Just recently I came across a set of SEO Tools which are really worth a second look:

The SEO Power Suite

it consists of 4 Modules (Link Assistant, Rank Tracker, SEO SpyGlass, WebSite Auditor), each separately purchasable, but to be honest the best benefit you can get is if you get them all in one nice package, either as the SEO Power Suite Professional – Trial (german edition, russian edition) or as SEO Power Suite Enterprise – Trial (german edition, russian edition). If you don’t have to report to customers or to business (if you’re an inhouse-SEO), the SEO Power Suite Professional is absolutely sufficient.

Another nice Tool, even though not directly a SEO Tool, is this nice Application to create Website Templates or Themes as they are called in WordPress: Artisteer2, it comes with a multitude of different images and color schemes which you can wildly combine, the Standard Version allows you to play around with each parameter individually, but I don’t recommend that – at least not right in the beginning – as that allows you to create really horrible themes as well . The nice thing about Artisteer2 is also that you can export the created themes directly as XHTML/CSS or as WordPress-Themes. The Enterprise Version allows you also to export the design as Joomla-Templates, Drupal-Themes and DotNetNuke-Skins and even as an ASP.NET Application or to CodeCharge Studio. The Home & Academic Version comes with less freedom in defining your templates as well with just a subset of images (~75%).

Google launched today a “beta”-test for their new “interest-based” advertising with adsense on partner-sites and on YouTube.

In general I think this is something that should benefit all sides: The Advertisers get their ads more targeted in front of potential customers, Google (and their content partners) will experience higher click rates, thus earning more money, and the consumer gets (only) ads he’s interested in.

But there are also a downsides to that:

a) The customer might get irritated if he gets ads presented he’s not expecting correlated to the content he’s currently reading/watching. I.e. he’s been surfing all morning for baby cloth, but now he want’s to check out some tools for his workshop but gets still baby ads – I know a pretty drastic example, but I guess you’ll get the point.

b) Privacy issues: It’s an opt-out procedure: as a user you’re in unless you opt out – huh? You can use the Ads Preferences Manager to opt out. Well for us tech-savvy people this might not be a big thing (IF we know about it) but the average Joe and Jane might not even know what’s going on, let alone understand the information presented to them on that Ads Preference Manager. – And to make your options permanent you have to install a browser plug-in. WHAT? When I’m that privacy wary I’m for sure installing a tool from a company I’m suspicious of…

This will start a lot of discussions at least in Europe. The safer way would be to do the “interest-tracking” only to those who opt-in. Easily done with an ad like: “If you want to see for you even more relevant ads, click here”

Just my 2ct

Lies den Post auf deutsch

Ever since I noticed that the bus line stopping near by has the number 301 I always have to chuckle when I see it…

Well so I thought how could we interpret buslines having numbers of HTTP status codes?

So here are my suggestions: (but feel free to add your interpretations in the comments!)

OK 200

No, problem enter the bus, you’ll be there in time with no delay.

CREATED 201

Well that’s a new route but I’ll take you there… (I just wonder what the other passengers would think of such a repsonse)

Accepted 202

Well I heard where you want to go, but it’ll be decided later if your wish will be fullfilled…

Partial Information 203

Ok, enter the bus but you might get only a partially there

No Response 204

You’re can enter the bus, but the bus will not move – only the view through the windows might change…

Bad request 400

Sorry, but you’re asking for something impossible or you formulated your request in a not understandable way (have you been drinking so much you can even articulate where you want to go?)

Unauthorized 401

No ticket – no transportation!

PaymentRequired 402

Won’t take you anywhere for free… cost additionally to your ticket…

Forbidden 403

Sorry private transportation only – stay out!

Not found 404

Sorry but the bus driver is lost, too.

Internal Error 500

Sorry, this bus has broken down!

Not implemented 501

Sorry, no lavratory in this bus!

Service temporarily overloaded 502

This bus is full!

Gateway timeout 503

Busdriver asked for directions from the dispatch but got no response…

Moved 301

Sorry, but actually the bus stop isn’t here anymore…

Found 302

Bus stop is currently moved to another location.

Method 303

Don’t use this door, use the other door.

Not Modified 304

You don’t need to go there, nothing has changed where you want to go…

OK, these were my thoughts on HTTP status codes on buslines, but maybe you got better interpretations? Let me know in the comments!

If you want to look up the official descriptions of the status codes you’ll find them on www.w3.org

I recently got across Tabbloid an online tool that automatically receives your RSS feed and converts it into a PDF file and mails it back to you(Thanks to Eoin O’Leary from the Irish Internet Marketing Clinic).

The PDF is really nicely formatted in a two column layout, even graphics are nicely scaled in…

So far so good. OK, but what it’s good for?

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s almost exactly 1 year ago that the then new firefox version 2.0.0.3 broke the funktionality of the typo3 wysiwyg editor rtehtmlarea. Now with the firefox 2.0.0.13 version it happend again…

And here’s the solution:

Just as one year ago the browser recognition failed at the very same spot:

find in

~typo3_src/typo3/sysext/rtehtmlarea/htmlarea/htmlarea.js

the line

HTMLArea.is_wamcom = (HTMLArea.agt.indexOf("wamcom") != -1) || (HTMLArea.is_gecko && HTMLArea.agt.indexOf("1.3") != -1 && HTMLArea.agt.indexOf(".1.3") == -1);

and replace it with

HTMLArea.is_wamcom = (HTMLArea.agt.indexOf("wamcom") != -1) || (HTMLArea.is_gecko && HTMLArea.agt.indexOf("1.3") != -1 && HTMLArea.agt.indexOf(".1.3") == -1 && HTMLArea.agt.indexOf(".1.13") == -1);

changes in bold red

then change the same statement in

~typo3_src/typo3/sysext/rtehtmlarea/htmlarea/htmlarea-compressed.js

finally delete all *.js files in typo3temp/, clear your browser cache, and although not really neccesary, Clear cache in typo3conf/

yours truely

seoXplorer

deutsche Version:

Every explorer needs his tools, in the case of seo, I use for creating complete websites: Typo3 and WordPress as complete Content-Management-Systems, php and perl to create individual dynamic websites. From a Explorers point of view these are research objects and experiments.

To measure the results there are many various tools available, which often cover almost identical tasks and deliver very similar results. Primarily I use the following:

• Google Analytics
  IMHO the simplest and most complete free online website-statistics tool
• Google Webmastertools
  First of all I use it to understand the quality of my websites as the Google-Bots see it (I’ll explain this in detail in a separate posting) and you get a pretty complete listing of external links to your site (also about that topic more in a separate posting)
• LinkVendor
  This contains a whole Toolbox of seo-measuring tools, but you have to take the results with a good grain of skeptism (which every explorer and research should have plenty of)
• SeoDigger
  This is a nice tool to find out about the most popular keywords on a website, that is with what keywords is the website best ranked in the Search Engines.

To find out the most searched keywords around the topic of a website you can use:

• Good-Keywords
• Overture-Keyword-Tool
• Google-Adwords-Tool
• Wordtracker
• Google Trends allows you to see how keywords evolve over time

And of course every researcher and explorer has to read the scientific journals of his colleages. This means with SEO as the topic to read blogs but also to listen to podcasts:

• english speakers will find alomst all interesting podcasts, or in this case live internet radio, on webmasterradio.fm, which show you want to follow frequently depends mostly on your own personal interests and taste.
• For german speakers it’s Webmasters on the Roof
  Mediadonis and FridayNite 2 munich based top SEOs and SuperAffiliates chat in a very relaxed atmosphere also live via webmasterradio.fm every tuesday at 7 pm (CET) about news and other interesting topics around seo and affiliate marketing. Often with very interesting guests…
• Radio4SEO
  this is the other podcast I listen to regularly. It’s a one-man-show by the seonaut who abandond his ambitious goal to broadcast live too, but still delivers a very good bi-weekly podcast, in the meantime also including interviews with guests.
  Good for beginners, too.

Recommended blogs are of course the official Goolge-blogs (analytics, adsense, webmastercentral) and the blog of Googles chief of Spam-Exorcism Matt Cutts (searchengine-spam, not eMail-spam), furthermore there are:

• Google-Blogoscoped
• SEOmoz
• Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Good german Blogs are:

• internetmarketing-news
• fridaynite
• Bayrischer SeoBlogger
• Website boosting

Lies den Post auf deutsch

So now it’s finally online…

the new seoXplorer (es-ee-oh-Explorer) blog!

I’ll try to post here more or less frequently (I would be stupid to announce that I’ll post frequently, knowing that I won’t be able to keep it up) about various topics around SEO…

Furthermore I will try to make this a dual blog, meaning that I’ll post at www.seoXplorer.com in english and at www.seoXplorer.de in german. There will also be topics which are only interesting for either english or german readers. Then I will post only where it belongs… usually I will mark if the post is also available in the other language.

And please, comment only in the matching language, ’cause certainly there will be readers (hopefully there will be any) who understand only the one or the other language.

Your seoXplorer