http://www.keepblogging.net/a-must-share-136-seo-tools/ http://www.keepblogging.net/a-must-share-136-seo-tools/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:10:01 +0000 Sam http://www.keepblogging.net/?p=1653

Our friends from SEO Company have released an article which includes 136 of the best SEO tools out there.

I think it’s really a must share and a must read, so I thought I’d make a post about it.

This SEO Tools page has links to the best SEO Tools on the internet and these tools will help you to optimize your website and move your search engine position higher.

So, without further delay, here’s the link

136 SEO Tools

Enjoy and see you at Google’s top!

Thanks for reading.

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I admit it. I’m pretty tired.

I navigate through my favorites forums, trying to find something interesting to blog about, something useful to share with my readers but, instead of that, I keep coming across the same question: When will Google update the Pagerank again?

As I’m tired about talking about the Pagerank, I’ll try to keep this post as short as possible.

First strike: There’s no need you keep worrying about the Google pagerank, as it has no SEO effects, it’s a known a proven fact.

A site with a low pagerank site can easily rank better than a high pagerank site. You can find dozens of examples on the Google results page.

So, high pagerank ≠ high search engine ranking

Second strike: What really matters, that is, the search engine ranking positions, are updated every day.

Anyway, the same goes with the pagerank, which is updated daily by Google, internally.

Why it doesn’t change every day on your toolbar you ask? Well, who care about that toolbar anyway, isn’t it?

Third strike: Stop asking a question which can’t be answered by anybody but Google Team.

Everyone always say that Google updates it every three months or so, which is totally false. As told before it’s updated every day internally but, as the way it shows on the Google toolbar, it can be updated every two days for a week then not being updated for the next eight months.

Nobody knows so, just stop asking, just don’t worry about it.

The only reason I think about why caring about Pagerank is the monetization viewpoint –to add a featured sites section- and popularity viewpoint –as it’s just cool to have a high pagerank blog-

You can check more about the Google Pagerank on one of my firsts posts: The myths of the SEO.

Recommended info

- More info on Pagerank

- Pagerank Sculpting

- Text links and Pagerank

Will I see less questions now about the Pagerank update? Hmm, probably not.

So was this post useless? Hmm, probably not –hopefully some will read it and have their doubts cleared.

Thanks for reading.

As requested, I’ve elaborated a new dofollow blog directories list so you can submit your site to directories and get a few backlinks.

As always, remember to make use of the anchor text.

Here’s the list, with the Url and the pagerank, as usual.

Enjoy! As you dear readers know, more to come, and remember that those directories that have low pagerank will have higher within the next months.

Thanks for reading.

Today I would like to post about a SEO problem that hundreds of newbies, when starting, and even some bloggers that have been blogging for some months can face.

This problem can lead to a dead blog and broke blogging dreams. I’m talking about the Google Sandbox.

Before starting, don’t panic, as it’s a problem that can be solved. If you’re facing it, it may take some time to return to a normal status, but you will.

Said so, let’s start.

Google Sandbox

What’s Google Sandbox?

The Google Sandbox effect is a drop on Google Search Engine rankings for some keywords, losing all the organic traffic from Google because of the pages that got removed from Google index.

Why does it happen?

It’s spam prevention.

It can happen because of various reasons:

-          Google won’t show a site until it proves itself to be worth to be displayed on the rankings.

-          A new site suddenly got thousands of backlinks on a very short timeframe.

-          Duplicate / not original content.

How to now my site is Sanboxed?

If you suddenly see a drop on search rankings results, a drop on pages indexed and traffic received from Google, then your blog is under the Google Sandbox effects. There’s no direct way to know it apart from the unexpected drop.

How to avoid it?

Now that you know what’s the Google sandbox effect, you must be wondering if there’s a way to avoid it, and if so, how to do it.

Yes, there’s a way to avoid to be sandboxed and to recover your rankings after it.

The way to avoid it has some coincidences with the way to be a successful blogger:

-          Unique and valuable content

-          Avoiding links farm and massive backlinks reception in short timeframe

-          Proper use of nofollow dofollow tags

Yes, that simple. Remember that the Sandbox is just the way that Google prevents spam, so there’s nothing special you should do to avoid it if you play fair.

How get out of Google Sandbox?

It depends. If you suddenly received tons of backlinks, there’s nothing else to do than wait, because receiving a massive amount of backlinks can confuse Google, considering that your site is using black hat techniques.

Using the Google reconsideration request may work too.

If your site isn’t appearing in Google search results, or it’s performing more poorly than it once did (and you believe that it does not violate our webmaster guidelines), you can ask Google to reconsider your site.

It may take a few weeks, but it can work. Before submitting the consideration, make sure you’ve check your site, checked all your pages and have fixed the mistakes, else it would be useless to submit it.

I started the post saying that it may lead a blogger to stop blogging, as after all the efforts made on the blog it suddenly drop on search rankings. Don’t panic, everything can be fixed!

Thanks for reading.

Checking around the blogosphere a came across quite a lot blogs, especially new blogs from newbie blogger, I realize that the vast majority didn’t have a favorite domain set.

Choosing a favorite domain or choosing your url to be displayed as www. domain . com without www is very quick task to do and very important. Reasons are inside the post.

Why to pick up one?

We’re always saying that, in order to increase SERPs, backlinks are crucial, apart from a decent on page seo and quality content.

This is true, but to get the maximum profit from seo juice it’s necessary to set a fixed domain, choosing whether your site’s url will be displayed along with www or without www.

It’s very important to pick up one and not leave both, because, as an example, you’ll get two different pagerank, one to the www version and another one to the non-www version, as backlinks will go to both versions. Your blog will look more professional too.

The first option to do it is using Google Webmaster’s Tools, from the configuration panel. You’ll only need to verify both sites are yours, www and without www, then choose which is your favorite one.

This just means that if the spider finds a link to your site that’s using the www version, but you want your site to be displayed and indexed without www and have specified it on the Google Webmaster’s Tools, the bot will see it and crawl it as a non www backlink, so you’ll get the PR juice where you’ve specified it.

Apart from that, we can set a 301 redirect, so that when a reader type, let’s say, the non-www version, it will be redirected to the version set, in this case, the www version.

Sounds pretty complicated, but it’s not.

To do the 301 redirect you’ll only need to edit the .htaccess on your root folder, and add the following code:

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. your site . whatever
RewriteRule (.*) http://www. yout site . whatever/$1 [R=301,L]

If you want your site without www, just remove the www on the code.

Make sure that before doing any changes you make a quick copy from your htaccess file, just to avoid any surprises.

Can one version be better than the other?

No. Just make sure you’ve a favorite one.

Now, all your problems around domains and www or non-www are finished. It’s very easy and quick to fix so do it ASAP, because you can get hurt.

Thanks for reading.

Yesterday I wrote a post about no index tags, what’s its use and why could you put them on your blog’s pages and get SEO benefits.

In order to clear this up a bit and make it pretty easy and all-in-one, if decided to create this simple but useful table that would clear any newbies and experts doubts.

Hopefully it will clear all doubts and destroy all myths around these tags that can really hurt if not used properly. So here we go.

And what about Search Engines besides Google? Do they see the properties the same way and accept them? Let’s see. As far as I know:

Recommended videos:

If you have something to add, don’t forget to drop a comment, I may have forgotten about something or gotten something wrong. I’d like to make it the best robots tag table around, so I’ll need very help possible to achieve it.

Hope it helps.

Thanks for reading.

I would lie if I say that SEO should be every blogger’s priority if ever wants to succeed on blogging.

Anyway, it’s one of those little factors that put together build your way to the ultimate living way: blogging.

That’s why today I feel like posting about SEO, more precisely, about no index tags.

As my post explaining the no follow tags had a positive impact, I thought it would be nice to comment the benefits of no index tags, because some bloggers are still wondering and have some doubts about some points that should be cleared, so let’s keep it simple and straight to the point.

Although there are no big secrets around them, it’s still worth a look.

Index / No index tags

This is the typical no index tag structure:

< html >

< head >

< meta name = “robots” content=”noindex” / >

< p > Content here < /p >

< /head >

< /html >

As you see, you call search engines robots to tell them not to index a particular page.

Once a spider start reading that page, it will automatically see the no index tag, so it will stop crawling it, avoiding it to be visible on SE.

It’s that simple.

Unless you modify it on your robots.txt file, your pages will be indexed by default.

Which are the effects of using no index tags?

The effects are clear: It’s used to avoid pages to appear on SE rankings.

Why would I want to exclude a page from Google?

You must be thinking “Hey! I want the maximum traffic possible! I’m not excluding any page at all!”

The real use of no index tags, from my point of view, comes when you want to avoid duplicate content and to avoid a bunch of “useless” pages to rank on search rankings, as it can hurt your rankings. As an example, you could include no index tags on your archives pages (weekly archives, monthly archives…)

Differences between disallowing on Robots.txt and using no index tag?

We will see more detailed info about this on further posts, but disallowing robots to crawl your site using robots.txt file won’t guarantee you that your site won’t show at rankings, but no index tags will.

Differences between nofollow and no index?

If you still have doubts about it you better check the post about dofollow and nofollow tags. Remember that no follow just prevents to pass reputation to the site you’re linking. It will still be crawled and ranked though.

What if I want to delete an indexed url?

Easy, just use the Google Removal Tool to request an url to be removed from the index.

This post completes the robots tags (Do Follow , no follow and no index).

I love SEO, so stay tuned for more SEO tips.

Thanks for reading.

Today, time for more SEO tips to make money blogging. Actually, this is the second part of the seo tips to make money blogging post series.

If you still don’t know why you need SEO to make money blogging, you better check the first post, as it’s an important factor.

SEO is a must to make money blogging especially when it comes to private ads sales, because if you rank well on Google (I mean within the top 5 for a particular keyword), advertisers will known that they will be getting targeted traffic.

I’m not saying that you won’t be able to get good private ad sales deals unless you rank on top of Search Engines, but I can guarantee you it will be A LOT easier and that you could ask a high price, because of that targeted traffic you’re receiving.

Marketing + content + SEO = Success.

Easy, isn’t it? Let’s first focus on SEO, so let’s start.

SEO tips to make money blogging

Last post finished talking about anchor text, so I’ll start this post talking about something related to it. I’m talking about backlinks.

1)      Backlinks: It’s essential to have backlinks pointing to your site to increase your SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position). Forums, blog commenting, killer posts… You should take your time to build backlinks to your site.

As an example, I spend 4-5 hours a week building backlinks to my site. You can get backlinks without moving a finger by posting killer articles, or working pretty hard, commenting on other blogs, submitting your sites, etc.

Since I started with keepblogging I really care about building backlinks, and I can say it’s worth it so far. Still working though. Stay tuned for future posts about how to build backlinks.

2)      Title tags: As explained on the previous post, with the current limitations on the on-page optimization side, you need to maximize its benefits. Your page title is the text placed between the title tags ( <title> </title> ), and it’s the text that will show on the top of your browser, as an example:

As you may have figured out by now, it’s important to include keywords on the title tags.

3)      Strong tags: You may know them as bold text too. It’s the text you write between the strong tags ( <strong> </strong> ). You use bold on texts because you want to emphasize or give an importance to a particular word, sentence or part of the body text, so readers can quickly see what’s the text’s all about or the important parts of it.

Well, Search Engines see bold text the same way as a person. That’s why it’s important to write keywords within the strong tags to show SE what your blog is about.

4)      Directories: Who said directories don’t matter? I reach top of Google for the keyword make money online on spanish with my spanish blog mainly because of submitting my blog to directories, because I didn’t have a clue about SEO at that time, I was just submitting my blog to directories like crazy. It helped me.

Different times, for sure, but still don’t underestimate directories!

You can find some do follow directories list within this blog.

5)      No follow: It’s extremely important to use no follow tags because linking to another site which has doubtful content will eventually penalize your site if you use the do follow technique, because you’ll be giving a vote / transferring reputation to that site.

Using no follow tags will prevent you to be penalized. I wrote a post about no follow tags long time ago, you can check it if you want, but to sum up, here’s an example about a no follow link:

<a href=”[insert website url here]” rel=”nofollow”>Make money blogging</a>

6)      Permalinks: The permalinks are just links to different pages or posts on your blog. As a default, the permalink structure is this one:

http://www.keepblogging.net/?p=123

To use, let’s say, SEO friendly permalinks, you should use a custom structure, as shown on this example:

You should use every blogging tip if you really want to make money blogging. Every detail, every small detail, adds up and has its importance.

Stay tuned for the next seo tips to make money blogging post.

Thanks for reading.

So, I’ve already gave away some SEO tips, not too much but enough to test you, dear readers.

You already know that in order to make money blogging you’ll need each and every blogging tip, and that includes SEO.

That’s why today I’m coming with some SEO tests to test your skills!

So… Do you have what it takes?

I’ve successfully completed all the tests, so if you need any kind of help feel free to ask.

Don’t cheat though, as you’ll be lying to yourself. This is just a funny way to learn SEO, not a competition

So without further info, here are the tests.

Test here

Test here

Remember to ask whatever you want, even if you feel it’s a dumb question. Apart from that, if you finish them, remember to drop a comment to check your results!

By the way, I know that there are more tests, but I lost the url of one of them, it was on DP forums, so if you know which test I’m talking about, please drop a comment. Thanks.

Thanks for reading.

SEO is VERY important. There are bloggers saying that content is king, others saying marketing is. I would add SEO too. Why? Because SEO can actually bring you money.

So, you can make money blogging thanks to SEO, reasons are inside the post, and it’s a key factor if you’re serious about blogging.

So today I’ve decided to make a list with some of the most important SEO factors you should always have in mind and apply if you haven’t yet.

I said that if you want to make money blogging you would want to have some good SEO skills, because it will provide you one of the the most important ingredients on the make money blogging recipe.

Seo tips to make money blogging

Why is SEO so important?

I said on the introduction that SEO should be named King too, along with Marketing and Content. Here are my reasons:

1)      SEO can market yourself if you reach Google front page. No doubt that hitting a search engine’s front page, specially Google’s front page, will give you lots of popularity (check my post about how to increase popularity, ranked #1 on Google for that term, by the way) so SEO is market – related.

2)      If you rank number one on Google, for, let’s say, blogging tips to make money blogging (as this blog ranks J ), when newbies look for blogging tips to make money blogging on Google, they will see your content.

As newbies, they will learn a lot from every source possible, so they will stick with your blog. Apart from that, if you rank high for a particular keyword means that you have some kind of valuable content, so SEO is content – related too.

That said, here comes some SEO tips. They won’t directly make you money, but will indirectly.

SEO tips

1)      Avoiding flash: Search engines have some kinds of problems with flash sites. They’ve difficulties to crawl them correctly, so the most you can avoid using them, the better.

Anyway, Adarsh recently made a post about how to improve a flash site; you can check the post here.

2)      Alt tags: You have surely heard about Google for Images. They can provide you traffic too. Apart from that, alt images have a dramatic impact when it comes to on page optimization.

Alt tags are used to display text when the image won’t load, showing a related description instead.

It would be interesting to put some keywords on alt tags, as an example:

<img alt=”A guy blogging to make money blogging” src=”http://yoursite.com/images/guy-blogging-for-money.jpeg”

width=”280″ height=”435″ />

3)  Using H tags: H1, h2, h3 tags are used to measure the importance of a particular sentence. H1 will be the most important, followed by h2,h3 etc.

You would say you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to make good use of H tags, but it has a proper way to be applied. H2 should always follow an h1 tag, and both should have always some keywords on it.

Putting keywords on h tags will show Spiders and readers what’s a particular article about, and the most important parts.

4)  Using anchor text: Anchor text is very important. With the current limitations on the meta tags, the rest of factors get more importance than ever.

Anchor text is the text displayed that links to a particular site. As shown is this example:

<a href=”http://www.keepblogging.net/”>Make money blogging | blogging tips to make money blogging </a>

It’s known what it provides information to Search Engines bots about what the site’s about.

Before finishing, I’d like to make a quick true or false section:

1)  No follow tags are useless: Wrong. Some people think that linking won’t hurt, but it’s false. Linking to a site which has doubtful content will eventually penalize you. No follow tags prevent to pass reputation to that site, hence, you won’t be penalized.

2)  If a bad site links to me, I’ll be penalized: Wrong. You can’t control sites linking to you. It would be a mess. Imagine what would happen. You could easily kill your competition by just making sites with illegal content and linking to them. Don’t worry, just see the point above.

3)  Disallowing robots.txt will prevent pages to get indexed on Google: Wrong. If your site has “User-agent: *
Disallow: /” but get’s linked frequently, it will be indexed anyway.

How to avoid it? Using the no index tag.

You can find more info about it watching this Matt Cutts’ video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBdEwpRQRD0&feature=player_embedded

That’s all for now, as the post is getting too long. I’ve realized that I will need to make a post series about this, as it has tons of things to say.

Thanks for reading.