SEOmoz recently launched a new link popularity checker and backlink analysis tool called Open Site Explorer. While I find the tool to be useful there is nothing really revolutionary about the tool. However, I do like using the tool compared to what I’ve been using before simply because of the clear presentation of results, which makes for a good quick check.

To be honest I haven’t really twiddled much with the Open Site Explorer so there’s likely hidden gems I haven’t found. To remedy my lack of knowledge on the other possible uses I will be attending the FREE Webinar SEOmoz is giving Thursday. There will be actually 2 webinars to be held on Wednesday, January 27th at 2:00PM (PST), and Thursday, January 28th at 10:00AM (PST). To join the Open Site Explorer webinar register here.  I am not sure if there’s still a slot for the Wednesday webinar but just a few minutes ago I registered for the Thursday webinar and got in. I suggest you join to learn the ins and outs without having to even strain a bit figuring out what you can possibly do. In my experience webinars like these where half the time is spent in Q&A can yield gems in terms of tips from the experts.

If you’re booked for both schedules or just didn’t get a slot you can view the webinar later in SEOmoz’s webinars page.

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Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all came together early this year to support the use of canonical tags. But what are canonical tags and what’s the use to us?

Canonical tags were created to help address the problem of duplicate content. We already know that there are already existing ways to address this problem such as 301 redirects and the use of sitemaps, however, in many instances these solutions are not enough. To make life easier for webmasters canonical tags were created. The tags help with duplicate content by telling search engines what URL you want them to index in place of a page’s uglier URL version. The syntax is also very simple and makes use of only one line that needs to be typed into the HEAD part of the page document. For example if you have a page with a URL like http://www.somepage.com/ example.html?sid=54321 you of course would prefer the search engine not to index that URL, especially if you have a nicer duplicate URL like http://www.somepage.com/example.html. So what do you do? All you need to do is type in:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.somepage.com/example.html"/>

And search engines will automatically honor your wishes. No sweat. Duplicate issues resolved. Now that’s one less problem you won’t need to worry about.

You can also watch Matt Cutts’ interview with WebProNews last February to learn more about canonical tags.

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One of the most indispensable tools for any webmaster who wants to rank in Google is obviously Google’s Webmaster Tools, after all no one knows better what tools you need to keep track of your site’s statistics. Besides Webmaster Tools allows us to tweak settings so as to ensure that Google takes note of our indexing preferences. Webmaster Tools also allows us to do so many other things. Anyway Google has recently redesigned and released a new user interface for the Webmaster Tools.

For me the best feature of the new UI is the new one-stop shop dashboard. It makes it much easier to view relevant data. If you haven’t switched to the new UI you can check out the new functionalities without logging into your account by simply watching the YouTube video embedded below. You’d better start getting used to the new UI though because the final switch to the new look is coming pretty soon. No need to worry about the learning curve though because the new UI is really much more easy to use than the old one.

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There are plenty of SEO tools out there but one of my favourites is SEO Toolbar. Aaron Wall has some other good SEO tools but this ones my favourite so far. Its really cool because its very comprehensive in terms of the information it displays. And since it is a toolbar all the information can be seen with just a glance.

Stuff you will learn about the webpage your currently on with just a glance at the basic SEO Toolbar includes the page’s:

• Google pagerank
• Yahoo! Linkdomain – rough estimate of the number of links pointing to the domain
• Yahoo! Link – rough estimate of the number of links pointing to the page
• Number of links from DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory, and BOTW Directory
• Sites’s age according to Archive.org
• Monthly unique hits
• Estimated traffic value

And all that with just the basic part of the toolbar! More information can be found in the advanced option (click on the icon) such as site links and page links from .edu and .gov links, social media links, Google cache date, etc. So with just one toolbar I now get all the basic stuff I need to check out site statistics relevant to SEO.

One non-SEO features I like is the ease with which you can turn the toolbar on and off, important to me since I don’t feel like thinking about SEO when reading my friends personal blogs and doing other personal stuff. We need time off from work!

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When Google Insights was introduced last year we told you just a bit about, I think it’s high time for those who didn’t really look into what it has to offer to know just what you can get out of it.

As the tagline says Google Insights lets you “see what the world is searching for.” Basically it is the same as Google Trends in this respect but the great thing about Insights is that it lets you compare search volume patterns by category, seasonality or time frame and geographic region

It is very easy to do this as well since you only need to tick the circle that corresponds to how you want to compare the search terms volume pattern, enter the search term, and choose your filter, then click on the search button.

For example I wanted to see how the search volume pattern of the search term “seo” in the United Kingdom. What is returned to me is the search volume from 2004 to 2008 which shows a steady increase in search volume. Regional interest results in the search term shows that if you want to target specific areas the best areas to target would be England first then Wales and Scotland. Forget Northen Ireland, Isle of Man, and Channel Islands because those regions don’t show any search volume for the term SEO!

As for your keyword research you’ll be glad to know that Insights also lists the top 10 related keywords and the top 10 keywords that are rising in search volume. With SEO the top rising related terms searched are “wordpress seo”, “what is seo”, “seo tool”,”seo tips”, and “seo jobs”.

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Ann Smarty just wrote a real smart (I know the puns corny but I couldn’t resist!) post about comprehensive keywords analysis. There she outlined some ways that will help you do a more in depth keywords analysis sans the usual keyword research tools.

Some of the tools she mentioned included”

• Dictionaries;
• Lexicons;
• Twitter search; and
• Synonym listing tools such as Google Adwords External and Synonym.com.

In the post she described how each tool can be used to come up with a more comprehensive list of keywords that will make for richer content.

Obviously this type of keywords research is only for those that are really committed to learning more about their own content AND doing the best possible SEO job. The great thing about this is that you will not only be relying on popular user data but will actually be learning about the words meaning, synonyms, and context. Due to the exhaustive nature of the research Ann does not advice that you do this for each and every keyword you wish to target but only for the core keywords in your site, the ones that you have already deemed to be most important.

In the end even if you do not end up optimising your site at least you’ll be smarter with all those words and their origin crammed in your head. ^_^

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Though I maintain blogs in both Wordpress and Blogger, it seems to me that there are more developers focusing on Wordpress and as a result, there is always something new to do with a Wordpress blog.  Of course, I could be wrong – it could just be my impression.

Anyhow, I read a press release from SEO Content Solutions, an SEO copywriting firm.  They have just released a new widget for Wordpress and it is totally free.  Here is an excerpt of the release:

Bloggers can now boast the number of current and cumulative daily visitors on their Wordpress blogs, as well the locations of the 5 most current visitors. Launched by SEO Content Solutions, a leading SEO copywriting firm, the new Online Now Wordpress Widget is free to all and compatible with all Wordpress versions.

“We wanted to create something that was both fun and functional for the blogging community. Not only does the ‘Online Now’ Wordpress Widget pique the interest of a casual reader, but it also validates the blog by proving that readers from all over the world frequently read and comment,” said Christine O’Kelly, Founder and Co-Owner of SEO Content Solutions.

Bloggers who love statistics – I am one of those! – will appreciate a widget like this.  Furthermore, stats are an important part of any SEO effort.  And when you can combine fun and function, there is no need to complain!  If you want to check out this new Wordpress Widget, you can visit SEO Content Solutions and download the widget.  You can also see a preview of the widget so that you can determine whether or not the visuals match your blog.

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In the previous post, we took a look at how to use the command site: in Google. We talked about the syntax and one advantage of using it – that is, to find out how much of your site is indexed. Are there other advantages to using the site: command? Are there any other pieces of information that we can make use of? Of course! Let us take a look at more of them.

I am assuming that you tried using the site: command with your domain name already. If so, did you notice that beside each result that you got from the search, there was a link named “cached?” Before, I didn’t really pay attention to this. Then I learned that it actually means something in terms of SEO. If you click this link, you will see the page and then some information is displayed.

That information is important – it tells you when that page was last crawled by Google. So how is this important again? Well, the more often that your pages get crawled, the better. So if your page has not been cached in a long time, you need to adjust your strategy and maybe tweak your content.

Another thing is that you can actually find out if you have duplicate content by using the site: command. If you see different URLs having the same content (for example http://yourdomain.com/about and https://yourdomain.com/about) then you can do something about – delete one.

Any personal experiences with this command?

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If you like using Google a lot (who doesn’t, really?), then you must know that there are various commands that you can use aside from simply entering keywords in the search box. These commands can help in narrowing down searches and getting more relevant results immediately. What might not be commonly known, however, is that many of the commands can be used for SEO purposes, more specifically, to analyze the performance of your web site.

One such command is the site: command. The syntax is very simple:

site:yourdomain

So, for example, you want to use this command for Smart PageRank, you need to key in

site:smartpagerank.com

Now that you know how to use that command, what is its use? Is it simply a cool thing to do or does it have implications for SEO? Of course it does!

One piece of information that you can find out from the results of a search of using this command is how much of your site is indexed. The idea behind this kind of search is that all or a large number of the pages in your web site should come up in the results. So, for example, if your web site has 300 pages and only 50 results show up, then that means there is a problem with the navigation. That means that Google is not seeing the other pages.

Naturally, you have to fix this problem. How can people find out about your other pages if they cannot be found by Google? Try optimizing your site map if you have one. Also, work on getting more inbound links to your other pages.

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In the previous post, we took a look at two of the best forums to visit if you want to learn more about web site optimization, courtesy of About.com. Let us take a look at a few more and hopefully, you guys will be able to visit them and pick up an insight or two.

Web Site Optimization Forum #3: Webmaster World
WebmasterWorld.com is a great Web site optimization forum. Lots of intense design discussions here, as well as topics such as search engines, search engine marketing, paid inclusion, and more. This is a very active forum and topics change fast. I personally enjoy the Marketing World sub-forum the most.

Web Site Optimization Forum #4: Cre8asite Forums
Cre8asite Forums are great for learning about anything from website usability to blogs and RSS to Web site optimization and more. I especially enjoy the Tutorials section, there’s always something good here.

Web Site Optimization Forum #5: SEO Chat
SEOchat forums are good forums for getting fast answers to somewhat difficult or complicated questions. The topics are all about different aspects of Web site optimization – anything from Alexa ranking to link popularity to Google AdWords. This is a forum that I tend to visit quite often; there’s just so much good info here.

Web Site Optimization Forum #6: Digital Point Forums
Digital Point’s forums are another good place on the Web to get information about anything to do with Web site optimization. You can also find support for the Digital Point Keyword Tracker here.

There are several more items on the list at About.com. If I were you, I would take a look at them. You can never get enough information!

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