I shared the SEO Bookmarklet with everyone at SEOmoz through a YOUmoz blog post because it is a great community filled with a ton of knowledgeable SEO practitioners, and I thought this could help them in their day-to-day work as much as it has helped me. The post generated so much discussion and interest that it was promoted to the main SEOmoz blog where even more great feedback was generated.

Thank You!

So thank you Mozzers! I’m glad you love the bookmarklet and thank you for all of your input.

It doesn’t have to stop there, though. If you have any input into features for the SEO Bookmarklet let me know!

Here is a video I came across on Google+ (connect with me there) and he had me laughing and thinking. Fair warning: he drops a lot of expletives.

Gary’s Site

Facebook buys Gowalla From CNN Money

I once submitted a poem to a publisher of poems who only accepted “the best works”. Those works were incorporated into an anthology and the anthology was offered to those who were published “at a special price”. In addition to the anthology the creators of the poems were offered special deals on custom plaques, bookmarks, and a bunch of other items featuring their poems. I was about 12 years old and my mother was proud that I was published, so she purchased both the anthology and a plaque featuring my poem.

…Or, How to Make Money Building Apps

There is a business model for this. Not marketing to the public, but marketing to those who want to be marketing to the public. If you want to make money building apps, market yourself as builder of iPhone apps for those who want an iPhone app.

I think this is about the only opportunity people have these days to create apps for iPhone (specifically, but possibly mobile apps in particular). I’m not sure that a business model based on creating and selling apps is sustainable 99.9% of the time. I think most people have the mentality that an app is an app; it’s a minor part of their lives. In the best case it’s an entertaining gadget that distracts them for a bit. For a lot of people that doesn’t seem to even be worth 99 cents.

The Other Option is to Build a Valuable Service, With App Access

So I had a look at the most popular and best-selling apps in the App Store (excluding games, they are a whole other beast), and a pattern revealed itself to me. The apps that people download (and sometimes pay for) the most are simply access points to a service that provides them with some value. The app itself provides value by giving them mobile access to a service that provides value. In most cases the mobile access is not a source of revenue for the service and the app is free.

Look at Facebook’s business model. A large part of it is selling advertising. On the desktop version of their website users see ads in just about every page they are on. On the iPhone app they see none. To get the iPhone app users don’t pay anything.

Look at Evernote. It is a freemium service model (free basic service, paid premium service). The app is free, but advanced features are unlocked in the app if you have a premium subscription.

I Hear You, Market

Personally, I believe that most of the apps that I create provide some value. Whether that value is a mobile budgeting tool, an iPhone Bible tool, or a basic navigation tool themed to match a game that I (and millions of others) enjoy, these apps all provide some value. I feel that the value is a meager $0.99 for each. For some I feel it is a little higher.

But the market doesn’t agree. They would rather have free mobile access to a valuable service they are happy to pay for. Fair enough. The upside is that it is much easier to effectively market a valuable online service than it is to effectively market a product that nets $0.70 in profit for each purchase. It can be very difficult to market an app in a profitable way with only $0.70 available to try to acquire a customer.

My advice? Don’t focus on creating a remarkable app if the market believes that generally apps are throw-away distractions. Focus instead on creating a remarkable service that people find valuable. Then give them mobile access.

Disagree? Agree? Post your feedback in the comments.

So I built a bookmarklet that highlights the areas I look for most often, as well as a bunch of external tools I use to check other aspects, such as the readability of the page or how old the domain name is.

How it works

The bookmarklet opens a window over the page you’re viewing to show you a bunch of different SEO factors and links to external sites. When you’re done just click the red “x” button at the top right and the window will close. You don’t have to leave the page or view the source.

There are two flavours, the stable version and a “Bleeding Edge” version that I might tweak from time to time (and may not work 100% all the time as I work on it). Drag the links below to your browser’s toolbar to install it, or copy the text in the textareas to create your bookmarks manually (useful for creating the bookmarklet on your iPad or tablet).

Install

Stable Version

Drag this to your bookmarks bar: SEO

or copy this code:
javascript:(function(){var d=document,z=d.createElement('scr'+'ipt'),b=d.body;try{if(!b)throw(0);z.setAttribute('src','http://twkm.ca/min/f=gadgets/resources/seo-bookmarklet/seo-0.1.js');z.setAttribute('id','twkmSEOScript');b.appendChild(z);}catch(e){alert('Please wait until the page has loaded.');}}());

Bleeding Edge

Drag this to your bookmarks bar: SEO (BE)

or copy this code:
javascript:(function(){var da = new Date(),d=document,z=d.createElement('scr'+'ipt'),b=d.body;try{if(!b)throw(0);z.setAttribute('src','http://twkm.ca/min/f=gadgets/resources/seo-bookmarklet/seo-latest.js?ts='+da.getTime());z.setAttribute('id','twkmSEOScript');b.appendChild(z);}catch(e){alert('Please wait until the page has loaded.');}}());

Install on iDevice

On an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch you will have to create the SEO bookmarklet manually. The process is a little involved, but well worth it to be able to check out SEO factors on the go.

1. Select and copy the code in the box (in the post above)
2. Tap the ‘action’ icon in Safari (the one that looks like a box with an arrow in it)
3. Choose ‘Add Bookmark’
4. Change the title to ‘SEO’ and choose the folder you want to save it in
5. Tap the ‘Save’ button
6. Now go to your bookmarks and find the bookmark you just titled ‘SEO’
7. Tap the ‘Edit’ button and tap the title of the bookmark
8. Select the URL, clear it, and paste the code you copied into the URL input
9. Tap the back button in the top left. Your changes should be saved.

Full List of Features

The bookmarklet is broken into four main sections, and each can be hidden or expanded by clicking the title:

• On-Page Factors
  • Title tag length and value
  • Meta description tag length and value
  • Count of <img> tags with the alt attribute set, and total number of tags on the page
  • Count of <a> tags with the title attribute set, and total number of tags on the page
  • Count of heading elements from h1 to h3 on the page
  • Whether or not sitemap.xml and robots.txt files are present in the root folder of the domain (i.e. “www.seomoz.org/sitemap.xml” or “www.seomoz.org/robots.txt”)
  • Whether or not rel=canonical or meta robots tags are present, and what their values are
  • The site cookie
  • The referral URL to the current page
  • A set of links that will perform various tasks on the page, such as the SEOmoz Term Extractor, the W3C Link Checker, and others
• Research and Intelligence Tools
  • Open Site Explorer links for the current page and current domain
  • An historic backlink graph for the site
  • Access to the Google AdWords keyword tool
  • and links to research and market intelligence resources
• External Tools
  • De-personalize Google results pages
  • Get Whois data from GoDaddy
  • View past versions of the page you’re viewing through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine
• Text Length Checker
  • Paste a chunk of text in the text box to find out how many characters are present

Compatibility

I have tested this on all modern browsers and on multiple sites and haven’t seen any issues. It also works fairly well on an iPad. If you find any issues or have any suggestions, let me know!

Help Me Out

I will post my progress over the course of the month here on my blog and at my Mo Space. You can help by checking out my Mo Space and tweeting about it, liking it on Facebook, rating my page, and/or donating to the cause.

You can also follow the Apis Design team progress at the Apis blog (here’s our announcement post).

What Movember is, from the Movember FAQs page:

Movember is the month formerly known as November, where men and women across the globe join together raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues. Men grow a Mo (moustache) for 30 days to become walking, talking billboards, for our men’s health causes – specifically prostate cancer.

Thanks for your support!

Let the Mo Grow!

• Helping someone understand something better.
• Brushing the snow off of your partner’s/parent’s/roomate’s car in the morning.
• Making your boss look good.
• Helping with your co-worker’s work load.
• Picking up a piece of garbage that you did not throw there.
• Helping others going through challenging times.
• Sending a gift or letter to a sick friend.
• etc., etc.

These are not gigantic life-changing actions, rather they are small, simple gestures that show that you care about another, that show you care enough to try to make their lives just the tiniest bit easier or more enjoyable.

The TWKM logo reflects my belief that life can be better, and that we can make life better. I discovered the basis of the logo in the back of my mother’s well-worn Bible. There was a page that showed Biblical symbols, some referring to the Trinity, some referring to symbols that early Christians used to secretly identify each other when they were being hunted by the Romans.

Of the multiple pages of symbols, the one that really seemed to resonate with me was a simple circle that had a line drawn vertically through it. The left side was colored black, and the right left unfilled. It symbolized Good and Evil.

I loved the simplicity of the symbol, and how much it stated with so little embellishment. But I saw in the symbol a sad stalemate. Good vs. Evil, static, with no change. They both existed there in a state in which neither side prevailed.

While this may be true and both Good and Evil exist in equal measure, I redrew the symbol to be more dynamic, showing that Good can overcome Evil. That there can be more Good than Evil. Basically, that we can make life better.

The TWKM logo is built off of the idea of that symbol, but it says so much more. The curved divider between the two sections shows that Good is forcing the boundary and encroaching on Evil’s territory. It is stressing it and actively working against it. By Good’s small and simple gestures and actions, it is making headway and growing, stealing space from Evil.

I love the simplicity of the TWKM logo, but I love more the complex message it conveys. This simple logo serves as a mini-manifesto that I strive to live and do business by. I work to make this logo a truth in my personal life by helping others in any way I can. With Gadgets by TWKM, I also work to make this logo a truth by not only make lives easier through gadgets and tools designed to simplify or streamline our lives, but also through donating to charities who are working to make life better for the people they support.

Do you have any other examples of simple symbols or logos that simply or discretely send a message? Do you have any other examples of small gestures that can make life better? Share them in the comments.

More and more lately I am coming to realize the value and importance of working within a team and finding the right people to fill that team. I am a quick-learner and capable of doing most anything reasonably well, so I have spent a lot of my life trying to do things myself. I usually do a pretty good job, too, no matter what it is.

Even though I can get a decent result doing it myself, it usually takes me four times as long and is not quite near the quality that a professional or someone much more suited to the task could accomplish. Beyond that, when it is all said and done, I have no one to share my success or failure with, no other ideas to consider and implement, no other skill sets and knowledge to learn and grow from.

I have built websites, iPhone apps, conceptualized businesses, painted, woodworked, fixed my own car, etc. and I do a good job because I am proud of the work I do, but the things I have built have been limited by my skill sets, my mindsets, my capacity and patience to learn a new skill (as well as the apparent future value of expending the time to learn that skill),  and my time. A team with the right people in it destroys a lot of those limits.

The point is, you can only do what you can do. You can only learn and grow from others.

Any product should be a well-oiled system (be it a business, electronic device, website etc.) and you need experts working on each component for that to become true. You are probably not an expert of each of those components. Sorry.

Sure, you could probably build it near as good as them. You could probably do it cheaper (although, your time IS worth money). You may not have to split the fruits of your labour with anyone, but you also won’t have anyone to split the crappy bits with, either.

As Hugh MacLeod says, seek out the exceptional minds. Pay them well, inspire them, work with them. A lot more can be built a lot more quickly with a team of people, than you can do yourself.

Those companies that have recognized this already are hugely successful. They are speaking to employees and customers on levels that resonate with them. It all starts at the top, at the genesis of the business and the people involved in the business. I remember reading that the most important thing in any business is it’s Mission Statement, which communicates the core values that the business operates from.

I’ve seen a lot of Mission Statements that really miss the point, and I don’t think that the Mission Statement is the first step, I think it is the product of the first step. Before you craft a Mission Statement you have to think long and hard about what the company you want to form believes in, which will most likely be very strongly tied to what you believe in. Some of the theories I am really taking note of lately come from Simon Sinek and Dan Pink. In a TED talk that Simon Sinek presented, he said that people don’t work with you or buy from you because you have a better or cheaper product, or a product that fits their specific goals for that product. They do these things because they believe what you believe.

I think that most people believe in something. Whether it is something spiritual and transcendent or something tied to survival, we all believe in something. Some believe in the pursuit of fortune and fame, others in family, others in philanthropy. No matter what it is you believe, it is important that you are surrounded by others who believe these things as well. It may not be a good match to have a capitalistic business hire philanthropic employees as their goals may be too different, for example.

So before you craft your Mission Statement, think about what it is you believe and what belief you want your company’s actions to be measured against. Don’t stop there, though, because a Mission Statement only COMMUNICATES what your core values are. You still have to ACT ACCORDING TO YOUR CORE VALUES. If your personal core values are the foundation of you as a person, then you Mission Statement is the foundation of your business. Always remember that actions speak far louder than words, and employees and customers can both pick up on a company (or person) who says they stand for one thing, but their actions don’t confirm that they do.

At my worst I think I pretty much boycotted social media because I feel that it can be a bit of a misnomer. That’s a discussion for a later time, but the point is that this book really solidified a full social media strategy for myself and my realtor mother who I will be helping develop a social media strategy.

I would definitely recommend checking out Gary’s book. It discusses the importance of building a personal brand, as well as a lot of tips and tools to get started. I haven’t read all of it yet, but from what I’m seeing so far, it is a good book for beginners and the more experienced alike. It would definitely help you build a social media strategy, and give you some ideas to get started.