Google Panda Update Scheduled March 15th, 2013

Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer at Google, announced yet another Panda update is scheduled to hit on Friday March 15th, 2013, or Monday March 18th 2013. This would be the 25th Panda roll out since February 2011. In addition, Matt mentioned that Google will launch is 4th major Penguin update this year, stating that it will be significant enough to cause major discussions.

Matt also confirmed that Google targeted another link network a couple weeks ago, and says they will release another one within the next week or two.

Wondering when next Google panda update is going to rolled out ? Well guys its very near and you should start wondering what effects this new Google panda update going to put on your websites and all SEO work you have done till now.  According to news In SMX West panel, Matt Cutts head of web spam announced that the team of Google web spam working hard to provide best search results. To keep filtering process going on between bad and good websites, most probably a Google Panda update is going to take place on Friday 15 March 2013 or Monday 18 March 2013.

If this Google panda update rolled out on these given dates than this will be official Google algorithm panda update #25. The last official Google panda update #24 was rolled out in early January on 22nd January 2013. In #24 Google panda update, it has affected almost 1.2 % of English Search queries and we can see same kind of affected English search queries in this coming latest Google panda update on 15 March 2013 or 18 March 2013.

Lets wait and watch what Google is going to do in coming days with its algorithm updates. We hope this time Google will filter the results by keeping original Google panda filtering system, as in last couple of Google algorithm updates specially the Google panda updates did not come out with the best results. We have seen that after Google panda update the bad content or no content website take place top spots in Google search results and Good quality websites having good page rank loose their rankings in Google SERP results.

Will confirm you guys as Google makes an official statement for this Google panda update #25, if it takes place on given dates. Till than just keep an eye on your search engine rankings and keep your website updating with some great and quality stuff.

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YouTube Improves Audio Editing With New Interface And More Tracks

YouTube has updated the audio editing capabilities it offers users, with several important improvements including an extended library of more than 150,000 backing tracks.

Other improvements include a new interface (pictured above), the ability to mix music into your video at different volume levels (from “soft background” to “completely replace”), and a choice of featured tracks that makes it easy to find a song that fits with your video’s mood.

To try out these new features, go to Video Manager — Edit — Enhancements — Audio.

The new features will be available worldwide over the next day, and YouTube promises more improvement to come in the future. Check out a video demonstration below.

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What does Semantic Search mean for SEO?

Semantic search uses artificial intelligence in order to understand the searcher’s intent and the meaning of the query rather than parsing through keywords like a dictionary. When you search now, Google gives you results based solely on the text and the keywords that you put in that search. Essentially, Google gives you its best guess.

When you use semantic search, Google will dive into the relationship between those words, how they work together, and attempt to understand what those words mean. Google will understand that “their” and “they’re” has two different meanings and when “New” and “York” are placed together, it changes the meaning.

Semantic search isn’t a new concept. As early as 2008, search engines were popping up that focus on natural language over keywords. But we’re really only taking notice now because of Google. And Google is really only taking notice because of Siri and Google’s response to Siri, Google Assistant, which will be out on Android devices later this year.

Semantic Search for SEO

Keywords are easy to manipulate; intent, not so much. In order to rank well in semantic search, you don’t just have to put your keywords in the right places, you have to figure out the actual meaning behind those keywords and create content around that specifically. That puts more emphasis on your keyword research.

When people search, they aim to answer a question. They just search in the truncated version of that question. Keyword research is largely data-driven around the popularity of the terms in their question. Keyword research in semantic search will have to focus on what that person actually means when searching for that keyword.

For example: Physiotherapy. What could people mean they search “Physiotherapy?”

• What is physiotherapy?
• The different procedure of physiotherapy
• How to handle different physiotherapy cases
• Physiotherapy learning videos and guidelines.

The possibilities are endless. When you’re framing your content in a semantic search world, it has to be around answering the specific questions people have as it relates to that keyword. With every sentence you write, ask yourself: How does this answer the searcher’s question? You will have to focus on the natural language even if those users are still focusing on keywords.

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Google's Algorithm Update to Penalize Over Optimized Sites

Few week during a SXSW panel, Matt Cutts, head of Google's search spam team, announced that Google has been working on a new tweak to its algorithm that will punish sites that are too optimized for SEO -- what he called "over-optimized" or "overly SEO'd," according to the recording of the announcement posted on Search Engine Land. Here's what you need to know about the new Google algorithm update, which has not been released yet but will go live in the next few weeks, according to Cutts' announcement.

What Cutts Revealed About the New Algorithm Update?

Cutts hadn't planned on mentioning the algorithm update, but was given the perfect opportunity when an attendee asked the following question:

"With so many SEO companies showing up claiming to do SEO, a lot of markets are getting saturated with optimized content...What are you doing to prevent, for example, if you're looking for something, and the first page is just optimized content, and it's not what you're actually looking for? Are you pretty much out of luck if you're not optimizing your site but it has relevant content? If I'm a mom or pop and I'm trying to optimize a site by myself, I'm going to get beat by people paying thousands of dollars."

This algorithm update is working to level the playing field for sites without as many resources to dedicate to SEO. Matt explained the changes as "trying to make the algorithm more adaptive," or being more understanding of sites that have good content even if it isn't search engine optimizedlike many marketers have learned to do. The sites that will be penalized are those that "throw too many keywords on the page, exchange way too many links, whatever they're doing to go beyond what a normal person would expect."

What Google's Algorithm Update Means Practically for Marketers?

If your content is driven by topics, you shouldn't expect to be penalized when the new algorithm update rolls out, even if you do take the time to search engine optimize that content with keywords and relevant links. If your writing is driven by keywords, however, we predict it's more likely you'll suffer some search ranking slips.

What's the difference between a keyword-driven content strategy and a topic-driven content strategy? A content strategy driven by what readers want, not what search engines want, is the direction that Google has been actively working toward rewarding even since last year's Panda updatesrolled out. So if you're selecting topics based on what your audience would find helpful, you're doing content strategy right. If you're choosing what to write about based on the keywords you want to be found for, you don't have the reader top of mind; and Google is doing everything they can in its algorithm not to reward such sites in the SERPs.

Said Cutts on the panel, "Make a compelling site. Make a site that's useful. Make a site that's interesting. Make a site that's relevant to people's interests...We're always trying to best approximate if a user lands on a page if they are going to be annoyed...All of the changes we make are designed to approximate, if a user lands on your page, just how happy they are going to be with what they're going to get."

Marketers, business owners, and SEOs could also take a cue from Bing's Duane Forrester, who was also on the panel and addressed the attendee's question after Matt Cutts' initial response. He highlighted the importance of social sharing as a signal others actually like your content -- one of the key indicators of relevancy for search engines. "Does the rest of the world think you have a great product?" Forrester asked. "If they do, they will amplify this. If you're not engaged socially, you're missing the boat because the conversation is happening socially about you and about your content. Those are really important signals for us. Whether you're involved or not is your choice, but those signals still exist whether you're in the conversation or not."

Thankfully, Danny Sullivan asked the burning question we all had (or still have) on our minds -- whether Google is going to release an algorithm update that's designed to hurt the kinds of SEO activities that have been recommended to marketers to help their search rankings. In short, no; this algorithm update won't do that. Cutts clarified by saying, "SEO can often be very helpful. It can make a site more crawlable; it can make a site more accessible; it can think about the words users are going to type whenever they come to a search engine to make sure those words are on a page. The same things you do to optimize your return on investment and make sure things spread virally or socially are often the same things that work from a search engine perspective...but there are some people who take it too far. If you're white hat or doing very little SEO, you're not going to be affected by this change."

So marketers, it sounds like the same rules still apply. Create great content with readers in mind first, search engines in mind second. Then make sure your site is easily crawlable so bots can actually read and index that content. As more information is released, we'll keep you updated on whether this algorithm update will affect the way you approach your content or search engine optimization strategy.

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Google Analytics Social Media Reporting Launched

Google Analytics has been working on social media reporting for a long time.

They started off with the Social tab under the Audience drop down. But this was limited, and it only relies on Google + Engagement, Actions or Pages +1ed by default. This wasn’t enough for Google and now they have launched an entirely new social media report that takes steps to prove how social contributes to conversions.

How to Access Social Media Reporting?

To access the new Google Analytics social media reporting tab follow these steps.

1. Login to Google Analytics
2. Select your account
3. Select Traffic Sources
4. Select Social

Under social you will see:

• Sources & Pages: Identify networks & communities where people engage with your content.
• Conversions: Measure the value of social by tracking your goals, conversions and ecommerce transactions.
• Social Plugins: Measure your on-site user engagement.
• Social Visitors Flow: Compare traffic volumes and visitor traffic patterns through your site.

Google Analytics Social Overview Tab

This tab shows you total visits, the number of social visits and how the social visits assist in conversions. It also breaks down the social networks and the traffic they deliver.

Google Analytics Social Sources Tab

This gives you a better look at how each one of your sources of social traffic compares to your overall traffic.

Google Analytics Social Page Tab

This report shows you the pages that are the most engaged socially.

Google Analytics Social Conversions Tab

This tab will show you both conversion from a social network and conversions that were assisted by a social network.

Google Analytics Social Plugin Tab

This area allows you to track likes, Tweets, etc. However, it only shows Google +1s as default.

Google Analytics Social Visitors Flow Tab

This tab is really amazing. It shows how visitors from social flow through your website. You can see where they start and where they finish.

Now that you know a little about Google Analytics Social reporting it is time for you to jump in and try it for yourself.

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Top 3 Computer Security Practices for Businesses

It is very important for an enterprise to secure their security to evaluate their network.Microsoft has compiled a list of best practices for securing an enterprise from various threats.This list is meant to assess your infrastructure, not to replace your present infrastructure.

1. Assess your enterprise Environment:

To secure your network environment effectively one must be first familiar with all of its components. First of all assess your infrastructure which includes all assets and security issues, by monitoring the quality of your security program. You have to decide your exact network safety needs first, by considering various factors or issues. To run security program successful in an enterprise, first you have to make sure that your technician staff has necessary skill to support it. If can manage to process it, then you should focus on establishing a process to analyze and indentify security risks on an ongoing process. Without such a preplan in place,even if you run the risk of initiating projects that may not solve your larger security problems.

Once a risk management process have established, then you should create a document with a set of security policies that control the usage of the resources and the technology within your organization. If your infrastructure has lack of main security policy, like an insecure computers,should first be indentified and then remove from your network until they come under your policies. By removing these computers, one should define the process and by following these processes you can recognize these potentially susceptible devices.

2. Protect Your Network

Being connecting to the world of internet has many benefits as well as challenges. Any computer connected to the internet within your network, directly or indirectly, has a possible risk for external attackers and viruses. Usually, firewall defenses these kinds of activities or attacks. To prevent these activities you should review or update your firewall very frequently and maintain them as valid. Always take necessary steps to protect your hardware devices such as laptops with technologies with host-based firewalls. You shouldn’t exclusively rely on firewalls as your sole ways to defense. You should also consider some added factors to protect your network. By providing safe remote access along with strong verification techniques and you should also know if your computer employs updated quarantine technologies.

You can secure your wireless network by preventing unauthorized user from gaining the access to the network possessions. By improving all internet servers to Microsoft windows server 2003 and all laptops to Windows XP, then you can reduce attacks risk to your network.

3. Protect Your Servers and Clients:

First of all, you should protect your servers and clients from internet attacks because you have been working with them from many years and spent huge amount to protect their perimeter networks by allowing their internet infrastructure to wait very vulnerable. By taking some crucial steps to harden your operating system and security tools you can minimize your attacks from various internet threats, so that you can protect your servers and clients more effectively.

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5 Things To Do If You’re A Wireless Broadband Internet Users

There are several ways by which you can access the internet and one great thing about the internet is that it is the best thing that has ever happened to the world. 

You should know that there are two major ways by which you can access the internet – these two ways can either be wired or wirelessly but in my own opinion the best way to access the internet is wirelessly.

This article will be listing 5 things you should do if you’re a wireless internet user or if you plan to be one soon.

Think Security, Think Effectiveness

The first thing you have to realize as a wireless internet user is that wireless technology is entirely different from other forms of broadband technology and it is one of the easiest to hack forms of internet connection. You need to take your security paramount to enjoy your wireless internet and this means you need to have strong wireless encryption keys while at the same time ensuring you use strong passwords.

The more secure your internet is the more effective your work will be so do all you can to ensure your computer is always secure.

Beware of Public Wireless Hotspots

Even though it can be fun trying to access the internet wirelessly using a public hotspot, especially if it is something you’re not paying for it is highly important for you to realize that public wireless hotspots can be very dangerous for you so always do your best to ensure you don’t use public wireless networks and if at all you will, make sure you do all you can to ensure you’re always secure.

Hide Your Network and Only Give Trusted People Your Network Name

A wireless network is one of the most vulnerable and easiest to hack networks and this means you have to be extra-cautious when using one. The more people can access your wireless network, the more risks you are exposed to so make sure you do your best to hide your wireless network from the public and also make sure you don’t give anybody your details unless you trust the fellow completely.

Always Change Your Details Regularly

It is also very important for you to ensure you don’t use the same passwords and security keys for a long period of time. Try to change your passwords at least once every three months, and if possible you canchange your passwords more often. The more often you change your passwords the difficult it is for others to guess it and monitor you and the more secure you are.

Make Sure You Have the Latest Tools

The final tip in this article to ensure you’re getting the best from your wireless broadband internet is to ensure you have the latest tools, both in terms of hardware and software. By this I mean you should always have the latest router, the latest computer and the latest software – this will ensure you’re greatly protected from hacking attempts.

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Best 5 WordPress Quiz Plugin

What makes WordPress stand alone among all blogging platforms is the rich library of plugins .

With plugins you can do almost anything on a WordPress blog . If you wish to conduct quizzes or surveys on your blog , then here are the best WordPress plugin for you .

Quiz WordPress Plugin lets you add quiz to your blog. This plugin is designed to be as easy to use as possible. Quizzes, questions and answers can be added from the admin side. This will appear in your post if you add a small HTML comment in your post.

1. Quiz Master

This plugin adds a quiz function to your WordPress website.you can handle Multiple Choice and True/False questions. Quiz master is also capable of storing a library of questions and randomly selecting a certain amount. Features email sending to admin or any other email address upon person completing quiz. Also gives option to show score, incorrect and correct answers to the person taking it upon completion.

2. Quizzin

Quizzin lets you create quizzes with any number of questions in it. Each question can have many answers in which one should be marked as the correct answer.You can add the quiz in a post by including the html comment [QUIZZIN 1] in the post. Here 1 is the ID of the quiz to be included.

3. Hexam

Hexam is very easy to use wordpress quiz plugin, you can create a lot of tests in your site and place it in posts or pages. You can choose how many questions each quiz may contain, you can also set number of answers for each question. Users can send their results after doing test. You can also view how many points each user has scored and you can see and post users’ ranking table in wp.

4. WP Quiz and Survey Tool

This plugin allows users to create quizzes, surveys or polls hosted on their WordPress blog. It features the ability to limit quizzes and surveys to one submission per IP address.You can also limit the quizes and surverys to registered users only . You can also issue PDF certificates to the successful quizzers .

5. MTouch Quiz

This quiz plugin provides touch friendly interface .You can specify hints based on answer selection; give a detailed explanation of the solution; choose multiple correct answers; specify when the correct answers are displayed; specify if a question may be attempted only once or many times; specify point values for each question; include customized start and finish screens; randomly order questions and/or answers; and more.

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Best 5 WordPress SEO Plugins

WordPress is one the most popular tools for publishing content on the web. Everything from e-commerce Websites to blogs can be developed using WordPress.
Additionally, the WordPress community has built up a huge offering of free themes and plugins to make it easy for newcomers to get content published on the web quickly and easily.

There are lot of SEO plugins available for wordpress but these are the SEO plugins which are Must Have in any wordpress blog .

1. All in One SEO Pack

This is a very popular SEO plugin . It allows you to easily add title , description , meta tags and meta keywords to your posts .

2. SEO Smart Links

This is the best plugin for inter linking your posts . SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.SEO Smart links also allows you to set nofollow attribute and open links in new window.

3. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google , Yahoo , Bing etc to better index your blog.

4. SEO Friendly Images

We generally forgets to add alt tag to the images in the posts . It describes your images to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images.

5. Simple Tags

Simple tag is a perfect tool to perfectly manage tags . It helps you choose the best tags for your posts by offering suggestions, auto-completion of tags as you type, an AJAX admin interface, mass tag editing and a whole lot more.

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Top 10 Free SEO Tools

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very important for your successful business in the world wide web . 

No matters whether you are a blogger or websites owner SEO is very important . There are lot of tricks and tips available for SEO , but SEO goes well beyond tips and tricks .There are lot of tools available for SEO some are free while some are not . Here I am listing some popular free available SEO tools , which you can use easily for a high search engine ranking of your Blog or website .

1. Bing WebMaster Tools

When talking about SEO most of us pays attentions to Google search only . Bing and Yahoo search are generally ignored . We should keep in mind that Bing and Yahoo together consist of 30% of search market .

With Bing WebMaster Tools you can improve your blog or sites ranking on Bing . Bing WebMaster Tool provides information pertaining to content performance: content crawled, indexed, and trafficked.

2. Yahoo Web Analytics

Yahoo Web Analytics is a highly customizable free web analytic tool .The only problem with it is that you cant use it directly you have to know someone who is a member of the Yahoo Consultant Network.

3. Google WebMaster Tools

This is a very useful tool which could improve your sites performance in Google search . Adding your site to Google webmaster will get it immediately indexed in Google search (sometimes less than 24 hrs ) .Google webmaster tool helps you diagnose Google search indexing issues, research keyword visibility (impressions, clicks, click-through rate, average position, position distribution), article popularity on Google search engine results pages and overall website speed.

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most popular and widely used analytic tool . It gives you rich insights into your website traffic and let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way.

5. Google External Keyword Tool

This tool provide keyword research information such as average competition, global monthly searches, local monthly searches, and local search trending.

6. Google Trends

This tool provides the most popular topics and searched queries . This tool could be a great help for those blogger who are confused about what topic they should write on .

7. Google Instant

Google instant can be used as an keyword research tool . Search anything on it and you will get keyword suggestions . It also gives you competitive content idea .

8. Google Insights for Search

This tool can be considered as an advance form of Google external keyword tool . With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties

9. Xenu Link Sleuth

This tool checks your website for broken links and ensures they are valid, executable (when pointed at files), and search engine friendly .

10. MozBar SEO Toolbar

The mozBar, SEOmoz’s SEO toolbar is available for both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. The mozBar provides easy access to some of the most powerful SEO tools and data while you surf the Web.

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Best Online SEO Tools

What is the best way to improve Search Engine Optimization or simply put, to boost your position is search engines? 

Which tools to be used to improve link popularity, quality of backlinks and rankings in Google? What keywords to be used? We give answers. Mentioned is the list of very useful SEO tools, which if used, will definitely help you in developing and optimizing your web site. For resources, we recommend the following very useful SEO Tools; one of the most comprehensive list of SEO tools.

Alexa & Backlink

Alexa Ranking:

This tool allows you to create traffic history for your site. It works out traffic rankings by analyzing the usage of millions of Alexa toolbar users.

Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer:

It will help you determine the anchor text used by your backlinks to link to your site and the backlinks.

Backlink Analyzer:

This tool researches and analyzes websites for the quality of link. It checks for DMOZ listing, Domain Age & Expiration, Indexed Pages, EDU & .GOV Links, Google PageRank, Links to Website, Alexa Traffic Rank.

Backlink Builder:

Quality backlinks are of utmost importance for site optimization, this tool helps you do that.

Domain Popularity, Domain Stats Tools

Domain Age Tool:

This tool allows you to check how the site looked when it started, and also displays the approximate age of the site.

Domain Dossier:

Domain Dossier is an exemplary tool, investigates the IP addresses and the domains, as the name says.

Domain Popularity:

This tool can show up to ten subpages/backlinking domains, Google PageRank and host IP. It also displays all the backlinks for the given domain.

Domain Stats: A Tool Presenting Required Stats:

It helps you attain all the stats you need to know about competitor’s domain. Stats include: Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Alexa Taffic Rank, Dmoz listings, number of backlinks and pages indexed in Search Engines.

HTTP / HTTPS Header Check:

This tool inspects the HTTP headers that the web server returns when a URL is requested. It works with both HTTPS URLs and HTTP.

View HTTP Headers & HTTP Path:

HTTP Headers allows you to view the HTTP headers for a HTTP request, whereas View HTTP Path tool lets you view the path, a request takes to get fulfilled.

Check Google PageRank:

This tool allows you to check the PageRank of any site you want without having to install the Google toolbar.

Check PageRank by Google Data Center:

This useful tool allows the user to check the PageRank of the site from many different data centers.

Adsense Keywords & YPN Keywords Search Tool:

Lotaweb allows Optimizers to focus on the right keywords and phrases for their content, to monetize their site, with the ability to search thousands of highly effective Adsense keywords.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool:

This Keyword tool from Google provides Specific and alternate keywords, best suited for your site. They will still have to be analyzed to determine their worth.

Google Banned Tool:

It’s a way to check if your site has been banned by Google for some reason. It has two ways to check in the Google database.

Google Keyword Ranking Tool:

It checks the search engine position ranking for keywords in the major search engines and helps you generate an advanced report.

Page Rank Tool:

PageRank tool shows the Google PageRank values for the URL submitted from various Google datacenters.

Google Page Rank Checker:

Google PageRank checker is a very simple tool that is used to check your PageRank so it can be displayed on your website.

Page Rank Authenticity Check:

This tool allows the PageRank to be checked for authenticity and also shows the PageRank of the given domain.

Visual Page Rank:

The Visual PageRank – tool shows all links and there corresponding PageRanks visually rather than in text.

Keyword Density, Keyword Suggestion Tool, Keyword Analysis Tool

Keyword Density:

It helps the SEOs and webmasters achieve their goal of optimum keywords density for a set of different keywords.

Keyword Difficulty Tool:

This tool is used to analyze the competitiveness of a keyword or a phrase. It gives a detailed analysis of the top ranked sites and the percentage score at Yahoo and Google.

Keyword Density Checker:

It shows the percentage of number of times a particular keyword has been used in the content. It crawls the URL, removes common stop words and analyzes the density.

Keyword Suggestion Tool:

It shows the popularity of key phrases and also gives ideas with alternate key phrases. It helps with selecting the right key phrase for the website.

Website Keyword Suggestions:

Website Keywords Suggestion tool provides keyword suggestions and traffic estimates, by determining the theme of the web site.

Ontology Finder:

The Ontology Finder tool checks the top one thousand Google results for the keywords by running a related query.

Link Value, Link Popularity Check, Site Link Analyzer

Deep Link Ratio Tool:

This tool can be used to compare the DLRs for the best ranking sites for the search term. It also analyzes if the ranking in search engines is affected by the deep link ratio of the site.

Link Validation Spider:

Link Validation Spider Tool is not only free but a very useful online tool mainly used to check for the broken links.

Link Value:

This very effective and free tool is used to calculate the value of the link per month of the submitted web site.

Link Price Calculator:

This tool helps you determine the approx. amount that you should be paying/month for a text link (ad) from all the pages of the specified website.

Reciprocal Link Check:

This tool determines whether your link partners have used the anchor text to link to your site.

Site Link Analyzer:

This tool analyzes the given URL and returns data containing columns of their associated text and outbound links.

Outbound Links:

The Outbound link tool displays every outgoing link from the given URL; separated in internal and external links.

Meta Tag Generators

Meta Tag Generator:

Meta tag generator only picks the most searched words from the content after crawling it. It also generates meta keywords tags using the same words. It is also used to generate meta head tag.

Title & Meta Tags Generator:

This tool generates the title and meta tags for the page and helps improves rankings using the meta tag generator.

Miscellaneous Tools

Copyscape:

This useful tool searches for copies of your web page on the Web.

Site Analysis Including Link Popularity:

This tool is used to generate complete site analysis e.g. Google PageRank, backlinks, indexed sites and also the domain if it’s in DMOZ and Yahoo directory.

Similar Page Checker:

Search engine penalize sites with duplicate content. The content used on your site could be similar to another site on the net or could even be similar to the content of your own site. The tool shows amount of similarity between the two pages and sites.

Sitemap Generator:

This tool generates Google sitemap online, which is of huge importance when it comes to improving the rankings of your site.

Robots.txt Syntax Checker:

This robots.txt syntax tool checker checks the contents of a site’s robots.txt.

Speedtester:

This tool shows how long a site takes to load and then decides if the IP needs to be changed or the site needs to be optimized more.

URL Rewrite (mod_rewrite):

This tool helps you change the dynamic URLs to URLs that are search engine friendly.

Mod_rewrite Rewrite Rule Generator:

This tool generator takes a dynamic URL, and generate the correct syntax to put it in .htaccess file to allow the URL to be written in a format which a spider can crawl.

Cloaking Detection Tool:

Cloaked content is detected by the Googlebot (based on User-Agent) stimulated by this tool.

What is Hosted on that IP:

This tool displays the virtual hosts on a particular IP (Internet Protocol).

Search Engine Spider Simulator:

This tool shows the information received from the website by a search engine spider.

Search Engine Position Checker:

This tool automatically queries the search engines specified and check if the URL is in the top 50 results of the targeted keywords.

Marketleap Search Engine Verification Tool:

This tool checks if the site is in the top 3 pages of a search engine for the targeted keyword.

Number of Pages Indexed:

This tool generates the report showing how many pages of the site have been indexed by the search engines. It supports all the top search engines: Google, MSN, Hotbot, Yahoo, Alltheweb and AltaVista.

SERPs Position:

This tool displays the position of your domain in the rankings for the targeted keywords and compares it with the first 100 results by Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

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6 Free SEO Tools to Powercharge Your SEO Campaign

Every SEO professional agrees that doing SEO barehanded is a dead-end deal. SEO software makes that time consuming and painstaking job a lot faster and easier. 

There are a great number of SEO tools designed to serve every purpose of website optimization. They give you a helping hand at each stage of SEO starting with keyword research and finishing with the analysis of your SEO campaign results.

Nowadays you can find a wide range of totally free SEO tools available on the web. And this overview of the most popular free SEO tools is going to help you pick up the ones that can make your website popularity soar.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Keywords lay the foundation stone of every SEO campaign. Hence keywords unearthing and faceting is the initial step on the way to Google’s top. Of course you may put on your thinking cap and make up the list of keywords on your own. But that is like a shot in the dark since your ideas may significantly differ from the terms people really enter in Google.

Here, Google AdWords Keyword Tool comes in handy. Despite the fact that this tool is originally aimed to assist Google AdWords advertisers, you can use that for keyword research too. Google AdWords Keyword Tool helps you find out which keywords to target, shows the competition for the selected keywords, lets you see estimated traffic volumes and provides the list of suggestions on popular keywords. Google AdWords Keyword Tool has a users-friendly interface and moreover it’s totally free. You can use some other paid alternative tools like Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery that may be effective as well, but Google AdWords Keyword Tool is the ultimate leader among free keyword research tools.

XML Sitemaps Generators

To make sure all your pages get crawled and indexed you should set sitemaps for your website. They are like ready-to-crawl webs for Google spiders that enable them to quickly find out what pages are in place and which ones have been recently updated. Sitemaps can also be beneficial for human visitors since they organize the whole structure of website’s content and make website navigation a lot easier. The XML Sitemap Generator lets you make up XML, ROR sitemaps that can be submitted to Google, Yahoo! and lots of other search engines. This SEO tool also lets you generate HTML sitemaps that improve website navigation for humans and make your site visitors-friendly.

SEO Book’s Rank Checker

To check whether your optimization campaign is blowing hot or cold you need a good rank checking tool to measure the fluctuations of your website’s rankings. SEO Book’s Rank Checker can be of great help in that. It’s a Firefox plug-in that lets you run checking ranks in Big Three: Google, Yahoo! and Bing and easily export the collected data. All you have to do is enter you website’s URL and the keywords you want to check your positions for. That’s it and in some seconds SEO Book’s Rank Checker provides you with the results on your rankings. It’s fast, easy-in-use and free.

Backlinks Watch

Links are like the ace of trumps in Google popularity game. The point is that the more quality links are on your backlink profile the higher your website ranks. That’s why a good SEO tool for link research and analysis is a must-have in your arsenal. Backlink Watch is an online backlink checker that helps you not only see what sites have links to your page, but also gives you some data for SEO analysis, such as the title of the linking page, the anchor text of the link, it says whether the link has dofollow or nofollow tag, etc. The only drawback of this tool is that it gives you only 1,000 backlinks per a website, regardless of the actual number of backlinks a website has.

Compete

Compete[dot]com provides a large pool of analytical data to fish from. It’s an on-line tool for monitoring and analysis of online competition that provides two categories of services: free Site Analytics and subscription based paid Search Analytics that lets you take advantage of some additional features. Compete an out-and-outer SEO tool that lets you see traffic and engagement metrics for a specified website and find the sites for affiliating and link building purposes. Compete is also a great keyword analyzer, since it lets you run the analysis of your on-line competitors’ keywords. Some other features to mention are subdomain analysis, export to CSV, tagging etc.

SEO PowerSuite.

SEO PowerSuite is all-in-one SEO toolkit that lets you cover all aspects of website optimization. It consists of four SEO tools to nail all SEO tasks. WebSite Auditor is a great leg-up for creating smashing content for your website. It analyzes you top 10 online competitors and works out a surefire plan based on the best optimization practices in your niche. Rank Tracker is a great at your website positions monitoring and generating the most click-productive words. SEO SpyGlass is powercharged SEO software for backlink checking and analysis. This is the only SEO tool that lets you discover up to 50,000 backlinks per a website and generate reports with ready-to-use website optimization strategy. And the last and the most advanced in this row is LinkAssistant. It is a feature-rich powerhouse SEO tool for link building and management that shoulders the main aspects of offpage optimization.

Free versions of these four tools let you tackle the main optimization challenges. You can also buy an extended version of SEO PowerSuite with advanced features to make your optimization campaign complete.

Summing things up we can conclude that there are lots of SEO tools that will never burn a hole in your pocket and let you effectively run your website optimization campaign with minimum of costs and efforts.

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Geotargeting Websites With Country Code TLDs

As most of you know, Google allows you to set the geographic target of domains with generic TLDs (.com, .net, .org etc) via Google Webmaster Tools console. Webmasters that own such domains are able to use the geotargeting feature in order to indicate that particular segments of their websites target in different countries. Those segments can either be subfolders or sub-domains of the main website.

The Geotargeting feature is extremely effective for SEO since it gives a significant boost on the rankings of the website in the targeted Country Version of Google. This means that if you own the domain example.com and you specify that the subdomain fr.example.com targets in France, then this domain’s rankings on Google.fr will improve significantly. At the same time, this will have the opposite effect on the rankings of the subdomain in the other Google Versions (google.co.uk, google.com, google.de etc).

What About The Domains With ccTLDs?

The domains that have country specific TLDs (also known as country code TLDs – ccTLDs), are not allowed to use the geotargeting feature on Google Webmaster Console. This is because Google considers that the entire domain is already targeted to the country related to the ccTLD of the domain. So if you own the domain example.fr, Google considers that your entire website is targeted in France and thus if you create the subdomain de.example.fr you will not be able to target it in Germany.

What Does Google Say About This?

Question on Google Moderator and Matt Cutts replied us with a Google Webmaster Video:

As you can see Matt did not mention anything that changes what we already know. Here are the main points of his reply:

1. Google considers that “you are swimming upstream” if you try to Geotarget a domain with ccTLD to a different country.
2. Matt advises us to get a generic TLD and target different segments to different countries
3. When Google sees a .jp website, it assumes it is more relevant to Japan rather than to other countries
4. There are around 20 ccTLDs that are treated as generic

So, are you really “swimming upstream”?

At first glance, trying to target a website with ccTLD to a different country is not really helpful for the users. On the other hand trying to use geotargeting for a particular segment of the website makes more sense but still it is not the best option. Nevertheless there are 3 important exceptions to this rule.

1. Websites Related To The Hotel Industry

Websites related to the hotel industry need to use geotargeting even if they have country specific TLDs. If you are the webmaster or if you are doing SEO for a hotel in Santorini (one of the most beautiful Greek Islands), it really makes sense to use a website with .GR top level domain. It also makes sense to have a segment of the site dedicated to important markets such as the French. One of the basic things that you will do in order to build an effective campaign targeting toFrance is to translate the website in French and to publish special offers and services specifically for travelers from France.

Unfortunately though, due to the limitation imposed by Google you will not be able to set geotargeting toFrance for this website segment because the entire domain is already targeted toGreece. Also you might not be able to buy an .FR domain because according to the rules French Domains can only be registered by individuals and companies located inFrance. (Even though this changed a couple of months ago, this is a common problem with other restricted ccTLDs).

So at the end of the day, you have a subdomain or segment of the website which is highly relevant to people from Franceand at the same time it is geotargeted to Greecein Google Webmaster Console. Does this make sense?

2. Generic Country Code Top Level Domains (gccTLDs)

As Matt said on the video, there are several TLDs which even though they are related to specific countries, they are used by a large number of people as generic. The most popular TLDs are the .co, .fm, .me and .tv. Fortunately Google treats those ccTLDs as Generic and thus the Geo Targeting feature is enabled in Google Webmaster Console. Here is a list of all the ccTLDs that Google considers generic: .as, .bz, .cc, .cd, .co, .dj, .fm, .la, .me, .ms, .nu, .sc, .sr, .tv, .tk and .ws.

3. Websites That Use Domain Hacks

Another reason why someone might choose a specirfic ccTLD is because he/she uses Domain Hacks. The Domain hack is basically a domain-name which combines the various domain levels and the TLD, to spell out the full name of the website. Few of the most well known domain hacks are del.icio.us, goo.gl, fold.it and youtu.be.

Most domain-hacks use ccTLDs like .al, .as, .at, .co, .in, .is, .it, .me and .us. Guess what? Only 2 of the previous ccTLDs are considered generic by Google!

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How to Speed up Search Engine Indexing?

It’s a common knowledge that nowadays users don’t only search for trusted sources of information but also for fresh content. 

That’s why the last couple of years, the Search engines have been working on how to speed up their indexing process. Few months ago, Google has announced the completion of their new indexing system called Caffeine which promises fresher results and faster indexation.

The truth is that comparing to the past, the indexing process has became much faster. Nevertheless lots of webmasters still face indexing problems either when they launch a new website or when they add new pages. In this article we will discuss 5 simple SEO techniques that can help you speed up the indexation of your website.

1. Add Links on High Traffic Websites

The best thing you can do in such situations is to increase the number of links that point to your homepage or to the page that you want to index. The number of incoming links and the PageRank of the domain, affect directly both the total number of indexed pages of the website and the speed of indexation.

As a result by adding links from high traffic websites you can reduce the indexing time. This is because the more links a page receives, the greater the probabilities are to be indexed. So if you face indexing problems make sure you add your link in your blog, post a thread in a relevant forum, write press releases or articles that contain the link and submit them to several websites. Additionally social media can be handy tools in such situation, despite the fact that in most of the cases their links are nofollowed. Have in mind that even if the major search engines claim that they do not follow the nofollowed links, experiments have shown that not only they do follow them but also that they index the pages faster (Note that the fact that they follow them does not mean that they pass any link juice to them).

2. Use XML And HTML Sitemaps

Theoretically Search Engines are able to extract the links of a page and follow them without needing your help. Nevertheless it is highly recommended to use XML or HTML sitemaps since it is proven that they can help the indexation process. After creating the XML sitemaps make sure you submit them to the Webmaster Consoles of the various search engines and include them in robots.txt. So make sure you keep your sitemaps up-to-date and resubmit them when you have major changes in your website.

3. Work on Your Link Structure

As we saw in previous articles, link structure is extremely important for SEO because it can affect your rankings, the PageRank distribution and the indexation. Thus if you face indexing problems check your link structure and ensure that the not-indexed pages are linked properly from webpages that are as close as possible to the root (homepage). Also make sure that your site does not have duplicate content problems that could affect both the number of pages that get indexed and the average crawl period.

A good method to achieve the faster indexation of a new page is to add a link directly from your homepage. Finally if you want to increase the number of indexed pages, make sure you have a tree-like link structure in your website and that your important pages are no more than 3 clicks away from the home page (Three-click rule).

4. Change The Crawl Rate

Another way to decrease the indexing time in Google is to change the crawl rate from the Google Webmaster Tools Console. Setting the crawl rate to “faster” will allow Googlebot to crawl more pages but unfortunately it will also increase the generated traffic on your server. Of course since the maximum allowed crawl rate that you can set is roughly 1 request every 3-4 seconds (actually 0.5 requests per second + 2 seconds pause between requests), this should not cause serious problems for your server.

5. Use the Available Tools

The major search engines provide various tools that can help you manage your website. Bing provides you with the Bing Toolbox, Google supports the Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo offers the Yahoo Site Explorer. In all the above consoles you can manage the indexation settings of your website and your submitted sitemaps. Make sure that you use all of them and that you regularly monitor your websites for warnings and errors. Also resubmit or ping search engine sitemap services when you make a significant amount of changes on your website. A good tool that can help you speed up this pinging process is the Site Submitter, nevertheless it is highly recommended that you use also the official tools of every search engine.

If you follow all the above tips and you still face indexing problems then you should check whether your website is banned from the search engines, if it is developed with search engine friendly techniques, whether you have enough domain authority to index the particular amount of pages or if you have made a serious SEO mistake (for example block the search engines by using robots.txt or meta-robots etc).

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7 Deadly Mistakes To Avoid In Google Webmaster Tools Console

The Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that allows webmasters to submit their websites & sitemaps to Google, affect their indexing process, configure how the search engine bots crawl their sites, get a list of all the errors that were detected on their pages and get valuable information, reports and statistics about their websites. Certainly it is a very powerful console that can help Webmasters not only optimize their websites but also control how Google accesses their sites.

Unfortunately though, even if using the basic functionalities and changing the default configuration is relatively straight forward, one should be very careful while using the advanced features. This is because some of the options can heavily affect the SEO campaign of the website and change the way that Google evaluates it. In this article we discuss the 7 most important mistakes that one can make while using the advanced features of Google Webmaster Tools and we explain how to avoid a disaster by configuring everything properly.

1. Geographic Targeting Feature

The Geographic Targeting is a great feature that allows you to link your website to a particular location/country. It should be used only when a website targets to users from a particular country and when it does not really make sense to attract visitors from other countries.

This feature is enabled if your domain has a generic (neutral) top-level-domain such as .com, .net, .org etc while it is preconfigured if it has a country specific TLD. By pointing your site to a particular country you can achieve a significant boost on your rankings on the equivalent Country version of Google. So for example by setting the Geographic Targeting to France you can positively affect your rankings on Google.fr. Unfortunately this will also lower your rankings on the other Google Country versions. So this means that you might be able to boost your rankings on Google.fr but you can actually hurt your results on Google.com and Google.co.uk.

So don’t use this feature unless your website targets only on people from a specific country.

2. Sitemap Submission

Google allows you to submit via the Console a list of sitemaps and this will speed up drastically the indexing of your website. Even though this is a great feature for most of the webmasters, in few cases it can cause two major problems.

The first problem is that sometimes the XML sitemaps appear on Search Results, so if you don’t want your competitors to be able to see them make sure you gzip them and submit the .gz version on Google. Also obviously you shouldn’t name the files “sitemap.xml” or add their URLs on your robots.txt file.

The second problem appears when you index a large number of pages (several hundred thousands) really really fast. Even though Sitemaps will help you index those pages (given that you have enough PageRank), you are also very likely to reach a limit and raise a spam flag for your website. Don’t forget that the Panda Update targets particularly on websites with low quality content that try to index thousands of pages very fast.

So if you want to avoid exposing your site architecture be extra careful with sitemap files and if you don’t want to reach any limitation use a reasonable number of sitemaps.

3. Setting the Crawl Rate

Google gives you the ability to setup how fast or slow you want Googlebot to crawl your website. This will not only affect the crawl rate but also the number of pages that get indexed every day. If you decide that you want to change the default setting and set a custom crawl rate remember that a very high crawl rate can consume all of the bandwidth of your server and create a significant load on it while a very low crawl rate will reduce the freshness and the number of crawled pages.

For most webmasters it is recommended to let Google determine their crawl rate.

4. Crawler Access

On the Crawler Access Tab, Google gives you the opportunity to see which parts of your website are allowed to be crawled by Google. Also it gives you the opportunity to Generate a robots.txt file and request a URL Removal. These features are powerful tools in the hands of experienced users, nevertheless a misconfiguration can lead to catastrophic results affecting heavily the SEO campaign of the website. Thus it is highly recommended not to block any parts of your website unless you have a very good reason for doing it and you know exactly what you are doing.

Our suggestion is that most webmasters should not block Google from any directory and let it crawl all of their pages.

5. Parameter Handling

After crawling both your Website and the external links that point to your pages, Google presents to you the most popular URL parameters that are passed to your pages. In the Parameter Handling console Google allows you to select whether a particular parameter should be “Ignored”, “Not Ignored” or “Let Google decide”.

These GET parameters can be from product Ids to Session Ids and from Google Analytics campaign parameters to page navigation variables. These parameters in many cases can lead to duplicate content issues (for example Session IDs or Google Analytics Campaign parameters), while in other cases they are essential parts of your website (product or category IDs). A misconfiguration on this console could lead to disastrous results on your SEO campaign because you can either make Google index several duplicate pages or make it drop from the index useful pages of your website.

This is why it is highly recommended to let Google decide how to handle each parameter, unless you are absolutely sure what a particular param is all about and whether it should be removed or maintained. Last but not least, I remind you that this console is not the right way to deal with duplicate content. It is highly recommended to work with your internal link structure, use 301s and Canonical URLs before trying to ignore or block particular parameters.

6. Sitelinks

As we explained several times in the past, the sitelinks are links that appear under some results in SERPs in order to help users navigate the sites easier. The sitelinks are known to attract user attention and they are algorithmically calculated based on the link structure of the website and the anchor texts that are used. Through the Google Webmaster Tools console the webmaster is able to block the Sitelinks that are not relevant, targeted or useful to the users. Failing to remove the irrelevant sitelinks or removing the wrong sitelinks can lead to low CTR on Search Engine Results and thus affect the SEO campaign.

Revisiting regularly the console and providing the appropriate feedback about each unwanted sitelink can help you get better and more targeted sitelinks on the future.

7. Change of Address

The Change of Address option is available only for domains and not for subdomains or sub directories. From this console you are able to transfer your website from a particular domain to a new one. Most of the users will never need to use this feature nevertheless if you find yourself in this situation you need to proceed with caution. Using 301 redirections and mapping the old pages to the new ones are extremely important to make the transition successful. A misconfiguration can cause a lot of problems nevertheless it is highly unlikely that someone will accidentally set up this option.

Avoid using this feature when your old domain has been banned by Google and have always in mind that changing your domain will have a huge impact on your SEO campaign.

The Google Webmaster Tools is a great service because it provides all the necessary resources to the webmasters in order to optimize, monitor and control their websites. Nevertheless caution is required while changing the standard configuration because mistakes can become very costly.

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