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SEO
Google Analytics Extension Upgraded
Just a quick note to say that the Is Google Analytics Installed? Firefox extension recently has been updated to work with Google’s new asynchronous tracking code.
It should now work for all versions of Google’s code.
And, if Google doesn’t drastically change the analytics tracking in the future, it should continue to work well for future updates.
(fingers crossed)
yExplore Comes To Google Chrome
Click To Enlarge
yExplore for Google Chrome is now available!
It adds quick access to search engine, and social media, information about the page, or domain, you are viewing.
yExplore is helpful for finding out information on your own site or doing competitive research on someone else’s.
yExplore includes shortcuts to:
- Google
- Backlinks
- InIndex
- Cache
- Yahoo
- Backlinks
- InIndex
- Bing
- InIndex
- Delicious Saves
- StumbleUpon Stumbles
- Compete Information
- BackType Social Information
- PostRank Social Information
- Archive.org Flashbacks
- Robots.txt Quick Access
- Text Only View
- Whois Info
Speeding Up WordPress Starts With Plugin Developers
I’ve recently been looking at Google’s speed test tool and working to increase the speed of some of the sites I interact with daily. Where as there are things that we, as blog owners, can control, a lot of speeding up WordPress falls in the hands of plugin developers.
Here is what WordPress plugins developers can do to help us all out:
1. Set the Height and Width of Images
I know this is an easy one not to do, and it’s one of the most common issues that Google reported, but it’s so easy. Please set the height and width of all images in your plugin.
New URLs & Lots of Patients
For some time I’ve wanted to remove the month, day, year from my URL structure on my blog but I haven’t. Everything I’ve ever learned about SEO is to not change the URLs. However I really wanted to.
Then, late last week, my host somehow blocked Google bot from accessing the server I’m on and my traffic tanked; badly. Once I got that figured out, I realized that now was as good of time as ever to re-do all the URLs. Since my site was already screwed up in Google, why not?
Blog Traffic
Minor Design Changes Can Make A Big Effect
When it comes to web design, sometimes less is more. And sometimes you don’t need to change a lot to make a big improvement.
Case in point, the latest Google update. All they did was add a few icons, make the colors pop, soften up the buttons a little and the new look is very nice.
Google Search Icons
Google Search Update
Small changes, but a big effect. Way to go Google!
yExplore 2.1 Now With More SEO and Web Developer Love
yExplore 2.1 has been released with loads of new shortcuts for SEOs and web developers!
yExplore 2.0 Screenshot
yExplore still offers quick and easy access to Yahoo Site Explorer, but now also offers:
- Google Backlinks, Inindex, Cache
- Archive.org
- So you can see how the site has progressed over the years. - Bing Inindex
- Delicious saves for a domain.
- How many bookmarks appear in Delicious for the domain you are on.
- How many times the current page you are on has been bookmarked - Highlighting of NoFollow links.
- In bright red so you can’t miss them.
14 Mac Only Twitter Applications
There are no shortage of Twitter applications out there. Each client seems to have a slightly different feature set too. I’ve tried a lot of them and below is a list of good Twitter applications that have been built for the Mac. No Adobe Air suggestions here, and most are available only on the Mac.
Bluebird
Simple and pretty, this app has the ability to be one of the nicest looking Twitter apps. It also comes with three built in themes which are very nice and supports multiple accounts. This one is one I haven’t played with much, but am loving it the more I use it. Only downside so far is no way to distinguish between read and un-read tweets.
Things Learned at the 2008 MIMA Holiday Party
Another fun MIMA event has come and gone. This time it was the 2008 Holiday party. In talking with some people, here are a few things that were learned.
Black Hat vs White Hat SEO – I had an fun talk with a kid who goes to the UofM and does Black Hat SEO. He said he didn’t have the patients for doing things the right way, he just like making things happen now. A lady at our table asked us the difference between what we do, as it sounded pretty much the same, and I said, “He does it fast, I last longer.” Tell that to a lady who’s had a few glass’ of wine and her mind will connect something else and we all had a good laugh.
How does Google crawl the iTunes Store?
Last I checked, a web page had to be on the web in order for Google to crawl the page and serve it up in search results. But then how does it crawl iTunes?
On a recent search for “implus iphone application” I came across the iTunes store page ranked at #8 in Google.
Yes, the iTunes Store may be built on WebKit, or some sort of web application on the back end, but how exactly does Google get there? Does the Googlebot run iTunes? Ohh there is a possibility.
Weekend Update: Firefox 3, TV, Software and More
I thought I’d write a random post with some of what’s on my mind this weekend.
- I’m now running Firefox 3 betas thanks to MultiFireFox.
- MidnightFox was updated the other day with incorrect buttons. Oops. That has been re-uploaded and should be made public soon.
- yExplore and GA? have been updated for Firefox 3. Actually, for the beats not the official release. That’ll happen when the final release comes out.
- Now that I am running Firefox 3, I can start theming it.
- Just started to watch Entourage. It seems like a pretty cool show.
