The best sources of free seo advice for webmasters often comes from the search engines themselves. Additionally, the “Big Three” search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN/Live.com in that order) also offer tool suites for webmasters to load sitemaps, check backlinks and spider status of their pages. So, for today’s free tip, check out these resources:
Search Blogs
Webmaster Centers
Want to do something fun? Check out www.GoogleWhack.com and learn about “Google Whacking”… finding a two word combination with no results in Google. The point is for fun but the nerdy SEO challenge then becomes who can report, then get rankings for that Google Whack.
For more fun with Google Whacking, go to Google.com and type in one of the two word phrases you find on the GoogleWhack.com website. Copy the URL of the #1 site, then search for this in Google:
link:{paste the URL}
Take note of the sites that show up in that list. That’s how the SEO guy or gal got the rankings for that phrase. The results are mostly hijacked .EDU or .GOV sites, which I would not recommend you replicate, but it’s interesting to see the process of gaining rankings at work.
Here’s a quick one… did you know that Google AdWords has a test site? Go Here. This site “is a tool for AdWords advertisers to test their ads.” It allows you to see how your ad is showing (and for which keywords) without costing you anything. For those of you who conduct PPC campaigns, enjoy!