In
this article, you'll find several tools that webmasters can use
to monitor your site's search engine position, and use to increase
the visibility of your site in major search engines like Google,
Yahoo and MSN.
URL
Trends
Most of the coverage I've seen focuses on the ability of UrlTrends
to allow you to "View Any URLs Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Popular
Search Terms and Incoming Links".
And that's a great thing, to be able to see all of that from
one place. But one great thing missed about this tool are that
you can subscribe to changes to the results via RSS -hands off
monitoring of your site.
Fagan
Finder's URL Info
This online gadget is like the Swiss Army knife of site information,
giving you one-page access to dozens of pertinent check-ups. But
monitoring relevant search engine information like your backlinks,
or the cached pages in a search engine are just the tip of the
iceberg.
You can use URL Info to chëck that your HTML code is validated,
translate your page, and if you're a blogger, discover where your
site is mentioned in the blogosphere.
Spannerwork's
Spider Simulator
Ever wondered what your site looks like to the search engine
spiders that crawl the web, looking for information to include
in their databases? Go to this page to see what information is
seen by the spider and what it skips over.
Spannerworks.com can also help you figure out how to troubleshoot
content that seems like it should show up to a spider but doesn't,
with its HTTP viewer. They also have a tool that will analyze
your keyword density.
GoRank.com's
Top Ten Comparison
If you've been banging your head against the wall in an attempt
to figure out why you haven't hit the top ten results in Google,
GoRank.com has a page that can give you important clues to help
you figure it out. One of my favorites, the Top Ten comparison
report, will scrub the raw data of the top ranking results for
a given keyword.
In studying the results, you may find it easier to understand
where your own optimization efforts are going wrong. Don't forget
to stop by Google for your API key at http://www.google.com/api
as you'll need it to create your frëe account.
Search
Guild's Keyword Difficulty Checker
This one's an old favorite of mine. When you find what you may
think is an ideal keyword, before you start tweaking your pages,
it's a good idea to run it through this tester. Using the Google
API, it analyzes whether or not a given phrase will be worth your
efforts.
You'll already have to be well-versed in how to find good keywords
to plug into the tool, but once you have that nailed, it's pretty
reliable in telling you whether it's worth your time to target
that phrase. If you use flash on your site, chëck out the flash
viewer on their utilities page as well.
The following tools are for monitoring your search results in
the three major search engines. It isn't an all-inclusive list,
but rather a highlight of some of the tools you can use. (I'll
point you to one of the master lists when we get into more general
tools in part three.)
Using the Google Site Information Page
I've covered this in an earlier article, but just in case you
missed it, we'll go over it again briefly hëre. (If you need more
help following along, you can listen to one of my recent podcasts
for a convenient audio walkthrough.)
Open up your browser and go to Google's home page. Type in info:yoursitenameandsuffix.
So if your site was ExactSeek.com you'd type info:exactseek.com.
You can also use site:yoursitenameandsuffix to find out
which pages have been indexed by Google's search engine spider.
This search will tell you pages that Google considers similar
to yours. It will also show sites that it considered linked to
you, and show sites that carry your full url, hyperlinked or not.
It's not 100% accurate as far as telling you all the sites that
are linked back to yours, but what you can learn from this is
which backlinks matter.
From hëre you can also see the last day Google spidered your
home page.
To see this in action, clïck on the first group of information
links, "Show Google's cache of yoursitename.com" If you look next
to the word "cached" on the first line, the date is expressed
also.
Sometimes it seems that the cached time for yoursitename.com
and www.yoursitename.com are different, so be sure and chëck both.
Finding
Your Site info In Yahoo
This document will tell you how to find out what sites are linking
to you, give you the results for how many pages of your site are
in Yahoo, and more. Once you get to the results page, you'll be
able to view your cached pages, etc.
Learning
Your Site's Status on MSN
As the page in the help section states, you can use site:www.yoursitehere.com
to find out if a document at your site has been indexed. The results
page will also give you the date of last caching.
Your
Google Rankings
You'll need a frëe Google API key for this one, and this site
has the direct link telling you where to get one. You'll have
to enter this key in order to query the site for information on
Google.
With Google Rankings, you'll be able to see where you rank within
the top 40-1000 results in Google for a given keyword. I recently
noticed that it also displays results for MSN and Yahoo, with
links to each search engine.
They also have some other tools that will track your keywords
over time, as well as one they call the "Ultimate SEO Tool" that
will measure your site's keyword density.
The
Google Backlinks Checker
LilEngine.com's Backlink Checker will measure the number of links
you have pointing back to your site against competing sites. Handy
if you just want a quick comparison of how many links you have
versus others, though how much getting more links back will help
varies, depending on other factors.
Your
Yahoo Search Rankings
From the same folks who brought you Google Rankings, using Yahoo
Search Rankings, you'll be able to see where you rank within the
top 1000 results in Yahoo for a given keyword. If you just want
to see your Yahoo rankings, it's quite helpful.
You can find more Yahoo tools that use the Yahoo Web API at their
developer's
site.