Marketing Mule

In some cases, a broken or malformed link can cause issues with site spiderability.

In this article we look at what those problems could be and give some suggestions on tools you can use to help diagnose and solve your problem.

How do you check for broken and mal-formed links?

Well there are a few ways. One is to use a search engine spider simulator. We have reviewed many different simulators, all with differing abilities.

For example, Webconfs spider simulator shows you all the spidered text, as well as links and meta description and keywords.

The Delorie spider simulator goes a little…

I have to admit that I’m a bit of a stats junkie. I love knowing who’s coming to my website, how they found my website, and what pages are getting the love from the search engines. I’ve often relied on using what my web host provided as far as stats programs went. They were handy because they were pre-installed and just there for me to use.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know if I’ve really been overly satisfied with any that I’ve used. So when I came across IndexTools I thought I’d give it a whirl and see if I could use it!

Is it easy to install?

Yes, it was very easy. To start using the 15 day free trial of IndexTools, you just need to do 3…

If you’re new to the game of search engine optimization, or an old hand at it you might be interested to know more about WordTracker’s free version that will now let you search 100 terms deep, shows daily search volume estimates based on the marketshare of Dogpile and Metacrawler. WordTracker is one of the leading keyword research tools on the Internet today and would be a great addition to your collection of optimization tools. I’ve used the free version before, and until now it was very limited in the results but I’m excited to start trying out their new version!

The first thing I did was go to their website for the Free Keyword…

Google has been slowly building on its Sitemaps application since its release quite a few months ago. In fact, just recently they added a new section showing you all the links pointing to your site.

But is that all Google Webmaster Central is good for? Sitemaps and links? In this article we review this Google product to determine if it is really a useful tool or time waster.

What is Google Webmaster Central?

Before I get into the “whys” of GWC let me explain what it is.

Originally, GWC started out as Google Sitemaps. This was a way to create a list of pages and save them in an XML file which you could then tell Google about so that it could more efficiently find all…

There are a lot of free analytics solutions out there. From large well known ones like Google Analytics to smaller less well known ones like this one – 103 Bees.

And of course there are many hybrid trackers, depending on your needs, from Bloglines to Feedburner which all offer at the least a rudimentary form of basic tracking to full fledged analytics comparable to what you would have to pay hundreds of dollars for.

And with this influx of new tools on an almost daily basis we thought we would take a look at one of the newer players in this field – 103 Bees.

Why 103 Bees?

According to the site, bees are very hard workers,...

I have found a way that you can create a Google Sitemap yourself all with free software that you can control. There are 3 essential aspects to this: A site crawler, the sitemap builder and of course a place to submit your sitemap too.

Step 1: Build the Sitemap

One of the easiest ways I have found to do this is to download a free program called Xenu Link Sleuth. While it can be used for a lot of other things, I have found it works exceptionally well for helping you build an XML sitemap.

Now it does not automatically output an XML ready file for you, but it can greatly help automate the URL collection process. So, here is the…

In this article we look at some of the free keyphrase analysis tools out there and give you a hands on approach to performing an analysis without spending any money.

The Purpose for Doing a Keyphrase Analysis

The premise behind keyphrase analysis is that the terms you select are the terms you expect your customers to use when finding your site. Obviously then you want to be sure to select the best terms yet you also want to be able to select terms which either give you great placement early (for an organic campaign) or which won’t break the bank (in terms of a PPC campaign).

Therefore, keyphrase analysis comes down to a balance between how likely you are to position for…

There are many options out there when it comes to office productivity applications. You can go with the most well known application – Microsoft Office – and pay a few hundred dollars for the right to own your copy, or you can use a web based application such as Google Docs to manage and share your documents and spreadsheets. And in between those two options are a variety of other productivity tools one can use to help them perform their daily operations.

One such application is OpenOffice. It is a free office suite which claims to be “compatible with all other major office suites.” What this means is that one can open and save…

I’ve been looking at so many SEO tools lately that I’m beginning to wonder if a really effective tool actually exists out there.

Sure some come close, such as WebCEO, but there aren’t too many web based SEO tools out there that are worth the hype they generate.

That is until now. Recently a new SEO tool entered the market – one that will likely generate a lot of buzz in years to come. That is, if they continue to innovate.

SoloSEO is a great collection of web based SEO tools. And while there are a few shortcomings (I’ll get to those later) there are also a lot of great features. So, let’s start…

As an affiliate marketer I’ve been interested in advertising my sites. Organic SEO is just fine, but it’s a long, slow process and I really wanted to get my sites out there – with relevant searches on ad networks such as Google adWords, Bidvertiser, Overture – but how do I start pulling in the clicks – how do I get an ad that is going to give me the maximum return for the money I’m spending on the advertising?

That’s when I came across Glyphius. The creator of Glyphius, James Brausch found some of the most profitable sales letters throughout the Internet and compiled them into a comprehensive database based on the commonly…