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Rank Checker is an awesome Firefox Add-on from the folks at SEOBook.  For many months, I was searching for a way to find out where I was ranking for specific keywords.  Then I found it, and I was ecstatic.

If you don’t understand the significance of this, think of it this way:

Say you have a site called Webovater, and you use it to blog about Kickass seo Resources.  And you want to know where it would turn up in the search results on Google, when you searched for that exact phrase.

In the past, you would have to go to Google, type it in, and manually search for your site in each page of the search results, until you FINALLY found it.  There were 10 results per page, so if you were result #1001 for a particular keyword, you would have to click through 100 pages before you found your site.

Who wants to do that?  Not me.  You can now save yourself time, by checking where you rank for MULTIPLE keywords, using this seo tool. What is even cooler is that you can export your results to a .csv file, which is basically a text file that can be opened in any spreadsheet app, like Excel.

So now, you can easily check your ranking on multiple keywords, fast, and save the results to track your changes.  If you notice your site is decreasing in rank, you can then start to make the necessary changes to fix it.

Hope this helps!

What other seo programs and tools are in your arsenal?  Leave a comment, and let us know why you like them/how they help.

Also: It just so happens that Webovater ranks #1 for kickass seo.  Yay.  Obscure?  Perhaps.  But still a small victory that causes me to smile.

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Athough this came out about three years ago, I thought it might be valuable to you if you have never used it before:
“SEOmoz has just recently released a new kick ass seo tool:

Page Strength seo Tool ”

Thanks to our friends at Geek Under Fire, I found this article back in 2007 but am just now getting around to thanking him for it

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Step One: Create some great content on your site.   For an example of great content, keep reading my blogs.  Why?  Because I will be linking to OTHER great content.  Ha, and you thought I was patting myself on the back, dintcha?

Step Two: Bookmark, bookmark, bookmark. If you don’t already have accounts on Digg, Fark, Furl, del.icio.us, Propeller, Mixx, Yigg, Reddit, and every other bookmarking site in existence, get them.  It will be incredibly tedious setting them all up, but after that four or five hour trek is complete, and you autosave your passwords, and drag your bookmarklets to the browser toolbar, you will be on the fast lane to success. There are at least a couple hundred bookmarking sites to choose from these days; for a few of the popular ones, look to the bottom of this article.

A quick note about social bookmarking: it used to be a great tool for seo.  The importance of bookmarking in terms of backlink building has decreased a little bit over the past two years, but it is still a good practice to get into, because you will get traffic.  Even though you might not get tons of diggs, if you just get a few, and one person likes your stuff enough to link to it from HIS or HER site, then you will get a backlink indirectly from a living breathing human, who liked your content.  And when you have a chance to network with other living humans, it is a good thing.

Bookmark other people’s content, link to them, leave them comments and shouts, and they will remember you.

Step three: leave comments on blogs that relate to your content. Yes, you have heard this idea before, and it’s time consuming.  And you have heard that a lot of blogs insert the rel=”nofollow” into all links to keep from passing along any PR juice to your site.  But now, remember that you want to write content for humans. You want to network on social bookmarking sites with humans.  And you want to get traffic from humans.  So who cares if the link has “nofollow” attached to it?  Over the long haul you will find plenty of “dofollow” links.  Don’t discriminate, grab them all.

Still not convinced? Ok, well here is a trick to find other blogs that are HUNGRY for your comments, and DOFOLLOW.  Use the “Do Follow Diver” search box over at our friends’ site, and just type in your niche keywords.  It’s easy, it’s fun.  Why is it fun?  Because the blog owners you will find here actually respond, they are waiting for you, and they are happy to link back to your site.

Just be respectful and make sure your comments are relevant, not spammy.

If you bookmark one of YOUR blog articles and one of someone else’s each day, AND leave a comment with your link on ONE blog each day, your traffic will pick up.  Make it fun, and don’t do too much at once.  You will see results faster than you think.

Steps 4 and 5: Forums and Article Directories, coming in the next entry.

Time for me to make some pasta.  See you soon.

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Have you ever wondered just how Google got to be a PageRank 10 site?

Just kidding, it’s pretty obvious.

But seriously, how do I make the jump from a PR3 to a PR4?  I have been sitting at PR3, not moving up or down, for what seems like forever.  Really it’s only been a couple of months, but we Americans are SO impatient, aren’t we? If I was cool I would have said Yanks, not Americans, but let’s get to the point:

BACKLINKS ARE THE NEW BLACK!

So it’s not a new trend, but the importance of it is huge.  You can’t compete unless you make link building an active  part of your seo Dance Moves repertoire.

Inbound links and backlinks are the same thing, if you weren’t sure.  It’s okay to ask questions, this blog is not aimed at the experts.  The experts don’t need seo blogs.

So although the practice of getting backlinks to increase your PageRank is not new, the importance of it is SO GREAT that it still merits being called the new black.

I would venture to say that IF your domain is young, and IF you do not have the luxury of having your primary keyword phrase in your domain, the fastest and best way to build your authority is by getting other sites to link to you.

Think of it this way: all other factors being equal, if two web pages are equal in terms of keyword density and onsite optimization, then the best tiebreaker is in OFFSITE optimization.

So although it can be tedious, although it is probably going to be your least favorite aspect of seo, it is still one of the smartest things to focus on.

The next article will be a list of creative ways to get those inbound links from high PR sites, and we aren’t going to send out a single desparate email to any webmaster, begging for a repicrocal link exchange!

I will make link building fun, if it kills me!

Comments are welcome, it’s getting lonely in this elevator shaft.

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First of all, SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page.  The ideal spot is number one.  Google puts ten sites on each page, so in order to get listed on the first SERP for a given keyword, you must be in the top ten sites ranked for that keyword.  Here are, basically, the most important things to focus on:

1. Domain age. A 5 year old domain has an advantage over a domain name that you bought last week. It already carries some authority. But it’s not a HUGE deal. There are often sites in the top ten (coveted spot) that are new. They optimized well in other areas, obviously.
2. Keywords in domain name. This helps a great deal. For example, if my main keyword phrase is “pound dog rescue“, then the ideal domain name is pounddogrescue.com, with no hyphens.  Don’t waste your money on a .info domain.  Only buy the .org, .net, .us, .me names if 1) the .com version is not available, and 2) it makes sense for your site (as in, don’t get a .org if you are not an organization–it just doesn’t look good).
3. Keywords used in other strategic spots.  If you are using Firefox, go to your site and hit CTRL+U.  This will bring up your source code for the site.  You should notice <title> tags, <h1> and <h2> tags, <img> tags, <meta> tags, and each of these is a good spot to use your keyword phrase.  Don’t just use your primary keyword phrase, but switch things up every now and then, without being spammy.  For example, in the <img> tag, include some alt text, with the word “logo” or “graphic” at the end.  The reason for alt text is to tell someone who can’t see the picture, what it is a picture of!  This comes in handy for text-only browsers, as well as broken images (the text will appear if the image doesn’t load).  So use alt text to your advantage, but remember to create your site to be useful for people, don’t just stuff keywords everywhere tastelessly.
4. Inbound links.  Perhaps one of the most difficult parts of seo; link building campaigns can be costly and time consuming.  But the more inbound links you have (in other words, other websites who are linking TO your page), the better.  Again, this is not going to be the sole determining factor, as sometimes the number one site has less inbound links than the other top ten sites for your keyword, but it is still a HUGE help, when other sites link to yours.  It helps build your authority, in your chosen niche.
5. Relevant link TEXT. Just because you’ve got inbound links, doesn’t mean your work is done.  You need to make sure the anchor tags linking to you are also using your keywords.  Don’t use the same link text for every inbound link.  Use a variety, and again, don’t get spammy.  The fewer words, the more weight each word will carry.

Each of these points can be analyzed further.  This is meant as a rough starting point to open up questions and discussion.  For example, meta tags for description and keywords (SEE #3 above) have really become less important in Google’s eyes, but they are still used by many other search engines to determine how to rank your pages.  Or we could start an entire discussion on whether or not to waste your time with reciprocal linking.  My opinion: if you truly find a site to be valuable, then link to it.  If not, then don’t.   As long as your content is strong, you won’t have to beg people for links, they will link to you naturally.

What are YOUR thoughts?

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