With the economic turmoil we've been having we weren't sure how it was going to be impacted, and it turns out search seems to be still thriving and doing really really well.

Why do you think search is thriving in these economic situations?

I think basically, it was interesting in the keynote today, we had an observation that search is still not getting the mind share that it deserves among the Global 1000 Chief Marketing Officers. A very, very interesting statistic: something like just one or two percent of the people who are CMOs that control budgets are still allocating money towards search. So that suggests that we're still very, very early on.

The other thing that is obvious is that search is very accountable. It's measurable. It's something where people can actually say we know what out ROI is.

We're not, in the classic old Wanamaker sense, knowing that half of our advertising bill is being wasted, and so on.

So I think that's why. And I think we're actually going to see that trend accelerate. A lot of people have said that search is plateaued, Google's growth is slowing and can't grow any more, but if we still have the majority of CMOs, globally, not giving much attention to it, then it's the exact opposite conclusion: we're just getting started.

Why isn't search marketing getting the attention it deserves?

The primary reason I think is that traditional marketers have grown up with things that they've been comfortable with: television, print, radio, and there's just a natural inertia to stay with what you're familiar with.

But what's happened now with the economic dislocation that we've had is that there's lots of challenges being made to assumptions to find what works best.

To get or keep that competitive edge so many industries are so threatened right now with everything that's going on in the world that search is actually emerging as a really viable alternative- it's just going to take time.

How do you think the UK differs, if any, from the US?

This is a really good question. I've been programming shows in the UK for I guess seven or eight years now and in the past there has been a gap in terms of knowledge and skills, and I think that gap is largely closed.

I really think that the level of sophistication that we're seeing here, the quality of the presentations, the approaches that the search marketers who've been speaking are taking, and so on is really world class. It's really quite interesting.

In terms of perception of the industry, do you think that differs any between continents?

The perception definitely varies. I think what we're starting to see is that search marketing is evolving in a way where the people in different countries expect certain things from search marketing.

So in other words there's an example with China who have no problem at all with including sponsored search listings in organic results- they don't see that as any kind of problem.

Paid search in China is not as big as it is elsewhere in world, but I think that's primarily because most people in China don't have a credit card either: they're not looking to buy online, they don't have that trust or the mechanisms in place.

So it's really the cultural differences I think have to do with it as much as what's going on in a particular country as much as anything else. It's not really a generic thing with search marketing.

What have been your highlights from SMX London?

This panel that we've just had- multivariate testing of landing pages panel- I thought was fantastic. What you saw there was really concrete examples of how applying search first of all is very cost-effective and profitable but also how you can have continual improvement to even increase the effectiveness. I came away quite impressed by that.

Anything in tomorrow's session you have your eye on?

We've got lots of different content, all through the show. It's been fun. It's always fun to programme these. I have an idea in my head of what I think is important, and what I think should be discussed, but then it goes to the individual speakers who can really add their point of view, their experience and knowledge.

Review: Zemanta blog enrichment extension

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:08:00 +0000

Create more compelling posts and boost SEO by tagging and links

Free Firefox extension, IE plugin plus others
Enterprise edition available ($1,200/month)
Directly embed relevant copyright-cleared images
Related link, tag and blog post suggestions

Functionality	4/5	effortless incorporation of suggestions into post
Interface	5/5	clear and consistent, comfortably sits alongside blog post creation
Value	5/5	a free productivity aid, doesn't distract from creating quality content
Support	4/5	open support forum with reactive company reps

Producing original and engaging blog content is great for SEO, but it takes precious time. Zemanta finds related images, web and blog links, and tags for your post. With the Zemanta Firefox extension (other browsers are available) incorporating these suggestions in your article requires a single click.

Semantic power

Under the bonnet Zemanta uses its semantic API to determine what your text is about and then finds content falling into the same categorizations. What differentiates them from other semantic engines is that they have a powerful API with a useful, real-world application built on top.

The realisation of a completely semantic web may be some way off, but it's Zemanta that's a great example of companies making practical application of semantic technologies. Promising also is their freely available (up to 10,000 calls/day) API.

Compelling content

Google Image Search doesn't cut the mustard for serious bloggers. Once you've spent an hour and found a fantastic image, more often than not you don't have the copyright to post it. Zemanta on the other hand is purpose built- only showing images available under re-use licenses.

Good blog articles aren't dead-ends. Once the reader has engaged with your post they'll often want to go on and find out some more. With the related blog post and link suggestions you can pepper links throughout with a single click.

Thoughtful execution

The technology that powers Zemanta is powerful, but thankfully none of the wiring is exposed when you just want to write your blog. Flowing alongside your post composition pane are the image, link, post and tag suggestions, updating as you compose.

It does take up a good chunk of screen real estate and the option to collapse would be welcome. That said, the Blogger interface is quite spartan and Zemanta isn't an unwelcome intrusion.

Niggles

Semantic similarity is hard and Zemanta makes sense of texts better than most. However, for short articles (1-2 paragraphs) and product or technology specific pieces it does struggle to generate quality suggestions.

It appears to want a main theme which if it can't find then the relevancy suffers dramatically. A search box is provided, but the opportunity to coach or coax Zemanta in the right direction when it goes haywire would be immensely useful.

For a medium to long blog post the image and blog suggestions are numerous. The number of tags and web suggestions stay around ten. Being able to request more is missing.

Better blog posts

Image by Peter Čuhalev via Flickr

Quite simply Zemanta will help you to create better blog posts. Better for your readers and better for SEO. It does this with minimal intrusion and a good understanding of relevancy.

Interview with Matt Malden, Yield Software: Product Launch

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:51:00 +0000

Launch of Yield Software

Automated search engine marketing
New release incorporating an interface overhaul
Promotional pricing starting at $129/month
Aimed at search marketers spending $2,000-$20,000/month on paid search

When I last reviewed Yield Software the product was in beta and a little rough around the edges. Matt Malden, co-founder and CEO of Yield Software took the time to speak with me about the product prior to their live launch today.

Automated Search Marketing

The arena of search marketing, especially automation, is rife with hype and hyperbole. It's refreshing that Matt doesn't resort to the outlandish figures banded about by other products; instead focussing on the marketing productivity features applied to current manual optimization tasks.

Download the podcast to listen to Yield Software in the words of its founder.

Glimpse the Paid and Natural Search Productivity Features

Take a look inside the colourful product.

URL Rewriting on IIS with IIRF Technical Overview & Walkthrough

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:29:00 +0000

Free, powerful and flexible URL rewriting on Microsoft IIS

Open source
Supports Apache mod-rewrite syntax
ISAPI filter
Single DLL and configuration file

Rewriting URLs to benefit search engine rankings has long been practised. For data-driven sites such as an e-commerce store, URLs like example.com/product.aspx?id=5367 can be rewritten to example.com/lily-allen/album/its-not-me-its-you. Human readable and clearer to spiders what constitutes a single page and what that page is about (as URL parameters often double as session handling or filtering values).

Google and Yahoo! search engines now do an adequate (but not perfect) job of untangling URL parameters. They even offer webmasters a tool to prompt them to ignore specific items. Still, however, Google's SEO guidelines encourage unique, hackable and readable URLs. A clear and understandable URL additionally provides another hook to encourage a click on your listing.

Rewriting on Apache and IIS

Apache first supported rewriting with mod_rewrite some time ago. There's not much that this module can't do; for a long time to the envy of the IIS tribe. That's why several 3rd party solutions such as the commercial Helicon ISAPI Rewrite, the delightfully named port80 PageXchanger and many others emerged to fill the void.

Now IIS 7 supports URL rewriting. Sort of. Undoubtedly Microsoft will enhance its functionality, but the current release is woefully limited. Thankfully there's a very capable, free and open source ISAPI filter for IIS URL rewriting from Ionic: IIRF.

Installation & Usage

Watch the technical walkthrough showing how to install URL rewriting on IIS. Installation is simple provided you have access to install ISAPI filters on your web server. Most shared hosts don't support this for good reason: you can do some serious damage with a poorly written or malicious filter. Fear not- URLRewriter.net provides a basic alternative.

The single IIRF DLL installs as an ISAPI filter, you edit the configuration file and that's it. There's a thorough readme with usage examples and documentation of every feature. The walkthrough video below shows its installation on Windows Server 2008 with IIS7 on an ASP.NET 2.0 e-commerce site.

URLs for SEO

Often overlooked is the fact that installing rewriting is a small part of the battle toward search engine friendly URLs. Here's a checklist of other things you may need to do to get maximum benefit, or even avoid harming your SEO:

Make sure postbacks work on your ASP.NET site
Permanent redirect incoming requests for the old data-driven URL to the optimised one
Change internal links to the new URLs
Build a URL from fields in your database, unavailable by simply rearranging the data-driven URL
Make sure URLs cannot be hijacked by inserting poison words or appearing like duplicate content

Review: Advanced Web Ranking keyword position checker

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:41:00 +0000

Cross-platform desktop SERP position tracking and reporting

Windows, Mac and Linux
From $99 to $599/year
Desktop and server editions
History, analysis and reporting

Functionality	4/5	ably performs position tracking and reporting with a regularly updated database
Interface	4/5	logically organised with several time-saving features
Value	4/5	good value and scalable for search engine marketing agencies, but you buy your infrastructure
Support	5/5	very detailed and extensive documentation, active forum and email support

While the debate rages on about the wisdom of solely focussing on search engine results page (SERP) positions there is no doubt that some form of tracking is part of a competent SEO toolkit. The difficulty is that Google openly frowns on applications that automate the process by scraping SERPs.

In spite of this there are many options both web and desktop based for performing the task. Advanced Web Ranking is of the desktop breed and has exploited many of the benefits brought by binaries.

Organic Rank Tracking

Advanced Web Ranking allows you to have multiple projects containing the websites and keywords being monitored. You can import your keywords, add them manually and get suggestions from Google Suggest and WordTracker. Strangely it doesn't offer the ability to get known keywords for a site from the search engines API- a feature available in both Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing APIs.

Regional versions of Google along with niche search engine definitions are included- an essential for targeting non-US audiences but absent from many online tools.

A Note on Scraping

Search engines frown on and sometimes openly outlaw the use of results scrapers such as Advanced Web Ranking. Google has specifically named Web Position Gold as a package it doesn't approve of. This puts search engine marketers in a difficult position as tracking the position manually, especially of long tail keywords, is impractical and their APIs frequently don't mirror their web results.

Advanced Web Ranking declares itself as 'search engine friendly' in spite of scraping web results. It does this by limiting the request rate and emulating normal human browsing behaviour (both configurable). This reduces the load on search engines and is difficult to block but does still violate terms of service. That said, their behaviour is being tolerated.

Analysis & Reporting

Neatly tucked in its tabs are different ways to slice and dice the collected data. This enables great flexibility to suit the targets of your SEO efforts without resorting to a spreadsheet in most cases.

Reports can be emailed, exported to PDF or several data formats. For search marketing agencies generation and email can be automated- a smart productivity addition.

Desktop-based versus Web-based

Advanced Web Ranking is one of the best-of-breed desktop SERP tracking applications, leveraging the advantages of running locally as opposed to on the web.

There are no restrictions on the number of URLs you can track (think competitor monitoring), unbounded keywords (very long tail) and engines to watch. This can't be said of any web-based tracker on the market. The reporting and analysis functions are more responsive and flexible.

But, you have to pay for and maintain the hardware and bandwidth. Plus it's a pony that can do some good tricks in the keyword monitoring stable, but it doesn't integrate with paid search channels and other components to maximise the value of the data.

Verdict

When choosing a tool to track keyword positions on search engines the real choice is between a desktop or web application. If you opt for the desktop, then Advanced Web Ranking is a well supported, long established, powerful tool that's also reasonably priced. I haven't found a better, well rounded package.

Review: Feedity RSS feed generator

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:22:00 +0000

Generate RSS feeds from HTML with ease

Simply define a start and end block of HTML for each feed item
Web based service
Free ad-supported edition
More feeds, support and SLA for $39 or $369/year
Limited to titles only

Functionality	3/5	very basic by allowing feed item titles only, but its simplicity is a plus over Dapper
Interface	4/5	easy to use, down to business
Value	4/5	good value to test the potential of feeds without up front development
Support	3/5	they offer an SLA but paid versions are email support only within 2 working days

Using RSS for SEO hasn't been adopted widely, partly due to the difficulty of generating feeds from database tables and back office systems. Whilst blogs and some content management systems (CMS) provide feed support out-of-the-box, enterprise adoption has been slow.

Feedity allows a web page to serve as the feed source. It handles the conversion to RSS once it knows the HTML blocks it should look for on a page.

Using RSS/Atom Feeds for SEO

Where feeds can aid your SEO efforts is by syndicating your frequently updated content to other sites to stimulate inbound links, pinging crawlers to increase their visit rate, and making it easy for customers to keep up-to-date with what they're interested in- equalling more repeat visits.

Feedity Introduces Feeds to Your Site

Feedity is very simple as it only allows linked item titles to be returned. A rich, engaging feed generally contains more than a single sentence title- it incorporates a description with images and multiple links to hook the reader into visting your site.

Additionally, as the feed is based on your HTML any code change could break the feed. These limitations shouldn't rule out its use however.

Where Feedity is immensely useful is allowing you to trial feeds without the up-front investment in the feed server software development, installation and infrastructure. Once it proves its worth then develop richer, deeper feeds.

Verdict

A great way to get feeds up on your site fast, trialling them for SEO and customer experience.

Review, Interview & Demo: Larry Kim, Wordstream Founder

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:06:00 +0000

Create and manage keyword taxonomies

Keyword suggestion, automatic categorisation and administration
Web based (Flash) application
Integrates with Google AdWords API
Export function for other PPC providers
Starting at $300/month
Cost based on size of your keyword database

Functionality	4/5	does what it does well, some room for other integrations and refinement
Interface	5/5	very elegantly manage a huge keyword database
Value	3/5	affordable entry point but could be replicable for lower cost
Support	4/5	they've just launched with VC backing and good testimonials

Managing tens, or hundreds of thousands of keywords is a common requirement for serious search engine marketeers. Typically, unwieldy spreadsheets are devised that can be used to target the medium and long tail terms an SEM desires.

Keyword suggestion tools are plentiful but in popular spaces Larry Kim asserts their efficacy is limited, as organisations battle for the same terms. His tool, Wordstream, aims to allow you to build up and easily manage your own private keyword database- developing a taxonomy uniquely your own.

Keyword Taxonomy Management

Wordstream is a hosted service seeded with keywords from your web server logs, file upload or manual entry. From there it automatically groups these keywords into a hierarchical categorisation navigable using a familiar folder structure, except that these are buckets.

Kim believes that keywords are much like a stream, continually flowing through these buckets. A JavaScript tracker added to your site's pages adds to this stream as your users search using new terms.

While an analytics package reports new keywords by analysing the referrer URL,what sets Wordstream apart is its ability to automatically place these under theright bucket. Typos are no problem for the software states Kim. Clearly this makes adding to your long tail keywords much easier. Goals and traffic alongside further unlocks their value.

Traffic & Goals

The service does not purport to provide analytics, but the Javascript tracker means keywords providing the highest value in terms of goals or traffic can be targeted. So, if whenever a user searches for [canned dog food chunks] they purchase said dog food, Wordstream lets you see it.

The value of this can't be downplayed as one of the drawbacks of long tail theory is that you can easily burn time and chase the wind of valueless terms. Again, the data's probably available to you at the moment, but Wordstream's seamless presentation, categorisation, and administration of it is elegant.

AdWords Integration

From within Wordstream you can place a PPC ad for your newly identified keywords and manage existing campaigns with its Google AdWords API integration. One of the key aims of Wordstream is productivity and this feature facilitates more productive campaigns.

Somewhat disappointing is the lack of integration with Yahoo Search Marketing or Microsoft AdCenter. While the data can be exported, and Google is the focus of many PPC campaigns, it would be nice to see these brought into the fold. With this the unified view would negate a need to use anything else for campaign management.

SEO

Once Wordstream unearths new terms it's up to you to action them for SEO. Creation of landing pages, on and off page optimisations aren't executed in the tool. The value of data it unlocks and makes manageable, however, means it is certainly a powerful tool in your SEO arsenal.

Kim provides the example of Wikipedia: they are fantastically optimised for organic search due to the site and content structure with a page for each topic. Wordstream in the hands of copy writers brings that a step closer for any site.

Verdict

The tool itself is well executed and thought out. This means that even though some of the component parts are available elsewhere, the core automatic keyword categorisation and management that it does coupled with goals, traffic, suggestions and AdWords integration adds to its value.

If you're struggling under the weight of your keyword management or would like to pursue an elusive long tail then Wordstream is worth a look with their free trial. It's easy to see how it will make PPC and SEO more productive if you're generating tangible return from niche keywords efficiently.

Review: Majestic SEO

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:35:00 +0000

Backlink data and analysis from an index larger than Yahoo! Site Explorer and SEOMoz combined

Free for your domain
Other domains around £10-£50 for 7 day subscription
Web based
Download and API option

Functionality	5/5	large index with download and API creates a seriously valuable backlink resource
Interface	4/5	straightforward web interface, API could be better documented
Value	4/5	free for your own domain and reasonably priced for others
Support	3/5	forum at majestic12.co.uk but early days for the SEO offering

Majestic SEO provides a credible alternative to Yahoo! Site Explorer, SEOMoz, or scrapers of Google SERPs to investigate backlinks. It's built on the Majestic-12 distributed search engine project which seems to be succeeding where others have failed.

Breadth of Data

It's hard to think of a useful piece of data Majestic SEO doesn't provide for backlinks as anchor text, domain, history and 'ACRank' spread are all here.

ACRank is an attempt to flag the quality of a referrer, in a much simpler way than PageRank. There are some flaws, which Majestic SEO recognises, but having an open and quantifiable link quality index is a core part of backlink analysis. Hopefully they will develop the algorithm with input from the SEO community.

Quality

Where Majestic-12 and Majestic SEO shine is that they have the feel of a serious academic project. True, Majestic SEO does lack documentation, but it's new and what there is is thorough and gives the impression they'll be here to stay. That can't be overvalued for SEO companies who've had to contend with SERP scrapers that come and go.

Verdict

Give Majestic SEO a go. Compare the data for your site with Yahoo! Site Explorer. If your results are anything like mine you'll be pleasantly surprised when a few gems turn up in your analysis.

Review: Yield Software

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:28:00 +0000

PPC, SEO and analytics as a service

Update: Yield Software has launched with improvements since this review. There's a new interface, pricing and fixes. Listen to our interview with the founder, Matt Malden

Undisclosed monthly fee
Software-as-a-Service + JavaScript page tracking

Automated PPC
SEO analysis and advice
Basic keyword tracking
Conversion analytics

Functionality	3/5	some functions are clearly broken but it shows a lot of promise
Interface	4/5	clean and easy to understand interface, clear direction
Value	?/5	undisclosed price tag
Support	?/5	Have venture capital in place but still in BETA and no client list

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Review: GSiteCrawler

daniel.sim@pluginseo.com (Dan) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Neat site map generator, link checker and general free SEO sanity-checking tool

Free
Windows desktop application

Site map generator
Link checker
Duplicate content checker
Analyse URLs, page title, description, keywords
Crawler

Functionality	4/5	just enough features to make the tool fully functional and not bloated
Interface	3/5	easy to use but dated and not intuitive in places
Value	5/5	free and without ads or nags- give the guy a donation!
Support	4/5	active Google Groups support but not actively developed

GSiteCrawler has been around for a few years but still stands the test of time as a versatile, free tool to sanity check a website for common problems and create search engine site maps.

In the context of SEO it’s as simple as plugging in the URL, letting the crawler spider the site and you’ll immediately expose several things that could harm SEO.

My tests reveal it handles cookies and session state with the default crawl configuration and is pretty much platform agnostic for the target website.

Site Map Generator

Templates are provided for Google Sitemaps and Yahoo! URL list file generation. Custom templates can be easily written for reporting, or you can plug it into a SQL Server database and do a direct query.

The interface also acts as a visual site map editor without the need to work with the raw XML. Site maps can be uploaded by FTP after a crawl has completed. Pair this with the basic automation (using a command line switch) and schedule a task and you’ve got a perfectly good way to create an automatically updated site map.

Link Checker

Broken internal links (404 – not found) are reported on after the crawl. What’s really smart is it’ll still work if your target site badly handles not found pages, by not returning the correct HTTP response code. The wizard detects the bad setup and instead looks for a string in the ‘page not found’ page, logging this as a not found.

Duplicate Content Checker

This feature is useful for the most basic of duplicate content- where 100% of the content is duplicated under a different URL. It can’t handle the case where a page contains the same content but is skinned differently and therefore may be treated as duplicate content by search engines.

Analyse URLs, page title, description, keywords

The URL list tab is invaluable for getting a bird’s eye view of your site’s URLs, titles, descriptions and keywords.

The interface is a bit cumbersome for performing analysis on a site with 100’s or 1000’s of URLs, but it at least allows you to pick out the SEO worst offenders of “all gallery pages have the same page title!” Without having to trawl the site yourself.

Crawler

After struggling with several other crawlers that require cookie configuration, custom settings for handling session state etc. GSiteCrawler was a breeze. Plugging it into classic ASP, PHP, .NET and extension-less sites couldn’t trip it up.

Don’t worry about overloading your site or interfering with others’ browsing experience as the number and rate of crawlers is completely configurable.

Being able to view the crawler is also hugely useful. Other crawlers silently go about their business, but GSiteCrawler gives you a detailed rundown of what’s currently happening and the projected remaining duration.

Conclusion

If you own a website, have been called in to work on one, or are responsible for its SEO then GSiteCrawler gives you a no-nonsense free tool in your arsenal.

By no means is it the only tool you’ll ever need for SEO, but it ticks a few of the SEO foundation tasks off the list.

The final plus is that support through Google Groups is active and lively. The mere fact the tool has weathered several years without much development (last release 28th December 2007) is evidence of a stable, reliable and functional piece of software.

Improvements

Option to ignore robots.txt and nofollow links when I want to check my entire site, not just the indexed portions
Lots of knowledge in the Group, but sparse documentation on the website
Bringing the tool back into active development after being mothballed- web-based version anyone?