These are some of the recent shiny and vetted finds from my Google reader. Thought I’d share them.

Wiep – The Perfect Link Request Email Template
Mashable – Top 20 Ways to Share a Great Blog Post
Mashable – Domain Name Search Gets Powerful with Domize
Lifehacker – How Do I Attach A File in Gmail From the Windows Context Menu
Mashable – 20 of the Best Plugins for WordPress
Search Engine Journal – Top WordPress Resources to List Your WordPress Blog & Build Links
Wiep – New Link Building Tool: BuzzStream
Mashable – HOW TO: Manage Multiple Social Media Profiles
TechCrunch – BackType Gets More Conversation Tracking Features, Seed Funding
Search Engine Roundtable – GetListed.org Brings Much Needed Tool for Local Search Marketers

One of the most interesting and exciting parts of search marketing for me is the competitive necessity for adaptation. A tactic I laud to no end. This post will be a short one since it focuses on one particular website but a very important one. One that i depend upon for consistently replenishing my social artillery. The site name has an odd and almost anti-mnemonic quality to it; Go 2 Web 2.0 is a constantly updated directory of new sites that are attempting to help us (and sometimes themselves) make the world an easier place. There are all sorts of tools, apps, rep management, bookmarking, social utilities, etc, etc, that are listed here. You can hover over each logo and a little informational blurb will pop up. You can also sort by tags. This site is a phenomenal resource which can help introduce you to new tools, apps and ideas that you may be able to leverage to beneficial ends.

Sometimes I get so caught-up in work that I forget how important it is to read through my list of seo feeds. Glen posted a nice article on Five Sneaky Ways to Build Website Traffic. In his post he mentions the RefControl Firefox Plugin. First time I have seen this one, thank you James Abbatiello for creating it. Nifty little tool which allows you to control your referring address. Just enter your site’s domain and every site you visit will think it’s where you came from. There are some tactics out there which talk about ways to abuse this (not recommended) but if you’re into that sort of thing then I’m sure you’ll find the tips you’re looking for. I was talking to Tim about this a bit who mentioned you can set up your user agent switcher (another Firefox plugin by Chris Pederick) to make it look like your user agent is your domain. Tim also suggested making a landing page for RefControl so that when people visit your referring address they know why your domain is seen as the referrer. Good stuff guys, thanks for the great tips!

This post is an ode to Matt McGee’s post How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes. I found myself using this as a quick reference from time to time when first published. It was a great write-up that was very useful to many people. I always wanted to expand on this a bit and have the search community add to it so here’s my new and updated checklist for your review. If there’s anything I missed please add it in the comments below.

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Contents
SEO Checklist
A: Homepage
B: Site
C: External

SEO Checklist
A1: Homepage – www.domain.com
1. Check for redirects and canonicalization issues
2. Choose http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com
3. Redirect domain.com/(index|main).(html|htm|php|cfm|asp) to domain.com

Apache redirects and editing .htaccess files:
domain.com to www.domain.com
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

www.domain.com/index.html to www.domain.com
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[^/]*/index\.html [NC]
RewriteRule . / [R=301,L]

www.domain.com/index.php to www.domain.com
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[^/]*/index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule . / [R=301,L]

A2: Homepage – Navigation
1. Check for image, drop downs, javascript, image maps vs text navigation. Text is the best option.

A3: Homepage – Content
1. How much text is present? The more the better.
2. Check for keyword density in homepage content
http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
3. Check for use of H2 tags and bold fonts (light/appropriate use is good on keywords)
4. There should be a sitemap present
5. Do a select all (ctrl + A) to find potentially hidden text
6. Check to see how search engines will view your site with SEO Browser. Make sure everything is crawlable.

B1: Site – Meta Tags
1. Check Title tags. Are they using keywords and are formatted correctly?

Brand authority formatting:
Brand Name or Domain | Keyword, Keyword & Keyword

Non brand authority formatting
Keyword, Keyword & Keyword | Brand Name or Domain

2. Check Descriptions for keywords and composition. Make sure the description gets to the point and speaks to the purpose/content on its respective page in the first couple sentences.

3. Make sure the keyword tag contains around 5 – 10 keywords. No more or less is really necessary.

4. Make sure there are no duplicate meta tags anywhere, site wide.

B2: Site – URL Formatting
1. Check url formatting. Dynamic URLs are bad. URLs that are too long will be truncated in Google SERPs.
2. URLs should contain keywords separated by hyphens.
3. Hyphens are more preferable than underscores
4. Keywords in URLs should match the content contained within the page they are leading to.

B3: Analytics
1. Make sure you have some sort of analytics installed. It doesn’t have to be Google analytics but do remember that every page within the site should contain the analytic tracking code.

B4: Site – Links
1. Links should contain keywords
2. Links should contain titles utilizing keywords
3. Anchor text, link keywords, link title, and page being linked to should be relevant to one another.
4. Site linking structure should be cyclical. There should be no dangling pages.
5. Use Xenu Link Sleuth to check for broken links

B5: Site – nofollows (advanced)
1. nofollow TOS, Privacy Policy, or other pages that don’t contribute to your site’s ranking.
2. If you know how to link funnel correctly this should be done. I haven’t written anything on this yet but you can consult Slightly Shady SEO or Andy Beard

B6: Site – Robots.txt
1. Check for robots.txt file. Does one exist?
2. See what’s being blocked and what’s not.
3. Make sure it’s written correctly (consult Sebastian’s Pamphlets for best advice)

B7: Site – Duplicate Content
1. Make sure there is no duplicate content within your site
2. Make sure there is no duplicate content on other domains. You can use CopyScape to check for dupe content.

B8: Site – PDF files
1. Does this site contain PDF files? If so these can be optimized with new titles, keywords, and comments. Use Adobe Acrobat Professional to edit PDFs.

B9: Site – Images
1. Images can have ALT tags. Make sure to utilize these appropriately with keywords. When implemented, your site may gain traffic from image search engines like Google Image Search.

C1: External – Indexation
1. Perform a site:domain.com search on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Compare what’s being indexed and what isn’t.
*Install FireFox Extension Search Status by Craig Raw
You’ll be able to easily perform this operative plus many other functions with the Search Status plugin.

C2: External – Backlinks
1. Perform a backlink count with the Search Status plugin.
2. You may also want to install Joost de Valk’s backlink checker plugin for FireFox to check the anchor text of your Backlinks within Yahoo Site Explorer or Google’s Webmaster tools.

So that’s about all I can think of for the time being. If I forgot anything please submit your additions to this checklist in the comments below.

If you’re a nerdbox like me, you love online tools. Anything that makes a day easier is worth bookmarking. Overtime I’ve collected some great tools and web apps that I’d like to share with you today. Hopefully you’ll find these as helpful as I have.

.htaccess File Generator
This is a neat little .htaccess file generator that pretty much covers everything you might need to include in your .htaccess file. As you fill in the details about your site’s domain, redirects needed, allow/deny particulars etc, this web app will write your .htaccess file for you at the bottom of the page. Once you’re done, simply copy and paste your new .htaccess data into a .txt file, save and upload to your root.

Duplicate Content Detection
Copyscape is a great duplicate content detector. Google has provided Copyscape with a high-capacity Web APIs key for use with Google Alerts. From the homepage you can enter your URL and Copyscape will scan the web searching for any instances of duplicate content. I haven’t used this recently but I think there’s a limit on how many searches you can perform per day. If you sign-up for their premium service, each search costs 5 cents. They also provide CopySentry which will automatically monitor the web searching for real-time instances of content duplication. This service is priced at $4.95/month.

Search for your term over multiple sites via one interface
Intelways allows you to search for your term through at least 100 different sites which include search engines, video, photo, social media, and popular commerce sites. If you’re looking for something niche or something that requires every informational resource, this is your spot.

Find out what your top ranking keywords are
SEOdigger is an interesting tool where you can enter your domain (or competitor’s) and find out which of your keywords rank high enough to be listed within Google’s top 20. It also compares keyword popularity with Wordtracker and Overture. Additionally, report data is CSV exportable. Site does require registration for complete use.

http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp
Robot.txt file generator and validation
Not that creating a robot.txt file requires a degree in aeronautical engineering but this app can be fun to use and helpful if you need to block some bots. There’s also a robots.txt validation checker on this site just in case you need a second opinion on your robots.txt markup.

Test everything…the mother load
There’s a very bright young man out there named Jonas John from Germany. This guy is a wiz and builds web apps, software, browser extensions and an array of other useful things. This one portal in particular allows you to utilize CSS and HTML checkers, SEO tools, social services, web proxies, network tools, text tools, image tools, and other miscellaneous tools all from one location. Good things to come from this guy. Make sure you check out his other projects on his homepage.