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Closed 10 years ago.
Are there any tools for finding if a page is SEO complaint and if it's not then suggest something to make that page SEO complaint?
Also note that I want to do this research on offline pages i.e. these pages are not on web yet.
The best all purpose services are:
WooRank
WebsiteGrader
Xinu
Google has their own tools which as close as you can get to official 'compliance':
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Website Optimizer
Google Adwords Keywords Tool
SEO is an entire industry, and the rules are always changing.
(See here for a great list of some of the more pronounced changes on Google this year.
And here for some of the more noticeable differences from Bing.)
Some of the better SEO targeted sites are:
Web-strategist
webanalyticsbook
SeoBook
Viget
A monitoring service you should look at:
http://conjection.net/
One of the better articles I would recommend is:
- http://community.seobook.com/45711-post172.html
You should also make sure your page is loading optimally, it will effect the SEO even though it is its own field:
Load and performance - Pingdom and Uptrends.
If you are technically minded, install Yslow or PageSpeed and look at the score.
You can try the Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. Tried it once and it works well.
Got broken links on your site? Is your HTML SEO optimized? This fantastic free tool answers all these questions and hundreds more as it chews your angle brackets for you, creating flexible reports and a full queryable database of your site. -- Scott Hanselman
It's a bit late but I made a presentation with great tools for SEO that I used.
You will find a lot of Firefox Add-ons and Google Chrome Extensions to analyze your page and get suggestion to respect main search engines recommendations.
These slides also present other tools usefull for SEO expert like : google products, online services, wordpress plugins, ...
If it could help someone else, it's here : http://slidesha.re/KOoDad
Hope this help.
I don't know if "compliant" is the best term to use. There isn't a standard.
Rather, there is a set of best practices that have been determined through observation of search engine behavior in reaction to certain aspects of page/url structure.
That being said, I would first take a look at article on About.com titled "White Hat Vs. Black Hat SEO" You definitely want to avoid the black-tactics while abiding by the white-hat tactics.
In a nutshell, the focus on white-hat tactics is on quality content relevant to the subject. Without that, your pages are pretty much dead in the water (assuming you don't subscribe to black-hat techniques).
Offline tools, I did not know which will do this.
You could upload it for a short time or protect it with a password if you do not want that other people see the webpages.
Online-Tool: http://www.linkvendor.com/
I have found the following site useful with Keyword Destiny and more content driven queries in the past... http://www.seocentro.com/tools/seo/keyword-density.html
i use this tool quite often. it doesn't look very good but i found the data to be really useful
article underground keyword density tool
Related
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Closed 10 years ago.
To start with, I am well aware of the security/usability trade-off associated with captchas and do not need any explanation on that.
I know that reCAPTCHA is the state-of-the-art in captcha technology but we just do not want to use it for our site because of the difficulty faced by users to read distorted words. Our site is a study portal for students offering live online classes, so the users will be students (leaving certificate level) and teachers.
I have been searching for different ideas and found some good ones like:-
The Sesame Street Solution as given in http://www.usereffect.com/topic/2009-07-13-captcha-is-there-a-better-way.
Asking questions which are very easy for humans like "which one tastes better or ". But how many such questions do I need to store to be safe?
My purpose of asking this question is to get as many ideas as possible. I think there are still a lot of user-friendly but secure ways I could analyse before finalizing.
Please highlight the pros and cons of the method you suggest with reference to the way spam bots work. I am not much aware of many of their strengths and weaknesses.
Thanks,
Sandeepan
Reading distorted words is one thing, but also asking legit users to enter things like this can get quite annoying. So it's important you don't burden the user with anti-spam measures.
Damien Katz has used a negative captcha to stop spam bots. This technique, also called honeypot field, is easy to implement and doesn't require the user to do anything.
A more complex honeypot implementation is described by Ned Batchelder. It involves randomized field names and hashed values to make sure bots haven't tampered with the form.
In his article he states the following:
Spammers don't make software that can post to any form, they make software that can post to many forms.
So it only takes a simple trick to confuse the majority of spam bots. A little bit more magic will take care of the remaining bots.
Regarding the Sesame Street solution, asking simple question or selecting the correct animal from a list: these are questions that are hard for spam bots to answer, but they can be difficult for users as well. Especially if your site has an international audience, people with a first language other than English may have trouble understanding the questions. It may not be an issue with your student audience, but it is something to keep in mind.
One a colleague of mine implemented was to present a series of random images of things like tea cups, boats, cats etc. with checkboxes and ask the user to tick all the cats (say), or perhaps the boat and the tree.
The images were fairly simple two colour icons really, though you could use real photos if necessary.
Just make sure that your image names aren't representative of their contents.
First, ASP.NET has a control that isn't truly a "captcha," but in fact quite the reverse - a very simple script which makes sure that the visiting program can evaluate JavaScript. This gets rid of all but the most complex scrapers, especially if the JavaScript test has a structure that changes (i.e. it isn't just var y = 2; var x=y+(random number from server); verify(x))
Google and Craigslist both use phone numbers, which mandate that a nasty bot at least have access to an SMS-capable number (or speech recognition + voice line)
My favorite captcha is clicking on something that a computer can't recognize, such as picking out a cat from a short list of animal pictures.
It's important to consider accessibility and ease of implementation, which reCAPTCHA does very well.
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Closed 5 years ago.
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I have asked What should i know about search engine crawling? Now i would like to know where can i learn about search engines and search engines optimization? Instead of reading dozen of articles with most saying the same thing as another i would like to read one book or resource and find everything i need to know.
The best kind of SEO is having really good and readable content on your site. :)
That's hard to answer.
I wouldn't recommend a book, because before anything about SEO gets into print, a lot of it will be outdated, so I'd rather stick to up-to-date online resources.
There are different approaches to SEO (e.g. "black hat" / "white hat" SEO) so considering only one resource will only give you part of the picture.
Some approaches will only be opinions so checking different resources should clear things up for you better than a single one could.
So I guess to "find everything you need to know" you'll have to check a lot of different resources / articles / forums, etc. etc. and then see what works best for you (and how much time and effort you'd like to spend) ...
I'd say don't bother spending too much time. SEO is simple:
Titles in URL
Title in h1
Have a sitemap
Get links from popular sites into your site
and... QUALITY & SPECIFIC CONTENT
I know this doesn't answer your question directly, however I feel you'll probably find better answers on stack overflow than in a book. That link to Google Webmaster Guidelines is a good resource too.
For SEO and crawling, instead of trying to outsmart Google and others, it is easier and more effective to listen to Google and follow their guidelines.
Here is a 22 page PDF about SEO from Google: Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
Another useful Google PDF: Making the Most of your Content
Matt Cutts's blog (a Google engineer): PageRank and other SEO Topics
How PageRank works from Wikipedia: PageRank in Wikipedia
Avinash Kaushik is a well known expert on all things web/analytics/customer related.
His first book "Web Analytics, an hour a day" is excellent. He has since released a second book, "Web Analytics 2.0", which I own but have yet found the time to read. He used to work for Intuit, now works for Google.
You can read his blog, Occam's Razor. Both of his books are mentioned on the right hand side (scroll down a bit).
If you are going to read one book, read either of the two books written by him.
I read his book after reading other books dedicated to just SEO, or just Google. I still found interesting things in his book that I didn't elsewhere. After reading his book you'll have a lot to think about and some very good ideas what you want to read next (or not read).
I've seen some slideshows/webinars given by him. He is entertaining, humourous, engaging, definitely intelligent and doesn't mince his words about stuff he doesn't like. If you get a chance to watch any of his stuff, do so.
Unlike many bloggers, you can find his email address AND he actually answers email you send him.
If you want a straight SEO book this isn't it, but highly recommended nonetheless.
A lot of this comes from personal information so go and ask anyone who has a website. You will find most of it is intuitive and common sense. What my friend does is get a little kid to look at it and point to whatever sticks out. It is an easy way to check what is showing up on your website. Try to draw attention to the key parts of the website. http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/.
Also, check out
http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html
http://www.seotutorial.info/
http://www.webconfs.com/seo-tutorial/
SEO Book is a very informative website.
http://www.seobook.com/
Check that out.
Go to http://www.seomoz.org. You'll find a ton of information and a number of tools to get you started.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I would like to design an eCommerce website with WordPress. I don't want to do it from scratch so I'm looking for a free plugin. The features I expect it to have are:
shopping carts
shipping modules (Canada post etc..)
payment using Paypal
customizable themes
I came across : WP-eCommerce
it claims to be free, however I found out that some documents require payment. All the payments, shipping modules are not free, am I right?
Actually, I'm not very familiar with Wordpress, if possible, could someone suggest an easy to pick up, but powerful enough eCommerce plugin for Wordpress?
Thanks!
WP-eCommerce is the only plugin for WordPress worth looking at when it comes to eCommerce. You do get a lot for free.
That said, Alex makes some great points about how WordPress is NOT ideal for eCommerce.
However, after having completed 2 websites with WP-eCommerce and 2 websites with Magento Commerce, I can say that there is a HUGE difference in the time it takes to complete.
WP-eCommerce can be set up relatively quickly with very little customization to get it to look decent in your own WP Theme. A full eCommerce system such as Magento, on the other hand, has a huge learning curve and you will spend 3 times as long anytime you want to change anything.
It all depends what you're going for. If you want something simple that can be tweaked a little but doesn't need to be a great robust long-term solution, I would definitely consider WP-eCommerce. Otherwise, go for a real eCommerce platform.
Alternatively: Zen-Cart looks simpler than Magento but without some of the flexibility. Whatever you do, DON'T go anywhere near osCommerce.
Trick question: WordPress, a very simplistic blogging platform, should never be stretched into something as intricate as an e-commerce solution. An e-commerce platform offering a simple blogging module is another matter entirely.
Since you don't know much about WordPress anyway, you may want to consider using a e-commerce platform like magentocommerce.com, zen-cart.com, or oscommerce.com. All of them are PHP/MySQL based, like WordPress.
Wordpress.org has an extensive list of all of the various extensions and add-ons that are publicly available. If you look under all results with the ecommerce tag, you might find something that better suits your needs. If you are already using Wordpress as your content management system, why not just outsource the shipping and order management with something like Paypal or Google Checkout? Just have your catalog and if they like it, the can click "order with Paypal" or some such.
Also, I just went and looked up WP eCommerce and it is incredibly generous what they offer out of the box for free. The things that cost are listed at the Gold Cart premiumm upgrades page, and from what I can tell, most of the features you could do own your own, other than the added payment options (none of which I've heard of).
You should take a look at the PHPurchase wordpress ecommerce plugin. It's got great features to sell digital products, physical products, and even recurring billing/subscription products. There are membership management features built in so you can require an active subscription to see certain content on your site. And, perhaps best of all, it is backed by real, professional support. Check it out here: http://www.PHPurchase.com
wp-ecommerce definitely is not the only e-commerce plugin out there, check some of these out before you go the route of using magento or zencart (both of which are a major pain in the ass)
http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/top-5-excellent-e-commerce-plugins-for-wordpress/
also I hear shopify is good and can be used with wordpress although I've never tried it out
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Closed 9 years ago.
I need a tool for collecting feedback and new ideas inside our company regarding our internal IS product. The problem is the acceptance level for such a tool.
Most of our colleagues are not IT oriented, so a solution like BugZilla or Jira is way to complicated for them to use. You need to create an account, take care of a lot of parameters before submission, new ideas about new software doesn't really fit well in these tools, etc...
So, here are my requirements:
No login need, or optional.
Few fields to enter.
If possible a WYSIWYG editor for the main description field.
Web based or E-mail based (we use outlook internaly).
Free (as a beer).
Not too chaotic (a Wiki is not an option)
I've take a look at uservoice (of course), it's really a nice tool for experienced people, but too complex for my target users.
Is the feedback you are seeking possible to collect through a questionnaire? There are many free solutions that provide you with questionnaire forms very easy to use, and if none apply it is also something relatively easy to implement.
I also do not understand why a wiki will not be a good solution, but regarding the Outlook, you have the possibility of doing simple votes (approve/reject) (yes/no):
See: http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/worktogether/forms.mspx
If the barrier to actually use the tool should be minimal, then perhaps the best way to collect the feedback is to use an e-mail address. Everybody knows how to use the system, so there is practically no barrier. And the feedback that is provided has to be processed by developers / management anyway, in order to decide what concrete actions are going to be taken. The developers can then use whatever system suits them best in order to keep track of bugs, immediately required functionality, nice-to-have features that can be implemented later, etc.
Some "defect tracking tools" handle this.
Don't vote down because of "defect tracking". Some of the tools are enterprise and handle incidents, requents, requirements, etc. And, you can go to one place for bugs and enhancement requests.
Microsoft's Exchange server has support for Public Folders, email lists/groups. This may be an easy introduction to collaboration for your environment, using tools that are familiar. From the Microsoft Help on Public Folders:
Public folders are an easy and
effective way to collect, organize,
and share information with other
people in your workgroup or
organization. You can use public
folders to share files or post
information on an electronic bulletin
board.
I'm not sure how effective the tools for managing those "lists" are - I'm not sure if you can mark responses such that all users see the mark, for example.
But it is probably a good start. As people start to see the value of collaboration, something along the lines of a Wiki becomes more appealing.
I've got to say that Confluence, especially now that editing with Open Office or Microsoft Office tools is possible really deserves a look. Not free (as in beer).
I would think a locally hosted php-bb (or other...) forum would be a good choice, as you could moderate it and have a FAQ and history that people could check before duplicating suggestions. So, that's the advantage over a simple email address, and it has a simple, known interface.
What's too complex about Uservoice? The main UI is a single question ("I suggest you ..."). Your users can be anonymous, one field to enter, web based, free for small users. Seems to tick all the boxes except the visual editor. Even administering it is not terribly tricky. (I use it for my iPhone app.)
It looks like you're facing a very standard tradeoff - you want your feedback to be structured, but you don't want any impositions upon your users.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Why is a wiki off the table? Wikis were designed to balance this kind of tradeoff.
You could use Google Documents to create a shared spreadsheet. Your uses will need Google accounts, but they only need to log in once and a cookie will remember them for next time.
Hum, I've found that we've also InfoPath as part of our toolset. I've never use it, but maybe that it could do the job.
How about using for example Google groups? I've found a mailing list works quite well for this kind of purpose.
Edit: or how about http://getsatisfaction.com/
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Closed 11 years ago.
An obvious answer is "an internal wiki". What are the pros and cons of a wiki used for software documentation? Any other suggestions? What are you using for your software documentation?
Loren Segal - Unfortunately we don't have support for any doc tool to compile information from the source code comments but I agree it would be the best way to store technical documentation. My question was about every kind of documentation tho - from sysadmin type to user documentation.
That's a very open ended question, and depends on many factors.
Generally speaking, if you use a language that has good documentation generation tools (javadoc, doxygen, MS's C# stuff), you should write your documentation above your methods and have your tools generate the pages. The advantage is that you keep the source of your text alongside your code which means it is orgnanized in the logically correct place and easily editable when you make a change to the behaviour of the method.
If you don't have good doc tool support or don't have access to source code, wiki's aren't a bad idea, but they're a second choice to the above.
Note: I'm talking only about code documentation here. Other artifacts obviously cannot be stored alongside code-- a wiki is a great place to put those documents. Alternatively if you use some CMS you can simply commit them in some docs/ folder as text/pdf/whatever files to be editable via the repository. The advantage there is that they stay with the repository if it is moved whereas a wiki does not (necessarily).
Tools are important, but don't get too bogged down in finding the magic tool. No tool I've found yet has a "document everything magically using tiny invisible elves" tickbox. :-)
A wiki will work fine. Or Sharepoint. Or Google docs. Or you could use a SVN repository. Hell you could do it with pens, notepaper, and a file cabinets if you really really had to. (I really don't recommend that!)
The big important key is you need to have buy-in throughout the organization. What happens in a lot of shops is they go and spend a bunch of time and money on some fancy solution like Sharepoint, and then everyone uses it religiously for about two weeks, and then people get busy with hitting the latest milestone and that's the last anyone hears about it.
Depending on your organization, field, the type of products your developing, etc., there are a few solutions to that, but one way or another you need to set up a system and use it. Appoint someone the official documentation czar, give them a cluebat, and tell them to hit people in the head everytime they say "oh yeah, I'll finish documenting that next week...". if that's what it takes. :-)
As for tools... I'd recommend Confluence by Atlassian. It's a fine wiki, it's designed to work in an enterprise environment, it has a lot of nifty features, it's customizable, it integrates well with some of the Atlassian's other nifty tools, and is basically a pretty solid product.
«Software documentation» is a very general term. There is «End User documentation», «Developer documentation», «QA Documentation». First one is usually developed by qualified techwriters. Other ones may be dynamically formed from wikis, documentation comments from source code etc. All this stuff maintenance process usually is very complex and each software company follow its own way. But there is one necessary point for all these ways: each code commiter, architect, manager, qa engineer MUST store well arranged each piece of information which may be helpful for the others. And someone else MUST keep an eye on this pieces storage and rearrange pieces if required. All this steps greatly improve all activities related to development process.
Assuming you are talking about code documentation versus user documentation, an internal wiki is great if you do not need to distribute the documentation for the code outside of your organization, to contractors or partners.
Javadoc or DOxygen is more suitable if you want distributable code documentation.
If you are referring to user documentation, you may want to have a look at DITA.
I started experimenting with a way to do user documentation with these goals:
Markdown/Html/Javascript/file-based relatively linked documents for portability (can run on local file system or you can throw it on a webserver), built-in handling of screenshots (interactively resize), and open source in case anyone else may want to do something with the crazy thing.
Your document source is written in Markdown and rendered to Html via Javascript at browser runtime.
Mandown - http://wittman.org/mandown/
We currently use inline documentation parsed by an external application (PHP + PhpDocumenter) plus various internal wikis. At times it's painful at best (mainly because only one person update the wikis or the docs...)
However, I've been looking at using ikiwiki to do internal docs. It integrate with your source countrol system (including Git, Subversion, Mercurial, Bazaar, TLA and Monotone) so all your docs track with your project. It is built in Perl and has an extensive plugin system (including multiple markup languages, with the default being Markdown). Also, the source control system is plugin based, so if what you use isn't immediately supported you could add your own. In your preferred language, if need be, since it supports non-perl plugins, too.
My company uses a variety of Sharepoint and a wiki. Sharepoint for specific documents like requirements, presentations, contracts, etc, while the wiki is used as a help guide a developer repository for tutorials on using internally developed libraries.
Yeah, we use a wiki, we also use Google documents. I find that Google documents is better than most wikis I've tried and, if you don't need to track all changes, you lose nothing. Google docs provides a good collaboration framework.