• Page Speed
• YSlow
• WebPagetest
• Check in Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We've also blogged about site performance.
  

Get High Quality Backlinks that Work for You!

If you have ever worked on building links to your site then you know that it is a tedious, time consuming job.  But, like all good things in life quality takes time and effort so there isn’t any way to bypass that. If you want to build quality backlinks to your site then read on.

I like finding blogs that can provide backlinks because blogs contain fresh content. I look for popular blogs that get updated frequently and have lots of backlinks.

You will need to use the Firefox browser and have the SEO for Firefox free plugin installed.  Once you have this go to Google and run your query for your selected phrase.  When your search engine results page comes up click the 100 option so 100 results come up per page and then under the search results window select the show options button then click on the blogs option on the left. Now you will have the top 100 blogs based on your search phrases. Next click on the csv option to save your results. We will be using the” URL” and ”Y! Page Links” columns in the csv file so you can delete the other columns or hide them. You then want to sort the ”Y! Page Links” column from largest to smallest so you get the blog url’s with the most links.

Now we want to see which sites linked to these blog posts.  So using the Yahoo link: option in the serps or by going to Yahoo and entering link: and the url from your spreadsheet you can see who is linking to this blog post. Track your findings in your spreadsheet and see why these sites are linking to them. Look at their content and see if you can also create comparable posts without copying their work of course.  You want to create the same type of value that these posts have created.

The last thing to do is to contact the bloggers sites that had linked to the articles that you researched. You want to contact these bloggers and ask them to take a look at your posts and ask them to consider sharing your information with their users. Compliment their work and thank them for their consideration of sharing your content. Also offer to share some of their content in return. 

 As you can see this entire process takes research and time, but done well you will gain the rewards of having high quality backlinks.

April 2010 PageRank Update Underway?

 There is speculation that Google is updating it's PageRank on websites. Some have noticed fluctuation in their organic search results traffic being down. Speculation also has it that the new Google Caffeine being rolled out. There is definitely a lot of chatter saying that Google has updated their toolbar PageRank scores over the weekend.

Compare your current search results against the Google Caffeine engine at: http://www.comparecaffeine.com/

Google SEO News and Discussion: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4109341.htm

What if your Website was Considered Malware? What would you do?

If your website is ever considered to be a malware website it will become flagged as such and your websites reputation will become affected. Believe it or not Google’s Safe Browsing program has inadvertently flagged sites as malware that weren’t. Sometimes it has been because of something as simple as a third party ad network that delivers bad ads.  Both browsers Chrome and Firefox use Google’s Safe Browsing technology and will throw up a warning page if it considers a site to have malware. If this occurs due to a third party ad network it may be hard to replicate since the ads served vary. So it’s best to use trusted ad networks on your website. All your SEO work could be affected!

If this occurs you can contact Google through Google’s Webmaster Tools and they will typically review your claim within 16 to 48 hours.

While Google’s Safe Browsing program is a good idea it still is a work in progress and does need to become better at flagging malware sites correctly.

Use the Google Business Channel for Maximum Advertising Optimization

The Google Business Channel is a great resource to get the most up to date information on how to best optimize your Google AdWords account. This is a resource that you can continue to check for the latest information on AdWords. Spend the time to educate yourself and you will see a favorable return on investment.

In addition to videos on AdWords, the channel also features videos of other Google business solutions like Google Analytics and Website Optimizer. The videos are currently organized into different playlists by product and by topic.

We have saved ourselves some phone time by not having to call customer support by using this valuable recourse.

Visit the Google Business Channel