Editor’s note: I couldn’t hunt Mr. Ploppy down this weekend, as I was moving houses. Thanks to those who were kind enough to help with the move. Now back to shuffling crap around.
SEO/SEM has really become project management. While their are certainly still tips and tricks that work in the short term, the overall longterm strategy of a site and its search engine rankings is very dependant on good project management - doing the right things at the right times. Timelines and management are very important to the success of sites in the search engines. Some folks have a natural knack for this, but tools definitely help to stay organized and on track.
Google Adsense spawned a whole new cottage industry. Raising CTR (click through rate) and CPC (cost per click) soon became important for publishers. Making money based around creating content is not a new idea, but adsense was the first of many tools that made it more of a reality.
SEO’s have to deal with an overwhelming amount of information everday. Tools that aid in the speed of gathering and disseminating that information more quickly are essential. It’s all about saving those nanoseconds each day so that you can have more time for aimless chatter on forums in the evening.
Bookmarklets are a wonderful tool for making life as a power surfer a little bit easier. They have been replaced in some respects by extensions which also serve to make things quicker and easier as well. There are a lot of similarities and a few differences between extensions and bookmarklets. If you’d like some fun with extensions, there’s a list of some favorite Firefox extensions here.
Bookmarklets are basically small pieces of javascript code that go in the bookmarks toolbar of your browser for easier access to simple commands that you do often. An example would be checking whois information. Having one-click access to this information saves from typing it in repeatedly throughout the day if you do it often. Here is an example of a bookmarklet for whois.sc.
My favorite bookmarklets
Until fairly recently, directories have been an excellent business model for the web. Choose a niche, aggregate some content, and charge for advertising. They were also nice for link developers trying to raise their link popularity, as many had high Page Rank and offered the ability to place your prime keywords in anchor titles. Directories are also a good example of how Google has changed the face of the web. During one of the G updates (perhaps Dominic if I remember correctly), Google’s algorithm was changed and became quite favorable for directories. This caused somewhat of an explosion in the number of directories created, and those trying to manipulate the flaws in the algorithm. In the recent past, Google has pointed a slanted eye towards directories with more of a guilty until proven innocent kind of mentality (funny how SEO’s always seem to personify Google’s thoughts and emotions). Directories have thus fell under the “quality microscope”, and seem to be on their way out if their models are not somewhat changed, or they offer some type of unique value proposition.
This all being said, I still like many directories. When they’re not built for the SOLE purpose of manipulating PR, they can be a very good addition to a site’s backlinks. I don’t think the directory model will ever completely die, but it does have it’s flaws. As a final note, don’t go over board with getting ALL the directories in one sitting. Too high a percentage of directory backlinks may *potentially* disrupt the balance of your link equation. Spread out your submissions over time, and use them as only a portion of your link power.
Directory Quality Control Questions
-
Check the:
- cache date
- inbound links to the page
- inbound links to the site
- age of the site
- theme of the links to the page
- other links on the page
- title of the page
- site or pages are not in the supplemental index
- make sure their IP Address is “clean†- DNS Report
- submission guidelines and quality level of listings
- make sure they are giving static links that pass link popularity and not just some type of redirect
Directory Tools
Usability is more of an issue than accessibilty to internet marketing in general, but I think BOTH topics certainly have some overlap into search engine optimization as well. Using best practices and well formed code that passes strict quality and accessibility standards is definitely going to have benefit for an SEO or other type of internet marketing campaign.
While I don’t visit Cre8site forums near often enough, Kim Krause-Berg has developed a great community over the years full of some phenomenal tools and resources. Do yourself a favor and check out the new website hospital, which is full of some awesome assistance for webmasters.
Usability and Accessbility Tools
Getting a site indexed correctly is a critical aspect to good search rankings. It never ceases to amaze me how many sites have less than half of their unique content indexed by the engines. I guess it surprises the SE’s as well, because their index seem to be getting much bigger lately, and they are making definite strides to improve on how well dynamic sites are spidered.
Creating a sitemap has always been a valuable technique towards getting a site indexed properly, and with recent developments from Google sitemaps and Yahoo’s site explorer (*coming soon) it is even more important to use the tools at your disposal for getting your site more effectively indexed.
