SEO White Hats » Search Engine Optimization Tools

The Best SEO Plugins For WordPress

seowhitehats — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:45:55 +0000

Listed below are some of the best SEO Plugins for WordPress, which either enhance WordPress features or just make things easier.

SEO
Meta Robots WordPress Plugin – Adds meta tags automatically to posts
Aizatto’s Related Posts – Adds related post information to posts and feeds
Cross-Linker – Set up commonly used words to link to posts or redirects (also useful for affiliate links)
Sitemap Generator – Automatically builds and HTML style sitemap
Google (XML) Sitemaps – Automatically build and ping multiple sitemap services with an XML file
HeadSpace 2 – A monster plugin that lets you rewrite titles, meta data, and host of other features watch the video on the page for the full list of features
SEO Title Tag – Don’t need all the power of Headspace try SEO title tag
SEO Slugs – keeps slugs from becoming too long

Utilities
Secure Form Mailer – makes building and integrating multiple and custom forms easy
FeedBurner FeedSmith – Makes integrating with feedburner easy
Feed Footer – Adds advertising, copyright or other custom messages into feeds
Flickr Photo Album – Integrate your flickr photo’s, albums, sets, and groups into your website
flickrRSS for WordPress – add photos from any flickr RSS feed into your website
Future Posts Calendar Plugin – A calendar that shows which days you have posts scheduled to publish, very helpful for multiple authors and scheduled posts.
Full Text Feed – Lets you use the “more” tag and still publish full feeds
GoCodes Redirection Plugin – Add tiny URL style functionality into your blog
Got Banners – Makes adding advertising banners quick and easy without having to monkey with the template
Highlight Author Comments – Makes giving authors comments a different style much easier
Objection Redirection! – Makes setting 301’s (especially lots of them) easy as pie
WordPress Organizer – Makes adding and managing uploads and images easier
Who Sees Ads – Makes ads or other elements conditionally displayed
Absolute Comments – Makes replying to comments and managing them much easier
Photo Dropper – Makes adding Creative Commons licensed photos from flickr quick and easy
Search Pages – Lets the search box search both posts and pages
Permalink Redirect – Keep urls with parameters from being indexed
WordPress Mobile Edition – Display a simple stripped down version of your site to mobile users
WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin – Save yourself thousands of hours of time upgrading WordPress
WordPress Database Backup – Automate backups of your blog

Social Media
Increase Sociability WordPress Plugin – Display custom messages for people who came from social sites like Digg and Stumbleupon
ShareThis – add buttons for social networks under the share this icon
Subscribe to Comments – let people subscribe and be notified when new and follow up comments are made
What Would Seth Godin Do – Display a message to a new visitor on your blog
Twitter Tools – Integrate twitter functionality into your blog

Maintenance
Close Old Posts – Closes old posts keeps them from becoming spam targets and maintenance issues
Search and Replace – Lets you easily search and replace information in your database
Simple Tags – Manage and get tag suggestions for all posts

Reports and Analytics
Blog Metrics – Gives you comments and stats on monthly and author levels
Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports – get feedburner and google analytics in your wordpress admin section
Search Meter – Find out what people are searching for on your site

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HCards, Microformats & Address Data – Does It Matter For SEO?

seowhitehats — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:02:04 +0000

When working to optimize your website for search engine use, there are many tools and techniques that you can use. In the following article, we will discuss HCards, microformats, address data and whether or not these tools and techniques matter for SEO optimization. Before you use any of these SEO tools, it is a good idea to know what they are and how they are used.

Hcards are a microformat that are used for publishing contact details of companies, people or other organizations. When using an HCard, these contact details with be put into arbitrary XML, (X)HTML or RSS, which are microformats. HCards allow parsing tools to obtain this contact information, which will allow the information to be mapped, indexed, searched or loaded into an address book/data program. This microformat may or may not be useful to you. For example, if you are working on a project that is more locally driven, HCards are not something that you will desperately need to implement. HCards are something that you will want to use on bigger projects, as they will start to give you an increasing pull with search engines. If you have the time, HCards are something that you could try out to see if they help your website’s SEO optimization. Microformatting of any sort will give your website some increased pull in the search engines. The results you will get may vary.

Address data can be helpful in SEO optimization if used correctly. In fact, address data can do more for your site than just SEO optimization. Some people and companies check websites for address data to tell whether it is trustworthy or not. The address data is looked upon by these people or companies as a sort of anchor to the real world. They will be able to tell whether or not your website and it’s information is legitimate. If you are interested in having address data on your website that will allow people or companies to verify your legitimacy, a Google Profile will be very useful to you. If you do use address data on your website, it will help with your SEO optimization as well as make you legitimate.

Why iPhone Apps Can Drive Traffic to Your Site

seowhitehats — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:29:39 +0000

Applications for the Apple iPhone – often referred to as Apps – can help drive significantly more traffic to your web site in a number of ways. Here’s why:

1.) You can create apps that make it less difficult to use your web site on an iPhone. For example, PayPal offers an application that enables phone users to easily conduct transactions in their accounts. FedEx and USA Today provide similar programs.

2.) Offering specialized iPhone apps for download on your site can also drive more traffic to it, even if they are non-Internet applications (like games). Fewer apps exist for it than the major systems like Windows and Linux, so it isn’t as hard to compete for traffic.

3.) Programmers can submit their free or commercial apps to Apple for inclusion in the iTunes App Store. If successful, this has the potential to drive much more traffic to the associated web site and expose many Apple users to it for the first time.

4.) Applications which refer to or interface with your web site remind people to continue using it, making them more likely to become repeat visitors. Gaining regular repeat users is far preferable to always having to attract new visitors.

Why is this important? In early 2008, Nielsen Mobile estimated that approximately 2,300,000 Americans use the iPhone and about eighty-two percent of them connect to the Internet with it. Such a large number of users offer great potential for web site traffic and sales.

iPhone ownership also likely indicates that a user is willing to purchase fairly expensive products and services, which adds to the value of working to enhance iPhone-based traffic.

Many such apps also work on the iPod Touch, a somewhat less costly alternative to the iPhone. Ensuring compatibility with the Touch should drive additional traffic to your site.

10 Ways to Get Free Traffic

7 Great Things About Google Suggest

seowhitehats — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:37:52 +0000

Even if you haven’t heard about Google Suggest, you may have seen it in action while typing a search query on Google. As you type, it displays suggested search phrases in a drop-down menu below the search box. Here are seven great things about using Google Suggest:

1.) It can make entering long search queries much faster; searchers may use the mouse pointer or down arrow key to select a desired suggestion, after only typing a few letters.

2.) Because its content is partially based upon other searchers’ queries, Google Suggest is great for learning about what sort of things people are searching for on the web.

3.) Google Suggest can be helpful for getting new writing ideas on a particular category you are interested in; just type in one or two words describing the subject.

4.) This Google feature is also great for helping you remember the names of places, songs, products, and other things that you can only recall a portion of.

5.) It lets users preview how many results there are for a particular word or phrase. The number of results is listed to the right of each suggested query (in no particular order).

6.) Additionally, this tool makes it easier to search for words you don’t know how to spell. Type the first few letters of the word, and there’s a good chance the rest will be suggested.

7.) Google Suggest pops up quickly and works under most major web browsers. It doesn’t require the installation of any extra software or new browser plug-ins.

If you prefer to use another search engine, it may have an equivalent to Google Suggest. Yahoo! has “Search Assist” and Ask.com offers “Search Suggestions”. These are quite similar, except that they don’t show the number of results alongside each suggestion.

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Google Webmaster Tools Importance to Webmasters

seowhitehats — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:03:33 +0000

Google.com offers its Webmaster Tools service to all webmasters free of charge. The tools provide a range of useful statistics, the ability to communicate certain search listing preferences directly to Google, and diagnostic features that list search optimization errors to correct.

Google Webmaster Tools holds great importance to webmasters for two main reasons:

1.) It gives webmasters a “look under the hood” of how Google works, which provides them with a greater understanding of search result rankings and indexing.

2.) It enables webmasters to get a better idea of what Google “thinks” about their web sites, how the Google “spider” sees them, and what improvements could be made.

MANY USEFUL FEATURES

In addition to interactively helping webmasters better comply with Google’s guidelines, Webmaster Tools can automatically perform various useful services like creating a Robots.txt file, counting links, or generating custom 404 error page messages.

Webmasters can not only find out what Google search phrases brought visitors to their sites, but the searches that made their pages show up in results. This holds importance because it may be used to determine what pages need more attractive description tags.

Site listing preferences like URL style (show “www” in results or not), image search inclusion, country-specific targeting, and “spidering” frequency, may be set in Google Webmaster Tools as well (under the “Settings” tab).

OVERALL IMPORTANCE

It is of the most importance that Webmaster Tools gives webmasters clear information on how to make their sites more acceptable to Google, the top search engine. This has the potential to raise a site’s position in results, considerably increasing its traffic.

However, the Webmaster Tools service does not replace Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tasks like META tag creation, keyword density enhancement, or link building. It also doesn’t take into account the policies of different search engines like Yahoo and MSN, which also hold importance.

OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Do other major engines offer Webmaster Tools equivalents? To some extent, yes. MSN/Live has the Live Search Webmaster Center (webmaster.live.com), and the “Webmaster Resources” section of Yahoo! Help offers some useful links within their site. Ask.com has a page oriented to webmasters as well.

ABOUT GOOGLE.COM

According to their web site, Google was incorporated in 1998 and relocated to Mountain View, CA (its current location) a year later. Google’s importance to webmasters grew as it rapidly became the top engine in following years, and Webmaster Tools was established in 2006.

Considering that this service is free and easy to register for, there is little reason for webmasters not to give it a try.

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How to Create Labels and Filters in GMail

seowhitehats — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:35:33 +0000

Gmail has a lot of features beyond just sending and receiving email. Some of these are included to but not limited to creating filters and labels. Having filters and lables allows you to organize your email quickly and efficiently. We all receive lots of email each day – we might as well keep our Gmail accounts organized.

After I created my video I did a little research and found a video from Google. Ours is a little bit shorter without all the fluff!

Filters and Labels – Google

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Geo-Location SERP Results for Other Countries

seowhitehats — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:00:51 +0000

Here is a fast way to see how your rankings are working in other countries. You simply have to add the string &gl=XX to the end of the URL in your browser. XX is the 2-letter ISO country code you need, i.e. RU for Russia, AU for Australia

http://www.google.com/search?q=internet+marketing&pws=0&hl=en&num=10&gl=au

This is a quick way to check Search Results in other countries as well as average position for Google Adwords campaigns. Here is a list of ISO country codes from Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1

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Top 7 Firefox Plugins and Add-Ons for SEO

seowhitehats — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:24:30 +0000

Many people may not think of Firefox as an SEO tool, but in actuality, it’s a great one. It works well for SEO for many reasons. Among them are that it’s free, secure, works on Mac, Windows, and Linux with the same features and functionality and has a large developer network creating extension that are generally independent.

After you make the decision to use Firefox though, it can be overwhelming deciding which plugins you should use. To that end, here is a list of the 7 highly useful plugins and what you can use them for:

1. SEOQuake – This tool helps analyze search results and various parameters that may influence SEO such as Google PR (Google PageRank of current page), Google Index (Number of indexed pages. Google version), Google link (Number of links, pointed to the current page. Google version (Except links from concerned domain) as well as similar parameters for many other search engines (Yahoo, MNS, Yandex, Rambler, Baidu) and some other miscellaneous parameters.

2. SEOpen: Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization, including Google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using the included toolbar. (Note: Not yet compatible with Firefox 3.0)

3. SEO Link Analysis: Adds display of PageRank, linktext and nofollow links to external links in Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Microsoft Webmaster Portal.

4. Mahalo Share: Share and recommend Web pages across many different services; recommend a link once and have it automatically posted to any of Twitter, del.icio.us, MySpace, Ma.gnolia, Jaiku, your Tumblr blog, Facebook, Pownce, StumbleUpon, Mahalo, Faves, or Google Bookmarks.

5. SearchStatus: Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and more.

6. RankQuest SEO Toolbar: RankQuest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensure the popularity of the site. Once you download and install the SEO Toolbar you are only one or two clicks away from carrying out most of your day to day SEO operations.

7. About This Site: One-click access to web site metadata – traffic, related and linked pages, and more – added to the Tools menu and context menu.

Top 10 SEO Secrets

Website Info Tools – Quarkbase & Website Grader

seowhitehats — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:34:29 +0000

There are lots of different tools online that provide quick data regarding websites, two sites that we use are Quarkbase and Website Grader. Here is a quick overview of Mortgage101.com using both tools along with some interpretation of the information found by the tools.

Using Advanced Google Searches for SEO Purposes

seowhitehats — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:35:39 +0000

Google supports query words that have special meaning to Google. These are known as advanced operators and modify a search in some way or tell Google to do a different type of search. Quite a few of these operators use punctuation instead of words and quite a few of them are accessible from the Advanced Search page of Google. Here is a list of the more common types and what they do.

link: Using the query [link:www.webpage.com] will list web pages that have links to the web page you specify. Make sure you do not put a space between the “link:” and the web page URL.
related: The query [related:www.webpage.com] will list web sites that are similar to the web page you specified. Again, you cannot leave a space between the colon and the web site specified.
site: This query [site:www.webpage.com] allows Google to restrict the results to the web sites in the given domain.
allintitle: This query [allintitle:example search] restricts the search results to ones with all of the query words in the title.
intitle: [intitle:example search] restricts the results to documents containing the word you search for in the title.
allinurl: [allinurl:example search] limits the results to ones will all of the query words in the URL. This query works on words only and not URL components.
inurl: [inurl:example search] confines the search results to documents containing that word in the URL.

Keep in mind there can be no space between the colon and the first word in any of these queries. Using these advanced Google searches as well as the additional ones found on Google can help you with your search engine optimization

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