Tools Archives - Page 30 of 30

Great Find: SEOmoz Beginnerâs Guide

January 26, 2006 by Liz

seomoz_org logo

Great Find: SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Type of Article: A Series of Articles on SEO
Permalink: Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Target Audience: Any blogger who is curious about SEO and how it works
Content: SEOmoz, a Seatlle-based Search-engine organization has put together this series to help individuals, organizations, and companies who have little to no experience with search engine optimization and want to learn the basics of how search engines work. The organization states their goal as to improve your ability to drive search traffic to your site and debunk major myths about SEO. We share this knowledge to help businesses, government, educational, and non-profit organizations benefit from being listed in the major search engines.

From this list it appears that they take their goals very seriously. The first four (in purple) give you a quick look at what you might be interested in further down the line. All of the articles are short and written in clear, plain English, so they’re easy to follow and, well, interesting to read. Take a peek.

This is one fine reference to add to your library. It’s nice to bump into an SEO org that wants to share what it knows in such an organized fashion. Thanks SEOmoz.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: Have You Been Stumbled Upon?

December 2, 2005 by Liz

This being Friday, I hadn’t planned on writing another post. I had a few lined up for the day and that MIT book I’m working on is staring at me.

But I was stumbled upon again—Successful Blog was stumbled upon last week and now this. I couldn’t help myself. My famous curiosity kicked in, and I had to check it out. Once I did, I figured you might want to play with Stumble Upon over the weekend. So here I am writing this post . . .

Stumble Upon is a more user-friendly, more organized, more social–yeah, that’s what I mean–a more social, social bookmarking tool. For the web pro, del.cio.us has an interface that offers the credibility and appeal of an indexing page. For the rest of us, Stumble Upon has that “Frosted Mini-Wheat” appeal–it’s visually pleasing and fun enough for the kid in me, but sophisticated and organized to satisfy the adult as well. For the social butterfly or the college kid this one wins hands down for it’s personal interaction features.

The time it takes to get up and running on Stumble Upon is short and sweet, and a quick check at Technorati shows that it already has 1500 users linked to it. I think this is the next sleeper hit. Well, just look at the difference. The developers have met most of the problems people have with using its competition.

You can edit the backgrounds, pick the categories, and do random searches to “stumble upon” sites under tagged themes. It’s addictive and fun. You can also meet people and share what you’ve found–if you so choose. More than that, it’s much nicer to look at and easier to find things.

If it’s not what you’re looking for, it might be the perfect thing for that friend or relative who finds del.cio.us overwhelming or visually intimidating.

Here’s what some of the big magazines said about Stumble Upon.

Give it a try. You might like it. I did, but then I stumble a lot even without it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SEO–Link Checking Tools

November 24, 2005 by Liz

Practical SEO for Every Blogger

Checking Backlinks

Backlinks are an exciting part of watching your blog grow. Each link is a statement, a vote, that moves your blog a bit higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Here are some ways for finding out about your links.

Talk Digger
Duncan Riley introduced Fred Giasson’s Talk Digger in an article in the Blog Herald this summer and I’ve been using it since. It’s a quick way to check your links at Bloglines, Blog Pulse, Feedster, Technorati, Ice Rocket, BlogDigger, PubSub, MSN, and Google all at the same time. To quote Talk Digger: Talk Digger is a meta-search engine. It asks major search engines: “Who links that URL?” The results will then be processed and displayed on Talk Digger. This is a free web service developed by Frederick Giasson.

Who Links to Me
Another tool you may have seen around the web is WhoLinkstoMe. Paste the Who Links to Me linking code into your template. Click through the link to check your own or another site’s Google Page Rank, and links found by Who Links to Me, Blogrolling, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, and Icerocket.

Related Links
Nick Wilson at Performancing had this method to check what Google considers related links. Type in the Google search box: related: yourdomain.com . Then he suggests you review the links to see what kind of sites come up. You would want a strong theme to show through. Your goal would be to answer these questions with a “yes.”

Are most of the sites on same theme or topic as your blog?
Are there some authorities in your niche?

deep dark blue strip A
THIS JUST IN:

Mark Wade of Blog Marketing, Blog Promotion for Newbies offered this addition to our list.

iWEBTOOL Backlink Checker

Ara Pehlivanian of the site of the same name offers this:

You might also want to check out the Firefox extension SEO Links by WebmasterBrain.

These should give you something to do while that turkey’s in the oven.
Happy Holiday if you’re having one. If you’re not, declare one.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: How to Back Up Your Blog

November 14, 2005 by Liz

It’s data. Best practices say, back it up regularly.

If you’re new to blogging you might not have heard the stories. I read another this week . . . about someone who accidently deleted a whole blog. Indie told one two weeks ago about fans who rescued a blog–piece by piece–when the author deleted it. Things happen to all of us. One night it happened to me. Blogger redid their blogging software, and that work messed up my formatting. ASCI characters popped everywhere that once was an apostrophe or a quotation mark. I had to change each character back by hand.

When I was reading this weekend, I found a great Lifehacker tip you might have missed, Ask Lifehacker: How do I back up my blog? The tip includes download links for two blogger back-up programs–one for OSX and one for PC.

Each of the programs puts a mirror image of the blog on your computer. It’s your safety net should anything ever happen for any reason. That means that not only your content, but any little template tweaks you make over time will remain true and faithful–never needing to be made again.

If you don’t have one or something like it, stop and go get one. Don’t find yourself thinking, “Oh man, I wish I would have done that when I had the chance.” Don’t work in the “high-risk” zone.

How much time could it take? How much time could it save you? 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss