For Those Who Don’t Have a Clue: What Was Site Explorer?

Since Site Explorer was quite a primitive tool if compared to, let’s say Google Webmaster Tools, it didn’t give us any real value on its own. A few of the valuable things that we could pick up from it were

1. seeing the number of pages indexed by Yahoo

and

2. the number of inbound links from external sources leading to single pages or the whole site.

For Those Who Wonder: Should We Miss It?

Since we still can get an idea about how many pages are presently indexed by Yahoo for a given domain (if we query its search with “site:somedomain.com”), then the only thing that is missing now is the ability to lookup the backlink count for a given web property. And for those who acquired a habit of using Yahoo Site Explorer for checking backlinks, I’ll be listing a few free alternatives at the end of this post. After you check out those tools, let me know if you still miss Site Explorer and I’ll try to help you more.

For Those Who Still Wonder: What Else Will It Affect?

As I mentioned above, by itself the Site Explorer was not that effective or useful. Yet quite a few SEO tools were relying on its API to collect backlink data for their reports. As a matter of fact, just about a week ago Market Samurai has posted the following message at the program startup:

“A change has been made to the backlink sources available in the Rank Tracker and SEO Competition modules. As the Yahoo Site Explorer has been decommissioned, it is no longer possible to retrieve backlink data from Yahoo…”

We will see this type of changes in many other search engine optimization tools. So, if you notice that one of your favorite programs is having a problem displaying backlink data, then you know why. (Remember, you can always drop a line in comments and tell us about your experience with this change.)

For Those Who Want To Get Over With It:

Should I Say: “Yahoo Site Explorer FREE Alternatives?”

1. BackLink Watch (http://backlinkwatch.com/)

Besides showing you the backlink count, this tool gives you the overview of anchor texts, outbound link count for the pages that host your links and some other valuable information.

2. Blekko (http://blekko.com/)

Requires registration, but it is quick and free. Enter a domain name you want to research in their search box. When search results come up, look at the end of the displayed result snippets. Click on “seo” and you will see all sorts of information about the homepage of the domain you are investigating.

3. Exalead (http://www.exalead.com)

Use “link:example.com” to see the number of backlinks indexed by Exalead. You can try the “link:” command in other search engines, including Google.

4. SEO Attack (http://www.seoattack.org)

Gives link count and shows limited result set. Requires free registration. The data comes for SEOmoz (Open Site Explorer) via LinkScape API.

Just to name a few…

If you want to suggest other options (FREE options), leave a comment.

If you experience difficulties with promoting your site on search engines or if you have questions regarding your new or aged WordPress blog, use our contact page to tell us about it. Submit your story with as many details as you find feasible . We will review your site’s structure and post your message along with our suggestions. Our visitors will have a chance to add their comments and discuss those of others.

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We hope to see your submissions soon!

Usually it is hard to get a link from an authority site. But the growing popularity of blogs has opened a new door for us to acquire such links with just a little effort. Did I forget to mention that these links can be absolutely free?

Many schools and government agencies are trying to incorporate blogs and discussion boards into their websites. These blogs quite often are the same WordPress and other popular blogging platforms that we see on regular sites – the blogs with comments and mild or even no moderation. If only one can allocate such blogs with posts that are somewhat related to one’s website subject, the rest becomes as simple as leaving a decent comment that will be approved by administrators.

So, how do we go about finding authority websites that allow commenting? Let’s turn to Google for answers. You need to know how to create somewhat advanced searches with the help of search directives or operators that we, bloggers and SEO peeps, should definitely know about.

site: – if you precede your search with this operator followed by a domain name or partial domain name, your results will contain all the pages from the given domain name

inurl: – including this operator followed by a word or phrase included in quotes, will give you indexed URLs that contain such a word or phrase

” “ (quotes) – including a search phrase in quotes will give you an exact match for the phrase

AND, OR – if you have a few phrases that you want to search for simultaneously, you may use these operators accordingly

- (exclude) – using dash (or the minus sign) followed with a search term will allow you to exclude pages that contain this term

So, what do we do with these operators? We know that WordPress themes quite often use same wording for particular elements. Just to name a few of the often repeated phrases: “post a comment”, “leave a comment”, etc. If you were to look for a website that is in .gov domain sector and has a WordPress installed within its domain, you could try searching Google for something like this:

site:.gov inurl:blog “post a comment” OR “leave a comment”

[Interpretation: find a page located on a website from the .gov sector that contain the word "blog" in the url and one of the following phrases "post a comment" or "leave a comment" within the page content]

You may also want to search for .edu, .org, .com websites by replacing .gov accordingly. If you want to search for the posts that are related to the subject of your site or a single page, add your keyword or “keyphrase” to your search string.

Some of the keywords/phrases that will help you to locate what you are looking for:

“powered by wordpress”, “leave reply”, -”comments closed”, -”you must be logged in”

Also try:
“powered by expressionengine”
“powered by blogengine”

Good Luck!

You can reinstate images with code:

With the usage of CSS3, the common web designing tools such as round corners, gradients, transparency and shadows that will be given by the respective browser. This will help you reduce the huge number of surplus files that requires being loaded to make the maintenance of the site better and simpler by stuffing more information into a single place. The fewer the number of files, the site speed will remain faster, improve the experience of the user and also boost the search engine ranking. Fewer images will ensure more content in HTML and this feature will make it more search engine optimized.

Use dynamic styles in your website:

Dynamic styles may be added to your website by implementing CSS3 and this will allow animation effects and also help you create an alternative to Flash and JavaScript. Website designing experts have recently mentioned that using Flash will not always be the most SEO-friendly technique. You’ll be able to do more with CSS and can easily minimize the conflict between SEO and designing. CSS3 can help you add transitions to your website and allow some added changes that occur on your website page. This will enable the web page to flow less abruptly and gradually.

Reduce codes and make designs more code-efficient:

If you’re currently making some designs using the complex methods in CSS2, you can use CSS3 to create the same designs with fewer number of lines and making it more code-efficient. The files can be made smaller to facilitate the speed of the site and also reduce the code-to-content ratio. Search engines will find it easier to crawl if your website has all these features. You can even add multiple images to the same element by using CSS3.

Therefore, don’t sweat the small stuff and get yourself worried about website designing solutions. Use CSS3, the most stylized version of Cascading Stylized Sheets to enhance the search engine optimization techniques of your website and boost your page rank among the most famous search engine results.

Content Contributor: Erica Smith of onediy.com

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