So here we are again.  Another week, another weekly link-fest.

Lots of good stuff here, if you missed any of it, make sure you check it out now.  And if there’s something vital that I haven’t mentioned feel free to go ahead and drop a link for it the comments (but bear in mind that I do moderate all comments, so don’t go thinking that you can get away with just lobbing any old rubbish in there for the sake of trying to score a link).

And now, without any further ado, on with the linkage…

SEO is dead.  Long live SEO.

Shoemoney and Marketing Pilgrim have announced that SEO is a dying industry.  Now, I’m not saying that Jeremey and Greg are indulging in a bit of SEO-baiting (a la Jason Calacanis), but it does seem like a pretty successful way of getting links from people who are determined to point out how wrong they are.
People like Ian Laurie at Conversation Marketing and Taylor Pratt from Gonzo SEO with his Gloria Gaynor-esque post about how SEO will survive.
And now me.  D’oh!

The best response I’ve seen so far though comes from Michael Gray on his Wolf-Howl blog, where he lists a wide variety of reasons why SEO not only isn’t dead, but will continue to thrive until web-designers, executives and just about everyone else involved with website creation, learn to stop messing things up and needing SEOs to come in and fix their problems.

Mmm, freshly baked, fudgey, chocolate-flavoured linkbait

This is absolute genius.  The guys at PurposeInc have dedicated an entire post full of juicy links this week to a bloke they met briefly at a couple of events, because he sent them a box of chocolate brownies.  Just goes to show that the personal touch and a well-thought out gesture can work wonders.  So, well done to Scott Skinger of MountainInsider.com who will probably find that he’s now going to get a lot of new backlinks from other people hoping he’ll send them some brownies as well (BTW Scott, if you’re reading this, I like brownies without walnuts )
Just remember folks, this kind of confectionery-based bribery doesn’t work on everybody.

An Avatar Picture Speaks A Thousand Words

Linda Bustos over at GetElastic.com wrote a couple of great posts about the value of avatar pictures as a tool for personal branding.  This worked as a brilliant piece of Sphinn-bait because so many of the avatars listed belong to active Spinners and I’m sure they were all happy to give the posts a thumbs up.

As a side note, it also prompted me to finally get around to adding an avatar of my own to my Twitter and Sphinn profiles (and I’ll get round to adding it to the rest over the next few days).  I haven’t decided yet if I’ll make that my permanent avatar; I might try out a few different ones over the next week or so and see what gets the most positive feedback.

The too-long-to-read-at-work-so-it’s-on-the-list-for-the-weekend Bit

This week’s award for the best post that I haven’t had time to read all the way through yet goes to Adam Audette from AudetteMedia.com for his very lengthy, very detailed and very, very informative post on SEO-focussed Information Architecture.  Just make sure you’re sitting comfortably and get yourself a cup of coffee before you start reading.

This just in from the Don’t-Fall-For-This Department

David Eaves at SEOCO.co.uk pointed out an article from The Times Online about SEO which stated that “Links to esteemed websites such as the BBC or a national newspaper act as advocates for its content, boosting its ranking with Google.”  Which probably sent a load of Times readers scurrying off to add links to the Beeb on their sites in the hope of improving their own rankings.
Oh dear.

But just in case they know something I don’t…
Here’s a link to the homepage of the glorious British Broadcasting Corporation.

(looks around… checks SERPs… nope, no change… damn.)

The Random Funny Bit

I’m a huge fan of the Fake Steve Jobs Diary and I was especially amused by his post this week about Robert Scoble seeking to be acquired by Microsoft.  As anyone who follows @Scobleizer on Twitter probably noticed this week, he’s been trying out the idea of Tweetvertising for his sponsors like Seagate, so perhaps pimping himself back to “The Borg” isn’t quite so far-fetched after all.

And there you have it.

Enjoy your weekend and remember,
If you can’t be good, be good at it.

So, what’s caught my attention while doing my rounds of all things SEO and bloggy on the web this week?

Well, lots of stuff actually…

Blogging Tips a-go-go

Scott Sweeney’s post comparing the talent and determination of a pro-athlete like Michael Jordan to the requirements of becoming a successful blogger was a really interesting take on the subject and a nicely worked analogy.

While we’re on the subject of successful bloggers, I was really impressed with this post on the 22 Essential Habits Towards Blogging Success.

Of course, there’s always a risk that you could go too far.  Check out James Duthie’s 7 Sure Fire Signs You’re Addicted To Blogging before it’s too late.

Just to help promote a bit of balance though, here’s Jennifer Slegg’s tips for making sure that you don’t end up letting your blog run your life.

SEO Trademark Watch - The many faces of Jason Gambert

Rhea Drysdale and the Scooby Gang tracked a bunch of Jason supporting commenters on a number of different sites back to the same IP address - Jason’s.
Someone give that girl a Scooby Snack.

(And BTW, what is it with people called Jason trying to piss off SEOs?  First there was Calacanis, now this.)

Some (not-so) Light Reading For The Weekend

Aaron Wall’s written a really lengthy and detailed post about estimating the value of top rankings in organic searches.  I’ve only had a chance to briefly skim through the post so far (seriously, it’s like the SEO blogging equivalent of War And Peace) but it’s at the very top of my list of things to read thoroughly over the weekend.

How many posts about Twitter are there in Sphinn??!

More than you can shake a stick at.
This week alone, we’ve had:

How To Make A Small Fortune With Twitter
How I Use Twitter for Headline Examples
Twitter Wrote This Column For Me
Getting the Twitterati to Talk about You
Twitter: I Twink I Twove You
Twitter Secrets Revealed
Twitter: Is it really worth using?
Matt McGee: Twittering for Charity
Twittering For Charity
To Tweet or Not to Tweet? 50+ Links & Tools
7 Things Twitter Can’t Do

And that’s just the stories that have gone hot!  By Thursday every other story on the front page was about Twitter and tempers seemed to be getting a little bit frayed as the tit for tat desphinns started to fly.

I just hope next week brings us more stories that aren’t about Twitter.

By the way, if you want to follow me and my irregularly scheduled silliness on Twitter, hit me up @TheKenJones.

And that’s me done for another week.  Have a great weekend folks and I’ll see you soon.

A little while ago I posted a bunch of Big Dumb Noob SEO Questions, along with their corresponding answers (if I had them) and a couple of really cool SEOs stopped by to help add their answers to the comments as well.

There was one question in particular that I still didn’t feel like I had a satisfactory answer for.  Until now that is…

Why do Yahoo Site Explorer, Webmaster Centre, Google Webmaster Tools and WP-Blog Stats (a really handy plugin - BTW) all show a wide variety of links pointing towards my sight now, but a simple link:www.seopscentre.com query on Google doesn’t return any results at all?

There was a lot of talk about how Google has devalued the link: query as a way of discouraging SEOs from overusing it to investigate the link profiles of competing sites and it only ever returns a very small percentage of the total number of links that Google knows about.
The thing is that what I was really trying to figure out and didn’t seem able to get a definitive answer for was why the link: query returned absolutely no results for my site at all.  I suggested the theory that it might have been because my site was still so new that it may have been “sandboxed” and decided that I would just be patient and wait for the next time Google did an update of the Toolbar PageRank display to see if there would be a connection between the two events.

Then, yesterday Google updated TPR and my little green bar lit up so I figured it’d be a good time to check my theory about whether or not Google would now give me a response to a link: query.

Lo and behold!  Now if I Google link:www.seopscentre.com it gives me a response.  The number of links it shows is considerably lower than the number of links that I know are pointing towards my site (much less than 10% in fact) but that’s to be expected.  What I have noticed about all of the linking pages that it does show for me is that (as far as I can tell by using Joost’s Link Analysis plugin for Firefox and cross referencing them with the links shown in Webmaster tools) all the links that are shown in the link: query results are “followed” links and appear to be passing PageRank.

Now, I realise that one single site isn’t exactly a large enough sample to qualify as a definitive SEO experiment, but I don’t think anyone can argue that it’s mere coincidence that Google has started showing results on link: queries for this site on the exact same day that their latest update gave the site a Toolbar PageRank display for the very first time.  I intend to keep track of the results for this site and I also have a couple of other new sites I’ve been working on that are just about to go live, so I’ll be able to record and compare what happens with them when the next PageRank update occurs as well.  Still not the hugest sample ever, but at least I’ll be able to apply the observe, evaluate, re-test (lather, rinse, repeat) principles to trying to figure this out.

I’d be very interested to hear from anyone else who has started a new site and noticed the same phenomenon.  Has Google suddenly started giving you results for a link: query on your site now that the latest update has gone through?

It’s also got me wondering about a few other things as well.
For instance, does this mean I’m officially out of the “sandbox” now?  I’ll have to keep a close eye on my SERP appearances and rankings to see if there’s any discernible upswing.
If my TPR increases in the next update will the number/percentage of links that Google shows rise as well?  I’ll have to keep track of these figures on a regular basis for the next few months to get a proper idea about that one.

Does any of this matter any way?  Should I just forget all this malarkey and carry on trying to build up quality content in my site and earning more links from valuable sources without getting bogged down in the minutia of silly little details like this?

Probably, yes.

But it’s still interesting to try and get a handle on this stuff and I wouldn’t be sticking to the whole “Learning by Doing” motto if I didn’t try.

This is just a quick post today, I’ll be carrying on with the Beginner’s Guide to SEO for WordPress later this week.  This is just one of those impromptu posts that interrupts our regularly scheduled broadcast, like a Breaking News Flash in blog form.

If you pay any attention to such things, you can’t have failed to notice that there’s been a lot of talk in SEO circles today about the latest round of updates from Google to the PageRank that it displays in the Google Toolbar.

Most, if not all, serious SEOs will tell you that this little green bar is basically meaningless; displaying an overly simplified (and occasionally manipulated) approximation of the actual Internal PageRank value that the Big G uses as part of its calculations to determine a page’s placement within the SERPs.
As Matt McGee points out,

much like WWE Wrestling and the sports betting lines published in your daily paper, Toolbar PageRank exists for entertainment purposes only.

So, we all know that TPR doesn’t reallymean anything significant, but that won’t stop thousands, or even millions, of webmasters the world over rushing to check out their sites today to see what Google is saying about them.

And I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’m one of them.
I know I shouldn’t take any notice of it.
I know I ought to be more interested in reviewing “proper” metrics like inbound links, pageviews and SERP rankings.
I know it really doesn’t matter.

But that didn’t stop me from getting a little tingle of excitement when I got home from work and noticed that when I went to my site, the little bar that had been plain old grey earlier this afternoon now had a teeny tiny little bit of green in it.

Sure, Google only wants to give me 1/10, but considering the fact that this site hasn’t quite reached its two month-iversary yet, that still feels like a minor achievement.  It’s not much, but it’s a start and it makes me feel like things are moving in the right direction.  Now I just have to keep going.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.
And I promise I won’t mention Toolbar PageRank again.  At least not until the next update

Time for a round-up of some of my favourite things on t’internet this week.  I’ll be trying to make this a regular weekly thing from now on, but I’m making no promises if I miss one from time to time.

Let’s start with a bit of shameless self-promotion

I did my first guest post this week on SEO-Scoop so, naturally, I want everybody to go over there and read my delightful tale of Dr. Strangelink, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Googlebomb.  But then come back and read the rest of this.

Hot pics of teenage (SEO-)Chicks!

Taking her inspiration from my SEO is like High School post, LisaD has gathered up some snapshots of the SEO-Chicks from their high school years and has now started a High School Meme to try and get other SEO bloggers to do the same.  And she’s tagged me for it.  Damn you Ditlefsen!  Now I’m gonna have to go digging around looking for pictures from an era I’d just as soon forget (I was a FAT kid) and I’ll have to finally get round to sorting out avatar pics for Sphinn, Twitter etc (just to prove that I’m not fat anymore )

While we’re on the subject of linkbait

Jane and Rand from SEOmoz managed to RickRoll the internet with their post about Google Onebox results that should be, but aren’t, real.  Once you’ve checked out the original post and finished chuckling about the things Rick Astley would never do, have a look at Jane’s follow-up post to see just what the effects of a truly successful piece of linkbait look like.  Makes my SEO High School post look positively wimpy by comparison.

Darren Rowse - ProSpeedBlogger

Darren’s come up with a rather novel challenge for himself.  He’s collected a bunch of questions from his followers on Twitter and over the next couple of days will be answering them all, with the self-imposed limitation of only being able to spend 3 minutes writing each reply.
PS It’s his birthday on Sunday, so Happy Birthday Darren!

How to spot a Real SEO

John Carcutt gives a really funny and (seemingly) accurate list of 14 Things You Didn’t Know About Real SEOs.  Seems like I manage to tick most of the boxes, but I had no idea about the SEO Sex Tape.  Still I’m new, so there’s still time to find out ;-).

Not at all search-related, but just plain funny

Last Sunday was 20/04/08 to those of us in parts of the world that drive on the correct (i.e. left-hand) side of the road, but to our American-style date-formatting brethren that means it was 4/20 and that’s kind of a big deal to a certain (*cough cough*) segment of the community.
The Funny or Die Blog posted their (anonymous) celebrations of 4/20 and @ShoeMoney Twittered the link for this BOTW collection of 4/20 related Top 10s.
Snootch to tha mutha-fuggin’ nootch!

Enjoy your weekend kids.

I’ve seen a few posts recently (and a number of rants by @sugarrae on Twitter) which suggest that people who are in the field of Search Engine Optimization should stop calling themselves SEOs and start referring to themselves as Internet Marketers or something similar to denote the fact that working effectively in this area goes way beyond simply trying to improve organic search listings, and optimizing sites for search visibility is just one facet of an overall whole.

Now, far be it for me, the new boy, to get heavily embroiled in a debate over semantics, but anyone who knows me knows that I’m always up for some antics (d’you see what I did there?), so here’s my tuppence worth (which with current exchange rates is probably about a nickel, but let’s just call it my two cents and move on):

I don’t want to be called an SEO

I don’t Optimize Search Engines.  That’s what Matt Cutts and the rest of the algorithm-tweakers in the Googleplex do.  If anyone deserves to be called Search Engine Optimizers, it’s them (and the corresponding teams at Yahoo! and Live Search, etc; I wouldn’t want them to feel left out).
That’s not what I do.  It’s not something I’ll ever do.  It’s not something that anyone who actually calls themselves an SEO will ever do.
Are you starting to get the point yet?

Sure we optimize websites in order for them to be more appealing to search engine ranking algorithms, but if you tried to put that on your business card then you might as well also tell people that you were educated at the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too.
SEO is a catchy marketing title.  It should be; it was created by marketers for marketers.

But it’s not what we actually do.

So, come on then smart-arse.  What do you suggest?

Glad you asked.

For my own part, the majority of my efforts go towards making sure that I can drive the right kind of traffic to a website.
It’s not about gaming the system to rank for loads of vaguely related keywords.  It’s about finding and targeting the right terms and phrases to bring in visitors that will actually convert into valuable customers.  Just take a look at Seth Godin’s post on Silly Traffic to see more about why you’re better off making sure that you focus on keeping the attention of the right kind of visitors rather than simply trying to pull in as many eyeballs as possible.
Sure, if you’re just some spammer pushing your rubbishy MFA site full of overloaded affiliate ads, then you can go ahead and optimize the hell out of a few thousand pages of carelessly constructed crap.
But if you’re serious about driving quality, qualified traffic to (and through) a quality site, then what you are really trying to do is Optimize your Search Relevancy.

Relevancy is a two way street

Don’t just focus on convincing Google that you’re the most relevant site for a particular keyword.
Focus on making sure that your search engine referrals are bringing you visitors that are relevant to you and to the goals of your site.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re working on a site for a basket weaver who wants to sell his amazing range of lovingly handcrafted wicker baskets on a shiny new website.
Do you want to fill your pages up with stemmed variations like, Basket Weaving, Basketry, Making Baskets etc?
Or will you gain a greater amount of relevant traffic from visitors who are actually interested in buying his baskets by focusing on terms that you’ve identified as representing searchers who are in a “buy cycle” and drawing them into your site?  Terms like, Woven Baskets, Handmade Wicker Baskets and so on.

Well, duh!  Seems pretty obvious when you put it like that doesn’t it?  And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there isn’t value to be gained in aiming for a range of phrases right across the whole of the sales funnel.  What I am getting at is that it’s important to not simply drop a seed phrase into a keyword tool and then fill your site with useless variations that are going to end up placing you at the top of the SERPs for queries that don’t serve any beneficial purpose to you or your site’s goals.

If you do that, you won’t only be wasting your time and energy, you’ll also be wasting the time and energy of the searchers and if they are disappointed by finding an irrelevant page to their research-phase query, you risk putting them off clicking through to your site when it turns up in the SERPs for the query they make once they reach their buying-phase.

You don’t just have to find out what words people are searching for.
You have to understand what they mean and consequently what they are searching for when they use those words.

Don’t let the long-tail wag the dog

It’s all well and good discovering that “wicker baskets with blue flowers embroidered around the top” has a juicy KEI and should be easy to rank for, but if all you sell are baskets with purple flower embroidery then it’s not worth the effort.  At least not until after you’ve had a word with the weaver and told him to switch to blue flowers.
But until your site has something of relevant value to the blue flower searchers out there no-one’s going to benefit from you trying to optimize for that long-tail term.

Semantic Irony

But hang on a second there, Ken.  If you’re ranting about not being called an SEO and wanting to focus on Search Relevancy Optimization instead, why are you blogging about Search Engine Optimization on a site that has SEO in the name?

Simple.  While I may be one of the (increasing number of) people who realises that Search Engine Optimization is technically an incorrect description of the nature of this work, most people out there are still perfectly happy to use the term SEO and I see no reason to go around beating them over the head with a stick and telling them they’re wrong.
More people will search for SEO and its related terms and if I want to provide relevant content on my site and draw relevant visitors to it, that means using the language of the searchers.  That’s the whole point of Search Relevancy Optimization.

Besides, if I can start positioning myself as an SRO now, maybe I’ll be able to avoid getting hassled by Jason Gambert for using the term SEO.  Either that or we all just need to buckle up and get ready for when he sends a Cease and Desist letter to half the Internet ;-).

So, what about the rest of you?  What do you say when someone asks what you do?

Do you tell them you’re an SEO?  And then spend half an hour explaining what that means?

Do you say you’re in Internet Marketing?  And then spend half an hour listening to them tell you how annoying they find all those ads on their MySpace profile?

Do you tell people you’re a spammer?  And then duck?

Or is there some other description that you feel sums up what you do better than any of these?

I’ve been posting on this blog for a couple of months now and I feel like I’ve really learned a lot about SEO during that time (obviously I still have a hell of a lot more to learn, but that’s the whole point of SEOpCentre).

I’ve had to find answers to a lot of pretty basic questions over the last month or so but there are plenty more that remain unanswered.  I’ve got a feeling that some of these questions might seem really simple and obvious to most of the experienced SEOs out there, but they’re things that I’ve found myself wondering about at various points since I began blogging about learning SEO.  They may even be so basic that everyone else out there just takes them for granted and all I’m doing is showing what a Big Dumb Noob I am for even having to ask.

Among this list are some of these questions.  Where I’ve already found the answer to a question, I’ll give it in italics.  If I haven’t yet been able to answer a question, I hope that some of the more experienced SEOs out there will share their knowledge in the comments.

If you’re trying to learn about SEO and there’s a simple question that you haven’t been able to answer yet then add that to the comments too and maybe someone will be able to answer that for you as well.
I’ll try to update this post with any answers we get and include a citation of the sources.

To get the ball rolling here’s one that I don’t understand yet:

Why do Yahoo Site Explorer, Webmaster Centre, Google Webmaster Tools and WP-Blog Stats (a really handy plugin - BTW) all show a wide variety of links pointing towards my sight now, but a simple link:www.seopscentre.com query on Google doesn’t return any results at all?

I really don’t get this one.  Does it just take time for Google to feel like giving me an answer?  Has it got something to do with the whole Main Index/Supplemental Index thing?   Is this part of the “sandbox” effect?  Am I just doing something wrong?

Update 1.0:  Frank from fhmedia.dk and Michael Martinez from SEO-Theory both offered their takes on this one (you can read their full comments below).  They both pointed out that Google have deliberately limited the results returned by the link: query in an effort to prevent SEOs from hammering their system with queries to try and check competitors’ link profiles.
Michael went on further to explain that, “The Webmaster Tools link reports are completely useless because they… don’t distinguish between links that pass value (links from pages in the Main Web Index) and links that don’t pass value (links from pages in the Supplemental Results Index).” which actually reminded me of another question that’s been on my mind…

Update 1.1:  At the risk of making myself sound like the Michael Martinez fan club, I’ve just read a new post on his blog that gives a lot of useful tips about how to effectively use query commands for gathering SEO data and it really deserves another link.

How can I tell whether a page is in the main or supplemental index?  And does it still matter?

I’ve seen a lot of talk about “Supplemental Result Index Hell” and, as Michael points out, links from supplemental pages don’t pass value, but since last summer Google have stopped labeling which results in the SERPs come from the supplemental index and have claimed that the distinctions between the supplemental and main index are “continuing to narrow.”  I’ve done a bit of hunting around and the clearest explanation I’ve been able to find is a post by Jim Boykin about How to Find if a Page is in Google’s Secret Supplemental Results.  Jim’s post is from around the same time last year when Google made the change and I’m still wondering whether anyone’s come up with a more precise method to find a definitive answer to the index status of a page.

Should I use rel=nofollow on strategic internal links to try and “sculpt” my pagerank towards my more important pages?

There seem to be two sides to this debate and I’m not entirely sure where i on fall on this one yet (my site’s still so new that Google won’t give me any indication of what my pagerank is, so it’s kind of hard to speak from personal experience on this one yet).
On the one hand I can understand the point of view that there’s not really any point trying to push the ranking of your about page or your login screen.  Plus, all those pretty pictures of buckets full of link juice can be quite convincing.
On the other hand I can see a lot of sense in the opposing arguments (mostly from Michael Martinez of SEO-Theory) that since there’s no way to know what your actual pagerank is (and we all know that the little green bar is largely meaningless) there is no way of effectively measuring your pagerank sculpting efforts in the first place.
The jury’s still out on this one.  Maybe once the Big G sees fit to light up my little green bar I’ll have a better idea of where I sit, but for now I think I’ll stick with a simple rel=nocomment ;-).

Update 2:  Michael weighed in on this one as well, saying, “As far as NoFollow on internal links go, using it only hurts a Web site’s search visibility. Any site whose “About Us” page comes up for something other than “About X” and related queries is badly optimized. The correct solution for such problems is to properly optimize the site, not to “sculpt PageRank”.”  You can read the rest of Michael’s comment below and I’d also recommend having a read of a few of his other posts about SEO Myths.
I think I’m definitely leaning more towards Michael’s point of view on PR-sculpting, mainly because he presents his case logically and far more scientifically than the more simplified arguments generally given in favour of PageRank sculpting theories.
Hmm, if only there was some way for me to comment-bait some of my other SEO-heroes into coming here and adding their opinions into the mix…

Should I put advertising on my blog?

So far, I’ve chosen not to.  At the moment I’m not even sure if I ever will put ads up on here.  I’m still just trying to establish this site and build up both my content and my readership and I don’t really want to let concerns over ad revenues get in the way of either of those things right now.  I’m not saying never ever, just not yet.  And if and when I do decide to place ads on SEOpsCentre I’d prefer to be selective about using affiliate ads for relevant SEO training providers rather than just covering the site with AdSense widgets.
As far as advice for anyone else starting a new blog goes, you need to ask yourself, “Will my audience (if you’ve even got one yet) benefit from what I’m advertising?  Or will it put people off visiting my site if they feel it’s covered in more adverts than a NASCAR winner?”

Is SexySEO real?

I’d certainly like to think so.  mmm

Now it’s over to you guys.
If you’re new to blogging and there’s a question that you’re struggling to find the answer for, ask it in the comments.  If I can help I will.
And if you’re an experienced SEO who knows the answers to these question please share your knowledge with us.  With any luck, it’ll mean one less dumb noob question that you’ll get in an email.  And if there are any questions that you regularly get asked by SEO noobs and you’re sick of having to answer them all the time, why not throw those into the mix as well?  You never know; the time you save may just be your own.

PS  I’ve just scored a Guest Blogger Post over on SEO-Scoop (thanks Donna) so if you’ve found your way here after reading my post on there, then Welcome.  Feel free to poke around and check out some of my other posts and if you like what you see don’t forget to hit the big orange button up at the top of the sidebar on the right so that you can get the RSS feed delivered direct to your favourite news reader.

PPS  If you feel like referencing this post in your own blog, feel free to use the phrase Big Dumb Noob in your anchor text.  You can even make it Ken Jones is a Big Dumb Noob if you like.  I won’t mind.  Really.  In fact I think it’d be kind of funny if I end up ranking for that term :-).

Big Dumb Update:  I checked my rankings for a few key terms this afternoon.  I’m hardly setting the SERPs alight just yet, but I am number 1 in Google for Big Dumb Noob.  Is it wrong that I feel oddly proud of that?

If you’re just starting in SEO and trying to learn as much as you can about Search Engine Optimization, your budget is probably going to be very limited (or perhaps even non-existent) but that doesn’t mean that you can’t gain access to some of the most useful SEO tools around.

Sure, there are more advanced tools out there if you’re willing and able to pay for them or, better still, if you have the resources and skills to create custom tools for yourself, but if you’re just starting out these free tools will give you more than enough information to help build your skills and understanding of important SEO-metrics.

If you end up doing so well that you can afford to shell out for better tools, that’s great.  If you can afford to get your own custom tools developed, that’s even better.  But you won’t notice the real benefits of expensive solutions like that until you’ve learned the basics from using free SEO tools like these.

So, what are you waiting for?
Check out this list of great SEO tools and go get ‘em!

1. Firefox- The web-browsers’ web-browser.  No SEO should be without it.  Firefox is free, flexible and can be extended by adding the plugins mentioned below in order to become an incredibly powerful tool for gathering SEO information. 
   I’ll admit, I tend to use IE for my day to day surfing (simply out of habit as I’ve been using it for years and I’m used to it’s particular quirks - I also feel that it’s a good idea to use it because it’s the default browser for so many people out there, which means it’s worth seeing sites the way everyone else does).  Don’t be a browser snob just because Firefox does so much more for you and does it better - Use FF when you need the SEO tools and other useful tidbits, but spend some time surfing with IE as well; most users aren’t as savvy as you are, try to see the world wide web from their perspective, at least for a little while.
2. SEObook’s Free Tools- Aaron Wall has created and made available some fantastic free SEO tools and he always provides really clear and helpful write ups on how to install them and get the most out of using the tools - my particular favorites are the SEO for Firefox plugin and the recently released Rank Checker tool which allows you to check a website’s rank in the big 3 search engines for your chosen keywords and provides a myriad of options to tailor it to your own needs and regional search engine preferences.
3. Joost DeValk’s SEO Tools- Joost makes some great plugins for WordPress and some brilliant SEO tools for Firefox as well.  Personal favorite here is his link analyzer, which will add information about pagerank, anchor text and rel=nofollow status for links to your site in analytics packages like Google Analytics or Yahoo Site Explorer.  Very useful indeed.
4. Keyword Research Tools
   - SEObook- Throwing some more link love Aaron’s way, the SEObook keyword tool will run checks across a variety of search engines for you and present you with a table full of results with loads of information that as a beginner you probably didn’t even realise was important.  Drink it all in, getting your head around this sort of detailed information about your targetted keywords is what it’s all about.
   - Google Keyword Tool- The data you’ll get from Google’s own tool isn’t quite as expansive as you’d find with some of the others and is focussed more towards use when setting up PPC AdWords campaigns, but it can be helpful when you’re in need of some quick comparisons of relative search volumes or if you want to get an idea of how competitive a particular keyword may be, based on the amount of advertising competition shown.
   - Wordtracker’s Free Tool- Wordtracker don’t give a lot away with their free tool, because they’d prefer you to pay for access to their excellent full tool, which can be bought fairly cheaply for very short-term access.  In fact Wordtracker’s full tool is one of the few premium tools out there that I would suggest paying for during the early stages of practicing SEO, but only for those occasions when you really need it.
5. Google Toolbar- If you haven’t installed this for both of your web-browsers (you are using IE and Firefox now, aren’t you?) go and get it now.  If you want to be really thorough you can also add toolbars from Yahoo! and MS Live Search, but you could end up suffering from toolbar overload and covering up most of the visible area of your browser window.  I tend to just keep the other two toolbars switched off and only turn them on if I really need to check something for that particular search engine.
6. Search Engines’ Webmaster Tools and Analytics Packages
   I’ve heard a few more experienced SEOs suggest that you should stay as far away as possible from search engines’ own analytics packages on the basis that you don’t want to be sharing all that sensitive information with “the enemy.”  Perhaps it’s because I’m new at this, or because I’m determined to try and keep my hat as white as possible, but I fail to see the logic of that argument.  If Google and the other search engines want to give me an easy way to see how well they’re indexing my site and make sure that they can find my sitemap, why shouldn’t I use it?  Granted, none of these options could be described as a complete solution in and of itself, but surely it’s better to have this information and not need it than to need this information and not have it?
   - Google Webmaster Tools - Lets you “suggest” various preferences to the Big G in terms of things like crawl rates, preferred domains and geographical targets but features their typically fuzzy worded statements about how effective this may be; in other words Google will still make up their own mind about how to treat your site, regardless of what you ask them to do.  Data presented about incoming links from external sites can be useful, but always tends to lag a few days (or even weeks) behind the real world and doesn’t give a full count even when it does update.  Will also let you see some (but not all) of the search queries for which your site has appeared in the SERPs and which ones resulted in clicks through to your site.
   - Yahoo! Site Explorer - A much better way of checking links to your site, especially if you’re using Firefox with Joost’s Link Analysis plugin; this will enable you to see whether the incoming links are passing pagerank (and the PR of the linking page) as well as the anchor text used on the page.  Very useful to know.
   - MS Live Search Webmaster Centre - They don’t give a lot of information away here; just ten inbound and outbound links, which they say are “performing the best” but it’s unclear how they rate that performance and they seem to just pick the links at random.  Live search can take a good while longer to fully index your site than the other engines.  Give them a helping hand by pointing them in the direction of your sitemap, then drop by occasionally to check how many of your pages have been indexed.
   - Google Analytics - This one is really useful when you’re building up your site and starting to get traffic coming through.  Enables you to see a whole load of information about your visitors, from referring sites, depth of visit, geographical locations, browser types and more.  Much easier than trying to divine this sort of knowledge from your server logs and a great way to gain a better understanding of how well your site’s being recieved.  Doubtless there are better ways to analyze your site’s statistics, but until you can afford to pay for them, this is top dog.
   - WP-Stats- Recently added to the ever-growing list of must-have WordPress plugins, WP-Stats is Automatic’s (the company behind WordPress) own way of getting statistics about your blog’s performance.  It’s far from the most detailed information in the world, but it highlights the important things like number of visits, their sources, even search terms that brought people to your blog and it puts it all into an easy to understand format on your WordPress Admin Dashboard.  Great for at-a-glance updates before you go digging into Google Analytics for more details.
7. SEOmoz’s SEO Tools - Rand Fishkin and the gang over at SEOmoz have put together a really handy collection of toys.  To get the full benefit you’ll need to sign up for their Pro-membership package, but there’s still plenty of things you can do with their free tools.  The Page Strength tool is great for getting a quick overview of a wide variety of ranking factors for your chosen URL and although the free tools have a daily limit on the number of times you can use them before you have to sign up for a premium account, I would recommend trying out the various tools on offer so that you can build up your understanding of the sort of factors that you need to consider when optimizing a site for search engine rankings.
8. Bruce Clay’s Free Trial SEO ToolSet - Much like the SEOmoz tools, Bruce Clay’s SEO ToolSet is primarily designed to be used as a premium, paid-for, product by more experienced SEOs but they also allow for a limited, free-trial access.  The tools available here can provide you with a wealth of information, but in my opinion you’d be better off waiting until you’ve gained a greater understanding of SEO-metrics from some of the simpler, more easily accessible SEO tools out there before delving into more advanced tools like these.

I’m sure there are plenty of other free SEO Tools out there that I’ve neglected to mention, these just happen to be a few of my personal favourites and are the ones that I use most regularly.  Also, this post was getting dangerously close to turning into a top 10 list and you know I’m not a fan of them.

If there are any tools that you think I’ve missed and that would be useful for people just starting to learn about SEO then feel free to comment with a link to your recommendations.  If I get enough (any) good suggestions, I’ll update this post to include them and give credit to the person who pointed it out.

 Update (before I actually post):  Before I finished this post and published it I decided to ask the Twitterverse if they had any recommendations for useful, free SEO Tools and got a response within a couple of minutes.
So, props to @BarryBowman of Search Engine News for reminding me about Google’s Website Optimizer.  As Barry says,

I highly recommend Google Optimizer for conducting A/B and Multivariate testing. 1% to 2% can be a dramatic increase to your bottom line!

@SpostareDuro was quick off the mark as well, with links for Alexa.com which can be useful for comparing your site’s rating against your competitors and other, similar sites.
I also want to point out her post about Keyword Research Tools.  She links to a few extra tools that I’ve missed off my list and explains in a bit more detail about what some of these tools can help you find out.

 Update 2:  Bill Slawski from SEO By The Sea dropped by and recommended a really useful tool for checking links.  It’s called Xenu Link Sleuth and it’s great for checking your site’s internal linking structure and outbound links to make sure you don’t have any broken links that search engines may frown upon when spidering your site.  Very handy for performing regular health-checks on your site, especially as it grows and find yourself with a large number of pages and links to look after.
Thanks for the tip Bill.

You’re on the home straight now.

You’ve made it to the Third and Final Stage of Installing a WordPress Blog.  You should have already been through Stage 1: Preparation and Stage 2: Uploading.  The tricky stuff is out of the way and all that’s left for you to do now is to complete the initialization of your new blog and set up your first user account.  Then the fun really begins.

• Run the WordPress Installation script by going to:
  http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/install.php(Or, if you chose to put your blog in a sub-directory of your main site, called Blog for example, then the address would be:
  http://www.yourdomainname.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php )
• The page you arrive at will ask you to enter a title for your blog.  You should have worked out what you want this to be by now, but you can always just use your domain name for the time being and change it later if you come up with a better idea.
  You’ll also need to enter an email address.
  This will be the email address assigned to the admin username, so I would recommend using one of your secondary email addresses at this point, as you’ll probably want to use your primary email for your own user profile, which you’ll use most of the time and will be setting up in a few moments.
• Make sure that there is a tick in the checkbox to “Allow my site to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati.”  (After all, if you didn’t want to be visible to search engines, you probably wouldn’t be reading this in the first place.)
  Now click the big button marked Install WordPress >> and let the magic happen.
• You should now see a page telling you that WordPress has successfully been installed (if it hasn’t, check out WordPress’ Installation FAQ to try and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it).
• Make a note of the user details WordPress gives you.  This will be for the username admin and will have a randomly generated password.
• Use these login details to access you new blog’s Administration Panel, by logging in at
  http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-login.php (or blah,blah,blah/blog/wp-login.php if you installed in a sub-directory, but I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now).
• First thing to do now that you’re logged in is to head into the Users section of the Administation Panel.  Unsurprisingly, this is when you control all of the user account details for your blog.
  Start by changing the password for the default admin username (make sure that it’s something that can’t be easily guessed or broken).
  Then set up a new user account for yourself.  This will be the one that you use on a day to day basis for your blog.  Make sure that you set yourself up as an Administrator as well.
• Now log out of the admin user account and log back in with your own username.  If you plan to have other people write on the blog as well set up user accounts for them too.  You don’t need to give them full Administrator rights, Editor or Author-level access will do.
• Next up, go into the Settings area and into the section called Permalinks.  Having a search engine friendly permalink structure can provide a welcome boost to your visibility and getting this setting in place now, before you start adding content to your blog will save on complications later.
  Select the custom structure radio button and enter the values for the way you want your post’s URL to look.  For this blog I’ve gone with /%category%/%postname%/ and would recommend this as a good way to make sure that you keyword targetted category names and post titles are given pride of place.  But whatever you do, don’t do this.
• One last thing to do for now is to switch on the Akismet spam filter that is automatically included with your WordPress installation.  There’s nothing on your blog yet, so you probably won’t be getting much spam anyway, but sorting this out now, saves worrying about it later.
  Just go into the Plugins section and you’ll see a list of available plugins waiting to be activated.  At this point there will only be Akismet and something called Hello Dolly, which is just a bit of randomness included by one of WP’s creators and you’ll probably not want to switch that on (but maybe I’m wrong ).  I’ll cover plugins in more detail in a later post, including a list of some of the most essential plugins to use if you’re practicing Search Engine Optimization.
  In order to activate Akismet you’ll need to have a WordPress API Key, which you can get by setting up an account at WordPress.com.  You’ll also need the API Key to activate the WP-Stats plugin (which is one of the ones I’m planning to include in the upcoming post about WordPress plugins).

So that’s it.  We’re all done now with installing WordPress and configuring the main details.  If you want to learn more about the things you can do in the WordPress Administration Panel head over to this page on the WordPress Codex.
But there’s still plenty more to do before you’re totally ready to go and start blogging.
Two of the most important things left to cover are Plugins to extend WordPress’ functionality and Themes, which change the way your blog will look.

Each of these are very important and deserve their own posts.  Come back soon for the Plugins post, which will be followed by the post about how to add themes to your WordPress blog.

Welcome to Part 2 of the 3 part series: Installing WordPress Is Easy.

If you haven’t read Part 1: Preparation yet, head over there now and make sure that you’ve taken care of all the things you need to do get ready to upload the WordPress software to your webserver.

Ready?  Okay, let’s get going.

• First up, you need to unzip the WordPress folder that you downloaded from wordpress.org.
  Using Windows Explorer you just double-click the zipped folder to open it,
  Click on the WordPress folder,
  Then click Extract all files.
  The Windows Extraction Wizard will guide you through the steps to unzip the WordPress files and place them in a new folder on your computer.
• Now you need to update some of the information in the WordPress config file so that it will be able to connect to your database.
  Open the newly unzipped WordPress folder and locate a file called wp-config-sample.php
  Rename the file wp-config.php and open it with a text editor such as Notepad (right-click, select Open With and choose Notepad).
  Look through the file for the following section of text (Hint: It’s right at the top):
  // ** MySQL settings ** //
  define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’);    // The name of the database
  define(’DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere’);     // Your MySQL username
  define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere’); // …and password
  define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);    // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
  define(’DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
  define(’DB_COLLATE’, ”);
  This is where you need to put the database information that you noted down during Stage 1.
  NOTE:  Although it says there is a “99% chance you won’t need to change this value” if your webhost gave you a hostname for your database when you set it up (for example- db1234567890.yourwebhost.com) then you should replace localhost with that information.
  Leave the DB_CHARSET and DB_COLLATE lines as they are,
  Save the file to confirm these changes and you’re ready to move on to the next step.
• Now it’s time to upload the WordPress files to your webserver.
  If you already have a favorite ftp program that you’re comfortable using to upload files, go ahead and load them to your webspace.
  If you don’t have a separate ftp program don’t worry, you can use Internet Explorer.
  Just open a new IE window and, in the address bar, type ftp.yourdomainname.com then press return,
  When prompted, enter the ftp username and password details that you noted down during Stage 1 and you will be taken to a page listing all the folders currently saved in your webspace.
  Now click Page (on the IE status bar) and then click on Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer.
  This will open up a new Windows Explorer window for you and it’s now just a matter of copying all the files from inside the WordPress folder on your computer and pasting them into the appropriate directory folder on your webspace.
  REMEMBER:  If you want your WordPress blog to be your whole site and to be accessible directly from www.yourdomainname.com then DO NOT copy and paste the WordPress folder itself.  You have to open the folder then select all of the sub-folders and files inside and copy and paste those into the directory folder on your webspace.
  If you do copy the whole WordPress folder and place that into the folder for your site on your webspace you’ll end up with your blog appearing at www.yourdomainname.com/wordpress.
  If you plan to have your blog at www.yourdomainname.com/blog just rename the WordPress folder and call it Blog before you copy it over to your webspace.
  Uploading these files shouldn’t take very long (depending on your connection speed) and then you’re done.
• Pat yourself on the back, go and make a cup of coffee and get ready for Stage 3 - Configuring Your New WordPress Blog.