They also offer credit control training and advice to businesses who are thinking of setting up a credit control team.

Credit Control Outsourcing & Debt Collection Ireland

Nenagh Business Directory - DiscoverNenagh.com

If you have any queries about the Nenagh Business Directory project, please send us a query via the Nenagh Business Directory Contact Form

Posted by randfish

Lately I’ve been surprised to hear concerns from a number of SEOs that using the canonical URL tag on the canonical version of the page can somehow cause problems. When I’ve talked to folks about it, there seems to be confusion that only duplicates should use the rel=”canonical” specification and the original must remain rel=”canonical”-free. This isn’t the case.

Let’s look at a few diagrams to help explain:

This is the standard way rel=canonical is employed. Different versions of a page, whether on your own site, on partner sites, or places you’re licensing content (note: this is an update Google launched on Dec. 17th, 2009) can all reference back to the original to help tell the search engines where to find that piece. However, it’s also perfectly OK to do this:

Looking through Google’s blog post on the subject, this isn’t explicitly stated. However, you can see that even the example website, Wikia, employs this practice on the page Google points out. You can also see Maile Ohye answering a comment on this:

@Wade: Yes, it’s absolutely okay to have a self-referential rel=”canonical”. It won’t harm the system and additionally, by including a self-reference you better ensure that your mirrors have a rel=”canonical” to you.

Maile’s got really good advice here. If you run into situations where third parties are referencing your posts and appending strings of data to the URL, it can be really helpful to have the canonical URL tag on these by default. In fact, we’ve worked with many companies recently who found it helpful to employ sitewide as a best practice, just to prevent future iterations or less SEO savvy development from reproducing versions of the page that didn’t contain the rel=canonical and potentially losing link juice / causing canonicalization issues.

One last piece – it’s a really, really good way to make sure Google indexes the http rather than https version of your page (and counts link juice to the proper one). This had historically been a royal pain in the butt for many SEOs, and we’ve heard enough positive stories now to feel confident recommending it.

Welcome to 2010! Hope everyone had a great holiday break

Do you like this post? Yes No

By randfish

Posted by randfish

What a year! From traveling to software development, saying goodbye to old friends and growing the team with new ones, we’ve had a tremendously exciting 12 months at SEOmoz. To celebrate, next week, on Wednesday, January 6th 2010, we’ll be hosting an informal meetup at the Elysian Brewery on Capitol Hill in Seattle, WA. Everyone from the Seattle technology, startup and SEO community is welcome to attend, and we’ll be hosting a special guest, Distilled’s Will Critchlow (who’s chosen the worst possible time, weather-wise, to visit our fair city). Please RSVP via the Google form below! 

In addition to the meetup, I thought it would be appropriate (and fun) to celebrate the year with a look back in pictures. Enjoy!

SEOmoz’s Mel Gray, Matt Heilman, Gillian Muessig, Nick Gerner, Sarah Bird & Mike Thompson at Seattle’s Big Climb Event, raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

The SEOmoz December holiday party at Olive8 – (Left to Right) Arden, Jimmy, Christine, Sarah, Ben Huff, Timmy, Gillian, Adam, Sam, Jen, Rand, Chas, Kate, Darren, Danny & Nick. Why did we all stuff into the dual showers? Umm… I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. You can watch our holiday video greeting and more holiday party photos on Facebook.

SEOmoz’s Chas Williams and Sarah Bird won most festive attire at our holiday event.

Tony Adam (BillShrink), smiling next to his SEOmoz Werewolf/Search Spam card at Pubcon Las Vegas in November

Kristy Bolsinger (blog), Kate Morris (blog) & Matt Cutts (blog) at the SEOmoz Werewolf Party at Pubcon Las Vegas

Ben Hendrickson and Jen Lopez, attired in full moz regalia, carrying “link juice” by the SEOmoz booth at SMX Advanced in Seattle

Ben, Danny (with a mustache! – he’s hidden so look real close), Chas, Scott & Timmy at lunch downstairs from SEOmoz’s offices at the Elysian Brewery on Capitol Hill

Sarah Bird hard at work in our cramped conference room

Sometimes, when we have tough decisions to make and could go either way, we Roshambo. I lost this round, and we ended up spending $5K on some professional services in our search for a new VP of Engineering.

Aimclear’s Marty Weintraub sent us a singing gorilla for the holidays. Tragically, I was out of town, but got to watch the video on Facebook

At the beginning of the year, we had some construction work done on the office to help accomodate new arrivals

Mozzers hard at work in the conference room (and apparently freezing cold, too).

Ben Hendrickson explains ranking models and how we can “prove” H1 tags don’t really matter for SEO

Rand, Sarah, and SEOmoz board member & investor, Michelle Goldberg at The Naked Truth (a startup event in Seattle). Leaning on my shoulder is Mystery Guest, who tragically forgot sunglasses (why didn’t I give her mine?!)

The Conversion Rate Experts squirrel (yes, they have a mascot) at the SEOmoz/Distilled London PR) Training Seminar in October. Must check on progress of the SEOmoz Ring-tailed Lemur mascot costume.

Jon Kelly (Quinstreet), Tony Adam (Billshrink), Andy Liu (BuddyTV) and Neil Patel (Quicksprout) at SEOmoz’s annual party after SMX Advanced in Seattle at the Garage (photo-bombing courtesy of Matt Cutts)

Rand on Hubspot TV with Mike Volpe in Hubspot’s Boston offices (Rand: “My grandparents asked what channel I was going to be on.”)

Rand is subsumed by Kristjan Mar Hauksson’s (of Nordic eMarketing) gigantic Viking hands in an Icelandic ice bar in the capital, Reykjavik following RIMC 2009

Dixon Jones (Receptional), Adam Lasnik (Google) & Rand go glacier hiking in Iceland

Rand at Searchfest Portland with Anne Kennedy (BeyondInk) and Adam Audette (Audette Media) speaking about SEOmoz’s history & future (apparently I was a bit more animated than most other folks)

On a panel at SES London chaired by Mike Grehan (SES), Rand pictured with Brett Tabke (WebmasterWorld), Chris Sherman (Third Door Media), Jill Whalen (HighRankings) and Kevin Ryan (WebVisible)

Outside the Chicago Hilton for SES Chicago with Richard Zwicky (Enquisite), Bill Leake (Apogee), Aaron Kahlow (OMS)

Jane Copland (Ayima), Danny Dover, Rand & Richard Baxter (SEO Gadget) in London following the Distilled/SEOmoz PRO Training Seminar

Mystery Guest gives Rob Kerry (Ayima) a gift in London on our way back from lunch near the Ayima offices. (“Why is my love always a source of linkbait?” – MG)

Rand & Will Critchlow (Distilled), standing under their respective time zone clocks in Distilled’s London offices.

Alexander Holl (blog), Rand, Sandra & Matthew Finlay (Rising Media), Marcus Tandler (Mediadonis)  at an SMX Munich party

Rand with Vanessa Fox (NineByBlue) & Mystery Guest in Bled, Slovenia for a day trip following SMX Munich

Rand & Mystery Guest join Nirav Tolia (Fanbase) for lunch in San Francisco during one of Rand’s VC fundraising expeditions to the valley

Bob Rains (blog), Lawrence Coburn (Rateitall), Lauren Vaccarello (Salesforce), Todd Malicoat (Stuntdubl) and Donna Rains in a limo during a (loosely SEO related) wine tasting trip in Monterey, CA

Laura Lippay (blog), Mystery Guest, Vanessa Fox (NinebyBlue), Lauren Vaccarello (Salesforce) & Jessica Bowman (SEM in House) in San Francisco following the Jane & Robot conference

Rand, Tom Critchlow (Distilled), Ken Jurina (Epiar), Dharmesh Shah (OnStartups & Hubspot), David Mihm (blog), Matt Brown (Define Search Strategy), Danny Dover & Nick Gerner at the SEOmoz PRO Training Seattle

Mystery Guest homemade retro Star Trek outfits for Halloween this year (and got a wig + Vulcan ears to complete her ensemble)

Rand with his grandparents, Si & Pauline Fishkin at a Broadway musical following SMX East in New York City

Rand & Cindy Krum (Rank Mobile) tour Soho during SMX East in New York City

Left to Right: Rand, Greg Boser (3Dog Media), Barry Smyth (BSocial), Stephen Pavlovich (Conversion Rate Experts), Rob Kerry (Ayima), Aidan Beanland (Yahoo!7), Michael Motherwell (MMIT Search Australia), Bruce Clay (Bruce Clay, Inc), Greg Grothaus (Google)

The SEOmoz whiteboards in our conference room, showing off early concepts of new software (codenamed “Turbomoz”) we’re hoping to launch this coming June

Ciaran Norris (Mindshare) was interviewed by Channel 4 in the UK on social media, search & Rupert Murdoch’s threats to shut off Google traffic. Tragically, he appeared garbed in naught save rags, and couldn’t be bothered to properly attire with a cravatte. Credit to Jane Copland for the image capture.

The SEOmoz crew outside the Garage following our party at SMX Advanced

David Temple (SEM Scholar), Gillian Muessig and Barry Smyth (BSocial) at SMX Singapore

Jen Lopez at SMX Advanced with Michael Gray (Wolf Howl)

Oh, and just FYI, the photos above are in no particular chronological order.

NOTE: If you’ve got other photos to share, please feel free to link to ‘em!

Do you like this post? Yes No

By randfish

Posted by randfish

Historically, I’ve been fairly narrow in what I read in the blogosphere and tech arena (almost all SEO-centric stuff). You can see my Firefox sidebar list here, which  hasn’t changed much since 2008 with the exception of the blogs and news sections. But, over the past 6 months, I’ve been broadening out considerably and found that it adds a great deal to the conversations I’m able to participate in and contribute to, especially as SEOmoz itself has expanded from the SEO world to the larger technology and startup world. For the New Year, I thought I’d share some of the sources that have contributed most on this front and some of my favorite posts/contributions from those sources.

#1 – Hacker News

(http://news.ycombinator.com)

I find more good stuff here than anywhere else, and the diversity is impressive, too. Tragically, Hacker News is also a place for lots of misinformation, fear, and loathing around SEO, but it’s good to get a sense for how the rest of the technology world still views our niche. The signal to noise ratio is higher than on places like delicious/popular, the tech subreddit or Digg (which has become largely useless to tech professionals as its moved away from its roots).

A few items I’ve found via Hacker News include:

• Why everything you think about User Centered Design in Wrong
• On Self Promotion
• The death of the boring blog post

#2 – A VC

(http://www.avc.com)

Fred writes compelling pieces consistently, almost never gets preachy, is self-promotional in a highly credible and useful way and brings up topics I wouldn’t have thought about without him. Most of us can’t have Fred on our boards or as an investor, but we can get into his head via his blog and participating more in the comments there has been a priority of mine for a while (he’s built a remarkable community in the comments).

Some favorite posts:

• Tenacity
• The “We Need to Own” Baloney
• Ten Characteristics of Great Companies

#3 – Chris Dixon

(http://cdixon.org)

Chris, like Fred, delivers crystal clear value propostions with his posts. And IMO, he’s even higher signal to noise than Fred. I don’t always agree with him on everything, but I like the way he thinks about problems, I like the ones he brings up and I think he has his finger intensely on the pulse of what startups and technologists (and technical marketers like SEOs) are thinking about and dealing with. It’s a pleasure to see a new post from Chris – here’s to hoping he makes many more in 2010.

Some favorites include:

• Why the web will continue to grow rapidly
• Man and superman
• Software patents should be abolished

#4 – Techmeme

(http://techmeme.com)

Techmeme is an obvious choice, but it’s also critical to the list. If it weren’t for Techmeme, I’d have to wade through ReadWriteWeb, Mashable and Techcrunch post-by-post, every day. Don’t ever leave us, Gabe.

No specific posts here – there’s far too many to name, and the site updates much too quickly for me to even recall all the great stuff I’ve found here. However, I will say that I highly recommend m.techmeme.com for mobile browsing. It’s been a joy to scroll through every time my wife takes extra-long in the dressing room at Anthropologie.

#5 – Answers On Startups

(http://answers.onstartups.com)

Launched just this past October, Answers On Startups has become a haven for learning more about the challenges, issues and questions entrepreneurs face in the technology world. I’ve recommended it before, and early on participated heavily (and I’d like to do more of that in the future), but if you’re seeking answers from highly authoritative folks in a scalable fashion, this is the spot. I’m really impressed by the quality of many contributions there - the signal to noise is pretty exceptional.

Some of the best include:

• What’s more important: release fast or getting it right?
• Free Trial vs. Freemium
• Qualities/skills of a CEO

#6 – Daring Fireball

(http://daringfireball.net)

In my ideal world, 5 years from now, when I’ve been put out to pasture by someone smarter and more capable, or bought out I’d have a blog like this. Some entries are just links, some are lengthy and thoughtful and all are interesting and worth reading. Author John Gruber also brings a remarkably diverse range of topics to the site and yet somehow, signal to noise remains high.

A few recent picks:

• Google’s Meaning of Open (a short, but flawless skewering)
• The Next iPhone
• A Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs

#7 – Steve Blank

(http://steveblank.com)

A few of Steve’s posts are not only relevant, but serve to actually change direction in the executive ranks here at SEOmoz. That’s high praise, but if you read the blog, you’ll see what I mean. Steve’s been there, and his experiences run in shocking parallel to the issues we face or worry about on a regular basis. Even when I disagree with points, the logic and thought he puts into the post makes for a great read and a hard think.

Some of his best:

• The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas are No Longer Free
• Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves
• Good Enough Decision Making

#8 – NYTimes Most Emailed

(http://www.nytimes.com/gst/mostemailed.html)

Despite the financial and institutional problems they face, the NYTimes still puts out absolutely phenomenal content on nearly every area of life. From cooking to politics, travel to health, there is amazing material to be found in the Grey Lady, and the Most Emailed list is the place to find the best of the best.

Some favorites:

• Twitter Chatter During the Superbowl (I love their interactive graphics)
• Using Menu Psychology to Entice Diners
• Google Keeps Tweaking its Search Engine
• 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1)

#9 - Venture Hacks

(http://venturehacks.com)

 When I was out trying to raise a second round of VC this summer (big mistake – more on that in a future post), Venturehacks’ historic content was invaluable. However, visiting the site made me realize how much good stuff there is that doesn’t apply only to those currently raising money. They’ve got some seriously great writers/contributors, invaluable interviews and tackle tough subjects.

My personal favorites recently included:

• 10 Skills I look for before writing a check
• How to develop your customers like you develop your product
• The Arrogant VC: Why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs

#10 – Twittersphere

(http://twittersphere.com)

Since they don’t publish archives (the most frustrating feature), I’m unable to show off just how cool this site is and has been over the last few months, but just try visiting a couple times a day for the next few weeks and you’ll see. It’s remarkable how much good stuff gets re-tweeted (and how much junk – signal to noise is about 15%, which is still decent since it’s easy to skim and consume at will). You can also get a sense for how important Twitter’s link graph is to the engines through Twittersphere – a lot of pages that have 0 links will have thousands of tweets pretty fast.

Do you like this post? Yes No

By randfish

Posted by Danny Dover

 As SEOmoz has matured as a company, our SEO team has shifted away from treating SEO purely as an art and more toward treating it as a science. There is certainly the necessity for both perspectives but I believe we are now much more centered.

As a result of this shift, we have been running more tests and analyzing more data. Before I get into the topic of our latest test results, let me provide some important points to establish context.

1. There is overwhelming evidence that from a “ROI on time spent working” perspective, there is much more value in link building and creating content that is link-worthy than obsessing over search engine algorithm fluctuations like PageRank sculpting. Link building is human oriented and thus more inline with the long term goals of the search engines. Links also have the added bonus of being easy to measure and thus easier to prioritize.
2. We can’t directly measure how PageRank flows so we can only infer results. This needs to be acknowledged when interpreting test results. That said, we also can’t directly measure objects outside our solar system and this solution of inference has become the basis for modern Astronomy. (If it is good enough for NASA, it is good enough for SEOmoz ;-p)

The Experiment

We chose the following five PageRank sculpting methods to test:

Rel=‘nofollow’ - The standard mechanism for nofollowing a link. <a href=’http://www.example.com’ rel=‘nofollow’>example</a>

Link Consolidation – Consolidating low priority pages. You can read more about link consolidation here.

Iframe – Include a standard link in an iframe that is blocked via robots.txt or meta robots so engines can’t follow it.

Javascript – An external Javascript file (blocked from robots) that inserts links into divs when the page renders.

Control Case – Null test with standard links.

Page Setup

We then built five standardized websites that used these different methods (one used iframes for its test links, another one used Javascript for its test links, etc..) and included one normal link with the anchor text of a phrase that was completely unique on the Internet.

Each website in the experiment used the same template. Each keyword phrase was targeted in the same place on each page and each page had the same amount of images, text and links.

The variables were:

• links (based on experiment type)
• colors
• photos (although alt text was standardized)
• text (randomized text based on proper English grammar using a standardized word-set)

We then did everything we could to make sure that all of these pages received the same amount of link juice from external sources.

The null result would be a random assortment of experiment types ranking in the SERPs.
The alt result would be one experiment type outranking all of the others.

Redundancy

We then duplicated this experiment eight times in parallel. This meant 40 different domains, 40 different IP addresses, 8 different WHOIS records, 8 different hosting providers and 8 different payment methods. (We then went outside and drank)

We ran this test for 2 months.

The Results

As you can see, the nofollow method ranked an average of 1 place higher (0.7) in the SERPs than the control result. This is significant when you realize the total is out of 5.

It appears that the iframe method and link consolidation were slightly effective but the margin was so small that they could be contributed to error.

As expected the Javascript method did not work at all. (Since the external scripts were blocked, the engines never saw the links)

The Bottom Line

Despite what the search engine representatives say, nofollow is still an effective way for sculpting PageRank. If you have nofollow sculpting already installed, don’t remove it. If you don’t have it installed, implementing it probably won’t make a drastic change but we encourage you to test this when it is responsible to do so.

Do you like this post? Yes No

By Danny Dover

Posted by great scott!

Welcome back to our second installment of this very special WhiteBEARD Friday! Last week Rand Fishclause discussed how the new school way to get links is to give back to webmasters. That’s right, you’ve gotta give a little to get a little.  This week, in the spirit of Searchmas©, we’re giving you 12 examples of sites that exemplify this new model.

From video hosting, to awards, to social profiles, and many more, we hope you’ll come away with some great ideas about what you can do to provide outward value to the linkerati and get a whole lotta link love back in return.

SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – 12 Link Strategies of Searchmas from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

From all of us here at SEOmoz, thanks for joining us every week for our 2009 season of Whiteboard Friday, and for being part of one of the most vibrant, fun, and talented communities on the web. Your participation and readership really means the world to us, and we can’t wait to share 2010 with you. Until then, happy holidays

Do you like this post? Yes No

By great scott!

Posted by randfish

Earlier this month, Google launched personalized results by default for all users. SEOs should have already read Danny Sullivan’s analysis of the shift (which is quite excellent) and I also suggest checking out David Harry’s Guide on the topic. Sadly, despite some good advice, it appears that a lot of folks are still worried that this is somehow the “end of SEO” or demands a “completely new look at SEO practices.” Let’s do a brief analysis:

What’s the Impact for SEOs?

• Rank Checking is Less Universally Accurate
  While not the biggest tragedy, it’s certainly a bit frustrating to know that rank tracking (manually or with tools) may provide somewhat less authoritative data than before. Though, to be honest, rank tracking has always been about establishing a baseline, not about exact results (see previous posts on this). Still, if you’ve been using this data to see how you fluctuate in the “normal” (non-personalized or geo-targeted) results, it’s still solid for that purpose and may actually help you determine if you’re gaining or losing in the new, personalized world (if you get more traffic but rankings stay the same, personalized might be helping; if you gain rankings but don’t proportionally benefit in search traffic, it may be hurting).
  _
• The Rich Get (Even) Richer
  Those at the top of the results, who “own” the queries around their niches are likely to benefit disproportionately as mid and long tail queries that would once have shown more alternative sources will now bring up those “previously visited” sites even if their traditional relevance and popularity scores wouldn’t have earned them a top position. This will likely contribute to some lowered diversity in the results, but may help fight against low quality re-publishers and content aggregators in favor of trusted brands.
  _
• User Experience & Branding Boost SEO (Even More)
  It’s always been critical to make users love your site, but now the direct SEO impact can be felt even more strongly. Sites and brands that “suck at SEO” may even find themselves performing better if their users love them and the pages are, at least, accessible to engines. I’m buying Steve Krug’s new book – Rocket Surgery Made Easy - ASAP either way
  _
• Buying Traffic May Now Help Organic Results
  If Google really is using signals from all sources of data, the paid results and their impact on search and visit history might now give a boost (indirectly) to positioning in the organic results. In fact, it could be that even services like Google AdSense or other paid advertising that leads a visitor who’s logged in to their Google account and using the toolbar (or other detectable methods of tracking) will “count” towards the personalization metrics. I expect lots of SEOs to start testing and reporting on this soon.
  _

What Should We Do Differently in our Campaigns?

• Get More Visitors (Any Way We Can)
  Depending on how Google is counting visits and traffic (which they haven’t and probably won’t ever fully disclose), any way you can drag a visitor to your site and give them a good experience is likely to positively contribute to your chances of ranking better in personalized results.
  _
• Improve Brand Loyalty
  SEOs haven’t classically focused on brand metrics and branding as a marketing practice, but it’s long past due. The benefits of building a strong brand are evident everywhere in the consumer (and B2B) marketplace. Now Google’s giving us one more reason (and a more direct one at that) to start earning visitors’ love and, in turn, be rewarded by higher rankings. 
  _
• More Tightly Integrate Metrics w/ Rank Tracking
  Again, this has been a wise move long before personalization, but with the expansion comes renewed need for weaving together the 3rd-party tracking of rankings with the traffic metrics from your analytics to provide a full picture of how your site is performing in the search engines.
  _

The big takeaway here is that these action items aren’t particularly groundbreaking. We should have been doing all of these as responsible, effective Internet marketers anyway.

Is this a Major, Tectonic Shift in SEO?

No. I’m maintaining my previous stance that unless a shift from Google fundamentally changes the classic SEO process:

1. Make pages accessible
2. Target with keywords that searchers employ
3. Build content that users will find useful and valuable
4. Earn editorial links from good sources

It doesn’t qualify as a “tectonic” or “massive” or “fundamental” change in SEO. The best practices we’ve been recommending to clients, developers and content creators for the last half-decade are actually less impacted by this change than by some of the other items we’ve encountered recently (Bing + Yahoo! combining, real-time results at the top of query results, more vertical results in the SERPs, etc.). These latter examples call for much more active changes, learnings and direct action on the part of SEOs vs. personalization, which by-and-large just strengthens the reasons for best practices we’ve long known to exist.

p.s. Tomorrow evening at 6pm (Tuesday Dec. 22nd), I’ll be attending an informal SEO meetup in San Diego, CA at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Mission Valley – 5010 Mission Center Road San Diego, CA 92108. Hope to see some of you there before the holidays!

Do you like this post? Yes No

By randfish

Posted by RobOusbey

Amongst the add-ons I add to any new install of Firefox is the Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick. (Find the install links at the bottom of this post.)

Obviously, this add-on is chock-full of features that are useful for web developers, but it really does make diagnosing various SEO issues much easier. This list gives the top seven tasks that I find easier when the toolbar is installed.

Click on any of the small images in this post to see them in full size.

1. Browse Like a Robot

By turning off JavaScript and Cookies, you can browse the web as it’s seen by ‘bots (which in most cases can’t accept cookies or execute JavaScript.) This basic change can help you recognise site architecture issues pretty quickly, such as when a main navigation bar is displayed using JavaScript or when visitors who can’t accept cookies always get redirected to the front page. (Yes, I’ve seen both of these in the wild.)

2. See What the Spiders See

For a more hardcore spider-emulation experience, use the Toolbar to turn off styles and images. The sudden appearance of previously cloaked text or seeing that the ‘main heading’ is actually an H4 item and sat 75% of the way through the content might suggest why a particular page is having issues.

This is how the site looked before Timmy joined

Although different spiders treat meta redirects in different ways, it can often be easier to diagnose some on-site issues if you disable them altogether via ‘Disable → Meta Redirects‘. To see what the site serves up to different user agents (such as mobile devices, GoogleBot, etc) you’ll want to get the author’s other successful add-on, the user-agent switcher.

3. See the Structure

Talking of page structure, you can press ‘Information → View Document Outline‘ to see the structure of a page, or simply ‘Outline → Outline Headings‘ to see the hierarchy of headings within the page.

4. Validation and Best Practices

The toolbar gives quick access to code validation tools (such as the HTML, CSS and RSS validation from WC3.) There are also options to highlight links without title attributes, or images with missing (or blank) alt attributes.

5. A Tip for Search Marketers Who do CRO as Well

Those of us with our massive screens (by the way, did you see this guy?) might not always appreciate how people view our pages. However, a quick click on the ‘resize’ button lets you see the site through the viewport of an older monitor or a net book.

I should probably let LoveFilm know that 20% of people can’t see their big green ‘Start a free trial’ button.

6. Making Web Page Screen Captures Easier

A change we’ve tried to make at Distilled recently is to include more illustrative images in our client reports. A fiddly task that comes up from time to time is creating a screen shot of a web page, but without it being obvious which links you’re already clicked on. A quick click on ‘Miscellaneous → Visited Links → Mark All Links Unvisited‘ removes the ‘visited’ styles from any links on the page.

7. Reputation Management Tip: Anonymity Made Easy

A year ago, I posted about how to hide your referrer string when browsing, as a handy way to prevent people seeing that you’re probing their site. It’s much easier to do with the Web Developer Toolbar, by simply clicking ‘Disable → Disable Referrers‘

You can read more about the Web Developer Tool Add-On, or if you’re running Firefox, simply install it now.

If you’re already a convert to this add-on, do let us know in the comments of any other features you use regularly.

Do you like this post? Yes No

By RobOusbey

Posted by great scott!

Ho-ho-ho! Merry Winter to you! In a very special Whiteboard Friday we’ll look at the new model for attracting lots of inbound links: giving back to webmasters.  Nowadays it’s not always enough just to have great content. You’ve got to give the linkerati value–something that will incentivize them to link to your site.  Rand Fishclause discusses how this new model works and then, next week, we’ll give you 12 link strategies of Christmas just in time for you to open them under your tree and put into action for the New Year.

SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – Give and Ye Shall Receive from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Just a quick reminder that today is the final day to get the new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics at the special launch pricing of 20% off + free shipping!

Do you like this post? Yes No

By great scott!