DailyRebellions 's Public Library

3. Invoke the Mind’s Eye

Producing a mental image in a reader’s mind is one of the most powerful things you can ever do as a writer, so expressly engaging the imagination is a powerful opening technique. Activate the mind’s eye of the reader by using words like “imagine,” “picture this,” “do you remember when,” etc.

. Use an Analogy, Metaphor or Simile

Analogies, metaphors and similes are some of the most powerful devices available when it comes to telling a story in a single sentence. This is a great way to capture a reader’s attention and also acts to provoke mental imagery that allows readers to tell a story to themselves.

5. Cite a Shocking Statistic

Starting off with an interesting factoid is also a great technique. People love being provided with interesting data, but only if it is unique, startling, or even shocking. The statistic should also be directly relevant to the point of your post as well.

PPC as a Link Building Tool

9. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign. Relevant traffic will get your site more visitors and brand exposure. When people come to your site, regardless of the channel in which they found it, there is a possibility that they will link to you.

News & Syndication

10. Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic.

11. Submit an article to industry news site. Have an SEO site? Write an article and submit to WebProNews. Have a site about BLANK? Submit to BLANKinformationalsite.com.

12. Syndicate a press release. Take the time to make it GOOD (compelling, newsworthy). Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message. For good measure, submit it to PRWeb, PRLeap, etc.

13. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.

14. Trade articles with other webmasters.

15. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.

16. Write about, and link to, companies with "in the news" pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments. This is obviously easiest if you have a news section or blog. Do a Google search for [your industry + "in the news"].

17. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important. If you can make other people feel important they will help do your marketing for you for free. Salary.com did a study on how underpaid mothers were, and they got many high quality links.

Directories, Meme Trackers & Social Bookmarking

18. This tip is an oldie but goodie: submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.

19. Submit your site to paid directories. Another oldie. Just remember that quality matters.

20. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible. Of course, if you make it into a truly useful resource, it will attract links on its own.

21. Tag related sites on sites like Del.icio.us. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.

22. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you. If your site gets on the front page of Digg or on the Del.icio.us popular list, hundreds more bloggers will see your site, and potentially link to it.

23. Look at meme trackers to see what ideas are spreading. If you write about popular spreading ideas with plenty of original content (and link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source on the meme tracker site.

Local & Business Links

24. Join the Better Business Bureau.

25. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.

26. Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources. (Easier in some countries than in others.)

27. List your site at the local library's Web site.

28. See if your manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.

29. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online and off, by recommending each other via links and distributing each other's business cards.

30. Launch an affiliate program. Most of the links you pick up will not have SEO value, but the added exposure will almost always lead to additional "normal" links.

Easy Free Links

31. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist to be a cheap or free classified service.

32. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and provide links to relevant resources.

33. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.

34. If you run a fairly reputable company, create a page about it in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis. If it is hard to list your site directly, try to add links to other pages that link to your site.

35. It takes about 15 minutes to set up a topical Squidoo page, which you can use to look like an industry expert. Link to expert documents and popular useful tools in your fields, and also create a link back to your site.

36. Submit a story to Digg that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page.

37. If you publish an RSS feed and your content is useful and regularly updated, some people will syndicate your RSS content (and some of those will provide links… unfortunately, some will not).

38. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and potentially read your site, link at your site, and/or buy your products.

Have a Big Heart for Reviews

39. Most brands are not well established online, so if your site has much authority, your review related content often ranks well.

40. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. We have seen this draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links.

41. Create product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your background (LINK!).

42. Review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.

43. Review products and services on shopping search engines like ePinions to help build your authority.

44. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links. Two testimonial writing tips — make them believable, and be specific where possible.

Blogs & the Blogosphere

45. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.

46. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

47. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

48. Technorati tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.

49. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.

Design as a Linking Element

50. Web 2.0-ify your site. People love to link to anything with AJAX. Even in the narrowest of niches, there is some kind of useful functionality you can build with AJAX.

51. Validate and 508 your site. This (indirect) method makes your site more trustworthy and linkable, especially from governmental sites or design-oriented communities. There are even a few authoritative directories of standards-compliant sites.

52. Order a beautiful CSS redesign. A nice design can get links from sites like CSS Vault.

Hire Help

53. Hire a publicist. Good old fashioned 'PR' (not PageRank) can still work wonders. Andy Hagans now offers a link baiting publicity service.

54. Hire a consultant. Yes, you can outsource link building. Just make sure to go with someone good. We recommend WeBuildPages, Debra Mastaler and, ahem, Andy Hagans.

Link Trading

55. Swap some links. What?! Did we really just recommend reciprocal link building? Yes, on a small scale, and with relevant partners that will send you traffic. Stay away from the link trading hubs and networks.

56. In case you didn't get the memo — when swapping links, try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages. Do not try to get links from pages that list hundreds of off topic link partners. Only seek link exchanges that you would consider pursuing even if search engines did not exist. Instead of thinking just about your topic when exchanging links, think about demographic audience sets.

Buying Sites, Renting Links & Advertisements

57. Rent some high quality links from a broker. Text Link Ads is the most reputable firm in this niche.

58. Rent some high quality links directly from Web sites. Sometimes the most powerful rented links come direct from sites not actively renting links.

59. Become a sponsor. All sorts of charities, contests, and conferences link to their sponsors. This can be a great way to gain visibility, links, and a warm feeling in your heart.

60. Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the profits to a charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.

61. Many search algorithms seem biased toward older established sites. It may be faster to buy an old site with a strong link profile, and link it to your own site, than to try to start building authority links from scratch.

Freebies & Giveaways

64. Hold a contest. Contests make great link bait. A few-hundred-dollar prize can result in thousands of dollars worth of editorial quality links. Enough said.

65. Build a tool collection. Original and useful tools (and collections of tools) get a lot of link love. What do you think ranking for mortgage calculator is worth?

66. Create and release open source site design templates for content management systems like Wordpress. Don't forget the "Designed by example.com" bit in the footer!

67. Offer free samples in exchange for feedback.

68. Release a Firefox extension. Make sure you have a download and/or support page on your site which people can link to.

Conferences & Social Interaction

69. It is easy to take pictures of important events and tell narratives about why they are important. Pictures of (drunk?) "celebrities" in your industry make great link bait.

70. Leverage new real world relationships into linking relationships. If you go to SEO related conferences, people like Tim Mayer, Matt Cutts, and Danny Sullivan are readily accessible. Similarly, in other industries, people who would normally seem inaccessible are exceptionally accessible at trade conferences. It is much easier to seem "real" in person. Once you create social relationships in person, it is easy to extend that onto the web.

71. Engaging, useful, and interesting interviews are an easy way to create original content. And they spread like wildfire.

Professional Blogging Establishes Thought Leadership

In your industry, what would it take to become a nationally recognized thought leader? In most instances, it takes 1-2 years of daily blogging by an intelligent, experienced writer (or writers). Producing daily content for two years means you have added approximately 730 pages of content to your site or at least to the space of discussion within your industry. If you think that over for a few minutes, you’ll realize how that kind of exposure can lead to quotes from media professionals, peer sites, and related industry sites all over the Web!

Once you have established your company as a thought leader, the inbound links you earn will drive traffic to your site, position you as a source of quality information, and additionally increase your search engine rankings for important industry-related phrases.

With these benefits, you can’t afford not to implement blogging into your interactive marketing strategy.

What information, products, and services do I offer?

This is an excellent place to begin compiling a list of potential keyword phrases. You’ll do some keyword refining later on, so go ahead and write down everything that comes to you in this stage.

Let’s say you’re a bowling supply Web site. What bowling products do you offer for sale? Start by listing the products and brand names. For example: Hammer bowling balls and Dexter bowling shoes. These are products you want to sell and phrases that people might use when looking for bowling supplies. Make a list of all relevant terms you can think of.

What keywords are my top ten competitors using?

Cover your bases. Select five competitors you know by reputation. Then use the search phrases you’ve already pinpointed and review the top five search results for each. Combine the five competitors you recognize and the five you just found and begin to view the source code of the site pages. You may find that successful competitors are using phrases and/or terminology you hadn’t considered.

What keyword phrases are people actually using when they search?

To answer this question, you need a keyword research tool. Whether you use Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, or Wordze, now is the time to use a professional keyword research tool. Membership fees vary, but your search marketing agency should have access to several tools for research and analysis.

Take your initial keyword list and research the popularity and variations available for each term. Proper use of the tool will yield the results you need to get started. You will have certain decisions to make, such as deciding whether to attempt to compete for the more generic and most popular terms or for the less popular but more accurate terms. If you do it yourself, you face the risk of aiming too broad and not ranking well, or aiming too narrow and getting no traffic in return for good rankings.

A good rule of thumb is to evaluate your business in terms of local search. If you have a relatively new Web site (two years old or less), you’ll find it difficult to compete for the broader terms, but what about location specific terms? If you offer services, which areas do you serve? Perhaps you’ll draw a good amount of traffic for Dallas maid service versus maid service. Think of how many people nationwide might be searching for what you have to offer and use your keyword research tool to see if city- or state-specific terms are popular.

What types of actions are taken by people searching for each phrase?

Most companies don’t take the time to consider this aspect, so you will be ahead of the curve if you do. Given the time to research thoroughly, you will find that certain terms are most often searched with one result in mind. Of course, making SEO decisions based on this research is a numbers game. If a greater percentage of users are intending to purchase rather than seeking reviews or information, the phrase is more valuable to you as far as immediate results are concerned. Some phrase orders are more common for researchers versus shoppers, so spending a little extra time to know the attitude of searchers in your industry can be well worth your time.

Of course, the true measure of whether you are focusing on the correct keywords will come down to the bottom line. Check your Web analytics to determine which keywords are driving traffic, sales and/or leads, and then modify your keyword selection as necessary.

Header Tag

The H1 tag is another key element that must be in synergy with the rest. This appears to most Web visitors as the “title” of the page. This header is usually bold and describes exactly what is on the page. Some web sites don’t have a headline or title above the copy at all, but having an H1 tag is another key element to proper search engine optimization. Using our example, the H1 of this page is “Soccer Jersey.” Are you starting to see a pattern?

Content

Obvious to most of us, and lost completely on many Web sites, is content. Write 250 words or so of copy that is relevant to that page. Make sure that we are using the same words/wording as the Title tag, URL, H1. Good idea to use the words “soccer jersey” here, too.

Internal Links

If you are going to link from www.yoursite.com to the “soccer jersey” page, be sure that you use the words “soccer jersey” in the anchor text on that link.

External Links

Be really careful here. Don’t get “all spammy” on me. If you can find relevant Web sites that would link to product/services pages that are relevant for inclusion, that’s terrific. Don’t — repeat, don't — get too focused on one keyword. Get some links to your internal pages from external sites that have “soccer jersey” in the anchor text and have these sites link to your /soccer-jersey/ page. Then, go get some other links for the /soccer-ball/ page that have the “soccer ball” anchor text. For more information on linking, be sure to read the Link Love section.

The Devil Is in the Details

Certainly, this isn’t everything that you need to know for search engine optimization. There are probably around 250 criteria that a search engine might consider to determine which Web site to rank for a given search phrase.

As always, if you’re unsure of a major change that you are about to make, please consult with a search engine optimization professional. Reckless changes to a Web site can have major effects on rankings and your bottom line.

Keyword-Rich Anchor Text: As for the actual appearance and structure of the site map, each page is represented in a list as a keyword-rich link. By that, I mean, don’t simply copy your URL structure as the text for readers and search engine spiders to read.

Hopefully, your site was built upon the foundational principles of SEO, and each page in main and sub navigation is keyword-rich. This is obviously not always practical or possible depending on your unique circumstances. But whenever possible, select popular, descriptive keywords for your nav headings and repeat this on your site map.

While using keyword-rich anchor text in your site map won’t solve your search engine ranking woes, it only makes sense to implement sound practices wherever and whenever you can. Every little bit helps along the way. The best plan is a complete plan with no holes.

In the end, most users won’t ever look at your site map, and it will seem like a worthless page at times. But take my word for it, you want to give all your visitors, both human and search engine, an extra opportunity to find and/or index all the important content your site has to offer. Here’s the bottom line: If it isn’t indexed, it won’t rank at all in the search engines. And if it isn’t ranking, it’s wasted potential.

Traffic vs Search Engine Juice?

As I’ve chatted to a variety of bloggers about linkbaiting over the last few months I’ve been very interested to find that many of them only focus upon one or the other of the above two elements. There are those that are quite obsessive with the initial rush of traffic and focus on their blog’s visitor count or page views while others get caught up in SEO and how many backlinks their site has and how it’s impacting their page rank.

I guess I’d say to both groups two main things:

1. it’s not an either or equation - getting links for your site benefits it in both of the above ways. While there are people who argue that the best traffic is Search Engine traffic and others that argue that the best traffic is referral traffic from other sites (a third group argue that it’s loyal repeat readers) my own opinion is that there are benefits of all kinds of traffic and it’s worth being holistic about this aspect of your blog (read more on the benefits of different types of traffic).

2. obsession can be dangerous - similarly, if you become obsessive with any one kind of traffic (or for that matter if you become obsessed about traffic in general) you run the risk of building a one dimensional blog. I’ve come across many bloggers who obsess about generating incoming links (for whatever reason) to the point where it begins to destroy their blog. They end up forgetting about the readers they currently have and let other elements of their blog slip (like building community, writing quality and deeper content instead of lighter posts that are just about getting link attention).

My Advice to these bloggers is to blog in a balanced and holistic way. By all means think about how you promote yourself and even think strategically about building links - but build a quality blog that actually helps people and a lot of the links will come anyway. Don’t just rely upon the tricks and controversy or you run the risk of becoming a one trick pony and won’t build a model that is sustainable for the long haul.

With that in mind, tomorrow I’m going to turn my attention to link baiting techniques.

3. It has to be targeted at linkers.

Linkers as a tribe follow a code, a pattern of behaviour which if followed and cracked can be very profitable. A linker links based on what the content is perceived to provide, not on the reality. Multiple factors come into play when tickling the link out of the linker. Find out who links, why they link, who they link to. Is there a pattern? Follow that pattern.

In psychology there is a technique called modelling, apply that to the linker. Psychologically profile them, hey if Cracker can do it you can.

4. It stands out.

Sometimes you can’t put your finger on it, other times it’s blatantly obvious why it works and you kick yourself for not thinking of it first. You know good linkbait when you see it. It whipsers, “link to me”, gently in your ear. After a while you can tell profesionally written linkbait from the guy who just got lucky.

5. Links make successful linkbait

Seems obvious doesn’t it, but it’s not about getting on the front page of digg. It’s not about any social media front page, it only works as linkbait if someone pulls the trigger and fires a link at you. Other than that it’s just ego tripping. Which is cool to a point, I’ve had front page diggs that got hardly any links. But what a rush getting to the front page of digg for the first time.

Just don’t confuse a front page digg with success.

Competitor Analysis - There are no secrets, an offensive plan




This service is an excellent precursor to building a website and designing a marketing program; why reinvent the wheel when we can tell you how it was built and how to make it better?




StepForth will disassemble your competition and provide you with a comprehensive report of our findings outlining the core strategy that worked for them.




Summary of Deliverables



• Systematic deconstruction of competitor marketing strategies
• Competitor primary (up to 10 words) and secondary (up to 20 words) keyword analysis
• Successful strategies for each competitor
• Final outline of the search engine optimization and marketing techniques that the competitors have used to achieve top rankings in this field.



Cost: Starting at $400.00 competitor

ETA: Within 5-10 days from receipt of deposit.

Urgent?: Please contact us if you require a faster turn-around.

Packaging: PDF format. Optional color-printed hard copy by mail.

The 360° Competitive Analysis - Beat them at their own game!




Is your niche completely saturated? Do you have countless questions about
your competitor's promotion tactics and how to beat them at their own game?
This analysis adds considerable focus on the methodical deconstruction
of the online marketing strategies for 3 of your competitors. Our professional
research staff will
note all of the tactics that are shown to have increased results for your
competition and ultimately create a superior plan to put you ahead of the
your competition.




The goal of this service is to provide you with all of the details
required to outpace the competition while increasing ROI. As a result,
this analysis will include all of the keyword research and web site usability
reporting that is noted within the Small Business Analysis with increased
detail.




Summary of Deliverables



• Systematic deconstruction of competitors
• Outline of competitor strategy
• Competitor primary (up to 10 words) and secondary (up to 20 words) keyword analysis
• Recommended strategic plan for client site
• How to implement recommended SEO strategy (written format with graphical cues)



Cost: Starting @ $1800.00 (this is a min 12hr service allotment)

ETA: Within 5-10 days.

Urgent?: Please contact us if you require a faster turn-around.

Packaging: PDF format. Optional color-printed hard copy by
mail (additional fees apply)

3. Search Engine ‘Unfriendly' Dynamic URL’s

Unfriendly dynamic URL’s are a common side effect of using a Content Management System that is not designed with search engine rankings kept in mind. Here are some examples of some unfriendly URL’s:

Sample 1:

http://www.mydomain.com/myproducts.php&354=prod333&subproduct

Sample 2:

http://www.surfboardsforyou.com/boards/

filename.php?id=F98ZF4&productId=39222&section=wicked&brand=582&template=532

These URLs are problematic because a search engine may consider these addresses too complex to spider. Why too complex? Suffice it to say that the more complex the URL, the higher the chance that a search engine robot will consider the content too dynamic to read; it changes too often to be valuable to a search engine.

The way around these types of URLs is actually not so difficult; it may only require a small investment of time and money. The ‘time’ will be required when researching which URL fix is right for your system. The money may be required to pay a programmer to implement and test the new URLs. Here are how the URLs might look once they are fixed to be search engine friendly:

1. Menus

Are the menus on your website spiderable? If not you may be hiding major areas of your website from search engine spiders and missing out on additional search engine rankings.

The fact is there are very few menus out there that a search engine will have a problem following, but there are definitely some worth avoiding. For instance do not use a JavaScript Jump Menu (example) as the core mode of navigation of your website; search engines cannot index this type of menu. Also be careful of Flash menus, they look slick but they will impede the progress of a search engine spider especially if they are the only means of navigation within your site.

General Menu Rules

The ideal menu would be text based and each text link would include the keywords you are targeting on the destination page. Setting up a menu with this much forethought requires that you determine the layout and content for your site before web design begins. Once you have a clear picture of the content for each page you can then research the keywords that are best to target per webpage. This essential keyword research can be done in house easily enough using systems-like keyword research tools that provide you with a glimpse into how your customers think by showing how many searches there are per month (or year) for a particular term.

Remember, almost every page within your site has a very real opportunity to gain a top ranking; all you need to do is ensure that the design, content and site structure is optimized. Ensuring that the menu is carefully thought out and designed is a crucial step for top rankings.

Finally, if you are at all uncertain whether your menu is search engine friendly then be certain to back it up with a text menu in the footer of your page using the same keyword targeting principles noted above.

2. Sitemaps

Sitemaps can dramatically help the visibility of your website by allowing search engine spiders easy access to all of the pages in your site. Place a link to the sitemap on every page within your site to ensure easy access no matter where a search engine or user enters your site.

Sitemap Tips

Just having a sitemap will help but how you build your sitemap will also play a role in how well the search engines catalogue it. For example, if you have a twenty-page website it would be ideal to create a sitemap where each page is represented by a title along with a short description. Ultimately, the page may be a bit long but it will have content that the search engines like to index and it will boost the relevance of the linked pages because the titles will accurately represent the content. So in effect, you will now have more than just a sitemap; you will have a table of contents for your site that has the potential of getting a ranking and provides an extra boost to the ranking worthiness of each page.

Google Sitemap

Google Sitemap is an additional design element that you should consider adding. Here is an article Scott Van Achte wrote on how to implement your own Google Sitemap.

3. Layout

How you layout your page can make a significant difference in how well your site ranks and ultimately how search engine friendly it is.

Tips for Layout

Search engine robots read a webpage from the top of the source code (the programming that made your page – see “view source” in your browser) all the way to the bottom. As a result, it is important to ensure that both of the following elements are found as close to the beginning of code as possible:

A) A short sentence introducing the topic using the keyword targets you have chosen for the page.

B) Your text menu and other navigational aids, or if this is not possible it would be even more beneficial to start with a paragraph or two of relevant content followed by the navigation.

By placing this information near to the top of the page, you will promptly present the search engine robot with relevant text that backs up the page title and backlinks. You will also provide an immediate sitemap of sorts for the search engine to spider, which includes keywords relevant to each page.

Competitive Research Tools




Need to research a competitor? Are you planning to do this yourself? If so then here are three of the the top programs you need. Think of them as your personal SEO detective kit.





1. 
   

   OptiLink
   
   Discover where your competitor's backlinks are coming from by compiling a list of their backlinks and automatically analyzing them with OptiLink. This program is reasonably priced and provides awesome support plus updates for life - you can't ask for better. This is a mandatory tool in our SEO toolbox.

   
   
2. 
   

   OptiSpider
   
   Similar to OptiLink this tool will take a different angle when analyzing your competitor's site. Wouldn't it be wonderful to know just how your competitor's have optimized their website's? This tool will crawl and catalogue their site just like a search engine spider and provide you with a very revealing report.

   
   
3. 
   

   WebPosition Gold
   
   Monitor the ranking position of your competitors. With this tool you can keep an eye on your competitors and reveal which search engine keywords they are ranking for. This kind of information can be gold if you are new to the market and don't want to invent the wheel; benefit from their experience and consider targeting the same keyphrase's! Download a free trial of WebPosition here.

   
   
4. 
   

   SERPH: track the ‘buzz’ of yourself and your competitors using this handy social search tool

   
   
5. 
   

   SEO for Firefox: a great plugin from SEO Book

   
   
6. 
   

   XENU Link Sleuth: a popular tool for many SEOs, XENU can quickly analyze your own or a competitor’s site.

   
   
7. 
   

   Compete: this great free tool can provide a statistical comparison of up to 5 different websites. Excellent for competitor analysis.

   
   
8. 
   

   Alexa: Alexa is the granddaddy of sources for competitor analysis data. Check out your own website’s profile and see where it stands in comparison to your competitors.

   
   
9. 
   

   WWW or Not?: Is link popularity split between two versions of a domain name (i.e. http://domain.com vs http://www.domain.com)? If so, this tool will tell you. This is valuable if you want to see if your own website has extra link popularity sitting on the sidelines from other sites that have linked to the ‘wrong’ address. Learn how to fix this situation for your website.

   
   
10. 
    

    PR Prowler: although PageRank is not nearly as powerful as it once was PR Prowler is serves as a helpful method for finding the best sites to get links from or to advertise on.

    
    
11. 
    

    Check Server Headers Tool: although slightly technical this tool, provided free by SEOConsultants.com provides valuable insight into the setup of yours or your competitor’s servers. For example, StepForth uses this tool to verify that our clients have properly set up their server redirects (301’s) so that duplicate content issues are avoided. It is also used extensively within our competitor analysis reports; it is useful to see how your competitors might have an edge over you.

    
    
12. 
    

    DomainTools.com: Domain Tools is one of my favorite sites for competitor analysis. The most useful component, the Reverse IP Tool, allows me to plunk in a single competitor’s domain and then see every other website that is hosted on its server. In rare instances where the co-hosted domains are owned by the competitor I can get a hint at any future marketing plans my clients should be made aware of.

    
    
13. 
    

    Robots.txt Syntax Checker: There is nothing worse than making an error in a Robots.txt file and accidentally dropping a site out of the search engines. The free Robots.txt checker will review your Robots.txt file; ensuring it is properly created and it will provide you with the rules within the file in plain language to ensure everything meets your approval. This is a valuable tool for avoiding serious indexing issues.

XML Sitemap Creation Tools




The following XML sitemap creation tools are extremely handy for creating and maintaining website XML sitemaps for submission to search engines:



• 
  

  Vigos Google Sitemap Generator: this great free tool will make your life easier by spidering and automatically generating a slick XML sitemap for your website. Plenty of useful controlled page update options are also provided.

Optimize Your Blog's Linking Structure For Best Results

1. Provide a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get more mileage from them.
2. Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.
3. If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the "Sticky Posts" plugin which allows you to 'stick' an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.