6 Free and Useful Backlink Checking Tools

Backlinks are one of the most important and influential factor that determines your websites online success. Hence it is always better to have a healthy number of backlinks to your site. The backlinks also should be from good, relevant and quality sites, other wise your site may lose its reputation and may not get help from these backlinks.

It is always a tedious task to track your backlinks and you cannot ignore it as you need to have an eye on your backlinks on a regular basis. You need to check your backlinks to find out whether your link building campaign is working up to the expectations, whether any bad sites are linking to you, how many authority sites are linking to you etc. There are many paid and free tools for checking your backlinks and they have different advantages based upon your requirement. Here I would like to mention around 6 Free backlink checking tools that are useful and easy to use.

1) WebRank Toolbar - This is a Firefox Addon to check your website's backlinks and shows backlinks as per Google, Bing and Yahoo. Once you install this Addon in your browser you just need to open any website and you can see the backlink details on the browser itself. This toolbar also gives you Google Pagerank, Alexa, Compete and Quantcast Rank and pages indexed.

2) SEO Quake - SEO Quake is another powerful Firefox Addon which helps you to get the number of backlinks for your site. Similar to WebRank Addons, this is also easy to install and use.

3) Backlinkwatch - Backlinkwatch is an online backlink checker and provides you the total number of backlinks your site has got. It give additional informations such as the anchor text used for linking, the PR of the site providing the link, the number of links on the page giving the backlink and the type of the backlink (follow or nofollow)

4) Yahoo Site Explorer - Yahoo Site Explorer is another online tool which lets you see the number of backlinks to your site. You just need to enter your site details and Yahoo will show you the number of backlinks your site has got.

5) Google Webmaster Tools - Google Webmaster Tools is yet another powerful tool by Google which helps you to find out the number of backlinks your site has got and it gets updated on a regular basis. You just need to to have a Google Webmaster account and your site must be verified with the Webmaster account, in order to see the backlink results.

6) SEOCentro - SEOCentro is an online tool for checking your backlink popularity and this tool gives you results from Google, Yahoo, Bing etc and usually send you the report via email.

My First Website - Using Sitemaps

When you create a new website it will be indexed as soon as the crawlers encounter a link to it. In general, you don't have to submit any information to search engines because the web is based on links. If there is a page then there must be also some links that point to this page. Otherwise the page is probably not worth indexing. However, there are situations where crawlers can not discover all the pages you have. This is where you can help them with sitemaps.

Sitemap is an XML file with defined structure. It contains information about all the pages of the website. All major search engines provide a way to submit sitemap files. Google, for example, uses Webmasters Tools as a place where you can submit sitemaps.

The main purpose of the sitemap is to inform search engines and crawlers about all the pages you have. Using this information bots, spiders and crawlers can visit pages even if there is no link pointing to them. But there is also another more important function. By submitting a sitemap file you can track how many pages are indexed by the search engine. This information is very important because in the case you find out that not all pages are indexed you may have a problem. In many cases pages with little or no content will not be indexed. This is normal. Less "normal" is when some article page is not indexed. In some cases you have to wait for a while, while in other cases the reason may be duplicate content or any other reason that makes search engine to think that this page is not worth indexing.

You can also add images, videos, code and geo information to the sitemap file. This way you can inform Google, Yahoo and Bing with all the stuff you think is worth indexing. More information about this possibility can be found at the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Creating a sitemap file is pretty easy. All popular content management systems including Wordpress and Joomla have an extension which can automatically create a sitemap file from all the pages of the website. This way you don't have to worry about the file structure and links. There is also a possibility for websites that have no such automatic solution. There are many scripts that can crawl the site by following internal links. Using this information they create the file which can be submitted to search engines.

How to Check Google Pagerank Using Online Tools

Google pagerank is one of the most important factors used to determine the quality of the domain. High pagerank means good chance to rank well in Google for your keywords. No wonder that many webmasters would like to know the pagerank value of their websites. This article will show you how to check Google pagerank using online tools.

There are 3 ways how to check Google page rank Using Online Tools:
1. Online pagerank checker
2. Long-term pagerank checker
3. Google toolbar

1. Online pagerank checker
Online page rank checker is a tool where you enter URL of your domain and the script will contact Google server using API. As a response the pagerank value is displayed. Some Google pagerank checkers offers the textarea where you can paste multiple URL's and the tool checks pagerank of all domains in the same time. If you run a lot of websites you should search for such online tool.

2. Long-term pagerank checker
Long-term pagerank checker works like membership website. After signing up for the account you will set up URLs of your domains. The script will check the pagerank periodically (every day, week or month). As a result, you will be able to watch the graph.

3. Google toolbar
Google toolbar can be installed to your browser (it works in all major browsers, not only in Firefox). When you surf the internet you can see the pagerank value of the website which you are currently watching. If Google toolbar doesn't work for you for any reason you can search for some SEO extension for Firefox.

Search Engine Advertising Advice - 4 Powerful Free Tools You Cannot Miss

Search engine advertising and marketing sounds like a very complicated process especially when you start talking about the tools required. Here are 4 powerful free tools that you cannot miss.

Google Keyword Tool

Before you start most of your campaigns, you must select a list of keywords which are well searched for and highly relevant to your offers. This is a really good keyword tool and it can work for both paid search advertisers and organic search advertisers.

Google Website Optimizer

There are quite a few good split testing software available on the market today and many of them are not cheap. You will be surprised that this free tool beats all of them hands down. It is so simple to use that you can figure out in a few minutes. Free tutorials are also easily available.

Google Webmaster Tools

Would you like Google to give you suggestions on how you can improve your website, which keywords you are ranking for and what position they are at? This is it! It will do all that for you. This is another simple yet powerful tool and I like the fact that it is absolutely free of charge.

Google Analytics

Google bought over a company with web statistics services and gave us the full access for free. There is a lot more functions in this service than you can imagine. You can even look at your sales funnel, where your visitors are coming from and much more. Take time to check it out and you will find out more.

Now that you discovered these useful and practical tips, here's where you can get more useful content for FREE...

Three (3) Ways Google Will Help With SEO

Getting your website on to the first page of Google search results, is a difficult task. Thankfully, Google provides tools and guidance to improve your chances of SERP success. Utilized properly, the dependable resources found within your Google account, will provide valuable information; that saves time, money and frustration.

As you can imagine, your first step will be to create a Google Account. This is accomplished by visiting the Google homepage, and selecting "Sign in"; located in the top right-hand corner of the webpage. Create and verify your account. Once your account is established, you will have access to some of the most powerful tools; available for webmasters and website owners.

A Google Profile is an excellent way to introduce yourself to Google. Take some time to accurately complete the Profile information, that Google has requested (Google Account Settings --> Profile). Be certain to make consistent use of your established keywords and optimized text. Moreover, your Google profile gives you an opportunity to add your website link, and create powerful inbound links your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or YouTube accounts. Google Webmaster Tools, allows you submit your Sitemap to Google; telling them important details about your webpages. This may include: which ones are the most valuable, and how often they change. Furthermore, webmasters can also let Google know how they would like the URLs indexed; to appear. As you know, this important detail must remain consistent; throughout your linking and optimization campaign. Taking much of the guesswork out of website analysis, Google Webmaster Tools provides webmasters/website owners with detailed reports; about the visibility of their webpages in the Google index. Detailed reports indicate how Google crawls and indexes your website/webpages; and relays specific problems the search engine is having accessing it. Furthermore, Google provides a dependable overview of your website; and offers solutions for problems it discovers. Perhaps most importantly though, Google will help you determine your link and query traffic, by providing comprehensive data about internal and external links; to your website. Google provides answers to which search words, terms and phrases are driving traffic to your website, and displays exactly how users are arriving there. Google Analytics is a free, enterprise-class web analytic solution offered by Google. This remarkable software, provides detailed insight into your website traffic and overall marketing effectiveness. Google Analytics can be used to track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks and email marketing. As such, the product is aimed primarily at marketers; as opposed to webmasters and technologists.

Taking the time to explore the benefits of the many tools Google freely provides, will greatly increase your chances of search engine optimization success. Google makes it difficult to appear on page one, but not impossible. I recommend that you follow the guidelines they set out, and pay close attention to what they are telling you; in detailed reports and other collected data. If you can consistently give Google what they want, they will happily give you what you want.

10 Best Free SEO Tools

They are efficient assistants for webmasters in analyzing and evaluating websites, and can help them improve rankings in Alexa. We provide ten great SEO tools for optimizing traffic and ranks for webmasters.

According to the survey results, 60% of website accessing amount is made through search services (search engine) and over 90% of web users only click on the first search result. If your website appears at the top of the results list, it would be much more likely to attract accessing of users. This shows the importance of optimizing websites in order that search services find it easily - which is known as the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If this phase is done correctly and perfectly, SEO can help you increase both the number of users and site traffic.

SEO is the work which required much effort and time. Although the market has advanced tools with high prices, but there are also totally free tools that can help you (webmasters), save effort.

1. Google Webmaster Tools:

Google always provide their real fans with totally free but worthwhile applications and Google Webmaster Tools is one of them. This is an online service (account required) that provides a detailed report about the "visibility" of your website in Google, such as the state index, broken link, site accessing queries and many features which help webmasters improve the visibility for websites in search engines like robots.txt setting and sitemap. It can even check malware and speed of access to your website.

2. Google Analytics:

Another tool from Google that almost all current webmasters know: Google Analytics (GA). GA is a tool for monitoring and analyzing website. In this case, GA requires you to embed a script into your web page - only webmasters can do this. For a valuable achievement, GA supply the statistics of website accessing, it helps you analyze important aspects of website content and users so as to have the appropriate strategy.

Two free tools from Google show you how Google look at your website as well as how to take advantage of this number-one search service.

3. Yahoo Site Explorer:

Creating links is an important part of improving rankings. There are a number of link analysis tools such as Link Diagnosis, Link Assistant and Backlink Watch. However, there are no tools which can work as efficiently as Yahoo's Site Explorer, it not only find links referring to your website but also make an order list by their importance.

In addition to link analysis, Site Explorer has a feature to help you improve SEO ability for Yahoo's which is similar to Google Webmaster Tools.

4. Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit

This SEO Tool is a big one of the giant corporation Microsoft. This tool is only installed on the IIS 7 Web server, but you can use it to analyze any remote site (no web server running on IIS 7 is required and it can work with Apache web server running on Linux).

IIS SEO Toolkit consists of the Site Analysis, Robots Exclusion, Sitemaps and Site Indexes that allows you to analyze detailed website and offer suggestions, robot and sitemap editing tools. With the Toolkit, you can make your website content much friendlier with other search services.

5. Sitemap Generator AuditMyPC:

To climb up to the first page of search engine, your site should become familiar to services like Google search engine. An important method for this is to create a sitemap to your website and show itself to search services.

There are many tools to create site map, of which the AuditPC Sitemap Generator is probably the best: it is an online service which can run in the browser (Java required) and an unlimited number of Web pages.

6. SEO Toolbar:

The additional libraries for Firefox provides a complete SEO kit on a toolbar, including the rank test (Google PR, Alexa Rank), website and keyword analysis, competition website comparison and many other useful features.

Google also has a similar tool for users of Google Chrome browser: Site SEO Tools extension. This open Chrome Library gives you general information about the SEO of the website in a window.

7. Yahoo YSlow:

This is in addition plug-in to of Firefox integrating with the Firebug tool. YSlow analyzes web pages and information in the web page elements and offers recommendations to improve speed as well as providing tools for speed analysis like JSLint or Smush.it.

8. Xenu Link Sleuth:

This small application runs on all versions of Windows (desktop environment, not server environment). It is well designed and easy to use, it has the ability to quickly detect broken links (error 404) in your website. Therefore, Xenu provides you much useful information to help you in search engine marketing.

9. SocialMention:

This online services search in blogs and small blogs, forums, question-answer pages, social networks, calendar events and news to calculate information related to your brand or keywords you enter.

10. Website Grader:

This online service measures website marketing performance. It gives a score based on information such as website traffic, SEO, website popularity in social networks and other technical parameters. It also offers basic tips to improve web promotion.

Here is a quote from an expert: "... SEO cannot bring immediate results. It can take months or even years to put a website in high rankings in search services. People who want to do SEO job should be patient and interested, they have to explore new techniques and earn knowledge to succeed. "

How To Build Your List For Free Using Google Adwords

There are numerous ways you can go about building your list, but in my opinion using Google Adwords, and indeed other pay-per-click sites, is one of the best ways of building a highly targeted list of responsive subscribers. Not only that, but if done correctly, you can effectively build your list for free, as I will demonstrate in the remainder of this article.

I own numerous websites in a variety of niches, and have successfully built up large lists of subscribers for a lot of these sites. A large percentage of these subscribers have come from Google Adwords alone, and best of all it's hardly cost me anything at all.

It all comes down to one thing - Backend Commissions.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Find targeted, but relatively cheap keywords you can use to advertise your site on Google Adwords (less than $0.40 per click). The lower the better, and as any Adwords expert will tell you, you should start off by bidding low to be placed in the top 5-10 results in the pay-per-click results, and concentrate on maximising your click-thru rate with a compelling headline and compelling sales copy, to obtain a higher position without having to increase your cost-per-click.

2. Create an opt-in page and send the traffic you receive to this page. This site has to be compelling enough for the visitors you receive to fill out the opt-in form to subscribe to your list. You should offer a free report and/or bonus to get as many visitors to subscribe as possible.

3. Here's the crucial part. On your thank you page that your visitors are sent to after they have filled-in your form, you should place links to either your own product, or to a quality affiliate product that you can earn commissions from.

This is a highly effective way of earning backend commissions and effectively recouping your advertising costs, if you have a good offer. You'd be surprised at just how many people purchase from this thank you page. In my experience a typical response rate is often anywhere between 2% and 10%, and for certain sites I've received a 30% success rate, so in some instances I have actually made more money from sales than I actually paid out in pay-per-click advertising. Therefore, I'm effectively building my list for free, and earning small profits along the way.

If you think about it, it's not surprising people take you up on your offer because they have already trusted you enough to leave their name and email address with you, so why wouldn't they take you up on your offer?

One thing I will say though is that the product or offer that you place on your thank you page must be affordable (I would say $47 or less) otherwise you may find that none of your opt-in subscribers take you up on your offer. Look at it objectively and ask yourself whether you'd be tempted to purchase the offer if it was someone else's site, and you were the one that had just opted in.

In addition to using your thank you page as a way of recouping your advertising costs, another good way of achieving this goal is by giving away free reports or ebooks to your opt-in subscribers which contain your affiliate links. This provides another way of earning backend commissions, and although, in my experience, not quite as profitable as the thank you page method, can still deliver the occasional sale, which all helps to cover your pay-per-click advertising costs.

To sum up then, if you're building your list, make sure that you are fully utilising your thank you page as a way of earning commissions. If done correctly, you can successfully recoup your Adwords costs, or indeed those costs that arise from any other forms of promotion, and build your list for free. As I have hopefully demonstrated, this thank you page can be a very profitable page of your website, but unfortunately most people simply don't take advantage of this space and leave it blank, or just provide basic instructions for completing the opt-in process. I've been guilty of this myself in the past, but I now make sure that I have a way of receiving backend commissions on the thank you page of all of my niche websites.

Admittedly, there are some niches where the high cost-per-click means that it is very hard to recoup your advertising costs completely from backend commissions, but even so, you can still claw back some of your costs by using the methods I've discussed in this article.