The main point here is that you are in control of what your meta description states and a well crafted statement about the page can increase your clickthrough rate.

Writing a Meta Description

When writing the description it is helpful to think in terms of advertising. What is the user looking for and what will compel him or her to choose your site over the numerous others that will be displayed?  A short and snappy summary of the page with your prominent keywords (they will be in bold text) near the beginning of the description will catch a users eye.

The description should be no longer than 155 characters or you stand the chance of having the message truncated. The meta description allows you to provide the search engine with a meaningful description of your page when they are unable to automatically create one from the page content.

In the SERPs

Meta descriptions are often used when the search engine displays extended site links. It is very important therefore to write a separate and distinct meta description for each and every page on your website. Extended site links are highly keyword dependent, so to benefit most from your meta descriptions your site must have a uniform purpose and your keywords must reflect this purpose. The use of these keywords at the beginning of your meta description will increase the odds that the search engine will use the meta description as a snippet.

Social Media Usage

Meta descriptions are especially important in social media marketing such as Facebook and Google+. If there is no meta description the search engine will usually default to the first sentence used in the article and this will not properly convey what the whole article is about. The majority of marketers on social networks overlook this fact and by creating the meta description you will enjoy a competitive advantage over your competition.

Indexation

A meta description in general is one of several meta elements that provide search engines with information that helps the algorithm index and categorize the page. They are not visible to the user as they are part of the HTML document. In the 1990′s they were essential to search engines in ranking a page but as webmasters learned ways to gain an advantage through keyword stuffing and other black hat SEO techniques search engines gradually started looking to other criterion in search technology.

Today meta elements have a far less effect on determining ranking of any given page as search engine robots have become more refined in sniffing out spamdexing and keyword stuffing.

The search engines of today use a variety of criterion to establish page rank such as:

• Freshness
• Quantity and quality of content
• Number of links from related websites
• Technical precision of source code
• Click-throughs
• Page views
• Relevance
• Uniqueness

The search algorithms of today are constantly changing and evolving but this does not mean you should disregard older aspects of page development. At the very least a well written meta description will be a sign of quality and technical precision in the eyes of search providers. These two criteria do play a part in ranking and will set you apart from those who are looking for the fast track to the top.

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Actually, it’s really easy to get your site in front of millions Christmas shoppers within just a few minutes, even if you’re not offering any Christmas specials this year.

For some of you it may be too late to search engine optimize your website for Christmas, but it’s definitely not too late to create a page for New Years and other Holidays in the future.

Basic Website Optimization Steps for X-Mas

1. Copy your best-selling product or service page and name it {product or service}-christmas-{current year}.extenstion(html, php, etc.)
2. Change the title tag to include “Christmas” and “{current year}”. Ex.: Hot Apple iPad 2 Deal Christmas 2011
3. Modify the Meta-Description to include the word “Christmas” and “{current year}”
4. Update the page heading to at least include the word “Christmas”
5. Add an XMAS related stock photo or colors to the page
6. Update the page text to include “Christmas”, “{current year}” and other relevant seasonal keywords
7. Write a related blog post and link it to your new page using at least the product or service name and “Christmas” in the anchor text.
8. Share the new page on your favorite social media sites

I realize this post is probably a bit late for many of you to fully take advantage of Christmas, but it’s really fairly effortless to immediately start receiving X-Mas traffic to your site from the search engines. You can follow these simple steps to optimize your site for New Years as well as many other holidays in the future too.

If you’re able to offer special pricing or terms specific to your holiday page, you’re definitely going to increase your conversions. But if not, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t be able to take advantage of all the seasonal deal shoppers too.

If you have the time and want to make a lot more sales, simply repeat this process for each of your best products and services.

Advanced Search Engine Optimization Tactics for XMas and New Years

When you have more time or run a site that depends on seasonal shoppers, here’s some tips for skyrocketing those holiday pages in the SERPs so that you can maximize you holiday search traffic.

Follow the steps mentioned above, plus:

• Redirect last years holiday pages to this years to get any previously earned link-juice flowing to the right pages. i.e., 301 redirect your iPad 1 Christmas 2010 holiday page to your iPad 2 page for this year.
• Write a guest post on a related site linking it to your new holiday page
• Locate and advertise with a related site that allows DoFollow banner ads and link the banner back to your new holiday page
• Link to your holiday pages from multiple other locations on your site using seasonal and other keyword variations in the anchor text
• Update any forum signatures to point to your new holiday specials page
• Share it on Google+
• If it’s a really good deal then Digg it
• Write a Squidoo lens or use your other favorite article sharing website to promote and link back to it
• Write a press release about the special offer and link back to it. There are several free press release websites.
• Bookmark it
• Update your company’s Google Places business page to include your holiday offers
• Create a sponsored online classified ad

And so on…

The key points to remember are updating your title and description meta tags, use keyword variants in the anchor text of any backlinks, writing relevant page headings, and creating sufficient unique page text.

By starting with your top-selling product or service and writing a quick blog post you could literally be raking in the sales this holiday in under an hour!

It can really be as simple as that.

Have some organic search optimization tips to share for the holidays?

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Google Analytics for iPad

Google Analytics is the premier web analyzer for blogs and other websites. If you need an app that will give you up to date stats on your blog or website, Google Analytics is the app for you. This app will give you charts and stats through reports to the iPad’s full screen mode. The standard version will give you ten data rows. If you want more, you can upgrade to the fully featured version at around 7 dollars.

Get Google Analytics through iTunes.

WordPress for iPad

Do you have a blog or website that uses the WordPress theme? WordPress For iPad is one of the best resources for changing a link or even posting a new article to your blog. If you are the kind of blogger that loves reading comments by their readers, this is an excellent app to have. This will also allow you to change keywords on a whim if the competition drops for a certain trending keyword.

Get WordPress through iTunes.

SEM Calculator

The SEM Calculator is essential for SEO because it allow a user to analyze every aspect of their marketing. You have the ability to work with your impressions or Cost Per Action campaigns. If you use Adsense or affiliate marketing on your blog, this calculator can give you information on what campaigns are working and what campaigns aren’t working.

Get SEM Calculator through iTunes.

Website SEO Analyser by Koozai

There are a lot of website analyzers on the market, but Website Analyzer by Koozia is one of the best. This app will give you all of the information about your site’s inbound links and the on page factors of your content. This is also a great app for checking the inbound links and domain information for any of your competitors.

Get Koozai through iTunes.

HootSuite

HootSuite is a great app for people who use social media as backlinks for their websites or blogs. If you are using social media to promote your sites, you can use the HootSuite app to link all of your social media profiles together. This gives you a link between Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Having all of your social media profiles linked together is one of the best ways to build backlinks and get traffic to your site.

Get HootSuite through iTunes.

SERPS

Would you like to know how your blog or website is stacking up online? SERPS gives you an easy way to check your page rank from your iPad. This is a fairly limited app, but it definitely serves its purpose when you need to know your rankings on the fly.

Get SERPS through iTunes.

Analytics HD

This is not a free app, but paying for it is a great way to get more detailed reports than Google Analytics will give you. Analytics HD gives you more options for charts and graphs than the standard Google Analytics. This app is also designed for the resolution output on your iPad so you will get better coloring throughout the graphs. This app is offered for 4.99 in the App Store.

Get Analytics HD through iTunes.

Kindle

Do you love reading ebooks about SEO, Internet marketing or the latest trends in the industry? If you had a Kindle in the past, you can transfer all of your Kindle based ebooks to your iPad with this app. Since the Kindle uses a special format, you normally would not be able to read through your Kindle based ebooks. Kindle is offered through the App Store for free through Amazon.

Get Kindle through iTunes.

Dragon Dictation

Do you need to post a new article to your blog or website but don’t have the time to type it out? Use Dragon Dictate to dictate the article directly to your iPad. When you first set up the app, you will need to read through a paragraph in order to allow the app to get used to your voice. The calibration will take you about 20 minutes. Once you have completed this, you will be able to dictate notes or a whole blog post using your voice. This is a free app offered through the App Store.

Get Dragon through iTunes.

DropBox

Dropbox is a great app for storing data on a cloud server. Cloud servers have become popular for computers, but with the implementation of mobile broadband, iPad users can now take advantage of it too. If you have been working on a post and want to access it from another computer, use DropBox. Setting up your own cloud server through the app will take you a couple minutes. Don’t confuse this for an offline backup because there is a limit to the amount of data storage you can use. This is another free mobile broadband app from the App Store.

Get Dropbox through iTunes.

What’s your favorite SEO app for the Apple iPad?

Article written by Spencer Hogg from the mobile broadband site Broadband Expert.

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This update to the search algorithm focuses on rewarding websites that offer fresh content. Not surprisingly news websites did very well, some better than others but we will get to that later.

News Sites and Other Winners

News sites generally update their content by the day, hour and some by the minute. Celebrity news and gossip sites have also done well by the same reasoning.

There is more to the Update than just freshness, based on results of a SearchMetrics analysis. Brand names like Coke, Hotels.com and Dominos.com also gained in visibility or ranking after the update even though they don’t update their content any more than the average website.
It is possible that recent information on product releases or product reviews may have had something to do with it.

This could also be a form of SEO content strategy going forward (product reviews).

The SearchMetrics analysis is based on keywords and not traffic gain or loss.

Purpose of Google’s Freshness Update

The Freshness Update is Google’s first step in developing an algorithm that can differentiate between specific search terms, that require up to date information (or a specific date) and general search terms.

For some webmasters who have relied on link popularity in the past the update could pose a serious problem. They would obviously have to consider changing their SEO strategy to include higher quality, fresh content.

Safeguarding Your Website

1. The best way to safeguard against this and any future updates to the Caffeine algorithm is to make sure your site only has high quality content that is relevant to your website’s purpose.
2. Keep your ads to a minimum and keep them out of your users face– there is nothing more frustrating to users than an annoying and distracting advertisement.
3. Keep your main content front and center, above the fold and easily distinguishable from your advertisements.
4. Not to mention keeping your website maintained, check to make sure all your links work properly and make sure your copyright date is no more than two years old.

That being said, take advantage of some of the web analytics software on the market to help you find which pages your users like and dislike. The software can keep track of things like number of page views, bounce rate and exit rate.

Another safeguard against deranking is to make sure you have enough content on the page to satisfy your user. Thin content of 200 to 300 words that does not adequately cover a subject is a major no-no in Google’s eyes.

Look at the webpage from the user’s point of view. The Caffeine algorithm is also getting better at picking up duplicate and spun content and nothing will get you barred from Google quicker than plagiarism.

How to Really Benefit from the Freshness Update

Earlier I mentioned that some news organizations profited from the Freshness Update while others did not.

It seems there is a certain amount of bias in the algorithm that favors membership in Google news. So if you are a news provider joining the network may be prudent. The most unfortunate loser affected by the Google Freshness Update are small businesses. These businesses set up their website for the benefit of their customers but do not update it on a regular basis or have the branding of a large corporation.

However, there are a few things a small business can do in the near term to take advantage of the change. Basically what it boils down to is providing new content and when you upload that content ensure that it is properly dated, preferably beneath the title of the article.

A small business can also create a blog on their website that will be continually updated each time a blog or comment is posted. A forum could also be useful for some small businesses; as well as a question and answer page and setting up a social network. Adding your own social news section is also a viable option for most small businesses and you will receive updated content each time a story is posted.

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But have you ever had your rankings fall off the grid after major Google update? Or even worse yet – had a web site penalized before?

Well I have!

And unfortunately it can happen to you too…

So I’m gonna share my experience with you in hopes it will help you avoid getting hit negatively by a Google Panda update and fix your site if you do.

Google Panda Update 2.5.2

Most recently I had two sites hit hard by a “minor” Google Panda Update, which was update 2.5.2 on October 13th, 2011.

And it’s a bit unfortunate because it’s already costing me an extra $1,000/mo or so.

I first noticed the significant drop in traffic on one of these top AdSense supported websites, and was quick to attribute it to one of the many testing changes I had been making over the last couple of weeks. However, after checking another AdSense supported site I immediately recognized the destruction of that site’s rankings too.

Luckily it hadn’t affected any of my other active websites though. Coincidentally, none of them are supported by Google AdSense either…

Which is actually one of the many benefits of running multiple websites – you have a much better chance at identifying “real” algorithm changes and ranking factors than you would if you were only working with a website or two.

Plus you’re business isn’t demolished when you’re hit by one of these updates either.

But getting back to what happened here, and since I was “lucky” enough to have two websites hit by the exact same update, it allowed me to compare the two sites and identify some existing patterns.

Recognizable Patterns

Potentially negative patterns that immediately stood out to me:

• Both sites were primarily supported by AdSense
• They had 3 or more ad units each
• Not a significant number of backlinks
• Aren’t the most aesthetically appealing
• Informational only
• Less than a year old
• Directory / list type information
• Low subscriber count

With a few other patterns I’m considering too. But I think one or some of these in combination is the primary culprit.

Although I’ll admit these sites would probably be considered lower-quality by most people at first glance, one of them has been “naturally” linked to quite often as great reference source, and both of them provide the most up-to-date, comprehensive information in their respective niches.

In addition to that, here are some other positive aspects:

• Content is completely unique (passed Copyscape)
• Very relevant to the top queries they’re showing up for
• Thick with textual content
• No “spammy” links

What’s funny is the sites that are now showing up for the top queries aren’t nearly as relevant as the ones that used to, but are seemingly more authoritative and generally have less ads on them too.

Which I’m not sure how that necessarily improves user-experience, since they’ll now have to dig through several more search result to find the most current information on these topics, but I guess that’s for Google to figure out.

Getting Back to Normal

Although no one besides the folks at Google can be certain why this has happened, what I can do is share with you what steps I take to get these sites “back to normal”.

Yes, I’ve read the million other articles telling me what it could “possibly” be, but most of it’s just the same old stuff people have been saying after every update since the beginning of time. I couldn’t find many “real” examples of what someone did to revive their site after a Google Panda update, and I don’t want to just regurgitate the same old speculative information to you.

Rather, I want to share with you what “really” happened, “known” patterns, and “actual” improvements and / or changes made.

So here’s what I’ve done so far: I’ve gutted them of their AdSense code, even though Google keeps emailing me there is still room for more ad placements on my sites. Gave both of them a logo, and completely redesigned one of them – moving it from an UGLY static HTML website to a WordPress site with a much nicer customized theme.

Enough time hasn’t passed yet to know whether these changes will have any affect or not, but I will definitely post future updates regarding the progress of them so you can get a better idea of what I did and what you might want do if you ever have to deal with this issue too…

But what about you – have you been hit recently by one of the Google Panda updates? Were you able to get your site “healthy” again? What did you do?

Would love to hear your experience and thoughts.

Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE NOW by downloading our free eBook so you don’t miss helpful updates regarding this topic!

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Don’t worry, I’ll keep the recommend resource list light because the last thing I want to do is have you thinking you have to run out learn a bunch of new tools.

Here are some great ways to lighten your daily load:

Automate

Many important search engine optimization tasks can be done for us automatically using some handy tools. You can schedule them to run, report and email automatically, or run them manually when you need them to.

Common SEO tasks that can be automated:

• Website Auditing
• Rank Tracking
• Traffic Reporting
• Link Partnerships
• Competitor Tracking

SEO related items that can be automated to:

• Lead Generation & Nurturing
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Monitoring

Although I’ve never used them, I wanted to provide you with ONE tool that can automate the highest number of these tasks for you, and came up with HubSpot. They can run a bit on the expensive side, but do offer an all-in-one solution that could end up saving you substantially more time and money in the long-run. However, SEOmoz is a much more affordable alternative and possibly better overall solution for most SEOs. Otherwise you can check out some of the other SEO tools and resources I’m familiar with and recommend.

Outsource

Even though the popularity of outsourcing is growing, I think many small business owners still struggle with the thought of doing it. Especially when it comes to SEO. I used to think there is no way I could outsource search engine optimization. because I definitely didn’t have time to be training anyone, and I didn’t feel comfortable they were going to keep mine and my clients’ websites out of trouble.

Although I think these are very legitimate concerns, here are some tasks that can be easily outsourced by transcribing your processes up front and passing them along as simple guidelines to follow.

• Competitive Research
• Link Building
• Website Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Content Creation / Blogging

SEO related tasks that can be easily outsourced too:

• Brand Management
• Tech Support
• Lead Generation and Nurturing
• Graphic Design
• Website Development
• Video Creation
• Social Media Marketing

Actually just about anything can be outsourced in today’s Internet age. When I finally learned to outsource projects it was the single best thing I could ever do for my business. The quality of my services actually improved because I wasn’t trying to “do-it-all” myself. Websites like oDesk have made it super easy for me.

I recommend starting with the items that are easiest to outsource first, then moving on to the ones you like the least. This will help you run a successful business that allows you to work on the things you love most.

What are some ways you’ve been able to simplify your business?

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Not in a way that I would have liked to anyway.

Well today that all changes!

Yes, I know it’s Friday, but who said anything about taking the weekends off – I still don’t know how to do that yet.

You see, I started this site a couple of years ago, mostly for testing purposes, and without any definitive goals in mind – other than helping people learn SEO while I get better at it too.

And I’m still learning every day. But you know, things are changing every day too. The day I think I know it all is the day you need to RUN from this blog.

I’m just a regular guy who loves the Internet because of all the opportunities it provides. It allows me to be creative in ways I never imagined possible before. It opens up doors and allows me to plow through my many subconscious barriers.

It allows me to feel alive.

BUT, up to this point I feel like I’ve failed you. You’ve probably downloaded my eBook and subscribed to the site. Almost never to hear from me again.

By the time I get out a rare (monthly) blog post, many of you don’t even remember who I am.

That’s kind of embarrassing.

And not very fair to you.

Out of my many web projects, this is the one where my name counts. Where I’ve established myself as an authority. Where I genuinely want get to know you, and let you get to know me.

Which is kind of hard for both of us when I’m never around.

Well not any more!

I’m committed to bringing this site to life. To helping you in ways that make you want to stick around. To giving you content you can’t get anywhere else. To being different than everyone else.

To ROCKING IT!

Why now?

You’re probably wondering why I’m able to do this now…

It’s mostly because I’ve learned to work smarter. Here are some new KEY skills I’ve recently picked up, that have improved my business dramatically, which I hope will inspire you:

• OUTSOURCE more (graphic design, video editing, etc)
• FOCUS on the stuff that matters
• STOP trying to learn everything
• STOP getting caught up on the details – JUST DO IT
• AUTOMATE everything possible

Two of the best resources that I’ve learned to take advantage of over the last year are Aweber and oDesk.

Email marketing has never been my thing, and I’m terrible at designating anything.

Today I depend on both.

But those are just two that have helped me recently.

Whether you’re an in-house SEO, an SEO consultant, or managing your own business website – there are a ton of available tools and resources that will make things easier for you. I’ve been using several of them for years.

Maybe you’ve never had a problem with time management, or shared any of these similar issues.

But today this is where I’m at.

It’s exhilarating. And I want you to feel exhilarated too!

Talk to you SOON. A lot sooner than in the past – I promise.

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Yep, that’s right. Youtube, as well Google’s Android.com and partner AOL, all topped the list – earning some of the biggest gains from Google Panda 2.5. Along with several mainstream news media sites.

The Biggest Loser

Surprisingly though, some of Panda 2.5′s biggest losers include ConsumerAffairs.org, MoterTrend.com and Entrepreneur.com.

Which tells me nobody’s ever safe and Google can skew their results however they want to.

What Does This Mean to You?

It probably means it’s time to start taking video marketing more seriously, or at least step it up a bit. However, you could sit around and complain that it’s not fair.

Thankfully there are plenty of folks who are a lot smarter than me being watchdogs, so I plan on focusing what I can control, and that’s video content creation and marketing.

The major plus is, at least posting videos on YouTube is free – for now anyway. And almost everyone has some sort of video recorder these days, so there shouldn’t be too many excuses, even from me.

Actually, YouTube has been a major search player for a long time. So using YouTube videos to drive traffic to your websites, and sell products and services is nothing new. Many smart Internet marketers have been making a fortune off it for years now.

Significant Downstream Traffic Increase

What is new is the phenomenal increase in downstream traffic from Google’s search results to YouTube. Aaron Wall reported, they are up almost 200% over the past half a year, gaining to somewhere between 9 and 10% off all of Google’s downstream traffic.

Just check out the screenshot of this search term showing YouTube in the top 3 positions of Google’s SERP.

If you’re crafty enough, you might even be able to capture all three of those top spots.

Many people don’t realize that According to Alexa, YouTube is the 3 most popular website on the Internet – where it has actually remained strong for quite some time.

I’m no video marketing expert, but do know where to find the best information. If your looking to get started with online video marketing, one of the best sites to check out is ReelSEO.com. They’ll tell you just about everything you need to know about Video SEO.

You could also search YouTube for videos on how to create YouTube videos , and check out this page.

Types of Videos

Here are some business video content ideas to help get you started:

• Website introduction
• Business overview
• How-tos / Instructional
• Customer testimonials
• Webinars
• Interviews
• Speeches
• Presentations

I can promise you one thing, the longer you wait, the harder it is going to be to compete with everyone else. Including the spammers. Because if you didn’t think YouTube was full of SPAM before, you can bet with this latest news, it’s going to get ambushed with it now.

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Regardless if you run a blog, small static website, or a large corporate site; finding and fixing broken site links is extremely important for user-experience, proper indexation, and better search engine rankings.

One way to do this would be to go through your site and test each hyperlink by clicking on them one at a time, but that’s not really feasible for most websites. Especially when most of us are already strapped for time. You could also verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools and check for crawl errors through there. Which I recommend you do anyway. But even then you’re likely working with outdated data and extremely limited features.

A better way would be to use an advanced website audit tool that allows you to crawl and diagnose each website on the fly. Luckily, there are 3 free tools I like to use that make broken link detection and repair super quick and easy.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is undoubtedly my favorite free website spidering tool for small websites. It crawls and analyzes websites extremely fast, then displays the information in a very straightforward and easy to navigate interface.

In addition to helping you detect broken links, Screaming Frog SEO Spider also collects and reports a ton of other helpful search engine optimization related data:

• Server Errors
• Head Section: Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords,
  Meta Robots, Meta Refresh, Canonical Link Element
• Internal / External Links: Permanent and Temporary Redirects,
  Nofollow Link Attribute, Anchor Text
• Duplicate Content
• Heading Tags
• File Size
• Page Depth
• Image Information: Alt Attribute, Address, File Size

The free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider allows you to perform a number of basic tasks while crawling up to 500 URIs. But, for a £99 per annum license, the 500 URI limitation is removed and all configuration options and enhanced features are enabled.

Compatibility: Windows PC, Mac

Xenu Link Sleuth

Xenu Link Sleuth is a completely free broken link checker I like to use for analyzing large and small web sites for broken links. It’s a very basic looking tool specifically designed to detect and report on broken links only; it doesn’t come with a bunch of other fluff which makes it extremely fast and easy to use without having to wade through a ton of irrelevant data just to find important link errors.

The free and only version of tool fully-featured and completely configurable. It offers a number of advanced features such as allowing you to check for specific errors and including or excluding groups of URLs and directories from your analysis. There are a number of export options available, and you can set it up to automatically email you a report upon completion. In addition, the user interface it very straightforward which makes it easy to navigate when you’re looking for particular errors and other important information.

Standard Reports Include:

• Broken Links, Ordered by Link
• Broken links, Ordered by Page
• List of Redirected URLs
• FTP and Gopher URLs
• Valid Text URLs
• Page Title and Meta Descriptions
• Download Speed
• File Type
• HTTP Status
• Orphaned Files

Compatibility: Windows PC

IIS SEO Toolkit

The Free IIS SEO Toolkit is a bit cumbersome for checking web sites for broken links. Especially when you just want to quickly check for any 404 not found errors. It was obviously built with developers and webmasters in mind. However, it’s completely free so once you get a grasp on it you’ll find it does a great job of auditing your website and reporting a ton of important search engine optimization related issues, in addition to finding broken links.

From within the link report you will be pleased to find the link URL, status code, page title and meta description of the linked pages. Simply right click or double click the URL to find additional details such as the linking page, last modified date, HTTP headers and content type.

Summary of all items reported:

• Invalid Markup
• Robots.txt Restrictions
• Duplicate Content
• Hyperlink Errors
• Performance Issues
• Missing Image Alt Attributes

Note: after you download and install the IIS SEO Tookit on your Windows PC, you’ll have to bind your website URL to the “Default Web Site” within the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, if you want it to crawl your hosted website or blog on a remote server rather than a local copy on your computer.

Like I said, it’s a bit cumbersome for simply doing broken link checks, but is one of the best “free” tools available for doing complete site audits – including checking broken links.

If you have an extremely small website you might also want to use the free crawl test tool from SEOmoz. It’s a fairly informative tool that will crawl and report on up to 250 site links for free.

I like to start with my favorite tool, then after I’ve fixed all of the concerning issues I double check my site with another preferred tool. All three of these broken link checkers do a fairly good job, but they don’t always find and report the exact same error codes and site issues. So I recommend not relying solely on one of them to sort out all of your site’s kinks.

I know there are some other really great paid tools, but keeping in-line with the topic of this post; what’s your favorite “free” broken link checker tool? Do you know of any good ones I haven’t listed here? Please take a moment to share your favorite with the rest of us below.

Thanks for reading and sharing!

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Since the notorious Google Panda/Farmer update in February 2011 there has been considerable speculation about what the updated algorithm means in the long term.

Going back a bit, Google’s algorithm was set to determine what type of content a website was offering. Moving more up to date, it began to include factors such as user interaction with any given site.
Today, the algorithm appears to be considering some quite radical additional factors which take account of both content quality and user experience of individual sites.

Although there are still no hard and fast facts or figures as yet, industry experts believe that there are definitely a number of user experience factors which Google has data on and is currently using. They can be broken down into four main sections:

Visitor Behavior

The first of these is visitor behavior, not just on-site but before a visitor clicks through. Google’s preview feature (the magnifying glass to the right of each search result) gives users the option to preview websites before loading. It is believed that sites currently high in the rankings which are overlooked by visitors will be penalized. Once on page, other visitor behavior which could be used by Google includes:

• Bounce rate
• Print occurrences
• Time on website
• Scrolling

Feedback

Another sector is feedback from website visitors:

• Brand searches
• Comments or reviews on content/products
• Repeat visits
• Social media feedback (+1 or Likes, for example)

Interestingly, the Google Chrome browser, which currently has almost 20% of the search engine market share, includes a toolbar plug-in which lets users block certain sites they do not find of interest. Enough blocks of this type are already affecting sites in a negative way.

User-Friendly Features

Sometimes overlapping the feedback section, user-friendly features include:

• Advertising density (percentage vs. content on page)
• Quality of advertising (low click through/high bounce = negative)
• Media incorporation e.g. videos
• Purchasing behavior (displaying popular items to establish
  credibility)

Content

The last section is all about the quality of content and how appropriate it is for the targeted audience. This is the least clear section in terms of how it could be applied to the algorithm, but paying attention to these factors can only be a good thing:

• Keywords and/or Keyword Stuffing – relevance of keywords and
  percentage of use per page
• Spelling and Grammar – should be 100%, even reviews and comments
  with poor spelling and grammar can equate to a poor user experience
• Reading Level – suitable for a 13 to 14 year old is considered about
  right so that an average adult reader can absorb the information quickly
• Page similarity and weak pages – pages which contain very similar

information to each other or those which contain no relevant copy at all should be removed or re-written to avoid negativity.

The changes have left a lot of uncertainty with SEO companies as they are not sure if their methodologies are still going to be effective. The only thing that they can still be certain of is that unique content and a quality link building service is the way forward.

Of course the fact that any or all of this is being used in Google’s algorithm is presently just supposition or educated guesswork, but there is certainly no harm in paying attention to these matters which at the end of the day can only serve to improve websites and user experience of them anyway.

Mark Barry is the Link Building Manager for Integrity SEO Experts, a full-service SEO agency based in the North East of England.

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