Many people whom I know and respect have engaged in self-imposed Twitter bans recently. I have found myself fuming over tweets and fussed about it to people who don’t care, for ages and ages it seems. However, I totally rely on Twitter to keep me informed about absolutely everything that’s going on in our industry. If someone writes a blog post, I find out through Twitter. If Google decides to do something insane, I hear it through Twitter. I don’t rely on RSS feeds or bookmarks or word of mouth anymore; it’s just me and Twitter. However, Twitter is quickly killing my goodwill and sanity. The self-promotional tweets about how much money you just made or how many job offers you’ve just turned down turn my stomach. The bickering and bitching suck me in until I’ve read 10 blog responses to 1 inflammatory blog post, and hey, it’s time to go pick up the kids already. I no longer have time for such a mess.

What can you do though, if Twitter is your go-to source for information? Once you’ve been clued in for long enough, being out of the loop seems terrifying. What will you miss? Will so and so be fighting, again, and you won’t get to see the mean tweets back and forth? Will you not immediately know when some blog has published a post so that you can rush to comment on it and again and tell us how great you are? Will you stumble because you want to do something yet you’re unable to due to having become reliant upon follower feedback for every step you take? Does my new avatar make me look fat? Can you believe what this mean person said to me in my blog comments?

Think back a few years to how you consumed industry news pre-Twitter. There was Sphinn, which has gone away. There were RSS feeds which are still being used. We bookmarked blogs and checked them every now and again, and we participated in forums. Sometimes we had to actually dig for information. That was kind of fun, and not nearly as overwhelming as Twitter has become for me.

We now have Marketing Land and My SEO Community (both of which I am very proud to be a part of) and we have lots and lots and lots of curation. People are doing some seriously great roundups. Tamar Weinberg’s Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 was truly amazing, for example, and full of articles that were concerned with topics that aren’t just relevant for 3 days. We have Google Plus which already seems to be spammier than Facebook, with much of it being a repeat of what’s on Twitter and Facebook, but hey, there seems to be a bit less whining and bitching there right now. And, of course, there are still forums! There are private Facebook groups and group Skype chats. There ARE alternatives to staying informed.

My latest favorite way to keep an eye on this is by visiting Coconut Headlines, which is a fantastic overview of all the big SEO news. Just a quick glance at the headlines is helpful enough to keep you clued in on a basic level. You get the big SEO news site headlines, Q and A from Moz, forum topics, and more. Spend 5 minutes just skimming headlines here and you’ll save god knows how much time on Twitter.

But back to My SEO Community for a minute…our first blog entry in the Mad SEO contest truly blew my mind. In it, Pete Wise describes how to use Yahoo Finance to track what’s going on in Google.  He didn’t try this because Twitter irritated the pants off him or anything, but I think it’s a great idea. In the comments, Pete says “The more creative you can get with information filtering, the less you have to spend time sifting through it yourself.” We do have information overload so I like reading about great ways to stay posted on things but still be productive (and not keep giving a crap about what Joe said to Terry that was rude and now she’s going to get all her friends to block Joe.)

In the end though, I could never give up Twitter. It’s like smelling bad milk. You HAVE to do it. I’ve unfollowed some people who annoyed me the most but during calm moments, I kind of miss being so easily irritated by them. Just in writing this post, I think I’ve spent 2 hours reading tweets. After writing this piece, after thinking about alternative news sources, and after fussing and being annoyed, I’m probably still going to run right to Twitter to see what’s going on in the industry today. It’s just nice to realize that if I decide to give it up, I can still keep up.

I’ve been feeling a little SEOfatigued of late. Sick of hearing the same old regurgitated advice and seeing the same old presentation. I’ve found myself withdrawing from Twitter and retreating to smaller communities where the discussion is much more specific and emerges from real, in-the-field observations and results. And you know what? I’m learning more, much faster, and in a shorter amount of time. So, this isn’t a Twitter-diss; but more a natural evolution of my own approach to (constantly) learning SEO. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased when this book landed in my inbox reason being the content is very much of the insider-perspective, using situational examples as opposed to any grand SEO theory.

About the Author, Editor and Book

“SEO ROI: Advanced SEOs’ 7 Curiously Obvious Rules and 30 Singular Tactics That Illustrate Them” is authored by Gabriel Goldenberg an SEO and CRO consultant of considerable experience, with a range of industry speaking experience.

SEO ROI is edited by Richard Kershaw, who again has considerable experience of many areas of online marketing from both blue-chip and affiliate perspectives and is currently running the successful gift experience website Wish.co.uk

Download a free chapter of the book.

Style

Divided into two sections, the first looking at overarching guiding principles, “the Rules”, which include sound advice such as “Teach Yourself” (rule 2); and the second section (30 singular tactics) looks at very specific, situational dilemmas and challenges any SEO or marketer in-the-field may face, with advanced solutions that solve or circumvent the issue with an ROI-positive solution. Each of the 30 tactics is premised on adherence to “the rules”.

As an example Rule 2 starts with useful points on how and where to seek knowledge within the industry; from blogs to books to good ole’ fashioned networking in the real world.

I particularly enjoyed the section on testing – classic A/B split-test methods looking at the object, existing theories, independent and dependent variables and how to measure the effects on the dependent variable. Included is a great step by step walk-thru in testing; from Step 1 “create a hypothesis, to Step 5 “Measure and Analyze”. There’s also a great deal of emphasis placed on critical thinking, as a mindset or effective approach for SEO practise, observation and test; and this is espoused throughout, including detailing some fundamental steps to thinking critically. Something that resonated quite clearly for me was Rule 5 “Define the Problem”. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen clients and staff react in something of a panic, making all kinds of plans and solutions prior to refining and defining exactly what a perceived issue may be.

Sensibly, Rule 6, recommends challenging assumptions; something I wholeheartedly agree with. Without those that dare to challenge there’s no progress surely? I was particularly pleased to see a section devoted to Inductive Validity “Inductive validity is another way of measuring the truth of an argument. Instead of setting the threshold as truth in 100% of the cases, inductive validity looks for a claim to be probably true.”

Here’s the thing…
DO NOT SKIP “The Rules” and head straight to the paydirt! Whilst the later sections of the book may be naturally more absorbing and resonating for a practising SEO I can assure you that this structure and the content therein is extremely valid.

Best Bits

I don’t want to give away too much of the excellent content detailed in the 30 tactics, but to highlight a few tactics that were fresh thinking for me: Writing Conditional  CSS for Higher Conversion – details a range of four solutions, including the ethics of each method, Link Prospecting Using Demographic Matching – with guidance on how to; and in particular a tactic Gab has described as “Message Matching”, which is an awesome tactic and unfortunately something I can’t really describe without giving away the crown jewels.

Room for Improvement?

I couldn’t find fault with this. And I’m picky.

Overall

A truly advanced book for experienced practitioners that are in a position to evaluate solutions based on wider business objectives and ethical frameworks.

Don’t just take my word for it – get your free chapter and see for yourself.

I scored better than 8% of Adwords accounts in my spend range. Wow, that’s…humiliating, and quite humbling.

Wordstream has an awesome new Adwords performance grader tool that’s free and compares your account to others in your spend range (that they have previously graded, but they say that it’s millions) using more than 60 different factors. You get a general idea of how you’re doing then recommendations, in sections, for improvement. I like.

Naturally, this all ties into their PPC management software, which is available on a free 7-day trial. As PPC isn’t my main thing, I won’t be trying that out, but I do really like comparison systems, as I think they give us a great idea for where we stand in, um, comparison to everyone else. Everyone else, that is, who has run their account through this system. Still, it’s millions!!

So in addition to learning that I’m worse than 92% of people in my spend range, what else can this tool tell me?

• I am wasting a lot of money and should add negative keywords to my campaign.

• My keywords are too broad. They are like the backside of my fattest chicken, S. Epatha Merkerson.

• I have no good longtails.

• I am neglecting my account and probably losing ground to competitors due to a full 0 recent actions in the past month. That is dedication that you don’t find with just anyone.

• I don’t have enough ads for each group. However, with my worst ad showing a CTR of over 4% (the expected average is 2.3%) I am still smirking slightly.

• I have way, way fewer landing pages than my competitors. I like it that way though, so take that! Why create a landing page just for PPC? I know people do it, but how is that any different than cloaking? OK I’m joking. That rhymes.

Good news though! My Quality Score kicks ass!! I’m better than the rest of you monkeys with a 7.4 compared to the average of 5.2. Go me!!

My CTR is also awesome!!

OK that’s really all I’m doing well here…but seriously, this is one cool FREE tool. My favorite part is the end where there are happy green thumbs up images or scary and sad red thumbs down ones. I’m 50/50.

Now, I have said many times that I love free tools…I also really like tools that spit out data in eye-pleasing ways. I may be about 6, but I do love the graphics here because it makes the analysis much less boring. Once your report is ready it emails you a permanent link in case you want to look at it over and over and over again, or, more professionally, make tweaks to your campaign, then check your performance later on.

Here’s the thing about this tool: it does not compare your campaign to others in your niche, which means that while it is very valuable, you still can’t determine that just because you don’t have the same performance for asbestos removal as you do for discounted boots, you must suck. As mentioned above, it also compares your performance to others who have run their accounts through the grader. Still, since I like to look at performance in terms of trending rather than exact metrics usually, I do think that it’s really useful. I’d also find this quite nice to show to a client who balks at making changes. For example, I don’t have conversion tracking on this account for various reasons. Yes I know it’s critical, so don’t fuss at me, but still, I do not have it. I am not always at liberty to choose the ad wording or keywords either. A report like this is helpful because then my client doesn’t just think it’s me deciding to do something crazy just because I’m bored.

So try it out. It’s free, it’s cool, and you get to either feel superior to others or you can cry into your warm cereal at dinnertime.

It’s embaressing how long it has been since I posted on SEO-Chicks, it’s months, agh…I have kind of got an excuse, being 8 months pregnant at the moment, but then again the baby is not growing in my head is it. Although sometimes it feels like it, when I find my keys in the fridge, throw the rubbish in the sink and the plate in the rubbish, or forget what I was talking about half way through a new business pitch. Apparently it’s the hormones affecting your brain, great thanks, like looking like a waddling hippo isn’t bad enough my brain is the size of a shrimp.

But as the guilt of not writing anything has finally taken hold of me, I’ve decided to do a “straight forward” blogpost. A Top 10 favourite list, and if you find it boring don’t leave a mean comment, who would do that to a pregnant chick. Ha! I’ve got the trumph card.

Ok, let’s get to business: one of my clients recently launched a blog on their site and asked me for my reccomendations on plugins, I started writing a list and found it surprisingly difficul to stop. So here are my top 10 “Must-Have” WordPress Plugins:

1. WordPress Database Backup
Website: Creators Website or WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: This plugin does on-demand backup of your WordPress database. Highly recommended as it makes sure you don’t lose anything.
Why you need it: You think it won’t happen to you, but it will, you will fiddle with something and down the blog goes, at least having a backup you can restore it pretty quickly. It only takes a minute girl….(jeese am I turning into Julie quoting songs in my blogposts? Albeit less cool songs that Julie’s mentions though…again “pregnancy trumph card” I can’t help it, it’s the hormones. Oh and I also downloaded an entire album of Roxette. And if you don’t know who Roxette are, bugger off, that means you are youger than me and it’s mean to make a pregnant girl feel old, she is already fat.

2. WordPress Firewall
Website: Creators Website or WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: This plugin blocks any suspicious-looking requests to WordPress.
Why you need it: Because there are mean little geeks out there trying to get your blog down, it happened to SEO-Chicks once, luckily Dazzlin Donna saved our “derrieres”.

3. WordPress Automatic Uprade
Website: Creators Website or WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: Allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.
Why you need it: It is very important that wordpress is upgraded regularly as old version might leave you prone to attacks! And I’m not talking attacks by raging hungry polar bears, I’m talking seriously pissed off and spotty virgins, that happens to have an IQ of 200 and a high spec computer.

4. All in One SEO Pack
Website: WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: This plugin allows you to specify title, meta descriptions and other information to the search engines. Why you need it: Because you want to be able to specifiy the title and meta description of your blogpost, “it’s SEO in’it mate”. There are loads of these SEO plugins around, it might not be the best one but it’s a pretty easy one to use. I wouldn’t spend money on “pro version” though I don’t think, it’s a bit cheeky isn’t it? WordPress plugins are suppose to be free, although, yes yes, you are right, they spend allot of their time making the plugin, but hey links is money, be grateful.

5. Tweetmeme
Website: Tweetmeme Plugin Homepage or WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: This has fast become the most used “social plugin” for twitter, it allows people to “tweet” the blogpost by simply clicking on the “tweetmeme” button on the blogpost. You would be hard pushed to find a blog without this plugin now.
Why you need it: Because this whole “Twitter” thing is a pretty useful channel, who would have thought..This is such an easy plugin to use for your users, one click and it’s tweeted (surely I’m preaching to the choir on this one). Once the plugin is installed it looks something like this:

6. Sexy Bookmarks
Website: Creators Website or WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: This is a very useful and nice looking (although I wouldn’t say sexy) plugin for including all social networking and bookmarking sites within each blogpost. Gives the reader an easy way to “spread the word” about the blogpost.
Why you need it: Making it as easy as possible for your readers to “socialise” increases your chances of your content being spread through social channels, simples! When implemented it shows up at the bottom of each blogpost and looks something like this (you can chose which social and bookmarking sites to include):

7. Facebook Share New Button
Website: WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: Allows reader to share the blogpost on Facebook, similar to Tweetmeme but for Facebook.
Why you need it: Facebook seems to be having a strong comeback and it’s once again “fashionable” to be on Facebook and even to share stuff..although I still hate it when my relative in northern Norway sends me a “I joined a stupid facebook application and thought you might like it to” request. Even still, I’ve seen a significant increase in “Facebook Share” and “Like” buttons on blogs lately. Once implemented it looks something like this (you can have a smaller button as well as having it after the content if you like, it’s pretty adaptable):

Once the user has pressed the facebook shared button it automatically posts it to their wall and news feedand will look something like this:

8. WP FB Like
Website: WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: Allows users to facebook “like” a blogpost by the press of a button. As far as I know (and correct me if I’m wrong) the “like” functionality doesn’t post a link to your newsfeed but just to your wall.
Why you need this: The “like” functionality is what brings shared items higher up in the news feed of importance, i.e the more people “like” a shared item the higher up it will be in the “top news”. It’s the “thumbs up” of facebook and people are getting very apt at using this functionality so make sure you have it on your blogposts. The plugin looks like this before anyone has “liked it”:

Then looks like this when someone has pressed the button:

And it will look something like this on the users facebook wall:

9. Subscribe to comments
Website: WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: Allows readers of the blog to subscribe and get emails every time a new comment is made.
Why you need it: This is such a simple easy plugin BUT so important. Readers usually wants to know if someone else has commented on their comment and you should to as it encourages continious conversation and increases the number of comments you get.

10. Post Avatar
Website: Creators Website or WordPress Plugin Download Page
What it does: Includes an avatar (picture) of the authors of each blogpost.
Why you need it: This is one of the most important plugins in my opinion (well any avatar plugin), why? Because building a blog (especially when it’s a group blog) you are building relationships between readers and users, knowing what the writer looks like can enhance the user experience in my opnion, and no not from a is she/he “good looking” point of view, but a simple human level. Knowing what someone looks like when you talk to them imitates personal contact, the phrase “putting a face to the name” springs to ming. But saying that, it obviously helps having gorgeous, friendly looking people on the blog staff like “me Julie”:

Lastly, and not at all connected to the subject, because I’m pregnant and my brain wanders (I find I’m not expected to make sense whilst pregnant, which is a relief, finally I can be myself). Here’s a video of what I look like when pregnant and trying to run…

And of course feel free to share your favourite WP plugins with us and the readers in the comments, there are thousands out there, this is just 10 basic ones that I couldn’t “live without”, and if you feel tempted to leave a comment about the phrase”live without”, it’s a figure of speech, don’t be a numbskull..Have a great weekend everyone!

Well, today I actually got around to reading through my newsletter subscription Inbox (first time in a month or so) and found something I thought was so exciting, that I had to blog about it.

Now I know we have different thresholds of excitement ), but this is bound to tickle a few people…

Disclaimer: OK this is no real news, but it is for me, and since it is the first time we’re blogging about it, it is technically news here on SEO-Chicks…

My excitement is caused by a new feature you can enable in your Gmail account, called Mail Goggles. And its function is only one – to try and ensure that you don’t send “heat-of-the-moment” emails.

WHEN?
By default it is set for late Friday nights and over the weekend – as this is the most likely time for us to get a bit ‘cocky’. Although, if you know you are likely to “offend” at any other time – you can adjust these settings to suit you.

HOW?
The Goggles will stop you by slowing down the sending process – giving you time to ‘cool off’ before clicking Send. It does that by asking you to solve a few mathematical problems – NICE! So it’s effectively asking to count to 10… or take a deep breath in… and exhale…

WHY?
Well, if you’ve ever been at a conference party, and after a few aperitifs you’ve come back to your room, typed out a ‘passionately heated’ email to your boss or colleague on some topic that was discussed there… and then you’ve woken up to realise that you’ve actually sent it too… You will know the answer to this question.

I love it - because basically it is a tool that does one thing, does it in an effective way (as much as possible), and it also happens to be a useful solution to a real potential problem…

Okay, so it has been a little more than a week since Part I, but SES NY takes a long time to recover from.

There are a ton of keyword research tools and tool lists out there, but it is still incredibly important to have all of your tools in one place. There are a lot of familiar tools in here, but there should also be a some lesser known ones here as well.

Let’s start this off with an SEO snack provided to you by one of my newest friends, Gareth

Free Tools

SEObook�s ultimate keyword research tool is a great place to start. Another tool on the site, is the Google Scraper tool

We can�t forget everyone�s old favorites, the Adwords Keyword Tool or Overtures Keyword Selector (although it doesn�t always work)

Quintura shows keyword maps to help you to generate more keywords!

Track keyword trends with Blogpulse.

If anything, Kartoo is a lot of fun. It provides keyword maps of who is ranking for what terms. Results could be a little bette

Find your competitors Keyword!

Start off with figuring out how competitive a keyword is

Long tail keyword discovery shows you the 3, 4 and 5 term keywords for your (or a competitors) site.

SEO Digger is pretty awesome tool. Find out what keywords your site ranks in Google�s top 20 for, or use this to spy on the competition

Shoemoney review

Keyword Spy is great at finding what your competitors are bidding on and ranking for and you test it out for free right on their homepage. The free version only lets you see 10 results, but the paid version for $90/month lets you see a lot more.

Digitalpoints Keyword suggestion tool is another good free option. It also lets you specify what country you are looking for data for. They also have a free keyword position tracking tool.

Paid

Wordtracker has a 7 day free trial for their tool, otherwise, it is paid for at $329 a year. They also have very good free version of their keyword research tool.

Trellian�s keyword discovery is another fantastic tool. It draws info from over 180 search engines around the world and has keyword brainstorming tools as well as the ability to import import keyword lists and add descriptors. This is paid for with prices varying, but a 1 year standard subscription will run you about $600.

Keyword Discovery also won Best Keyword Research Tool in 2007 on www.toprankblog.com

Wordze has gotten a bit of a following with tools that let you perform keyword research, get historical keyword data, perform competitive research, and download top searches. They cost $45/month

Wordze also had a great deal of praise TopRank Blog

Wordze review on copyblogger.

AdGooroo, which also deserves a mention in Yoda�s Ultimate Competitive Research Tools Post is also a great keyword research tool. It allows you see what terms your competition is bidding on so you can make sure you don�t miss any opportunities. Prices range from $89/month to $399/month depending on what you need.

Spyfu also let�s you see what your competitors rank for as well as help you find new keywords to use fro your own site. They let you perform some research for free, but if you want to dig deep, it will cost you $308/year or $6.75 for 3 days

Miscellaneous

Shimon Sandler listed some keyword stemming tools on his site a while back that are very useful. Basically, they help you to take the stem of a word and build out additional keywords by adding in the variations of that term. Here are a few good ones:

http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/wordcheck/index.php?word=work

http://www.related-pages.com/adWordsKeywords.aspx

Other Great Keyword Research Lists

The other Loren (Baker that is) recently wrote a post at Search Engine Journal asking what keyword tools his readers liked � WordTracker, SEOBook, and Keyword Discovery seemed to make it out on top.

Mona Elesseily also put together a great list about spying on your competitors including Compete and Spyfu (mentioned above).

SEOBooks keyword research tool list is another great one.

Anne Smarty�s list on SEOMOZ is also very comprehensive

Coming soon . . . Must have Firefox Plugins

An SEO�s best friend (other than a stiff drink) is a good tool. Tools save us time and energy and streamline the process so we can get to making money instead of researching. They provide the information you need when you need it. But it is important to remember that knowing when to use a particular tool and how to use it is more important than any list.

This is why I�ve created Yoda�s ultimate tool to put all the tools one would need in 1 place. Since this list is too massive to fit in one post, it will be a multi-part list that will cover: Competitive Research, Keyword Research, Must have Firefox plug-ins, Reputation Management tools, PPC Tools, Domainer tools and my favorite non-conformist miscellaneous tools

So here we go: Part 1 � Competitive Research

Step 1: Who is your competitor and where have they been?
Competition Finder
A great tool, this shows you how many pages are indexed in google competing for your key terms. This will let you size up the competition and market saturation.

Archive.org will show you what their website looked like the past as well as give you the age of the site

Whois.sc
By adding this bookmarklet to your firefox browser you can find out the whois information for the site you are viewing simply by clicking on it.

Step 2: What kind of marketshare and traffic do they have?
Compete.com is one of my FAVORITE sites. They have a lot of great free tools (and some really cool paid for ones). You can compare sites, get traffic information and get an idea of how much your competitors are spending.

Index Rank
The first time I saw this was on SEOBook, (Aaron has some amazing tool�s listed there as well, so you should definitely check out that list too). Index Rank is incredible useful in showing you how many times Google is indexing your site compared to competitors sites.

SEO Quake is a pretty cool tool that shows you PR, # of pages indexed, Links, Alexa ratings, Age, whois info and density of every site you open in Firefox.

Who is linking to your competitors?

The Tattler
Originally posted by Todd, this is a great tool to scrape who is linking to your competitors

Backlink and Keyword Tracker
Totally free tool can be used to check search engines for the number of back links to any specific URL over time

Link Diagnosis is a is a great link hunting tool especially if you want to see what kind of anchor text your competitors are using.

Another great one, from a fellow chicklet�s site, is SEOmoz�s Backlink Analyzer. This shows the backlinks to a competitor�s website and the common anchor text. In general the SEOmoz tools section is a must read

What keywords are your competitors buying?
There are a several different tools that do this that vary in prices. Spyfu is a good option, that is not too expensive ($300 a year or about $40/month). It lets you see what keywords your competitors are buying up as well as see what they optimizing their site for.

Have they made any changes?
WatchThatPage will email you with any changes made to a competitor�s site or your site (although you probably should know that already)

Search for Broken Links
Xenu�s Link Sleuth will search for broken links on sire

Great Overall Site Analysis Tools
Last but not least, LinkVendor. This is a site filled with awesome research and site analysis tools.

. . . . . Next Week Part II: Keyword Research

I’ve got that warm and fuzzy feeling that usually only my husband evokes.� Something has me all hot and bothered.� I’ve been playing with myself at http://tools.seobook.com/website-health-check/ – and of course�by “myself” I mean my websites.� God you people have dirty minds!� My husband is a programmer and he makes fantastically innovative bits of code.� For goodness sake people!� Minds in gutters….

What a fantastic tool!� Why did someone not come up with this sooner � Aaron, you are a god (possibly a Nordic one)!� I can now solve a gazillion phone calls from friends who just need a little bit of advice by pointing them at this tool.

Please everyone with �how to� sites out there � please add a link to this tool with your explanations about tags, duplicate content and the like.� I believe that it might even help the new folk out there who want to hire an SEO firm check their own site so they know what is going on before they walk in to that meeting.� Heck, it’s a great little quick and dirty check on any site!

This fantastic tool drills 1000 pages deep on your website checking for missing title tags, missing descriptions, duplicate tags, duplicate descriptions,� www vs non-www issues that we all know and love, it check the index and home page just in case and checks that the proper error codes are being returned.

I fed it several URLs I have *too many*cough* and it flagged some issues I haven�t been bothered to fix errrrr�. have been so busy I haven�t yet had the chance to fix.� It even flagged up some duplicate title issues I didn�t know about.� It tells you exactly what the description or title that is duplicated is and which pages it appears on.

Fantastic!� Go there, have a play, enjoy yourself, have some fun, mock your competitors and boogie – there needs to be more boogie in our lives.

Always remember the call of the cowboy -��Meta tags?� We don�t need no stinkin� meta tags!�

Warning: the following post has almost nothing at all to do with SEO. It’s simply a rant.

A good friend of mine just showed me what I think is one of THE most ridiculous things I have ever seen. Besides Scarlett Johannson singing with the Jesus and Mary Chain even!

It’s a flash drive designed exclusively for women! And strangely, they’re not available in America.

What makes them designed for women anyway? Other than being pink, the product has a “sleek, feminine, cap-less design” which will, apparently, “make it ideal for women of all ages.” It’s a f&^(G! flash drive! What does your sex or age have to do with it? I assume that it also allows you to keep up with your menstrual cycle and fend off would-be attackers in dark parking lots. If it came with a rape whistle, MAYBE I could see its benefit but as it stands, this is truly ridiculous and it brings me to a point (amazing!) about products that are designed for women.

The “designed for women” market has really gotten out of hand lately. This flash drive idiocy is only the latest in a string of items ranging from products that are simply smaller versions of their bulky male counterparts to products that are pink, and thus will appeal to all of us for their simple color. Everyone knows that all women love shiny pink things. OK that sounds really vulgar…you know what I mean you big bunch of sickos. Yes, some women are small and could probably benefit from a product that’s designed more for their size than for someone who’s a giant hill person, but I’ve also known quite a few ham-handed brutish females (yes, I mean brutish, not British) who would beat the tar out of many men on their way TO a fistfight. It’s simply another way to make money, so why does it make me so angry? We’re all in this to promote something. So why do I care?

I care because it’s setting a horrible precedent. Especially with regards to technology, the idea that you need to pink up a product simply so women will understand it and relate to it is about as offensive as Britney Spears covering a Ramones song. Obviously, if there weren’t women-only flash drives we’d most likely have one like this:

The problem is that there are many women who will buy into this nonsense, thus creating the demand for more and more of it. Then what will we have? Will someone design a search engine that will work with women’s needs, or a woman-only browser that’s all pink and lacy? What about an analytics program designed for our tiny minds that are usually full of kittens and flowers? Why is it set in stone that all women like pink anyway? I do happen to love pink, but I sure as hell do not want a pink flash drive. Or a pink phone, or a pink iPod…I’d rather have all those in orange.

Obviously there are products that should be designed for women (such as my mom’s Smith and Wesson Lady Smith revolver, for example, so don’t anyone visit her to complain about her daughter please) for various reasons. Knee cap replacements, amazingly, also seem to be a big area for women-only design. I don’t have a problem with these. Well, the gun thing freaks me the hell out but still, I’d rather see Mom coming down the stairs with a weapon that fits nicely in her small hand than holding a giant shotgun that she can’t control. My point is simply that there are legitimate instances where designing for women makes sense. The flash drive, however, is not a case like this.

Now if you don’t already have this tool, this could make your life a WHOLE lot easier. Well your SEO life anyway, it doesn’t actually help you get a boyfriend or anything like that. Now that would be a great tool? Boyfriend toolbar..

The SeoQuake tool was originally a Mozilla Firefox extension, but they have recently added a Internet Explorer version. Although I would highly recommend you start using Firefox if you are not already using it. Much better, cooler plugins and not to mention so much safer browsing. Ok now this wasn’t meant to be a blogpost about Firefox =)

Anyway, back to SeoQuake. This tool is awesome, it allows you to view a large number of SEO parameters in one go. You get a toolbar that shows you the following parameters of the website you are currently viewing:

- Number of Indexed pages in Google
- Incoming links to URL (based on Yahoo)
- Incoming links to the domain (based on Yahoo)
- Alexa rank
- Age of domain
- Delicious Index
- Whois
- Source
- Internal and External Links
- Keyword density (plus keyword cloud)

plus you can install other parameters such as dmoz info, Technorati index etc etc

Sounds sweet?
Go to find out more about SeoQuake OR to Install SeoQuake