Using Google Advanced Search to diagnose your website

Using Google itself, with knowledge of some of the advanced search features, will enable you to achieve an insight into your own site in regards to SEO.

Firstly, check to ensure that your site is free from any filtering issues by using: search [yourdomain.com] in Google; if your sites comes up #1 for this query, you are doing alright. If you see other sites mentioning your domain ranked first, that could be a bad sign.

Next, check for duplicate content problems. Search for a pretty long extract of text from your site (exact match, i.e. in quotes). Blogs, for example, have a good chance of seeing the category page (summarising the post) instead of the corresponding post page.

Determine how many links or URLs from your site have actually been indexed by Google by using: search [site:yourdomain.com] and then “dig deeper” into the search results by searching [site:yourdomain.com/subdirectory1] and then, [site:yourdomain.com/subdirectory2] and so on, as the “deeper” you dig, the accuracy increases.

It is worthwhile checking to see if your site has canonical problems where a non-www. url reference may be listed, if you had determined to focus on www. displaying primarily. Do this by searching [site:yourdomain.com -inurl:www] and see if any non-www URLs are picked up.

The following are search queries to use in identifying the more powerful pages of your site:
[www site:yourdomain.com]
[tld site:yourdomain.tld]
[inurl:domain site:yourdomain.com]
[domain site:yourdomain.com]

Leading on from this, you can then identify the most powerful pages of your website (keyword-dependent) by using the search query: [site:yourdomain.com inanchor:keyword]

To then determine sites with the most potential for promotional opportunity use:
[site:yourdomain.com inanchor:”key * word”]
[site:yourdomain.com intitle:”key * phrase”]

To assist you to find the most relevant pages of your site, lending them to additional promotion for a specified term use the search query [site:yourdomain.com keyword] or [site:yourdomain.com key * phrase].

Crawl and index frequency by Google can be determined using the search query [site:yourdomain.com] then play around with “date range” advanced search option.

Check who, and also what, your site is associated with in the SERPs by using the search query [related:yourdomain.com]. This will help to identify your site co-citation, or who your promoters also link to as well.

Review your competition's backlinks by using the link domain command. [linkdomain:competitor.com -site:competitor.com]

To narrow this down further and to see who links to all of the competitors you're targeting, you can use a search query such as: [linkdomain:competitor1.com linkdomain:competitor2.com linkdomain:competitor3.com].

Probably worth refining this query to exclude your own site to something like: [linkdomain:competitor1.com linkdomain:competitor2.com linkdomain:competitor3.com -linkdomain:yoursite.com].

Twitter Tools, Clients, Plug-ins and Analytics

Twitter Clients

TweetDeck
http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
Sleek Adobe Air desktop client for Twitter offering a good overview with several panes.

twhirl
The social software client
http://www.twhirl.org/
One of the more popular Twitter clients.

Spaz: An Open-Source Twitter Client for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux
http://funkatron.com/spaz
Cross platform open source Twitter client.

Hahlo
http://hahlo.com/resources/
Web based iPhone (and iPod Touch) optimized Twitter app.

Twinkle - New iPhone Twitter Client Uses Locate Me Features!
Just Another iPhone Blog
http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/04/09/twinkle-new-iphone-twitter-client-uses-locate-me-features/
Twitter client for the iPhone that allows you to socialize with people near you. Great for conferences it seems.

Twobile: A Twitter client for Windows Mobile - Download Squad
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/04/02/twobile-a-twitter-client-for-windows-mobile/
Twitter client for Windows mobile powered mobile phones. Most smartphones other than iPhone, Blackberry and Google Phone use Widows Mobile.

Misc. Twitter Tools

Twellow :: Twitter Search Directory, Twitter Search Engine
http://www.twellow.com/
Twellow is the “Yellow Pages” of Twitter.

iTweet 2 : Web
http://itweet.net/web/
This is an alternative web based interface for Twitter and indeed it’s a little more usable than the default one, for instance it offers one click retweets and makes bio links clickable etc.

TwitterCounter: How popular are you on Twitter?
http://twittercounter.com/
This is a Twitter followers counter similar to the Feedburner count for blog subscribers.

Magpie: Make Money on Twitter
http://mashable.com/2008/10/31/magpie/
Magpie is an ad-network for Twitter. It boast that users can make something like 50 to 200$ a month just by tweeting.

About crowdstatus :: Crowdstatus.com
http://crowdstatus.com/about.aspx
This tool allows you to create address groups of people at Twitter and notify all of them at once.


Twitter WordPress Plugins

Twitter for WordPress - Rick’s HideOut
http://rick.jinlabs.com/code/twitter/
Very basic but unobtrusive way of including your Tweets in your WordPress blog.

Wordpress Twitter Widget
http://xavisys.com/2008/04/wordpress-twitter-widget/
Clean and simple Twitter widget for the WordPress sidebar.


WP to Twitter
Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/wp-to-twitter/
Twitter updater plugin using the Cli.gs short URL service for tweeting your posts.

Adnan`s Crazy Blogging World » Blog Archive » My blog gets twitterized
http://kadnan.com/blog/2007/11/12/my-blog-gets-twitterized/
Basic and quite ugly but very popular Twitter plugin many bloggers use, even TechCrunch.

AJAX Twitter plugin for Wordpress
http://kish.in/ajax-wordpress-twitter-plugin/
Advanced AJAX powered widget for your blog not only displaying tweets but letting you send updates from your blog.

Twitter Updater » Fireside Media Development Blog
http://www.firesidemedia.net/dev/software/wordpress/twitter-updater/
This tool lets you tweet your blog posts automatically.

Firefox Extensions for Twitter

TwitterFox – naan studio
http://www.naan.net/trac/wiki/TwitterFox
Simple but effective and popular Twitter Firefox add on.

TwitBin - twitter your browser - twitbin.com
http://www.twitbin.com/
Even simpler Twitter add on for Firefox.

TwitKit
http://engel.uk.to/twitkit/features/
Another Twitter Firefox client with more features though.

TwitterBar :: Firefox Add-ons
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4664/
Let’s you post from the address bar of your browser.

Twitter Social News

Twitturly - Real-time Link Tracking on Twitter
http://twitturly.com/
Digg-like interface for the currently hot tweets.

MicroBlogBuzzes of the last 24 hours
http://www.microblogbuzz.com/
Shows you what’s most popular today, this week etc. on Twitter and across the other common microblogging platforms.

Twitturls - Popular Twitter Links Tweeted err Twittered err Twhatever
http://twitturls.com/
Shows the latest and most popular links on Twitter.

ReadBurner: What’s Shared on the Web
http://readburner.com/
Lets you monitor the buzz around Twitter elsewhere among many other memes.

POPrl.com / Shrinking popular URLs since 1973 / What’s POPular
http://poprl.com/
Short URL service like TinyURL but better. Offers not only stats but also a Digg-like interface for the most popular URLs shared.

Twitter Analytics

TweetStats :: Graphin’ Your Stats
http://tweetstats.com/
This statistic tool measures everything from when you tweet (weekdays, time of day) to who your real friends are by counting how often you address people.

Twitstat.com - Twitter Analytics
http://www.twitstat.com/cgi-bin/view.pl?search=interface
Both a Twitter search engine and popularity stats at the same time (e.g: showing most active users).

Twitterverse
http://www.twitterverse.com/
A Twitter keyword tag cloud for quick overview on what’s going on.

Twist - see trends in twitter
http://twist.flaptor.com/?tz=1
Twist allows you to quickly view and compare popularity trends on Twitter. It’s similar to
Google Trends.

FriendOrFollow.com - Who’s not following you back? Who aren’t you following?
http://friendorfollow.com/
This tool compares your list of friends with your followers and shows you who does not follow you back.

Twitter Twerp Scan
http://twerpscan.com/
Gives you a quick overview about your followers so that you don’t have to click each one.