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5 Reasons I love blogging…

visio — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:52:25 +0000

…and 5 more reasons why I don’t do it so often

Okay apparently I am in this game they call tag or something. Some new thing thats going around and your not supposed to break the ring, curse or whatever you call it.Â Sounds like a chain letter to me

Okay so WebGeek from hybrid6.com tagged me so I am assuming that means I have to write a “5 reasons…” post.Â Well I am in a good mood because I just got done fixing a problem in my forums so here goes.
1.) I can share my knowledge with others and sometimes share ideas/thoughts and exchange industry knowledge with others.

2.) When I sit down to start an article I have to put something together my readers will enjoy, if not then I have failed my purpose of this blog. So by blogging it inspires me to extensive research for my articles which increases my knowledge of what I am writing about… if that made any sense

3.) Meet webmasters. By having an seo blog I get emails and messages from other seo, marketers, ppc guys(sorry but all three are fairly unique of each other ) and in that way get to know some realyl great people and learn alot more about the industry I am working in.

4.)Â Reputation… I got to be careful how I say that.Â By writing articles about seo I can gain a reputation as a good seo that can be trusted to provide accurate stuff. I hope that is the way my blog is seen, again if not I have failed my purpose.

5.) I could end with clients. That is not the primary reason for this blog. I actually do not accept many clients however I have gotten some really interesting requests for seo jsut because of my blog which is really cool.

Ok the good part, my tagees:

DaveNaylor – One of the blogs I frequent. Dave gives unique articles alot of the time, I really like that. I really enjoy your blog Dave!

Bill Slawski from SeobytheSea.com/

Michael Gray from Wolf-Howl Seo blog

Clicky Web Analytics 2.0 – My new playground

visio — Tue, 22 May 2007 18:36:58 +0000

I normally don’t write articles on new analytics software but this one is really cool. It has an Ajax interface and virtually live data. Within 10 minutes of installing the tracking code you can see live statistics. Again I have been known to promote Google Analytics very highly as in my opinion it is the best analytics software on the web. My stance on that has not changed however I will use Clicky Web Analytics 2.0 side-by-side with Google Analytics. There are things I like about each tool and each has things the other doesn’t. I am pleased with the setup and ease of use of Clicky Web Analytics 2.0
Very easy to use and understand, they did a good job of putting it together and making it look good and still provide the stats we all want.

One of the great things about this tool is that they don’t overdo it, items are not crammed together and it is very easy to go through the statistics and to get to the items you want to see the most. On the home page of your stats you have on the left side your top content, incoming links and search data. This shows you the top content pages of your site, the page that get the most activity. Google analytics gives this data and IMHO does a better job and gives much more info on the top content pages and bounce rates. Again that is why I use them side-by-side now.

The next side-bar unit is the incoming links. This shows you the highest traffic incoming links. Which sites linking to you send you the most hits? I really like this feature, yes Google Analytics and other statistic tools give this data however most incoming php urls get chopped. So you can’t see the specific page they came from, only the domain. I HATE that. This tool appears to give you the full url to all the incoming hits. I am really happy about that! I like to see the pages I am linked from and see why, not just who is linking.

The next stat on the side-bar is the searches. This will show you the latest/highest search phrases for your site. Upon clicking a phrase you can see the search engine that brought the hit, the time of the hit(kind of cool), the ip(click the ip for the traffic pattern on your site the user has made), how many actions have been made by the user, where the user is from and what browser they are using, as well as the length of the visit. This data is all placed conveniently.

Then on the middle of the page you have graphs. These graphs show the past ten days and the traffic for each. There are also graphs depicting the visitor actions and average time spent on your site.

There is a visitors tab which allows you to view all your visitors, where they came from(what search/site/page), how many actions where produced by each and how long their visit lasted and even what time they appeared on your site. Again all the data is conveniently placed unlike some tools I have used in the past.

What are actions? Actions are page views(when a user hits another page that logs as a action), outgoing links(user clicks out of your site from one of your outbound links), downloads etc. By using the actions statistics you can see where each visitor went on your site and what time they went to the page so you can see how long they were at each page of your site. What brought them to your site? Where did they exit? You can see that there too. This tool uses flags to depict the region the user is from. It even shows a google map of where they are. Not sure that will do me any good but its there in case you need it

The content statistics. I personally prefer the Google Analytics top content stats better than Clicky. Basically these stats show you a graph, your top content for the day and how many hits each got. You can also click ‘entrance’ or ‘exit’ link to see which pages brought the most hits and which had the highest bounce rate.

The links stats give you the ability to see your top referers, incoming links and outgoing links. Which sites are sending me the most traffic? Which page on the site did the user come from. You can also see which sites you are sending the most traffic to. Again as I said before I do like how they set this up so that the php pages aren’t chopped. I will probably use this for checking the sites who link to me from now on.

Searches stats. This feature gives you your search data for the day. What phrases produced the most hits today? By clicking on a phrase you can see which engine the search came from. One thing that sadly Awstats lacks. If you click the ‘engines’ link you can see your highest search engine referers and see the data for each.

Lastly the spy data. This feature allows you to see live data of your site, what is going on RIGHT NOW on my site? See what is happening in real time. The only downfall to having it update live is for big sites, it is updated live so for large trafficked sites you won’t be able to see much as it will keep updating and bumping the results down. However Clicky has thought of this and added a cool feature which allows you to pause the data, look at your stats, get the info you need and then press play again so you can see all the latest data. Very cool!

So my conclusion? I like how Clicky provides all the data in an easy-to-access form and that it isn’t cluttered like many stat tools. I also like the ability to see direct page hits instead of just the domain that sent the hit.
I wouldn’t give up the Google Analytics data however, I like them both and will use them side-by-side.

You can also hook this up with Feedburner to see your FeedBurner stats right in the Clicky interface. For those of you who use FeedBurner for your stats this will be a great improvement.

As a replacement for AwStats this is awesome. If you use AwStats I HIGHLY recommend you make the change now. For Seo/Marketers and/or webmasters who like to stick their nose into web analytics I highly recommend you use Google Analytics and this tool side-by-side.

Also a cool feature to this tool is that it works well with Ajax sites, something most stat tools do not support. For you Web 2.0 lovers this tool is for you.

Check it out yourself:

Please post your comments/thoughts on this tool and web analytics.

Copyright Â© 2007, 1st-rankings Co.
This article may NOT be redistributed in any way, shape or form. If you would like to link to the article we would appreciate it.

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New MSN Labs Search Funnel Tool

visio — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:54:46 +0000

Maybe I am just slow lately but this tool is new to me. Since the introduction of the MSN Adlabs Keyword tool I have been checking for new tools at MSN so it has to be new – So what the heck is this tool and what effect does it have on my life? Well here is how it works. You enter a key-word and select either Funnel in or Funnel out. An incoming funnel is a search that ends with a certain keyword; for example, an incoming funnel for “SEO” displays all the queries that customers searched before searching for “SEO”.(taken from MSN details page).
An outgoing funnel is a search that starts with the keyword; for example, an outgoing funnel for “SEO” displays all the queries that customers searched after searching for “SEO”.

Who cares? This doesn’t pertain to me does it? Well that is your decision but since your hooked you might as well read the rest of the article

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. Here is the link to the tool: MSN Adlabs Keyword Funnel tool
As the MSN details indicate this tool takes a keyword and either shows any keywords that were searched prior to arriving at that final key-phrase or vice-versa.

After doing a few searches I found some interesting data. I found ‘links:’ and ’site:’ command searches which ended in searches for their terms. This tells me that webmasters are checking their rankings and links. Sure what is so wonderful about that? We all do it don’t we? That is what I am getting at. The search data for MSN and Yahoo is inflated by automated and manual rankings checks. I am not saying Google doesn’t have this either but Google isn’t wide open to auto attacks. Google uses APIs while MSN and Yahoo can be queried without them. I think the actual search data for MSN and Yahoo is much lower than even Overture says.

I have found this recently when I have gained a few more competitive rankings on MSN yet so far have gotten no traffic. Google produces over 100,000 searches for the same phrase yet MSN is not sending me one click. What is going on?
I think more people than MSN or yahoo would have us believe are turning into Googlers. Yahoo is a hotbed of spam and I have yet to rank a quality site there, however BH sites have no trouble ranking. MSN has made changes for the better and IMO is the #2 search engine even though they lack the traffic Google has and alot of that is even automated queries.

Not sure where I am going with this… Maybe to show that you should spend more time worrying about Google than gaining rankings for a losing search engine. If you rank on MSN/Yahoo and Google you will know what I am talking about. The search volume is vastly different. The quality of the search traffic is vastly different. A well written, quality site will convert more Google traffic than the other search engines combined.

This morning I heard someone say “there are 4 major search engines. Google, yahoo, msn and ask”. I wonder how much traffic comes from a search phrase like ‘hosting’ on ask because I also rank very well on Ask and get no traffic. Yahoo is dieing and the worst part about it is they are ignoring it. They ignore any suggestions from seo/webmasters and continue to the path of desctruction. The ONLY reason MSN has improved at all is that for #1 they have started taking advice and listening to it and 2. they are starting to think like a search engine. MSN is still new to the game so IMO are doing okay. I believe MSN can rise in status if it continues on this path. I have recieved a few letters from MSN asking for advice(supposedly randomly sent) and have submitted my advice. I have seen one of those recomendations put into effect. The others are algo changes which may or may not be in effect yet.

Well I guess I kind of took it off the topic of the MSN funnel tool but maybe this is more interesting? Well I hope some of it was helpful to you. Just remember Google SEO will have long lasting effects. It may take longer but will last a long time if done right. MSN and Yahoo rankings can comes quick but bring little quality traffic.
Copyright Â© 2007, 1st-rankings Co.
This article may NOT be redistributed in any way, shape or form. If you would like to link to the article we would appreciate it.

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Spam Report – Report SE Spam

visio — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:21:29 +0000

Do you hate spam? Do you want to help make Google a cleaner place by submitting spam but don’t got the time to goto Google and submit a form every time you see one? Now there is a FireFox extension that allows you to submit a report right from your browser with auto-fill in fields. This is the easiest way yet to submit spam results to Google.

How does it work? Well when your browsing Google and you click a organic or PPC listing and find that it is a spam site or MFA page you click the little icon right next to your browser box and it will bring up a form which has the spam url already filled out. Just go back to google and copy the url of the search(the url in the browser bar which brought up the search) and the keywords used to find the site. Then submit the spam report and your done.

It may not seem like a lot just submitting one site but wouldn’t you like to have more relevant results and after all it was you who found that spam site so by submitting it your only helping to clean up the results you get. One person submitting one site may not help a whole lot but if 500 or 5000 webmasters submit a report everytime they see one think how much spam would be gone. If you don’t than you are in a way letting the spam stay. We as webmasters have a part in keeping Google clean. Some say they don’t have time or it is a waste of time yet they take advantage of the usage of this great search engine. Why not just spend a few minutes each day giving a little back.

Spam Reports…
What good are they exactly. Does Google listen? Do they care? I believe they do. I submit reports now and again and usually it isn’t very long before google removes the result and/or bans them. Google wants to keep their search engine the most relevant and so I think they look into spam reports and I also believe that those webmasters who submit only real reports about sites that are actually spam and/or MFA sites get reviewed first and Google takes priority on these. i can’t prove that but it seems true for me. Just try it and see what happens. You will never know what good you could have done unless you do it.

Try it out – Spam Reporter – Firefox Plugin

Copyright Â© 2006, 1st-rankings Co.
This article may NOT be redistributed in any way, shape or form. If you would like to link to the article we would appreciate it.

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1st SEO Search Engine

visio — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 22:12:43 +0000

SEO Search Engine – The search engine for the SEO – Human Edited

We have just launched our NEW! SEO Search Engine which is powered by Google. This search engine is targeted towards the SEO audience. Our editors, contributers and volunteeers add SEO sites based on relevance in the SEO world. This search engine provides results from sites that are known to provide factual information and good advise.

We would like your help to make this search engine the best. To help us please submit a list of SEO sites you have found to be helpful. We will accept sites that you own however our volunteers will review all sites and will only accept those which are most accurate.

If you would like to apply to bea volunteer for this search engine please post a comment or send me a email.

How exactly does this search engine differ from google?
Well our editors and volunteers help to rank the sites in the search results based on relevance and accurate info. In many searches you will notice a big difference between our results and Googles. Google is a great search engine and I highly recommend it however it doesn’t use human editors so doesn’t know whether a site is providing factual information or not. That is why you should use our search engine for all your SEO needs.

This search engine is powered by Google, what exactly does that mean?
Well it means that Google hosts the results and the ads. The search is made on our site and passed through Google where the ads are placed on it. You still get the human edited results which Google doesn’t offer and a Google-easy interface. How much better can it get?

Do volunteers rank the sites based on preferance?
No. As mentioned before these results are human edited yet the same principles are used that Google employs such as relevance and importance however there is one more element which we give more value than the others and this is its accuracy and importance in the SEO world. If a SEO site is well trusted among webmasters such as SeoBook it gets more weight. Sites that are known to be contradictory are pushed down below sites with accurate info. This doesn’t mean that your small SEO site won’t appear in our results. You can get your site reviewed by our volunteers by submitting a comment with the URL. Please also submit your favorite seo sites.

How to become a Editor/Volunteer
Would you like to become a part of the SEO Search Engine? Well signup for a application to become a editor. Send a email to randy@NOSPAM1st-rankings.com with your Name, site and seo experiance. We will need URLs and keywords of sites you ranked so we may verify. Just in case you missed that we will verify these. We want this search engine to be relevant so want only editors who know what there doing to be a part.

Please take a look and support it by using it. Send us your feedback and ideas as we plan to use them. Submit comments and emails so I know your still around

SEO Search Engine

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We are sorry ‘www.google.com’ cannot be found

visio — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 02:37:47 +0000

Okay this post won’t help you get higher rankings on Google or anything but might give you a laugh.

Lol I got this error message on my computer just now and man did I found it funny.

Click for image>>>
http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/6448/tbefoundsi4.jpg

This image has not been tampered with at all. It appeared on my computer using IE7 when trying to goto ‘www.google.com’ spelled correctly. It wasn’t just once. It happened everytime I went there. And yes IE works fine
Is this MSNs new way of deterring google traffic to them? lol

“We are sorry google cannot be found… not sure why but what the heck try out MSN search”

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