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.

If you’re running an AdWords campaign that serves multiple countries, you may want to see how each country is performing individually. I came across this again recently when discussing AdWords performance with one of my e-commerce clients. In his campaign, he is running ads in both the US and Canada. “How is Canada performing compared to the US?”, we wondered.

As far as I can tell, AdWords Report Center does not have a method for seeing data per country. Their demographics reporting is limited to age and gender. Here’s my method for revealing the data using Google Analytics. Your AdWords account must be properly linked to your Google Analytics account for this to work.

1. Log into your Analytics account and in the Dashboard, select Visitors > Map Overlay.

2. On the Map Overlay screen, select the country of interest, in my case that was Canada. You can drill as deep as you like here.

3. In the Dimension selection drop-down, choose Campaign.

4. Now, you can see the productivity of your Campaign(s) in the geographic region that you selected.

Now you want to know what to do with this new data? Well, I hope it convinces you to segment all of your countries into separate campaigns. For this client, Canada’s conversion rate is 68% lower than the site average. I’ll be splitting out Canada into a separate campaign as soon as I finish this post and redistributing my spend. I’ll also be talking with my client about updating his site to include Canadian shipping rates and landing pages for Canadian customers.

For a hot tip on how to make doubly sure that Google is only serving your US targeted campaign to US customers, see Uber Affilliate’s article, “QuickTip Time : Adwords International Traffic”

UPDATE 09/03/2008: Looks like Google AdWords finally decided that

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

1. Make sure you close all FireFox windows. In FireFox, “File => Exit” should to the trick.
2. 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.

   

3. 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.

1. Open Notepad: Start => Programs => Accessories => Notepad
2. enter the following in Notepad:

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

3. Make sure that the text after -P in the second line is the same as the profile name you created.
4. 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!

1. Right-click on “firefoxSEO.bat” and choose the “Create Shortcut” option.
2. Move and/or copy the shortcut anywhere you like: your desktop, shortcut bar, QuickLaunch bar, etc.
3. Now, right-click on the shortcut, and choose “Properties.”
4. On the second tab “Shortcut” click the button labeled “Change Icon”

   

5. You may get a message like the following. Just click “OK”

   

6. 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
7. 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!

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:

• SEO for Firefox
• http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
• http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/switchproxy

Backlinks:

• http://www.linkhounds.com/link-harvester/
• Greg Boser’s Tattler
• http://www.linkhounds.com/hub-finder/
• http://www.webuildpages.com/search/

Keyword Info:

• Aaron Wall’s Keyword tool
• http://labs.google.com/sets

Header & Page Level

• Number of links on a page bookmarklet

Spidering

• Xenu Linksleuth

Project Management/Small Shop SEO

• Solo SEO
• Compete

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

Project Management

• Basecamp

Blackjack

• Hot Hand Advantage

Joe Laratro, Tandem Interactive

• GSite Crawler: Google Sitemap Creator

From the Q&A

• allproxies.org
• Microsoft AdLab

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:

• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• WordTracker
• WordTracker Free Version
• Yahoo Keyword Tool
• WebDeveloper FireFox Plugin
• Live HTTP Headers FireFox Plugin
• Web Position
• DNSstuff.com
• DomainTools (formerly whois.sc)

If you manage websites of any decent size, you’re probably familiar with Xenu Link Sleuth for PC. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that allows you to check links on your site for errors. Well, bummer for me, it’s Windows only and I’m on a Mac. I’ve pretty much replaced every other application that I used on Windows, but a Xenu replacement was the, shall we say, missing link? (har har.) So, after a client emailed me with yet another broken link on his website, I finally went on the hunt.

There appeared to be two major contenders when I Googled “link checking tool for mac”…

Braxton’s Link Tester (BLT) looked pretty good. The website displays a 3.5 mouse rating from Macworld. After reading Macworld’s review, I ruled it out because there is no option to exclude specified URLs or domains.

Then, I found Integrity by Shiela Dixon at Peacock Media. Integrity is inspired by Xenu, and it’s freeware. Hooray! Have I found the last piece to my Mac migration puzzle? Am I finally free of the PC?

I’ll be using Integrity over the next few days and will post a full review in a couple weeks. Check back for updates!

So, of course, the SES that Sally and & I won’t be attending has an *OFFICIAL* SES NYC 2007 Party & Events Schedule. Put together by Joe Morin, no less.

Sounds like a lot of fun, and it looks like there’s quite a line up of events.

Have fun everybody, & I want to see pictures!

He’s such a romantic. My honey writes me code for V-day.

http://www.visualfuture.com/sally/

It’s a landing page URL search tool for Yahoo Store. Give it a list of keywords, there’s a quotes option for exact match (thanks, Rob), tell it the store name, then hit the majik button. A minute later you have a list of the first three results for each keyword from the Yahoo Store search. It even gives you a csv file!

If it wasn’t so irritating, it would be funny.

I just received an email forwarded by a client from an SEO firm trying to contact me. The SEO firm sent an email to the client’s “info@” address to try and reach me to solict SEO services.

I admit: I’m baffled.

I’ve received plenty of phone calls for SEO services directly, from firms obviously mining WHOIS information, but this was the first time someone had gone through the trouble of locating an email link on the client’s web site, and then sending the client an email to try and reach me. I mean, if you’re going to take the trouble to go to the client’s web site, which many firms of this nature do not, why not spend a little time on the “Contact Us” page and email the marketing director, well, directly?

I suppose I could be giving them too much credit… They may have just taken a stab with the “info@” address & not visited the site at all. Either way, I don’t think we’ll be working together anytime soon.

Here’s a tip: While you need valid contact data in your domain registration information, it might make sense to have a unique email address for your registrant and domain contact info. Or even unique addresses for each contact type like “admin-contact@,” “technical-contact@,” etc. Doing so will help identify firms mining WHOIS information for their leads.

Big Caveat: Don’t change information on existing domain registrations unless you have to!  Some search engines pay attention to changes in domain registration information.

And it might be yours too!

It’s worth taking a look at your analytics “Screen Resolutions” report from time to time. The last time I heard someone quote a statistic on how many people used 800×600 resolution the number given was 40%. I did some checking, and while some of our web sites had numbers near 40%, many sites were much lower. Some sites had numbers as low as 5 to 10%.

(I believe that these numbers will drop even further, now that some of the 800×600 crowd have received new computers for Christmas.)

While there’s no absolute rule on when to drop support for 800×600 browsers, it’s probably a safe bet once the traffic is under 5%~6%. If you have an high-traffic web site, and 5% is still a large number of visitors, it may make sense to stay compatible for a while longer.

For the most part, fixed-width sites can now enjoy some extra screen real-estate by making 1024 the new “minimum width.”

Happy New Year!

Ok, now that everyone has had a chance to develop a “content rich” super-converting 404-error page, it’s time to put it to good use.

And what better use for an error page, than to have it give us some indication of what link may have *caused* the error to occur in the first place. Thankfully, Alix Obitz posted just how to do that on the Google Analytics blog the other day. So now we can:

1. Serve up a custom, “content rich” 404-error page in our Yahoo! store.
2. Track which links are causing the error page to show up.
3. Surely, you didn’t think we were done yet, did you?

Once you have the new code in place, you’ll have access to the URLs the visitor was originally looking for. Depending on what the URLs look like, you may be able to determine the visitor’s original intent. A page URL of “http://mystore.com/gensym23.html” is not going to reveal much about what type of content was at that URL previously. A URL of “http://mystore.com/soft-blue-widgets.html” is much more helpful. (I know Rob Snell has a page on “Why You Should Always Create New Pages from the ‘Contents’ page” but I can’t find it right now… The tip is also on pg. 179 of his book, Starting a Yahoo! Business for Dummies)

Anyway, when you *do* come across information laden broken links like the “soft-blue-widgets” example, one possibility is to go create a new page at that location that will redirect the visitor to an existing relevant page. This can be valuable for 2 reasons:

• Your visitor will now end up on a page even more relevant than your “content rich” 404-error page.
• You now have another *working* link to your site. (Your PageRank should skyrocket any minute now…)