You can:

• Manually check all of your rankings and plot them in a spreadsheet – however for checking sites with more than a few keywords this can become tedious very quickly.
• Use RankChecker – a Firefox addon, however the results from this tool always tend to be a little off.
• Use a purpose built piece of rank checking software.

At SEOwned over the years we have used all of the above, but now due to volume we solely rely on the final option – and our software of choice? Advanced Web Ranking all-in-one SEO software. Available for Windows, Mac OS X and even Linux this robust rank checking software is best in class, so why is it so great?

Best in class features

Integrate Google Analytics

You can plug in your Google Analytics data straight into the key reports that are produced. This allows you to corroborate and traffic increases with ranking increases.

Geo-Targeting Search Engines

You have websites that operate in different countries? That is not an issue for Advanced Web Ranking. Within each project you can quicky and easily set which search engines you want the software to check.

Keyword Rank Graphs

No more looking at numbers, tables or trying to piece together your own charts. AWR does all of the hard work for you – you can even add competitors websites in to the mix.

Google Universal Search

Do you want to see if you are ranking in the universal search results for a particular keyword – Advanced Web Ranker does this as standard, and you can also create reports that splits rankings across normal search, image search, video search, news search and also shopping results..

SEOMoz Data Included

Analyse your own or your competitors link profile using AWRs SEOMoz integration. You can dig deep and identify new link prospects right form your dashboard.

Reporting

Advanced Web Ranking produces beautiful reports detailing everything from keyword rankings, traffic and links. These reports give you a brilliant graphical overview of the current performance of your website at any given time.

And much much more

Not only does Advanced Web Ranking have best in class features but the team are constantly monitoring the search engines, and any changes they may be making to their search results page code. Meaning that if Google changes the way they display their results you can be sure that the support team at Advanced Web Ranking are on the case and will have an update out in double quick time.

Website Optimisation Report

Not all users of Advanced Web Ranking are SEO agencies, businesses small and large also use it in their in house teams. These teams can also use the website optimisation report that generates a checklist of potential issues that AWR may have come across. Now a computer generated report is now replacement for a trained SEO to review a website but for some of the quicker on page recommendations can provide a really good sense check.

Conclusion

As an SEO agency we find AWR invaluable in the time it saves us in manually checking all of our clients rankings and the new features such as adding links and traffic into the mix means it can generate some really useful and insightful reports. As a small business/website owner we would also recommend the purchase as it can give you a snapshot of your sites performance at any time.

Note: .htaccess is very powerful, but it is also very temperamental. Get somthing wrong and you can easily take down large parts of your website, if not your whole site. Be careful when typing out lines of code

So with that warning out of the way lets dive in and see what we can do with .htaccess.

Fix Canonicalisation Issues

If a user visits your website at example.com and they are not redirected to www.example.com this causes potential duplicate content issues. To fix this we need to put in place a 301 redirect that catches all pages of the site that have no www. and redirect it to the correct page.

The Code

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Redirecting a Page to a New Location

It happens to the best of us. We create a page in one location only to modify our site architecture later on. To maintain any link equity that the page may have gained, maintain users bookmarks and let Google et al know where the new page is we need to add a 301 redirect into the .htaccess file.

The Code

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^old-category/page-name/$ /new-category/page-name/ [L,R=301]

We can also change folder names in a similar way.

The Code

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^old-category/(.*)/$ /new-category/$1/ [L,R=301]

404 Catch All

Every now and again a user might encounter a 404 error on your website, be that through a link that has been copied incorrectly or a page that has been deleted. It is best practice to serve a 404 page to these users that shows them a way to find either the content they where looking for or newer more relevant content.

The Code

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

Prevent Image Hotlinking

People using your images on their website is annoying at the very least, illegal at worst but there is another downside to people who embed images directly from your website – you are paying for it, through your bandwidth costs. Preventing this requires just a few simple lines in your .htaccess file.

The Code

RewriteEngine on
OnRewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule [^/]+.(gif|jpg)$ - [F]

SEO Friendly URLs

Many CMS and eCommerce systems use parametes to create their dynamic pages. These pages will often call an id or a filter in the format:

http://www.yoursite.com/products.php?product_id=39576&type=47

A much more SEO friendly URL would be:

http://www.yoursite.com/nike-training-shoe/black/39576/47/

To achieve this we would use the following code.

The Code

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/(.+)/(.+)/([0-9]*)/([0-9]*)/$ /products\.php?product_id=$3&type=$4

Remove File Extensions From URLs

Many static websites will have .html at the end whilst many dynamic sites may have .php or .aspx. Using these file extensions immediately gives and hacker an indication of which technologies you may be using for your website, allowing them to tune their toolbox into making hacking your website easier. The other thing is it simply doesn’t look pretty either.

So how would we go about removing the file extensions? (The below example makes the assumption that your file extension is .php)

The Code

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /$1\.php

conclusion

As you can see there are many powerful uses for .htaccess beyond 301 redirects that can be used for usability, SEO andeven save you cash!

Do you have any others? Share them below and we will add them to the post with a credit to yourself.

The SEO Audit raised £50 towards the total amount for Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology.

About Ellies

Ellies has been open since Spetember 2009 and is situated in the leafy village of Greasby, Wirral. Open day and night 7 days a week customers can enjoy anything from a coffee, lunch, dinner, live sports matches or fabulous live music events.

Visit the Ellies website at Ellies Greasby

About Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology

Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology is a leading NHS specialist hospital based in South Wirral and is one of the largest specialist cancer centres in the UK, they treat well over 26,000 patients per year. Delivering treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy, as well as providing research facilities and weekly clinics as locations around the region.

With the Search Awards hosting over 400 of the brightest talent in the industry, MLB, State of Search and SEOwned would like to use our extended networks to really get behind their supported charity.

How Can I get Involved?

If you have a spare five minutes and would like to support this cause, perhaps we can coordinate a little in order to increase awareness of this campaign between now and tomorrow evening

1. Choose a “change,” make a pledge or commitment. You can use helpful suggestions from the WWF campaign website if you don’t already have an idea of your own
2. Write a post about the WWF campaign if you have the time and the platform to share with your audiences. (Please don’t link to or refer to this post, just the campaign message)
3. Share your pledge with your social networks
4. Schedule or tweet your pledge using the hashtag #ThePandaMadeMe - between 7 – 8pm tomorrow, UK time (that is Thursday 3rd November 2011) in an attempt to get the hashtag to trend, thus increasing awareness considerably.

Have You Got Involved?

Of course – our MD Dan Taylor has sponsored a bottleneck dolphin for his 15 month old son. We look forward to hearing updates of how the money is being used.

The Laddermen Web Design

We have been busy for the past few weeks creating a brand new website for start up firm The Laddermen. The brief was simple but it really struck home with our designers; clean, modern and easy to use. The site must portray exactly what the company does, which is helping people with jobs that require a ladder.

How We Built It

The site was built using WordPress as a CMS to allow for future development of the website including the addition of further pages, a blog or other features that may be deemed necessary. The template is coded using a mixture of xHTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript.

Google Analytics/Google Places

We also installed and set up Google Analytics on the site so that the client could monitor their traffic, as well as completing the setup of a Google Local Business listing to ensure the launch of the site runs as smoothly as possible.

You can find The Ladder Men website at www.theladdermen.co.uk

Services Provided

• Web Design
• Web Development
• Google Analytics Set Up
• Google Places Listing

We are pleased to welcome Moonlight Paranormal (www.moonlightparanormal.co.uk) on board at SEOwned as our newest client. Moonlight Paranormal offer Ghost Hunts around the UK and is run by mother and daughter team Joanne Taylor and Jo Ryan – who are some of the most passionate people we have had the pleasure of chatting to. They really believe in their business and we are fully bought in and as eager for the campaign to succeed as they are. So welcome on board ladies.

Was Beyonce Singing About Relationships or SEO?

Stick with us on this one, it’s good, we promise…

So there we are in the office one day, working on fixing some validation errors, when ‘Single Ladies’ by Beyonce comes on the radio. Now we’re not usually ones to pop, lock, jam and break when the Queen B starts buzzing, but we couldn’t help but notice the SEO connotations hidden deep within one of Beyonce’s best-known anthems. Beyonce isn’t really a singer, she’s really an astute online marketing professional looking to spread the word of SEO. Want to know why? Let us explain…

S-E-Oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh…

Beyonce’s SEO message is intertwined with the core beat of Single Ladies. Her call of “S-E-Oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh” is a strong undercurrent throughout the whole tune, encouraging small, medium and large businesses to consider a broad, eclectic range of internet marketing services for their website.

And who could argue with Beyonce? She is, after all, one of the strongest brands in the world. She knows an incredible amount about marketing, spending years researching the music industry to find a gap that herself and Destiny’s Child could exploit in a positive manner. She started off as an unrecognisable unknown singer, and crafted herself into one of the most recognisable women on the planet through a combination of talent, careful market consideration and positive perception. She knows that good organic rankings are crucial to online success, and she’s encouraging online businesses to reach the heights she herself has through “S-E-Oh oh oh oh oh…”

If you liked it then you should have put a link on it!

Though, in reality, Beyonce’s actually singing about her disappointment that her man hasn’t committed to her and left her on the scrapheap, we feel that she’s also hinting at how important link building is when it comes to networking and further expanding brand visibility online. That philosophy should hold true in all you do – if you liked it then you should have put a link on it!

Internal linking throughout your site helps new visitors to discover more of your original, unique content, whilst external links are a critical way to boost your site’s authority and attract new visitors. There are a huge number of ways to create a natural external link portfolio, including article submissions, public relations work, including your site in directories and others. The more powerful and natural your internal and external link portfolio, the stronger your site will be when search engine spiders crawl and index it.

Delivers me, to PPC, to infinity and beyond

Interwoven in the lyrics of Single Ladies is Beyonce’s desire to have a big strong man take her to heights of ecstasy and more. Well, that’s what many assume Beyonce’s singing about. We reckon that she’s actually vocalising the many benefits of Pay Per Click marketing, and how utilising different marketing methods in your search engine optimisation campaign can generate unbridled success.

PPC can give your site a different kind of exposure than organic search rankings, and using the right consultants can help to define and balance your campaign against the other measures you’ve decided to incorporate. Choosing to go down one path when optimising a website isn’t recommended. Your SEO campaign needs to be complemented by other practices such as PPC to maximise its potential and generate the best return on investment (ROI) possible.

Alright then, we know we’re clutching at straws. We know she’s actually singing about her boyfriend jibbing her off. But we guarantee you, that after reading our thoughts, the next time you hear Single Ladies in the office you’ll be singing along with SEOwned’s version instead!

Next week: Lady Gaga and ranking reports.

The Different Types of Small Business Websites

In my mind there are a few types of small business websites there are the websites that provide some basic background information on a bricks and mortar business, the website that sells a few products but the main business is again a bricks and mortar shop and the full online only experience such as an e-commerce store. The level of SEO or Online Marketing each of these websites will need is dictated by both the returns that could be potentially be made from increasing traffic to the website and how competitive the current marketplace is.

The Information Site

This type of site is synonymous with older businesses. These are the type of company that provides a service such as; Bus & Coach Operators, Factories or Solicitors but won’t necessarily sell anything through their website. They are generally heavily reliant on tele-sales or a shop front to make money. How would these types of company benefit from Search Engine Optimisation?

It is a well known fact that most customers will use the internet to research a company before they use their services. But what about people who are doing some research on which company to use in the first place? Where will they find your company? Yellow Pages? Not any more – these days people use the internet and more specifically Google.

Where this type of small business will benefit most is from a Local SEO campaign – whereby they will be targeting phrases from their locality such as ‘Coaches Liverpool’, ‘Solicitors in Margate’ or ‘Lingerie Factories Midlands’ – if they rank well for these keywords they will get visitors to their site, and if the content is compelling and relevant they will drive feet to their shops or calls to their offices.

A Local SEO campaign is typically a lot cheaper than a full generic campaign due to the competitiveness but return on investment can still be made by targeting the correct keywords.

Small Online Shop with Big Offline Shop

Again this type of website is typically from a business that was created before the explosion in popularity of the Internet. They may be more traditional sales such as haberdashery suppliers or similar. They have been sold a website that can supplement their bricks and mortar shop but is only contributes a small percentage of the total business turnover.

They are typically in a niche where big businesses do not operate in and as such if they rank well they can bring masses of traffic and potentially their online business can turnover a lot more than their shop ever could. If their content is unique and descriptive, their pictures sharp and prices are competitive then this business can move into the next category with the help of an SEO Expert.

This type of business usually requires a higher level of investment in SEO due to competitiveness of particular products, but the return on investment of the project will be much higher as a result.

The Online Only Business/e-Shop

The online only business (or mainly online with small offline presence) makes almost 100% of their turnover from their website already – so how can they benefit from SEO?

Although this business is already making all of its money from the internet there are always improvements that can be made both in terms of SEO and also their conversion rates. Users are becoming more and more web savvy and using many different streams to find the right provider for their products or services such as Google Places, Facebook and other social media streams.

A professional SEO Agency will also take a holistic approach to online marketing and will have experts who can advise on things like social media and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) too to provide the best return on investment for the business.

So in Conclusion

Every small business can benefit from SEO and Online Marketing but it needn’t cost the earth if you are targeting the right market. Be aware of who your customer is, where they are based and you are on the right track. Don’t let an SEO Agency try and sell you into the worldwide marketplace if your business structure and processes cannot manage it, but similarly don’t fall behind if you spot a gap in the market that you can service.

Matthew Platt

To mark the launch of this brand new website we ran a competition to give away a free ticket to this months Brighton SEO Conference run by Kelvin Newman. Well the entries are in, the results have been verified (by us) and the winner is:

Matthew Platt

Matthew is Head of SEO at SEONext an SEO Company based in Hyde.

Matthew had this to say on his win:

I am over the moon to have won a ticket for the event, I missed the boat originally , I am very much looking forward to meeting people in the industry and listening to peoples different views. also looking forward to seeing some faces I haven’t seen in a while.

Keep an eye out for more great prizes from SEOwned in the coming weeks.

To be in with a chance of #winning all you have to do is follow us at @seowned and tweet the following message:

“I want to win the #BrightonSEO ticket from @seowned – http://bit.ly/nlXxVR”

The winner will be announced on Monday 29th August at 3pm GMT. The conference is on Friday 9th September and you must be able to travel there yourself.