As always, Matt’s been gracious enough to let us use him as an example. His site is awesome, though, and we doubt many people will want to block it! - SearchEngineLand.com

What concerns me the most about this update is that Google just added the feature to block sites from the search results in March. It’s not normal for Google to use a new signal so quickly(considering it took them months to even consider using social media signals), especially one that probably has such low usage and can be manipulated. How long until companies start using it to to knock their competitors out of the SERPs.

What do you think?

In the following screenshots I used example.com: https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/site-explorer/summary/example.com

Improved Backlink Data Layout

MajesticSEO now presents the backlink data in a much simpler and easy to read interface, giving you a quick snapshot of any sites backlink profile. This is great information for an SEO professional but would be information overload for most SEO clients. I would be careful on how you may present this data to a client.

Same Great Backlink History Graphs

For those of you familure with the backlink history graphs this isn’t anything new. For those of you who are not these graphs represent the number of discovered links per month. If you click on these graphs you’ll get additional features like the ability to compare the backlink discovery of multiple domains as well as view it comulatively(my favorite view). It would be nice if they’d allow you to change the defult view on the site explorer page.

Quickly See the 5 Top Backlinks

Again this isn’t a new feature just an improved layout, which the site explorer page does well, giving you a summary of all the data available. In this section you are presented with the top 5 backlinks(Based on MajestiSEOs AC Rank) for the entered domain. This can allow you to also check out some of your(or a client’s) backlinks as well as spy on a competitors top backlinks. This feature can be extremely useful for a link builder.

Referring Domains Visual

This little diagram shows some of the reffering domains that link to the entered site the most. For one reason or another these domains link to the entered site many times. Not the prettiest looking diagram but it does the job.

Most Popular Pages

The final feature you’ll find on MajesticSEO’s site explorer page are the top pages(Based on MajesticSEO’s ACRank). Now you’ll be able to see what your most popular pages are based on their backlinkd ata.

Overall the tool is great! Can’t really complain too much considering all the data that they provide for FREE! If I had any criticisms, is some of the data could be a little nicer looking and a PDF version of this report would be great. Keep up the good work MajesticSEO.

1. Diagnose and Monitor Your Website

In order to measure the success of your website you need tools to monitor traffic and search engine indexing errors. Google not only has some of the most well respected monitoring tools but they’re also FREE! Installing Google Analytics will allow you to monitor visitors to your website and measure its success, while Google Webmaster Tools shows you how Google views your site and helps diagnose problems.

2. Start with Your Friends and Business Connections.

Who better to give you honest feedback and share your new website than your friends and business connections? Post a link to your new website on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and any other social network, message board or blog you are already involved in; then ask those connections to share it with their connections.

3. Now Share Your New Website Design With Strangers!

You’ve shared your new website with people you know… now share it with people you don’t. There are dozens of websites who want to share your new website design. These sites are primarily made up of web designers and developers who are looking for inspiration and something new to share with their connections. If you feel your design is the kind to show off, then consider submitting it to these design galleries.

4. Bookmark It!

I’m sure you have some of your favorite websites bookmarked on your browser, but that only helps you know your favorite websites. There are many websites that allow you to save your bookmarks online and share them with others who share the same interests. See a list of these sites and bookmark your site today!

5. Make a News Annoucement.

You’ve launched a new website… isn’t that worth talking about? Make an announcement using free online press release websites. Not only will these give your website quality links but also get your news on popular platforms like Google News.

Now don’t stop here! Keep creating online content worth sharing and don’t forget to monitor visitors from these sites with Google Analytics.

1. Trifecta by SEOmoz

SEOmoz’s reputation in the SEO industry is impressive and their tools are just as impressive. The inspiration that Trifecta had on SEOzio can be found in it’s scoring and categories.


2. Quarkbase.com

The clean design and simple overview of the quarkbase results inspired us to make a tool just as user friendly. We still have features we’re working on that where inspired by this tool, but those are top secret at the moment.


3. websitegrader.com

Website grader is usually one of the first tools any aspiring SEO professional uses. The information is valuable and the presentation is impressive. But it’s short comings is exactly why we developed SEOzio in the first place. We found that the scores where generally high even for sites that weren’t very optimized.


4. TurstRank.org

TurstRank.org isn’t as well known as some of the other tools mentioned but their attempt to understand trustrank and apply it to their tool was a great inspiration to us to try to provide an intelligent way to measure the trust of a site.


5. SEO-Browser.com

SEO Browser doesn’t provide you with a grade or a score but the information it does provide you is extremely important. I’ve been recommending this tool for years and have even done a youtube video on how to use SEO-Browser.com.

Special thanks to all of the intelligent people behind the tools mentioned aboved. Check out the SEO Grading Tool that was invented as a result of their inspiration.

Feel free to post your feedback. I hope you enjoy it!

Many websites(usually start-ups or small businesses) rely on long-tail searches to bring traffic to their websites. This is based upon the difficulty and low conversion rate of short tail phrases. For example lets look at how many results there are for our short-tail and long-tail phrases;

As you can see from our search, our short tail search had 272,000,000 results where our long-tail had 503,000 results. This means there where less pages on the internet competing for that combination of keywords.

With Google Instant many experts are concerned that it will encourage users to settle for the shorter suggested Google searches, rather than creating a more unique targeted search phrase.  Others on the other hand think that it will encourage users to keep typing until the suggestion is more specific to their need, this would cause long-tail searches to increase.

After reading over many of these articles, I think bottom line is; time will tell. As SEO professionals we need to keep a close eye on analytics, continue using best practices and analyze user behavior as this update is surely going to effect the way people search.

The problem I’m having with it, is when I did a search today for “SEO definition” I had a very strange result. The definition Google pulled from it’s dictionary was about how Seo is a common Korean family name, while all 10 organic results where all related to Search Engine Optimization. This seemed unlike Google to give such a answer considering that I’m searching with in the US (so Korean family names might now be the best result for me) and that the remainder of the search results where all about Search Engine Optimization. Keep in mind I also capitalized SEO in my search and performed this search unpersonalized.

Here’s what my results looked like;

It looks like Google may still be working the kinks out of this new feature. But it says something about a search engine when you expect more from them.

Post a comment and let me know your thoughts.

I’m very happy to say that today we’ve launched the new SEO tool to the public and I can’t wait to get some feedback.

Try our new Free SEO Tool.

I pointed a few links to chrishornak.tk and within 24 hours the site could be found in Google. This was great news but the celebration came to a quick end. By day 3 of the experiment I could no longer find chrishornak.tk in Google’s index. My conclusion is that since dot.tk domains  are free most of them are owned by spam websites so Google takes a closer look at any new dot.tk domain. After a few weeks of being in the index and out of the index it finally stayed in the index and the unique keyword phrase page I created “fish taco seo” ranked #1 in Google.

Three months have gone by and the homepage now has a Google PageRank of 2 and a few internal pages including the fish taco page have a PageRank of 1. This is proof that a weebly site and dot.tk domain can be used to create a website on a zero dollar budget.

When I was in highschool I got involved in online First Person Shooters. To be more specific, Quake 2 was the title of the game that got me addicted. I have been playing games like that ever since (about 10 years). There’s one site in particular that I visited daily way back then and I still find myself participating on it today. It’s a little site called ESReality.com. ESReality is a site for competitive gamers, more specifically those who have roots in Quake games. Before I ramble on forever about competitive gaming (or eSports) let me attempt to get to the point of this story.

The reason I think people like me have been visiting this site for so long is because it focused on a niche when we needed a site to focus on it and it had people who brought the best stories about that niche to one place. This is exactly what I have been trying to apply to the community site’s I’m working on now.

To get to my point I think if you want to run a successful community site you need to really find your niche, something that you’re passionate about. The second part is find other people who feel the same way and are willing to contribute (if you want to start a community, you need people!). Finally, just start writing and provide users with the tools they need to contribute to your community. If you have those things, the people will come and they will contribute.

Three Point Summary:

1. Find a niche.
2. Get others involved.
3. Provide users with the tools they need to contribute.