Webmaster tools from Google, Bing and Yahoo

To help you make your website better, there are plenty of tools out there. Some of the best ones are free.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a must-have. There is a wealth of information about your website you can get here. For free. All you need is a Google account – which is free.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

You need to add a bit of code to your meta tags to verify that you are the owner of the website.

The code is specific to your website, but will look about like this:

<meta name="google-site-verification" content="code specific to your website" />

Once you are verified, you can access a wealth of information about your website. It is by far the most intricate of the free diagnostic tools. You can work with site maps, see internal and external links, analyse the keywords on your website and more technical aspects like testing your robot.txt file.

Googles free webmaster tool is one of the best on the market

Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo also has its own version, which is called Yahoo Site Explorer. It’s less complex, but you can analyse the website and find back links. It can also help you assess competitors’ websites – that means you can explore ANY website not just your own – though the information does not dig too deep. To use this you need a Yahoo account, which is free, and then – like with Google’s webmaster tool – add a Meta tag or a small file to the website to verify that it is you that is the owner of the website.

The code you need to upload on Yahoo is similar to that on Google:

<META content="code specific to your website">

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Bing Webmaster Center

Bing – as newbees on the market – are of course eager to get a piece of the cake, and have launched Bing Webmaster Center. In the same fashion as the previous two, you need a Windows Live ID or a hotmail email to start using the service. And, same as before, you need to validate that you own the website by uploading a meta tag to your site, it looks like this:

<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="code specific to your website" />

There are not too many features here – yet – the most useful one is probably how your page ranks on keywords.

Bing is new, so my guess is that they will be developing these tools in the near future.

Google Insights for Search and Trends

To find keywords and phrases related to the content of your website, Google – as always – has great tools for this. Google Insights for Search and Google Trends.

Search Insights on the term “digital cameras” and it will not only give you the geographical location of where people most use this search term, but also the related top searches and the rising searches – which could be part of your long tail of search. Don’t you just love Google?

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

Google Trends will give you the keyword broken down by Country, City and Language.

http://trends.google.com/

URI Valet

URI Valet is yet another of the free great tools out there. It will give you an indication on how you are doing with the technical issues of your header files and other problems on the website. Type in your URL in the form and see what happens:

http://www.urivalet.com/

If you have done something wrong, it will tell you, and it does it with a bit of humour if there is something amiss!

SEO Browser

SEO is a bit like driving a car in the mist. SEO Browser is a great free tool to help you get an idea of how browsers “see” your website, type in your website here:

http://www.seo-browser.com/

And you can see in which order the information is displayed on the page – from a browser point of view. In the advanced mode, the SEO browser will indicate any problems, for example if you have too many keywords and the number of links you have on the page, both internal and external.

So, now there is nothing stopping you from making your website even better!

Tips and tricks for SEO – good and bad

In Search Engine Optimization, the best trick is to avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself: “How does this benefit the visitors to the website?” If you can justify that, then go ahead and use the “trick”.

Below are good tricks to use. And here are some to avoid like the plauge:

What NOT to do in Search Engine Optimization

Things that will ruin your ratings and annoy your visitors

Don’t use unautorized webpages and programs to submit pages

Google the words “submit pages” and you will find a thousand web pages offering this service – sending automatic submissions to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. Don’t use them. They may violate Googles Terms of Service, and other search engines Terms of Service, which in turn may cause you to get shut off.

Don’t take part in link schemes

Link farms, link schemes and sites peppered with links to other sites should be avoided. Spend your time instead building a good network of websites with similar content to your website, and exchange real, good quality links.

Building SEO landing pages and cloaking

An often employed tactic is to build a custom made landing page to improve hits for a website. This page is riddled with search words, links to other pages, content that looks odd to the visitor, because it’s stuffed with keywords. All it contains is Search Engine “candy”. Presenting different content to search engines than to users is called “cloaking”. It may well work in the short term, but instead, use your energy and time to build web pages with good content. Build pages for your visitors, not for search engines.

Meta refresh

A redirect is a page you come to and immediately and automatically get sent on to another page. This is called a redirect or meta refresh. A meta tag is used to do this, or sometimes Java script. Don’t do this. Search engines are allergic to these.

Invisible text

Sometimes webmasters try using invisible text and keywords, for example, white text on a white background, or an invisible layer, to fool the Search Engine spiders. The text won’t disturb the user experience, because the user can’t see it, only the search engines will pick up the text. This way the webmaster is hoping to get a higher page rank. Don’t do it. It is bad practice and you risk getting banned.

Misleading title tags and descriptions

Meta data, like title and description is an excellent tool to help Search Engine spiders finding your website. Don’t misuse them by adding non-relevant content in the titles and the description. Google will scan the content of the page and read the title. If they don’t match you may be punished. Keep the title and the description good.

Misleading links

Same as other misleading content. Don’t do it.

Getting caught

If you use any of the above “techniques” and get caught, your website may be removed from Google all together. It can be a painful experience, especially harming the traffic to your website. It is not worth the temporary increase in traffic. Search Engine Optimization is a long term job, built up with good website content.

What to do to IMPROVE your websites ratings

Good tricks – guidelines to filling your website with good content.

Using a clear structure

Make sure the navigation is clear and easy to understand. A clear hierarchy where all pages are reachable from at least one link, and main pages are reachable from a site map. Site maps are especially useful for websites with over 100 pages.

Put your visitor first

Create useful pages – that is useful for your visitor or user in the first place, and for Search Engines second. Label the pages accurately, with proper titles and descriptions that describe your content.

Keywords

Think about the words that a visitor would type in to Google and use to find your website. Make sure those words are included, preferably both in the headline, the body text, the title and the description, in a natural way.

Images

Don’t use images to display headlines. Use the h1, h2, h3… tags in the html code. Google can’t “see” images, so if you use an image for content, make sure you use the “alt” tag to include descriptive text.

Links

Use links to relevant websites with relevant content. Check your website for broken links regularly, and fix and replace any broken links.

All of this is described in more detailed in the free SEO guide.

Page Ranking on Google

Page Ranking

Page rank, or page ranking is a value from 1 to 10 that tells us how relevant Google thinks a page is to users. It is a very complicated mathematical formula that sets Google’s page ranking. To simplify things, the more votes a page gets, the higher page rank will be achieved. A link from a page with high page rank will give you more votes than a link from a page with a low page rank. Links from link farms will be filtered out all together.

A page with a good page rank will be listed higher in the SERP, Search Engine Result Page, than one with bad page rank. Bear in mind that Google changes it’s algorithms and methods regularly, and that the most important thing of all is to always keep content, links, headlines, titles and descriptions relevant to the USER. If it is relevant to the user, it will be relevant to a search engine.

This is a rough guide to how votes are rated – though some of the content is disputed elsewhere:

• Internal link: 10 points
• Domain name: 7 points (though Google claims on their blog this has no relevans)
• Headline text: 5 points
• Search path or filename: 4 points
• Related keywords: 4 points
• The first words of a sentence: 1.5 points
• Use of the keyword in text: 1 point
• Alt tag on image: 0.5 points
• Meta description: 0.5 points
• Meta keywords: 0.05 points

If you have a gmail account you can also download Google Toolbar and instantly see which Page Rank a webpage has.