The SEO industry exists largely because search engines don’t see websites like humans. If they did, we would probably be finding new employment as web designers or conversion experts. Nevertheless, until this happens (and I’m betting my career on the fact that it won’t) it is one of our main jobs to view a website the way a search engine would and give suggestions for improvement.

Luckily, professional SEOs no longer only look at the source code of a website. SEO tools have come a long way, and it is easier than ever to view a website the same way a search engine does. Below are five tools that make this task quick and effective.

Google Cached Version

SEOs have long used the cached version of their website to glean how Google is viewing it. To view the cached version of any page simply type “cache:www.yourdomain.com/” into the Google search box. Once the cached version of your webpage loads, click on “Text-only version”. This will enable you to quickly identify if any of your text or links are not being crawled in addition to any hidden text.

SEO-Browser.com

While checking Google’s text-only cached version of a page can be very helpful, it is difficult to do this for an entire website. This is because clicking on a link to another page in the cached version will bring you to the live version, thus making it difficult to quickly examine the entire site. For this reason I often go to seo-browser.com. It is essentially the same as viewing the text cached version, but it allows you to obtain a better understanding of how the pages interact with each other. Simply type your URL into the search box on the homepage and click “Simple”.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools has two great features that help you see how the Googlebot views your website. For a quick reference you can use the Site Preview Tool. This will show you the same thing as clicking on the magnifying glass next to your website in the SERPS. However, it is easier to use since it compares your actual page and previewed page side by side and doesn’t highlight snippets of text from your site.

For a more in depth report perform a “Fetch as a Googlebot” within Webmaster Tools. This is similar to viewing your source code, but it is going one step further by showing you how Google views your source code.

Web Developer Toolbar

The Web Developer Toolbar is a well known extension for Firefox and contains three essential features for enabling you to see a website the way search engines do. These features include:

1. Turning off cookies (search engine crawlers don’t carry them)
2. Turning off JavaScript (search engines struggle to read it)
3. Turning off Meta redirects (search engines don’t blindly follow them)

By simply disabling cookies and Javascript while browsing a website you will gain a better understanding of what the search engines are seeing while still maintaining the overall look and feel of the site as you browse.

Likewise, it is also helpful to turn off Meta redirects in your browser, since it is likely that the search engines will crawl a page with a Meta redirect before moving on, whereas some Meta redirects will send a visitor away so quickly they might not even realize an additional page exists.

User Agent Switcher

A user agent switcher or spoofer allows you to change the user agent string, which identifies what browser you are using to the website you visit. In other words, even if you are browsing the web in the latest version of Firefox, you can change the user agent to appear as if you are using IE6. My favorite is a Firefox extension from Chris Pederick, who created the Web Developer Toolbar mentioned above.

The best part about this extension is the ability to set the user agent string to any one of the major search engine bots. This will allow you to quickly determine if a website is cloaking by presenting the search engines with different content than users.

Conclusion

These tools and methods have their strengths and their weaknesses, so it is important not to rely on a single tool while reviewing a website. By using all or a combination of the above tools, you will be able to see and spot problems in a website that simple browsing can’t accomplish.

5 Tools to See a Website Like a Search Engine is a post by SEO expert Christian Greiner. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

This post summarizes the results of a recent internal test conducted to understand how a website’s navigation menu affects the ‘First Link Priority’ rule. A method for avoiding the consequences of this rule was also tested with positive results. While these tests were in no way exhaustive, they do add to the body of evidence available on the subject.

Optimized anchor text has long been an important aspect of search engine optimization because it helps the search engines determine the relevance of the target URL. And while a good SEO link-building campaign can help you achieve better optimized anchor text, a natural backlink portfolio will often be less than ideal.

For this reason, internal linking is crucial. It allows you to tell search engines what pages you want to rank for a certain term. In order to make your internal linking effective, there is one very important yet often overlooked rule you should be aware of called the “first link priority” rule.

What Is the ‘First Link Priority’ Rule?

The “first link priority” rule is Google’s way of making sure a webmaster doesn’t add hundreds of anchor text links into the content of their website. Basically, when the search engine spider crawls a page on your website and comes across two links pointing to the same page, it will only consider the anchor text of the first link and disregard the second. While this rule has been well documented by many SEOs, there seems to be some confusion on whether or not this rule applies to the navigation menu of a website.

Problems with the Navigation Menu

On the vast majority of websites, the navigation menu is located above the majority of content when viewing the source code. As a result, the spiders end up crawling your navigation menu first. This creates a problem because most navigation menus do not use fully-optimized anchor text. For example, if I sell bunk beds, I might have two tabs in my navigation menu, one labeled “wood” and the other labeled “metal”. Of course those are not the keywords I am optimizing for, but “wooden bunk beds” and “metal bunk beds” don’t always look good in a navigation menu.

As a result, many professional SEOs have assumed that Google will still count an internal link’s anchor text within the content of a page. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

I created a test a few months ago on www.christiangreiner.com, before I redesigned the website. I made a page using 15 randomly generated letters with no search results (christiangreiner.com/zjjiurzcfccylco/). I then linked to this page twice, using other randomly generated letters. One link (pbnrnqdmzbeloxd) was in the navigation menu, with another (cxelwjgqaajlost) in the content of the homepage.

In the search results shown below Google ONLY considered the anchor text from the menu in ranking the page named zjjiurzcfccylco. Results were the same in Bing and Yahoo.

Results of this test and others that have been performed show that webmasters should re-examine the internal links of their website. If you have a link within the content to a page that is also linked to in the menu of your website, then the anchor text used in the content is most likely not being considered by Google because of the first link priority rule. However, all is not lost because there are a few ways you can still get your desired anchor text.

3 Ways to Get Around the First Link Priority Rule

There are a quite a few technical ways to avoid the first link priority rule, some of which are demonstrated in a post by Giuseppe Pastore from Italy. However, I wouldn’t recommend all of these since some could be seen as misleading by the search engines. Instead, the following are three “best-practice” ways to avoid the consequences of the first link priority rule on your website.

1. Place the menu below the content in the source code of your website

If you have a static website this could be a great option. By using DIVs and absolute positioning it is possible to place a side navigation menu below the content in the source code. When applicable, this is a great option. Google considers any anchor text within the content first, and only when there is none does Google go on to count the links in the navigation menu.

However, before you get too excited you should know that this is difficult to do with a dynamic website, or any website using a CMS. It requires a smart developer, since one little tweak could ruin your absolute positioning and throw your website into a tailspin.

2. Internal link to deep pages only

Most of the time it is best to simply link internally to the deeper pages of your website, instead of duplicating links to pages already linked to in the navigation.

This is probably the most common solution and you see it used a lot by major news outlets. For example, I have never seen a New York Times article with an internal link to the “Sports” page within the content of article. Instead, they link to other articles with optimized anchor text. The result is a deep-linking strategy that is beneficial in getting deep pages read and indexed.

3. Use a hashtag for multiple internal links

The final option is a little trick that involves using a hashtag within your internal links. A hashtag is used within a link to bring users to a specific part of a page and is very common on websites like Wikipedia. Because only part of a page may be relevant to a user clicking on the link, Google treats a hashtag link like a link to a separate page, and therefore will consider the anchor text of multiple links.

In fact, the hashtag work-around works even when the link doesn’t bring you to a specific part of the page. For example, after the first link in the content (cxelwjgqaajlost, which was ignored by Google), I created another link with a hashtag in it (http://www.christiangreiner.com/zjjiurzcfccylco/#1) and gave it another random 15-character anchor text (mtqqjatxxwjfkod). Sure enough, as seen below, Google (but not Bing or Yahoo) considered the anchor text used when ranking the page it links to.

Even though it worked in my test, I wouldn’t consider this method to be a “best practice,” since it is essentially adding links which do not benefit users for the sake of manipulating search rankings.

However, if you do have an H1 tag that contains your keyword, and use an internal link with the same anchor text to bring users directly to that H1 tag on the page, this could create a good user experience and solve the first link priority problem at the same time.

Final thought

This was not the first test to learn more about the first link priority rule, nor should it be the last. Instead, it is simply meant to help us better understand how Google crawls a website and what it considers.

It is also important to note that having internal links within the content of your website (even when the menu already links to the same page) can still be beneficial as long as it creates a positive user experience. The point of this post is not to discourage internal linking, but to discourage internal links that will hold no value for a visitor or the search engines.

Testing the First Link Priority Rule is a post by SEO expert Christian Greiner. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Google Analytics is a very powerful tool that every website should have installed. Those who have browsed through their analytics report know how valuable the information can be for improving conversions and making informed business decisions. As a result, webmasters and marketers must make every effort to ensure their data is as accurate as possible.

To help accomplish this task, Google Analytics has given us the wonderful ability to filter data to our needs. And while there are many different filters you can use for a variety of reasons, there are two filters every webmaster should create upon first installing Google Analytics. These two filters are an absolute must, and failing to implement them may contaminate results and provide you with inaccurate information.

1. Exclude All Employee IP Addresses

The first filter you should create when installing Google Analytics is a filter excluding yours and your employees’ IP addresses.

Why It’s Important

Not only will your employees inflate the number of visitors to your website, but more importantly, they may skew more sensitive data such as the number of pageviews and the time on site, since their browsing habits may be very different than a customer’s.

How to Exclude a Single IP Address

Creating this filter is very straightforward. From your Analytics Settings page click “Edit” to the right of the domain you wish to add the filter to. This brings you to your Profile Settings Page where you click “Add a Filter”. Select “Predefined Filter” and add your IP address (as shown below).

How to Exclude Multiple IP Addresses

If you have a range of IP addresses to exclude, select “Custom Filter” and enter the IP range using regular expressions. I suggest using Google’s IP Regex tool to make sure you are entering the correct expression.

2. Include Only Your Hostname

Why It’s Important

Including your domain name and subdomains is an often overlooked but vital filter. Remember that the tracking code Google gave you to use on your website (the UA-XXXXX-X) isn’t a secret. Anybody can see it pretty easily by looking at the source code of your webpage. If somebody uses this same tracking code on their page it will contaminate your data.

You may think this is a rare occurrence, but unfortunately it is very common. Most of the time it is done on accident, when somebody scrapes your code. But it could also be done maliciously. To see if anyone is using your tracking code on their website simply check your analytics under Visitors > Network Properties> Hostnames. We did this for SEO.com and found more than 40 websites using our tracking code, including a hilarious example of a Chinese website that has scraped our code. Can you tell which one is the real SEO.com?

While this may not be that significant to a larger website like ours, it can really have an impact on small- and medium-sized websites by skewing metrics like bounce rates and average time spent on site. Furthermore, if somebody wanted to be malicious they could even include your code on a larger website, inflating visitors and making it harder to segment out traffic that is not yours.

How to Include Your Hostname

Including only your domain name is also pretty straightforward, although you will have to use a custom filter since there is no predefined filter available. To do this, select “Custom Filter” and “Include”. You then select “Hostname” from the drop down menu. To enter you domain name as a regular expression you simply need to add a “” before the .com: seo.com

Always Have an Unfiltered Profile

While these two filters are extremely helpful, you will still want an unfiltered profile with only raw data. This is considered best practice since once you create a filter you can never go back to see unfiltered data, even if you made a mistake.

To create an unfiltered profile click “Add new profile” to the left of the domain name you want to add it to. Then enter a profile name such as “www.seo.com – unfiltered”.

Taking these simple steps allows you to have more confidence in your data and make better informed business decisions.

Two Must Have Filters for Google Analytics is a post by SEO expert Christian Greiner. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Image SEO is a post by SEO expert Christian Greiner. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Ever wonder what keeps us going here at SEO.com? The truth is, we have often wondered the same thing. We know we are a weird breed and we embrace that stigma wholeheartedly, but that got us wondering, just how different are we?

A few days ago a co-worker made the comment that many of us appear to be addicted to energy drinks. That set off a discussion about what the most popular drinks are among SEO.com employees. I sent out a survey and recorded the results.

The question: What Fuels You? Here is the scenario. You are at work and feeling a bit sluggish. What is your go-to drink?

The Results:

At first it appears that we are a pretty healthy bunch, with so many of us choosing water over soda and energy drinks. However, the results become disturbing when broken up among job title and what percentage of us need caffeine to keep going.

As you can see most of our account executives love their water and shun caffeine, while the SEO specialists can’t seem to get enough caffeine. In fact, all three Monster drinkers were on the specialist team.

So are we really that different? I’m sure the SEO companies in Seattle probably have more than one coffee drinker, but besides that, is this the industry standard?

What Fuels Your SEO? is a post by SEO expert Christian Greiner. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

The longer I work in the industry, the more apparent it becomes to me that there are essentially two types of clients: those who want to be guided to higher rankings and those who want to be pushed to higher rankings. As SEOs we are capable of doing both, but the goal of this post is to explain the vast superiority of one method over the other.

The Client Who Wants To Be Pushed

Some clients come to SEO.com wanting to be pushed up the rankings. They view search engine optimization as a ticket to a bigger return on investment and need the whole process to take place pretty quickly. I’m not sure these clients really know what SEO is. They might have been told they need SEO to make more money on their website and called us because we are the first SEO company they saw in the rankings. To be honest, I don’t really know a lot about these clients because they don’t like to talk to us. They consider us their SEO company, nothing more and nothing less. We are in charge of getting them to the first page and they really don’t care how we do it.

More often than not we do achieve first page results for these clients (an accomplishment I am sure must confirm to them they don’t need to be involved to see results). Nevertheless, it can at times seem like an uphill battle, often taking longer than it should to see results. The main problem with a client like this is that they only care about one thing: rankings. If their rankings look good, we are met with praise. If they are taking longer than expected, we are scorned. Yes, we will work with you if you are a client like this, but there is a better way and I will show it to you.

The Client Who Wants To Be Guided

These are the clients we love and have the most fun with. These clients have three great things going for them.

1. A unique value proposition. They have a great business model combined with a great product or service. They know they deserve to be No. 1 for their keywords.
2. They have a great website. This isn’t to say their website is perfectly optimized, since we can work on that together. Instead, their website is well designed, has lots of great content and will convert once they start seeing traffic.
3. They view us as part of their marketing efforts and business strategy, not just SEO. These clients realize that SEO is much more than building links. They want us to work with them to achieve lasting results and increase brand awareness.

The main thing that sets this type of client apart is the level of involvement. Instead of a “set it and forget it” attitude, we become more of consultants, combining SEO best practices with their current marketing efforts.

What SEO Firms Can Do

Not every client will understand what a good SEO does. Let’s face it, there are many SEO companies that will take a client’s money and get them rankings through shady methods without the client ever needing to pick up the phone. But potential clients need to understand that a legitimate long-term SEO strategy will require a lot of work from both the SEO team and themselves. Without the ability to commit on this level there may be some frustrations in the campaign and results may take longer to achieve.

Finally, we as SEOs need to do a better job at setting expectations when taking on a new client. Too many clients have been conditioned through past SEO companies to count links and come with an expectation of a certain amount of links per dollar paid. To convert a client from one who expects to be pushed to one who wants to be guided means dispelling all past expectations they might have heard about the SEO industry and explaining to them what really works and what your vision is for their campaign. Failing to do this could lead to animosity and unmet expectations six months from now. On the other hand, doing this right will lead to rankings, ROI and a great relationship.

So I would like to hear from others, what tips do you have for setting realistic expectations and what myths do you make it a priority to dispel when taking on a new client?

Do You Want To Be Pushed Or Guided To Higher Rankings? is a post by SEO expert Christian Greiner. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Choosing a domain name can often be a frustrating and challenging task. It’s not uncommon to feel that all the good names are taken. Nevertheless, with a little creativity it is possible to choose a great domain name that will make you proud for years to come. And while there is no “one way” to choose a domain name, I offer these eight simple steps for those feeling overwhelmed by the task. They are intended to maximize your new domain’s search engine optimization along with its conversion potential.

Step  1 – Choose a .com

There is a lot of speculation about whether any domain or top level domain is given preference by the search engines. The search engines have said they are not, while some anecdotal evidence says they do. The following is a data table in which I compared the number of registered domains to the number of pages indexed by Google. I then listed the average number of pages indexed per domain by TLD.

This data is not scientific. It is most likely biased towards .com and .org. Many people purchase the other TLDs to protect their brand and have them redirect to the .com or .org version of their website, which causes them not to be indexed by Google. And while it doesn’t prove causation, the data is interesting and if nothing else, it shows that there are a lot more .coms out there. While we may never know for sure if one TLD is preferred over another by the search engines, this table does suggest that .com and .org are preferred by users.

Step 2 – Use your industry in your domain name

Let me preface this post by saying that some of the biggest and most successful businesses online did not follow this step. Names like Amazon, Flikr and Monster have been extremely successful. Though, the goal of this step is to help a business create a domain name that will stand on its own, not one that requires a large advertising budget to promote.

The best practice is to name your industry in the domain you choose. If you sell knives, “knives” should be in your domain name. This not only helps customers identify immediately with your product, it will also help search engine optimization as users type that keyword into their browser.

Also be sure not to stuff your name full of keywords. This looks spammy and is a huge turn-off to Internet users. Besides good link building will help you rank for additional keywords later in your SEO campaign.

Step 3 – Brand yourself

Unless you can jump back in time, or shell out big bucks, chances are that keyword you want is already taken. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Ever try going to nissan.com? It is not what you think. It is some guy’s computer shop in North Carolina with the last name Nissan. I guarantee he gets lots of unwanted traffic and his bounce rate (people going to his website and immediately leaving) is huge. The point is that having that domain name has not benefited him, just like having the name cars.com would not help you if you run a used car lot in Lubbock, Texas.

Branding yourself allows you to get creative by giving a memorable and distinct name to your company. If you already have a business name then this should be easy, just put it up front or in the back of your industry keyword. If you are starting a brand new online business then have some fun and think of something catchy.

Step 4 – Put in your geographic location

If you serve only one geographic location then you can go ahead and add it to your domain name, or use it instead of your brand. This will not only make it more likely for the people within that location to click on your site, but it will also make it less likely for people you don’t serve to click on your site.

Step 5 – Keep it to a handful of words

Obviously, the shorter your name, the easier it is to remember. In fact, there is really no reason your name should be longer than five words.

Sometimes you may need to introduce a second keyword, such as “usedcars” or “tacticalknives,” to clarify what types of products you sell. In addition, you may need to be specific in your location, and add that to your domain name. In some cases, your domain name could end up three, four or even five words. But never go longer than five.

You may tempted to use an acronym. But acronyms don’t help you with keywords or do anything for branding. Basically, you would be ignoring steps two through four. Plus, they can often be difficult to remember.

Step 6 – Make it easy to say

Stay away from names that use hyphens, numbers, slang and homonyms. This may help you get a name you might not have otherwise received, but it makes it difficult for people to remember your domain name and you will lose traffic. Besides, just imagine having to tell people what your domain name is. Names laced with hyphens or numbers get tiring.

Step 7 – Make it easy to remember

Stay away from plural words unless you can get both the singular and plural domain name. If you only get the plural, you may lose traffic to someone who registered the singular form. Also, if the “perfect name” is already taken, it is tempting to add “my,” “the” or “your” to the beginning. This can cause a less professional look and you may end up losing some traffic to your competitor without these modifiers in their name.

Step 8 – Make sure you love it

This is your brand, your website. Imagine it on business cards and on billboards. Imagine telling people every day the name of your website. Be sure it makes you proud. If it doesn’t give you pride then keep on brainstorming and go through these steps again. Keep brainstorming keywords and creative branding words. Eventually, you will stumble upon something that excites you.

Eight Easy Steps to Choosing a Domain Name is a post by SEO expert Christian Greiner. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.