I’ve already said that I consider myself a whitehat, one thing I would like to clarify though is that you don’t need or have to conform to these labels defined by others. Each individual should find their own SEO path based on history, experience, skill and ultimately risk.
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Greyhats tend to employ blackhat tactics to a lesser degree and do also employ some whitehat tactics. It’s fair to say that they do also focus on the things which just aren’t covered by search engine guidelines and rules.
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Following on from Which SEO hat are you wearing? it can be difficult to know which tactics can affect you in which way, particularly for the novice.
For informational purposes, I’m hoping to cover some of the more common tactics of each type of “hat Continue reading »
As you move into the world of SEO and start to understand much of the terminology you will no doubt start to wonder about the colour of your hat.
In the same way that hackers, scripters and crackers tend towards particular techniques and acceptable disclosure practices, SEO’s have adopted a similar standpoint. What are the hats? Continue reading »
We often talk about accessibility and SEO in different contexts. The truth is that many of the goals in SEO are mirrored in accessibility.
First and foremost, in search engine optimisation, we are attempting to get a non-visually aware system to read, navigate and digest our content. Whilst accessibility does not only cater for and promote useage by the blind or visually impaired, it is one strong facet.
One of our commenters suggested this tool in the top 3 SEO tools article. As you can see in my comment there, I was pretty unimpressed when I installed it in IE7 on Vista. True to my word, I then installed the app into firefox on the mac, here is my review :):
The SEO Quake toolbar/plugin is available directly from http://www.seoquake.com/
Installation:
I’m installing into Firefox V2.0.0.14 on Mac OSX Leopard (10.5.2). The first window that the app presents me with is this one:
I just happened to check the alexa monitoring page for the site this morning:
When we started the experiment at 08:26BST on Fri 16th May 2008 our Alexa rank was: #1,632,224
At 13:34BST today (Wed 21st May 2008) our Alexa rank was 1,457,361 giving us a rank change of 174,863 in 5 days.
The original post on our experiment is here: http://www.hungerfordwebdesign.com/blog/seo/increase-your-alexa-rank/
I must say, the more I investigate Alexa and it’s measurement techniques, target audiences and reach, the more I am convinced that I have little concern for the rank (which actually helps me justify the experiment). Whether our rank improves or decreases really doesn’t affect my business or revenue. Anyone selling advertising, certain products etc may well benefit.
I will be summarising some of the negative aspects of Alexa in more detail shortly - This is just a ranking update post for prosterity.
(OK, the astute amongst you will notice there are four tools here - I almost forgot the most important - the SEO text browser….)
Search engine optimisation is an ever-important part of web development and design. Developers nowadays simply must have an appreciation for SEO (whilst not having to be experts) to ensure that nothing we do negatively impacts the sites we develop.
This is a list and description of some of the best tools we use to help check our sites for standards compliance, SEO and syntax checking. It’s by no means exhaustive and I’m sure others will have more/better tools. If there is something you use which you would suggest to others, please add it in a comment.
One of the reasons I blog is to share the knowledge/tips/help/advice I pick up along the way. Sometimes it can take me days to figure out a particular piece of code. I do want to know how useful people find this sharing. I’m conscious that of all the blogs I stumble across, not all of them are useful to me.
Is this blog useful to you? Have you used one (or more) of our scripts? Have you used some of our links or advice to increase your SEO or help you develop your site?
Do you have a particular question you would like me to try to help with? I’d be happy to.
Post a comment and I will read it, answer and help if I can.
I had required users to register before posting comments (due to SPAM) but have removed this requirement so please, please engage with us. I’m really keen to make this blog more interactive and informative.
Alexa who?
Alexa.com is owned by Amazon.com. In short (for those that don’t know), it’s ONE method of demonstrating traffic levels for your website. There are pro’s and con’s to Alexa and we’ll get to them in a minute.
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