A Google Toolbar Pagerank update is happening as I write this. The last PR update was around 3 months ago. It would be interesting to see if Google softens its tough stance on penalizing websites/blogs that sell links, or relaxes it a bit.
I already see a case of the latter with some blogs going back to their high PR. This blog for instance was a PR7 before the last PR upheaval and was penalized down to a PR4. I now see that it is a PR7 again. They seem to have removed the 30 odd outgoing links which were on their home page and I am sure this is what got back their PR.
Not that Pagerank is an all important factor that influences rankings, but it is a part of over 100 factors that Google considers in their ranking algorithm - an important part at that.
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30.Apr.08 
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Most SEO’s use freely available SEO Webmaster Tools to do their research on a website. While nowadays, automated SEO software is available to carry out almost every conceivable SEO related task, I have always refrained from using such software. Why? For two reasons:
1. Search Engines do NOT like SEO software querying them and consuming their resources without the use of authorised API code and/or individual API keys.
2. Software cannot match human intelligence. You cannot get that special ‘insight’ or ‘gut feeling’ about a website using software. Sometimes this can be the key to rank a site better. For example, any software does not tell you about the quality of incoming links. Just knowing PR is useless. A simple Yahoo ‘linkdomain’ query will give you much more information about the quality sites linking to you. I have explained this in more detail below.
A few SEO Tools I use on a regular basis:
1. The Yahoo linkdomain query - Go to the Yahoo Site explorer. Type ‘linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com’ to find out the url’s of sites linking to you and the total o. of backlinks as per Yahoo. Yahoo sorts links by their order of importance and weightage. What this can help you do is:
a. Keep a close watch on you top incoming 100 links and make sure these sites continue to link to yours.
b. See which sites are linking to your competitor and approach their webmasters for links.
c. See the quality of incoming links for a site which you wish to buy links on.
d. And better still, see if the url that bought links on this site (the one that you want to buy a link on) have this site’s link in their top 100 incoming links in Yahoo. This can give you a fair idea of the weightage of this site.
2. The Google backlinks query - For this, simply use your Google toolbar (download it if you have’nt already) and click on the small arrow next to the PageRank button. You will see three options - a. Cached Snapshot of the page , b. Similar Pages , c. Backward Links. Use the third option ‘c’. You will immediately see a list of the links considered worthwhile by Google. If you do not want to download the toolbar, use the ‘link:yourdomain.com’ query in Google. Note: Google will not display all your links, only the ones it considers important.
3. Google Cache: Using the option ‘a’ above you can see when a site was cached by Google. This is important because unless a site is indexed and cached regularly, your link on it will not be considered as a link by Google. Alternatively type, ‘cache:www.yourdomain.com’ in Google.
For more advanced Google and Yahoo Search Operators, see this excellent post by John Satter - The ultimate guide to advanced searching within Yahoo, Google and MSN.
4. Link popularity tool - Compare the top site in both Google and Yahoo with yours - . It also has an option where you can choose to get the results mailed to you as well.
5. Link quality assessment tool - This tool gives you handy information on a website’s links, pages cached in Google, Yahoo & MSN, pages in Google’s supplemental index, Dmoz listing, Yahoo directory listing, .edu, .gov backlinks, deep link percentage etc.
6. Backlinks Anchor text tool - This tool is useful to find out how many backlinks a site has with their anchor text in them. The tool also displays the location of these links.
7. Website diagnostic tools - A whole buch of useful tools.
8. More SEO Tools.
9. Over 100 SEO Tools listed here.
What is more important than knowing about the tools, is to know how to use them correctly. With the right use of these tools, you can achieve the results you need for your Search Engine Optimization camapaign.
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26.Feb.08 SEO Tools Comments (0)
I have often been asked to make recommendations to friends and colleagues regarding books on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Learning SEO is comparitively easy when you have a manual at hand. I always recommend 3-4 of my favourites:
Aaron Wall’s SEO Book: This is one of the most comprehensive SEO books with over 300 pages of information. It tends to digress at times and launches into different branches of Internet Marketing, but overall its the best SEO book for beginners.
Free SEO Book by Brad Callen: Another nice book for beginners. Though not as comprehensive as Aaron’s book, this book is a good start for people who know nothing about SEO and wish to start learning. It tends to blatantly promote Brad Callen’s SEOElite software, but hey, it’s free!
SEOFastStart by Dan Thies: An excellent ‘no nonsense’ to the point SEO book for learning Beginner and Intermediate level SEO. You should definitely read this book - it’s free.
Other than the above ebooks if you prefer printed books, there are several options:
Search Engine Optimization by Richard John Jenkins: Includes SEO Training Videos
Search Engine Optimization Bible by Jerri L. Ledford
Get to the Top on Google by David Viney
Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP for developers
Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET for developers
Search Engine Optimization for Dummies
Search Engine Optimization:An Hour a Day
and many others…
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