Four Houston entrepreneurs are launching a search engine today that they hope will challenge the likes of Google and Yahoo.
Frustrated with the results they get from other search engines, Neal Verma, founder and CEO of iRazoo.com, and three friends with technology backgrounds have spent their evenings and weekends — and an undisclosed amount of money — over the last eight months developing iRazoo.
Now they'll have to prove it works by drawing enough users, who in turn will attract advertisers to fund the company in a business where a handful of companies dominate.
They're betting they have a better approach to search — a site designed to highlight the most useful sites by seeking input from users who can earn rewards by voting for, or against, Web sites.
Even though 97 percent of Internet searches are done on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and Time Warner, according to comScore, there are hundreds of smaller search engines.
Newcomers keep trying because there is a lot of money to be made, said James Lamberti, senior vice president for comScore, which measures Web usage and ranks search engines by use.
In the U.S. alone, companies are spending $17 billion a year in online advertising, and 40 percent of that is spent on search engine sites, he said.
"There's still a ton of activity in this field," he said. "A lot of people think they can build a better mousetrap."
But it's very difficult to catch on. Hundreds of companies like iRazoo have started search engines. Not since Google emerged five years ago has a search engine really gotten traction, Lamberti said.
Those dominant search engines are always in a buying mood as they try to find niches that will catch on with users, he said.
In the technology world where paradigms can change faster than Google can find 63.5 million hits for "monkey," Verma pointed to that top competitor as evidence iRazoo can succeed.
Google may dominate now, but it, too, had humble beginnings, he said.
Last year, google — with a small "g" — knew it had arrived when it became an official dictionary entry. Members of the iRazoo team can dream of the day when their search engine makes the dictionary, but they could live with one of their targets taking notice and paying them a few million bucks for iRazoo.com.
"Either way is fine with us," Verma said.
For now they need to prove their site's features will appeal to users and return better search results.
• Users can recommend sites that come up in their searches. If a link had useful information, a user can vote to recommend it to others. If not, the user can vote against it. Sites that get good recommendations will show up at the top of future searches. Sites that get more "no" votes than "yes" votes eventually will be dropped.
• Users earn points every time they vote. When they earn enough points, they can redeem points for digital cameras, iPods and other gadgets. Each recommendation earns 2 points, and an iPod Shuffle costs 58,000 points.
• When users search for a term, iRazoo puts a thumbnail screen shot of the site next to the search result, allowing users to preview the page before linking to it.
Only once
To prevent users from manipulating the system — sometimes known as "Google-bombing" as in the recent example that got Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert listed as the top result when searching for "greatest living American" — iRazoo requires users to log in, and they can only recommend a particular site once, Verma said.
The iRazoo site also tracks users by the unique address on their computers, and one user can only vote for a site once per computer, Verma said.
"You'd have to have a lot of time on your hands to get around it," he said.
Doubts if it's enough
If there's anything the Internet has shown, it's that a lot of people have too much time on their hands. Todd Mintz, a Portland, Ore.-based Internet consultant, suspects iRazoo's checks and balances won't be enough to prevent efforts to move sites into the top spots mostly likely to be seen by users.
"There are very smart people out there who will figure out how to game it," he said.
Depending on recommendations can be risky because the site can't account for how smart users are, said Scott Hendison, another Portland Internet consultant specializing in search engine marketing and optimization — the practice of getting one group's site to come up higher in search results than another.
Moving up the list
Search engines rely on algorithms — mathematical formulas — to find the best search results. Basically, the engine looks for keywords on sites across the Web.
As Internet marketing has evolved, people such as Hendison have figured out ways to get their clients' sites listed higher in search results on popular search engines, in turn driving traffic to their sites.
"Commercialization has kind of taken over the algorithm a little bit," Lamberti said.
Mintz said the algorithms' recommendations are better than those of strangers.
"The Google or Yahoo algorithm may not be perfect, but I'd trust them more than someone I don't know," he said.
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Social-Search-Engine--Houston-entrepreneurs-seek-a-sharper-search-engine--They-say-their-system-of-letting-users-rank-sites-is-superior-/263960
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Finding The Right Niche - Finding Your Alternatives
Ironically -- or perhaps appropriately -- the quickest way to find out about alternative search engines is to search on that phrase in Google. The first site that comes up is Search Engine Watch, a regular stop for anyone who does SEO. After all, they’ve been covering the field since 1996. If you visit this page on the site, it takes you to a list of links. These links take you to specific categories of search engines, such as news search engines, shopping search engines, multimedia search engines, kids’ search engines, specialty-related search engines, and more. If you have a fascination with knowledge in general and a few specific areas in particular, you might want to line up a number of pointed queries, get comfortable with this site, and spend a day or two poking around. Depending on how lucky you’ve been finding that kind of information on Google, you just might find some new favorites.
Another web site worth checking is altsearchengines. The entire site is devoted to coverage of alternative search engines, though it does cover the majors as well. You can subscribe to the site via email or RSS feed. While the site definitely has the feel of a professional blog (which is what it is, essentially), it’s better organized, making it somewhat easier to find things. There are colorful tabs labeled “alts,” “majors,” “updates,” “in beta,” “newcomers,” “news” and “verticals” to help you navigate. There are also ads from alternative search engines on the site. Each month, they compile a list of the top 100 alternative search engines; it seems to have turned into a mission for Charles Knight, the man doing the compiling. Here’s a link to the list for April 2007.
To coin an analogy, think of Google as the biggest department store in the world (I know, that’s either Wal-Mart or Amazon, but bear with me). For most of your needs, you’ll probably be able to find the right item at that department store. But say your portly Aunt Edna just fell and did something nasty to her knee, for which she now needs a custom-built brace. You wouldn’t go to the department store for that; you’d go to a hospital, which would be able to refer to you to the right place to have that made.
By the same token, if you’re looking for the most up-to-date medical information on a particular condition, you might go to Google if it’s a well-known and much-discussed condition such as breast cancer, but not if it’s something that’s more rare and unusual. For that, you’d be wise to consider some of the vertical search engines that explicitly cover the health and medical field.
Yet another site to check is About.com. Of course, it’s an alternative search engine itself these days. It has a guide, Wendy Boswell, for the Web Search topic. One of the areas she covers is search engines. The link I gave will take you to articles that review and discuss the alternatives. She even has an article titled “Web Search 101,” which gives you answers to frequently asked questions about search and helps you zoom in on the kind of search engine you want based on your needs.
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Finding-the-Right-Niche---Finding-Your-Alternatives/264113
Another web site worth checking is altsearchengines. The entire site is devoted to coverage of alternative search engines, though it does cover the majors as well. You can subscribe to the site via email or RSS feed. While the site definitely has the feel of a professional blog (which is what it is, essentially), it’s better organized, making it somewhat easier to find things. There are colorful tabs labeled “alts,” “majors,” “updates,” “in beta,” “newcomers,” “news” and “verticals” to help you navigate. There are also ads from alternative search engines on the site. Each month, they compile a list of the top 100 alternative search engines; it seems to have turned into a mission for Charles Knight, the man doing the compiling. Here’s a link to the list for April 2007.
To coin an analogy, think of Google as the biggest department store in the world (I know, that’s either Wal-Mart or Amazon, but bear with me). For most of your needs, you’ll probably be able to find the right item at that department store. But say your portly Aunt Edna just fell and did something nasty to her knee, for which she now needs a custom-built brace. You wouldn’t go to the department store for that; you’d go to a hospital, which would be able to refer to you to the right place to have that made.
By the same token, if you’re looking for the most up-to-date medical information on a particular condition, you might go to Google if it’s a well-known and much-discussed condition such as breast cancer, but not if it’s something that’s more rare and unusual. For that, you’d be wise to consider some of the vertical search engines that explicitly cover the health and medical field.
Yet another site to check is About.com. Of course, it’s an alternative search engine itself these days. It has a guide, Wendy Boswell, for the Web Search topic. One of the areas she covers is search engines. The link I gave will take you to articles that review and discuss the alternatives. She even has an article titled “Web Search 101,” which gives you answers to frequently asked questions about search and helps you zoom in on the kind of search engine you want based on your needs.
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Finding-the-Right-Niche---Finding-Your-Alternatives/264113
Monday, July 23, 2007
Seo Techniques For Beginners
Before you start doing things to rank well in the search engines, you need to determine what your “money words” are. In other words, what keywords do people who buy from you type into the search engines. If you are selling auto insurance, are people typing auto insurance or car insurance? You can determine what your money keywords are by creating and using a Google Adwords account to quickly test keywords for profitability.
Once you know your money words, you need to pick one and start optimizing for it. The first thing you need to realize is that Google and the other major search engines rank individual pages, not entire websites. So you are actually going to want to optimize one or more pages on your site. Please start with just one. Maybe it’s your home page, but it does not have to be.
There are 2 types of optimization for the search engines. Internal (on page) and external (off page).
Internal optimization can be summarized as having:
1) Clean HTML Code on your site
2) A great Title Meta Tag that includes your money word AND inspires people to click on the link when it shows up in the search engines
3) A great Description Meta Tag where the text in that tag also shows up on the page somewhere
4) Links on your page that point to other pages on and off your site. Use relevant text when linking to other pages on your site and other sites. Don’t use the phrase “click here” instead; use text that describes the page you are linking to.
5) A site map page that links to every page on your website and is linked to by every page on your site.
6) Fresh Content which encourages the search engines to come back to your site more often so that you can test new ideas
External optimization is even simpler to summarize (and actually more powerful):
1) Get links from pages on your site and from other high ranking websites
2) Get more links
3) Get more links
The links you get should appear natural and not all use the exact same words to link to your site, but a majority of the links should link to your page on using your money word.
You can ask websites for a free link, you can buy links, or you can trade links. If you buy or trade, be careful because the search engines don’t like this and you might need to do it in a way that they can’t trace. For instance, linking to someone’s site and having them link back to you used to work well, but now you have to be more clever by linking to a site that doesn’t link back to you, but instead a different site links to you (called a 3-way link).
To prove how valuable links are, go to a major search engine and search for the phrase: “click here”. Notice that Adobe’s Acrobat Reader download link shows up near the top. If you go to their page, you will not see the phrase “click here” anywhere. But so many people have linked to their site on that phrase, that they rank really high for it.
There is a lot more to search engine optimization, but the information in this article should get you well on your way to ranking high in the search engines.
For more search engine tips and other online marketing tactics, you can download a copy of Rob’s Workbook. The workbook sells for $97 but is free for readers of this article. Just go to http://www.HowToMarketBetter.com/resources
http://ezinearticles.com/?Seo-Techniques-For-Beginners&id=650492
Once you know your money words, you need to pick one and start optimizing for it. The first thing you need to realize is that Google and the other major search engines rank individual pages, not entire websites. So you are actually going to want to optimize one or more pages on your site. Please start with just one. Maybe it’s your home page, but it does not have to be.
There are 2 types of optimization for the search engines. Internal (on page) and external (off page).
Internal optimization can be summarized as having:
1) Clean HTML Code on your site
2) A great Title Meta Tag that includes your money word AND inspires people to click on the link when it shows up in the search engines
3) A great Description Meta Tag where the text in that tag also shows up on the page somewhere
4) Links on your page that point to other pages on and off your site. Use relevant text when linking to other pages on your site and other sites. Don’t use the phrase “click here” instead; use text that describes the page you are linking to.
5) A site map page that links to every page on your website and is linked to by every page on your site.
6) Fresh Content which encourages the search engines to come back to your site more often so that you can test new ideas
External optimization is even simpler to summarize (and actually more powerful):
1) Get links from pages on your site and from other high ranking websites
2) Get more links
3) Get more links
The links you get should appear natural and not all use the exact same words to link to your site, but a majority of the links should link to your page on using your money word.
You can ask websites for a free link, you can buy links, or you can trade links. If you buy or trade, be careful because the search engines don’t like this and you might need to do it in a way that they can’t trace. For instance, linking to someone’s site and having them link back to you used to work well, but now you have to be more clever by linking to a site that doesn’t link back to you, but instead a different site links to you (called a 3-way link).
To prove how valuable links are, go to a major search engine and search for the phrase: “click here”. Notice that Adobe’s Acrobat Reader download link shows up near the top. If you go to their page, you will not see the phrase “click here” anywhere. But so many people have linked to their site on that phrase, that they rank really high for it.
There is a lot more to search engine optimization, but the information in this article should get you well on your way to ranking high in the search engines.
For more search engine tips and other online marketing tactics, you can download a copy of Rob’s Workbook. The workbook sells for $97 but is free for readers of this article. Just go to http://www.HowToMarketBetter.com/resources
http://ezinearticles.com/?Seo-Techniques-For-Beginners&id=650492
Friday, July 20, 2007
7 Tips for Effective Reciprocal Linking
Reciprocal linking...does it work? Yes it does. One can debate the value of reciprocal linking compared to other linking strategies. And without a doubt, one way links far outway the value of a reciprocal link. However, if done correctly, reciprocal linking can be a powerful SEO strategy for your website (See Search Engine Optimization Specialist for additional tips).
Tip #1
Search for reciprocal links from pages that have a Google PR equal or greater to your own. By doing so, you are enhancing the quality/value of the reciprocal link improving your overall success in the eyes of the search engines - especially Google. The higher the Google PR the more valuable the link becomes.
Tip #2
Exchange links only with sites that are related to your site/industry in some way. For example, don't link to web sites about athletic clothing if you're selling hardware. Sites that you're exchaning links with need to be contextually relevant. When they are, you earn extra points in the eyes of Google and other major search engines.
Tip #3
Make sure that your anchor text, the text that comprises your link contains your keywords. This is one of the most important aspects of linking. For example, a link to my primary site should look like this: "Internet Marketing Expert Marketing Secrets" instead of "www.marketingscoop.com". Doing so will signal the search engines with the specific keywords that you're optimizing for. This enhances your search results when someone searches on your keywords or keyword phrase.
Tip #4
Your links page should never include more than one hundred links. Keeping your link quantity below one hundred ensures that search engines do not discredit the value of your site or challenge it as SPAM. One way to include more than one hundred links to to create a mini-link directory. Develop categories and group your links appropriately.
Tip #5
Check your partner's websites on a regular basis to ensure that they are still linking back to you. Often I've exchanged links with a site only to find that they removed the link back to my site only days after the exchange. You can do this manually or utilize software to do it for you. There are a variety of options out there. No matter how you validate reciprocal links, check them on a regular basis.
Tip #6
View the title of the links page where your link will be placed. You can do this by visiting the link page and then pressing "view" on your browser menu bar. Then select "view source code" and find the meta tags. The title tag should include keywords relevant to your site. It doesn't have to, but if it does, the more valuable it becomes.
Tip #7
Quality over quantity. When you being the process of building reciprocal links for your website, go for quality over quantity. Once you get started, you will undoubtedly have numerous sites looking for an exchange. If the sites don't meet your linking criteria, you must say no to the link exchange.
In summary, make sure your reciprocal link program includes relevant links that have an equal or greater Google PR. Check your links often and make sure not to include more than 100 links on your link exchange page. Follow these tips and you're well on your way to a successful reciprocal linking campaign. Lastly, be patient. The value of reciprocal links is most clearly seen over time.
http://www.add-articles.com/Article/7-Tips-for-Effective-Reciprocal-Linking/116547
Tip #1
Search for reciprocal links from pages that have a Google PR equal or greater to your own. By doing so, you are enhancing the quality/value of the reciprocal link improving your overall success in the eyes of the search engines - especially Google. The higher the Google PR the more valuable the link becomes.
Tip #2
Exchange links only with sites that are related to your site/industry in some way. For example, don't link to web sites about athletic clothing if you're selling hardware. Sites that you're exchaning links with need to be contextually relevant. When they are, you earn extra points in the eyes of Google and other major search engines.
Tip #3
Make sure that your anchor text, the text that comprises your link contains your keywords. This is one of the most important aspects of linking. For example, a link to my primary site should look like this: "Internet Marketing Expert Marketing Secrets" instead of "www.marketingscoop.com". Doing so will signal the search engines with the specific keywords that you're optimizing for. This enhances your search results when someone searches on your keywords or keyword phrase.
Tip #4
Your links page should never include more than one hundred links. Keeping your link quantity below one hundred ensures that search engines do not discredit the value of your site or challenge it as SPAM. One way to include more than one hundred links to to create a mini-link directory. Develop categories and group your links appropriately.
Tip #5
Check your partner's websites on a regular basis to ensure that they are still linking back to you. Often I've exchanged links with a site only to find that they removed the link back to my site only days after the exchange. You can do this manually or utilize software to do it for you. There are a variety of options out there. No matter how you validate reciprocal links, check them on a regular basis.
Tip #6
View the title of the links page where your link will be placed. You can do this by visiting the link page and then pressing "view" on your browser menu bar. Then select "view source code" and find the meta tags. The title tag should include keywords relevant to your site. It doesn't have to, but if it does, the more valuable it becomes.
Tip #7
Quality over quantity. When you being the process of building reciprocal links for your website, go for quality over quantity. Once you get started, you will undoubtedly have numerous sites looking for an exchange. If the sites don't meet your linking criteria, you must say no to the link exchange.
In summary, make sure your reciprocal link program includes relevant links that have an equal or greater Google PR. Check your links often and make sure not to include more than 100 links on your link exchange page. Follow these tips and you're well on your way to a successful reciprocal linking campaign. Lastly, be patient. The value of reciprocal links is most clearly seen over time.
http://www.add-articles.com/Article/7-Tips-for-Effective-Reciprocal-Linking/116547
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and Internet Marketing
Search Engine Optimization
Each search engine has a database of all web sites. When you search for any term in search engines, they actually search in their database and show the results from their database. As a user, when you need to find information on a topic, you use search engines to get a listing of web sites related to the topic of interest. As a webmaster, you want your site to be one of the first ones the user will see. How can the web designer make sure you are noticed? That is where effective search engine optimization comes in.
Search Engine Optimization is the process where a website is optimized to get better ranking in search results in popular search engine. As a website owner, you must aim to get listed in top 10 results for your site’s primary keywords. You must do several optimizations in your website to appear in search results. This process is called as
Search Engine Optimization. Search engine works through the better understanding of algorithm, which are but the rules which governs and helps the search engine to rank the respective sites.
The ranking depends on various factors:
Keywords
Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page. Each web page has different ranking for different keywords. Search engine sorts the keywords and displays the results.
Keyword Research: The search for keywords related to your Web site, and the analysis of which ones yield the highest return on investment. The search engine research the keywords and rank the website. If your site has higher rank than other site, then your page will appear on top.
Keyword density: Measure of how frequently a given keyword appears within a given web page. Improving the keyword density on your website is one of the fastest and simplest ways to increase your site’s visibility in the search engine results pages. If your keyword occurs only once or twice in a page of 500 or more words, obviously it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that would occur six or seven times in a page of similar length. As far as search engines are concerned, if a particular keyword has a higher density on that particular web page, then the chances of that page obtaining a much better search engine ranking increases almost exponentially.
Optimized content
The success of website is changing and optimizing the content on a regular basis is important. Therefore, we must routinely change your web site to test and see what changes work and what changes do not work when trying to achieve top ranking.
Meta tags:
If the word or phrase appears in the HTML title tag, that website will be considered the most relevant. Also, if the word appears close to the top of the first web page, for instance, the home page, the relevancy will be ranked accordingly.
Meta tags are information inserted in the head title of your web pages.
Link Building Services
Evaluate the source page:- Before assigning a value for a link, the search engine evaluate the rank for the page itself. If you get link from site that are related to your content, it has more value.
Site Submission
If you have a web page that is not linked by any other page that page may never get indexed by any search engine.
Internet Marketing
E-mail: - It is always better to have an e-mail to link to other website to promote the products. When we promote products and services, the other website come to know about our site. By sending e-mail, you get some quality link to your sites.
Choose partner for online marketing and advertisement: Make use of the website to evaluate the marketing effectiveness. By giving advertisement also, you can promote your site.
Benefits:
Increased usability:- More people visit the site, which lead to increased sales and generation.
http://www.add-articles.com/Article/SEARCH-ENGINE-OPTIMIZATION-and-Internet-Marketing/116780
Each search engine has a database of all web sites. When you search for any term in search engines, they actually search in their database and show the results from their database. As a user, when you need to find information on a topic, you use search engines to get a listing of web sites related to the topic of interest. As a webmaster, you want your site to be one of the first ones the user will see. How can the web designer make sure you are noticed? That is where effective search engine optimization comes in.
Search Engine Optimization is the process where a website is optimized to get better ranking in search results in popular search engine. As a website owner, you must aim to get listed in top 10 results for your site’s primary keywords. You must do several optimizations in your website to appear in search results. This process is called as
Search Engine Optimization. Search engine works through the better understanding of algorithm, which are but the rules which governs and helps the search engine to rank the respective sites.
The ranking depends on various factors:
Keywords
Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page. Each web page has different ranking for different keywords. Search engine sorts the keywords and displays the results.
Keyword Research: The search for keywords related to your Web site, and the analysis of which ones yield the highest return on investment. The search engine research the keywords and rank the website. If your site has higher rank than other site, then your page will appear on top.
Keyword density: Measure of how frequently a given keyword appears within a given web page. Improving the keyword density on your website is one of the fastest and simplest ways to increase your site’s visibility in the search engine results pages. If your keyword occurs only once or twice in a page of 500 or more words, obviously it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that would occur six or seven times in a page of similar length. As far as search engines are concerned, if a particular keyword has a higher density on that particular web page, then the chances of that page obtaining a much better search engine ranking increases almost exponentially.
Optimized content
The success of website is changing and optimizing the content on a regular basis is important. Therefore, we must routinely change your web site to test and see what changes work and what changes do not work when trying to achieve top ranking.
Meta tags:
If the word or phrase appears in the HTML title tag, that website will be considered the most relevant. Also, if the word appears close to the top of the first web page, for instance, the home page, the relevancy will be ranked accordingly.
Meta tags are information inserted in the head title of your web pages.
Link Building Services
Evaluate the source page:- Before assigning a value for a link, the search engine evaluate the rank for the page itself. If you get link from site that are related to your content, it has more value.
Site Submission
If you have a web page that is not linked by any other page that page may never get indexed by any search engine.
Internet Marketing
E-mail: - It is always better to have an e-mail to link to other website to promote the products. When we promote products and services, the other website come to know about our site. By sending e-mail, you get some quality link to your sites.
Choose partner for online marketing and advertisement: Make use of the website to evaluate the marketing effectiveness. By giving advertisement also, you can promote your site.
Benefits:
Increased usability:- More people visit the site, which lead to increased sales and generation.
http://www.add-articles.com/Article/SEARCH-ENGINE-OPTIMIZATION-and-Internet-Marketing/116780
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Importance-of-relevant-links
Links are an essential tool of search engine optimization. As more and more search engines adopt link popularity as an important aspect of their ranking algorithm, they also work to increase their ability to determine the value of links. By carefully crafting the text that you use to link internally and externally as well as any text that might accompany a link request, you can have a significant impact on the optimization of your web site.
Including keyword phrases in linked text helps improve not only the keyword density of your page, it also helps boost the relevancy of the page you are linking to. Search engines read and index the text used to describe a link and apply that text toward both the linker and the linkee's ranking.
For this reason, using your keywords in a link like so:
About Web Search
is much more effective than simply making the URL (which rarely contain keywords) the link text, as shown here:
http://websearch.about.com
In addition, some search engines will read and index the content of the title tag within an <> tag. Apart from the SEO value, this feature provides added usefulness for site visitors as the title tag is used to give further detail
about the page or content that a link refers to.
http://www.acmearticles.com/Article/Importance-of-relevant-links/13085
Including keyword phrases in linked text helps improve not only the keyword density of your page, it also helps boost the relevancy of the page you are linking to. Search engines read and index the text used to describe a link and apply that text toward both the linker and the linkee's ranking.
For this reason, using your keywords in a link like so:
About Web Search
is much more effective than simply making the URL (which rarely contain keywords) the link text, as shown here:
http://websearch.about.com
In addition, some search engines will read and index the content of the title tag within an <> tag. Apart from the SEO value, this feature provides added usefulness for site visitors as the title tag is used to give further detail
about the page or content that a link refers to.
http://www.acmearticles.com/Article/Importance-of-relevant-links/13085
Best-5-Free-Seo-Tools
Let's face the facts: search engine optimization, for the most part, is hellishly boring. Doing the research, making the on-page changes, writing content and syndicating it is all tedious and time consuming. Fortunately I am not the only one, and like-minded web developers have come up with some great, and best of all, free seo tools.
Let's have a look at some of the best tools for any optimizer:
1. 7search.com Advertiser Tools ( www.tinyurl.com/2wj5ac ): as always, keyword research is the basis of any seo project - you have to get the right keywords or your work will be useless.
This is one of the best free keyword research tools out there, and although the traffic numbers aren't accurate, their related searches suggestions are the best!
2. Back Link Analyzer ( www.tinyurl.com/86hk8 ): this free link analyzer, courtesy of Aaron Wall, is an absolute jewel! The best way to use this is to actually spy on your competition and see where they are getting all that link juice from.
Here is some of the info that Back Link Analyzer can gather from Google, Yahoo, MSN and/or AllTheWeb on the backlinks for the query: anchor text and type (one-way or reciprocal) of the incoming link, the title of the page that has the link and the url that the link points to, ip address of the domain and much more!
3. Hub Finder ( www.tinyurl.com/9kpd3 ): yet another amazing tool from Aaron Wall, and this one is even open source! Like me, you've probably found out by now that it's a good idea to get links from the same places that your competition has.
Well this is the perfect tool: you input a keyword or keyphrase, which search engine to use (I recommend Yahoo) and the number of sites that each hub must have in common (between 2 and 10). Wait for the results and then try to get links from each of the sites.
4. SeoQuake ( www.tinyurl.com/2pzemv ): this plugin for Firefox is essential for any optimizer. When active it can be set to show any number of parameters including:
a) for Google: PageRank, number of links pointing to the url, number of pages in its index and cache date;
b) for Yahoo: same as for Google, but with links for domain and link in Yahoo Directory;
c) for MSN: the same as for Google;
d) number of links in DMOZ, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati;
e) Alexa rank;
f) WebArchive age;
... and many more!
5. Free Monitor for Google ( www.tinyurl.com/85atz ): although it's only for Google, this ranking monitor does the job it is supposed to do. It works with all regional versions of Google flawlessly and it supports multiple keywords/keyphrases per url.
Bonus point: 6. The Tattler ( www.tinyurl.com/2ma5pg ): although I usually prefer Back Link Analyzer for link analysis, sometimes I need to look at all the data without the fluff.
One of the features I like that I like in Tattler is the possibility to show how many links you have from a certain domain - this is really nice to find out what sites your competitors find most valuable to them in terms of seo.
http://www.acmearticles.com/Article/Best-5-Free-Seo-Tools/16838
Let's have a look at some of the best tools for any optimizer:
1. 7search.com Advertiser Tools ( www.tinyurl.com/2wj5ac ): as always, keyword research is the basis of any seo project - you have to get the right keywords or your work will be useless.
This is one of the best free keyword research tools out there, and although the traffic numbers aren't accurate, their related searches suggestions are the best!
2. Back Link Analyzer ( www.tinyurl.com/86hk8 ): this free link analyzer, courtesy of Aaron Wall, is an absolute jewel! The best way to use this is to actually spy on your competition and see where they are getting all that link juice from.
Here is some of the info that Back Link Analyzer can gather from Google, Yahoo, MSN and/or AllTheWeb on the backlinks for the query: anchor text and type (one-way or reciprocal) of the incoming link, the title of the page that has the link and the url that the link points to, ip address of the domain and much more!
3. Hub Finder ( www.tinyurl.com/9kpd3 ): yet another amazing tool from Aaron Wall, and this one is even open source! Like me, you've probably found out by now that it's a good idea to get links from the same places that your competition has.
Well this is the perfect tool: you input a keyword or keyphrase, which search engine to use (I recommend Yahoo) and the number of sites that each hub must have in common (between 2 and 10). Wait for the results and then try to get links from each of the sites.
4. SeoQuake ( www.tinyurl.com/2pzemv ): this plugin for Firefox is essential for any optimizer. When active it can be set to show any number of parameters including:
a) for Google: PageRank, number of links pointing to the url, number of pages in its index and cache date;
b) for Yahoo: same as for Google, but with links for domain and link in Yahoo Directory;
c) for MSN: the same as for Google;
d) number of links in DMOZ, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati;
e) Alexa rank;
f) WebArchive age;
... and many more!
5. Free Monitor for Google ( www.tinyurl.com/85atz ): although it's only for Google, this ranking monitor does the job it is supposed to do. It works with all regional versions of Google flawlessly and it supports multiple keywords/keyphrases per url.
Bonus point: 6. The Tattler ( www.tinyurl.com/2ma5pg ): although I usually prefer Back Link Analyzer for link analysis, sometimes I need to look at all the data without the fluff.
One of the features I like that I like in Tattler is the possibility to show how many links you have from a certain domain - this is really nice to find out what sites your competitors find most valuable to them in terms of seo.
http://www.acmearticles.com/Article/Best-5-Free-Seo-Tools/16838
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