Google | SEO Brisbane

SEObook.com/images/writingguy.jpg" />

Yes, deliberate mistake

It grates when people write poorly, huh. When writers write well, the words almost become invisible. The focus shifts away from technical details, and onto the message.

Is there an easy way to write better blog posts? E-mails? Web copy?
Let’s take a look at three guidelines for web writing.

1. If You Can Say It, You Can Write It

The Dilbert Mission Statement Generator – sadly now offline – comes up with convoluted gems this:

“Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance based infrastructures”

Satire, one would hope.

However, the US Air Force uses the following mission statement:

“The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests – to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace”

“Deliver sovereign options”?

Who talks like this? Well, apart from the US military.

Nobody.

Good web writing is the same as good spoken language. Use short sentences, short words, simple structures and a natural, predictable flow of ideas. Avoid waffle, hyperbole and words that hide meaning. Whenever you finish a piece of writing, read it aloud. Cut or rephrase phrases that sound clunky, because they’ll read clunky, too.

Your writing will sound warm and human.

The human voice is especially important online. Communicating at a distance, particularly two-way communication, is relatively new to humans. To help people connect with one another more easily, it pays to write in a warm, conversational style that mimics personal conversation when conducted in close, physical proximity.

When you think about how you would say something, especially to a specific person, you choose words, expressions and structures based on that personal context. Try to imagine that person in front of you as your write.

This approach works well for all applications – from formal legal sites, to personal sites.

2. Planning

Planning what you’re going to say helps you to complete any writing task more quickly and easily.

1. Identify and list your goals. What is the message? What is the desired action you want your reader to take? What is the key thought you want your reader to take away?
For example, a goal list might look like this:

*inform people the last project went well, even though there were problems
*highlight the good aspects about the project
*highlight the problems
*present ideas on how these problems can be overcome in the next project
*get everyone revved up and excited about the next project
2. Think about the audience. Who is your audience? What do you know about the person or group?
3. Determine the right tone and format based on answers 1& 2
4. Write quickly. Don’t edit, even if your writing is a mess. Separate out your writing and editing functions.
5. Draw a solid conclusion. Calls to action work well.
6. Read aloud what you’ve written. Cut, fix and tighten. Writing comes alive in the rewrite.

Solid blog posts sound spontaneous, but they’re not. They’re often structured, worked and reworked.

3. Hyperbole Doesn’t Work On The Web

Hyperbole means extreme exaggeration. i.e. “All the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten this little hand”. Web readers tend to gloss over the flowery and the convoluted.

On the web, people scan, so the shape of your writing – how it appears on the page – can be just as important as what you say. So think about the shape and form of your writing. Can you use bullets, headings and images to break up large blocks of text? Sometimes, the best thing to do is not write at all. Can an image convey your message? If so, use it.

Also consider context. When visitors arrive on a page, a page deep within your site, do they know what your site is about from glancing at that one page? If not, consider using chunks of content to provide context. These chunks of information can be repeated on every page of your site, and should be self explanatory. Think directory entry. Your repeat visitors will become blind to it, but your first time readers will appreciate it.

We could go on all day about web writing. However, we’d like to hear your tips. How do you approach writing on your site? Do you plan? Do you wing it? What style of writing gets the best results?

Related Blogs

SEObook.com/images/writingguy.jpg" />

Yes, deliberate mistake

It grates when people write poorly, huh. When writers write well, the words almost become invisible. The focus shifts away from technical details, and onto the message.

Is there an easy way to write better blog posts? E-mails? Web copy?
Let’s take a look at three guidelines for web writing.

1. If You Can Say It, You Can Write It

The Dilbert Mission Statement Generator – sadly now offline – comes up with convoluted gems this:

“Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance based infrastructures”

Satire, one would hope.

However, the US Air Force uses the following mission statement:

“The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests – to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace”

“Deliver sovereign options”?

Who talks like this? Well, apart from the US military.

Nobody.

Good web writing is the same as good spoken language. Use short sentences, short words, simple structures and a natural, predictable flow of ideas. Avoid waffle, hyperbole and words that hide meaning. Whenever you finish a piece of writing, read it aloud. Cut or rephrase phrases that sound clunky, because they’ll read clunky, too.

Your writing will sound warm and human.

The human voice is especially important online. Communicating at a distance, particularly two-way communication, is relatively new to humans. To help people connect with one another more easily, it pays to write in a warm, conversational style that mimics personal conversation when conducted in close, physical proximity.

When you think about how you would say something, especially to a specific person, you choose words, expressions and structures based on that personal context. Try to imagine that person in front of you as your write.

This approach works well for all applications – from formal legal sites, to personal sites.

2. Planning

Planning what you’re going to say helps you to complete any writing task more quickly and easily.

1. Identify and list your goals. What is the message? What is the desired action you want your reader to take? What is the key thought you want your reader to take away?
For example, a goal list might look like this:

*inform people the last project went well, even though there were problems
*highlight the good aspects about the project
*highlight the problems
*present ideas on how these problems can be overcome in the next project
*get everyone revved up and excited about the next project
2. Think about the audience. Who is your audience? What do you know about the person or group?
3. Determine the right tone and format based on answers 1& 2
4. Write quickly. Don’t edit, even if your writing is a mess. Separate out your writing and editing functions.
5. Draw a solid conclusion. Calls to action work well.
6. Read aloud what you’ve written. Cut, fix and tighten. Writing comes alive in the rewrite.

Solid blog posts sound spontaneous, but they’re not. They’re often structured, worked and reworked.

3. Hyperbole Doesn’t Work On The Web

Hyperbole means extreme exaggeration. i.e. “All the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten this little hand”. Web readers tend to gloss over the flowery and the convoluted.

On the web, people scan, so the shape of your writing – how it appears on the page – can be just as important as what you say. So think about the shape and form of your writing. Can you use bullets, headings and images to break up large blocks of text? Sometimes, the best thing to do is not write at all. Can an image convey your message? If so, use it.

Also consider context. When visitors arrive on a page, a page deep within your site, do they know what your site is about from glancing at that one page? If not, consider using chunks of content to provide context. These chunks of information can be repeated on every page of your site, and should be self explanatory. Think directory entry. Your repeat visitors will become blind to it, but your first time readers will appreciate it.

We could go on all day about web writing. However, we’d like to hear your tips. How do you approach writing on your site? Do you plan? Do you wing it? What style of writing gets the best results?

Related Blogs

SEObook.com/images/writingguy.jpg" />

Yes, deliberate mistake

It grates when people write poorly, huh. When writers write well, the words almost become invisible. The focus shifts away from technical details, and onto the message.

Is there an easy way to write better blog posts? E-mails? Web copy?
Let’s take a look at three guidelines for web writing.

1. If You Can Say It, You Can Write It

The Dilbert Mission Statement Generator – sadly now offline – comes up with convoluted gems this:

“Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance based infrastructures”

Satire, one would hope.

However, the US Air Force uses the following mission statement:

“The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests – to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace”

“Deliver sovereign options”?

Who talks like this? Well, apart from the US military.

Nobody.

Good web writing is the same as good spoken language. Use short sentences, short words, simple structures and a natural, predictable flow of ideas. Avoid waffle, hyperbole and words that hide meaning. Whenever you finish a piece of writing, read it aloud. Cut or rephrase phrases that sound clunky, because they’ll read clunky, too.

Your writing will sound warm and human.

The human voice is especially important online. Communicating at a distance, particularly two-way communication, is relatively new to humans. To help people connect with one another more easily, it pays to write in a warm, conversational style that mimics personal conversation when conducted in close, physical proximity.

When you think about how you would say something, especially to a specific person, you choose words, expressions and structures based on that personal context. Try to imagine that person in front of you as your write.

This approach works well for all applications – from formal legal sites, to personal sites.

2. Planning

Planning what you’re going to say helps you to complete any writing task more quickly and easily.

1. Identify and list your goals. What is the message? What is the desired action you want your reader to take? What is the key thought you want your reader to take away?
For example, a goal list might look like this:

*inform people the last project went well, even though there were problems
*highlight the good aspects about the project
*highlight the problems
*present ideas on how these problems can be overcome in the next project
*get everyone revved up and excited about the next project
2. Think about the audience. Who is your audience? What do you know about the person or group?
3. Determine the right tone and format based on answers 1& 2
4. Write quickly. Don’t edit, even if your writing is a mess. Separate out your writing and editing functions.
5. Draw a solid conclusion. Calls to action work well.
6. Read aloud what you’ve written. Cut, fix and tighten. Writing comes alive in the rewrite.

Solid blog posts sound spontaneous, but they’re not. They’re often structured, worked and reworked.

3. Hyperbole Doesn’t Work On The Web

Hyperbole means extreme exaggeration. i.e. “All the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten this little hand”. Web readers tend to gloss over the flowery and the convoluted.

On the web, people scan, so the shape of your writing – how it appears on the page – can be just as important as what you say. So think about the shape and form of your writing. Can you use bullets, headings and images to break up large blocks of text? Sometimes, the best thing to do is not write at all. Can an image convey your message? If so, use it.

Also consider context. When visitors arrive on a page, a page deep within your site, do they know what your site is about from glancing at that one page? If not, consider using chunks of content to provide context. These chunks of information can be repeated on every page of your site, and should be self explanatory. Think directory entry. Your repeat visitors will become blind to it, but your first time readers will appreciate it.

We could go on all day about web writing. However, we’d like to hear your tips. How do you approach writing on your site? Do you plan? Do you wing it? What style of writing gets the best results?

Related Blogs

SEObook.com/images/buysell.jpg" />

Does the thought of selling fill you with dread?

If you see yourself as a technologist, or marketer, then selling may not come easy to you. But we all need to sell something, even if it is just our opinion! If you’re a consultant of any description, it comes with the territory.

So it pays to know a few techniques. Luckily, sales isn’t something you have to be born to do – it does not require supernatural charm, charisma, a hide as thick as an elephant, and a superhuman drive.

Selling can be like a doctors consultation.

A Visit To The Doctor

When you go to the doctor, do you expect the doctor to just guess what is wrong with you?

SEObook.com/images/it-looks-cracked.jpg" />

A doctors consultation involves the doctor asking you a series of questions. This questioning is to help determine what the problem is, and how it can best be solved. At the end of the process, the feeling is probably one of relief and assurance i.e. that the doctor has your best interests at heart, and will cure what ails you.

It’s the same in business.

Any client you encounter has a problem. Like a specialist doctor, it is your job to ask a series of questions to help nail down the problem and find a solution. The very act of questioning – known as consultative selling – helps build trust and rapport with the client in the same way you may experience with a doctor. This works especially well in the field of consulting, which is based on information sharing.

The emphasis is on clients needs, as opposed to getting a signature on the dotted line. You first establish a client’s needs, then you provide a solution, if you have one. You’re building a relationship, based on trust, by asking a series of questions.

Not so hard, really.

The Mechanics Of Consultative Selling

Ok, so how do you do it?

First, you need to understand the buyers buying process. You then match your selling process to their buy process.

All buyers go through a specific process. For example, if a company needs internet marketing services, do they go to their established provider – possibly the web design company who built their site – or do they go direct to the SEO market? Do they attend conferences? If so, which ones? Hint: they may not be SEO conferences. Do they ask other business people in their business network? Do they go with a known brand?

It’s pretty simple to determine the buying process if the buyer comes straight to your website, fills out the contact form, and requests a call-back. But life often doesn’t work that way.

A prospective client may ask their web design company. Their web design company may not have had a clue, had you not been in to see them a week earlier. You asked the web design people a few questions about whether they had an SEO capability in house, found out they didn’t, and found out they had a lot of clients who quite possibly needed SEO. You proposed a joint deal whereas they would refer their clients to you, for a 10% commission.

Try to find out how your prospective clients buy SEO services, and position yourself accordingly. Think business associations and clubs, their existing providers in related areas, and the other companies they have an association with.

You need to get yourself positioned correctly in their buying process.

If you’ve managed to get in front of them, you then need to think about the questions you are going to ask. You should be asking about their business, where they see it going, what problems they are having, their place in the market, and their competitors. Business owners typically like doing this, and will welcome your interest, so long as you’re seen as a “doctor” i.e someone they trust to help. You’ll also need to make a presentation, which, depending on the context, need not be formal. It could consist of showing them case studies of how you’ve helped solve this problem before. Let’s face it, most SEO/SEM problems and solutions are going to look pretty much the same.

It’s all about trust relationships. It’s a fact of life that people buy more readily from people they trust.

But how do you know if you can trust your prospective buyer?

Screening Buyers

Consultative selling is also a great way to screen out tire kickers. A person who is just pumping you for information will reveal very little about themselves. The conversation will be one sided.

If they are genuinely interested in your service, they are more likely to answer questions. They do have to trust you first in order to do this, so try to think like a doctor if you encounter resistance. i.e. “I want to help you get more traffic, but I can’t do so if I don’t know more about your business before I can devise an appropriate solution”.

Be prepared to walk if they don’t volunteer the information you need. Even if you did land the job, you may end providing a substandard solution to their problem, which will likely end in tears. Better to find clients who you can work with, rather than against.

Another method of screening is to pre-close the sale. When you are gathering needs, ask that if you can solve their problems to their complete satisfaction, as a result of this discussion, that they will buy your services.

This will sound to them like a fairly safe bet i.e. you have to propose something that solves their problem. However, it also creates an implied obligation on their part to do so. There is no risk on your side, as you can either solve the problem, in which case you’ll likely get the business, or you can’t, in which case you’ll walk anyway.

If they are hesitant, it is either an opportunity to walk, and thus stop wasting your time, or an opportunity to find out something more about their buying process.

In short, when thinking about sales:

You are not a salesperson. You are a “doctor”
Focus on the needs of the client, not landing the job. Sale hucksters typically focus on the close too soon, which can destroy trust
It’s ok to walk away. You won’t be able to help some clients
Insist that the client engage in conversation. A client who asks you questions, and volunteers little information, might be pumping you for information

These consultative sales techniques are covered in various sales theory books. Check out “Consultative Selling“, by Mack Hanan, Jay Abrams “The Sticking Point Solution“, and “Stop Telling, Start Selling: How to Use Customer-Focused Dialogue to Close sales” by Linda Richardson.

Related Blogs

One of the best ways to track Google’s strategies is through visualizing & analyzing their acquisitions. Which is what the following image helps you do. Click on it for the full enlarged version

Google/">SEObook.com/images/Google-acquisitions.jpg" border="0" />
via Scores

Related Blogs

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-review.png" align="right" alt="Alexa Logo" />

Alexa, a free and well-known website information tool, recently released a paid service.

For $199 per site Alexa will audit your site (up to 10,000 pages) and return a variety of different on-page reports relating to your SEO efforts.

It has a few off-page data points but it focuses mostly on your on-page optimization.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-home-page.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Review Homepage" />

You can access Alexa’s Site Audit Report here:

http://www.alexa.com/siteaudit

Report Sections

Alexa’s Site Audit Report breaks the information down into 6 different sections (some which have additional sub-sections as well)

Overview
Crawl Coverage
Reputation
Page Optimization
Keywords
Stats

The sections break down as follows:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-expanded-sidebar.jpg" alt="Site Audit sections and subsections" />

So we ran SEObook.com through the tool to test it out

Generally these reports take about a day or two, ours had some type of processing error so it took about a week.

Overview

The first section you’ll see is the number of pages crawled, followed by 3 “critical” aspects of the site (Crawl Coverage, Reputation, and Page Optimization). All three have their own report sections as well. Looks like we got an 88. Excuse me, but shouldn’t that be a B+?

So it looks like we did just fine on Crawl Coverage and Reputation, but have some work to do with Page Optimization.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-overview-site-audit-top.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Overview" />

The next section on the overview page is 5 recommendations on how to improve your site, with links to those specific report sections as well. At the bottom you can scroll to the next page or use the side navigation. We’ll investigate these report sections individually but I think the overview page is helpful in getting a high-level overview of what’s going on with the site.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-overview-bottom.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Overview" />

Crawl Coverage

This measures the “crawl-ability” of the site, internal links, your robots.txt file, as well as any redirects or server errors.

Reachability

The Reachability report shows you a break down of what HTML pages were easy to reach versus which ones were not so easy to each. Essentially for our site, the break down is:

Easy to find – 4 or less links a crawler must follow to get to a page
Hard to find – more than 4 links a crawler must follow to get to a page

The calculation is based on the following method used by Alexa in determining the path length specific to your site:

Our calculation of the optimal path length is based on the total number of pages on your site and a consideration of the number of clicks required to reach each page. Because optimally available sites tend to have a fan-out factor of at least ten unique links per page, our calculation is based on that model. When your site falls short of that minimum fan-out factor, crawlers will be less likely to index all of the pages on your site.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-reachability.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Reachability Report" />

A neat feature in this report is the ability to download your URL’s + the number of links the crawler had to follow to find the page in a .CSV format.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-download-reachability.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Reachability Report Download Links" />

This is a useful feature for mid-large scale sites. You can get a decent handle on some internal linking issues you may have which could be affecting how relevant a search engine feels a particular page might be. Also, this report can spot some weaknesses in your site’s linking architecture from a usability standpoint.

On-Site Links

While getting external links from unique domains is typically a stronger component to ranking a site it is important to have a strong internal linking plan as well. Internal links are important in a few ways:

The only links where you can 100% control the anchor text (outside of your own sites of course, or sites owned by your friends)
They can help you flow link equity to pages on your site that need an extra bit of juice to rank
Users will appreciate a logical, clear internal navigation structure and you can use internal linking to get them to where you want them to go

Alexa will show you your top linked to (from internal links) pages:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-onsite-links.jpg" alt="Onsite Links Alexa Site Audit" />

You can also click the link to the right to expand and see the top ten pages that link to that page:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-expand-onsite-links.jpg" alt="Expanded Onsite Links Report" />

So if you are having problems trying to rank some sub-pages for core keywords or long-tail keywords, you can check the internal link counts (and see the top 10 linked from pages) and see if something is amiss with respect to your internal linking structure for a particular page.

Robots.txt

Here you’ll see if you’ve restricted access to these search engine crawlers:

ia_archiver (Alexa)
Googlebot (Google)
teoma (Ask)
msnbot (Bing
slurp (Yahoo)
baiduspider (Baidu)

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-robots-xt.jpg" alt="Site Audit Robots.Txt" />

If you block out registration areas or other areas that are normally restricted, then the report will say that you are not blocking major crawlers but will show you the URL’s you are blocking under that part of the report.

There is not much that is groundbreaking with Robots.Txt checks but it’s another part of a site that you should check when doing an SEO review so it is a helpful piece of information.

Redirects

We all know what happens when redirects go bad on a mid-large sized site

SEObook.com/images/alexa-redirects-beaker-fire.jpg" alt="Redirects Gone Bad" />

This report will show you what percentage of your crawled pages are being redirected to other pages with temporary redirects.

The thing with temporary redirects, like 302′s, is that unlike 301′s they do not pass any link juice so you should pay attention to this part of the report and see if any key pages are being redirected improperly.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-redirect-report.jpg" alt="Redirect Report Alexa Site Audit" />

Server Errors

This section of the report will show you any pages which have server errors.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-server-errors.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Server Errors" />

Making sure your server is handling errors correctly (such as a 404) is certainly worthy of your attention.

Reputation

The only part of this module is external links from authoritative sites and where your site ranks in conjunction with “similar sites” with respect to the number of sites linking to your sites and similar sites.

Links from Top Sites

The analysis is given based on the aforementioned forumla:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-reputation.jpg" alt="Alexa Reputation" />

Then you are shown a chart which correlates to your site and related sites (according to Alexa) plus the total links pointing at each site which places the sites in a specific percentile based on links and Alexa Rank.

Since Alexa is heavily biased towards webmaster type sites based on their user base, these Alexa Rank’s are probably higher than they should be but it’s all relative since all sites are being judged on this measure.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-linking-site-chart.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Link Chart" />

The Related Sites area is located below the chart:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-recs-related.jpg" alt="Related Sites Link Module Alexa Audit" />

Followed by the Top Ranked sites linking to your site:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-review-top-ranked-sites.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Top Ranked Sites" />

I do not find this incredibly useful as a standalone measure of reputation. As mentioned, Alexa Rank can be off and I’d rather know where competing sites (and my site or sites) are ranking in terms of co-occurring keywords, unique domains linking, strength of the overall link profile, and so on as a measure of true relevance.

It is, however, another data point you can use in conjunction with other tools and methods to get a broader idea of your site and related sites compare.

Page Optimization

Checking the on-page aspects of a mid-large sized site can be pretty time consuming. Our training.SEObook.com/website-health-check">Website Health Check Tool covers some of the major components (like duplicate/missing title tags, duplicate/missing meta descriptions, canonical issues, error handling responses, and multiple index page issues) but this module does some other things too.

Link Text

The Link Text report shows a break down of your internal anchor text:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-link-text.jpg" alt="Link Text Report Alexa" />

Click on the pages link and see the top pages using that anchor text to link to a page (shows the page the text is on as well as the page it links too):

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-link-text-expand.jpg" alt="Link Expansion Site Audit Report" />

The report is based on the pages it crawled so if you have a very large site or lots and lots of blog posts you might find this report lacking a bit in terms of breadth of coverage on your internal anchor text counts.

Broken Links

Checks broken links (internal and external) and groups them by page, which is an expandable option similar to the other reports:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-report-broken-links.jpg" alt="Alexa Broken Links Report" />

Xenu is more comprehensive as a standalone tool for this kind of report (and for some of their other link reports as well).

Duplicate Content

The Duplicate Content report groups all the pages that have the same content together and gives you some recommendations on things you can do to help with duplicate content like:

Working with robots.txt
How to use canonical tags
Using HTTP headers to thwart duplicate content issues

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-duplicate-content-overview.jpg" alt="Alexa Duplicate Content Overview" />

Here is how they group items together:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-dup-content-group.jpg" alt="Alexa Duplicate Content Grouped Links" />

Anything that can give you some decent insight into potential duplicate content issues (especially if you use a CMS) is a useful tool.

Duplicate Meta Descriptions

No duplicate meta descriptions here!

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-dup-meta-descr.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Duplicate Meta Descriptions" />

Fairly self-explanatory and while a meta description isn’t incredibly powerful as standalone metric it does pay to make sure you have unique ones for your pages as every little bit helps!

Duplicate Title Tags

You’ll want to make sure you are using your title tags properly and not attacking the same keyword or keywords in multiple title tags on separate pages. Much like the other reports here, Alexa will group the duplicates together:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-dup-title-tags.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Duplicate Title Tags" />

They do not currently offer a missing title tag or missing meta description report which is unfortunate because those are worthwhile metrics to report on.

Low Word Count

Having a good amount of text on a page is good way to work in your core keywords as well as to help in ranking for longer tail keywords (which tend to drive lots of traffic to most sites). This report kicks out pages which have (in looking at the stats) less than 150 words or so on the page:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-low-word-count.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Low Word Count" />

There’s no real magic bullet for the amount of words you “should” have on a page. You want to have the right balance of word counts, images, and overall presentation components to make your site:

Linkable
Textually relevant for your core and related keywords
Readable for humans

Image Descriptions

Continuing on with the “every little bit helps” mantra, you can see pages that have images with missing ALT attributes:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-alt-attribute-overview.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit ALT Attribute Overview" />

Alexa groups the images on per page, so just click the link to the right to expand the list:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-expanded-alt-attribute.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit ALT Attribute Groupings" />

Like meta descriptions, this is not a mega-important item as a standalone metric but it helps a bit and helps with image search.

Session IDs

This report will show you any issues your site is having due to the use of session id’s.

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-session-ids.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Session ID" />

If you have issues with session id’s and/or other URL parameters here you should take a look at using Googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html">canonical tags or Google’s Google-lets-you-tell-them-which-url-parameters-to-ignore-25925">parameter handling (mostly to increase the efficiency of your site’s crawl by Googlebot, as Google will typically skip the crawling of pages based on your parameter list)

Heading Recommendations

Usually I cringe when I see automated SEO solutions. The headings section contains “recommended” headings for your pages. You can download the entire list in CSV format:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-report-headings.jpg" alt="Automated Headings Alexa" />

The second one listed, “interface SEO”, is on a page which talks about Google adding breadcrumbs to the search results. I do not think that is a good heading tag for this blog post. I suspect most of the automated tags are going to be average to less than average.

Keywords

Alexa’s Keyword module offers recommended keywords to pursue as well as on site recommendations in the following sub-categories:

Search Engine Marketing (keywords)
Link Recommendations (on-site link recommendations

Search Engine Marketing

Based on your site’s content Alexa offers up some keyword recommendations:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-rank-keywords-sem.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Keyword Recommendations" />

The metrics are defined as:

Query – the proposed keyword
Opportunity – (scales up to 1.0) based on expected search traffic to your site from keywords which have a low CPC. A higher value here typically means a higher query popularity and a low QCI. Essentially, the higher the number the better the relationship is between search volume, low CPC, and low ad competition.
Query Popularity (scales up to 100) based on the frequency of searches for that keyword
QCI – (scales up to 100) based on how many ads are showing across major search engines for the keyword

For me, it’s another keyword source. The custom metrics are ok to look at but what disappoints me about this report is that they do not align the keywords to relevant pages. It would be nice to see “XYZ keywords might be good plays for page ABC based on ABC’s content”.

Link Recommendations

This is kind of an interesting report. You’ve got 3 sets of data here. The first is the “source page” and this is a listing of pages that, according to Alexa’s crawl, are pages that appear to be important to search engines as well as pages that are easily crawled by crawlers:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-link-source-page.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Link Recommendations" />

These are pages Alexa feels should be pages you link from. The next 2 data sets are in the same table. They are “target pages” and keywords:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-link-source-page.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Link Recommendations Target" />

Some of the pages are similar but the attempt is to match up pages and predict the anchor text that should be used from the source page to the target page. It’s a good idea but there’s a bit of page overlap which detracts from the overall usefulness of the report IMO.

Stats

The Stats section offers 3 different reports:

Report Stats – an overview of crawled pages
Crawler Errors – errors Alexa encountered in crawling your site
Unique Hosts Crawled – number of unique hosts (your domain and internal/external domains and sub-domains) Alexa encountered in crawling your site

Report Stats

An overview of crawl statistics:

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-report-stats.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Report Stats" />

Crawler Errors

This is where Alexa would show what errors, if any, they encountered when crawling the site

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-crawl-errors.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Crawl Errors" />

Unique Hosts Crawled

A report showing which sites you are linking to (as well as your own domain/subdomains)

SEObook.com/images/alexa-site-audit-unique-hosts.jpg" alt="Alexa Site Audit Unique Hosts" />

Is it Worth $199?

Some of the report functionality is handled by free (in some cases) tools that are available to you. Xenu does a lot of what Alexa’s link modules do and if you are a member here the training.SEObook.com/website-health-check">Website Health Check Tool does some of the on-page stuff as well.

I would also like to see more export functionality especially in lieu of white label reporting. The crawling features are kind of interesting and the price point is fairly affordable as one time fee.

The Alexa Site Audit Report does offer some benefit IMO and the price point isn’t overly cost-prohibitive but I wasn’t really wowed by the report. If you are ok with spending $199 to get a broad overview of things then I think it’s an ok investment. For larger sites sometimes finding (and fixing) only 1 or 2 major issues can be worth thousands in additional traffic.

It left me wanting a bit more though, so I might prefer to spend that $199 on links since most of the tool’s functionality is available to me without dropping down the fee. Further, the new SEOmoz.org/blog/new-SEOmoz-web-app-now-in-beta">SEOmoz app also covers a lot of these features & is available at a monthly $99 price-point, while allowing you to run reports on up to 5 sites at a time. The other big thing for improving the value of the Alexa application would be if they allowed you to run a before and after report as part of their package. That way in-house SEOs can not only show their boss what was wrong, but can also use that same 3rd party tool as verification that it has been fixed.

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Swingometer Update | RedState

Do you want Google to tell you what you should be doing? Mr. Schmidt thinks so:

“More and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type. I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” he elaborates. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next. … serendipity—can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically.”

Of course the problem with algorithms is they rely on prior experience to guide you. The won’t tell you to SEObook.com/computer-algorithms-vs-human-creativity">do something unique & original that can change the world, rather they will lead you down a well worn path.

What are some of the most bland and most well worn paths in the world? Established brands:

The internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday. Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted.

“Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

“Brand affinity is clearly hard wired,” he said. “It is so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.”

If Google is so smart then why the lazy reliance on brand? Why not show me something unique & original & world-changing?

Does brand affinity actually have a hard wired genetic component? Or is it that computers are stupid & SEObook.com/Google-branding">brands have many obvious signals associated with them: one of which typically being a large ad budget. And why has Google’s leading search engineer SEObook.com/Googles-brand-debacle-backfires">complained about the problem of “brand recognition” recently?

While Google is collecting your data and selling it off to marketers, they have also thought of other ways to monetize that data and Google-redefine-insider-informationtrading">deliver serendipity:

“One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try and predict the stock market…” Eric Schmidt continues, “and then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that.”

Any guess how that product might have added value to the world? On down days (or days when you search for “debt help”) would Google deliver more negatively biased ads & play off fears more, while on up days selling more euphoric ads? Might that serendipity put you on the wrong side of almost every trade you make? After all, that is how the big names in that space make money – telling you to take the losing side of a trade with bogus “research.”

Eric Schmidt asks who you would rather give access to this data:

“All this information that you have about us: where does it go? Who has access to that?” (Google servers and Google employees, under careful rules, Schmidt said.) “Does that scare everyone in this room?” The questioner asked, to applause. “Would you prefer someone else?” Schmidt shot back – to laughter and even greater applause. “Is there a government that you would prefer to be in charge of this?”

That exchange helped John Gruber give Eric Schmidt the label Creep Executive Officer, while asking: “Maybe the question isn’t who should hold this information, but rather should anyone hold this information.”

But Google has a moral conscience. They think quality score (AKA bid rigging) Google-email-20100813,0,6924885.story">is illegal, except for when they are the ones doing it!

“I think judgement matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” – Eric Schmidt

Which is why Googles-ceo-demanded-his-mistress-take-down-her-blog-source">the blog of a certain mistress disappeared from the web. And, of course, since this post is on a blog, Google-ceo-disses-blogging">it doesn’t matter:

If you’re ever confused as to the value of newspaper editors, look at the blog world. That’s all you need to see. – Eric Schmdit

Here is the thing I don’t get about Google’s rhetorical position on serendipity & moral authority: if they are to be trusted to recommend what you do, then why do they recommend illegal activities like pirating copyright works via warez, keygens, cracks & torrents?
SEObook.com/images/Google-torrent-keygen-serial-number.jpg" />

Serendipity SEObook.com/does-marketing-make-you-cynical">ho!

Related Blogs

SEObook.com/images/raven-logo.jpeg" align="right" alt="Raven SEO Logo." />

Everyday it seems like a new SEO tool or toolset is launching.

I’ve been quite impressed with the improvements and enhancements to Raven’s SEO Tools since they launched. There are so many features in Raven but I want to focus on some of the really unique ones which make Raven a must have for me.

Link Research Tools

Raven has 2 powerful, time-saving tools in their Link Research toolset. Site Finder and Backlink Explorer are 2 tools that really help me quickly assess and work through link profiles and the link landscape of a particular keyword.

Site Finder

Site Finder is keyword driven and the reports are saved under the website profile you are working on in Raven. While the tool is fast (my auto insurance quotes example took about 6 seconds!) one of the workflow features that I really like is that I can run a bunch of these and go off to do other things within Raven rather than waiting for the reports to come back.

On to Site Finder! :

To use Site Finder, just navigate to it under the Links tab, enter your keyword, and hit “Run”:

SEObook.com/images/site-finder-interface-raven.png" alt="Site Finder Start page" />

Here are the results returned for my query on auto insurance quotes:

SEObook.com/images/site-finder-results-raven.png" alt="Site Finder Results" />

Site Finder gives you quite a bit of data and options in an easy to use interface, here’s how it breaks down:

Search Box – search for a specific domain or reset the results post-search
Display Settings – show anywhere from 25 – 1k results on the page, show links that are “hidden” (links you “hid” via the options column), or show all links with no filters
Display Settings Option Box – click “Display Settings’ and you’ll get a box where you can toggle ACRank, MozRank, Page Authority, and/or Connections off and on

SEObook.com/images/site-finder-display-settings-box-raven.png" alt="Site Finder Settings" />

Domain- the name of a domain which is linking to at least 1 site in the top ten Google Results. Click on the domain link to get a slick drop down of the sites that domain is linking too

SEObook.com/images/site-finder-domain-options-box-raven.png" alt="Site Finder Domain Options" />

Link Icon – click the icon to display the domain in a new
Connections – number of sites in the top 10 for your keyword that have a link from that domain
ACRank – a quick, simple data point which aims to show how important a specific page is (0-15, 15 is the highest) based on referring domains. A more in-depth definition can be found SEO.com/glossary.php">here
MozRank – SEOMoz’s global link popularity score. It mirrors PageRank but SEOMoz says it updates it more frequently and is more precise (scaled 0-10, 10 being the highest). A more in-depth overview can be found SEOmoz.org/blog/mozrank-and-pagerank-for-metrics-driven-SEO">here
Page Authority – a predictor of how likely a page is to rank based on a 100 point, logarithmic scale independent of the page’s content. The higher the better
Backlinks – total number of links the domain has going into the top 10 Google results
Options Tab – if you want to hide a domain from the report (maybe not a link you want to go after, you or your team members can click “hide” and the link will be hidden from the report. If “add” is clicked then the link is added to the link queue in the Link Manager (more on this shortly)
Export Options – export your report to PDF or CSV (really helpful, especially when running reports on hidden links to gauge how well a link builder might be doing in terms of assessing the appropriate links to hide

So that’s Site Finder. The flexibility, power, speed, and collaborative features of Site Finder make it one of my favorite tools to use.

Backlink Explorer

Researching competitor’s link profiles is usually a time-consuming piece of the SEO puzzle. While it still involves time, especially on larger link profiles, Backlink Explorer delivers some pretty impressive results quickly and efficiently via a 3rd party tie-in to Majestic SEO.

Another nice thing with Raven is a consistent, clean user interface across the toolset. Here’s the spot where you enter the domain you want to research:

SEObook.com/images/backlink-explorer-first-page-raven.png" alt="Backlink Explorer Start Page" />

Just like Site Finder it will save the report in the history of whatever website profile you are saving the report in. You can explore it at anytime or delete it at anytime:

SEObook.com/images/backlink-explorer-history-raven.png" alt="Backlink Explorer History" />

Continuing on with the auto insurance theme, I ran a quick report on GEICO:

SEObook.com/images/backlink-explorer-results-raven.png" alt="Backlink Explorer Results" />

Backlink Explorer gives you the following data points and options:

Search Box – search for a particular domain or words within a domain
Display Settings – group domains (this is really helpful for cutting down duplicate results from domains with more than one link to the site), show/hide hidden or already linked from domains, filter by ACRank, and display up to 1,000 results on the page
Display Settings Box – display or hide no-follow, image, or date data fields
Source URL – the site the link is from
Link Icon – open page in a new window
ACRank – as discussed in Site Finder’s review, more info SEO.com/glossary.php">here
Anchor Text – the anchor text of the link
No-follow – whether it’s no-follow or not
Image – whether it’s an image link or not
Options Box – hide the domain or add it to your link queue
Export – export results, filtered or non-filtered to CSV

What’s really great about this tool is that you can do some pretty heavy filtering to get rid of the noisy links and quickly add the good ones to your link queue. On its face it may seem like it’s not that big of a time-saver, but it really is if you are combing through a large profile or multiple link profiles.

You could really buzz through some fairly thick link profiles with the filtering options and put them right into your link queue for you to work on later or for a team member to work on. Once you start working with it you’ll quickly see how efficient it is for you or for you and your staff.

Link Management

This is probably my favorite tool in the toolset. Prior to utilizing this tool, I was using lots and lots of spreadsheets to track link building campaigns which got to be pretty time consuming and tough to collaborate on.

It’s built in to the Raven SEO Toolbar which allows you to quickly add a link to your link queue, right from your browser, rather than hand copying the website’s data to a spreadsheet for further processing. This is a slick feature for a one person show and really sings when used in a collaborative link building environment. The last 2 spots are where your site would be listed and your account profile name:

SEObook.com/images/link-manager-toolbar-raven.png" alt="Raven SEO Toolbar" />

When you are researching link partners, simply click that Add Link button and you are presented with this screen:

SEObook.com/images/link-manager-add-link-toolbar-raven.png" alt="Raven SEO Toolbar Add a Link" />

The link manager in an of itself is worth the price of admission in my opinion. So here you can:

Set the status to queued, requested, active, inactive, ignore, or declined. Most of the time it will be “queued” if you are saving it for further handling
Input the date the record was created
Select the type of link (organic, paid, blog, exchange, and so on). You can even define custom types in Raven and it will show as an option in this application
Note the desired anchor text of the link (great for collaboration with link building staff members)
Include the URL of where you’d like the link to point to
Add more links if you might be getting more than one link from the page
Tag the link for sorting within the link manager application
Set it to be monitored automatically from within Raven
Add it as a task for you or a staff member
Raven pulls in the URL, domain name of the site, and PageRank of the page
If available you can list the contact name and email as well as the type of site it is and even leave a note attached to the record

Try doing all that in a spreadsheet and a bunch of word or text documents for notes

Once again, another solid way to save loads of time doing what is probably the most time consuming part of an SEO campaign, link building.

So that was just the toolbar portion of the Link Manager. Within your Raven account you have access to the same “add link” application that you do from the toolbar. Perhaps you have link opportunities that you or a staff member cultivated outside of Raven. You can use this form to plug them right in.

You can also import links into your Raven account.

SEObook.com/images/link-manager-import-links-raven.png" alt="Raven Link Manager Import Links" />

You can upload a CSV file with custom data that Raven will recognize up to 20 columns of data points. These data points relate to Raven’s Link Manager application. So you’re able to define all of these (Raven gives you a handy sample CSV to do this from):

Status
Link Type
Link Text
Link URL
Website Name
Website URL
Website Type
PR
Contact Name
Contact Email
Contact ID
Cost Type
Cost
Payment Method
Payment Reference
Start Date
End Date
Creation Date
Comment
Owner Name

Currently the currencies supported are USD, GBP, EUR, AUD.

When you upload you can automatically add link monitoring by clicking the link monitoring box.

You can also import up to 1,000 backlinks from Yahoo! via your domain or your competitor’s domains (ones you’ve defined in Raven).

Raven’s link monitoring service will alert you if any changes occur to a link or a page the link is on. For example, you would be notified if:

PageRank changes
Anchor text changes
Another link gets added to the page
They add no-follow to your link
The location of your link changes

I believe Raven now has about 21 different tools within their toolset now. This one tool, for me, is well worth the subscription cost. It really does save quite a bit of time and there’s really nothing else like it on the market that I’ve seen (in terms of functionality, collaboration, and ease of use).

Facebook

There are a growing number of applications out there where you can manage your social media accounts (mainly Twitter and Facebook, but Facebook in this example). If you want the most bang for your buck, Raven offers a state of the art Facebook application within its toolset.

SEObook.com/images/facebook-entry-image-raven.png" alt="Raven Facebook Entry Page" />

In addition to the deep reporting Raven gives you from within Facebook you can now integrate with Google Analytics from within Raven.

SEObook.com/images/raven-ga-facebook.jpg" alt="Facebook and Google Analytics with Raven" />

Here are some of the features offered within Raven’s Facebook Tool:

Deep Google Analytics integration
White label reporting of Facebook metrics
Automatic wall post scheduling
Fan tracking, customizable by date range
Monitor posts, comments, and likes

What I really like about the Facebook tool in Raven is that you can really synch up your analytics information and truly get a handle on what’s working and not working over defined periods of time.

The reason why I’m a big fan of the integration here is due to the fact that you are likely going to be using either Twitter or Facebook (or both) in your internet marketing campaign(s). So to have this data in one place and integrated, as well as using the deep metrics that the tools provide, amount to a set of game changing features with respect to Facebook campaign management.

Sometimes with all in one toolsets you see features like this get added and they are kind of watered down. This is not the case here, it’s one of the stronger Facebook management tools out there. If you are going to allocate resources to search and social then you need a way to accurately track the ROI of your campaigns and that’s exactly what you get with this tool.

Twitter

Occasionally Social Media campaigns can be tough to quantify in terms of ROI and overall effectiveness. Much like the Facebook Monitor, Raven offers a tool for Twitter users which is a real gem.

SEObook.com/images/twitter-entry-page-raven.png" alt="Twitter Entry Page Raven" />

Raven’s Twitter Tool

One feature within the Twitter tool is the ability to post a new tweet right away or schedule it for later, integrate with 3 URL shortener services (bit.ly, is.gd, j.mp, and tinyurl), and set custom Google Analytics campaign variables. Raven also gives you the ability to work with bit.ly and j.mp’s APIs.

SEObook.com/images/twitter-post-tweet-raven.png" alt="Twitter Tweet Posting Raven" />

Monitor Twitter Activity and Engagement

If you are allocating resources to Twitter, or being paid by a company to run their Twitter account, then you’ll want the ability to see some pretty juicy stats related to your Twitter campaign. With Raven’s new Twitter tool you’ll be able to see the following:

Posts
Followers
Friends
Friend to Follower Ratio
Mentions
Google Analytics referral data
Reply and Retweet reach (a great way to see how many readers are seeing the message

Here’s a screenshot of the statistical overlay:

SEObook.com/images/twitter-insights-raven.png" alt="Twitter Insight Metrics Ravenf" />

What’s really nice about this is the date range comparisons. It’s a huge time-saver to manage this data mostly in one place, you can truly get a handle on what’s working and what’s not working, as well as why it’s not working or working. The level of detail and integration is really unique to Raven’s suite of tools.

Monitor Tweets Related to Your Account

In addition to viewing tweets from your public timeline you can also see all mentions associated with your account, as well as tweets posted from your account:

SEObook.com/images/twitter-timeline-raven.png" alt="Raven Timeline Image Twitter" />

A great feature here is that if there is a thread associated with a tweet you can click on the “view thread” link and see the entire thread from within the Twitter tool.

You can also access this via Raven’s slick iPhone/iPad app

Campaign Reporting

Much like the link tools are worth the full subscription for me, if you have a need for custom reporting then Raven’s Campaign Reporting features are probably worth the price of admission for you.

In lockstep with their other tools, the Campaign Reporting feature set is super easy to use:

SEObook.com/images/campaign-reporting-raven.png" alt="Campaign Reporting Image" />

You can quickly create white-labeled, customized reports for the following modules within Raven:

Link Building
Twitter
Rankings
Facebook
Keyword Research
Competitor Research
Social Media Monitoring (track mentions of your brand and/or keywords related to your service. It also allows you to manage overall sentiment and track daily buzz)
Google Analytics

The reporting options include the ability for you to use customized descriptions to explain different parts of the report, summary pages for different sections, and Raven will even generate a table of contents for you.

Brand Templates

Here you can quickly create a completely customized brand template for use with your reports, just click New Brand Template in the campaign home screen.

Give the template a name:

SEObook.com/images/brand-template-name-raven.png" alt="Name Brand Template" />

Assign it to a website, a profile or an account:

SEObook.com/images/brand-template-assignment-raven.png" alt="Brand Template Assignment" />

Pick a custom logo or text header:

SEObook.com/images/brand-template-header-raven.png" alt="Customize Header" />

Customize the colors and the footer text

SEObook.com/images/brand-template-colors-footer-raven.png" alt="Color and Footer Customization" />

Customize the appearance of your ranking results (keyword and rank alignment, numbers/+/-/arrows)

SEObook.com/images/brand-template-serp-tracker-raven.png" alt="Custom Ranking Result Display" />

Report Templates

Report Templates allow you to configure specific aspects of each report, saving you from having to create them over and over again for each client or each report:

Similar to a Brand Template you start by clicking “New Report Template” in the Campaign Report screen. What I like about these reports is that they are fully customizable. Maybe you have clients that just hire you for keyword research, or just links, or both of those and social media (and so on). Well with the customization flexibility of these reports you can set up a custom template for just about any reporting need you may come across.

So name your report (I did Test 1) and you’ll see the creation options on the left side:

SEObook.com/images/report-template-entry-raven.png" alt="Order Report Template" />

To give you an idea of how deep your customization and reporting options are, here is that left bar fully extended:

SEObook.com/images/report-template-options-raven.png" alt="Custom Ranking Result Display" />

Every singe one of those tabs is a customizable report So you just click on the ones you want to add and they are added to the report template.

Customizing Reporting Fields

When you add the fields to a template, or when you are creating the report, you can expand the section and customize each one (the summary page and title are report-wide options, but they each have other options depending on the piece you are reporting on). Here’s the customization options you get with the link detail module:

SEObook.com/images/report-template-detail-raven.png" alt="Expanded Reporting Options" />

Once you add more than one, you can collapse them and reorder them in a drag and drop fashion:

SEObook.com/images/report-order-raven.png" alt="Report Order Customization" />

Scheduling and Auto Delivery

Maybe you want to auto-deliver reports to employees for further customization or presentation work, or maybe you want to set and forget the delivery of reports to your clients. You can send reports as attached PDF’s or as trackable download links.

SEObook.com/images/scheduling-options-raven.jpg" alt="Scheduling Options" />

You can do monthly, daily, weekly, or quarterly reports and select a day between 1-28 as well as define a custom date range.

Create the Report

It’s really easy to create a detailed, customized report within Raven. Name your report, select your brand and report templates, set you scheduling and delivery options, and create! It is really that simple. As mentioned in the Report Template section you can add, customize, and arrange all those reporting areas to suit your reporting needs.

Additional Features

While I focused on key areas that sold me on Raven, I also utilize their other tools. In addition to the tools mentioned above Raven’s tools also include

Blog Manager – manage unlimited WordPress blogs (or any blog that supports XML-RPC
Competitor Manager – track competitors and see key metrics like PageRank, pages in Google’s index, and links.
Contact Manager – this is where Raven stores (via this feature and via the Link Manager) contact information (mailing address, email, phone number, username, company, etc) which you can assign to different links, websites, and tasks
Content Manager – a place where you can manager articles, website content, and posts. You can add keyword analyzer features to check frequency, density, and relevance. You can also list where the article or post was used (quite handy for link building campaigns)
Design Analyzer – what I really like about this tool is the ability to look at your website in a Lynx browser
Event Manager – similar to GA annotations, the event manager can help you track any type of event related to your site. You can even include these in your reports, which is great for in-house record-keeping and/or client reports.
Firefox Toolbar – a killer link building assistant as discussed in the link section of this review. You can easily switch between your site profiles in the toolbar, use the analyzer features, and use logins for different social media personas.
Keyword Manager – a place to store potential and active keywords. A handy tagging system can be used to group keywords and you can add them to your rank tracker in one click.
Persona Manager – store multiple social network profiles and logins. In addition, you can also share these with staff members. This functionality is also available in the Toolbar.
Quality Analyzer – you can use this in your Raven account and from the Toolbar (which is a nice feature when scouring the web for links). It measures the site’s indexed page count in Google and Yahoo, links from Yahoo, .edu links, .gov links, domain age, domain expiration, Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, and whether or not the site is in DMOZ. It assigns a numerical score based on this data.
Research Assistant – enter a domain to see data regarding the site’s paid keywords, organic keywords, and competitors in both. You can one-click add a keyword or a competing URL to either the keyword/competition manager or to your SERP tracker (rank checker). Enter a keyword to see matching keywords and related keyword with data from SEM Rush, Google, and Wordtracker. View a page to see semantic data powered by OpenCalais.Com and keywords (related to the page’s content) from AlchemyAPI.Com.
SERP Tracker – Raven’s rank checker, runs once per week automatically, has historical chart and data viewing capabilities, and supports a bunch of international versions of Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Google Analytics Integration – tie in your Google Analytics account for easy viewing and slick reporting.
Social Media – in addition to Facebook and Twitter Raven also offers brand/keyword monitoring services, integration with KnowEm and Omgili.
Website Directory – records of all the websites used in your campaign with filtering options to sort out different site and link types.
iPhone and iPad apps

Give Raven a Try

Raven’s integration is slick and powerful:

Google, SEM Rush, and Wordtracker for keyword research
Majestic SEO & SEOMoz for link building and research
Google Analytics integration
Twitter & Facebook integration with lots of engagement goodies

Raven currently offers a free 30 trial, no credit card required, on all their plans. The combination of SEO tools, link building tools, social media integration, and custom reporting options were strong selling points for me especially at the price points Raven offers. I think you can also see the significant time saving benefits Raven provides, especially in the reporting module.

There isn’t much to lose, a free 30 day trial that doesn’t require you to enter any payment information. So give Raven’s SEO Tools a try.

Pricing and Free Trial Info

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Everyday it seems like a new SEO tool or toolset is launching.

I’ve been quite impressed with the improvements and enhancements to Raven’s SEO Tools since they launched. There are so many features in Raven but I want to focus on some of the really unique ones which make Raven a must have for me.

Link Research Tools

Raven has 2 powerful, time-saving tools in their Link Research toolset. Site Finder and Backlink Explorer are 2 tools that really help me quickly assess and work through link profiles and the link landscape of a particular keyword.

Site Finder

Site Finder is keyword driven and the reports are saved under the website profile you are working on in Raven. While the tool is fast (my auto insurance quotes example took about 6 seconds!) one of the workflow features that I really like is that I can run a bunch of these and go off to do other things within Raven rather than waiting for the reports to come back.

On to Site Finder! :

To use Site Finder, just navigate to it under the Links tab, enter your keyword, and hit “Run”:

SEObook.com/images/site-finder-interface-raven.png" alt="Site Finder Start page" />

Here are the results returned for my query on auto insurance quotes:

SEObook.com/images/site-finder-results-raven.png" alt="Site Finder Results" />

Site Finder gives you quite a bit of data and options in an easy to use interface, here’s how it breaks down:

Search Box – search for a specific domain or reset the results post-search
Display Settings – show anywhere from 25 – 1k results on the page, show links that are “hidden” (links you “hid” via the options column), or show all links with no filters
Display Settings Option Box – click “Display Settings’ and you’ll get a box where you can toggle ACRank, MozRank, Page Authority, and/or Connections off and on

SEObook.com/images/site-finder-display-settings-box-raven.png" alt="Site Finder Settings" />

Domain- the name of a domain which is linking to at least 1 site in the top ten Google Results. Click on the domain link to get a slick drop down of the sites that domain is linking too

SEObook.com/images/site-finder-domain-options-box-raven.png" alt="Site Finder Domain Options" />

Link Icon – click the icon to display the domain in a new
Connections – number of sites in the top 10 for your keyword that have a link from that domain
ACRank – a quick, simple data point which aims to show how important a specific page is (0-15, 15 is the highest) based on referring domains. A more in-depth definition can be found SEO.com/glossary.php">here
MozRank – SEOMoz’s global link popularity score. It mirrors PageRank but SEOMoz says it updates it more frequently and is more precise (scaled 0-10, 10 being the highest). A more in-depth overview can be found SEOmoz.org/blog/mozrank-and-pagerank-for-metrics-driven-SEO">here
Page Authority – a predictor of how likely a page is to rank based on a 100 point, logarithmic scale independent of the page’s content. The higher the better
Backlinks – total number of links the domain has going into the top 10 Google results
Options Tab – if you want to hide a domain from the report (maybe not a link you want to go after, you or your team members can click “hide” and the link will be hidden from the report. If “add” is clicked then the link is added to the link queue in the Link Manager (more on this shortly)
Export Options – export your report to PDF or CSV (really helpful, especially when running reports on hidden links to gauge how well a link builder might be doing in terms of assessing the appropriate links to hide