Vince Samios - Internet Marketing Expert » SEO Tools

Link Tracking SEO Tools - Yahoo Site Explorer Alternatives

Vince Samios — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:56:54 +0000

After the recent decommissioning of yahoo site explorer, alternatives need to be found so that we can track our own backlinks, and spy on competitors backlinks.

Below is a short list of SEO Tools which can, together, provide a somewhat viable alternative to yahoo site explorer.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Frankly I haven’t used Bing Webmaster Tools, but as the official alternative to yahoo site explorer one hopes it would have much, if not all of the same data as yahoo site explorer displayed. The biggest issue with Bing Webmaster Tools is that it is a tool for webmaster only, whereas yahoo site explorer allowed users to view the backlinks and backlink counts for any and all websites.

At this point in time I can’t comment on the usefulness of Bing Webmaster Tools as a yahoo site explorer alternative for webmasters, because I haven’t used it, however as an alternative for competitor analysis it is a completely useless tool.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is only a yahoo site explorer alternative for webmasters, as google webmaster tools has only ever been available to the sites owner. In this respect I think Google Webmaster Tools is more comprehensive than yahoo site explorer ever was.

Majestic SEO

Without paying for an account, the only information you can get for free is the number of total backlinks, referring domains, and C Class IP addresses. I have doubts about the accuracy of Majestic SEO’s data, but in respect to the number of links a website has for competitor analysis (the link count) Majestic SEO is probably the most accurate and consistent alternative to yahoo site explorer.

Google Links Search

If you use the search links:domainname.com in a standard google search, you will get a short list of sites linking to that domain name. The problem is this list is minuscule and doesn’t even reflect 1% of the links Google actually knows about (which we can compare as a webmaster, with the links in webmaster tools). It can be vaguely interesting, and it is only important in this day and age where yahoo site explorer is down and decommissioned, as one of the seo tools we can use to fill in the blanks.

Alexa

Alexa gives you a rather vague "sites linking in" feature which actually gives you a better list of linking sites than you get from the Google Links: search mentioned above. In a world before we needed and alternative to yahoo site explorer the data alexa provided was entirely redundant, but now it is again, another seo tool to help us piece the SEO puzzle together.

Open Site Explorer

Open site explorer is probably the best like for like yahoo site explorer alternative. It allows us to gather details on other sites, as well as our own. I don’t like the data for backlink counts, and in general I find Open Site Explorer a little clumsy to work with, but in an imperfect world we are left with imperfect SEO tools.

Incoming seo search terms:

Free Retweets Service - Retweet.it Review

Vince Samios — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:03:06 +0000

It’s been reported widely by SEO blogs etc that twitter is having a powerful effect on rankings.

In the course of trying to jump on the same bandwagon I stumbled across a service called “retweet.it” where you can buy re-tweets (or you can earn free retweets).

The maximum package size is 200 retweets for $40. This sounds like a reasonably good deal considering the profound effects others are reporting. Alternatively you can earn credits for yourself, and for each tweet you retweet, you earn half a free retweet. So if I retweet 400 other tweets, I’ve saved myself $40.

As with anything like this, I decided to give it a good go.

Earning free retweets isn’t as easy as it may sound. There are a very limited number of things to retweet and you need to log in regularly to be in with a chance of having enough things to retweet to earn enough of your own free retweets. I was quite surprised about this, because I thought the service would be a lot more popular and there would be a lot more opportunity to earn retweet credits.

So I logged in regularly over the course of 3 days and earn’t myself 55 free retweets which I then proceeded to use. To be honest, unless someone is being paid less than $2/hour, you’re better off just buying credits rather than trying to earn them.

With my 55 retweets I submitted my own tweet to be retweeted by 55 other people. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I was definitely expecting a little bit more than nothing.

First of all it took a very long time for my credits to be used up. I wanted them to fly out of the door in under an hour, but instead it took closer to a day and a half.

I’d only included one keyphrase in the tweets, and the target site didn’t budge even slightly for that key term.

I received absolutely no additional traffic, so no value there either, and I think I possibly received about 7 extra twitter followers, all of which were the “refollow or I’ll un-follow you” kind.

While I’m not going to base my conclusion on this one single test, I am going to say that retweeting isn’t all its cracked up to be if you’re using a service like retweet.it

This may be down to twitter being over-hyped, or it could be down to the fact retweet.it publish an rss feed of all the retweet request… which is just bloody stupid because all google has to do to filter out this manipulated retweeting, is subscript to the retweet.it feed… or maybe googles twitter quality algorithm is excellent… who knows.

Give it a go here if you like… here’s the web address retweet.it (these links are all affiliate links, and I’ll use any credits I earn from referring you, to do more tests)

Incoming seo search terms:

12 SEO Firefox Extensions - SEO Tools

Vince Samios — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:41:45 +0000

The first in a series of posts about SEO tools, first of all 12 SEO tools for firefox.

SEO for firefox

Absolutely critical SEO tool which loads important metrics in your browser as you search. SEO For Firefox can automatically load metrics such as Page Rank, Backlink Counts, Domain Age and Alexa Rank in your browser as you view the SERPS (along with many others)

SEO For Firefox also includes a neat little tool called “SEO X-Ray” which can show you various details about the page you are viewing, including internal and external links on that page, as well as meta descriptions and meta titles.

Another Critial part of the SEO for Firefox tool is the automatic no-follow highlighting, which I always have turned on. This allows you to view web pages with more clarity and instantly spot potential holes.

I would say this is one of those absolute must have seo tools and seems to always appear at the very top of any seo tools list.

Get it here

Search status

A very useful suite of small seo tools which sit in your firefox status bar ready to be used when you need them. The parts of this tool I use most are the “Whois” lookup, “Show Keyword Density” and “Show Robots.txt”. All very self-explanatory. In addition I also use the “Show other domains on this IP” option quite often to spy on competitors.

Get it here

Rank Checker

Not the best rank checking tool on the planet, but quick and easy to use. Checks a list of up to 100 keywords and store historical rankings. Not very pretty, but I still use it every day.

Get it here

SEO Quake

Just a bigger more bloated version of SEO for firefox. It shows you all the same data, and it does show you more data on the page you are viewing (to get the same data you’d have to do a google searh with the seo tool for firefox) but seo for firefox and seo quake don’t play well together and I personally prefer seo for firefox. I’ve also found I get banned rather quickly using SEO Quake because of the sheer volume of requests it ends up sending out.

I also don’t need pretty pictures, which SEO Quake has.

Get it here

Google Toolbar

There is very little reason to add the google toolbar. If you are running firefox you’ve already got a search box in the browser, and if you’ve got the other, better, seo tools installed, it won’t give you any extra data.

Get it here

User Agent Switcher

Vaguely useful once in a while. I find the best use for this firefox tool is to view contents on a page which require a login, but which will present all the data to a google spider.

Have you ever seen exactly what you were looking for in a meta description but you aren’t actually able to view the article once you click through? Set your user agent to the google spider and you’re in!

It can also be useful for more shading (black hat) seo.

Get it here

Fire Bug

Finding, browsing, fixing, modifying and checking code is incredibly easy with the fire bug plugin for firefox. While it isn’t, strictly speaking an seo tool, fire bug is absolutely one of the most useful tools I’ve got.

It has to be seen to be believed, but if you ever want to see code attributed to a particular object, fire bug will change your life. It’s also incredibly easy to make livee changes to a page design or layout without having to dig up ftp details, dreamweaver, and the other half of your brain.

True SEO’s understand the deep dark depths of html, javascript and css. Firebug is a fantastic firefox plugin code viewer which allows you to make dynamic changes to a page on the fly and experiment with layouts, scripts and css.

I use firebug quite often when I want to add weight to an on-page element (a good example is using a heading tag) but I first want to experiment with the way the results will look.

I can fix styling’s in CSS very quickly and I don’t need to upload multiple copies of changes before I get things right.

A must have for a serious SEO geek.

Get it here

Web Developer

Also a fairly useful tool which allows you to see a lot more of the back side of a website. In my opinion Web Developer is beaten to the finish line by Fire Bug hands down.

Get it here

Live HTTP Headers

While a bit more of a technical tool, live http headers can show you a lot of the session data transacting between yourself and a website. Some of the most important data from a seo tools perspective is the ability to see referrers and track through redirects. It’s worth having, but I only use it rarely.

Get it here

Google Global

Want to find out what the SEO results look like for a particular keyphrase in a particular country? Google Global is the seo tool for you.

Personally I just type in the country specific tld and be done with it, but I have needed to use Google Global in the past on a windows machine which was very persistent about the localized results it was showing me.

Get it here

KGen

KGen will create a list of the most common terms on a web page (keyword and keyphrase density) and show you a nice neat list inline in the browser.
Personally I just use the Search Status keyword density tool.

Get it here

Wordtracker Free Keywords

Very useful when writing a blog post, the wordtracker free keywords firefox extension is a keyword suggestion tool inline in the browser.

Get it here (Currently under maintenance)

FlagFox

Thanks to a comment below, this useful firefox extension will show a flag in the address bar showing the geographic location of the server. Nice little feature to have.

Get it here