Sheer SEO : Specialist Search Engine Optimisation Tools

I recently came across a great suite of search engine optimisation tools for both SEO specialists and newcomers alike. Search tools such as:

Current & Historical Search Engine Positions - Ongoing reporting, with graphs, of the search engine rankings on both Google and Yahoo for each keyword or keyword phrase you specify.

Main, Current & Historical Referrers - Current & Historical Referrers shows the number of inbound links to your website for Both Google and Yahoo with historical reporting of your inlinks over a user-defined period of time. Main Referrers shows the links to your site ordered by PageRank. This report details the URL of the linking page, the PageRank, the link text, the target URL and whether the link is nofollow or not.

Current & Historical Social Reports - Shows your status on Digg and Delicious both currently and over a user-defined time period.

Single, Double and Triple Keyword Density - Reports the number of occurences for keywords and keyword phrases of every page on your website.

Current & Historical Indexed Pages - A useful SEO tool that displays the number of pages currently indexed on Google and Yahoo with historical graphing.

Current & Historical Supplemental Index Ratios - Shows the percentage of pages on your site that are found in Google’s main and supplemental indexes.

Backlinks Watchdog - A superb SEO tool that monitors, on a daily basis, inbound links to your site and reports to you of any change in a links status.

All these search engine optimisation tools (and probably more to come) can be found at SheerSEO.com - online SEO software that specialises in tracking SERPs, PageRank and more. Give it a test drive by signing up for a free 90 day trial account. I definately suggest that you add Sheer SEO to your search engine optimisation arsenal today.

Add comment May 17th, 2009

Should it be SEO UK, seo uk or SEO uk?

Depending on how capitalisation is used in your search query you may see different results. Try the three ’seo uk’ variations above and see for yourself where our website ranks for each search term. Surprisingly the variation in capitalization can account for a shift in as much as 5 or 6 places in the results.

“Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.” - [ http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=searchguides.html&ctx=basics&hl=en ]

It seems that this no longer holds true and that Google searches are indeed case sensitive, for the time being at least, but why? Is it simply a glitch in the algorithms? or a brave move by Google to allow more websites to benefit from better SERPs visibility based on capitalization variation?

Maybe the latter sounds a little too far-fetched, but why should Google not offer different results based on capitalization. It’s already happening with localized and personalized results? After all, who really wants to go back to the days where, for any query, a different handful of websites dominated the SERPs.

It would be really nice if Matt Cutts or someone of a similar standing in the SEO community could present Google’s take on this matter.

Add comment October 8th, 2008

Google Kills SEO Ranking Analysis Tools

Anyone in SEO worth their pay may have, this week, noticed that Google has been changing the code used to display their search results. Unfortunately these changes, and repeated tweaks to the SERPS code over the past few days, have had the knock on effect of wiping out a good portion of the web-based search ranking analysis tools, as well as some locally run ranking software.

SEOBook are one of the first to report that they have recently updated their online rank checking tools SEO for Firefox and Rank Checker and according to Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com “Both should work as of now, and if any more SERP changes happen we will try to update the extensions as soon as possible.”

The changes however do beg the question. Are the SEO community, and their tools, responsible for so many requests on Google’s servers that they need to take action or are we looking at a simple backend HTML layout update?

The very act of querying Google with automated software is wrong, and according to Google’s webmaster guidelines…

“The sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express permission in advance from Google. Sending automated queries absorbs resources and includes using any software (such as WebPosition Gold) to send automated queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks in Google search results for various queries.”

So, was it a simple backend update that caused a blip or a deliberate attempt to slow down the SEO community. Lets hear your thoughts?

Add comment August 24th, 2008

Google Insights for Search : Marketing statistics for all

I have been playing around recently with Google Insights for Search, a brand new search data analysis tool for search marketing specialists.

Just like Google Trends, this new Google search marketing tool offers seasonal and historical trends with search volume shown distributed across regions and cities. Google Insights for Search however goes even further by allowing you to narrow search data to specific categories, location subregions and even user specified date ranges.

Once your search parameters are defined Google Insights for Search not only presents you with historical trend data and regional interest statistics but, in a similar manner to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, also offers you the top search terms related to your query and a list of the hottest related rising searches.

As wonderful as this search marketing tool is, I do however have to question the validity of the representation of the data. For example: A search for the term ‘Gifts’ with the filters of United Kingdom / All Subregions / Last 12 Months / All Categories produces the following demographics.

Compare this to the same search on Google Trends and the data starts to get a little confusing.

As you can see from the Google Insights for Search results it appears that the Isle of Man may be a market worth exploring for our particular term. For those who are not familiar with the Isle of Man - it is an island nestled between England and Ireland with a population of around 75,000 people. Approx 1/100th of the population of London.

But wait a minute? Google Trends is highlighting Scotland as a popular search market for our term! Both tools, by default use the broad matched version of a keyword so where does the difference in statistics lie?

All-in-all a wonderful search marketing tool, which is still in Beta, so possibly the results may be distorted at this time.

Add comment August 7th, 2008

Search Engine Usage stats by country

I recently had to do a load of search engine usage research for a potential new client opportunity. Such information seems hard to come by, so for others in the same predicament I have added these to the blog in the hope that other marketeers, may be able to utilise this in some form.
Google as predicted has pretty much market dominance across the ten countries profiled, however the surprising statistic was that Yahoo came below both MSN and Yandex in terms of percentage (as a total/number of countries - it should also be added that Yandex only appears in one country - however it accounts for 45% of internet searches). Visually this could be represented as follows:

Total usage for profiled countries:

Google: 73%
Yahoo: 4%
MSN: 5%
Yandex: 5%

These figures were obtained as below from the following data, for the following countries, UK, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Italy, Bulgaria and Russia:

Add comment June 3rd, 2008

People who have shaped search marketing…Your views?

This year has been a bumper year for search, particularly SEO. In particular as we have mentioned a number of times before some of the people who have shaped the search marketing industry, so further to this E-Gain are asking for your feedback as to who has shaped search as we know it whether the UK search engine marketing industry or the US search marketing industry - we’re not fussy in that respect.

So feel free to give us some feedback. Whether you think its the usual suspects ie Danny Sullivan, Ralph Wilson or even Matt Cutts, or perhaps some of the new kids on the block (so to speak) such as Rand Fishkin, Jon Myers, Vanessa Fox or Andrew Girdwood. Or perhaps one from left field, maybe Lisa Dietliefsen or Kevin Lee. The floor is yours…

2 comments June 1st, 2008

Paid Links and Shadow domains - Surveying the new SEO landscape

There has been a lot of movement over the last year in terms of clampdown on unscrupulous SEO tactics, as Google continue to strive for greater relevancy within their search index. The biggest of these has been the clampdown on paid linkage, and directories and something that affected a large number of SEO tactics and campaigns, as well as campaign planning.

However taking a step back now that the dust has settled - what is the current scenario. Sure new facets of optimisation are starting to take shape (such as blended/universal search), and many search engine optimisation specialists are starting to have to think like marketeers rather than SEO’s, something which has been good for the industry, and as the industry continues to evolve will hopefully continue to produce more and more broad thinking online marketeers.

However following on from the paid links (which people like Andrew Girdwood from Bigmouthmedia in particular activately campaigned on behalf), a new trend which in my opinion rivals that of paid linkage (well in my opinion is more devious and off less value than targetted paid links), has started to become much more widespread in its use. It has been noticeable the amount of Search Engine Optimisation companies now starting to employ ‘doorway sites’ or ’satellite sites’ more aggressively as part of their online marketing strategies. In particular I can name two organisations based around Burnley, Lancashire alone (and that isn’t a huge geographic location) that actively engage in such tactics. I would suggest on a UK basis there could possibly be hundreds if not thousands more employing this technique. Many of these sites have only one major plus on the side - relevancy (and I use that term loosely) but are however of very little use, and often merely filter people through to the primary site.

Used well and strategically as part of a campaign, there is no issue with the use of microsites, however a thought pattern develops in my brain, that if you (ie Google) are going to penalise sites for artificially affecting the algorithm via the purchase of linkage, then surely trying to artificially affect the algorithm by developing hundreds of throwaway sites is against T&C’s as well, in fact quoting from Googles own Q&A page, surely the above practise would fall under shadow domains or at the very least doorway pages.

“There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It’s far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:

• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear in search results
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google”

Therefore I have to ask, why do you continue to reward such activity Google?

Surely it is not that hard to track - a simple DNS or Whois lookup would sort some of the wheat from the chaff, and more sophisticated algorithmic calculations would probably take care of the rest?

It would be interesting to gauge other peoples thoughts in the industry on this one. Pretty sure there is going to be a broad difference in opinion…

However nothing should be taken away from some major advances though that I believe have been made over the last year. It is very noticeable now how many more organisations understand SEO and its commercial benefits. It has to said, that there are a a number of people that have played a key part in laying the foundations but I do believe that SEO has to a certain extent started to move away from the ‘Dark Art’ perception and one can only hope this continues across the digital marketing landscape.

Add comment May 30th, 2008

Google goes social network mad with Friend Connect

With all the fanfare of a royal wedding (well maybe not that much), Google has launched a new tool which appears to be an API allowing users for “Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites”, following closely on the heels of similar products from Microsoft (Data Availability) and Facebook Connect.

The tool will allow users to:

• Securely send personal data such as friends lists, presence status and the like
• Maintain single friends list

So why you may ask are organisations fighting for what seems such a small prize. The answer is the price is actually a very large one, one worth potentially millions of pounds to the winner. At present it would seem Google’s product does seem limited in some rather major areas such as user profiles (well to the same extent as Facebook and Microsoft (via Hotmail etc), however it would seem if this can be sorted via partnerships with other high profile partners this problem should be somewhat alleviated.

There is already a reasonably amount of noise on the net about this, and it is worth keeping an eye on places such as

Search Engine Roundtable - Google goes social with Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect - Webmasterworld

Google Friend Connect - Search Engine Watch 

Add comment May 13th, 2008

Microsoft will buy Yahoo

This is a point I have been discussing with others in the industry recently, and something we have covered in the recent post ‘Can Microhoo compete with Google‘. Much discussion has taken place on various prominent blogs throughout the search industry as to the potential impacts of such a deal, and other potential suitors.

However according to a couple of people I have spoken to, within Yahoo, there seems to be a general consensus, that it isn’t a case of IF Microsoft buy Yahoo, it is more a case of WHEN.
Only time will tell whether this is the case, however it is sure to raise a lot of questions for Paid Search Consultants such as ourselves, namely

• Which platform will be developed further, or will both. My personal thoughts would be that the stronger Panama platform would in all likelihood be further enhanced using some Microsoft integration
• Will the two brands operate seperately - I would again suggest yes, as both brands are very well established within their core markets, and thus a ‘re-brand’ would achieve very little
• What does this mean moving forward - This could be where the real winnings are made. I think it was Brian Eisenberg at SES London who said that Microsoft and Yahoo had to a certain degree conceeded to Google on search (apologies if it wasn’t you Brian) , and I would to a degree have to agree with this sentiment, however the future battlefields via the behavioural and social media battlefields will continue.

Wait and watch…

Add comment March 4th, 2008

If you want to be a SEO rockstar - be prepared to work for it

I have just finished reading Lee Odden’s post on ‘The Falacy of SEO celebrity‘ and Rand Fishkin’s subsequent post ‘The Desire for fame in the SEO world’, something which I would highly recommend to any budding SEO. I was fortunate to see Lee at the recent London SES conference (Blog and Feed SEO seminar if you read this Lee), and having seen him in action (as well as regularly reading the blog), you really get a feel for just how authoritive the man is, and one of the primary reason for Lee’s prominence within the search community.

Like Lee, we had a recent candidate in for interview recently, who came from a good agency (no names mentioned), and wanted close to a superstar salary - and wanted to be the next Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan. However people such as Danny, Lee, Matt have contributed years of feedback, support and above all effort back into the community via their involvement at the very top of the industry, and that list would also include others such Rand Fishkin et al.

Some people do get prominance via their positioning within high profile organisations, however lets face it, these are very few and far between in SEO. So at the end of the day, if you want to live the SEO rock and roll lifestyle, be prepared to work for it, and above all - dont forget at the end of the day its an SEO community.

1 comment February 23rd, 2008