Kikabink News

Where else but on the Internet can you get so much wonderful, helpful free stuff? (Of course, let’s not talk about all the free UNDESIRABLE stuff on the Internet… or the free problems that require us to get all the free stuff!)

Kikabink News subscriber, Andrew Jones, has written in with a list of 10 cool, free tools to make your life on the Internet easier. They’re all available from a site called MajorGeeks.com and Andrew assures me that none come with any free nasties like viruses or Trojans.

But as they say: “When in doubt, don’t download!”

Here are the 10 tools in alphabetical order:

• Auslogics defragmenter - optimizes your hard disk.
• Avast home edition - anti-virus software.
• AVG 8.0 - anti-virus software.
• DAP - increases download speeds by up to 300-400 percent.
• Piriform CCleaner - removes unused and temporary files from your system.
• Piriform Recuva - recovers files.
• RoboForm - one-click web form filler and password manager.
• Spybot Search and Destroy - removes malicious software (malware) from your computer.
• Trojan killer - removes trojans from your computer.
• Vcleaner - anti-virus software.

This isn’t an endorsement of any of these tools - just a tip for checking them out. Thanks again, Andrew!

Source: MajorGeeks.com

Ross Dunn’s recent article in Web Marketing Today provides a handy outline of some of the search engine optimization (SEO) tools you can use to improve your search engine and general Internet marketing results.

Helpfully, Mr Dunn lists both free and paid tools in terms of four key areas:

1. Monitoring search engine rankings
2. Keyword research
3. Link tracking
4. Website check-up

The good news is that most of these tools are available free via a Google Webmaster account. Don’t have one of those? Sign up for free at http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

Source: Ross Dunn, “SEO Tools That Will Help You Succeed. Part 1″, Web Marketing Today, September 16, 2008

In an interview with US Today magazine, Google’s high profile engineer and blogger Matt Cutt’s has revealed his top 5 tips for ranking higher in Google.

Useful advice but if you’re an SEO pro be prepared to be… underwhelmed. Cutts’ top 5 tips are:

1. Use search terms on your webpages. You want your webpage to rank higher for a given phrase? Make sure it’s actually on the page!
2. Fill in the Title and Description tags with your targeted terms… but give the Keywords tag a miss (Google practically ignores it).
3. Get back links from other sites – back links are given a higher weighting than any of the 100+ data pieces considered by Google’s algorithm when determining a site’s natural search results ranking. (To the search engine marketing firm that continues to mislead its clients into believing that on-page factors are still the most important of all: Google has just spoken.)
4. Launch a blog, post to it, and post often. Blogging allows you to easily create content (more search engine spider food), are more frequently visited by the search engines, and facilitate links back to your website.
5. Register for free tools, such as Google’s webmaster tools. Whether giving you information about who is linking to your site, or how often Google visits your site, such tools will help you attain greater search engine visibility for your site.

Source: Jefferson Graham, “Google’s Cutts: Good directions drive traffic to your website”, USA Today, June 22, 2008

No Internet marketer – well, no Internet marketer with at least a passing interest in search engine marketing – should be without:

1. The Firefox web browser - whether Firefox 2.0 or 3.0 (the latest version); or

2. The free SEO tools and software available from Aaron Wall’s Seobook.com website. These are available as plugins for Firefox.

I’ll cover some of these tools in future issues of Kikabink News. For now, though, let me explain why Aaron’s RankChecker tool is a must-have.

To put it simply, if you want to know how your website ranks for one or more keywords… RankChecker will tell you. You basically type in your domain name, type in however many keywords you wish to check, click “Start” and RankChecker will tell you where you rank (if at all) in Google (US and international), Yahoo Search, and Microsoft Live. You can also export the results in CSV format (i.e. to save in your spreadsheet program).

Click here to download or learn more about RankChecker (yes, it works with Firefox 3.0).

If you haven’t already, click here to download Firefox 3.0 (I’ve heard a couple people say it’s buggy but it seems fine to me… and it certainly leaves its main competitor in the dust).