Traffic Flow SEO

One measure of a good site is that it will get crawled by the search engine bots or crawlers on a regular basis. If you update your content often and acquire backlinks you should be in good shape, but many forget to do this and their sites just sit stagnant not offering any reason for the engines to check-in and update their database records. The fact is, sites that get crawled more often tend to rank better than those that do not.

That being said, I just found a nice tool from the folks at SEOAnalytic.com that provides quick insight into the last time the search engine bots or crawlers from Google, Yahoo! and MSN have visited your site.

That tool can be found here - SE Bots Last Visit

Google says that they have known a long time that the Web is big. So big in fact that it now indexes at least 1 trillion URLs! Below is a brief timeline of index milestones:

- Google index in 1998 reached 26 million URLs
- Google index in 2000 reached 1 billion URLs
- Google index in 2008 hits 1 trillion URLs

Recently the Google engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days -- when there systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!

Read more here:
Official Google Blog: We knew the web was big...

The other day I was working on a computer that was not mine, but I needed access to my IM to better communicate with a client. It was very frustrating to say the least, but after a bit of searching I found the perfect solution to my problem in eBuddy! eBuddy is a browser-based Web and mobile messenger - which also has a special version for my iPhone!

Here is the description from the site:

eBuddy is a free web based messenger that enables you to chat with your MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, MySpace and AIM buddies. No downloads or registration required!

When you're on the road, outdoors or traveling you can use the mobile version of eBuddy to chat with your buddies. Every mobile device that supports xHTML or WAP can be used; this includes Cell Phones, PDA's, Sony PSP and Nintendo DS! Check out the Mobile page for more info.

While not necessarily a specific SEO/SEM or Web marketing tool, a very vital part about a Web site is that it is viewable within many browsers. Below is a link to view your site in over 70 browsers across many platforms - Linux, Windows, Mac OS and BSD (many versions of the browsers listed below are available to view in multiple platforms - that is how they come up with over 70 browser views).

Browsers/Version(s)

- Firefox (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0)
- Internet Explorer (4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0)
- Dillo (0.8)
- Epiphany (2.14, 2.20, 2.22)
- Flock (1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0)
- Galeon (1.3, 2.0)
- Iceape (1.0, 1.1)
- Iceweasel (2.0, 3.0)
- Kazehakase (0.2, 0.4, 0.5)
- Konqueror (3.5)
- Minefield (3.0, 3.1)
- Mozilla (1.7)
- Navigator (9.0)
- Opera (9.23, 9.24, 9.25, 9.26, 9.27, 9.50, 9.51)
- SeaMonkey (1.1, 2.0)
- K-Meleon (1.1)
- Safari (1.3, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 4.0)
- Camino (1.6)

The Site is called, simple enough - Browsershots. To visit Browsershots click here - Test Your Site in Over 70 Browsers Now.

Please note that since this is a free service it may be a bit slow and require that you sit in a queue for a few minutes and then only hold your browser screenshots for a limited amount of time as to conserve resources and allow all users an opportunity to use this free service.

I was checking out new search engines and stumbled upon, Search Radar. It is a unique engine that can help with SEO by showing word clouds (they call them tag clouds) and list views around your search results. Search Radar describes itself like this:

Search Radar is a unique tool to assist you in your web searches. A typical search will return thousands of matching pages in the search results. Locating the right page that matches your query intent is a hit-or-miss process of figuring out the magic combination of keywords. Search Radar assists you in this process by providing you with a list of relevant keywords and phrases for your search query that you can use to refine your query. In addition to the list of relevant queries, Search Radar also provides you an excerpt that helps you know more about how the suggested phrase is related to your original query.

One of my favorite directories is running a July promotional offer that offers 20% of their standard pricing. This is probably one of the best directories to submit to for direct traffic and SEO efforts. While it tends to be more expensive than most, you get what you pay for. The July offer information is listed below (BOTW marketing message):

- CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED -


To coincide with the summer heat, we’d like to offer a deal that’s just as hot. Our valued customers certainly deserve the opportunity to save big from time to time. So from now until July 31st, you can SAVE 20% on All NEW Submissions and Sponsorship Advertising in the Best of the Web Directory and BOTW Blog Directory.

During the sign up process, when prompted, enter the following promo code and instantly save!

Promo Code: FIREWERX

Get Started today and Save 20% on:

* Directory Submissions - Discount on both the annually recurring and/or the one-time review fee.
* Blog Directory Submissions - Save on the one-time review fee for blogs.
* Monthly Sponsorship Ads - Save on the monthly rate for all new sponsorship ads.
* Blog Advertising - Discount on all new sponsorship ads in the Blog Directory.

The promo code may be used multiple times for multiple products and services throughout the month of July. Remember to act now – this amazing deal ends July 31st, 2008, so be sure to take full advantage!

And just in time for your summer planning, we are pleased to announce the recent launch of BOTW Local. BOTW Local provides users with information on businesses in their community - where they are looking for local solutions. Sign up today for your FREE Business Profile page, and get your business in front of the growing local marketplace.

Cheers!

Best of the Web

- CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED -

Recently (June 2008) eBizMBA created a list of the 15 Largest Search Engine Optimization Websites ranked by a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast. With this disclaimer - although no traffic metrics are completely accurate we do believe the data below to be useful for gauging relative audience size.

Even if it is not completely accurate it is fun to review. You can check it out for yourself at - 15 Top SEO Websites

It is always hard to find a tool that can check your backlinks in Ask.com accurately. To many this is really not that important, but to some you may find this interesting. I was checking a link popularity tool on Add Me and noticed that it now includes Ask.com (in addition to Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, AllTheWeb) and it is ACCURATE! Check it out here.

Backlinks are very important to your search engine optimization efforts. Many people assume a link, is a link, is a link, but that thought process is completely untrue. All backlinks have different values. For instance you may get a backlink from a site that has a Google PageRank (PR) of 8, thousands of backlinks, great tags (title, meta, etc.) - essentially what would appear to be the perfect backlink (assuming your site the the backlink site have content that is relevant to each other) - compared to a site that has say a Google PR of 3, hundreds of backlinks and just okay tags. The knee jerk reaction is that the first backlink is better, but in reality the second may actually be better because of many reasons. If the first backlink is on a page that has many outbound links, which all have to share the 'link juice' then the actual value of the backlink is greatly diminished. Also, the 'anchor text' (the text used in the backlink to your site) may not be keyword rich. So, on the first backlink your anchor text may be "click here to learn more" and in the seond backlink it may be something like this, "xyz company that provides xyz service". In the second backlink the 'anchor text' may contain important keywords with which you want to rank for and by having them in the 'anchor text' greatly increases the value of that backlink regardless of the PR value. This can all get confusing fast, so below is a list of free backlink tools to help you sort through the value of your backlinks and hopefully help you build a better roadmap for your SEO efforts.

Analyze Backlinks - good tool that lets you see all backlinks (appears to be up to the top 1,000), anchor text, total links, outbound links and the title of the page - all great for better insight.

SmartPageRank | Backlink Checker - great tool that lets you see all backlinks, anchor text, PageRank (PR) and best of all nofollow (this is essential to see if the link is passing any 'link juice').

Link Diagnosis (requires FireFox with a plugin) - great tool with incredible visuals (when it works properly, sometimes you may have to re-run your reports to get them to work). This tools is by far the most advanced including a unique 'strength' number. Here is a sample of one of the reports this tool can create - click here.

Backlink Watch - Good tool with a lot of potential, but way too much advertising! Lets you see backlinks, PR, outbound links and anchor text.

iWebTool | Backlink Checker - very basic offering from a site that offers some incredible tools. Limited results and information, possibly use as a secondary source of data.

Domain-Pop | Free Backlink Checker - great tool that offers all the basics, but also allows you to analyze (and sort by) IP addresses which is also very helpful as it can identify different sites that are bunched up on a single IP (not as much value in their backlinks).

Domain Inbound Links Checker - basic level tool with minimal amount of data available, but one stand out is that the backlinks can be sorted by extension (.edu, .gov., .mil).

UPDATE!!!! (6/19/08)

I think I just found one of the best and most accurate online backlink analyzers ever! It is located here - SEOPRO - Backlink Checker

Found a nice web-based free dead link/broken link checker that I thought I might share. I tested it with multiple sites and it appears to work rather well (a little slow). It also is great at identifying many codes such as:

- 404 Not Found
- 301 Permanent Redirects (SEO friendly)
- 302 Redirects
- Dead Links
etc., etc. etc.

It can be found here - Broken link checker