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	<title>SEOgadget.co.uk &#187; SEO Tools</title>
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		<title>How To Install and Use IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit (IIS 7.0)</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-install-and-use-iis-seo-toolkit/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-install-and-use-iis-seo-toolkit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:19:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>danielbutler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Guides]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IIS SEO Toolkit]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=3726</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We think the IIS Toolkit is absolutely awesome! Image credit: Lumaxart This post will provide a step by step guide on how to install the powerful IIS 7.0 toolkit from Microsoft, and show you some of the many cool features which can open up a whole new world for extracting information from a website (we [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-install-and-use-iis-seo-toolkit/">How To Install and Use IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit (IIS 7.0)</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>We think the IIS Toolkit is absolutely awesome!<br />
<img src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/IIS-toolkit-is-cool.jpg" alt="" title="IIS-toolkit-is-cool" width="640" height="400" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3772" /><br />
<span style="margin-left:522px; font-size:9px;">Image credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lumaxart/">Lumaxart</a></span></p>
<p>This post will provide a step by step guide on how to install the powerful IIS 7.0 toolkit from Microsoft, and show you some of the many cool features which can open up a whole new world for extracting information from a website (we are talking about a Xenu link sleuth beater here!).</p>
<p><strong>Please note:</strong> IIS 7.0 is only compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7</p>
<p>The program is quite simple to install but it certainly isn’t one of the most obvious, and when you need a helpful guide there isn’t much about, so here&#8217;s something to help get you started&#8230;</p>
<h2>1.	Install Web Platform Installer 2.0</h2>
<p>By downloading and installing the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx">Microsoft Web Platform Installer</a>, the set up process of IIS Toolkit becomes a lot easier, so this is a good starting point.</p>
<h2>2.	Install ‘Search Engine Optimization Toolkit’</h2>
<p>Once the web platform installer has downloaded and installed, navigate over to the <a href="http://www.iis.net/download/seotoolkit">Microsoft SEO Toolkit</a> page and click on ‘install using web platform installer’ in the download extension box in the right hand column:</p>
<p><img src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/install-iis-toolkit-using-web-platform.png" alt="Install IIS Toolkit Using Web Platform Installer" width="259" height="188" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3735" /></p>
<p>Or alternatively here is a direct <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9695987">download and install</a> link for IIS toolkit.</p>
<p>Once the download has begun, the Microsoft web platform installer will take care of the rest and install the required components to set up IIS Toolkit on your computer.</p>
<h2>3.	Activating IIS Toolkit</h2>
<p>Now this is the section which isn’t that clear, once the download and installation process has been completed, on the majority of occasions (unless you are one of the lucky few – if so, then IIS toolkit will appear within ‘<strong>All programs &gt; IIS 7.0 Extensions &gt; Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit</strong>’ ready to use) you will need to active the software.</p>
<p>To do this, perform a search on your computer for ‘Turn windows features on or off’, or go to <strong>‘Start &gt; Control Panel &gt; Programs &gt; Turn Windows features on or off</strong>)’</p>
<p><img src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/turn-windows-features-on-or-off.png" alt="Turn Windows Features On or Off" width="460" height="100" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3736" /></p>
<p>Once located a dialog box will be displayed, and under ‘Internet Information Services &gt; World Wide Web Services’ double check that the check boxes have all been selected (see below screenshot for further guidance).</p>
<p><img src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/windows-features-dialog-box.png" alt="Windows Features Dialog Box" width="565" height="517" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3737" /></p>
<p>Once selected hit ‘ok’, and you are ready to launch IIS Toolkit.</p>
<p>Go to: <strong>Start &gt; All Programs &gt; IIS 7.0 Extensions &gt; Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit 1.0</strong></p>
<h2>Using Microsoft’s IIS Toolkit</h2>
<p>Now it’s time to let the fun begin. Once you have opened the program click on the ‘create a new analysis’ link underneath ‘Site Analysis’, and add in the details of the website you are looking to examine:</p>
<p><img src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/seoanalysis.png" alt="New Analysis" width="505" height="210" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3740" /></p>
<p>Clicking ‘ok’ will start the site crawl.</p>
<p>If you have used Xenu link sleuth you will immediately notice how much quicker and cleaner it is to crawl a website. Once the crawl has been completed you will be presented with a report overview with an indicator on the number of links crawled and errors encountered:</p>
<p><img src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/site-analysis-report.png" alt="Site Analysis Report Summary" width="590" height="361" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3741" /></p>
<p>You can take a look in a lot more detail at the errors encountered within the violations tab (*cringes at the thought of posting this* If anyone asks it is not for seogadget!):</p>
<p><img src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/violations-summary.png" alt="IIS Toolkit Violations Summary" width="718" height="382" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3742" /></p>
<p>The summary provides a fairly detailed analysis of the types of errors (or potential errors) encountered and the number of occurrences of each type of error.</p>
<p>The Violations section also provides details on:</p>
<ul>
<li>Pages with the most errors</li>
<li>Error levels picked up (number of errors, warnings and information)</li>
<li>Categorises the errors (SEO, content, web mark up etc)</li>
</ul>
<p>But the IIS Toolkit analysis doesn’t finish there, content, performance and links sections all contain their own extensive report data. Here are some bullet points summarizing these 3 sections of IIS toolkit:</p>
<ul>
<li>Content
<ul>
<li>Host summary</li>
<li>Directory summary</li>
<li>Content types summary</li>
<li>Status code summary</li>
<li>External links</li>
<li>Duplicate files</li>
<li>Duplicate titles, descriptions and keywords</li>
<li>Duplicate keywords</li>
<li>404 errors</li>
<li>Large content areas</li>
<li>Broken links by page</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Performance
<ul>
<li>Slow pages</li>
<li>Slow pages by directory</li>
<li>Slow pages by content type</li>
<li>Pages with many resources</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Links
<ul>
<li>Pages with most links</li>
<li>Most linked pages</li>
<li>Redirects</li>
<li>Links blocked by robots.txt</li>
<li>Internet protocols</li>
<li>Link depth</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>You can then export all of this data into a single Excel file where you can hone in even further on the data, and Richard&#8217;s post last week on <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/find-orphaned-pages-from-your-sitemap-xml-file-with-excel/">finding orphaned pages from your sitemap.xml</a> using IIS toolkit is just one example on how to use this powerful piece of kit. </p>
<p>Now I have always been a Xenu link sleuth fan, but after using IIS SEO toolkit, let’s just say ‘times they are a-changing’.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-install-and-use-iis-seo-toolkit/">How To Install and Use IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit (IIS 7.0)</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Lessons Learned: Building Simple SEO Tools</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/building-simple-seo-tools/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/building-simple-seo-tools/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:23:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=3526</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Almost a month ago, we released the anchor text tool, a simple URL by URL anchor text analyser that plugs in to the Anchor Text Linkscape API. Image credit: arclients If I’m honest, the tool was as much a learning device for future tool development as it was an opportunity to give something back to [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/building-simple-seo-tools/">Lessons Learned: Building Simple SEO Tools</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Almost a month ago, we released the <a href="../../../../../anchor-text-tool/">anchor text tool</a>, a simple URL by URL anchor text analyser that plugs in to the <a href="http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/Anchor-Text-API">Anchor Text Linkscape API</a>.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3529" title="tomatoes-in-the-sun" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/tomatoes-in-the-sun.jpg" alt="tomatoes are unrelated to SEO tools" width="640" height="295" /></p>
<h6 style="text-align: right;">Image credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alternativeroute/">arclients</a></h6>
<p>If I’m honest, the tool was as much a learning device for future tool development as it was an opportunity to give something back to the community. I definitely think there’s a ton of scope for other SEO folks out there to experiment with building their own SEO tools without any formal development skills, and I think that they should!</p>
<p>On that note, let me share some learning and explain how the tool was built.</p>
<h2>Set some early objectives and principles</h2>
<p>A great starting point for your embryonic tool idea is to write a few, clear objectives for the tool. Right at the start, you&#8217;ll have a set of principles to adhere to, and objectives to review at the end of your work. Even if the objectives can be really simple, for example &#8220;the user should receive their data with as few clicks as possible&#8221;, is a pretty reasonable objective for a small project.</p>
<h2>Don’t make assumptions</h2>
<p>One of the first, and probably biggest mistakes I made was to assume something about the data output of the API. That assumption cost a little time to resolve, delaying the launch of the tool. I know how obvious this is about to sound, but I’ll say it anyway: read the API documentation, then read it again. Is the tool you’re about to build even possible within the limits of the API output, your development resource and budget?</p>
<h2>Mock up your UI</h2>
<p>If I could go back and do one thing first, it would have been mock-ups. What could possibly go wrong with such a simple idea? You don’t have to be a design genius to create a decent mockup, especially not with the plethora of <a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/05/50-free-ui-and-web-design-wireframing-kits-resources-and-source-files/">UI and wireframing tools</a> available for free. A good friend of mine (who happens to be a Ruby developer) insists on basic UI mock-ups at the beginning of a project, even for the simplest developments.</p>
<p>Why? In his words:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Some of the things you learn from reviewing the UI can influence fundamental aspects of the database and code design. Having to add / remove items at a later date because the mock ups were inadequate can be murder.”</p></blockquote>
<h2><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3528" title="search box" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/search-box.gif" alt="search box mockup" width="533" height="59" /></h2>
<h2>Write a clear specification</h2>
<p>Using the UI as a starting point, writing a clear specification should be easy. You don’t have to create a literary masterpiece, just an outline of the core purpose of the tool, and what each control should do. Don’t forget the outputs, specifying exactly how you’d like the user to see or interact with their results.</p>
<h2>Set limitations in the specification</h2>
<p>The full <a href="http://apiwiki.seomoz.org/SEOmoz-Site-Intelligence-APIs">Site Intelligence API</a> service will happily play back a lot of data, if you ask it to. Obviously a public (free) version of the tool can’t just give away every single detail in the Linkscape API, but because of a lack of instruction on the maximum input URLs and the maximum results, the test version of the tool would happily play everything back in one go. The initial version had no upper limit on the URLs you could paste in, slowing the tool down for thousands of URL requests.</p>
<h2>Think about performance</h2>
<p>If I could start again on the build of the tool, I’d ask that some kind of stress testing work was carried out in QA. Again, I know how obvious it sounds to state: “make your tool able to cope with multiple users” but initially, the test version of our tool was quite poor under load.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3530" title="activity" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/activity.gif" alt="daily activity" width="654" height="280" /></p>
<h2>Get a freelance developer</h2>
<p>If you don’t have an in-house developer, no problem. Brief your project in at Freelancer.com or Odesk targeting suppliers with a minimum level of feedback. You can make projects <a href="http://www.freelancer.com/info/nonpublic.html">non public</a>, and if you’ve had recommendations from friends on good developers to use on either network you can reach out to them individually.</p>
<p>The first project you embark on can be daunting and to some extent can feel a bit like a gamble. Frankly, it is a gamble – a risk mitigated by <a href="http://www.seoidiot.co.uk/10-tips-on-using-odesk-to-outsource-your-life/">experience</a> and support from <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/leveraging-mechanical-turk-odesk-elance-craigslist-for-seo">friends</a>. I think it’s definitely worth having a go though, if you have a tool idea, see what you can do for $250!</p>
<h2>Useful resources</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.odesk.com/">http://www.odesk.com/</a> &#8211; <strong>oDesk.com</strong><br />
<a href="http://www.freelancer.com/">http://www.freelancer.com/</a> &#8211; <strong>Freelancer.com</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.seoidiot.co.uk/10-tips-on-using-odesk-to-outsource-your-life/">10 tips on using oDesk to outsource your life</a> &#8211; <strong>SEOidiot</strong><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/leveraging-mechanical-turk-odesk-elance-craigslist-for-seo"><br />
Leveraging Mechanical Turk, oDesk, ELance &amp; Craigslist for SEO</a> -<strong> SEOmoz<br />
</strong><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/api-and-dataset-cheatsheet-building-quick-dirty-tools">API and Dataset Cheatsheet &#8211; Building Quick &amp; Dirty Tools</a> &#8211; SEOmoz</p>
<p><strong><br />
</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/building-simple-seo-tools/">Lessons Learned: Building Simple SEO Tools</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
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		<title>Analyse Your Anchor Text With The SEOgadget Anchor Text Tool</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/analyse-your-anchor-text/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/analyse-your-anchor-text/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:19:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anchor Text Tool]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=3454</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There hasn&#8217;t been as much blogging activity on this site in the past three weeks. For good reason, I&#8217;ve been on a (much needed) holiday after a mind blowing first 6 months of the year and, upon my return, I&#8217;ve been building a new toy. Image: Jared You can now analyse your anchor text with [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/analyse-your-anchor-text/">Analyse Your Anchor Text With The SEOgadget Anchor Text Tool</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There hasn&#8217;t been as much blogging activity on this site in the past three weeks. For good reason, I&#8217;ve been on a (much needed) holiday after a mind blowing first 6 months of the year and, upon my return, I&#8217;ve been building a new toy.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3455" title="pretty cubes" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/pretty-cubes.jpg" alt="picture of pretty cubes" width="630" height="308" /></p>
<h6 style="text-align: right;">Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/generated/">Jared</a></h6>
<p>You can now analyse your anchor text with the SEOgadget <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/anchor-text-tool/">anchor text tool</a>.</p>
<h2>Analyse your top 10 anchor texts and image links to a page, domain or subdomain</h2>
<p>The public version of the tool is free to use and if you find it useful, <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/contact/">please give feedback</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/anchor-text-tool/"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3456" title="anchor text tool" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/anchor.png" alt="anchor text tool" width="630" height="416" /></a></p>
<h2><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-3460" title="linkscape" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/linkscape.png" alt="Powered by Linkscape" width="166" height="43" /></a>Features</h2>
<ul>
<li>See your <strong>top 10 anchors</strong> to any URL</li>
<li>&#8220;Flags&#8221; currently highlights an image link (I&#8217;ll think about how to play this back more sensibly)</li>
<li>Enter up to 5 URLs</li>
<li>Export your anchor text data to CSV</li>
<li>See how many internal and external, domain and subdomain links use those 10 anchors</li>
<li>Get access to important metrics such as internal and external mozRank passed</li>
</ul>
<h2>Examples</h2>
<p>What are the top 10 anchor text phrases to my <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/seo-jobs/">SEO Jobs</a> page?</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3458" title="chart1" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/chart1.png" alt="chart1" width="618" height="340" /></p>
<p>How many root domain links contain relevant anchors to the top 5 ranking URLs for &#8220;SEO Jobs&#8221;?</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3459" title="externalRDchart" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/externalRDchart.png" alt="external root domain chart" width="591" height="311" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;d just like to say a huge thanks to <a href="http://katemats.com/">Kate</a> and <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/team/sarah">Sarah</a> at SEOmoz, and for dealing with numerous, newbie API developer queries in the last week. If you&#8217;re considering developing a tool that uses the Linkscape Site Intelligence API &#8211; do! It&#8217;s a breeze and well worth the effort. Have fun and remember, my tool (not the API!) may be a little slow to start off with, consider it a beta release.</p>
<p>Above all things, I appreciate your patience and <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/contact/">feedback</a>!</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/analyse-your-anchor-text/">Analyse Your Anchor Text With The SEOgadget Anchor Text Tool</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>16</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Http Status Reports With Open Site Explorer, Xenu and VLookup</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/http-status-reports-with-open-site-explorer-xenu-and-vlookup/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/http-status-reports-with-open-site-explorer-xenu-and-vlookup/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 May 2010 09:56:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Open Site Explorer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=3352</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Open Site Explorer is a really nice tool to enable quick and easy reviews of your best inbound links, most linked to pages and most frequently occurring anchors in text links. One of my favourite tools in OSE has always been the classic &#8220;Top Pages&#8221; report, allowing for deeper visibility on your most linked to [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/http-status-reports-with-open-site-explorer-xenu-and-vlookup/">Http Status Reports With Open Site Explorer, Xenu and VLookup</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.opensiteexplorer.org">Open Site Explorer</a> is a <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-launch-a-brand-new-toy-open-site-explorer/">really nice tool</a> to enable quick and easy reviews of your best inbound links, most linked to pages and most frequently occurring anchors in text links. One of my favourite tools in OSE has always been the classic &#8220;Top Pages&#8221; report, allowing for deeper visibility on your most linked to pages.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3359" title="server" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/server.gif" alt="server" width="640" height="283" /></p>
<h6 style="text-align: right;">Image credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/br1dotcom/">Br1dotcom</a></h6>
<p>With the top pages report, you may find that lower authority sites with many pages get less crawl bandwidth than sites with higher authority. This can lead to URLs in the report with &#8220;No Data&#8221; in the HTTP status field. No problem, here&#8217;s a tip to get the most out of that data using Xenu&#8217;s Link Sleuth and a simple VLOOKUP in Excel.</p>
<h2>Collect your Open Site Explorer data</h2>
<p>First, you&#8217;ll need to navigate over to the Top Pages tab in Open Site Explorer, and export all of the data into Excel via CSV.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3353" title="open site explorer" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/opensiteexplorer.gif" alt="open site explorer" width="640" height="302" /></p>
<h2>Paste the exported data in to Excel and make a table</h2>
<p>I like working with Excel tables, so highlight the exported data from the CSV and press &#8220;<strong>CTRL + L</strong>&#8221; to make your table:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3354" title="make a table" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/makeatable.gif" alt="make a table" width="640" height="129" /></p>
<h2>Grab a refreshed and up to date list of HTTP headers</h2>
<p>Now you have your list of internal pages, copy the list and paste what you&#8217;ve got into Notepad (Or Notepad++, Programmers Notepad or whatever else you use). We&#8217;re going to save that list and upload to Xenu via &#8220;Check URL list&#8221;.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3356" title="notepad" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/notepad.gif" alt="notepad" width="640" height="162" /></p>
<p>With the list of URLs saved, open Xenu and head to &#8220;<strong>Options &gt; Preferences</strong>&#8220;.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3357" title="xenu options" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/xenu-options.gif" alt="xenu options" width="413" height="365" /></p>
<p>It&#8217;s really important to set &#8220;Maximum level&#8221; to 0, that way only the list of URLs you&#8217;ve provided will get crawled and Xenu won&#8217;t discover and follow any new URLs.</p>
<p>Next, head to &#8220;<strong>File &gt; Check URL list</strong>&#8221; ready to upload your URL list. Xenu will get straight on with the business of crawling that URL list. If you&#8217;ve got thousands of URLs, this part could take a while, so make yourself a coffee or get on with some other work for a few hours&#8230; As soon as Xenu is finished, export the crawl results into a TAB separated file.</p>
<h2>Import the crawl data in to the Excel spreadsheet and perform a VLOOKUP</h2>
<p>Import your new list of URLs into Excel by pasting the data into a new tab. If you&#8217;re using tables, be sure to create a table with your new data. The new table should be called &#8220;Table2&#8243;. Next, you need to VLOOKUP the URL and fetch Xenu&#8217;s recorded server header response. The query will look something like this:</p>
<blockquote><p>=VLOOKUP(Table1[[#This Row],[URL]],Table2,2,0)</p></blockquote>
<p>If you&#8217;re not familiar with Excel, try reading <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/using-tables-microsoft-excel-2007/">using tables in Excel 2007</a>, and this post explaining <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/using-vlookup/">VLOOKUP</a>. The end result should be a table that has a new column with your up to date Xenu server header results making for a powerful, highly actionable review of your site&#8217;s most linked to pages.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3358" title="excel-crawl-results" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/excel-crawl-results.gif" alt="excel-crawl-results" width="451" height="196" /></p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/http-status-reports-with-open-site-explorer-xenu-and-vlookup/">Http Status Reports With Open Site Explorer, Xenu and VLookup</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>How to Make a Pivot Table and Chart in Excel</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-make-a-pivot-table-and-chart-in-excel/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-make-a-pivot-table-and-chart-in-excel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:14:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Keyword Research]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Excel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pivot Chart]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=3241</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For SEOgadget clients, most of the SEO work they receive from me is delivered at the end of a heavily data driven process. If you&#8217;re feeling a shift towards data driven SEO too, then the chances are using pivot tables and charts in Excel is a near daily part of your SEO consulting activity. Image [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-make-a-pivot-table-and-chart-in-excel/">How to Make a Pivot Table and Chart in Excel</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For SEOgadget clients, most of the SEO work they receive from me is delivered at the end of a heavily data driven process. If you&#8217;re feeling a shift towards data driven SEO too, then the chances are using pivot tables and charts in Excel is a near daily part of your <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/what-we-do/">SEO consulting</a> activity.</p>
<p><img title="table" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/table.gif" alt="table" width="630" height="354" /></p>
<h6 style="text-align: right;">Image by: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/goincase/">Incase Designs</a></h6>
<p>At some point we all have to up our game, especially with Excel and general analysis skills, so at the <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/seminar/series">SEOmoz Pro Training</a> Seminar late last year, I gave a step by step tutorial on how to make a beautiful chart based on an Excel Pivot Table.</p>
<p>Almost 6 months after the presentation I&#8217;ve finally gotten to tick another blog post off my ideas list: &#8220;how to make a pivot table in Excel&#8221;.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3245" title="beautiful ranking chart" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/beautiful-ranking-chart.png" alt="" width="647" height="458" /></p>
<p>The chart above is the finished article showing search volume (or analytics entries) and ranking on the secondary axis. It&#8217;s my favourite SEO chart, and feels especially useful for keyword research presentations. Here are the main steps to making the chart above:</p>
<h2>Gather your data and create a Master table</h2>
<p>Pull down some keyword research data from <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-external-vs-beta/">Google Keyword Tool</a>, the <a href="http://www.google.com/sktool/#">Search based Keyword Tool</a> or your usual source of keyword volume information and paste the exported CSV into a (Master) <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/using-tables-microsoft-excel-2007/">Excel Table</a>. You don&#8217;t have to use tables, but I recommend you do &#8211; amongst other reasons, tables are less work for your processor, less work for you and can be fun to name. Next, you need to run your keywords through your favourite rankings checker (mine is <a href="http://www.advancedwebranking.com/">Advanced Web Ranking</a>) and put the exported CSV into another table. Excel 2007 pivot tables demand that the data for the pivot comes from one table (until Excel 2010 is commercially launched, I&#8217;m sticking with 2007) so let&#8217;s do a simple VLOOKUP to pull the rankings data through into your Master table.</p>
<h2>Use VLOOKUP to pull the rankings data into your keyword data master table</h2>
<p>Use VLOOKUP when your values are located in a column to the left of the data that you want to find, <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP052093351033.aspx">says Microsoft</a>. I&#8217;ve written before about the power of this Excel query so, if you&#8217;re new to it&#8217;s use, try this post on <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/using-vlookup/">how to use VLOOKUP</a> for matching keywords and rankings data.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3246" title="vlookup in action" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/vlookup-in-action.png" alt="vlookup in action" width="613" height="180" /></p>
<p>Note in my screen grab that there&#8217;s the occasional missing value in the rankings columns? That&#8217;s because there are no values for that particular keyword in the rankings (raw) data table. If you say, wanted a zero value to appear instead, you could use an IFERROR and nest the VLOOKUP inside the new query. For the time being, we don&#8217;t need to complicate things too much.</p>
<h2><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-3247" title="add a pivot chart to your excel spreadsheet" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/add-a-pivot-chart.png" alt="add a pivot chart to your excel spreadsheet" width="151" height="172" />Create a Pivot Table on a new sheet</h2>
<p>Now we have all of our data nicely arranged in one place, let&#8217;s get to the fun part. We&#8217;re going to add a pivot table to a new sheet. You can add the chart later if you like, but I always add them both at the same time by selecting &#8220;<strong>Insert &gt; PivotTable &gt; PivotChart</strong>&#8220;.</p>
<p>Next, a window will appear that looks like the one below. Hopefully, you&#8217;ve taken note of your table name (visible via &#8220;Design &gt; Table Name:&#8221;), though if you don&#8217;t know what the table is called it will almost certainly be called &#8220;Table1&#8243;!</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3248" title="Create Pivot Table with Pivot Chart dialogue" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Create-Pivot-Table-with-Pivot-Chart-dialogue.png" alt="Create Pivot Table with Pivot Chart dialogue" width="399" height="289" /></p>
<p>When you click &#8220;OK&#8221;, you&#8217;ll be presented with a blank Pivot Table &#8220;field list&#8221; and a Pivot Chart &#8220;filter pane&#8221; on the right of your screen and a very blank looking space on the left called &#8220;PivotTable1&#8243;.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3249" title="blank pivot table" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/blank-pivot-table.png" alt="blank pivot table" width="630" height="413" /></p>
<h2>Add axis fields, values, column labels and filters</h2>
<p>If you&#8217;re new to Pivot Charts, you&#8217;re about to experience a bit of a penny drop moment. We&#8217;re going to look at which items of data should be placed where and you&#8217;ll see very quickly how a pivot table works.</p>
<p>The PivotTable Field List uses drag and drop functionality to enable you to populate those little white squares with values. As you add values, the table on the left begins to form. Start by picking up your keywords by dragging the keywords (KWs in my screenshot) field into the &#8220;Axis Fields&#8221; box. Next, drag and drop your search volume figure into the &#8220;Values&#8221; box. Provided you&#8217;re looking at &#8220;Sum of KW&#8217;s&#8221; and not &#8220;Count of KWs&#8221;, your table on the left will start to make a lot of sense:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3250" title="pivot field list populated" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/pivot-field-list-populated.png" alt="pivot field list populated" width="630" height="490" /></p>
<p>You&#8217;ll very quickly notice that you&#8217;ve created a thing of beauty. A pivot table with <span style="text-decoration: underline;">all</span> of the keywords in your list and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">all</span> of their corresponding search volume values. I call this the <strong>pivot-table-penny-drop-moment</strong>. Having all of your values in a pivot table might not be what you intended, though and as you can see, in my table I have some pesky &#8220;-1&#8243; values to clear away. To do so, we need to apply a &#8220;Report Filter&#8221; by dragging the data point we wish to filter into the correct section:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3251" title="pivot field list filtered" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/pivot-field-list-filtered.png" alt="pivot field list filtered" width="630" height="492" /></p>
<p>You can filter by any value in your master data table, which allows for some serious charting! Follow the black arrow to the filter drop down and &#8220;Select Multiple Items&#8221;. You&#8217;re now free to clear out any irrelevant data from your table. Finally, drag down the rankings values into &#8220;Values&#8221; and you&#8217;ll have a pivot table, with keywords, search volume and rankings. Now to make a graph!</p>
<h2>A pivot chart is born</h2>
<p>You&#8217;ll already have the pivot chart right in front of you (mine&#8217;s just missing from the screen shots). It may look a little rough around the edges though, so let&#8217;s make it look a lot nicer than this:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3252" title="Ugly chart" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/ugly-chart.png" alt="Your chart's so ugly, when it joined an ugly contest, they said &quot;Sorry, no professionals.&quot;" width="569" height="288" /></p>
<p>First, we need to organise the keywords by search volume so we can look at our chart as a tail graph. Highlight your search volume data (the column you&#8217;d like to sort in volume order) and select &#8220;<strong>Data &gt; Sort</strong>&#8220;.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3253" title="sort by volume" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sort-by-volume.png" alt="sort by volume" width="357" height="308" /></p>
<p>This will improve matters slightly, but there might be a few too many keywords in the chart. Try filtering out the lower volume terms, at least for the time being.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3254" title="chart fewer terms" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/chart-fewer-terms.png" alt="chart with fewer terms" width="630" height="273" /></p>
<h2>Sort out the rankings by keyword</h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-3255" title="format selection" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/format-selection.png" alt="format selection" width="158" height="88" />We&#8217;re really very close to being done. The only remaining challenge is to arrange the rankings in such a way that they make sense, visually. You should never compare fundamentally different types of values on the same chart axis, so lets create a secondary axis for the ranking values.</p>
<p>First, you need to select and format the rankings data series. You could use your right mouse button on the chart and select &#8220;format data series&#8221;, but that&#8217;s fiddly and unnessecary. Instead, select your chart and navigate to the &#8220;<strong>Format</strong>&#8221; pane. You&#8217;re looking for the &#8220;<strong>Current Selection</strong>&#8221; drop down on the far left hand side of the screen. Select the drop down and click your rankings data series, now, select &#8220;Format Selection&#8221;.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-3256 alignright" title="secondary axis" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/secondary-axis.png" alt="secondary axis" width="123" height="66" />We&#8217;re going to place the data on a secondary axis, and change the chart type to a line chart. Finally, we&#8217;ll remove the lines in the rankings chart to leave only the markers.</p>
<h2>Dealing with the secondary axis and changing chart type</h2>
<p>My ranking charts use a reversed secondary axis to place position 1 rankings at the top of the chart. To be able to do this, we&#8217;ll need to edit the secondary axis. Right click on the secondary axis in your chart, and choose &#8220;<strong>Format Axis</strong>&#8220;. Setting your minimum value to &#8220;1.0&#8243; will exclude all of the zeroes in your rankings data and setting a maximum of say, 15 would exclude any ranking higher than 15th. You choose the range that&#8217;s right for you.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3257" title="axis options" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/axis-options.png" alt="axis options" width="372" height="211" /></p>
<p>Finally, check &#8220;values in reverse order&#8221; and you&#8217;re almost done.</p>
<h2><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-3258" title="chart type" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/chart-type.png" alt="chart type" width="55" height="54" />Finishing touches</h2>
<p>One tiny point left to do, we should change the chart type so our secondary data makes a little more sense. Select the <strong>rankings data</strong> bars and navigate to &#8220;Design &gt; Change Chart Type&#8221;. Select the line graph option with visible data markers in the line. Now, take out the line colour from inside &#8220;Format Data Series &gt; Line Colour&#8221; and you&#8217;re done. Here&#8217;s the chart I reproduced while I was writing the blog post:</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-3259 alignnone" title="Our completed pivot chart" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/finished-chart.png" alt="Our completed pivot chart" width="633" height="265" /></p>
<p>And there you have it. How to make a pivot chart and table in Excel. Have fun making your own!</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-make-a-pivot-table-and-chart-in-excel/">How to Make a Pivot Table and Chart in Excel</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>SEOmoz Launch a Brand New Toy: Open Site Explorer</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-launch-a-brand-new-toy-open-site-explorer/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-launch-a-brand-new-toy-open-site-explorer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:16:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linkscape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Open Site Explorer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=3143</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the last hour, SEOmoz have launched a new tool Open Site Explorer, driven by the vast wealth of data collected by their Linkscape product. I&#8217;ve been playing with the tool and I&#8217;m already excited about some of the actionable insights the tool can deliver. Here are my tips for making the best use of [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-launch-a-brand-new-toy-open-site-explorer/">SEOmoz Launch a Brand New Toy: Open Site Explorer</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3144" title="open site explorer from SEOmoz" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/opensiteexplorer.gif" alt="" width="620" height="113" /></a></p>
<p>In the last hour, <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/one-giant-leap-for-link-data-announcing-open-site-explorer">SEOmoz have launched</a> a new tool <a href="http://www.opensiteexplorer.org">Open Site Explorer</a>, driven by the vast wealth of data collected by their <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape">Linkscape</a> product. I&#8217;ve been playing with the tool and I&#8217;m already excited about some of the actionable insights the tool can deliver. Here are my tips for making the best use of Open Site Explorer:</p>
<h2>Optimise your most authoritative internal links</h2>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3146" title="internal-links" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/internal-links.gif" alt="" width="620" height="116" /></p>
<p>With the tool, two new authority metrics become available. Domain authority, and page authority. Every page on your site has been assigned a page authority value by the tool. With the new metrics, you can answer questions such as: &#8220;what are the most authoritative internal pages on my site?&#8221;.  There&#8217;s potential therefore to see which internal pages can pass the most value by way of their overall page authority through internal links. By selecting &#8220;Only followed&#8221; and viewing &#8221;Internal pages only&#8221;, you can work out a priority internal link realignment list to the page you&#8217;re analysing. Working down the list you can spot any sub optimal anchor text links and make changes where necessary.</p>
<h2>Sort out any nasty internal 301 redirects</h2>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3147" title="internal-301s" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/internal-301s.gif" alt="" width="620" height="115" /></p>
<p>There&#8217;s no point 301 redirecting internal links (navigation, footer links, old links in ancient content before a redesign etc). Find them and fix them by choosing &#8220;only 301&#8243; on &#8220;internal pages only&#8221;.</p>
<h2>Get a quick snapshot of your most common inbound anchor text</h2>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3148" title="anchor-text" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/anchor-text.gif" alt="" width="620" height="126" /></p>
<p>Having an awareness of your most common anchor texts can offer a good insight as to why (or why not) you&#8217;re ranking for specific terms as well as giving you a view on your competitor back link strategy.</p>
<h2>Get a good snapshot of your competitors best back links</h2>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3149" title="best-backlinks" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/best-backlinks.gif" alt="" width="614" height="291" /></p>
<p>Gone are the days where we&#8217;d hope nobody would be able to dissect your link strategy. Investigate your competitors best back links to work out what makes them rank.</p>
<h2>Create a nice summary dashboard of your clients metrics for presentation fodder</h2>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3150" title="summary dashboard" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/summary-dashboard.gif" alt="" width="620" height="318" /></p>
<p>Open Site Explorer has an extremely visually appealing interface &#8211; take screenshots of the dashboard to show your clients how successful your link building efforts have been.</p>
<h2>*New &#8211; Spot if your competitors are using 301 redirected domains as part of their SEO strategy</h2>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3152" title="301 redirected domains" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/301-redirected-domains.gif" alt="" width="620" height="323" /></p>
<p>This is the fastest way (I know of) to get a list of a competitor&#8217;s owned, 301 redirecting domains. As there&#8217;s still some argument to suggest that <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/buying-domains-for-seo/">buying old domains</a> and redirecting them can add some value to your search engine rankings, this report is very handy for getting under the bonnet of your competitor&#8217;s domain strategy.</p>
<h2>Feedback on the tool</h2>
<p>As with all things new, feedback is critical to new ideas. You <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/one-giant-leap-for-link-data-announcing-open-site-explorer">can leave feedback on the Tool</a> on the announcement post here.</p>
<p>The one thing that really stands out with this tool is the lack of an ability to track changes over time. With the dashboard, particularly, it would be nice to see the change in metrics over time. If SEOmoz aren&#8217;t developing this feature for a later release, I&#8217;ll eat my hat!</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-launch-a-brand-new-toy-open-site-explorer/">SEOmoz Launch a Brand New Toy: Open Site Explorer</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<slash:comments>17</slash:comments>
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		<title>Tools to Speed Up Your Site &#8211; Ready for 2010</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/tools-to-speed-up-your-site/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/tools-to-speed-up-your-site/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:32:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Site Architecture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[page load performance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[page speed]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=2529</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Matt Cutts recently referred to a movement inside Google to begin using page load times as part of the organic ranking algorithm, describing the factor as one of his ‘what to expect in 2010? bullet points in a presentation at PubCon Vegas 2009. Photo by: lrargerich Most webmasters and SEO’s have seen this as a [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/tools-to-speed-up-your-site/">Tools to Speed Up Your Site &#8211; Ready for 2010</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Matt Cutts <a href="http://searchengineland.com/site-speed-googles-next-ranking-factor-29793">recently referred to a movement</a> inside Google to begin using page load times as part of the organic ranking algorithm, describing the factor as one of his ‘what to expect in 2010? bullet points in a <a href="http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021114.html">presentation</a> at PubCon Vegas 2009.</p>
<p><img title="web page load speed could be a ranking factor in 2010" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/web-page-speed.png" border="0" alt="Two cars driving in a 60 mph speed limit" /><br />
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank"><img title="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/2.0/80x15.png" border="0" alt="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License" align="left" /></a> <em><strong>Photo by:<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrargerich/" target="_blank"> lrargerich</a></strong></em></p>
<p>Most webmasters and <a href="http://www.searchenginejournal.com/site-speed-may-soon-affect-google-page-ranking/14671/">SEO’s have seen this as a positive</a> change, and Google have already started doing a lot to support webmasters in their quest to pursue a faster, more efficient website. They’ve even begun developing a new protocol, “<a href="http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-whitepaper">SPDY</a>” to improve upon the “<a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/">HTTP</a>” protocol to create a “<a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2009/11/2x-faster-web.html">2x Faster Web</a>”. Google’s <a href="http://code.google.com/speed/">make the web faster project</a> provides background reading and resources as part of their mission to &#8220;<a href="http://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/5881021750">improving the web for all</a>&#8220;.</p>
<p>I’ve picked out some useful tools that you can use to start improving your client’s site performance now. Does it make sense to start including recommendations related to serious site performance issues in your <a href="../../../../../what-we-do/">SEO consulting</a> from now on? I think it does.</p>
<h2>Pingdom tools – full page test</h2>
<p><strong><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2513" title="pingdom-results" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/pingdom-results.jpg" alt="pingdom-results" width="620" height="183" /><br />
</strong></p>
<p>The Pingdom “<a href="http://tools.pingdom.com/">Full Page Test</a>” loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScript, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser, reporting on total loading time, the number of objects on the page and the results can be sorted by useful metrics such as load order, load time and file size.</p>
<p>The tool is particularly useful for identifying slow loading internal objects or external scripts through the “order by” functionality, though the tool itself does not provide a commentary and recommendations on potential performance issues.</p>
<h2>Google page speed</h2>
<p><strong><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2515" title="Google page speed chart" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/page-speed-chart.jpg" alt="Google page speed chart" width="601" height="172" /><br />
</strong></p>
<p>On the tool, Google writes:</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/">Page Speed</a> performs several tests on a site&#8217;s web server configuration and front-end code. These tests are based on a set of <a href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rules_intro.html">best practices</a> known to enhance web page performance. Webmasters who run Page Speed on their pages get a set of scores for each page, as well as helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance.</p></blockquote>
<p>Google&#8217;s plugin integrates nicely with Firebug, the code preview plugin, standard in all <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/my-seo-must-have-extensions-for-firefox/">Firefox SEO</a> setups and seems a lot more reliable than the earlier versions. It&#8217;s strength (Over <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/">Y!Slow</a>) is that the recommendations made in the speed test sometimes contain actual examples. For example, if you&#8217;re told to <a href="http://www.minifycss.com/">minify your CSS</a>, Page Speed will provide you with an example of your own CSS file in its minified form.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2517" title="page speed recommendations to minify CSS" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/page-speed-recommendations.jpg" alt="page speed recommendations to minify CSS" width="662" height="154" /></p>
<h2>WebPagetest.org</h2>
<p>Based on the Internet Explorer specific, AOL developed tool <a href="http://pagetest.wiki.sourceforge.net/">Pagetest</a>, the <a href="http://www.webpagetest.org/">online version</a> offers the ability to choose test location (US, UK and New Zealand), Browser (IE7 or IE8), and more advanced settings such as repeat testing for more reliable data. Matt Cutts <a href="http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/11/13/google-page-speed-may-be-a-ranking-factor-in-2010">mentioned this tool</a> in an interview with <a href="http://www.webpronews.com/user/mike-mcdonald">Mike McDonald</a> at Pubcon 2009.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/webpagetest_large.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2522" title="Webpagetest results" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/webpagetest_small.jpg" alt="Webpagetest results" width="600" height="268" /></a></p>
<p>The test is surprisingly powerful (don’t be put off by old school UI design) with an optimization check list and waterfall report, similar to Pingdom’s tools. The downside of the UI experience is an inability to sort by performance metrics – all of the reports are generated as images, not ideal for deep data analysis.</p>
<h2><strong>WGET</strong></h2>
<p><strong><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/download-your-website-with-wget/"><img class="alignnone" title="WGET for Windows" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/downloading-seogadget.gif" alt="" width="677" height="340" /></a><br />
</strong></p>
<p>If you’re careful to get the arguments right in the command line, <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/">WGET</a> can provide a useful breakdown of page load times as the crawler fetches and stores web pages on your computer. Normally WGET is for <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/the-ubuntu-installation-guide/">Linux</a> users, though I wrote a how to install <a href="../../../../../download-your-website-with-wget/">WGET in Windows</a> guide for the Vista / XP / Win7 crowd. If you&#8217;re interested, definitely have a go.</p>
<h2>WebSiteOptimiser.com</h2>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2523" title="page objects report" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/page-objects-report.jpg" alt="page objects report" width="600" height="120" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/">WebSiteOptimiser</a> produces a basic, but useful page objects report with a particular focus on bandwidth saving through the use of compression. The report also makes comments and gives warnings on image size, scripts and CSS. Very handy, though bypassing the CAPTCHA to get to the report was an unwelcome step in the process.</p>
<h2>Google Webmaster Tools</h2>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2524" title="Google webmaster tools site speed chart" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/google-webmaster-tools-site-speed-chart.jpg" alt="Google webmaster tools site speed chart" width="645" height="201" /></p>
<p>Don&#8217;t forget <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/crawl-stats">Google&#8217;s Webmaster tools</a> &#8211; though extremely basic, the crawl stats section can give you a directional feel for the overall performance of your website. In the example from SEOgadget above, you&#8217;ll see a sharp decrease in time spent downloading a page in mid October. That was due to a site redesign and relaunch, where a lot of inefficient code was replaced with something much more nicely put together. If anything, it just goes to show that a site update with a good developemnt team can usually provide performance improvements without having to do anything to the server or hosting!</p>
<p>It&#8217;s great that Google are actively involved with research and tools that can deliver a faster web. I do hope though, that Webmaster Tools gets an upgrade in the site monitoring department before any page speed related upgrades are included in the ranking algorithm. In the meantime, there are already plenty of tools (and good developers) that can help you with your site performance issues.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/tools-to-speed-up-your-site/">Tools to Speed Up Your Site &#8211; Ready for 2010</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>Linkbuilding Tool Tip &#8211; SEOmoz Link Intersect + Top Pages on Domain</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/linkbuilding-tool-tip-seomoz-link-intersect-top-pages-on-domain/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/linkbuilding-tool-tip-seomoz-link-intersect-top-pages-on-domain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:55:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Link Building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[link strategy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=2425</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Photo by: m4rlonj Here&#8217;s a quick and handy (and headsmacking) link building tool tip you should try the next time you&#8217;re link building for a client by using competitor back links data as a starting point. We know that the &#8220;Competitive Link Finder&#8221; tool (or, &#8220;Link Intersect Tool&#8221;) offered by SEOmoz Labs offers insightful comparison [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/linkbuilding-tool-tip-seomoz-link-intersect-top-pages-on-domain/">Linkbuilding Tool Tip &#8211; SEOmoz Link Intersect + Top Pages on Domain</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img title="Linkbuilding tool tips" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/tool-tips.gif" border="0" alt="Arduino Workshop" /><br />
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank"><img title="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/2.0/80x15.png" border="0" alt="Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License" align="left" /></a> <em><strong>Photo by:<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/m4rlonj/" target="_blank"> m4rlonj</a><a href="http://www.imagecodr.org/" target="_blank"> </a></strong></em></p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a quick and handy (and headsmacking) link building tool tip you should try the next time you&#8217;re link building for a client by using competitor back links data as a starting point.</p>
<p>We know that the &#8220;<a href="http://www.seomoz.org/labs/link-intersect">Competitive Link Finder</a>&#8221; tool (or, &#8220;Link Intersect Tool&#8221;) offered by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/labs">SEOmoz Labs</a> offers insightful comparison on your competitors most powerful back links, with a useful notification if any of those back links are missing from your link graph. My tip involves using two tools offered by Labs to get the most out of your link building strategy.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s a search for the top 4 ranking sites for the term &#8220;Pears&#8221; with a comparision to a lesser ranking site:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2426" title="pears" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/pears.gif" alt="pears" width="600" height="190" /></p>
<p>Which reveals a report something like this:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2429" title="pears links" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/pears-links1.gif" alt="pears links" width="600" height="198" /></p>
<p>Often a report like this can immediately expose valuable opportunities in contextually relevant, high value links. By expanding on the &#8220;# Linking Pages&#8221;, you get a quick summary of the urls on the linked from domain:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2431" title="gourmet-sleuth" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/gourmet-sleuth.gif" alt="gourmet-sleuth" width="600" height="157" /></p>
<p>At this point, my advice is: don&#8217;t stop there! So often, an SEO would take this report and contact the owner of the site shown above to request to be included on any of the pages in the list. But, your job is to beat the competition, right?</p>
<p><strong>Run that valuable new link opportunity through the Top Pages on Domain Tool</strong></p>
<p>It&#8217;s <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seomoz-tools-top-pages-on-domain-kick-ass">no secret</a> I&#8217;m the world&#8217;s biggest advocate of the SEOmoz Top Pages tool, and for good reason. It&#8217;s very, very useful. Copy your new target domain into the tool and run the top pages report:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2432" title="top-pages-gourmet" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/top-pages-gourmet.gif" alt="top-pages-gourmet" width="600" height="154" /></p>
<p>Now you have a list of the most linked to pages on the domain target in question. To beat your competitor, if you&#8217;re going to be linked to from the same domain, get a more authoritative back link from them. <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/30-seo-problems-the-tools-to-solve-them-part-1-of-2">Using these tools</a> individually is powerful, but learning to use them together is awesome.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/linkbuilding-tool-tip-seomoz-link-intersect-top-pages-on-domain/">Linkbuilding Tool Tip &#8211; SEOmoz Link Intersect + Top Pages on Domain</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
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		<title>Fun with Godaddy&#039;s GeoDomainMap [Domain Buying]</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/fun-with-godaddys-geodomainmap-domain-buying/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/fun-with-godaddys-geodomainmap-domain-buying/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:17:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=2393</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Looking for inspiring ways to come up with domain names you&#8217;re probably never going to use? Today I learned that sellbuenosaires.com remains unregistered thanks to Godaddy&#8217;s local domain search service, GeoDomainMap. Godaddy&#8217;s new service asks you to set a location and a keyword you&#8217;re interested in. Next, the tool combines nearby location names and the [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/fun-with-godaddys-geodomainmap-domain-buying/">Fun with Godaddy&#039;s GeoDomainMap [Domain Buying]</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2394" title="godaddy geodomain map search" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/godaddy-geodomain-map-search.jpg" alt="godaddy geodomain map search" width="600" height="262" /></p>
<p>Looking for inspiring ways to come up with domain names you&#8217;re probably never going to use? Today I learned that <strong>sellbuenosaires.com</strong> remains unregistered thanks to Godaddy&#8217;s local domain search service, <a href="http://geo.godaddy.com/">GeoDomainMap</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/maps/archive/2009/10/21/geo-domain-names-from-go-daddy-and-bing-maps.aspx">Godaddy&#8217;s new service</a> asks you to set a location and a keyword you&#8217;re interested in. Next, the tool combines nearby location names and the keywords you supplied and &#8220;checks the GoDaddy database of available domain names and returns those that are available&#8221;.</p>
<p>Sadly, the tool didn&#8217;t seem to be working quite so well for the UK this evening, though there&#8217;s still a very long list of domains ending with &#8220;SEO&#8221; available in the US for those people looking to emulate the good work of our friends at <a href="http://londonseo.org/">LondonSEO</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/fun-with-godaddys-geodomainmap-domain-buying/">Fun with Godaddy&#039;s GeoDomainMap [Domain Buying]</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>Google Keyword Tool [External vs Beta] – What’s the Difference?</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-external-vs-beta/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-external-vs-beta/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:04:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Keyword Research]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=2122</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On the 24th September 2009, Google announced a revision of their Keyword Tool, the imaginatively titled “Keyword Tool (Beta)”. As Barry reported that morning at Search Engine Roundtable, Google has a beta version of a new keyword tool available in the AdWords console. To get to it, login to adwords.google.com, go to a campaign, click [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-external-vs-beta/">Google Keyword Tool [External vs Beta] – What’s the Difference?</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2175" title="Testing keyword research tools from Google in the lab" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/lab.jpg" alt="Testing keyword research tools from Google in the lab" width="600" height="228" /></p>
<p>On the 24<sup>th</sup> September 2009, Google announced a revision of their Keyword Tool, the imaginatively titled “Keyword Tool (Beta)”.</p>
<p>As Barry reported that morning at <a href="http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020848.html">Search Engine Roundtable</a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>Google has a beta version of a new keyword tool available in the AdWords console. To get to it, login to adwords.google.com, go to a campaign, click on opportunities (if you have that tab), then on the left bar, click on keyword tool. A “beta” link should be available for you to click on in the top paragraph.</p></blockquote>
<p>SEO’s all agree, the data from Google’s Keyword Tools and other sources should be <a href="http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/five-reasons-your-keyword-tool-may-be-lying-to-you-and-ours-might-too.html">taken with a pinch of salt</a>, and I definitely agree with that too. Particularly in the US market, the Local, Global and Trend data sets just don’t feel right on certain keywords.</p>
<p>Has Google improved the situation in their new tool? We’ll let Google tell you about <a href="http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/09/updated-versions-of-keyword-and.html">their fancy new</a> interface and get right on with what’s important. The data.</p>
<p><strong>Evaluating Google Keyword Tool Beta</strong></p>
<p>From the start, let me tell you that this post does not conclude with a “this tool is right” kind of an answer. What it does do is compare new with old, and it&#8217;ll tell you where the differences are. With an understanding of those differences, you can make your own decision about which source makes more sense. I’ll give you my personal opinion on this, but, I’ve only reviewed one sector in the UK market, so the conclusion could be different in different geo locations.</p>
<p>For the record, I looked at local search data in the UK market, ignoring the global figures. All values relate to August 2009 comparing the data exported from the Beta tool. Variances are expressed as the percentage difference of the beta tool compared to the old tool.</p>
<p><strong>Observations</strong></p>
<p><strong>1)</strong> The largest volume generating keyword in the dataset had a variance between the data sources of -242% &#8211; equating to a difference of more than 14 million searches per month. Beta significantly under reported at the head of the data, compared to the original tool.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2135" title="Head of KW data set shows switch in volume reportting" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Head-difference.gif" alt="Head of KW data set shows switch in volume reporting" width="700" height="489" /></p>
<p><strong>2)</strong> With the largest volume generating term removed, Google beta continued to under report by as much as -230%, but did not over report until the 28th keyword, with a search volume of approximately 76,000 searches per month.</p>
<p><strong>3) </strong>After the 28th keyword, beta begins to demonstrate a smaller negative and eventually frequently occuring positive variance further down the data set. An anomaly is visible at keyword 36, where beta strongly disagrees with the old keyword tool. From this point the variance favours the beta keyword tool, with more volume data available in the beta keyword set for long tail search queries.</p>
<p><strong>4)</strong> Much further along the tail (a selection of 40 keywords with a volume between 140 and 1700 searches per month), the beta tool under reported compared to the original keyword tool data set, with the average variance around -35%:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2138" title="tail difference" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/tail-difference.gif" alt="tail difference" width="700" height="423" /></p>
<p><strong>5)</strong> More data (results with a volume figure) was acquired using the Beta Keyword tool in the same keyword list, making the Beta tool a better tool for long tail keyword data. Beta keyword tool has improved data exports with more rows of data and actual numbers for monthly trends, instead of those <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-calculate-approximate-traffic-volume-for-the-past-12-months-in-google-keyword-tool/">dreaded ratios</a>.</p>
<p><strong>6)</strong> Keyword Tool (External) and Keyword Tool (Current, signed in to adwords) are exactly the same.</p>
<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
<p>It&#8217;s very difficult to draw a conclusion by simply comparing the two data sources. There are obvious differences, and my personal opinion is that the beta tool is a step up from what we have now. The data exported (as a CSV) contains more usable values from the outset, and there are powerful categorisation features available in the user interface.</p>
<p>Keyword data evaluation is not easy. My recommendation would be try this for yourself, pulling actual rankings and Google referral data from your analytics tool to benchmark the numbers. My theory is that you&#8217;ll see some consistency between organic CTR% on a more accurate dataset, by keyword category / group. That&#8217;s a different blog post though.</p>
<h6><em>Image credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/odreiuqzide/">Pasta Boy Sleeps</a></em></h6>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-external-vs-beta/">Google Keyword Tool [External vs Beta] – What’s the Difference?</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>Google launches Rich Snippets Preview Tool (RDfa)</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/google-launches-rich-snippets-preview-tool-rdfa/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/google-launches-rich-snippets-preview-tool-rdfa/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:52:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microformats & HTML5]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[microformats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[RDfa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Structured data]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=1944</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[You (hopefully) remember a few posts on SEOgadget discussing HTML5 and the impact that structured data will have on SEO, and if you do, you&#8217;ll remember me banging on about my hcard implemention too. I&#8217;ve been convinced for some time now that Google&#8217;s attitude towards structured HTML markup is really starting to get serious, which [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-launches-rich-snippets-preview-tool-rdfa/">Google launches Rich Snippets Preview Tool (RDfa)</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>You (hopefully) remember a few posts on SEOgadget discussing <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/xhtml-20-and-seo/">HTML5</a> and the <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/the-future-of-seo-structured-markup/">impact that structured data will have on SEO</a>, and if you do, you&#8217;ll remember me banging on about my <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/markup-location-data-with-hcard/">hcard implemention</a> too. I&#8217;ve been convinced for some time now that Google&#8217;s attitude towards structured HTML markup is really starting to get serious, which is why today&#8217;s news is very exciting.</p>
<p>On this, the last meaningful day of Summer in the UK I say, thanks be to Google for giving us their <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets">Rich Snippets Testing Tool</a> allowing even us mere mortals to view and tweak a rich snippet result after implementing a structured markup modification on a site.</p>
<p>On the news of the release, <a href="http://searchengineland.com/preview-your-google-rich-snippets-with-google-webmaster-tool-24963">Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land</a> writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>Brian Ussery <a href="http://www.beussery.com/blog/index.php/2009/08/rich-snippet-tool/">spotted</a> that Google released a beta version of the <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets">Rich Snippets Testing Tool</a> that does just that. What is interesting is that you can plug in any URL, not just URLs that you own via the verification process in Google Webmaster Tools, and preview the snippet data.</p></blockquote>
<p>Here&#8217;s the <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fseogadget.co.uk%2Fcreative-apprentice-internet-marketer-16-20k-london%2F">preview</a> of one of the <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/creative-apprentice-internet-marketer-16-20k-london/">job postings</a> on SEOgadget.co.uk:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1945" title="Google rich snippet preview" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Google-rich-snippet-preview.gif" alt="Google rich snippet preview" width="559" height="256" /></p>
<p>Google points out that &#8220;there is no guarantee that a Rich Snippet will be shown for this page on actual search results.&#8221; and helpfully advises: &#8220;For more details, see <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&amp;topic=21997">Documentation</a>&#8220;. Fair enough.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve already learned a lot from reviewing a few of my own results. A tool like this can really inspire a &#8220;penny drop&#8221; moment or two, an experience I&#8217;ll be taking note of ready to make some changes to my hcard markup in the very near future.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-launches-rich-snippets-preview-tool-rdfa/">Google launches Rich Snippets Preview Tool (RDfa)</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>Creating Inspirational Sitemap Architecture Diagrams</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/inspiring-sitemap-diagrams/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/inspiring-sitemap-diagrams/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:37:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Site Architecture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sitemaps]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=1700</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[photo credit: slimygherkin Whatever tools we have available for making sitemap diagrams and mapping architecture right now, just don&#8217;t seem to quite inspire. At least, that&#8217;s how I&#8217;ve been feeling. How do you take the site architecture design process to a more inspirational level through more creative visualisation? Hoping to find an answer, and some [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/inspiring-sitemap-diagrams/">Creating Inspirational Sitemap Architecture Diagrams</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1886" title="british-museum-roof" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/british-museum-roof.gif" alt="british-museum-roof" width="630" height="277" /></p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/8794240@N07/539023585/">slimygherkin</a></em></p>
<p>Whatever tools we have available for making sitemap diagrams and mapping architecture right now, just don&#8217;t seem to quite inspire. At least, that&#8217;s how I&#8217;ve been feeling. How do you take the site architecture design process to a more inspirational level through more creative visualisation?</p>
<p>Hoping to find an answer, and some sweet inspiration, I started checking out different ways to visualise and generate sitemaps on the interwebs. Along my travels I&#8217;ve found some really interesting site map diagrams and I&#8217;ve been looking at various methods to document site maps, using commonly (and less commonly) available tools.</p>
<p><strong>Why document a site architecture diagram?</strong></p>
<p>A nicely documented site architecture diagram can give you a complete enough view of your current site map for you to identify any potential problems with pagerank flow, pages with very low levels of internal links and content too many clicks away from your homepage. It can also make you think differently, and (for me anyways) anything that inspires me to think differently about something I&#8217;ve done the same way for a long time is a good thing. By creating a diagram of your site, you can solve existing problems, add links to flatten your site architecture and you can always use your work later on to plan for a better site redesign.</p>
<p><strong>Graphviz</strong></p>
<p>One of the first tools I came across was <a href="http://www.graphviz.org">Graphviz</a>, a piece of software (with its own language) designed to represent &#8220;structural information as diagrams of abstract graphs and networks&#8221;. Bottom line is, if you can get your head round the language, <a href="http://www.graphviz.org/cgi-bin/man?dot">&#8220;DOT&#8221;</a>, then you should be able to produce some amazing architecture diagrams like this (click to enlarge):</p>
<p><a href="http://www.graphviz.org/Gallery/twopi/twopi2.html"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1885" title="circular" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/circular.gif" alt="circular" width="448" height="472" /></a></p>
<p>I really liked the way the deeper content surrounds the homepage at the centre, rather that the homepage sitting at the top of the diagram. Pagerank doesn&#8217;t flow &#8220;down&#8221; your site architecture, <strong>it&#8217;s distributed around it</strong>. Cool.</p>
<p>Using Graphviz is rock hard though &#8211; you&#8217;ll need some patience to produce something like the diagram above. There&#8217;s a lot of messing around learning DOT, which is a very simple language but requires some further code driven tomfoolery to get the design / layout of the visual just right. To make life apparently easier,  <a href="http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html">Xenu&#8217;s link sleuth</a> supports an export file type compatible with Graphviz, thanks to contributor <a href="http://www.coltishware.com/">Kevin Niehage</a> but, every export I did ended with hilarious (crash related) results.</p>
<p><strong>Visio 2007</strong></p>
<p>Perhaps a little less exciting, but far simpler is <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/visio/default.aspx">Microsoft Visio</a>. Visio actually crawls your site, and generates a site map, just like that! Admittedly, the first results tend to be a bit useless, but with the discovery of the list view toolbar, you&#8217;re set:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/circular-visio.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1889" title="circular-visio-small" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/circular-visio-small.gif" alt="circular-visio-small" width="585" height="388" /></a></p>
<p>The <a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751380.aspx">process</a> of mapping a web sitemap in Visio is simple &#8211; here&#8217;s the step by step:</p>
<p><strong>1) Open Visio and select networks &gt; web site map &#8211; the dialogue that appears looks like this:</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1890" title="Visio-crawl-dialogue" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Visio-crawl-dialogue.gif" alt="Visio-crawl-dialogue" width="479" height="306" /></p>
<p><strong>2) Click ok (there are some settings to play with, but let&#8217;s not cover those &#8211; you don&#8217;t need to change much, if anything):</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1891" title="crawling-visio" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/crawling-visio.gif" alt="crawling-visio" width="373" height="236" /></p>
<p>3) Use the Filter Window to select filetypes you&#8217;d like to exclude eg: css files, gif&#8217;s and javascript files:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1892" title="filter-window-visio" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/filter-window-visio.gif" alt="filter-window-visio" width="321" height="202" /></p>
<p>On sites of a reasonable size, you can produce something visually appealing for your clients quite quickly.</p>
<p><strong>Nicheworks<br />
</strong><br />
Some of the most impressive visualisation tools I found out there seem not to exist any more &#8211; Nicheworks being a good example. <a href="http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography/atlas/web_sites.html">According to this site</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Nicheworks is a interactive tool for visualising massive networks with hundreds of thousands of nodes. It was developed by Graham Wills at Bell Labs. The screen-shots here show Nicheworks visualisation of the network structure of a large Web site.</p></blockquote>
<p>Check out the graphics produced by Nicheworks (Click to enlarge):</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/nicheworks1_large.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1894" title="nicheworks1_small" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/nicheworks1_small.gif" alt="nicheworks1_small" width="450" height="452" /></a></p>
<p><strong>WebTracer2</strong></p>
<p>By far the coolest visualisation tool of them all (and I really, really hope it gets some more development one day) is WebTracer2. According to <a href="http://www.nullpointer.co.uk/-/webtracer2.htm">their homepage</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>WebTracer is an project based on the intention to visualise the structure of the web. There are many applications that analyse websites for structural integrity and diagnostic purposes, but few reveal the visual structure that web hypertext creates. Webtracer represents this structure as a three dimensional molecular diagram, with pages as nodes(atoms) and links as the strings(atomic forces) that connect those nodes together.</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>Check out these visuals (click to enlarge):</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/w26.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1907" title="Amazing sitemap visualisation" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/w26-small.jpg" alt="Amazing sitemap visualisation" width="549" height="395" /></a></p>
<p>These images are not static! In fact, they&#8217;re interactive. Webtracer is a really exciting piece of visualisation software, so how do you make a pretty picture like this?</p>
<p>The way the tool works is incredibly simple. Download the <a href="http://www.nullpointer.co.uk/-/files/webtracer2.zip">WebTracer2 ZIP</a> file and extract it to a directory somewhere on your PC. Open the &#8220;Spider&#8221; application and enter your URL, like this:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1908" title="spider-software" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/spider-software.gif" alt="spider-software" width="351" height="238" /></p>
<p>The spider sets about crawling, ready to be told when to save its data in the /Maps subdirectory. The crawl isn&#8217;t too aggressive &#8211; one or two pages per second is quite reasonable. I&#8217;d love to take the crawler for a spin on one of the big sites I work with when I have the time to allow for the crawl.</p>
<p>Once you&#8217;ve crawled your site, click the &#8220;Save Current Trace&#8221; and go back to the directory you extracted the ZIP file to. In there you&#8217;ll find another executable called &#8220;Visualiser&#8221;. Run the EXE and follow the on screen prompts to find your newly created map file. Here&#8217;s I one made after crawling SEOgadget, recorded with <a href="http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp">Camtasia</a> and uploaded to Youtube:</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="560" height="340" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OJlqRot_foY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="340" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OJlqRot_foY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
<p>The two, double helix like chains of spheres running through the middle of the space are pages linked to frequently, typically navigational elements. There are other, smaller chains of spheres which seem to be the most recent posts. From there, the spheres (nodes) decrease in size the less often they are linked to. Typically the least linked to nodes sit on the outermost periphery of the space. These are the pages / posts that I don&#8217;t mention very often (if at all) so most likely they&#8217;re liked to from one or two category pages at the most.</p>
<p>I really like the way you can mouse over the different spheres to find out their URL &#8211; great for exploration and a good way to kill some time, too.</p>
<p><strong>Other (surprising) inspirational sources: Flickr</strong></p>
<p>Thanks to finding a very similar discussion to this post on <a href="http://www.broken-links.com/2008/08/13/interesting-examples-of-sitemaps/">Peter Gaston&#8217;s Broken Links</a> I quickly found some interesting ideas posted by the good folks on <a href="http://www.flickr.com">Flickr</a>:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/netfuel/2652025252/"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1917" title="flikr netfuel sitemap" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/flikr-netfuel-sitemap.jpg" alt="flikr netfuel sitemap" width="500" height="346" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/netfuel/">netfuel</a></em></p>
<p>Peter&#8217;s favourite &#8220;hard to beat&#8221; method of sitemap creation was simply to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbola/2284121051/">put your pages up</a> on the wall:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbola/2284121051/"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1918" title="jimbola-sitemap-wall" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/jimbola-sitemap-wall.jpg" alt="jimbola-sitemap-wall" width="500" height="375" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbola/">jimbola</a></em></p>
<p><strong>There&#8217;s much inspiration left to discover</strong></p>
<p>Just by looking around the internet and discovering some of these applications, I quickly began to realise the gap in the market for an upto date architecture visualisation tool. Imagine the power of a tool that could crawl and recrawl your site, identifying, visually, areas of your architecture that need work from the perspective of pagerank flow. Extra points for anyone who can build chronological crawl data to check for orphaned content &#8211; still a huge problem with large scale dynamic sites. Inspiring stuff.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/inspiring-sitemap-diagrams/">Creating Inspirational Sitemap Architecture Diagrams</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>Top Page Analysis meets HttpFox &#8211; an awesome SEO Tool combo (SEO Tips)</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/top-page-analysis-meets-http-fox/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/top-page-analysis-meets-http-fox/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2009 21:00:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[domain strength analysis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEOmoz tools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=1397</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s a little taster of what&#8217;s in store for my presentation at SMX London. This tip combines two SEO tools to make one awesome SEO weapon. SEOmoz&#8217;s &#8220;Top pages on Domain&#8221; and HttpFox, a server header analyser plugin for Firefox. Want to work quickly through a new client&#8217;s domain to make sure all their high [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/top-page-analysis-meets-http-fox/">Top Page Analysis meets HttpFox &#8211; an awesome SEO Tool combo (SEO Tips)</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Here&#8217;s a little taster of what&#8217;s in store for my presentation at <a href="http://searchengineland.com/previewing-smx-london-the-speakers-speak-18735">SMX London</a>. This tip combines two SEO tools to make one awesome SEO weapon. SEOmoz&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seomoz-tools-top-pages-on-domain-kick-ass">Top pages on Domain</a>&#8221; and <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6647">HttpFox</a>, a server header analyser plugin for Firefox.</p>
<p>Want to work quickly through a new client&#8217;s domain to make sure all their high authority (or most linked to) pages are loading correctly or are being properly redirected?</p>
<p><strong>Analyse your top URLs in sequence, quickly and easily</strong></p>
<p>Install HttpFox and head to SEOmoz&#8217;s <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/labs">Labs</a> area*. Do a query on a domain and activate HttpFox:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1399" title="Top Pages Screenshot with HttpFox" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/top-pages-1asgif.gif" alt="Top Pages Screenshot with HttpFox" width="720" height="510" /></p>
<p>*I edited out all the text between the search box and the &#8220;Displaying 1 to 25 Top Pages&#8221; to make a decent screenshot. How did I do that? <a href="http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/ubiquity/">Ubiquity</a>. But, that&#8217;s a different blog post that I&#8217;m waiting for <a href="http://tumblr.zakazaka.co.uk/">Tom</a> to do sometime soon&#8230;</p>
<p>Now unclick the &#8220;autoscroll&#8221; check box and click start. With your top page URLs in view, click a link. A new Firefox tab will open and Httpfox will tell you the server header response straight away. If you&#8217;re happy with the outcome, press &#8220;Clear&#8221; and click the next link in the list.</p>
<p><strong>Here&#8217;s something I found earlier:</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1401" title="Top pages SEOmoz tool " src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/top-pages-2.gif" alt="Top pages SEOmoz tool " width="720" height="445" /></p>
<p>The <a style="border: 0pt none; font-weight: normal; background-color: pink; color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;" rel="nofollow" href="http://searchenginewatch.com/awards/2002-winners.html">9th most linked to URL</a> on this domain is no longer live and gives a 404 server header response. Low hanging fruit I&#8217;d say. Work through your top URL list for your new client, noting URLs to redirect as you work through the list. Google Webmaster Tools doesn&#8217;t always report 404 errors like this, which is why this tool combo packs quite a punch in your SEO arsenal.</p>
<p><a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/">Searchenginewatch</a>, if you have a few authority URLs in error state available, I can supply a list of domains you could redirect them to? <img src='http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/top-page-analysis-meets-http-fox/">Top Page Analysis meets HttpFox &#8211; an awesome SEO Tool combo (SEO Tips)</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>My SEO &quot;Must Have&quot; Extensions for Firefox</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/my-seo-must-have-extensions-for-firefox/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/my-seo-must-have-extensions-for-firefox/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:24:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[firefox]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=1073</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There are a lot of different Firefox extensions, plugins, scripts and more for doing SEO, but which ones really make a difference? Here&#8217;s my list of &#8220;must haves&#8221; for doing SEO with Firefox. My SEO &#8220;must haves&#8221; for Firefox 1) Firebug Firebug is a powerful web development tool that helps you to &#8220;see&#8221; your HTML, [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/my-seo-must-have-extensions-for-firefox/">My SEO &quot;Must Have&quot; Extensions for Firefox</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/20070520-firefox_logo.jpg"><img class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-1092" title="20070520-firefox_logo" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/20070520-firefox_logo-150x150.jpg" alt="20070520-firefox_logo" width="125" height="125" /></a>There are a lot of different Firefox extensions, plugins, scripts and more for doing SEO, but which ones really make a difference? Here&#8217;s my list of &#8220;must haves&#8221; for doing <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEO</a> with Firefox.</p>
<p><strong>My SEO &#8220;must haves&#8221; for Firefox</strong></p>
<p><strong>1) Firebug</strong></p>
<p>Firebug is a powerful web development tool that helps you to &#8220;see&#8221; your HTML, CSS and Javascript as you browse around your webpage. It&#8217;s perfect for checking the semantic HTML structure of your site is exactly right. Clicking &#8220;Inspect&#8221; will show the exact code for the section of the webpage you&#8217;re mousing over. Really powerful stuff for making sure the changes you&#8217;ve asked for have been implemented!</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/firebug-2.gif"></a><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/firebug-21.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1113" title="firebug-21" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/firebug-21.gif" alt="firebug-21" width="642" height="228" /></a></p>
<p>Download the <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843">latest version</a> (last updated Feb 23rd, 2009) of Firebug &#8211; which <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/firebug-doesnt-work-in-firefox-3/">works with Firefox 3</a>.</p>
<p><strong>2) Speed up your web pages with YSlow (Firebug extension)</strong></p>
<p>YSlow is a Yahoo developer tool that extends Firebug to allow you to analyse web pages from a page load / performance point of view. The best part is that YSlow tells you why the page is slow and what elements to change to improve performance. Check out this &#8220;review&#8221; of my website:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1076" title="yslow for Firebug" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/yslow.gif" alt="yslow for Firebug" width="519" height="247" /></p>
<p>I *think that the &#8220;F&#8221; in &#8220;Performance Grade F&#8221; stands for FAIL. Anyway, if you want to add YSlow! to Firebug &#8211; <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5369">download it here</a>. (The 85k download takes a fair while. I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s an irony in there somewhere..)</p>
<p><strong>3) Get Greasemonkey</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748">Greasemonkey</a> allows you to customise the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.You need Greasemonkey for Joost&#8217;s &#8220;Show those Nofollows&#8221; script which we&#8217;ll look at next. There&#8217;s a wealth of Greasemonkey scripts available at <a href="http://userscripts.org/scripts?sort=installs">Userscripts.org</a> &#8211; I&#8217;ve sorted that link so it displays the most popular script downloads. Amazing that the 6th most popular download says &#8220;Do not download this code&#8221;. Hmm.</p>
<p><strong>4) Show those Nofollows!</strong></p>
<p>Joost hosts an excellent little script for Greasemonkey, the imaginatively titled &#8220;<a href="http://yoast.com/tools/seo/greasemonkey/nofollow-display/">Nofollow display Greasemonkey script</a>&#8220;. Install it to be able to quickly identify Nofollows on any webpage you browse inside Firefox.</p>
<p><strong>5) Show Class=&#8221;robots-nocontent&#8221;</strong></p>
<p>If nofollows are &#8220;<a href="http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-talks-about-redirected-links-nofollowed-links-16867">miniscule compared to all the links</a>&#8221; on the web, the number of class=&#8221;robots-nocontent&#8221; instances out there must be practically infinitesimal. That said, you might want to be able to see areas on a webpage that make use of this class attribute. I&#8217;m still yet to find a Greasemonkey script for this so I <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/yahoo-seo-robots-nocontent/">have a method</a> using the <a href="http://webdesigns.ms11.net/chromeditp.html">Chrone Edit Plus extension</a> which makes your webpage look like this:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/nocontent.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1090" title="nocontent" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/nocontent.gif" alt="nocontent" width="398" height="194" /></a></p>
<p><strong>6) Google Global Firefox Extension (V2)</strong></p>
<p>Redfly Marketing&#8217;s Firefox extension is such a powerful little tool. With Google Global installed you can quickly switch between Google search TLD&#8217;s (.co.uk, .com, .ca, .de etc) with a simple right mouse button click:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1079" title="google global firefox plugin" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/google-global-firefox.gif" alt="google global firefox plugin" width="449" height="441" /></p>
<p>Get Google Global from <a href="http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/google-global-view-results-different-locations/">Redfly Marketing here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>7) User agent switcher</strong></p>
<p>Changing User Agents in Firefox is a very nessecary part of SEO diagnostic work on most dynamic websites. Why? Well sometimes webmasters *accidentally serve different content to browsers, search bots and so on.</p>
<p>If you want to find out how to switch User Agents in Firefox, try my <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/changing-user-agents-with-firefox">Youmoz post here</a>. There&#8217;s a much easier way thanks to User Agent Switcher:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/user-agent-switcher.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1083" title="user agent switcher" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/user-agent-switcher.gif" alt="user agent switcher" width="467" height="255" /></a></p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-switch-your-user-agent-to-googlebot/7249/">Anne recommends</a>, you can download <a href="http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/">User Agent Switcher here</a> and you can download a lot of <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/useragents.xml">User Agents in an XML file here</a>. You can test that you&#8217;re correctly switching UA&#8217;s by checking out <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx">MSDN&#8217;s website</a> as Googlebot. Why they bother doing that I&#8217;ll never know. Then again, noone seems to care that <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/why-is-yahoo-hiding-links-from-google">Yahoo still cloak links</a> from Google. <img src='http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>*May not be accidental<br />
 <img src='http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_cool.gif' alt='8)' class='wp-smiley' /> <strong>Live HTTP Headers</strong></p>
<p>Live HTTP Headers shows you exactly what&#8217;s being sent in the client request and what server header responses are recieved as you click around. There are lots of these tools around, but I like this one. Don&#8217;t know why &#8211; <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3829">download it here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/live-http-headers.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1084" title="live http headers firefox" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/live-http-headers.gif" alt="live http headers firefox" width="707" height="362" /></a></p>
<p><strong>9) Toolbars?</strong></p>
<p>I know what you&#8217;re thinking, where are all the toolbars? I have Google Toolbar and that&#8217;s about it. There are so many of them for SEO. Some of my fellow SEOs at the office use the <a href="http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/">SEO toolbar from SEObook</a> and I played with the <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/mozbar">SEOmoz toolbar</a> for a while. They&#8217;re both useful in their own way, it&#8217;s just that I&#8217;m a little &#8220;old school&#8221; and prefer my own setup. That said, I&#8217;m a massive fan of the <strong>Web Developer Toolbar</strong>:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/webdevelopertoolbar.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1085" title="web developer toolbar" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/webdevelopertoolbar.gif" alt="web developer toolbar" width="479" height="21" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60">Download it here</a> and enjoy hours of fun disabling Javascript, CSS, images and all sorts of other stuff. Still the best toolbar you could have as an SEO, in my humble opinion.</p>
<p><strong>10) Ubiquity</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/ubiquity/">Ubiquity</a> is an amazingly powerful tool enabling Javascript powered keyboard shortcuts to run your Firefox session. There are a <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5045293/killer-commands-for-ubiquity">lot of really clever people</a> out there who truly understand how to use it. I don&#8217;t. Apart from the &#8220;Edit&#8221; function of course:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ubiquity.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1086" title="ubiquity in webpage edit mode" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ubiquity.gif" alt="ubiquity in webpage edit mode" width="733" height="204" /></a></p>
<p>I like this particular function so much because it saves a lot of time from making change specifications for websites. Just make the edits and take a screen capture with <a href="http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp">Snagit</a> or <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-screenshot-in-ubuntu/">Gimp in Ubuntu</a>. All done.</p>
<p>I hope my list is useful, I know there might be some really great plugins and extensions that I may have missed, but this is definitely my favourite setup for Firefox and has been for a while now. Enjoy!</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/my-seo-must-have-extensions-for-firefox/">My SEO &quot;Must Have&quot; Extensions for Firefox</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<slash:comments>25</slash:comments>
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		<title>How to check the DNS settings for a big domain list</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-check-the-dns-settings-for-a-big-domain-list/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-check-the-dns-settings-for-a-big-domain-list/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2009 10:51:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DNS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Domaining]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=1056</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This week I had a list of 600 (632 to be exact) domains to check after the DNS was thought to had been pointed elsewhere for every single one. The easiest and quicket way to check a single domain is simply to ping the domain name from the command prompt like this: But when you [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-check-the-dns-settings-for-a-big-domain-list/">How to check the DNS settings for a big domain list</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This week I had a list of 600 (632 to be exact) domains to check after the DNS was thought to had been pointed elsewhere for every single one.</p>
<p>The easiest and quicket way to check a single domain is simply to ping the domain name from the command prompt like this:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1057" title="ping a domain in command prompt to check the DNS settings" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ping.gif" alt="ping a domain in command prompt to check the DNS settings" width="677" height="340" /></p>
<p>But when you have more than one this process simply wouldn&#8217;t work. In steps<a href="http://www.analogpoint.com/tools/domainip.php"> this tool</a> from Analogue Point Solutions:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1058" title="check a list of domains for DNS settings ip tool" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ip-tool.gif" alt="check a list of domains for DNS settings ip tool" width="504" height="422" /></p>
<p>Hat tip to <a href="http://www.adamcrawford.co.uk/">Adam Crawford</a> on this one &#8211; very useful tool <img src='http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-check-the-dns-settings-for-a-big-domain-list/">How to check the DNS settings for a big domain list</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<title>How to download your website using WGET for Windows</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/download-your-website-with-wget/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/download-your-website-with-wget/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:55:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[site backups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WGET]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=932</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ever had that terrifying feeling you&#8217;ve lost your blog? Perhaps your WordPress installation got hacked, or your web hosts royally screwed up with a &#8220;database upgrade&#8221;. Either way there&#8217;s an almost infinite array of reasons to download and backup a copy of your website, and precisely zero reasons to neglect doing it. If you&#8217;re a [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/download-your-website-with-wget/">How to download your website using WGET for Windows</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ever had that terrifying feeling you&#8217;ve lost your blog? Perhaps your WordPress installation <a href="http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/06/24/how-to-completely-clean-your-hacked-wordpress-installation/">got hacked</a>, or your web hosts <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/its-good-to-be-back/">royally screwed up</a> with a &#8220;database upgrade&#8221;. Either way there&#8217;s an almost infinite array of reasons to download and backup a copy of your website, and precisely zero reasons to neglect doing it.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re a Linux user, there are lots of guides out there on how to use <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/">WGET</a>, the free network utility to retrieve files from the World Wide Web using HTTP and FTP, but no guides to doing so with Windows. Unless you fancy <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/the-ubuntu-installation-guide/">installing Ubuntu</a> or <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-install-crunchbang-on-a-usb-drive/">Crunchbang</a>, here&#8217;s a handy guide to downloading your site using WGET in Windows.</p>
<p><strong>1) Download WGET</strong></p>
<p>Download and save WGET to your desktop. You can get <a href="http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/#download">wget.exe here</a>. I recommend downloading WGET for Windows (win32) from Ugent.be as it&#8217;s the most up to date version I could find. For info, you can also get WGET from <a href="http://www.brothersoft.com/wget-for-windows-5755.html">Brothersoft</a> but avoid the WGET for Windows <a style="border: 0pt none; font-weight: normal; background-color: pink; color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;" rel="nofollow" href="http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm">download page</a>, because their installer doesn&#8217;t work with Windows Vista.</p>
<p><strong>2) Make WGET a command you can run from anywhere in the Command Prompt</strong></p>
<p>If you want to be able to run WGET from any directory inside the command terminal, you&#8217;ll need to learn about the path command to work out where to copy your new executable.</p>
<p>First, open a command terminal by selecting &#8220;run&#8221; in the start menu (if you&#8217;re using Windows XP) and typing &#8220;cmd&#8221;. If you&#8217;re running Windows Vista go to <strong>&#8220;All Programs &gt; Accessories &gt; Command Prompt&#8221;</strong> from the start bar. You&#8217;ll see something that looks like this:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/terminal.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-934" title="terminal" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/terminal.gif" alt="terminal" width="677" height="340" /></a></p>
<p>We&#8217;re going to move wget.exe into a Windows directory that will allow WGET to be run from anywhere. First, we need to find out which directory that should be. Type <code>path</code> into the command prompt to find out:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/command-prompt-path-command.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-935" title="command prompt path command" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/command-prompt-path-command.gif" alt="command prompt path command" width="677" height="340" /></a></p>
<p>Thanks to the &#8220;Path&#8221; environment variable, we know that we need to copy wget.exe to either the C:\Windows\System32\ directory or the C:\Windows\ directory. Go ahead and copy WGET to either of the directories you see in your Command Terminal.</p>
<p><strong>3) Restart terminal and test WGET</strong></p>
<p>If you want to test WGET is working properly, restart your terminal and type:</p>
<p><code>wget -h</code></p>
<p>If you&#8217;ve copied the file to the right place, you&#8217;ll see a help file appear with all of the available commands</p>
<p><strong>4) Make a directory to download your site to</strong></p>
<p>Seeing that we&#8217;ll be working in Command Prompt, let&#8217;s create a download directory just for WGET downloads. <strong>*</strong>If you&#8217;re familiar with Command Terminal basics, just skip this step. Change to the C:\ and use <code>md</code> (makedir) to make a directory:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/make-directory.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-936" title="make directory" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/make-directory.gif" alt="make directory" width="677" height="340" /></a></p>
<p>Change (<code>cd site-download</code>) to your new directory and you&#8217;re ready to do some downloading!</p>
<p><strong>5) Download your site using WGET</strong></p>
<p>Ok, the fun bit begins. Once you&#8217;ve got WGET installed and you&#8217;ve created a new directory, all you have to do is learn some of the finer points of WGET arguments to make sure you get what you need.</p>
<p>I found two particulary useful resources for WGET usage. The <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/html_node/ ">Gnu.org WGET Manual </a>and About.com&#8217;s <a href="http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl1_wget.htm     ">Linux WGET guide</a> are definitely the best.</p>
<p>After some research I came up with a set of instructions to WGET to recursively mirror your site, download all the images, css and javascript, localise all of the URLS (so the site works on your local machine), and save all the pages as a .html file.</p>
<p>To mirror your site:</p>
<p><code>wget -r http://www.yoursite.com</code></p>
<p>To mirror the site and localise all of the urls:</p>
<p><code>wget --convert-links -r http://www.yoursite.com</code></p>
<p>To mirror the site and save the files as .html:</p>
<p><code>wget --html-extension -r http://www.yoursite.com</code></p>
<p><strong>6) Is your WGETing you blocked?</strong></p>
<p>See what I did there? Some webservers are set up to deny WGET&#8217;s default user agent &#8211; for obvious, bandwidth saving reasons. You could try changing your user agent to get round this. Try er, pretending to be Googlebot:</p>
<p><code>wget --user-agent="Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)" -r http://www.yoursite.com</code></p>
<p>And finally, here&#8217;s WGET downloading my website:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/downloading-seogadget.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-937" title="downloading seogadget" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/downloading-seogadget.gif" alt="downloading seogadget" width="677" height="340" /></a></p>
<p>On that last note, lots of hosting companies block WGET. Mine included! Took me a while to be able to back my own site up but now, I feel pretty safe that I have backups of the database, the plugins, the images and even the HTML of the site itself. Happy WGETting! <img src='http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/download-your-website-with-wget/">How to download your website using WGET for Windows</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<slash:comments>16</slash:comments>
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		<title>How to calculate approximate traffic volume for the past 12 months in Google Keyword Tool</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-calculate-approximate-traffic-volume-for-the-past-12-months-in-google-keyword-tool/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-calculate-approximate-traffic-volume-for-the-past-12-months-in-google-keyword-tool/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2008 08:00:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Excel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keyword Research]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=778</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In my &#8220;Demand for SEO Jobs&#8221; post, I plotted keyword demand for the phrase &#8220;SEO Jobs&#8221; across 2008 based on Google keywords data. A few folks have asked me to explain how I did that, so without further ado: How to calculate approximate traffic volume for the past 12 months in Google Keyword Tool First [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-calculate-approximate-traffic-volume-for-the-past-12-months-in-google-keyword-tool/">How to calculate approximate traffic volume for the past 12 months in Google Keyword Tool</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In my &#8220;<a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/demand-for-seo-jobs-in-2008/">Demand for SEO Jobs</a>&#8221; post, I plotted keyword demand for the phrase &#8220;<a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/seo-jobs/">SEO Jobs</a>&#8221; across 2008 based on Google keywords data. A few folks have asked me to explain how I did that, so without further ado:</p>
<p><strong>How to calculate approximate traffic volume for the past 12 months in <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-external-vs-beta/">Google Keyword Tool</a></strong></p>
<p>First of all you&#8217;re going to need the data. Go to Google&#8217;s keyword tool and select a few keywords you&#8217;re interested in.</p>
<p>Before you export data from the keyword tool, be sure to select &#8220;Show Search Volume Trends&#8221; in the &#8220;Choose columns to be displayed:&#8221; drop down list:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-771" title="keyword tool seasonal volume trends" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/keyword-tool-volume-trends.gif" alt="keyword tool seasonal volume trends" width="499" height="176" /></p>
<p>From there it&#8217;s easy to calculate the search volume of your keyword by month by using the ratio data provided in the CSV export. Let&#8217;s look at how to do it (I&#8217;ve provided a <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/seo-jobs-research.xlsx">sample excel spreadsheet</a> if you&#8217;d like to look at my calculations) in a few easy steps:</p>
<p>If you download the search volume trends data, you&#8217;re presented with a set of ratios that look like this:</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/ratios.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-800" title="ratios" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/ratios.gif" alt="ratios" width="449" height="65" /></a></p>
<p>Fortunately, Google gives you the approximate average traffic volume for the month (in my example: November). Knowing the traffic for one month makes it simple to calculate the traffic numbers for all of the others.</p>
<p>Just divide the search volume by the ratio you&#8217;re given for the same month, and then multiply that figure by the ratio for the month you need to calculate the traffic for. Did that make sense? Hopefully!</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-calculate-approximate-traffic-volume-for-the-past-12-months-in-google-keyword-tool/">How to calculate approximate traffic volume for the past 12 months in Google Keyword Tool</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>Using VLOOKUP to match keyword volume and rankings data</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/using-vlookup/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/using-vlookup/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:08:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Keyword Research]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[analysis]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=640</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Ever needed to compare lists of keywords in different data tables and match corresponding values together? For example, matching keyword volume data to search engine rankings? Today we&#8217;re going to take a look at a really simple but powerful query in Microsoft Excel called VLOOKUP which makes that possible. Here&#8217;s the definition of VLOOKUP from [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/using-vlookup/">Using VLOOKUP to match keyword volume and rankings data</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ever needed to compare lists of keywords in different data tables and match corresponding values together? For example, matching keyword volume data to search engine rankings? Today we&#8217;re going to take a look at a really simple but powerful query in Microsoft Excel called VLOOKUP which makes that possible.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the definition of VLOOKUP from <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP052093351033.aspx">office.microsoft.com</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Searches for a value in the first column of a table array and returns a value in the same row from another column in the table array. The V in VLOOKUP stands for vertical. Use VLOOKUP instead of HLOOKUP when your comparison values are located in a column to the left of the data that you want to find.</p></blockquote>
<p>In plain english that means you can use VLOOKUP to match two values and return a bit of data in a different column but the same row. Maybe Microsoft&#8217;s definition was better. Here&#8217;s how to do it:</p>
<p>1) Import your data from your rankings tool and <a href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal">Google Keyword Tool</a>. I&#8217;ve created two tabs in Excel, &#8220;Google Keywords&#8221; and &#8220;Rankings&#8221;.</p>
<p>2) In my Google Keywords tab I create a new column, titled &#8220;Google Ranking&#8221;</p>
<p><img title="excel-1" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/excel-1.gif" alt="" width="630" height="86" /></p>
<p>3) Now I&#8217;m going to write my simple vlookup query. Here&#8217;s how it looks:</p>
<p>=VLOOKUP(A2,Rankings!$A$1:$B$151,2,0)</p>
<p><img title="excel-3" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/excel-3.gif" alt="" width="632" height="41" /></p>
<p>The query works by looking at cell A2 and matching that value in a predefined area of the spreadsheet called a table array. In our case, the table array is Rankings!$A$1:$B$151. &#8220;Rankings!&#8221; refers to data in the other tab, and $A$1:$B$151 describes our table array. Think of the &#8220;$&#8221; as an anchor point, so, when you drag the query across a number of cells (A2,A3,A4 etc) the table array won&#8217;t move. In short, with a &#8220;$&#8221; we&#8217;re always looking at the same area of data to do our matching.</p>
<p>The &#8220;2&#8243; means the 2nd column from the leftmost point in our table array. That&#8217;s the ranking position data in our second tab. Finally, the &#8220;0&#8243; means exact match, which is the only sensible option when you&#8217;re matching words rather than numbers.</p>
<p>Once you understand how the query works it&#8217;s reasonably easy to make it more complex. Maybe you could consider adding data from other sources such as Hitwise and MSN Ad-centre Intelligence? Finally, I&#8217;ve uploaded my example spreadsheet <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/vlookup-example.xlsx">here for you to download</a> and inspect. Enjoy!</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/using-vlookup/">Using VLOOKUP to match keyword volume and rankings data</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<title>Perfecting the SEOmoz Linkscape tool &#8211; My feedback</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-linkscape/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-linkscape/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:21:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Links]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linkscape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEOmoz]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=430</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Exactly two weeks ago, SEOmoz launched Linkscape, their new link analysis tool. There has been much accusation, feedback and discussion over the inner workings of the product itself which this post does not cover. Instead I&#8217;d like to take a look at some ideas that I hope are in the development queue to improve Linkscape [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-linkscape/">Perfecting the SEOmoz Linkscape tool &#8211; My feedback</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Exactly two weeks ago, <a href="http://seomoz.org">SEOmoz</a> launched <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/announcing-seomozs-index-of-the-web-and-the-launch-of-our-linkscape-tool">Linkscape</a>, their new link analysis tool. There has been much <a href="http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/10/17/how-to-block-the-bots-seomoz-isnt-telling-you-about/">accusation</a>, <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/official-linkscape-feedback-thread">feedback</a> and <a href="http://sphinn.com/story/79700">discussion</a> over the inner workings of the product itself which this post <strong>does not</strong> cover. Instead I&#8217;d like to take a look at some ideas that I hope are in the development queue to improve Linkscape even further over the coming months.</p>
<p><strong>Some tweaks in linkscape I&#8217;d like to see, in no particular order&#8230;</strong><br />
<strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>1) Export reports to PDF</strong></p>
<p>In the &#8220;Advanced Link Intelligence Report&#8221; you can export raw data via CSV. That&#8217;s a great feature, but sometimes you need a document to download rather than a raw data export, particularly in a dashboard summary situation. White label the report template with uploadable logo functionality so you can make it look like your own, hard work for extra bonus points.</p>
<p><strong>2) Report metrics over time</strong></p>
<p>This is tough, but to see how the various metrics have developed over time (30 days, 3 months, 6 months) Would be an amazing tool to help us demonstrate how SEO efforts have added value to a client project. Obviously this would require a higher resolution of data (more frequent crawl). SEOmoz already keeps a record of your previous historic searches so perhaps this wouldn&#8217;t be *too difficult?</p>
<p>Reporting over time would make the last point particulary powerful, you could provide a quarterly or 6 monthly review very quickly.</p>
<p>*Assumption based on no inside knowledge of the SEOmoz development process!</p>
<p>A time graph would make even more sense in the competitor analysis as it would give you a good idea of how agressive other websites link building campaigns must be. Imagine being able to quickly and easily see the rate of aquisition of your top 5 competitors, down to a daily basis. I know this is beyond Linkscape&#8217;s crawl rate today. I suppose in the meantime we always have Google alerts!</p>
<p><strong>3) Site submission (I never thought I&#8217;d say that word on my blog!)</strong></p>
<p>As a paying user of linkscape I think a useful feature would be to allow requests for more detailed crawls of competitor (and your own) websites.</p>
<p><strong>4) Sitemap.xml compatibility </strong></p>
<p>If a sitemap is referenced in the robots.txt file then Linkscape could incorporate the urls into its database for future crawls. If you&#8217;re a subscriber, you could submit your own sitemap.<br />
<strong><br />
5) 8 Most common anchor text terms- exact match<br />
</strong></p>
<p>When you click this link it would be handy to see a list of urls using that anchor text for link realignment purposes. Currently, clicking the text takes you back to the link intelligence report but the anchor texts don&#8217;t match exactly. For example, you might click a &#8220;<span style="text-decoration: underline;">car parts</span>&#8221; anchor, but the report will include &#8220;<span style="text-decoration: underline;">carparts.co.uk</span>&#8221; and so on.</p>
<p><img title="most common anchor text report - Linkscape from SEOmoz" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/8-most-common-anchor-text.gif" alt="most common anchor text report - Linkscape from SEOmoz" width="647" height="265" /></p>
<p><strong>6) Reformat the display of some reports</strong></p>
<p>It would be nice to have a pie chart for the inbound anchor text distribution. This works very well for Advanced Link Manager.</p>
<p><strong>7) All 301 and 302 inbound redirects</strong></p>
<p>Urls that redirect (internally or externally) via  302 or 301 redirect to any url on my site. I would love to know how many redirects I have pointing to my site. even more so if some of them are 302&#8242;s from high authority domains!</p>
<p><strong> <img src='http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_cool.gif' alt='8)' class='wp-smiley' /> Mouseovers in graphs give you the metric</strong></p>
<p>If I mouse over a graph, it would be good to see the value for that measurement rather than just a visual representation.</p>
<p><img title="mouseovers in graphs - SEOmoz Linkscape" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/mouseovers-in-graphs.gif" alt="mouseovers in graphs - SEOmoz Linkscape" width="675" height="281" /></p>
<p><strong>9) Site architecture analysis</strong></p>
<p>This was a brilliant idea from <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/official-linkscape-feedback-thread#jtc71118">Joshua Sciarrino</a> on the SEOmoz feedback forum (I&#8217;ve picked 2 great ideas to give my 8 ideas a nice round figure of 10). Basically Josh said:</p>
<blockquote><p>Is there a way to have a graph of the site I&#8217;m getting intel from, to have their internal linking structure? that would be amazing. <img src='http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p></blockquote>
<p>The mind boggles with this idea, a visual representation with a competitors site architecture, every inbound link and keyword they&#8217;re optimising for? That is a nice tool!</p>
<p><strong>10) A guide!</strong></p>
<p>Another brilliant idea from <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/official-linkscape-feedback-thread#jtc71382">Globusinternet</a> on the SEOmoz Linkscape feedback forum, someone needs to write a guide for Linkscape!</p>
<p>So hurry along and have a go if you haven&#8217;t already, Linkscape is here to stay and I&#8217;m looking forward to watching it develop as a powerful SEO tool in the months to come.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/seomoz-linkscape/">Perfecting the SEOmoz Linkscape tool &#8211; My feedback</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
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		<title>Google Keyword Tool &#8211; Volume data is permanent</title>
		<link>http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-volume-data-is-permanent/</link>
		<comments>http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-volume-data-is-permanent/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:39:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>richardbaxterseo</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Keyword Research]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO Tools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://seogadget.co.uk/?p=87</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[More exciting news after this week&#8217;s observations in the community that Google&#8217;s Keyword Tool was temporarily spitting out real numbers &#8211; it&#8217;s doing it again! Is this a permanent change now? Let&#8217;s hope so! Go see for yourself at: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal **Update: Yes, it looks like it is &#8211; Rebecca at SEOmoz included a link to [...]<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-volume-data-is-permanent/">Google Keyword Tool &#8211; Volume data is permanent</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>More exciting news after this week&#8217;s observations in the community that <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-external-vs-beta/">Google&#8217;s Keyword Tool</a> was temporarily spitting out real numbers &#8211; it&#8217;s doing it again!</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/google-keywords-tool.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-88" title="google-keywords-tool" src="http://seogadget.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/google-keywords-tool-500x439.gif" alt="" width="500" height="439" /><br />
</a><br />
Is this a permanent change now? Let&#8217;s hope so! Go see for yourself at: <a href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal">https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal</a></p>
<p>**Update: Yes, it looks like it is &#8211; Rebecca at SEOmoz included a link to <a href="http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/07/keyword-tool-updated-with-search-volume.html">this inside adwords post</a> on this week&#8217;s <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/roundup-thursday-for-the-week-of-7608">roundup Thursday</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-keyword-tool-volume-data-is-permanent/">Google Keyword Tool &#8211; Volume data is permanent</a> is one of our latest posts from: <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk">SEOgadget.co.uk</a>, UK SEO consultants helping people and organisations succeed in search.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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