Cog SEO Blog » SEO Tools

SEO – Guide

Melanie Prough — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:07:12 +0000

1. Alexa Ranking Tool:

Alexa is a pretty powerful tool used to rank web site traffic. Find out how your web site traffic stacks up against all your competitors! This is one of the fairly accurate freely available tools to find out how well your site ranks up against millions of other sites on the Web.

Remember:

“The lower the Alexa ranking number the more heavily visited the site.”
Some examples are:

Automated Website Testing

Melanie Prough — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:00:40 +0000

You just finished building your company’s new website. You have tested it yourself and had other company employees test it as well. The website now goes live. A few weeks later you start getting emails from irate customers who complain that they are unable to place their orders because certain steps in the “Buy Now” process give errors. You quickly fix the problem. A few days later you get complaints about some other issue and you again react quickly to fix the new

Funny SEO Tools Poem

Melanie Prough — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:56:00 +0000

Start the day at the Cog with a fun SEO giggle or 2… You will like this very funny poem about SEO Tools.

I am in my cave, and looking out kind of furtive,
The reason being, psychologically, I am low assertive,
It seems to me with dinosaurs just outside the cave,
Its entirely reasonable now, to be anything but brave,
But the tribal psychiatrist insists that I must face my fears,
And he issued me with stones, and little wooden

Server Side Log Stats Explored and Explained

Melanie Prough — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:19:13 +0000

There are many programs used inside the server environment to analyze logs and provide analysis of many different metrics of the site. Most times your server / hosting company will provide some sort of stats program for you, sometimes even two. I did a little digging and will cover a few details about what appear to be the top 4 programs out there right now.

When choosing a stats program there are many factors price, options, dependability, compatibility, and ease of use. Here is a

Guide to the Google Webmaster’s Toolset

Melanie Prough — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:18:29 +0000

The Google Webmasters Tools are a wonderful vantage to Google’s graces. They allow easy access to crawl stats and more. Your sitemap and several decisions are submitted here. You can survive without the tools, but they are highly recommended.

You must have a Google / Gmail account to use these tools. When you first arrive at Google

To ROR or Not to ROR

Melanie Prough — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:57:46 +0000

There is a great deal of mystery surrounding the actual use of the ror.xml feed. I did some heavy investigating and have decided that ROR (Resources of a Resource) is like a “Sales Pitch” for the engines that use it. For the engines that do not it is still a sitemap/content link and a feed….we all know feeds are hot.

So how is a ROR feed a “Sales Pitch”? It is a fully disciplined interface to describe everything in and about your site in greater detail

Geo Targeting in Googles Webmasters Tools

Melanie Prough — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:08:49 +0000

A tasty Halloween SEO treat from Google Webmaster Tools was announced 10/31/2007 yesterday in the Google Webmaster Blog. You can now Geo Target your location right in your tools dashboard! This is a pretty exciting tool for Google to add, a definite treat!

Google says you can now choose a location for your content per directory, domain, and sub domain to help them improve the geographic

So You Want to do Your Own SEO?

Melanie Prough — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:49:19 +0000

PROJECT: Complete on page and off page optimization (SEO) for a page or site.
TIME: Forever, the job is ongoing.
MATERIALS: PC, Internet connection, great SEO resources, beer, patience, Tylenol, thick skin, caffeine, problem solving skills, and common sense.
TOOLS: Various online and offline optimization tools and data collection methods.
SCHEDULE: At least 2 hours a day until the