KGen Firefox Extension Shows Pages' Potential Keywords

KGen is an extension for Firefox web browsers that displays the strongest keywords on a particular web page. Words on the page repeated more than once are ranked by "weight" (a user-tunable algorithm based on html tags and page placement), number of repetitions on the page, and "position" (which appears to be how far down in the page's code the keyword appears, relative to other keywords in the list). At present, the tool displays only single-word keywords (not multi-word phrases).

To install, in Firefox go to the KGen Add-on Page and download. After installing and restarting Firefox, to use KGen first browse to a page you want to analyze, then select Sidebar > KGen: Keyword generator from Firefox's "View" menu. The Word List tab shows the keywords with the rankings described above. There is also a Cloud view for a quick graphic representation of the relative strength of the various keywords found. In the Word List view, selected keywords can be copied to your computer's clipboard to paste and use elsewhere.

While the lack of analysis for phrase keywords limits the tool's usefulness, particularly for PPC, I found that useful combinations still suggested themselves by glancing from the top ranked keywords to the actual text of the page under analysis. For SEO purposes, right-clicking on any keyword will open a browser tab suggesting common misspellings and lettter-omissions and -substitutions for the word.

Business Blogger Beware

Bloggeris a great, easy to use site for creating a personal blog. However, if you are planning to build a blog for business purposes, it is probably not your best choice, even to start out on. I just learned that Google does not allow Blogger sites to 301 redirect. What this means is that if you are successful in building up good page rank and back links to your Blogger site, and then later decide to move it to another domain, you will lose all of the SEO "juice" you had built up on the Blogger site.

For this reason and others, we're planning to move http://virante.blogspot.com off of Blogger very soon, before we've put any more effort into building it up.
in reference to: Blogger: Dashboard (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google Profiles and Reputation Management - Part Two

In Google Profiles and Reputation Management - Part 1, I made a case for why building a Google Profile should be a central part of establishing a positive online presence (i.e. "reputation management"). Today let's look at a second, but probably equally worthwhile, benefit of Google Profiles: free PageRank "juice" to your sites.

Possibly as an incentive to get you to create a Google Profile, Google gives you a free gift for putting links on your profile: the links are NOT no follow. This means that as profiles gain PageRank themselves (and I believe they will), they will pass along some of that ranking power to whatever you link from your Profile page.

How best to take advantage of this? Use some of the "bio" portion of the Profile to talk about your web site(s), your company, what your company does or services you provide, etc. Using the little chain link button on the bio editing window, you can make these links to relevant pages on sites you or your company control. Be sure to make the linking text relevant to the page content!

Google Profiles and Reputation Management - Part 1

A few days ago I posted some suggestions about using social media sites to "ace" the front page of Google (fill the first page of Google's search results for your name with links to sites and content that you control). Let's review the value of doing this (aside from the obvious ego stroke!):

1. Create a positive impression on potential clients and/or employers. It is very common these days that people who are considering doing business with you (or hiring you) will Google your name to see what comes up. If you are involved in the marketing or advertising fields, the impression such a presence makes is worth even more than usual.

2. Force down negative links. If you are "out there" -- either because you are well known and/or you participate actively in social media, blogs, forums, etc. on the Internet-- sooner or later someone will write something negative about you. If the attack shows up high in Google results, the only thing you can do about it is bury it by creating positive links and getting them to rank higher than the negative post.

3. Create linking "juice" that can have a positive effect on other sites you control on the web.

One relatively new tool that should not be ignored in this effort has been provided by Google itself: Google Profiles. Google Profiles allows you to create a "one stop" picture of yourself and your online connections. You can easily post as much or as little information about yourself as you like. Additionally, this web app makes it super easy to add any or all of your social web sites.

Google has a high incentive to incentivize you to create a profile. Many are predicting that Twitter and Facebook will become the first real challenges to Google's stranglehold on the search market. Facebook in particular is actively pursuing the creation of Google-killing search functionality. The advantage that sites like Facebook and Twitter are banking on is that they are able to collect very personalized data tied directly to individuals, whereas Google's search data is more aggregation and generalization. Facebook's creators believe that in the years to come people will value the ability to find information, get recommendations, etc. in the same way they've always done, by querying their friends and acquaintances. And then, of course, sites that facilitate that will be able to present ads to users that are very tightly targeted.

Google gives every sign that they think there is something to that challenge, and Google Profiles is one of its first attempts to fire back. But because they are already behind in the game, Google has to hold out some kind of carrot to get people to create these profiles. So far, the main incentives seem to be:

1. Having a one-stop "business card on the web" that gives people searching for you all the ways to contact you, as well as where to find you on the web.

2. Rewarding profile participants with Google ranking "juice" that feeds back to their linked sites.

Tomorrow I'll post about how best to optimize your Google Profile to get the biggest Google bang from #2 above.

Social Media and Reputation Management

Are you an ace? I don't mean you've shot down boucoups enemy planes in some WW I video game. I'm coining a new usage of "ace": to have all the first page references from a Google search of your name be your own links--or links about you--and have them all be positive. I'm an ace most of the time, except for when a certain D. C. lawyer with the same unusual name as me gets in the news. Of course, if your name is "John Smith," you'd better be the most famous John Smith in the world, or you're out of luck. Acing Google's first page is a worthy goal for any company name, trademark, or brand identity as well.

The popularity of a number of social media sites has made them valuable real estate to claim if you are concerned about what people see when they search for your name online. This may be one of the most overlooked benefits of having a widespread social web presence. Most marketers just concentrate on the possible contacts/prospects to be gained. But the tremendous "Google juice" many social media sites have can result in high rankings for your name or brand.

Obviously, the first step is to claim a profile for your name/brand on as many social media sites as you can. A great one-stop tool to accomplish this is knowem.com. But just having a profile is not enough; you need to begin to regularly post content to these sites. After doing this for a while, you should begin to see many of these site filling in the first page of Google for your name or brand. For my name, my personal blog comes up #1, followed by FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Amazon. I also created a Google Profile, which shows up at the bottom of the first page for my name.

Social Media Marketing: Where are the Measurables?

(From clickz.com:) In its simplest form, SEO (define) is a three-step process: break down crawling barriers to help the engines efficiently index a Web site; craft keyword-targeted content that appeals to search engines and visitors alike; and, most critical, practice link-building for targeted terms and phrases.

Social media optimization, on the other hand, is primarily about knocking down the walls of user-generated content to be a dynamic part of an online community. It's not a simple process and it takes time. Just because a "Digg This" button has been added to a blog or Web site doesn't mean every post or product is compelling enough to be considered socially buzzworthy.

Social media is just another liberating facet of content optimization tactics that can lure in thousands of new visitors and hundreds of inbound links. When it works, it's scalable. But it doesn't always work in a predictable manner.

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On Click Pixel Tracking

(From theGoogleCache.com:) One of the most common methods of tracking conversions and visits is through “Pixel Tracking”. Essentially, a single pixel image is included on a page that, when triggered, gives the user some form of cookie or results in his/her her browser IP / user-agent / etc. stored in a tracking database somewhere.

Well, what if you wanted to use that pixel to track something else? Like a file download, a mouseover, or a click on a particular outbound link? How do you make sure the pixel image gets included and loaded before the redirect takes place without making Timeout assumptions?

Here is some simple scripts to help you accomplish just that…

Javascript in Head

The following code snippet should be placed between the start and close head tags of your page. These functions are responsible for inserting the tracking pixel onto your page and then setting an Interval to check it every 1/5th second to make sure it loads. Once it is loaded, it redirects the individual on to the target URL.

function clktrk(url) {

pxlsrc = "http://your.tracking.pixel.jpg";


window.clkurl = url;

document.getElementById('clkimg').src=pxlsrc;

window.intval=setInterval("isImgComplete()",200);

}




function isImgComplete() {

document.getElementById('working').innerHTML = document.getElementById('working').innerHTML + " .";

var img = document.getElementById('clkimg');


window.timer = window.timer+200;

if(!img.complete) { return false; }

if (typeof img.naturalWidth != "undefined" && img.naturalWidth == 0) { return false; }

else {

window.clearInterval(intval);


location.href=window.clkurl;

}

}

Javascript on Your Links

Instead of a traditional a href=”http://www.yourlink.com”, use the code below…

Your Link

Footer Image

At the bottom of the page, include the following HTML.

<img id='clkimg' height='1' width='1' />

Optimizing Body Text for Google

From thekeywordacademy.com: Before we can talk about how to optimize the body text of the page you’re working on, we should probably define what body text is. To put it simply, body text is the text that you can see on a web page. Everything you can see on this post would be considered to be body text.

The technical explanation of what body text is would be everything that appears between the opening body tag, , and the closing body tag, , in the code for the page.

Bloggers don’t really need to worry about the technical explanation - you can think of body text as a combination of your post title and the main body of your post, or as the text that appears on your blog’s homepage.

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Easy Linking for SEO Boost

From BizArticleZone.com: Search engine optimization is a process, one that must always be revisited and adapted as search algorithms are changed by the search engines. Seo is evolving much faster that SEO companies can adapt, and this is a fact not loudly stated and never mentioned to clients. Today Seo is about getting quality traffic, making great websites findable and usable, and most of all is merging with conversion science. Search Engine Optimization is a combination of activities spanning from the initial stages of production and extends beyond launching of the site.

SEO experts analyze the keywords or phrases the user is likely to search information for your company and accordingly optimizes your website making your website search engine friendly. Search engine optimization includes but not limited to keyword research and optimization, content analysis, link building and search engine marketing. Website promotion and strategy sound expensive and time-consuming, but they don’t have to be.Optimize your web pages to be user and search-engine friendly. Easy navigation and fast-loading pages keep surfers happy.

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