Website SEO Analysis Tool (From Microsoft!)

OK, I know you’re sceptical, but I think you’ll find this really useful.

Microsoft have a Search Engine Optimization Toolkit, which allows you to run reports which identify any errors with content, code and any on-site SEO issues.

It will scan through your site to identify the following types of error:

• Canonicalization
• Uppercase letters in urls
• Missing/duplicate/short/long title tags and descriptions
• Broken links
• Duplicate content
• Slow pages

What I really like is that you can save that report & re-run to compare. Meaning that once the amends have been made, you can check through quickly to see what’s been fixed, what’s still broken and any new errors that have appeared.

The installation of the tool is a little cumbersome (you need to install the Web Platform Installer, then the IIS SEO Toolkit); and the format of the report isn’t beautiful – but you can easily export to a spreadsheet to add your commentary/recommendations in and style up.

More info here: Microsoft SEO Toolkit

Posted: July 13th, 2010 under Search Engine Optimization - No Comments.

Google Caffeine Diagram And The Salmon Terrine Algorithm

I love Google’s diagram explaining how their latest indexing system works. The old system was organised in layers, like a salmon terrine, while Caffeine looks like a cyclone rave of mess. I suppose that’s the difference – Caffeine is faster, and more sporadic to account for news, blogs and real time updates, as well as rich content from books and video.

“The image below illustrates how our old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine:”

via Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.

While I can see why they opted for the catchy name Caffeine rather than ‘Cyclone rave of mess’, I prefer ‘The Salmon Terrine Algorithm’ to the rather boring title ‘old index’. Never mind… at least there’s a little angry looking man to brighten the old one up a bit.

Posted: July 12th, 2010 under Search Engine Optimization - No Comments.

AdWords Editor Error Message

It looks like AdWords Editor was doing that ‘pretending to touch type fast’ thing they do in the movies when they created this crash report for me.

Posted: March 2nd, 2010 under Paid search marketing - No Comments.

Cursor Moves To A Different Line While Typing – Disable Touchpad on Dell Latitude

After about three years of a slightly irritating habit my laptop appears to have, I have finally been bothered enough about it to find a solution.

When I’m typing, occasionally my cursor will skip to a different line of text.  So I’m happily writing away, only to realise that half of my paragraph has been added to my signature line or to the paragraph above. It happens a couple of times a day, and is the result of a sensitive touch pad on my laptop, which my sausage fingers seem to keep brushing while I type.

I’ve been unable to disable this, and most of the tech support or forum content on the web direct you to the mythical touchpad tab on the mouse properties settings in control panel. Other advice given is to update the drivers (mine were shown as the latest drivers), to uninstall and re-install your touchpad driver, disable the touchpad in BIOS, or check that the Touchpad driver (Alps or Synaptics) is flagged ON (via Start > Run > msconfig).

The solution that worked for me, thanks to Joel Mansford was to install the Hewlett Packard touchpad driver, which gives you a full control panel for your touchpad – enabling you to customise settings, tailor tap sensitivity and most importantly disable your touchpad and stick when you have a mouse attached.

* loud sigh of relief *

Posted: February 10th, 2010 under Off Topic, Technology - No Comments.

Problem Upgrading To WordPress 2.9

Just in case anyone else had this problem -

I upgraded to latest WordPress version 2.9 – and found a bit of a bug when I viewed the website. The homepage showed no posts, and I was unable to change the themes.

This was mainly due to a pretty lazy upgrade process on my behalf – the ‘upgrade now’ button called to me louder than the ‘make sure you backup, and turn off all your plugins’ voice in the back of my head.  I clearly don’t have the patience to be a developer!

The issue for me was specifically to do with the WordPress Super Cache plugin.

I disabled this plugin, and the problem was resolved.

If you’re having the same problem, but you’re not using this plugin, then turn off your plugins one by one, refresh your site to find the culprit.

Alternatively, if you cannot access your admin panel – then re-name your plugin directory.  This will automatically disable your plugins, and if there is a conflict that is breaking the site, you should be able to access the admin area once more.

Posted: December 30th, 2009 under Blogging - No Comments.

Some Statistics About Your Facebook Status

Inside Facebook Blog has put together some statistics on Facebook Status updates; some of which is more relevant to America, but there were some global insights which I found quite interesting.

Whilst competing for users, Facebook integrates well with Twitter. You can see the effect of the conversation about Twitter versus the integration with the following graph.  Conversation, (e.g. “Twitter’s down again”) seems to be on the decline, but integration is increasing (judging by the growth in statuses which include the RT – or Re Tweet tag).

The RT and @username tags aren’t likely to make much sense to non Tweeters on Facebook, so I expect that there will be a way to sync only original posts in future.  I wonder whether the decline in Twitter mentions is down to increased server capacity.

The strain of virus formerly known as “swine flu” produced “a huge media frenzy at least as big as avian flu a couple of years ago, and mad cow disease before that,” as the post appropriately notes. The friendlier-to-pigs term, “H1N1,” has managed to infect Facebook, occurring as frequently as “swine flu” this past fall.

The effects of media hype and seasonal illnesses can be seen from the following graph, which shows a winter trend in status updates for Flu type terms, along with a huge spike in status updates for the terms Flu and Swine flu, which followed from the heavy coverage in the news.

I quite like this graph. It shows the frequency of occurrences for two common swear words in Facebook status updates.

Interestingly, people seem to be becoming more well behaved, as the number of mentions has declined over the year.  Perhaps people are becoming more aware that content published on the Internet may come back to haunt you in later life… or maybe it’s because mum’s on Facebook now!

Posted: December 23rd, 2009 under Online Social Networking - No Comments. Tags: facebook, social media