SEO Part III: Useful Tools

by John R. SedivycloseAuthor: John R. Sedivy Name: John R. Sedivy
Email: john@capecodbranding.com
Site: http://www.capecodbranding.com
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In SEO Part I, I had discussed the important distinction of search sites compared to search systems. In Part II, I had discussed the concept of robots and spiders and debunked one of the largest myths concerning SEO that continues to mislead individuals. In this article, the final to the series, I will discuss a couple useful tools to assist you in your SEO efforts.

At the suggestion of Peter Kent’s book “Search Engine Optimization For Dummies” I downloaded a few toolbars and tried them out. There were five suggested toolbars, but for my needs I only found two to be of great use. Two of the toolbars would not support Apple OSX and one I just found to be a bit amateur. Keep in mind that I am not one to download toolbars – there are just too many and most serve to clutter your browser without adding any value, the two discussed in this article are nice in that they offer great value and occupy a minimum of real estate.

Google Toolbar
Google is one of those rare companies that seem to produce free content that is extremely useful. The google toolbar is no different. Here is what makes the Google toolbar worth downloading:

1. Search – Allows Google search without going to the Google website (similar feature is available in the Firefox browser).
2. PageRank - Provides the overall Google PageRank for each site that you visit. PageRank is basically Google’s view as to the importance of a page. For PageRank, 1 is least important and 10 is most important. For example, a new website will be assigned a 1 (least important) where a popular existing website such as Facebook is assigned an 8.
3.  AutoLink - Creates links based on webpage text. Like most items on the toolbar – they can be accomplished prior to downloading the toolbar, but this allows for a quick one click solution.

There are many other useful features with this toolbar, too numerous to name here. My advice is to download the Google toolbar and play around with it for a bit. You can customize the features that you would like on the toolbar and remove the features that are not useful for you. There is likely something for everyone here. Download the Google toolbar by clicking here.

Alexa Toolbar
If you track website metrics you have likely heard of Alexa. Alexa provides such measures as overall website rank, number and source of incoming links, and many other useful metrics. Prior to reading SEO for Dummies I had not realized that Alexa has a toolbar, dubbed “Sparky”. The best aspect of Sparky besides the useful information it provides is that it really takes up a minimum of your web browser space. Actually it integrates into your existing browser display and does not even add another row! Here are the top three useful features that I have found by using this toolbar:

1. Traffic Rank – Provides the overall ranking of the website you are visiting. This is great for tracking your own website, rather than visiting Alexa and typing in the information, you just visit your website and it will provide you with the traffic rank – easy as that!
2. Traffic Trends – Provides a small graph of the overall traffic trends of the site you are visiting. Same advantages as the preceding traffic rank description.
3. Related Links - Provides a list of links related to the website you are visiting. I am user of the Firefox web browser and one of the best aspects that I found is that this feature is integrated into my Firefox menu, thereby saving real estate!

What makes the Alexa toolbar unique is that there are only a handful of functions, but they each are very useful, and really take up no space at all, so they provide minimal distraction from your existing configuration. To download Sparky click here.

There may be other useful toolbars out there but from what I have discovered so far these are the two that have provided me with the most value. I encourage you to give them a try, they’re fast and easy to install and you can uninstall quickly if you decide they are not worth you time. Take some time and experiment and have some fun doing so!

The Google and Alexa toolbars provide great shortcuts for existing tasks!

-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding

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