Review of Advanced Link Manager & Advanced Web Ranking
Posted by admin
Advanced Link Manager
You know the questions that constantly nag an SEO: how many backlinks have I got? What’s the inbound text? What’s the page rank of the inbound link? Has anyone removed a juicy link to me? Who’s linking to my competitors? What inbound link text do my competitors have? Have I got any deeplinks? Where are they linking to? Oh my god, my head is spinning…
To try and deal with all this information, you go to Google :site, you go to to Yahoo: links, you review and review your site and your competitors, then you’ve got to write down all the info, you out it in a spreadsheet, which rapidly gets big and cumbersome, you forget to update it, your head starts to spin even more…yes, welcome to SEO hell…and Enter Advanced Link manager.
Dudes, this program is simply awesome, it takes all the grunt work out of tracking and analysing links, leaving you to sit back and focus on strategy.
Setting it up is easy, simply enter your URL, select the search engines that you want to check backlinks for (there’s a bunch of options, but let’s face it it, all we care about is Google and Yahoo!) - then Advanced Link Manager goes off and queries those search engines for all available back links to your site.
Of course, not all your links will show up in those search engines - so you’ll want to add tracking for your lovingly crafted list of backlinks that you’ve been building up. That’s easily done, either one by one, or by a batch CSV update.
Once the program has built a list of all pages linking to you (both those it finds from the search engines, and those that you’ve manually added), it goes off and checks those pages, bringing back a wealth of information - not least of which is whether that page does in fact still link to you! Domain info? You got it! Number of outbound links? Page rank? You got it! Inbound link text? Oh baby, you got it!!!
So now what do you do?
Well, for one, keep updating it on a regular basis - manually add the links as you build them, and update the report either by triggering it manually or scheduling it to run late at night (this is a better option if you’ve got a big site with a lot of backlinks, as Link Manager needs time to check all the incoming links - though you can use the “check new only” option if time is short).
My favourite reports:
Inbound link text - this is of course a vital factor in SEO, you don’t want to over-do the money term for the target page, but neither do you want a bunch of random crap, so this report helps you identify what to focus on.
And to keep you motivated, back links over time. If this flat-lines (or worse still, nose-dives!), then you know that your SEO effort has faltered - get back to work!
Want to do some competitor analysis? Just add their URLs in your project, and you can get hold of the same info: who’s linking, the value of that link, and the inbound link text. Sit back, take a look - can you identify a winning pattern? Can you duplicate it? Can you get a link from the same source?
Want more? There’s even a feature to enter the keywords you want to target - Advanced Link Manager will then check the search results, and then analyse the backlinks of the sites that appear in the search results! Like I said, no more grunt work 
Advanced Link Manager is available in a variety of license options depending on your needs, and in both Windoze and Apple flavours - and best of all, they have a 30-day free trial! Download it, try it out on your next SEO project, and be amazed at how much you can achieve.
Advanced Web Rankings
As an SEO, there are basic reporting and reviewing activities that you need to do on a regular basis. These reports are your bread and butter, your whole raison d’etre as an SEO, and include:
- Where you are ranking for your target SERPs
- Where your competitors are ranking for your target SERPs
If, like me, you obsessively check your rankings on the search engines, then I’m sure that you’ve wished there was an easier way to do it. You probably not only want to know where you rank today, but where you ranked yesterday, last week, last month - and hey, wasn’t that guy below me last week? Damn, I can’t quite remember - did I take a screenshot of the SERPs? Now, where’d I put it? What else does he rank for anyway?!?
Well, I’ve discovered a great tool that gives you a wealth of information, and now I’m wondering how I managed without it. The tool is Advanced Web Rankings, and I’m in lurve…
My favourite features
- Selecting the right search engine: I have sites that target regional search engines, in their native languages. I don’t care about ranking on google.com, I want google.es in Spanish, or google.de in German - I want to know where I’m ranking on those
- Filter the rankings report based on search engine, website, and keyword - great for drilling down!
- Set up a scheduled task to automatically check the SERPs - ok, nothing beats actually taking a look at the SERPs themselves, but let Advanced Web Rankings alert you to when there’s been a change worth looking at!
Easy competitor review
Monitoring the competition - it’s as simple as clicking the “Top Sites” tab, then checking out the report. Combine this with Advanced Link Manager to analyse your competior’s backlinks, and you’ve got a powerful winning combination!
Advanced Web Rankings is available in a variety of license options depending on your needs, and in both Windoze and Apple flavours - and best of all, they have a 30-day free trial! Download it, try it out on your next SEO project, and be amazed at how much you can achieve.
Domains and trademarks
Posted by admin
In the purchase of cialis.co.uk by an independent client of ours, Lilly Icos the trademark owner of cialis immediately made contact requesting the domain be handed over… initially our client had bought the domain hoping to use it for marketing purposes as they run one of the UK’s largest online pharmacy’s selling cialis, amongst other medicines.
We discussed various options with them including the idea of handing (selling) the domain over to a family who had the surname cialis (there had been some press about this family being upset by their surname being given to an erectile dysfunction drug).
Another idea was to use the domain to write a history of the cialis family and the impotence drug together- to justify retaining ownership versus the trademark and not handing it back to Lilly Icos.
As with all trademarks there are grey areas where ownership rights may not be as clear cut as you might think- our client, ukmedix, took specialist legal advice from Charles Russell and decided it best to hand over the domain to Lilly Icos and avoid a lengthy legal tangle with a manufacturer it needs.
Trademark ownership can be tested and there may be some creative ways to challenge the Trademark owner- but more often then not the Goliath and not the David comes out on top- sometimes out of necessity to maintain relationships (as with the case above) and sometimes out of sheer financial clout.
Even domain mispellings and proven copycat techniques that play on a trademark can land you in the soup as was the case with zuccarini- although this is usually too hard to prove.
Landing a great domain in your market can be very lucrative and holding onto it well worth your while, just keep your eyes open as the big boys are protecting their interests now.
For further reading on trademarking try looking at the Lanham act (its US based but covers the topic well).
Writing quality original content
Posted by admin
We all know “content is king”, but how good are we at producing that content? Here’s some good links:
A cheap web hosting deal is not a good one even if it is offering free web design templates. Instead pay a bit more but go for names like ipowerweb or easycgi only.
Social Networks - your new friends
Posted by admin
Looks like 2007 is the year of Social Networks, everybody’s talking about them and everybody’s joining them…well, anybody who’s anybody anyway, looks like I’m a little late to the party. But hey, I’m here now, and I brought bubbles!
So, the question is HOW do you get involved? ClickZ wrote a good introductory post on this, summarising the steps to get involved. My even shorter summary would be “Get Involved”!
The basics of search engine optimization exact that everything from the web design to the plans like ppc should be optimized. Only then can one do optimized advertising.