Search Engine Optimization Help

Like Tweeted images, most “Dugg” images have been a constant stream of link baiting and viral inspiration to me.

1. DiggTop

DiggTop is my favorite way to keep track of Digg stories in any category. It’s an Adobe Air desktop app that is easy and fun to use. One of the best things about it is that it allows a quick way to preview an image before clicking through:

It is highly customizable:

• Set the categories and subcategories you want to track;
• Set the sound alert to notify you of new images that match your criteria;
• Keep the tool in the mini mode;

2. Digg Pics

Digg Pics is a fun visual tool within Dogg labs that tracks the activity of images on the site. The tool works like this:

• Images slide in from the left as people Digg and submit them.
• Hover over any line to see the category;
• Click on any images to see the details of the category it is dugg;
• Click on the image again to see the details of the image: number of votes, the member who submitted and who was the lats to digg, the image source:

3. Digg Images on Twitter

Digg Images is an official Digg profile on Twitter. Just follow it, add to lists and groups to track the updates more properly:

4. Digg iGoogle Gadget

If you use iGoogle as your browser home page, this Digg gadget (found here) is a great option to be added there. It tracks all hot images, can be filtered by category and updates in real time:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

4 Ways to Track Most Dugg Images

I sometimes try and review various content management systems because I need to be in the loop of what types of tools I can recommend various people with different backgrounds. To me, the main advantages of using a CMS are:

(!) The ability to manage many websites from one dashboard;
(!) The ability to effectively distribute tasks between many users (even if they have very basic tech knowledge).

Last week I was contacted by a company representative who asked me to review a new (to me) content management system called Eden Platform which seems to pay a great deal of attention to SEO. As an added benefit, Eden Platform is offered under a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

So I decided to try it out: luckily they offer a very handy free-trial option.

The process

The sign-up process was quick and easy. After providing a few details, I was instantly taken to my dashboard.

After signing up, the first thing I wanted to do was to add pages to my test website. So I clicked “PAGES” in the top navigation menus. Adding and editing content looked like a fun. I found the “page tree” containing the visualized structure of my site. From there I could:

• Zoom the structure;
• Expand and collapse page sub-sections,
• Preview any page;
• Edit any page;
• Show each page in the main navigation menus, etc:

Each page editor looked very usable: I could change the placement of any element by simply dragging and dropping. The page meta tags and template could be controlled though SETTING tab:

Uploading files seemed also very easy. By accessing FILES module I was given the option to upload a file, edit it, organize files in folders and view all previously uploaded files:

So far the process seemed fun, I kept on browsing…

Some features I really loved:

Dashboard

The dashboard contains a lot of important information about your website including:

• News about recent updates to Eden Platform
• Contact information for your Account Representative
• The number of recent pageviews your website has received
• The number of recent unique visitors to your website
• A list of your most visited web pages
• Your current optimization score
• A list of off-site events that might have affected website traffic

Flexible system of permission distribution

Working in an SEO team, I always prefer the tool I am using to allow a flexible platform for permission management. I want to effectively distribute tasks among my team members. The Eden Platform offers a really nice option for that.

If your account has the proper administrative privileges you can add, edit, and delete users from your website. You can assign any “group” for each user to manage his permissions. A group stands for the set of rights and privileges a user have. By default, there are three groups:

• Administrators;
• Guests;
• Visitors.

You can edit or delete each group. You can also add a new group by providing:

• The group name;
• Description;
• Type of privileges.

After that the permissions are controlled from the “Authentication” module. See how flexible it is:

1. Setup your different user groups within the Users module.
2. If you would like to have one particular page accessible to one group but not the other, scroll down the page until you see “Pages” on the left hand column.
3. Find the page you’d like to set as private, turn on the permission for the group of your choice by clicking the red dot that lines up with the group and the page, turning it green.
4. To limit access to this page to all other groups, simply click each corresponding dot to red (note: you should leave the admin group’s dot green).
5. Now any user within the group that’s allowed access will be prompted with a password protected interface when trying to access the page, where they will enter in their username and password. Once entered, they are “logged in” and can access the page without having to retype their credentials.
6. You can also limit access to any or all modules within the Authentication module by following the same steps as above.

How-to Guides

The platform is really easy to use due to extensive help guides:

• There’s a Quick-start guide;
• Each section has “Quick help” guide explaining it;
• There’s also the knowledge base containing FAQ and other handy troubleshooting material.

Add to this very fast and efficient customer support: on signing-up I was instantly contacted by a team representative (who found my site in Google, looked through it and dropped me a message via my contact form). It looks like solid training and support are included with all full Eden accounts.

Optimization

Once you are done with learning the tool and performing some basic tasks (like adding pages, content and distributing user permissions among those who are going to be in charge of each page), you can go ahead and optimize your site.

Every page has an overall score from 1 to 100 that represents its current level of optimization. As you edit your Content elements this score will be updated each time you hit save. To increase your page score follow the suggestions displayed in the optimization.

The highest priority suggestion is automatically displayed in the optimization panel. To view all suggestions simply click on ‘view all’ to expand the list. The suggestions that need the most work are highlighted in red and yellow and suggestions that are already performing well are highlighted in green. As you make the changes indicated in each suggestion your page optimization score will increase.

Each recommendation has HOW? and WHY? buttons: hover over any of them and you will get specific instructions and explanations:

The traffic stats:

Eden platform does support third-party traffic analytics software (like Google Analytics) but it also has some nice built-in feature. I haven’t seen it in action because my test site hasn’t received any traffic yet, but from the screenshots I found on help pages it looked like a nifty tool.

For example, the dashboard contains the following visualized graph of your web site performance:

My verdict?

Since Eden Platform is not a blogging platform, I don’t see myself using the platform but I can see how many of my clients and even team members can benefit from that slick, self-explanatory interface that easily guides you though the whole process of creating, optimizing and managing a website.

You are highly encouraged to go ahead and try the platform for free and share your thoughts in the comments.

Disclaimer: this review was published on the service representative’s request but in it I express my absolutely independent opinion.  Note: the tracking URL is not used for affiliate revenue purposes.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Easily Create Search Engine Optimized Websites with Eden Platform (CMS Review)

In the last week’s post I shared how you can do keyword research using Google Adwords tool right within your SEJ tools dashboard. I also shared why it is actually so helpful to have third-party keyword research tool integrated within the advanced toolkit. This way you can manage your lists more efficiently and easier add keywords to the tracker to monitor your rankings;

Here’s some great news: besides Google Adwords tool, you can also use Wordtracker within your SEJ tools dashboard to have a broader choice of key phrases to analyze and choose from.

To access Wordtracker search, you should hover over “Research” tab and choose WORDTRACKER. The process is quite easy:

1. Enter the keywords you want to research: one phrase per line;
2. Choose the match type:
   1. The Related match returns related keyword matches based on popularity.
   2. The Embedded match returns embedded keyword matches based on popularity.
   3. And the Exact match returns exact keyword matches based on popularity.

The results page provides keywords that match your query:

• The phrase based on the base term you provided;
• The search volumes for each keyword (per Wordtracker).

Now you can add keywords in the SERPs tracker:

• Add words to the SERPs tracker one by one by clicking “Add” in the last column;
• Add words to the tracker in bulk by checking boxes to select each them and then selecting “Track keywords in SERP Tracker” in the drop down;
• Export selected rows to CSV by checking boxes to select each of them and then selecting “Export keywords to CSV file”

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

SEJ Tools: Enhanced Keyword Research via Wordtracker

Over the past weeks, I’ve come across a few highly valuable and inspiring articles on using Gmail filters as well Outlook rules for better productivity. This actually goes about organizing your email more effectively in order to do your job better and faster.

This prompted me to optimize my SEO process using email filtering to a achieve higher productivity. Just an hour or so of playing resulted in quite a few cool tips I am thrilled to share on SEJ:

1. Create a separate folder / label to store your weekly analytics reports

I use Google Analytics reports feature that sends me CSV traffic reports weekly. Now I have a separate folder to store all those report. I have also set them up to skip my inbox because I can now access my folder any time to find the most recent one (the latter one is optional. Some people prefer to receive the reports to the inbox and thus be reminded to go check their traffic / rankings trends).

2. Automatically star Google Alerts updates.

Like many other Internet marketers I use Google Alerts to track my brand name mentions. I now automatically star all updates coming from Google Alerts service to unstar them once I go through the updates.

3. Store client work in various folders

I have set up filters / rules for mail from my clients to get sorted into different folders. Now, once a message comes from any of my clients (From:*@clientdomainhere.com), it gets into the separate folder dedicated to this client. I can thus store and quickly access all the email correspondence from any person.

4. Send yourself reminders of upcoming tasks

I have created a separate label / folder to store the reminders. Now once I need to remember to do anything, I send an email message to myself and this task is stored in my TO-DO folder unread until I go and do that.

5. Send reminders to others

I can also automatically forward specified messages to the people I manage for them not to forget to do the task. For more detail on this one, refer to my Gmail productivity post on MUO.

6. Send an SMS to your phone once your story gets Dugg

Well, actually I haven’t seen this one in action yet because none of my posts has been dugg since the last week but I have this set up. I use BLVDstatus to update me via email once my webpages see some unexpected traffic spike. Then I use this post as the guidelines for setting up SMS alerts for those email messages.

7. Get uncluttered: filter social media updates

As much as I love my social media friends and always vote for all the stuff they share with me, the updates keep me from being productive by instant updates in my Gtalk. It is much more efficient if I access one folder daily and read all the shares and vote for them in one go.

Therefore I have created a separate label for Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc shares and now those updates skip my inbox and go straight to “Social” folder. They are marked unread there until I enter the folder, read every message, check the story shared and vote for it.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

7 Awesome Ideas to Use Gmail Filters For SEO Tasks

You may have noticed that two weeks ago Google announced a new feature for Google Reader: the ability to create/track RSS feeds for pages that don’t provide them.

There’s a lot of potential here in just about every aspect of web use – personal and professional.

Like most tools, the functionality can be used to many ends. The limits are only your own insight and creativity.

From an SEO standpoint this new feature opens up some interesting possibilities.

1) Add your core in-linking pages to detect when a link to your website is removed

Effective link building often means keeping track of the links you’ve secured – especially when you’ve invested money/resources into getting the link. Monitoring your in-linking pages manually is time consuming. With Google Reader’s feed creation tool you can track changes to the page in question – and automatically detect when a link has been removed or replaced.

This, admittedly, could get somewhat cumbersome (if you’re tracking 100s or 1000s of in-linking pages), but for the real hub links, the ones you worked hard for, its worth keeping track – and this is an automated way to do it.

2) Track the pages you want links from, and see who’s getting links from them (and when)

Often times in link building you’re looking for hub pages – where several competing websites in your space have been listed and linked to. It isn’t that you want the same links as your competitors (that, naturally, is no advantage), but often enough these pages are going to be easier to get links from if you’re offering something unique but related.

Tracking these hub pages with the feed creation tool before you’ve approached the webmaster/organization in question is a good way to see who your competition is – and who’s actively engaging in link building. You can also catch new competitors as they come onto the scene.

3) Track when your link is added to a page where you’ve requested it

Once you’ve requested a link from a website and they’ve agreed to add it tracking when that link has been added is often a matter of manually checking up – another task that burns up time you could spend on more valuable things.

Using the Google Reader feed creation tool you can automatically detect when your links go live – and, in the mean time, spend your time doing better things than checking up.

4) Monitor your clients’ website(s) to detect changes/updates to content

When you work with clients (as I do) there’s a little of babysitting that goes on. Sometimes the work I do or recommend can be tossed out inadvertently by someone who isn’t aware of the repercussions.

Sure, you may say, “that’s their problem,” but we should be better stewards than that.

Tracking their pages with Google Reader will notify you when any content changes have occurred on a client’s website – which is a great way to catch a potentially-damaging mistake early.

It’s also a great way to detect when and how a client is carrying out your recommendations (since the lines of communication aren’t always as open as we’d like them to be).

5) Keep tabs on your competitors hub or topic pages, and watch their SEO strategies unfold

This one is particularly powerful.

If you know who your competitors are and want to keep tabs on their SEO efforts create feeds for their most important/central pages. Now every time they make an update, add content, rewrite something, link to a new page, etc, you’ll be pinged – and the change is tracked.

An added bonus here is the ability to track how often your competitor updates the page (since Google marks each update with the date/time they detected the change) – a kind of “fly on the wall” view of what they’re up to that is delightfully sneaky. Of course, it’ll depend on how often Googlebot returns to the page (which is a function of how “valuable” and frequently-updated the page is).

One thing: this will track changes to content, not the page code itself (so you can’t track everything they’re doing SEO wise), but it is nonetheless an unprecedented way to keep tabs on what the competition is up to.

There are far more possibilities – and undoubtedly some phenomenal ones that haven’t dawned on me. Got any ideas? Share them in the comments.

Note: Webmasters can “opt out” of this feature (blocking the creation of feeds for their pages) by doing the following:

• Adding <meta name=”googlebot” content=”noarchive”> to their page head
• Using Robots.txt to block Googlebot (though this one is a quintessential case of tossing the baby with the bathwater – it means your site/page is removed from Google’s index)
• Moving content into an iFrame (similar to above, though, this renders the content invisible to Googlebot)

Mike Tekula is an SEO Consultant working and living on Long Island. Check out Mike’s latest free resource: The Blogger’s Guide to Google Analytics

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

5 Powerful Ways to Use Google Reader’s Feed Creation Tool for SEO

Google Insights is an awesome tool for tracking and comparing trends. Most of us use it on a regular basis.

However the common misconception of the tool is that it’s a regular keyword research and traffic estimation utility. Well, to put it simply, this is not true:

1. The graph data DOES NOT equal search volume

Google Insights show “the likelihood” of people in each region to search for the given phrase:

This means that the number on a graph (roughly) = search volume for this word for each particular region / the overall searching population in this region and normalized to 100-scale graph (to be able to compare it on a graph)

Why is the data normalized?

Without normalization regions with higher population would always be on top simply because there are more people (and hence more searchers) there. This means we would never be able to find out that in some particular (smaller) region people like apples more than in other region with higher population.

Example?

If you search for “hairdo”, you might see Singapore ranked first and United States ranked 5. This does NOT mean more people search for “hairdo” in Singapore than in the United States. It just means the regional interest for hairdo is higher there. Conclusion: there’s no way to tell the absolute popularity of the term in any region using Google Insights.

2. Downward Trend Does NOT Necessarily Mean Declining Search Traffic

Going back to the formula we discussed in the previous section:

Number on a graph = number of searches for the keyword in the region / number of all people who use Google search in this region

Now imagine for a minute that much more people start using Google search in this region, while the interest to the keyword remains the same (for example, people who start using Google search in this region belong to the group that is not interested in this keyword)? This would result in the downward trend on the graph but in reality the search traffic remains the same.

An Example?

…suppose the city of Melbourne, Australia, has 1000 internet users and 500 of them (or 50% of internet users in Melbourne) searched for the term spring festival in October. In November, 500 more internet users moved to Melbourne, but none of them knew about the spring festival, so no one out of that group searched for that term.

Here’s a forum thread that discusses the downward trend for many generic phrases like “loans”, “poker”, “insurance”, etc. Here’s how this is explained:

…a decline on the graph means a declining SHARE of all possible searches. To show a flat graph, a given keyword would actually need to be increasing in volume — assuming the total volume of all searches is increasing, and for most areas of the world this has been true.

Most Useful Articles from Help Section:

• How can I use Google Insights for Search?
• If my search term is used in multiple contexts, how does Insights for Search determine which data to show?
• What are rising searches?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Understanding Google Insights: You Can’t Estimate Traffic with It

We’ve seen quite a few FireFox addons aimed at showing you more information while you browse with no or little effort from your part. There are addons that help you predict the linked page content, there is also a way to add a sidebar to Google SERPs containing additional information on search terms or ranked pages.

Today’s featured addon aims at optimizing your browsing by showing additional information on various page objects.

MashLogic is a FireFox addon that (on mouse-over) shows in-page info about:

• Names;
• Terms;
• Linked pages.

Here’s a few examples of what info you may see…

Mouse over any (linked) name mentioned on a page and you will be able to see (very useful when you want to quickly scan who comments a post):

• The link destination page info (title and full address);
• LinkedIn search results:

Also useful for researching any person’s connections; look what you can see right from Google SERPs:

Hover over any term to see the definition retrieved from Wikipedia and latest news around the term (I found this one also very handy when looking through SERPs):

The addon can be customized if you want to include / exclude any info. You can add:

• Currency converter,
• English dictionary;
• Yelp;
• New York Times;
• Books, many more:

Additional uses:

• See the destination page info for any shortened URL;
• Browse Twitter profiles and Tweet directly from any web page (Twitter authentication required);
• Explore places with maps, images, and events, etc.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! How would you use the addon?

Note: the addon did make my FireFox a bit slower (but this is obviously because it is stuffed with many more addons I test weekly).

The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

See More Information on Linked Pages with MashLogic

Being an advanced SEO toolset, SEJ tools unite quite a few useful third-party services. One of such useful tools is Google Adwords keyword research tool that makes it easier for you to:

(1) Run keyword research without having to leave the dashboard;

(2) Easily add keywords to SERP tracker (to monitor how close to top rankings you are / become).

(3) Easily access keyword research tools you ran in the past.

Google Adwords keyword research tool hides behind RESEARCH tab:

There you will be able to:

• Provide up to 10 words;
• Specify match type (Broad, phrase, exact).
• Choose language (click “Tailor results to languages and countries” to access the option)

The results page provides keywords that match your query. It also includes:

• Known search volume (average and last month’s);
• Advertiser competition for each keyword;
• An option to add any phrase to SERPs tracker;
• A check box that allows to add to SERPs tracker in bulk, export selected rows or hide selected rows:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

SEJ Tools: Run Keyword Research via Google Adwords Tool

Webinars are a great place to learn any skill related to business and the internet. Unlike blogs and other content pieces, you aren’t forced to read text, which can get monotonous. The PowerPoint plus audio interface throws a nice wrench in your normal learning process and can help stimulate development.

The professionals teaching webinars are frequently thought leaders in their area. They will frequently bring their A-Game to the free sessions in an effort to attract you to a paid subscription service afterwards. Plus, you almost always have the opportunity to ask questions afterwards, allowing you to get into the minds of the experts without ever having to attend a networking event or spend $2k on a conference.

Put this all together and you have the best learning format available on the internet, which makes missing or not participating in them a huge mistake.

Locating these webinars can often be difficult. You might hear from your colleagues or on your RSS or Twitter feed, but that rarely occurs often enough. There are several other webinars on the internet that you will miss out on if you only look on these channels.

Thanks to advancements from the Google team, you can now use their alert platform to find a webinar about your favorite subject. Google Alerts will deliver daily updates to your e-mail inbox or RSS feed with every website match they find for whatever you input. For SEO, see the example below:

You can create these for any area of learning you want. Simply repeat the process and fill up your Alert profile with as many webinar queries you want. Of course, you can also leverage Google Alerts for other areas of business development and reputation management as well.

When you start getting these alerts in your RSS or Inbox, begin sorting through them to assess which ones are real webinars and which ones just mention your alert term on the page. Once you’ve found a few pages, evaluate the quality by researching the webinar service and speaker to determine if it’s worth your time. You shouldn’t have to pay for any of these – there is enough volume on the internet that you should be able to find free webinars without much trouble.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to add it to your calendar. The nature of these alerts is that they will show you the page once it’s been created/updated, so you will frequently get a notification for a webinar weeks or months in advance. By adding it to your calendar, whether on Google or elsewhere, you will get a reminder (hopefully you have these set up, or you’re busy enough to look at your calendar every day) to attend.

The next step is the webinar itself. Here are a few recommendations for maximizing your return from these sessions:

Do research on the speaker before the event. Read past articles they’ve done, look at a bio and do whatever other research you’d like to get familiar with this person. You should find yourself with a few queries about their past successes, articles or otherwise, and this platform is a great way to get instant, good feedback about your questions about them and their experience.

Write down niche-specific questions. If you’re listening to the webinar, you probably feel your skill set is subpar as it comes to the topic being discussed. This means that you must have questions about how to start, proceed, and execute within the noted area. If you find yourself watching a webinar without any real questions beforehand, you probably don’t have much to gain from the session and are wasting time listening to it.

Take notes, preferably in a notebook. I find that I retain information better in notebooks and by taking written notes. You can get multiple notebooks and sort these by category, so you can frequently go back and look at your notes for reminders on what you’ve learned. This also allows you to maximize the powerpoint screen and fully take it in without any other distractions on your desktop.

Reach out and say thank you after the event. Acknowledgement is always great, and speakers will connect with you more if you make an effort to directly acknowledge and thank them for their presentation. This is best done through Twitter, which is a good way to open dialogue. You can also use e-mail if you want to talk more in-depth about the subject. This can promote further learning and also a possible business relationship later on. Should you see or talk to this person later on at a conference or elsewhere, you now have a speaking point you can utilize to start the conversation.

Rinse, wash, repeat. Webinars are a superb way to get ahead in the tech world. By utilizing and implementing the suggestions above, you have a great opportunity to match wits with the leading thinkers in the field of your choice.

Ross Hudgens is a Senior SEO Analyst at Single Grain, LLC, an internet marketing company. You should follow him on Twitter here.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Leveraging Webinars to Learn SEO (Or Anything)

We regularly review various rank checkers and trackers so that you could compare and choose. This week I have something new and awesome for you: SEO Ranking Monitor. The features I liked most of all:

(!) Sleek and usable interface;
(!) Nice-looking visualization tools;
(!) No clutter: no unnecessary features.

So let’s take a look at the tools settings and options.

The Process

Start by clicking “Settings” to configure tracking:

• Domains: add your domain here;
• Keywords: enter your keywords to track. You can add keywords one by one or in bulk. You will also need to tag each keyword for better report organization.
• Competitors: add your SERPs competitors to compare rankings;
• Google Analytics: grant access to your Google Analytics account to see results from your rankings;
• Search engines: select the search engines to track rankings in. You will have a huge choice of multiple Google local versions:

The results

Here’s where the real fun starts. You will have access to multiple tables and charts visualizing your stats.

SERP monitor: here you will be able to see a table containing your current rankings for each keyword in each search engine and the most recent change. You can export the whole table to Excel and filter the keywords by tag:

Competitors Monitor: this table compares your rankings with your competitors’ ones. Click through tabs to see the comparison across all tracked search engines:

Domain Monitor: this table represents your summarized domain stats in all chosen search engines:

• Average rankings of the tracked keywords;
• Backlinks;
• Indexed pages:

From each table you can access cool charts visualizing your ranking fluctuation:

Dashboard: summarizes it all by visualizing your stats in really nice-looking charts that will let you see your rankings distribution:

Our verdict: This is one of the most usable rank tracking tools I’ve used (and I’ve used quite a few). The tool also appears to be really affordable and complete in terms of all required features. You can also try the tool for free, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Track Your Keyword Positions with SEO Ranking Monitor

I am sure there are plenty of pages you visit weekly, daily and in some cases monthly. It is hard to keep that in mind. Here are two FireFox plugin that might turn helpful: two tools that allow to schedule your browsing:

My Weekly Browsing Schedule

My Weekly Browsing Schedule automatically opens your selected pages on the specific days of the week and at specific times.

Once the tool is installed, the options dialog becomes available from the TOOLs menu as well as from the (right-click) contextual menu. Thus, whenever you are on a page you want to schedule, just right-click on it and select “My Weekly Browsing Schedule”.

In the dialog you can easily set up when you want the page to open:

• Click to choose the days of the week;
• Click under # to activate the “CatchUp” feature for any page (in case you missed your schedule, this will open the page once you are back to work);
• Click under * to activate “StartUp” feature for any page (this will open the page on the browser startup no matter what);
• Double-click to select the time:

In the “Options” dialog you can customize the following settings:

• Open pages in a new tab or window;
• Set the default time;
• Set the scheduler look and feel (number of rows, width)
• Import pages to schedule.

More handy options:

• Add pages in bulk: select multiple Bookmarks / Tags to add by using Shift + Click in “Add from Bookmarks”
• Another way to add pages: use the Import function to import a list of Websites from a simple text file
• “Open Websites Now” will immediately open Websites for a particular Day and Time Interval

Page Scheduler

Page scheduler is an experimental addon that helps you schedule web pages with daily, weekly, monthly and yearly recurrences within a specific date and time range.

Here’s how it works:

• When on page you want to check regularly, click PageScheduler icon in your browser address bar and choose “Add to scheduler” option;
• The dialog will open where you can set when and how often this page will be scheduled to open:

The dialog allows you to set the following time and frequency parameters:

• Open the page every (provide the number here) days;
• Open the page every weekend or every weekday;
• Open the page starting and ending the specified dates;
• Open the page within the specified time range;
• Open the page on the specified day of the week (e.g. every Monday);
• Open the page on the set date of the month or every set date of the month (e.g. every first Monday of each month):

Besides, the icon in the address bar allows to open all scheduled pages in different tabs whenever you want:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

2 FireFox Addons to Schedule Your Browsing

Like I said a few times, the primary aim of SEJ tools is to provide you with all aspects of online marketing campaigns within one combined dashboard. Therefore there are a few most useful third-party services that help you monitor your social media activity as well as promote your brand.

Here are a couple of them:

Secure Your Name Across Numerous Social Media Accounts

If you an active social media user, your moniker is your brand name. People know it and recognize it. Therefore it is important to secure your moniker and register it whereever you can to prevent others from using it.

Of course, you can’t be everywhere and you have not yet ALL social networks. Besides, these are so plenty that you can’t possibly know about all of them.

If you have an account with SEJ tools, you will be able to check the availability of your brand name, user name or vanity URL on 120 popular Social Media. The feature is powerd by KnowEm.

Hover over the SOCIAL tab in the main navigation and then click on KnowEm. Enter the brand name or username and then hit the Check button.

You will be then taken to KnowEm that will run a search on the name you specified and display all of the social networks where the name is available and not available.

Search Through Forums and Discussion Boards

Another very handy third-party feature is the ability to search through various discussion boards. It can be useful both for your reputation monitoring and general web research. The feature is powered by Omgili.

Hover over the SOCIAL tab on the main navigation and then click on Forum Search. Enter your brand name or keyword into the Keywords field then click on the Search button.

The Forum Search will return discussion threads that match your query. The search results will contain the thread date, title and short summary. Clicking on a Title link will open a new tab in Firefox and take you to the discussion thread:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

SEJ Tools: Useful Third-Party Services

Microformats should be one of those development trends that are going to change SEO as we know it.

Therefore it is a must that you start learning them and implementing them now.

Since the beginning of the year I have started regularly posting on microformats: I’ve looked at hCard microformat and the related tools and Wordpress plugins, over-viewed most REL attributes and where we can use each of them, reviewed some tools recognizing and analyzing microformats like Semantic Checker.

This post looks at three tools that can extract various microformats from web pages and turn them into usable format:

Tails

Currently it supports the following formats:

• hCard [export to .vcf file]
• hCalendar [export to .ics file]
• hReview
• xFolk
• Rel-license

The statusbar contains an icon: if a microformat was detected on the current page, it lights up. It is grey when it couldn’t detect any microformat:

Click on the icon to toggle a sidebar with all the microformats listed. Click any of hem to extract:

Operator

Previously discussed on SEJ, Operator is a great addon that detects and extracts some microformats including:

• hCard,
• hCalendar,
• REL attributes (rel=”tag”, rel=”bookmark”)

The addon has its on toolbar which only appears when any microformats are detected. Once some microformats are found on the current page, the tool will make the corresponding toolbar section active and accessible:

Microformats Bookmarklet

This extractor works as a bookmarklet: just drag and drop it into your bookmarks toolbar (supports Safari, Firefox and IE). Once on a page you want to check for the microformats, click the bookmarklet. Once clicked, the bookmarklet brings up an overlay window of all the hCards and hCalendars within the current page:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

3 Tools to Export Microformats

How much do you search daily? If you are a reader of this blog, I bet you search quite a lot. That’s why I am sharing more and more various search tools here every week. Today I am going to offer another cool search utility that you may find useful.

FastestFox is a FireFox addon that adds some more fun to web searching with FireFox (huge thanks to Edward Khoo who shared the tool in his top 10 FireFox addons post).

Basically (and among other features), the addon allows to quickly access more search options:

• For highlighted text;
• From Google search results page.

Here’s how it works:

1. Scan through any web document and find some words or phrases that you need more explanation for;

2. Select these phrase and instantly get access to Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and OneRiot search engines (in the “Popup Bubble”):

3. Choose Google and get access to even more search engines right from Google SERPs:

4. Customize which sites you want to see in the Popup Bubble. Supported search engines include:

• OneRiot;
• Delicious;
• Twitter;
• Surf Canyon;
• Bing;
• Youtube;
• Wiktionary;
• Google:

You can also turn off the popup bubble whatsoever or customize its behavior:

And here’s the customized bubble:

We have seen quite a few more FireFox addons that make web searching faster and more fun:

• 11 FireFox Extensions to Search Google Properly: the post lists some cool ways to customize Google SERPs;
• 3 Ways to Customize Google Search in FireFox: the post provides some tips on how to make searching Google with FireFox easier and quicker;
• Featured FireFox Addon: Search Any Site with Google: the post shares a Greasemonkey scrip that allows to easily access Google’s SITE: operator;
• Featured FireFox Addon: Google Enhancer: the post shares an addon that allows to quicker access some of the Google’s advanced operators.

The tool was shared under SEJ policy.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Search Google and Twitter Faster with FastestFox

StumbleUpon and Digg have been my major social bookmarking/voting sites for months. There’s no way to compare the two sites: it’s like comparing oranges to apples; but it’s nice that sometimes we are given the opportunity to somehow mix them.

Today’s social media tools will give some StumbleUpon feel to Digg browsing: the tools will allow to click through Digg stories the way SU toolbar button allows to browse through stories shared on StumbleUpon: all you need is just clicking the button and see some random page submitted to Digg:

Jogstr

Jogstr is a nice online tool that requires no registration and allows to click through popular or upcoming submissions in any Digg category /-ies:

1. Choose at least one category;
2. Click “Jogstr”;
3. See the top popular story on Digg;
4. Digg it (for that you will be taken to the submission page on Digg);
5. Share on multiple supported social media networks;
6. Or “Jogstr” further:

You can also set preferences to filter some subcategories, select the media type and choose between “jogstering” popular or upcoming stories:

Sub Digger Plus

Sub DiggerPlus helps to browse through any Digg user’s friends’ submissions:

1. Provide any Digg user name;
2. See a random story submitted by this user’s friend;
3. Use Digg bar to digg or share the story;
4. Click “Next” to see another friend’s submission:

The tool is thus a good way to kill an idle hour and keep up with the content your friends share on Digg. It is especially useful if you have been selective when adding people to friends and thus follow only those who share the same interests as you.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

2 Ways to Browse Digg Stories the StumpleUpon-Way

Knowing how to search Google is important, knowing how to search Google creatively is gold. Therefore I always pay so much attention to various tools and ideas that help to learn all various ways of using Google.

I already took a look at a few tools that help learn Google advanced search and also listed some helpful link building search queries. This time I am sharing another useful tool that will help you in your link prospect Google search.

Ontolo guys have put together and made public a new link building tool that generates search queries based on what you need.

Let’s see how it works.

Step 1 

The first step is clear: you need to provide your base search term (describing the niche you want to build links in).

In this step you can get as creative as you want:

• Put your base key phase in quotes to make the search more targeted (e.g. "weight loss");
• Provide synonyms to reach more relevant sites; use OR between your synonyms to make sure any of them is included (e.g. "weight loss" OR "dieting" OR "diets");
• Use a wildcard to include more results into your search: a wildcard (*) will be substituted by one or ore words (e.g. "* dieting * tips" will find "Diet Trends · Dieting Myths · Dieting Tips", "Weight Loss & Dieting: Diet Tips", etc)

Step 2 

The next step requires a bit more explanation: here you will need to choose ONE of the following "Types":

1. Linkable Asset Types (stand for properties or qualities of your site or organization that earn links):

• Content for placement;
• Content for submission;
• Forum;
• RSS feed;
• Contest, etc

2. Linkable Opportunity Types (stand for the types of links you’re targeting with your efforts):

• Description link;
• Directory listing;
• Guest post;
• Editorial, etc

3. Targeted Content Type (stand for the types of content and websites you’re seeking links from):

• Sponsor list;
• Resource list;
• Blog;
• Testimonial page;
• Video aggregator.

Step 3 

After you provided your search term and chose the type, you are ready to generate link building queries. Grab each of them and use your preferred search engine to look for link prospects:

And:

Be sure to consider these two steps suggested on the tool help page:

• Play around! Add your highest-level keyword and pick a random query. By investigating random queries you may discover some unknown link opportunities.
• Quit playing around and get systematic! Look at every single query using your top keywords – where are the link opportunities that you’ve missed until now?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Creative Google Link Building Queries w/ Ontolo’s Tool

With SEJ tools you can unite all your personal projects and client work under one dashboard which saves time and effort. What’s more, you can even create multiple logins with different permissions to give access to your co-workers or freelancers.

Let’s see how this works.

1. Create Multiple Profiles

The first step in aggregating and organizing all your projects is creating separate profiles for each of them.

To add a Profile, hover over the Admin tab in the Main Navigation and click on the Profiles submenu link. Enter a new Profile Name and then click on the Add Profile button.

It is a good idea to give some name that will be easy to associate with the project (the main site of the project or the name of the client):

After the profile is created, you can start adding websites to it.

2. Manage roles

Managing and assigning roles allows you to set which areas different users are permitted to see. You can add roles in ADMIN menus -> Role manager.

You can add a Sub-User role or a Read-Only role. Both the role types are highly customizable. You can set which sections of the tool will be visible to the user with this role and which will be hidden from him. To start provide the role name and description. Then for each of the tools section grant one of the possible levels of access:

• Full access;
• Read-only;
• None:

3. Add users

You can add users from ADMIN menus -> “User Manager”. There you will be able to see current users: designates an admin user.

From there you can add a sub-user or a read-only user.

As far as you can see, managing projects and distributing roles is easy and highly customizable to suit any team and any needs.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Organize Multiple Campaigns and Distribute Permissions with SEJ Tools

Yolink is a nice new tool that searches through the content linked from the current page (available to both FireFox and Google Chrome users). Basically, it works as follows:

(1) You find a page which links to some other pages (let’s call them “linked pages“)
(2) You open the tool in the sidebar and provide the search term;
(3) The tool will look for the provided term on the linked pages and show you the summarized content.

I found the tool especially useful for various SERPs research.

Let me show one example: let’s say my main keyword is [diabetic diets] and I want to research which (and how many) pages found for its core term [diets] mention [diabetes] or [diabetic]. My steps would be:

1. (With Yolink installed) I search Google for [diets];

2. I click the Yolink icon in the address bar to toggle the tool sidebar; In the sidebar I provide my second keyword [diabetic] and choose one of the options (exact match, “best” match, match one of the search terms, match all the search terms):

3. Now I can watch the tool generate snippets from the linked pages and highlight my search term:

• The listing number represents the link on the base page (which is Google SERPs in our case);
• If there are several extracts containing the search term within one listing, they will be marked with letters;
• When you hover over any listing in Yolink results, you will be able to see its number on the base page:

4. Now just scroll through results to see which pages contain your term and how they use it:

Isn’t it useful?

More things you can do with Yolink:

• Scan the current page links or text;
• Send results directly to Blogger, Wordpress, Facebook or Twitter.

Do you see yourself using this tool? Please share your thoughts!

The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

More (Google) SERPs Research with Yolink