You learned the basics of Feedburner and its relationship to SEO in the first part of this two-part series. Now in the second part you will learn the detailed technical procedures for integrating Feedburner with your website to maximize subscribers and also increase the chance of getting organic links….
IT Training Programs Get The It Skills That Gets Jobs! Further Your Career Today
On December 28, 2009, In SEO, by Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization - RSS Feeds
You learned the basics of Feedburner and its relationship to SEO in the first part of this two-part series. Now in the second part you will learn the detailed technical procedures for integrating Feedburner with your website to maximize subscribers and also increase the chance of getting organic links….
IT Training Programs Get The It Skills That Gets Jobs! Further Your Career Today
On December 28, 2009, In SEO, by Danny Dover
Posted by Danny Dover
Update: Based on some excellent feedback in the comments (Seriously, thank you everyone!) I have updated the post with some clarifications and more added data. Specifically, I added a diagram of the page setup and removed a confusing comment I made about Javascript links.
As SEOmoz has matured as a company, our SEO team has shifted away from treating SEO purely as an art and more toward treating it as a science. There is certainly the necessity for both perspectives but I believe we are now much more centered.
As a result of this shift, we have been running more tests and analyzing more data. Before I get into the topic of our latest test results, let me provide some important points to establish context.
- There is overwhelming evidence that from a "ROI on time spent working" perspective, there is much more value in link building and creating content that is link-worthy than obsessing over search engine algorithm fluctuations like PageRank sculpting. Link building is human oriented and thus more inline with the long term goals of the search engines. Links also have the added bonus of being easy to measure and thus easier to prioritize.
- We can’t directly measure how PageRank flows so we can only infer results. This needs to be acknowledged when interpreting test results. That said, we also can’t directly measure objects outside our solar system and this solution of inference has become the basis for modern Astronomy. (If it is good enough for NASA, it is good enough for SEOmoz ;-p)
The Experiment
We chose the following five PageRank sculpting methods to test:
Rel=‘nofollow’ - The standard mechanism for nofollowing a link. <a href=’http://www.example.com’ rel=‘nofollow’>example</a>
Link Consolidation – Consolidating low priority pages. You can read more about link consolidation here.
Iframe – Include a standard link in an iframe that is blocked via robots.txt or meta robots so engines can’t follow it.
Javascript – An external Javascript file (blocked from robots) that inserts links into divs when the page renders.
Control Case – Null test with standard links.
Page Setup
We then built five standardized websites that used these different methods (one used iframes for its test links, another one used Javascript for its test links, etc..) and included one normal link with the anchor text of a phrase that was completely unique on the Internet.
Each website in the experiment used the same template. Each keyword phrase was targeted in the same place on each page and each page had the same amount of images, text and links.
The standardized website layout contained:
- Four pages per domain (the homepage and the keyword specific content pages)
- One internal inlink per page (Links in content)
- One inlink to homepage from third party site
- Six total outbound links.
- Two "junk" links to popular website articles to mimic natural linking profile (old Digg articles)
- One normal link to keyword test page
- Three modified links (according to given test) to three separate pages optimized for given keyword
- Links to internal pages only came from internal links
- The internal links used the anchor text (random English phrase) that was optimized for the given internal page
- Outbound links (aka "junk" links) used anchor text that was the same as the title tag of the external page being linked to (Old Digg articles)
.png)
Example Test Website
Please note that the above example was NOT actually used. I provided a fake example to maintain the integrity of the testing platform for future tests.
The experiment variables were:
- links (based on experiment type)
- colors
- photos (although alt text was standardized)
- text (randomized text based on proper English grammar using a standardized word-set)
We then did everything we could to make sure that all of these pages received the same amount of link juice from external sources.
The null result would be a random assortment of experiment types ranking in the SERPs.
The alt result would be one experiment type outranking all of the others.
Redundancy
We then duplicated this experiment eight times in parallel. This meant 40 different domains, 40 different IP addresses, 8 different WHOIS records, 8 different hosting providers and 8 different payment methods. (We then went outside and drank)
We ran this test for 2 months.
The Results
| PageRank Sculpting Method | Average Rank in Google |
| Nofollow | 2.4 |
| Link Consolidation | 3.0 |
| Iframe | 3.1 |
| Javascript | 3.2 |
| Control Case | 3.2 |
| Rank | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Test 4 | Test 5 | Test 6 | Test 7 | Test 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | nofollow | nofollow | control | nofollow | consolidation | iframe | nofollow | control |
| 2. | javascript | iframe | javascript | consolidation | iframe | consolidation | consolidation | iframe |
| 3. | consolidation | javascript | nofollow | iframe | nofollow | control | control | javascript |
| 4. | control | control | consolidation | javascript | javascript | javascript | javascript | nofollow |
| 5. | iframe | consolidation | iframe | control | control | nofollow | iframe | consolidation |
As you can see, the nofollow method ranked an average of 1 place higher (0.7) in the SERPs than the control result. This is significant when you realize the total is out of 5.
It appears that the iframe method and link consolidation were slightly effective but the margin was so small that they could be contributed to error.
The Javascript method did not work at all.
The Bottom Line
Despite what the search engine representatives say, nofollow is still an effective way for sculpting PageRank. If you have nofollow sculpting already installed, don’t remove it. If you don’t have it installed, implementing it probably won’t make a drastic change but we encourage you to test this when it is responsible to do so.
I invite you to share your interpretation of these results in the comments below. As with any experiment, these results are not valid unless they can be reproduced and stand up to the critique of others. What should we do differently in future experiments?
Posted by Danny Dover
Update: Based on some excellent feedback in the comments (Seriously, thank you everyone!) I have updated the post with some clarifications and more added data. Specifically, I added a diagram of the page setup and removed a confusing comment I made about Javascript links.
As SEOmoz has matured as a company, our SEO team has shifted away from treating SEO purely as an art and more toward treating it as a science. There is certainly the necessity for both perspectives but I believe we are now much more centered.
As a result of this shift, we have been running more tests and analyzing more data. Before I get into the topic of our latest test results, let me provide some important points to establish context.
- There is overwhelming evidence that from a "ROI on time spent working" perspective, there is much more value in link building and creating content that is link-worthy than obsessing over search engine algorithm fluctuations like PageRank sculpting. Link building is human oriented and thus more inline with the long term goals of the search engines. Links also have the added bonus of being easy to measure and thus easier to prioritize.
- We can’t directly measure how PageRank flows so we can only infer results. This needs to be acknowledged when interpreting test results. That said, we also can’t directly measure objects outside our solar system and this solution of inference has become the basis for modern Astronomy. (If it is good enough for NASA, it is good enough for SEOmoz ;-p)
The Experiment
We chose the following five PageRank sculpting methods to test:
Rel=‘nofollow’ - The standard mechanism for nofollowing a link. <a href=’http://www.example.com’ rel=‘nofollow’>example</a>
Link Consolidation – Consolidating low priority pages. You can read more about link consolidation here.
Iframe – Include a standard link in an iframe that is blocked via robots.txt or meta robots so engines can’t follow it.
Javascript – An external Javascript file (blocked from robots) that inserts links into divs when the page renders.
Control Case – Null test with standard links.
Page Setup
We then built five standardized websites that used these different methods (one used iframes for its test links, another one used Javascript for its test links, etc..) and included one normal link with the anchor text of a phrase that was completely unique on the Internet.
Each website in the experiment used the same template. Each keyword phrase was targeted in the same place on each page and each page had the same amount of images, text and links.
The standardized website layout contained:
- Four pages per domain (the homepage and the keyword specific content pages)
- One internal inlink per page (Links in content)
- One inlink to homepage from third party site
- Six total outbound links.
- Two "junk" links to popular website articles to mimic natural linking profile (old Digg articles)
- One normal link to keyword test page
- Three modified links (according to given test) to three separate pages optimized for given keyword
- Links to internal pages only came from internal links
- The internal links used the anchor text (random English phrase) that was optimized for the given internal page
- Outbound links (aka "junk" links) used anchor text that was the same as the title tag of the external page being linked to (Old Digg articles)
Example Test Website
Please note that the above example was NOT actually used. I provided a fake example to maintain the integrity of the testing platform for future tests.
The experiment variables were:
- links (based on experiment type)
- colors
- photos (although alt text was standardized)
- text (randomized text based on proper English grammar using a standardized word-set)
We then did everything we could to make sure that all of these pages received the same amount of link juice from external sources.
The null result would be a random assortment of experiment types ranking in the SERPs.
The alt result would be one experiment type outranking all of the others.
Redundancy
We then duplicated this experiment eight times in parallel. This meant 40 different domains, 40 different IP addresses, 8 different WHOIS records, 8 different hosting providers and 8 different payment methods. (We then went outside and drank)
We ran this test for 2 months.
The Results
| PageRank Sculpting Method | Average Rank in Google |
| Nofollow | 2.4 |
| Link Consolidation | 3.0 |
| Iframe | 3.1 |
| Javascript | 3.2 |
| Control Case | 3.2 |
| Rank | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Test 4 | Test 5 | Test 6 | Test 7 | Test 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | nofollow | nofollow | control | nofollow | consolidation | iframe | nofollow | control |
| 2. | javascript | iframe | javascript | consolidation | iframe | consolidation | consolidation | iframe |
| 3. | consolidation | javascript | nofollow | iframe | nofollow | control | control | javascript |
| 4. | control | control | consolidation | javascript | javascript | javascript | javascript | nofollow |
| 5. | iframe | consolidation | iframe | control | control | nofollow | iframe | consolidation |
As you can see, the nofollow method ranked an average of 1 place higher (0.7) in the SERPs than the control result. This is significant when you realize the total is out of 5.
It appears that the iframe method and link consolidation were slightly effective but the margin was so small that they could be contributed to error.
The Javascript method did not work at all.
The Bottom Line
Despite what the search engine representatives say, nofollow is still an effective way for sculpting PageRank. If you have nofollow sculpting already installed, don’t remove it. If you don’t have it installed, implementing it probably won’t make a drastic change but we encourage you to test this when it is responsible to do so.
I invite you to share your interpretation of these results in the comments below. As with any experiment, these results are not valid unless they can be reproduced and stand up to the critique of others. What should we do differently in future experiments?
On December 23, 2009, In SEO, by great scott
Posted by great scott!
Welcome back to our second installment of this very special WhiteBEARD Friday! Last week Rand Fishclause discussed how the new school way to get links is to give back to webmasters. That’s right, you’ve gotta give a little to get a little. This week, in the spirit of Searchmas©, we’re giving you 12 examples of sites that exemplify this new model.
From video hosting, to awards, to social profiles, and many more, we hope you’ll come away with some great ideas about what you can do to provide outward value to the linkerati and get a whole lotta link love back in return.
SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – 12 Link Strategies of Searchmas from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
From all of us here at SEOmoz, thanks for joining us every week for our 2009 season of Whiteboard Friday, and for being part of one of the most vibrant, fun, and talented communities on the web. Your participation and readership really means the world to us, and we can’t wait to share 2010 with you. Until then, happy holidays 
Posted by great scott!
Welcome back to our second installment of this very special WhiteBEARD Friday! Last week Rand Fishclause discussed how the new school way to get links is to give back to webmasters. That’s right, you’ve gotta give a little to get a little. This week, in the spirit of Searchmas©, we’re giving you 12 examples of sites that exemplify this new model.
From video hosting, to awards, to social profiles, and many more, we hope you’ll come away with some great ideas about what you can do to provide outward value to the linkerati and get a whole lotta link love back in return.
SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – 12 Link Strategies of Searchmas from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
From all of us here at SEOmoz, thanks for joining us every week for our 2009 season of Whiteboard Friday, and for being part of one of the most vibrant, fun, and talented communities on the web. Your participation and readership really means the world to us, and we can’t wait to share 2010 with you. Until then, happy holidays
On December 23, 2009, In SEO, by Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization - RSS Feeds
Having trouble getting your new site seen by readers and ranked by the search engines Feedburner can help. This two-part series explains how to use this popular web feed management system and how to get the most out of it….
IT Training Programs Get The It Skills That Gets Jobs! Further Your Career Today
Having trouble getting your new site seen by readers and ranked by the search engines Feedburner can help. This two-part series explains how to use this popular web feed management system and how to get the most out of it….
IT Training Programs Get The It Skills That Gets Jobs! Further Your Career Today
On December 22, 2009, In SEO, by Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization - RSS Feeds
Many of you reading this article may not know what statistical process control or SPC is. It is a problem-detection technique implemented for any measurable process. Keep reading as we delve deeper into the appropriate methods and show how to apply them to SEO….
Explore Microsoft Windows Get valuable resources, advice, videos, and tips about Windows 7
Many of you reading this article may not know what statistical process control or SPC is. It is a problem-detection technique implemented for any measurable process. Keep reading as we delve deeper into the appropriate methods and show how to apply them to SEO….
Explore Microsoft Windows Get valuable resources, advice, videos, and tips about Windows 7
On December 21, 2009, In SEO, by randfish
Posted by randfish
Earlier this month, Google launched personalized results by default for all users. SEOs should have already read Danny Sullivan’s analysis of the shift (which is quite excellent) and I also suggest checking out David Harry’s Guide on the topic. Sadly, despite some good advice, it appears that a lot of folks are still worried that this is somehow the "end of SEO" or demands a "completely new look at SEO practices." Let’s do a brief analysis:
What’s the Impact for SEOs?
- Rank Checking is Less Universally Accurate
While not the biggest tragedy, it’s certainly a bit frustrating to know that rank tracking (manually or with tools) may provide somewhat less authoritative data than before. Though, to be honest, rank tracking has always been about establishing a baseline, not about exact results (see previous posts on this). Still, if you’ve been using this data to see how you fluctuate in the "normal" (non-personalized or geo-targeted) results, it’s still solid for that purpose and may actually help you determine if you’re gaining or losing in the new, personalized world (if you get more traffic but rankings stay the same, personalized might be helping; if you gain rankings but don’t proportionally benefit in search traffic, it may be hurting).
_ - The Rich Get (Even) Richer
Those at the top of the results, who "own" the queries around their niches are likely to benefit disproportionately as mid and long tail queries that would once have shown more alternative sources will now bring up those "previously visited" sites even if their traditional relevance and popularity scores wouldn’t have earned them a top position. This will likely contribute to some lowered diversity in the results, but may help fight against low quality re-publishers and content aggregators in favor of trusted brands.
_ - User Experience & Branding Boost SEO (Even More)
It’s always been critical to make users love your site, but now the direct SEO impact can be felt even more strongly. Sites and brands that "suck at SEO" may even find themselves performing better if their users love them and the pages are, at least, accessible to engines. I’m buying Steve Krug’s new book – Rocket Surgery Made Easy - ASAP either way
_ - Buying Traffic May Now Help Organic Results
If Google really is using signals from all sources of data, the paid results and their impact on search and visit history might now give a boost (indirectly) to positioning in the organic results. In fact, it could be that even services like Google AdSense or other paid advertising that leads a visitor who’s logged in to their Google account and using the toolbar (or other detectable methods of tracking) will "count" towards the personalization metrics. I expect lots of SEOs to start testing and reporting on this soon.
_
What Should We Do Differently in our Campaigns?
- Get More Visitors (Any Way We Can)
Depending on how Google is counting visits and traffic (which they haven’t and probably won’t ever fully disclose), any way you can drag a visitor to your site and give them a good experience is likely to positively contribute to your chances of ranking better in personalized results.
_ - Improve Brand Loyalty
SEOs haven’t classically focused on brand metrics and branding as a marketing practice, but it’s long past due. The benefits of building a strong brand are evident everywhere in the consumer (and B2B) marketplace. Now Google’s giving us one more reason (and a more direct one at that) to start earning visitors’ love and, in turn, be rewarded by higher rankings.
_ - More Tightly Integrate Metrics w/ Rank Tracking
Again, this has been a wise move long before personalization, but with the expansion comes renewed need for weaving together the 3rd-party tracking of rankings with the traffic metrics from your analytics to provide a full picture of how your site is performing in the search engines.
_
The big takeaway here is that these action items aren’t particularly groundbreaking. We should have been doing all of these as responsible, effective Internet marketers anyway.
Is this a Major, Tectonic Shift in SEO?
No. I’m maintaining my previous stance that unless a shift from Google fundamentally changes the classic SEO process:
- Make pages accessible
- Target with keywords that searchers employ
- Build content that users will find useful and valuable
- Earn editorial links from good sources
It doesn’t qualify as a "tectonic" or "massive" or "fundamental" change in SEO. The best practices we’ve been recommending to clients, developers and content creators for the last half-decade are actually less impacted by this change than by some of the other items we’ve encountered recently (Bing + Yahoo! combining, real-time results at the top of query results, more vertical results in the SERPs, etc.). These latter examples call for much more active changes, learnings and direct action on the part of SEOs vs. personalization, which by-and-large just strengthens the reasons for best practices we’ve long known to exist.
p.s. Tomorrow evening at 6pm (Tuesday Dec. 22nd), I’ll be attending an informal SEO meetup in San Diego, CA at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Mission Valley – 5010 Mission Center Road San Diego, CA 92108. Hope to see some of you there before the holidays!
Posted by randfish
Earlier this month, Google launched personalized results by default for all users. SEOs should have already read Danny Sullivan’s analysis of the shift (which is quite excellent) and I also suggest checking out David Harry’s Guide on the topic. Sadly, despite some good advice, it appears that a lot of folks are still worried that this is somehow the "end of SEO" or demands a "completely new look at SEO practices." Let’s do a brief analysis:
What’s the Impact for SEOs?
- Rank Checking is Less Universally Accurate
While not the biggest tragedy, it’s certainly a bit frustrating to know that rank tracking (manually or with tools) may provide somewhat less authoritative data than before. Though, to be honest, rank tracking has always been about establishing a baseline, not about exact results (see previous posts on this). Still, if you’ve been using this data to see how you fluctuate in the "normal" (non-personalized or geo-targeted) results, it’s still solid for that purpose and may actually help you determine if you’re gaining or losing in the new, personalized world (if you get more traffic but rankings stay the same, personalized might be helping; if you gain rankings but don’t proportionally benefit in search traffic, it may be hurting).
_ - The Rich Get (Even) Richer
Those at the top of the results, who "own" the queries around their niches are likely to benefit disproportionately as mid and long tail queries that would once have shown more alternative sources will now bring up those "previously visited" sites even if their traditional relevance and popularity scores wouldn’t have earned them a top position. This will likely contribute to some lowered diversity in the results, but may help fight against low quality re-publishers and content aggregators in favor of trusted brands.
_ - User Experience & Branding Boost SEO (Even More)
It’s always been critical to make users love your site, but now the direct SEO impact can be felt even more strongly. Sites and brands that "suck at SEO" may even find themselves performing better if their users love them and the pages are, at least, accessible to engines. I’m buying Steve Krug’s new book – Rocket Surgery Made Easy - ASAP either way
_ - Buying Traffic May Now Help Organic Results
If Google really is using signals from all sources of data, the paid results and their impact on search and visit history might now give a boost (indirectly) to positioning in the organic results. In fact, it could be that even services like Google AdSense or other paid advertising that leads a visitor who’s logged in to their Google account and using the toolbar (or other detectable methods of tracking) will "count" towards the personalization metrics. I expect lots of SEOs to start testing and reporting on this soon.
_
What Should We Do Differently in our Campaigns?
- Get More Visitors (Any Way We Can)
Depending on how Google is counting visits and traffic (which they haven’t and probably won’t ever fully disclose), any way you can drag a visitor to your site and give them a good experience is likely to positively contribute to your chances of ranking better in personalized results.
_ - Improve Brand Loyalty
SEOs haven’t classically focused on brand metrics and branding as a marketing practice, but it’s long past due. The benefits of building a strong brand are evident everywhere in the consumer (and B2B) marketplace. Now Google’s giving us one more reason (and a more direct one at that) to start earning visitors’ love and, in turn, be rewarded by higher rankings.
_ - More Tightly Integrate Metrics w/ Rank Tracking
Again, this has been a wise move long before personalization, but with the expansion comes renewed need for weaving together the 3rd-party tracking of rankings with the traffic metrics from your analytics to provide a full picture of how your site is performing in the search engines.
_
The big takeaway here is that these action items aren’t particularly groundbreaking. We should have been doing all of these as responsible, effective Internet marketers anyway.
Is this a Major, Tectonic Shift in SEO?
No. I’m maintaining my previous stance that unless a shift from Google fundamentally changes the classic SEO process:
- Make pages accessible
- Target with keywords that searchers employ
- Build content that users will find useful and valuable
- Earn editorial links from good sources
It doesn’t qualify as a "tectonic" or "massive" or "fundamental" change in SEO. The best practices we’ve been recommending to clients, developers and content creators for the last half-decade are actually less impacted by this change than by some of the other items we’ve encountered recently (Bing + Yahoo! combining, real-time results at the top of query results, more vertical results in the SERPs, etc.). These latter examples call for much more active changes, learnings and direct action on the part of SEOs vs. personalization, which by-and-large just strengthens the reasons for best practices we’ve long known to exist.
p.s. Tomorrow evening at 6pm (Tuesday Dec. 22nd), I’ll be attending an informal SEO meetup in San Diego, CA at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Mission Valley – 5010 Mission Center Road San Diego, CA 92108. Hope to see some of you there before the holidays!
On December 21, 2009, In SEO, by Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization - RSS Feeds
It has been observed by the SEO community over a number of years that search engine rankings in Google are influenced by a so-called geo-targeting aspect of the domain TLD and registrant s background location and its hosting location. In this article we ll look into those factors that affect Google s geo-targeting aspects so you can put them to work on your own web site….
Microsoft SQL Server® Value Calculator Reduce Costs & Increase Value with Microsoft SQL Server® 2008. Download Today!
It has been observed by the SEO community over a number of years that search engine rankings in Google are influenced by a so-called geo-targeting aspect of the domain TLD and registrant s background location and its hosting location. In this article we ll look into those factors that affect Google s geo-targeting aspects so you can put them to work on your own web site….
Microsoft SQL Server® Value Calculator Reduce Costs & Increase Value with Microsoft SQL Server® 2008. Download Today!
On December 20, 2009, In SEO, by RobOusbey
Posted by RobOusbey
Amongst the add-ons I add to any new install of Firefox is the Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick. (Find the install links at the bottom of this post.)
Obviously, this add-on is chock-full of features that are useful for web developers, but it really does make diagnosing various SEO issues much easier. This list gives the top seven tasks that I find easier when the toolbar is installed.
Click on any of the small images in this post to see them in full size.
1. Browse Like a Robot
By turning off JavaScript and Cookies, you can browse the web as it’s seen by ‘bots (which in most cases can’t accept cookies or execute JavaScript.) This basic change can help you recognise site architecture issues pretty quickly, such as when a main navigation bar is displayed using JavaScript or when visitors who can’t accept cookies always get redirected to the front page. (Yes, I’ve seen both of these in the wild.)
2. See What the Spiders See
For a more hardcore spider-emulation experience, use the Toolbar to turn off styles and images. The sudden appearance of previously cloaked text or seeing that the ‘main heading’ is actually an H4 item and sat 75% of the way through the content might suggest why a particular page is having issues.
This is how the site looked before Timmy joined
Although different spiders treat meta redirects in different ways, it can often be easier to diagnose some on-site issues if you disable them altogether via ‘Disable → Meta Redirects‘. To see what the site serves up to different user agents (such as mobile devices, GoogleBot, etc) you’ll want to get the author’s other successful add-on, the user-agent switcher.
3. See the Structure
Talking of page structure, you can press ‘Information → View Document Outline‘ to see the structure of a page, or simply ‘Outline → Outline Headings‘ to see the hierarchy of headings within the page.
4. Validation and Best Practices
The toolbar gives quick access to code validation tools (such as the HTML, CSS and RSS validation from WC3.) There are also options to highlight links without title attributes, or images with missing (or blank) alt attributes.
5. A Tip for Search Marketers Who do CRO as Well
Those of us with our massive screens (by the way, did you see this guy?) might not always appreciate how people view our pages. However, a quick click on the ‘resize’ button lets you see the site through the viewport of an older monitor or a net book.
I should probably let LoveFilm know that 20% of people can’t see their big green ‘Start a free trial’ button.
6. Making Web Page Screen Captures Easier
A change we’ve tried to make at Distilled recently is to include more illustrative images in our client reports. A fiddly task that comes up from time to time is creating a screen shot of a web page, but without it being obvious which links you’re already clicked on. A quick click on ‘Miscellaneous → Visited Links → Mark All Links Unvisited‘ removes the ‘visited’ styles from any links on the page.
7. Reputation Management Tip: Anonymity Made Easy
A year ago, I posted about how to hide your referrer string when browsing, as a handy way to prevent people seeing that you’re probing their site. It’s much easier to do with the Web Developer Toolbar, by simply clicking ‘Disable → Disable Referrers‘
You can read more about the Web Developer Tool Add-On, or if you’re running Firefox, simply install it now.
If you’re already a convert to this add-on, do let us know in the comments of any other features you use regularly.
Posted by RobOusbey
Amongst the add-ons I add to any new install of Firefox is the Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick. (Find the install links at the bottom of this post.)
Obviously, this add-on is chock-full of features that are useful for web developers, but it really does make diagnosing various SEO issues much easier. This list gives the top seven tasks that I find easier when the toolbar is installed.
Click on any of the small images in this post to see them in full size.
1. Browse Like a Robot
By turning off JavaScript and Cookies, you can browse the web as it’s seen by ‘bots (which in most cases can’t accept cookies or execute JavaScript.) This basic change can help you recognise site architecture issues pretty quickly, such as when a main navigation bar is displayed using JavaScript or when visitors who can’t accept cookies always get redirected to the front page. (Yes, I’ve seen both of these in the wild.)
2. See What the Spiders See
For a more hardcore spider-emulation experience, use the Toolbar to turn off styles and images. The sudden appearance of previously cloaked text or seeing that the ‘main heading’ is actually an H4 item and sat 75% of the way through the content might suggest why a particular page is having issues.
This is how the site looked before Timmy joined
Although different spiders treat meta redirects in different ways, it can often be easier to diagnose some on-site issues if you disable them altogether via ‘Disable → Meta Redirects‘. To see what the site serves up to different user agents (such as mobile devices, GoogleBot, etc) you’ll want to get the author’s other successful add-on, the user-agent switcher.
3. See the Structure
Talking of page structure, you can press ‘Information → View Document Outline‘ to see the structure of a page, or simply ‘Outline → Outline Headings‘ to see the hierarchy of headings within the page.
4. Validation and Best Practices
The toolbar gives quick access to code validation tools (such as the HTML, CSS and RSS validation from WC3.) There are also options to highlight links without title attributes, or images with missing (or blank) alt attributes.
5. A Tip for Search Marketers Who do CRO as Well
Those of us with our massive screens (by the way, did you see this guy?) might not always appreciate how people view our pages. However, a quick click on the ‘resize’ button lets you see the site through the viewport of an older monitor or a net book.
I should probably let LoveFilm know that 20% of people can’t see their big green ‘Start a free trial’ button.
6. Making Web Page Screen Captures Easier
A change we’ve tried to make at Distilled recently is to include more illustrative images in our client reports. A fiddly task that comes up from time to time is creating a screen shot of a web page, but without it being obvious which links you’re already clicked on. A quick click on ‘Miscellaneous → Visited Links → Mark All Links Unvisited‘ removes the ‘visited’ styles from any links on the page.
7. Reputation Management Tip: Anonymity Made Easy
A year ago, I posted about how to hide your referrer string when browsing, as a handy way to prevent people seeing that you’re probing their site. It’s much easier to do with the Web Developer Toolbar, by simply clicking ‘Disable → Disable Referrers‘
You can read more about the Web Developer Tool Add-On, or if you’re running Firefox, simply install it now.
If you’re already a convert to this add-on, do let us know in the comments of any other features you use regularly.
On December 18, 2009, In SEO, by great scott
Posted by great scott!
Ho-ho-ho! Merry Winter to you! In a very special Whiteboard Friday we’ll look at the new model for attracting lots of inbound links: giving back to webmasters. Nowadays it’s not always enough just to have great content. You’ve got to give the linkerati value–something that will incentivize them to link to your site. Rand Fishclause discusses how this new model works and then, next week, we’ll give you 12 link strategies of Christmas just in time for you to open them under your tree and put into action for the New Year.
SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – Give and Ye Shall Receive from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
Just a quick reminder that today is the final day to get the new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics at the special launch pricing of 20% off + free shipping!
Posted by great scott!
Ho-ho-ho! Merry Winter to you! In a very special Whiteboard Friday we’ll look at the new model for attracting lots of inbound links: giving back to webmasters. Nowadays it’s not always enough just to have great content. You’ve got to give the linkerati value–something that will incentivize them to link to your site. Rand Fishclause discusses how this new model works and then, next week, we’ll give you 12 link strategies of Christmas just in time for you to open them under your tree and put into action for the New Year.
SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – Give and Ye Shall Receive from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
Just a quick reminder that today is the final day to get the new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics at the special launch pricing of 20% off + free shipping!
On December 16, 2009, In SEO, by Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization - RSS Feeds
Whether you re a very large already successful company or a small startup the same rule applies if you want to make money online increase your ad revenue or sales. This rule even applies to Microsoft one of the most successful companies of all time which is why they ve recently partnered with OpenX. Keep reading to learn the implications of this deal including its likely effect on Google….
Microsoft SQL Server® Value Calculator Reduce Costs & Increase Value with Microsoft SQL Server® 2008. Download Today!
Whether you re a very large already successful company or a small startup the same rule applies if you want to make money online increase your ad revenue or sales. This rule even applies to Microsoft one of the most successful companies of all time which is why they ve recently partnered with OpenX. Keep reading to learn the implications of this deal including its likely effect on Google….
Microsoft SQL Server® Value Calculator Reduce Costs & Increase Value with Microsoft SQL Server® 2008. Download Today!