Ethical search engine optimization

There are so many free tools and software programs for SEO enthusiasts that it almost becomes overwhelming and difficult to grasp the “right” tools to use in your SEO efforts. Everyone has their own personal preferences which makes this predicament even more perplexing.

Well enough about me and my love of words; let’s get down to business: What are some of the best free SEO tools on the web?

Cool Tools

Google Keyword Research Tool: When this free tool came out the other week we all had a little dance party in the office we were so excited! Well to be honest… there wasn’t any dancing involved but it sure did give us a reason to celebrate.

This tool is amazing! Simply type in your keyword and you can see a long list of related keywords with approximate search volumes for those keywords as well! You can even customize the results with this tool: everything from the location (country) of your keyword results to finding out which month had the highest search volumes. For more information on how to use this keyword research tool check out this great article.

This free keyword research tool immediately replaced my other keyword research tools by Wordze and SEO Book after just one test use: that’s how powerful it is. In short, the tool rocks and it instantly makes keyword research way easier and much more efficient!

HTML Playground: This tool is great for those that have limited HTML knowledge or just aren’t sure how to apply the right formatting in an easy and efficient manner. Well this free tool takes all the “hard work” out of HTML coding for you. It has a list of all the most popular tags; simply click on the tag, customize the parameters and colours you desire and the HTML code is ready to go! It even shows you a preview of what your text or image will look like once uploaded! This tool is simply vital for any HTML rookie or beginner.

Firefox Extensions

There are hundreds of free Firefox extensions readily available at Firefox Add-ons. They have tools and add-ons for just about everything! My favourite Firefox add-ons for SEO are:

SEOpen: This add-on lets you place a toolbar in Firefox to quickly analyze everything from the number of Yahoo! Backlinks to verifying whether the PR of a site is legitimate or not; and that’s just the beginning. I think of it as in all-in-one SEO resource that is absolutely mandatory!

SearchStatus: This nifty little add-on simply lets you display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere on your browser. It also allows you to highlight nofollow links and comes equipped with a fast keyword density analyzer. Pretty sweeeeeet!

SeoQuake: This tool is one of the most advanced Firefox add-ons for SEO. Yet it’s perfect for both beginners and advanced users. Basically, SeoQuake displays the parameters for search results and even includes the findings into the search engine result pages - Search engine ranking - for the most popular search engines. You can then set these parameters to display by ascending or descending order; so you can search for any keyword in Google or Yahoo! and then set the order to show the highest PR’s, or the most Yahoo! backlinks, or by whatever parameter(s) you are most interested in.

And now, my favourite Firefox add-on is…(insert drum roll)… Speed Dial!

This add-on lets you visually display your most used websites so you can access them instantly! Forget about using bookmarks ever again! Simply open up the add-on and enter the number of columns and rows to determine the amount of sites displayed in your speed dial. To enter in the sites simply click on the boxes and type in the URL’s.

When you want to access your favourite sites simply hold CTRL and press the number of the site (number set in speed dial options) to open it up in a new tab or window. Or you can press the speed dial button which displays all your sites in one window and then you can just click on the site you want to open. Once you get the hang of this add-on you can instantly access your favourite site(s) with just a couple of clicks: saving you both time and effort! It’s a win-win situation like no other!

These cool tools and Firefox extensions are really useful and can dramatically improve your SEO efforts while simultaneously saving you time and improving your efficiency. Be sure to check them out and feel free to share your own favourite Firefox extensions!

There is a lot of litter on the street, and the weird thing is that those things that do not belong there (litter, etc) is what catches your eye first. The search-engines seem to have adopted this rule.

The virtual world is like the real world. When I take my bike to the mountains in only half an hour ride, I’m surrounded by nature. A closer look reveals that nature and nurture can’t be separated, perhaps on a few Virgin Islands in the ocean, where nature is unaffected… A few yards away the first litter triggers my eye; a red agricultural machine, a sort of a lawn mower in the bush, a few miles further a somehow whitish fridge once pulled down the edge of the mountain, cans of coca-cola, plastic bottles, you name it and you will find it. Rubbish and litter.

The internet is like that, the real and virtual world are populated by the same people. Rubbish is everywhere, but how do search engines deal with this? Do they show pure nature or do they focus on the litter and rubbish down the road?

Testing is the ultimate activity before launching a product. A test shows some quality characteristics of a product. Fool-proof is a simple and interesting test where you enter BS data and check the response of the system. It is often a first indication of the overall quality…

A test needs data and having written a few hundred articles gives you enough data to perform some simple investigations. Anyone with a few hundred articles may check this.

The fool-proof test I performed was by using my name (by using quotes and without initials. This may not work with all names as mine is quite unique) and submitting these to the main search engines. This is the result:

1. Google’s first page:

The fourth entry shows litter. Someone from Pakistan has misused my name (I’m quite sure that it doesn’t fit the pakistan context) and put in in their url. Google finds it probably as being weird and therefor significant. The URL in question refers to a youtube video.
On the ninth place there is another occurrence of misuse with my name and showed again in a wrong context. Perhaps the same person , also from Pakistan.

2. Live Search is free from rubbish on the first page, the second and other I didn’t check.

3. Yahoo doesn’t show the Youtube results (because they have their own video site), but also there on the first page they show a link out of context. Again my name is used. This is shown on the 6th place.
On the fifth place there is another wrong reference from a site called “swik.net” that misused my and very likely other peoples names.

What does this mean? It means that littering is not only accepted as in the real world, it attracts the attention. In this case, the attention of the mayor search engines.

The search engines represent the eye of the visitor that drives his bike through nature. And litter is among the first that is displayed. This seems logical and fits the principle of searching: that of attention. Attention is never drawn to what you need, but to what gets you distracted.
Another view on this matter could be that Search Engines are not aware of the results they show, whereas a human check instantly signals wrong entries…

The Search engine rules are real, more real than real life itself.