The SEO News Blog from Pat Marcello

I admit it… I made a foolish blunder.

I trusted my SEOQuake add-on for Firefox to tell me about Twitter. It was showing that I had links coming back from my profile and that they were “do follow” links, when ehhhhhhh….  (See http://ovblogger.com/1694/google-ranks-twitter-profiles/)

Someone questioned me on this, and so, I went into the page source for my Twitter profile page and there you see it  [rel="nofollow"] right in the code.

Somebody shoot me.

Everything I wrote in that Twitter post is wrong. Don’t use your Twitter page for sending links anywhere because the spiders can’t follow them. So, it really doesn’t matter if your page is a PR10, it doesn’t help.

But here’s the thing that will be cool: The most visitors you get to your Twitter profile and the higher your page rank goes, the higher your profile page will go int the SERPs. You ‘ll get traffic to your links just because people want to find out more about you. So…

Tweet away. Don’t go nuts thinking that you’ll get link juice from Twitter, though, because it just ain’t going to happen.

Grr… SEOQuake. I really like that add-on, but if I have to go back and double check everything it tells me… ppfffftttt!!!

Mea culpa.

This is a test.

Seriously. I juts added ScribeFire Blog Editor to Firefox. I’ve been hesitating doing this because I’m right at home with my blog. I use Fast Dial as my homepage, so it’s really easy to get to. One click on my Fast Dial page or one click in my lower toolbar… what’s the diff, eh?

But I’m hearing all kinds of great things about this add-on, and there are times when I’m at a web page and want to blog about it, but think… I’ll get to it later and never do. Maybe this will stop that arrested intent blogging.

Here are some cool features:

• You can preview the post in your blog template or just in the Scribefire template. Kind of cool, but I rarely preview my posts. I hit send very quick and then, am glad that I have MaxBlog Press’s Ping Optimizer installed so that edits don’t matter to the blog directories since they’re only pinged once.
• It shows you the last several posts you have made in the “Entries” tab.
• You can select which category you want the post to fall into.
• It allows you to add TrackBack URLs, which I think is kind of redundant for WordPress, which does that automatically.
• Allows you to add images.
• Has a special button for YouTube video additions
• Will find related articles for you with Zemanta (notice the links at the end of this post leading to other articles), which is kind of cool
• You can make money with in-text links from InLinks.com
• You can bookmark at Propeller, Facebook, Digg, Fark, StumbleUpon, and Newsvine from the “promote” tab.

continue reading »

You already know that I’m a Firefoxaholic. I really love the browser and all it’s cool stuff, and today, I found another great add-on that is SEO oriented.

You know how you can search from your Navigation Toolbar? I have a bunch of stuff in there that makes searching in my favorite places really easy. You can add stuff like Amazon, the IMDB (Internet Movie Database), and even look up domains on GoDaddy.

Today, I found a way to do some quick keyword research from there, too, at a site called continue reading »

You know how much I love things that make my life easier, right? Well, there’s a new add-on for Firefox that you’ll have to try. It’s called “History Tree,” and you can get it here: http://normansolomon.org.uk/histTreeHelp/tutorial.html. I think I just fell in love with Norman Solomon, who developed it. (Hi, Norman! Just kidding. Married 36 years now. )

So many times I’ve wanted to go back to a page that I hit hours before, and well… did you ever try to wade through all the stuff you do during the day? I must hit a thousand online pages a day at least. It’s impossible!

History tree is awesome! It gives you not only where you’ve been, clearly and succinctly, but it allows you to see your path visually, so that you can see where you came from, where you went, and how to get back to where you want to go. I’m in heaven.

I just installed it and haven’t been to too many places yet, but here’s a screenshot of how it looks:

Neat? I think you’ll love it, too.

When you want to use it, you just to to the “Tools” tab in your top navigation bar, and click on “History Tree.” Then, it should be pretty easy to find whatever it is you’re looking for. Can’t wait to try it out for all my meandering on a daily basis. I’ll bet you’re in that boat, too and will be happy with the results that history tree provides. Let me know your thoughts!

There’s a new add-on in town, and guess what? It’s for Firefox… the “SEO’s browser.”

Really, Firefox is just the bomb for quick SEO evaluations of a site. I’ve told you about SEOQuake and Search Status before, but today, I found this new add-on called “FoxyLinks.”

When you land on a page, it will give you the same information as the add-ons mentioned above, but here’s the cool part about this add-on…

It shows you how much “link juice” will come to you from having a link on that page. It also tells you about no-follow links, whether there’s a blocking robots.txt, and you can get all the info just by clicking an icon in your tray.

The only really cool part that makes it worth having in addition to SEOQuake, which is still my favorite eval tool, is the indicator of how valuable it will be to have a link on someone else’s website. It doesn’t always make sense you know.

When there are so many links on a page that it’s distributing you .01% link juice, why bother?

Page rank distribution works like this: If you have 10 links on the page, each one will distribute 10% of the PR from that page. (The page in question doesn’t lose page rank from this, by the way.) But if there are 100 links on the page, watch what happens… now, you only get 1% of the PR in link juice. BIG difference, eh?

What FoxyLinks does is automatically count the links on the page and calcualtes the link juice ratio for you. Sweet!

If you’re really into this SEO stuff like me, it’s the small stuff that matters. But the add-on is still in Beta so be wary of adding it. If Firefox starts doing funky things (and 3.0.11 has enough funk to suit me for sure), then you’ll just have to deactivate it. But I thought I’d give it a try out. Imagine knowing how effective a link will be without doing the math!

Oh, and by the way…

If you want to learn all there is about SEO from the ground up so that it’s easy to understand, try Spider Language, a course from me & Tellman that will put you on the right track. Believe me, it’s not really rocket science. You just need to hear all about it in human terms.  Get your first month for only $4.95.

If you use images, and who doesn’t, do you ever consider their size?  I mean, do you plunk them into a web page in Front Page fresh out of the scanner and think it’s OK?

Whoa! It’s definitely NOT OK.

Scanners usually produce humongous images that are Megabytes in size, just because they produce them in a format that creates such a huge file. Or, because it’s a full-size image you’re using when you really only need a thmbnail.

Before putting any images into your pages, consider the size. If it’s more than a couple of hundred KB, you probably need to resize it.

There are plenty of ways to do that, and some folks have Adobe Photoshop, which is a pretty expensive program. Yet, if they spent that much, chances are they already know about changing image sizes. So… let’s talk about a program that works much like Photoshop but is infinitely less expensive… it’s free.

The program is called “Gimp,” and you can do much the same stuff with is as you can with Photoshop, which is really sweet for free. It will open photoshop images, too, so that you can work on them.  You can download it at Gimp.org

But even resizing images may not be enough. If you really want to crank up your pages and crank down their sizes, try a Firefox Add-on called Smush.it. You can go to the site, feed it an image and it will “smush” it down for you. I had an image of Tellman smushed from 64K to 2.6K. Imagine how much faster your pages will load with a little smushing.

And think of how much happier your visitors will be when they don’t have to sit there waiting for your 2M image to load up. Oh yeah, and Smush.it is free, too.  So, take the image into Gimp and resize it to reasonable dimensions and then Smush.it!

WordPress came out with version 2.8 today and I didn’t wait an hour to install the new version. Why would I when the blog will do it for you, eh? I mean, they’re making things easier and easier and I’m loving it!

So, what’s new? The color of my dashboard changed. It’s now a putty grey with blue headers. Hmm… not that thrilling.

But there are some things that don’t show. They have fixed some 790+ bugs. That works for me. I’ve been getting kicked off Firefox when trying to add an image. Let’s hope THAT one is fixed.

One of the coolest improvements is that WP2.8 allows you to search for and change themes without leaving your blog. Not too bad. As a constant theme changer, this is very cool for moi.

The widgets interface looks different now, too. Plus, you can drag and drop to add or delete, and I like that the old information goes away when you get rid of one. Plus, now, when you add a widget, you don’t have to save the content in it and the sidebar, too. Only one save is sufficient.

Anyway, here’s a list of all the upgrades, if you want to read through it: http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.8

The changes aren’t quite as sweeping as they were with WP 2.7, but hey… they’re still pretty sweet.

I have a few cool plugins for Firefox, but one of my favorites is “Search Status.” Here are some things it does:

• It provides not just Google Page Rank, like the Google Toolbar does, but Alexa ranking of any page you land on as well. And these ranks sit in your lower toolbar and you can see it automatically. You can also see a compete rank and an mozRank, which measures the link juice coming into that site, as well.

When you right click on the Search Status symbol (an @, but with a q in the middle), it will show you the following about any site you visit:

• Highlights “no follow” links. Want to see if a blog is allowing spiders to follow links? Turn this option on and all “no follow” links appear in little pink boxes. You may want to use this when considering the site’s link potential.

• Gives you a link report on. How many are coming in/going out? How many of them are follow links?

• Shows the META tags and description

• Shows what the site looked like historically.

• Gives you robots.txt, whois, and sitemap

• Provides the keyword density and highlights any keyword you choose

• Shows all pages indexed in Google, Yahoo, and MSN (now bing.com)

• Shows the sites linking back in Google, Yahoo, and MSN

So, you can learn much of the SEO data just from this little plugin. Of course, some of it overlaps with the data you get from SEO Quake, but I think you really need both plugins to have a fully functional SEO browser. I mean, there are other SEO add-ons for Firefox, but these are 2 I couldn’t do without.

And if you want a firm foundation in SEO, visit http://SpiderLanguage.com

So, today has been a frustrating one, and I’m in a pretty testy mood right now.

Want to know what’s on my mind?

OK…

1) I HATE Internet Explorer. All versions. Hate it.

IE is a developer’s nightmare. It’s very quirky, and often won’t recognize what you want to do. For example, my new blog site (http://EasyBlogTricks.com). I have embedded some Camtasia videos into the blog, and they work perfectly on Firefox. No problem!

But when people try to view them in Internet Explorer, nada.

And I have a flaw. Yes, I admit it… a flaw. OK, well, maybe more than one, but this is tech related.

I always forget to check and see how my stuff looks in IE because I figure people should all be using Firefox, anyway.

Kidding.

People have their druthers. I really went kicking and screaming into Firefox from IE, and now, I realize how narrow-sighted I had been. But, people have their faves, and I know that TONS of people still use IE.

So, I’m trying to find a fix for this issue. I’m not much of a programmer. That’s the problem. I mean, if there’s PHP around, I can manipulate it, but writing? No clue. So… that leaves me at the mercy of Google, and trying to find a fix online. So far, bupkiss. I do have PHP for Dummies, so I think I might learn one day–at the Dummy level, anyway. Ha!

2) Power Going Off and On

I’ve had to reboot my computer 7 times this afternoon. Yes, 7! Servers me right for not having an APS, so I’m supposing I need to go out and purchase one tomorrow.

3) Windows Vista

Who does it think it is? I mean, it’s always telling me what I can and can’t do, and I’m sick of it. I turned it off. Stop trying to mother me, Vista. I’m a big girl and I know what and what not to do, really.

OK… I’m finished. I will return you to your regularly scheduled chat with Pat.

Whew! Feels better to get THAT off my chest.

If you have any pet peeves, anything that’s totally pissing you off today, here’s the place to let me know what that is!

Remember, misery loves company.

And I’m not really miserable, just hacked. LOL And totally glad it’s Friday.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Today, one of my workmates needed to know page rank of blogs for a project she’s working on, but had no Google Toolbar or anything that would show it to her. Immediately, I asked her what browser she was using  and she told me Firefox. Yes!

Do you know how many very cool add-ons for Firefox there are? I mean, wow! You can go nuts. Here’s my list of must-have add-ons for SEO and social marketing in alphabetical order:

• Bending the Web Toolbar: I’ve told you about this one before, but it’s awesome! One toolbar gives you access to all the important Web 2.0 networking, bookmarking, content, and video sites. It also has a built-in radio. Pretty sweet. Love it, especially since it allowed me to add a calculator to my browser. I’m forever using those. Read more about Bending the Web from social marketing experts Jack Humphrey and Howie Schwartz here: http://www.jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/make-money-while-bending-the-web/

• Bookmark Duplicate Detector: Oh, yeah… We’ve all done it, right? We think we need to save a site, and end up with a hundred bookmarks that we just keep adding. Nope! Not with this tool. It keeps my bookmarks unique and I love it.

• Clipmarks: Save the stuff you enjoy and add it to your online account. Clip it! Or, add it to your blog or whatever. Neat.

• ColorZilla: click the icon and get the hexcodes for any color you rest your mouse on. I also like a little program called “Pixie” for this, which you can get at http://nattyware.com free. It’s great for getting matching color codes when you’re not using a browser.

• Fast Dial: Allows you to add icons for all the sites you visit regularly. No more searching, even in neat bookmarks. Just click and you’re there.

• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer: This is awesome if you have more than one computer. Foxmarks stores all your bookmarks and when you log in to your other computer with Foxmarks installed, you’re golden. All your bookmarks are always up-to-date.

• IE Tab: Switch between Firefox and Internet Explorer interfaces with the click of a mouse. This is great if you need to see web pages in both browsers or if a site just doesn’t work with Firefox. You don’t have to open the other browser, just click!

• Rank Checker from SEOBook.com Let’s say it’s SEOElite lite. You can check the rank of any site in Google, Yahoo, and Live right from your browser.

• Amason S3Fox: It’s like .ftp for Amazon S3. All you have to do to access all your S3 files is click on the icon in your browser.

• Search Status: Give you Google Page Rank and Alexa Ranking plus a bunch of other stuff. Let’s you see keyword density of pages, highlight no follow links, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

• SEOQuake: I love this one. You get this tiny toolbar that appears every time you open a web page. It’s transparent and really unobtrusive, until you open it. BAM! You have Google page rank, the number of pages indexed, the number of backlinks, and similar info for Yahoo and Live. You can also access Whois, SEODigger, and a whole load of info in a heartbeat. This is totally cool.

• Tab Mix Plus: Lets you reorder your tabs, have tabs open when you click on links, rather than leaving pages, and you can really customize this one any way you want. It’s really great, too. Worth the effort to get it and plug it in.

• TwitterFox: I know, I know… You can really customize TweetDeck so much better, but TwitterFox just sits open on my browser all day. I can see when tweets come in immediately and whether or not it’s something I might want to check out or reply to. I mean, I’m so busy that I really don’t have much time for Twitter. If I had to use Tweet Deck or another stand alone program, I doubt that I’d be able to bother with it at all. If you’re as busy as me, you might enjoy this add-on.

I have a few others that aren’t worth mentioning, but these are my absolute faves. Try them. You’ll be amazed at what you can get one free and very cool browser to do for you.