Robin Good: Founds Free Online SEO Audit Tool is a free web service which allows you to instantly check any web URL for canonicalisation errors, technical issues, meta data and links by scanning your selected URL and leveraging the public available data from online services like SEOMoz.
The Tool has 3 Main Parts:
a) Technical issues, such as domain canonicalisation & XML sitemaps
b) Content issues, such as keywords found on the page and in meta data
c) External link analysis
The specific tests run by FOUND SEO Audit Tool are:
HTTP Header
Canonicalisation
Robots
Sitemap
Loading Time
Links Analysis
Headings Analysis
Image Analysis
Keywords Analysis
Metadata Analysis
SEOmoz URL Metrics Analysis
SEOmoz Links Analysis
The service is free to use and requires no login or registration.
Google Webmaster Tools is warning users that they’ve fallen from Google’s graces and should be on the lookout for “artificial or unnatural links." Popular blog networks have been deindexed.
Is it time to panic, or is a reality check in order?
From the excellent report by Miranda Miller on Search Engine Watch: "Recent events seem almost a fundamental shift in the way Google perceives inbound links; they’re now saying not only can you not buy them, you can’t try to build at all. Of course, Google is predictably tight-lipped about what it is, exactly, that has relegated the offending sites to the wrist-slap list.
...
This is the kind of profile that might signal a stinker to Google.
For example, an unnatural link profile for a flower shop might look like: 1,000 links with the brand name as the anchor text; 3,500 links using “buy flowers online”; 5,000 links using “order flowers online,” etc. You would expect more links to use the brand name as anchor text; large quantities of links using very specific, high search volume terms, even more than the name of the business, could be a red flag.
...
Unnatural links, paid links... obviously they’re not going to pay off in the grand scheme of things. But before you jump on the bandwagon, ask yourself if you can handle the immediate drop in rankings and possibly traffic if you delete a bunch of backlinks. Or should you stop, breathe, plan, and try something new to build up some volume of backlinks before pulling plug on any that might be deemed “unnatural?”"
Robin Good: Lander is a new web-based landing page builder like Unbounce, Headway, Instapage lets you create beautiful landing pages for your social media, email and online marketing campaigns using an easy step-by-step process.
Key features include:
Functional Layouts for B2B or B2C conversions
Easy-to-use drag and drop editor
Lander Dashboard for traffic, number of leads, conversion rate, split-tests
A/B Split Testing
Signup/Conversions Form
Customized URLs and domain mapping
Google Analytics integration
Lander costs you zero money for up to 500 visitors in a month. Then it charges at$25/month for sites with up to 1500 visitors/mo.
Robin Good: SurveyLegend is a new web-based service which allows you to easily create surveys and questionnaires that fully-image based. You upload a set of pictures, screenshots or diaagrams and you associate a question to be displayed next to each.
SurveyLegend visual surveys can be further customized and posted directly to Facebook, Twitter, integrated into a web site pop-up or embedded in any web site or blog. If you do not have a web site your visual questionnaires can be hosted on SurveyLegend own web site.
The free SurveyLegend version allows for up to 100 responses and five email addresses to be collected. Higher priced versions allow "unlimited" responses and emails collection for as low as $99/year.
Robin Good: Online services like PeerIndex and Klout are not really yet trusted indicators of your true influence, but things may change quite rapidly on this front.
In a written report packaged as a presentation deck entitled: "The Rise of Digital Influence", Brian Solis has released a report that breaks down the top 14 influence measuring services (Appinions, eCairn, Empire Avenue, Klout, Kred, mPACT, PeerIndex, PROskore, Radian6, Traackr, TweetLevel, TweetReach, Twitalyzer, and TwitterGrade) explaining what they are good for.
Here a few highlights from Techcrunch own review of Brian Solis' presentation:
"Brian Solis believes that rather than sending out a flurry of tweets in hopes of boosting your score now, you should think about your short- and long-term goals with social media.
It’s not worth trying to game the system. I think services like Klout should inspire you to think critically about how to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media.
That way you can increase your real-world influence and let your scores rise to reflect that, instead of the reverse."
"A lot of people think that nobody gives a damn about your Klout score, and that those from other services are equally useless. I disagree. They may not be very accurate yet, but they’re getting better quickly."
Robin Good: Here is a tool that simplifies your management of your social media profiles. Need to rapidly change your profile picture across your social networks? Need to update your password or email settings across the board?
Blisscontrol does just that. Without the need to provide acess to your private data, the service makes it as easy as making a click the need to change and update your personal settings on anyone of the major social networks. From Google+ to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and more, Blisscontrol gets you covered.
Robin Good: Brad Neelan does a good job of outlining and summarizing what it takes to find relevant new content themes that can help you or your company stand out and become more relevant to your readers.
In synthesis, this is the three-step strategy he suggests to use:
"What you are looking for is data insights that highlight a trending topic or illustrate an opportunity area based on emerging interest.
When you couple these trending keyword opportunities with categories of interest to your business clientele, you can formulate a snapshot based on growing patterns of interest.
...When you begin to institutionally think about where you can capitalize on keywords that are either not yet in vogue, or about to become breakout, you will find that search provides a wealth of potential insight to inform your next big differentiating position.
...Once you have begun to think about the opportunities keyword insights can provide, you collect the concepts into a pool of potential targets grouped by theme."
In this article by Kristi Hines, you can find six indispensable free and freemium SEO tools for keyword research, on-site optimization, link building, suggestions, and monitoring keyword rankings.
Here in summary the tools presented and a brief description about them.
1. AdWords Keyword Tool for Keyword Research:
All SEO campaigns should begin with keyword research. Google AdWords Keyword Tool is your best bet for a free keyword research tool.
2. SEO Book for a Keyword Research & On-Site Analysis:
With a free account, you have access to the tools as a keyword density analyzer, a page comparison tool to find keywords, an ad group generator for AdWords, and others.
3. SEO Site Tools for On-Site Analysis & Suggestions:
If you are using Google Chrome, then the SEO Site Tools is a must have extension for your browser. You can see the PageRank of any page you are browsing immediately in your extensions’ toolbar and you can get the rest of the information by clicking on the magnifying glass.
4. Open Site Explorer for Competitor Backlink Research:
A great way to find link opportunities for your website’s link building campaign is to research the backlinks of competitor websites. SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer allows you to enter a domain and view that domain’s backlinks.
5. SEMrush for Paid Search & Keyword Ranking Analysis:
If you are working on paid search, then you might be curious about keywords competitors are ranking for organically and the CPC for those keywords. SEMRush will answer those questions.
6. Authority Labs for Monitoring SEO Campaign Results:
What is the point of a good SEO campaign if you are not monitoring the results? Authority Labs is a great tool for keeping tabs on your keyword rankings by simply entering your domain and the keywords you want to track.
Get in depth info for each one and how to best leverage its capabilities by reading the
Why storytelling is such an effective advertising technique and how to tell compelling stories in your smart marketing strategy.
Creating stories for advertising can sometimes be tricky -- you've got a short amount of time and need maximum impact in order to gain and keep those eyeballs --and make sales!
This article helps us understand th 7 characteristics of effective advertising storytelling, gives us a few lessons for developing your story ad strategy, and then includes a final tip/link about what not to do.
Nice -- solid ideas without being too long or difficult to grasp :)
From the original article: "Title tags are the nuclear warheads of content marketing: While they contain only a very small mass — roughly 65 characters — they pack an unbelievable punch.
Because of title tags’ enormous impact on SEO, social sharing and conversion, content marketers should know how they work, and how to put them to work
Theoretically, title tags can be of any length. However, length and composition are greatly influenced by the fact that Google displays only the first 65 characters or so in search engine results.
a) Remember that each title tag on a website or blog should be unique, and completely relevant to the content of the page.
b) Besides appearing in search engine results, title tags are displayed in many other high-visibility locations, including in browser tabs and social media shares.
c) Title tags are the most important onsite ingredients for SEO because they explain to Google and other search engines what each page is about.
d) Explain well and your pages will enjoy higher rankings; explain poorly and Google won’t know how to match up your page to search queries."
Robin Good: Trendwatching.com focuses this month on a new interesting emerging trend: FLAWSOME.
A growing number of people cannot stand anymore the idea of buying services and products from companies that sell themselves through a facade of superhuman perfection and infallibility.
What many consumers are looking for increasingly, are brands capable of admitting their faults, and being humble enough to come down from their traditional branded pedestals.
From the article briefing: "Consumers don't expect brands to be flawless. In fact, consumers will embrace brands that are FLAWSOME*:
a) Brands that are still brilliant despite having flaws; even being flawed (and being open about it) can be awesome.
b)Brands that show some empathy, generosity, humility, flexibility, maturity, humor, and (dare we say it) some character and humanity.
The two key drivers fueling the FLAWSOME trend:
1) HUMAN BRANDS: Everything from disgust at business to the influence of online culture (with its honesty and immediacy), is driving consumers away from bland, boring brands in favor of brands with some personality.
2) TRANSPARENCY TRIUMPH: Consumers are benefiting from almost total and utter transparency (and thus are finding out about flaws anyway), as a result of the torrent of readily available reviews, leaks and ratings."
Austin Carr writes on FastCoCreate.com: "Yesterday at New York’s fMC, the Facebook Marketing Conference, the company echoed that very sentiment as it argued that following brands on Facebook is no different than following friends and family.
Introducing a suite of new advertising tools--enhanced brand Pages, premium offers, mobile ad placements--the social network reasoned that users would appreciate the additional avenues advertisers now have to reach them, because advertisers share "quality" content.
"Our main objective is to make sure that over time, the advertising is as good as the content you would receive from your friends or family," said Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions. "It’s very similar to your own Facebook experience.
There are certain friends that you probably love getting updates from--they are witty and interesting--and that’s really what we’re trying to do with brands: Stop thinking about brands over here and people over here, but actually [think of] brands as people.
Are you wondering how your peers are using social media? Wondering if you should focus on Google+ or Pinterest?
Marty Smith: How are marketers using social media? More and more as it turns out. The Social Media Examiner just released its yearly state of social media marketing report with these findings:
Major Findings
Measurement and targeting are top areas marketers want to master: Forty percent of all social media marketers want to know how to measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media and find customers and prospects.
Video marketing holds the top spot for future plans: A significant 76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2012.
Marketers seek to learn more about Google+: While only 40% of marketers are using Google+, 70% of marketers want to learn more about it and 67% plan on increasing Google+ activities.
Top three benefits of social media marketing: The number-one benefit of social media marketing is generating more business exposure (reported 85% of marketers), followed by increasing traffic (69%) and providing marketplace insight (65%).
Top five social media networks/tools for marketers: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and YouTube were the top five social media tools used by marketers, in that order.
Social media marketing still takes a lot of time: The majority of marketers (59%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week, and a third (33%) invest 11 or more hours weekly.
Social media outsourcing underutilized: Only 30% of businesses are outsourcing some portion of their social media marketing, only a slight increase from 28% in 2011.
Robin Good: The Facebook Share Counter is a free web-based tool that allows you to check how many Facebook Likes, Shares and Comments any specific URL has received.
"Facebook allow you to measure the effectiveness of sharing links, by giving detailed data about how many times a url has been shared, clicked and commented.
With Facebook Share Counter you can now discover these details about any url you want, just input here the url (without any http://), and click get data."
The tool requires no registration or login and si free to use.
From the article by Eugen Oprea on Social Media Examiner: "Google Analytics allows you to see where your visitors come from and if they engage with your content or leave immediately.
Additionally, you can set up goals that match your business goals and measure if visitors are meeting those goals.
With Google Analytics, you can get valuable insights about your visitors and in this article I am going to show you how to track social media traffic.
This will help you identify the social media sites that send the most visitors back to your website to see which one needs more attention.
You will also discover how you can learn more about the visitors who come to your site from Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or other social media sites.
Additionally, you will learn how to use a feature called Advanced Segments to segment your social media traffic and see how those visitors behave on your site."
Robin Good: SEO Site Tools is a professional SEO extension for the Google Chrome browser which acts as website x-ray analyzer by providing tons of useful information about any URL you provide it with.
Besides providing a PageRank value for any page you are on without even needing to click on it, SEO Tools extracts this useful data from any URL:
1) External Page Data
- Google Trends;
- Google Indexed Pages & Domain Links;
- SEOmoz Linkscape;
- Quantcast Ranking;
- Alexa Data;
- Majestic SEO Data;
- SEMRush Data;
2) Page Elements
SEO Title & Meta Description;
Anchor Tags;
Img Tags;
Formatting Tags;
Header Tags.
3) Social Media
Measures how many
Facebook,
Twitter,
Digg,
StumbleUpon,
Reddit, and
Delicious actions
have been made on a particular page.
4) Page Terms / Tools
In this section, you can get some valuable information for keyword research, site speed, and more.
5) Server / Domain Info
Go to this section to see any publicly listed information about a domain’s registrant including the site owner’s name and email address.
6) Suggestions
This area gives you free SEO advice about what things you should be on the lookout for in your on-site optimization.
Speaking at SES New York, Google shared the news of the immediate, incremental launch of their new Social Reports.
“The new social reports take into account the total number of conversions that happen to visitors that had touched a social media channel connected with the account.”
Among the new features, users can compare last-click to assisted conversions, see Social Visitors Flow, view select social streams in Analytics, and more.
Robin Good: If you are looking for ways to "engage" your customers, readers and fans, webinars are truly a great solution.
Not only they allow you to showcase your expertise while providing good value to your audience, but they give you a tremendous opportunity to "listen" to your fans real needs and to address them later with custom-designed services and products.
Lewis Howes writes: "...My recommendation is to host publicly available Q&A webinars throughout the year, which allows you to “give back” to your market while also gaining valuable intelligence.
Pay close attention to recurring questions or themes in your webinars, since these are the signs your market may be ready for a new product.
They’re simple to do — just pick a topic and host an hour-long webinar where attendees can ask anything they’d like to learn more about or are struggling with.
Your job is to look for those repeating themes, because that’s what your market is hungry for.
...You can usually bet that the questions you get in your Q&A sessions are ones that lots of other customers have as well.
When you solve real customer problems, you put yourself at the head of the pack in your niche."
Robin Good: Eppie Vojt, a Digital Marketing Consultant at JPL, has just published a great case study on making "garbage" rank in the SERPs, and at the end of it has discretely launched a new great online tool: LinkDetective.
LinkDetective will x-ray and dissect any website to provide you with a detailed breakdown of all the links pointing to that URL. Not only. LinkDetective allows you to slice and dice this data in a million different ways, giving you the capability for example to see only anchor text links coming from blogs, comments, or blogrolls and to see exactly where those have been obtained.
"Most link metrics tell a story you already know -- people are ranking with authoritative links and heavy use of anchor text.
No matter how you slice that, it doesn't get more actionable.
The challenge is figuring out where you can GET THOSE LINKS. Isn't it?
That's where Link Detective comes in.
Link Detective rifles through a backlink profile using semantic markup and URL naming conventions to group links by type. This makes it SUPER easy to see which of your competitors' links you can swipe for yourself.
Even if you're not looking for the "low-hanging fruit," Link Detective can make your job easier.
By quickly classifying low quality links, Link Detective leaves a smaller pile of high quality contextual links behind that you can run through manually.
No matter how you use it, Link Detective makes link building a breeze."
Questo tool è interessante ma utilizzabile solo in combinazione con "opensite explorer" di seomoz, scaricando il csv dopo che si è fatta l'analisi di un link di un competitor (infatti si vede: "This should be an export from Open Site Explorer of external links only.").
Fin qui non ci sarebbe nulla di male, peccato che su Open Site Explorer non si può fare neache 1 prova senza registarsi già dall'inizio come "trial of pro account" , fornendo fin da subito carta di credito .
Penso che almeno 1 prova con un reale "free account" su seomoz potevano almeno concederla , se ci si dimentica di stoppare il mese di trial vengono addebitati automaticamente 100 $ al mese per l' account pro .
A parte questo aspetto, in linkDetective mi sembra molto utile la possibilità di filtrare le tipologie di link, una cosa in più rispetto a molti tool seo .
Dear Alex,
thank you for your kind comment on this. I have used Open Site Explorer myself and keep using it with satisfaction. I think your concern should be voiced in an open post to SEOMoz so that your frustration can be heard and acted upon.
From my viewpoint I must say, that while it is true that you need to sign up for a free trial with a credit card, no money is asked right away, and the Pro subscription can be suspended one minute-after you have opened it, giving you login access to export as much 10,000 records from OSE without needing to pay anything. Given that anyone can go to a post office or elsewhere and get a credit card with a few euros deposited on it, and the unique value that this service provides, for free, I wouldn't be so heavily critical for those who have invested for so long in making this data accessible. Again, I empathize with your frustration but I think the benefit provided remains untainted by their customer acquisition policy.
Yes Robin, I basically agree with you when you say they provide a really good service, I just wanted to point out that particular aspect that maybe someone is not aware of.
Anyway, as I said before, i think this is valuable tool for people that wants to improve their link building strategy, having access to detailed useful informations.
Robin Good: Aweber, the email marketing and newsletter distribution service, which I use myself, has just relased a new very useful form editor to simplify the creation of professionally-looking email newsketters, DEMs or other marketing offers.
The new Block Editor includes 10 types of content blocks that can be easily dragged and dropped into your email template and which can be tightly customized to your specific needs.
Anise Smith writes on her blog: "The new Facebook Timeline layout for brands will be going live March 30, 2012 ready or not so I thought I would find as much information as possible to get you prepared.
I found a great two part tutorial that I screen captured that really provides an amazing step by step walk through of Timeline for Brands.
I am pretty sure it will get you prepared to make your Timeline shine for your brand.
Take a look at the two videos below and they should answer EVERY question that you have about how Timeline will work for your brand."
Excerpted from the original article: "If you're looking for the quickest way to create a great landing page, invest your time in creating copy that follows these 7 landing page copywriting best practices.
1) Use Action-Oriented Language
If within 3 seconds, a site visitor can't glean what exactly they can do on that page, they click the back button.
2) Use Value-Oriented Language
The value is the "so what?" of your landing page copy. Use language to convince visitors that the time they'll spend filling out your form is worth it for the offer they'll receive
3) Use Reader Keywords
What is a reader keyword? It's a phrase I just made up to describe the keywords a reader -- not a search engine, a reader -- will look for while scanning your page to understand what the page is about.
4) Write Using the Second Person
Writing in the second person means instead of saying "I," you speak in your readers' terms by saying "You" and "Your."
5) Go for Clarity Over Creativity
You're on a timer. It's set for 3 seconds. There's no time for fluffy language.
Discover the remaining points in the original article here: http://bit.ly/w8O3Z2 ;
Robin Good: Just recently I have been asked how to get some press attention for the launch of a new web site, and I provided my basic set of tips on what to do under these circumstances:
a) Prepare a Press Media Kit
b) Create a list of journalists, reporters, bloggers and newsrooms which cover your niche or related ones
c) Send out a properly written email outlining key info and facts to facilitate journalists in extracting a valuable and interesting story for their readers.
But there is a LOT more that can be done on this front.
One excellent new reference guide to how you can get extra media coverage for your next event or launch is Chris Winfield's "92 Ways to Get (and Maximize) Press Coverage" published ths week on SEOMoz.
This guide contains tons of useful advice and tips which can really help you get the attention of the press, in ways you may not have even considered.
Robin Good: If you are trying to better understand what your fans, readers and customers like and appreciate from you the most, you may want to start considering Pinterest as a resource for valuable insight on this front.
It is quite easy in fact to discover "who is pinning you" by simply changing in this URL, the "sitename.com" with your site domain:
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
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