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Monitor Your Visibility in Google, MSN, and Yahoo with these DIY SEO Tools
This is the second part of an article series in which you'll find many tools that you can use to monitor your site's search engine position and see how your do-it-yourself search engine optimization efforts are coming along.
The following tools are for monitoring your search results in the three major search engines. It isn't an all-inclusive list, but rather a highlight of some of the tools you can use. (I'll point you to one of the master lists when we get into more general tools in part three.)
Using Your Google Site Information Page
I've covered this in an earlier article, but just in case you missed it, we'll go over it again briefly here. (If you need more help following along, you can listen to one of my recent podcasts for a convenient audio walkthrough.)
Open up your browser and go to Google's home page. Type in info:yoursitenameandsuffix. So if your site was ExactSeek.com you'd type info:exactseek.com. You can also use site:yoursitenameandsuffix to find out which pages have been indexed by Google's search engine spider.
This search will tell you pages that Google considers similar to yours. It will also show sites that it considered linked to you, and show sites that carry your full url, hyperlinked or not. It's not 100% accurate as far as telling you all the sites that are linked back to yours, but what you can learn from this is which backlinks matter.
From here you can also see the last day Google spidered your home page.
To see this in action, click on the first group of information links, "Show Google's cache of yoursitename.com" If you look next to the word "cached" one the first line, the date is expressed also.
Sometimes it seems that the cached time for yoursitename.com and www.yoursitename.com are different, so be sure and check both.
Finding Information About Your Site In Yahoo
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/tips/tips-08.html
This document will tell you how to find out what sites are linking to you, give you the results for how many pages of your site are in Yahoo, and more. Once you get to the results page, you'll be able to view your cached pages, etc.
Discovering Your Site's Status on MSN
http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx
As the page in the help section states, you can use site:www.yoursitehere.com to find out if a document at your site has been indexed. The results page will also give you the date of last caching.
Google Rankings
http://www.googlerankings.com
You'll need a free Google API key for this one, and the site has the direct link telling you where to get one. You'll have to enter this key in order to query the site for information on Google.
With Google Rankings, you'll be able to see where you rank within the top 40-1000 results in Google for a given keyword. I recently noticed that it also displays results for MSN and Yahoo, with links to each search engine.
They also have some other tools that will track your keywords over time, as well as one they call the "Ultimate SEO Tool" that will measure your site's keyword density.
Google Backlinks Checker
http://lilengine.com/tools/backlinks-tool.php
LilEngine.com's Backlink Checker will measure the number of links you have pointing back to your site against competing sites. Handy if you just want a quick comparison of how many links you have versus others, though how much getting more links back will help varies, depending on other factors.
Yahoo Search Rankings
http://www.yahoosearchrankings.com/
From the same folks who brought you Google Rankings, using Yahoo Search Rankings, you'll be able to see where you rank within the top 1000 results in Yahoo for a given keyword. If you just want to see your Yahoo rankings, it's quite helpful.
You can find more Yahoo tools that use the Yahoo Web API at their developer's site : http://developer.yahoo.net/wiki/index.cgi?ApplicationList..
In the next part of the article, we'll take a closer look at other tools that give you more specific information about the links pointing back to your site, keyword research, and more.
Tinu is a website promotion specialist who can teach you many do-it-yourself ways to bring more traffic to your site in addition to DIY SEO. Subscribe to her ezine at http://www.freetraffictip.com/thebook/ for more details.
Determining the Value of Your SEO Service
Every once in a while--and probably more often than we should--we find ourselves reviewing our SEO pricing models. Pricing SEO has always been a real sticking point for me because there is no one-size-fits-all pricing metric. As I began our most recent review of our pricing something really starting to become quite obvious; search engine optimization is requiring more and more research and analysis than it ever did before.
Search Engine Optimization Tips For 2005 - Part Two
Welcome to the second part of our series of articles on search engine optimization. In the previous article we discussed keywords, domain names, content and keyword density issues. This article moves past that to the nitty gritty of improving your web pages and website for better search engine rankings.
Here Today Gone Tomorrow
Its a matter of here today, gone tomorrow at the moment with Google so don't get complacent if you are on the first few pages of the searches. Its great, you are making money and think now you can relax and forget about it for a while. No chance, Keep up with linking and adding the odd page every week or two or you will disappear in a twinkling.
Attack Smaller Searches To Get The Big Ones!
Searching online can not only be fun, but you sometimes need to be downright inventive.
Increase Your Page Rank Through SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) must be considered a process and over time you can build your ranking and traffic.
How to Use the Google Patent to Get More Traffic
According to the recent release of the Google Patent Application, many of the things you're doing to get better page rank and increase your position in natural search are about to be history. It's frightening how much things are going to change.
Meta Tags - What Are They and Which Search Engines Use Them?
Defining Meta Tags is much easier than explaining how they are used, and by which engines. The reason is very few engines clearly lay out what they do and do not look at, and how much emphasis they put on any one factor. So, we'll start with the easy part
Lets Make Your Website #1
Their is simple way of making your website rank top and search optimized.
The Great Search Engine War, Where Content is King
When search engines first appeared, they were simple affairs consisting of a relatively basic database containing small amounts of information about websites. The search engine database allowed web-surfers to search for specific words or phrases. The search engine would then provide a list of hyperlinks to websites containing those words or phrases in several Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). The basic concepts of a search engine are still the same, but much has changed since those innocent days.
Google Love - Five Top Tips To Make Google Love Your Site
1. Google love ...
Search Engines - The Dominant Factor
Let's face facts - Search engines are starting to rule and dominate the way people advertise their products and services.
Content Is King
Over the past few years, there have been many debates about different search engine optimisation strategies, though it is highly important that a range of strategies are pulled together as one to form the best optimisation program possible. There is one particular factor that is becoming ever more important when it comes to reaching number one in the search engine results pages. That factor is "content". It seems search engines in their quest to provide ever more relevant results are giving site content more and more weight in their ranking algorithms. These days we are seeing web pages packed full of relevant text as opposed to the wonderful, graphical pages that used to adorn many a company's web sites.
Professional SEO: Hand Off to Bob or Outsource the Job
We are often asked if professional SEO (search engine optimization) can be done effectively utilizing in-house talent. Despite our obvious self-interests on the subject, our answer is always a qualified "yes"? you can achieve professional SEO results using existing talent. However, for every company we have known that has met with great in-house SEO success, we know of many more that have seen their in-house efforts fail. We have also discovered the companies that have succeeded share some common traits.
Reciprocal Links to Boost Link Popularity ?
Link popularity means the number of incoming links pointing to your website. This is one of the criterical factor that rank the search results. If you are have link on website with high PageRank (PR4+), you will benefit from it and your ranking will boost.
Linking for Fun and Profit
Well actually, linking isn't fun at all. In fact, it's quite tedious. Seeking, responding to requests and adding links takes time and effort. But, if you're not actively building links the RIGHT way you are going to be left behind. In other words, your site will be "Lost in Cyberspace". The plain fact is Google, and to a lesser extent, other important search engines, reward sites with links from relevant and important pages.
SEO Help: Dont Try to Fool the Search Engines
Writing articles is all the rage these days on the web. Or should I say getting other people to write articles for you, joining membership sites that provide "private label" rights -- that is all the rage.
Your Website Title Could Be Costing You Money
Nothing could be simpler than the title you give to your web pages right? Unfortunately, the vast majority of the websites I visit these days have absolutely terrible titles that hurt their online business. The title of your website is a very important part of getting good rankings on most of the major search engines. A good title also goes a long way towards getting your prospects to click on your listings.
Keywords, Choose Them Wisely
By now you have likely heard that keywords and keyword phrases, are extremely important in having search engines display your website. So how do you choose them? Guess? Ask a friend? Check successful competitors sites? There is a better way!
Google News - Just another article announcer?
In Google's recent battle towards becoming an international news center, I've come to notice that the results delivered from Google News seems like nothing more than the articles we publish everyday. So I ask, doesn't it seem like Google News resembles an article directory of some sorts?
An SEO Checklist
Would you like a checklist of the important steps to take in optimizing a web site? Well, here it is: