DaveTech » SEO

Un-Tynt Your Website (for Apache)

David Burke — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 05:47:30 +0000

For more on the entire Tynt issue, see Eric Lander’s blog post on Tynt.

If you’re on an Apache server with mod rewrite & want to prevent Tynt from displaying your site here are some rules that may help:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}    ^204\.244\.109\.(2(4[0-7]))$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}    ^204\.244\.120\.(1(7[6-9]|8[0-3]))$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$    [F]

You can do plenty of other fun things instead of “RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [F]” if you like. For an example, check out the 404 page for SEOconsultants.com

Many thanks to @IncrediBILL, @pageoneresults, @scottpolk and @ericlander for bringing the situation to light & coming up with the correct IP blocks.

Creating a second FireFox profile for SEO

David Burke — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:36:23 +0000

Note: A link to instructions for Mac users is at the bottom of this post -s

I started reading up on how to develop a FireFox Extension and one of the first recommendations is to create a separate FireFox profile. The second profile is recommended so you don’t have to clutter up your “regular” FireFox profile with a bunch of debuggers and development tools. And, both profiles can be run at the same time. This got me thinking about other uses for 2 profiles:

Having 2 profiles would allow you to be logged into 2 different Google accounts at the same time.
You could run keyphrase searches and view “personalized” vs generic SERPs.
Run one profile through a proxy service to see if your IP address is being served alternate content.
Compare different extensions, security settings. Manage an alternate set of bookmarks, etc.
Keep your “work” & “personal” browsing history separate.

Here’s the setup for Windows, using FireFox 2.x. I’ll try to add the Mac version shortly

Make sure you close all FireFox windows. In FireFox, “File => Exit” should to the trick.
Run the FireFox Profile Manager. Click on the Windows “Start” button, then choose “Run” Type firefox.exe -ProfileManager in the box next to “Open” and then click the “OK” button.
Create a new profile. Just click “Create,” give it the name seo & hit “Finish.”

Now that the new profile is created, you need a way to run that profile along with your “default” profile. At this point, any of your usual methods of starting FireFox should bring up your “default” profile. I’m going to roll a couple tips into one here, so you’ll end up with a way to run your “seo” profile AND give it the shiny icon of your choice.

Open Notepad: Start => Programs => Accessories => Notepad

enter the following in Notepad:

set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
start "" "%ProgramFiles%\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P seo

Make sure that the text after -P in the second line is the same as the profile name you created.
Save the file in your “My Documents” folder, and name it “firefoxSEO.bat”

Double-clicking the “firefoxSEO.bat” file will launch FireFox with your “seo” profile. So technically, we’re done and you can start running two FireFox profiles side-by-side right now. But as you can see, the default icon for .bat files is pretty ugly. And there’s no easy way to change it. The default icon can also be a problem later on, if you want to create even more profiles, and would like individual icons for each profile.

The solution is to create a shortcut to “firefoxSEO.bat,” and give it any icon you like!

Right-click on “firefoxSEO.bat” and choose the “Create Shortcut” option.
Move and/or copy the shortcut anywhere you like: your desktop, shortcut bar, QuickLaunch bar, etc.
Now, right-click on the shortcut, and choose “Properties.”
On the second tab “Shortcut” click the button labeled “Change Icon”
You may get a message like the following. Just click “OK”
Now, pick an icon! Usually Windows will direct you to the file %SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll which has many icons to choose from. There are some additional (& quite retro) icons in %SystemRoot%\system32\moricons.dll
You can also design your own icons with a graphics program, or there are several websites with icons & even some online icon creator sites.

You’re all set!

UPDATE: Here’s a link to Asa Dotzler’s blog where he covers how to create a shortcut to launch a specific firefox profile on mac. Pretty simple to do using Apple Script. -Sally (the Mac user of this team)

PubCon 2007 “Tools of the Trade” session

David Burke — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 02:15:34 +0000

For all of you asking for notes from the SEO Tools presentation, here are the links to (most) of the tools mentioned:

Derek Vaugn, Techpad Agency

http://webceo.com/: Keyword rank checking; like WebPosition. Downloadable Windows software that runs in the background. Long lists (~200+ Keywords) can take several hours to run.
IndexTools: Last 100 Visits report: View the last 100 visitors in realtime. Helps identify trends in realtime & provides details of where the visitors are coming from.
http://spyfu.com/: Keyword Competitive Intelligence
http://google.com/trends: Useful for popular terms, may not have accurate data on lower volume terms. Can be used over time to add new terms.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal: Free keyword tool, works without an Adwords account. Has a "Site-Related Keywords" tab that shows related terms based on the content of an URL.

Todd Malicoat, Meta4creations, LLC

Server information:

http://ip-report.com/: Find “safe” IP blocks
http://www.seologs.com/ip-domains.html: Information on the number of sites for a given IP address

Competitive Information:

Backlinks:

Keyword Info:

Header & Page Level

Number of links on a page bookmarklet

Spidering

Xenu Linksleuth

Project Management/Small Shop SEO

Many more tools

StuntDubl.com

Jessie Stricchiola, Alchemist Media, Inc.

Links & Link Value

Cumbrowski’s Query & Link Stats Converter: Processes the raw data from Google Webmaster Central .CSV files
Joost de Valk’s Google Webmaster Tools External links tools: Provides additional information on sites linking to you: PageRank, rel=nofollow, “link not found,” image link, frame
dnScoop domain & site value tool
SEO Tools – Link Price Calculator

From the Q&A

Finally, I’ll have to admit I didn’t note some of the tools that "everyone knows about" already. While not a complete list, here are some tools in that category: