Expert search engine marketer, strategist and analyst Bruce
Clay has put together an impressive mix of free and subscription
information and online tools for you to analyze the pages on your site,
many of which have recently been reengineered. Armed with the information
and analysis these tools provide, you could get the advantage you need
to outperform your competition.
Be forewarned, these tools are heavy duty, and you need to be intimately
familiar with a Keyword Density Analyzer program in order to take full
advantage of their potential. Despite this, there is a wealth of information
that any search engine marketer will find extremely helpful.
Starting Out
To start, you should visit http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm
to take a look at Mr. Clay's Search Engine Relationship chart. By clicking
on the small chart, you'll be taken to an extremely interesting chart
in PDF format that shows the relationships among all of the major search
engines and several minor or defunct ones as well. By studying this
chart, you will understand more fully from where each search engine
receives its results. With this information in hand, you can develop
your own strategies for getting into the index of each of the major
search engines. In several cases there is more than one way, and using
the multiple avenues for indexing may help increase your visibility
in those particular search engines.
Mr. Clay has also put together a page for each search engine. However,
I found these pages rather disappointing, as I expected detailed information
about the nuances and optimization techniques for each engine, when
appropriate. Instead, I found that these pages were really nothing more
than the same information from the chart in text form, plus a search
box (when available) and a link to the search engine's submission form.
There are links to Danny Sullivan's very thorough engine specific information
on each search engine page, but Mr. Clay liked my suggestion of having
more detailed information about the nuances and optimization techniques
on these pages. He informed me that he should have this information
added to the site in the next few weeks.
Finally, below the small chart on the above page, Mr. Clay has put
together a step-by-step search engine optimization process. This series
of steps is appropriate for search engine marketers of all skill levels.
Some of these tools are similar, although perhaps less powerful, than
those available in the subscription service.
The SEOToolSet - Subscription Service
Once you complete login and setup you are sent to a screen that is similar
to that of the free services. On this page you will find the same Search
Engine Relationship Chart and links to the same individual search engine
pages. The chart is useful and I suggest you save the PDF version for
reference. By studying it you can find different ways for getting into
many search engines and develop your own submission strategies to take
advantage of these multiple listings. Mr. Clay is working on an updated
Search Engine Relationship Chart. Among other changes, Northern Light
will be removed and the Overture/MSN link will be added.
Beneath the relationship chart and links are Mr. Clay's proprietary
search engine analysis tools. There are approximately 18 different tools
grouped in six separate steps:
Step 1 - Research Your Competition
- Research Summary - This tool is designed to query the major search
engines for keywords you designate. It then combines and sorts the
top results from each engine into a table. Mr. Clay notifies you ahead
of time that this tool takes several minutes to run. Once the report
runs, you may then analyze the results with his Keyword Density Analyzer.
I suggested to Mr. Clay that it would be better for subscribers and
his server(s) if these analyses opened in a separate browser. He made
this change immediately on my recommendation, so the analyses now
open in a separate window, and you do not have to re-run the summary
multiple times to analyze each page with his Keyword Density Analyzer
anymore.
- Engine Specific Research - This tool queries a specific search engine
for keywords you designate. The results are returned in a table and
you may analyze the results with his Keyword Density Analyzer.
- Monitor Overture Bids and Rankings - Monitor your Overture keyword
bids and reports the bid for the top 15 positions as well as your
current top 15 rankings. This tool only queries Overture and does
not allow you to change bids, so Overture's policy of six bid changes
does not affect the number of times you can use this tool to monitor
your bids.
- There are also links for monitoring keyword bids in a variety of
other PPC engines, including FindWhat, Sprinks and Ah-Ha.
- Monitor Yahoo! Directories - This tool is supposed to take your
keywords and return a list of the best categories for your keywords.
This tool is undergoing reengineering for Yahoo's new format.
- Monitor DMOZ/Open Directory - Take your keywords and returns a list
of the best ODP categories for those keywords.
Step 2 - Analyze Your Own Pages
- Keyword Density Analyzer - This report shows frequency, density
and where-used information for your top keywords and all words in
your META tags.
- Keyword Density Analyzer (compare two pages) - Compares keyword
density, frequency, and where-used information for a single phrase
for two distinct web pages.
- Keyword Density Analyzer (site review) - This report shows keyword
frequency, density and where-used information for web pages you designated
during setup.
- Check Server Page Status - This tool performs two different page
requests from your server and compares the returned error codes and
content.
- Keyword Selection Tool - This tool extracts keywords from your page
and recommends high-traffic phrases that you might want to use.
Step 3 - Submit Your Page
- Search Engine Submission Recommendation - This tool is designed
to show you where your pages are not ranked in any positions for your
keywords. The tool will list these pages as viable candidates for
submission.
- Search Engine Add Page - This isn't a tool, rather it takes you
to a page that, again, has the Search Engine Relationship Chart and
links to pages for each individual search engine. On each search engine
page you will find a link to each engine's submission page if it accepts
direct submissions.
Step 4 - Monitor Your Placement
- Search Engine Ranking Monitor - This tool is designed to query the
major search engines and produce reports ranking pages from your site.
The output from this tool can be analyzed in the Ranking Reports in
the next step.
- Import WebPosition Files - This will allow you to analyze files
produced by WebPosition and exported by the "Customize"
tab of WebPosition.
Step 5 - Report and Analyze Your Ranking
Results
- Domain Ranking Report - Using this tool, you can view the ranking
report for the last Ranking Monitor (above) run. It produces a table
by search engine of the best ranking for each keyword phrase you have
specified.
- Note that there is a "drill down" available. Clicking
on a keyword or phrase in the left hand column produces another
report showing just the pages ranked for that keyword, and then
clicking on a page URL produces a report of all keywords where
that one page has rankings.
- The same applies for the Competition Report -- see where each
competitor site ranks for your keywords... etc.
- Ranking Report by Keyword - This tool produces a ranking report
for each keyword by page and search engine.
- Ranking Report by Page Name - This tool produces a ranking report
for each page name by keywords and search engine.
- Ranking Report History - Using this tool, you may view a history
of the prior recorded Ranking Reports, providing the percentages in
the Top-10, Top-20, Top-30, Top-40 and Top-50 positions.
Step 6 - Develop a Reciprocal Links List
- This tool produces a report of the links to your site as reported
by the major search engines. You can also put in your URL and that
of several competitors, and you get a side-by-side report of who links
to them and not to you. It is quite useful in seeing what your competitors
have, and in identifying sites for you to contact to get them to also
link to you.
Help Documentation
Most of the tools have an accompanying help page that describes in more
detail what the tool does. For the most part, the descriptions are helpful
and explain what the tool does, but occasionally the help documentation
does not provide any more information than is given on the toolset page.
In some cases, more information would have been welcome. Mr. Clay has
informed me that more help documentation, including a tutorial, showing
how and why to use each tool is forthcoming in the next couple of months.
How the SEOToolSet Can Help
As mentioned in the introduction, many of the tools rely heavily on
his Keyword Density Analyzer. In order to get the most benefit from
Mr. Clay's SEOToolSet, you should be thoroughly knowledgeable with a
Keyword Density Analyzer (KDA) program and the information it contains.
If you are not, many of the tools will not be helpful and could even
be confusing to use.
Despite the heavy reliance on his KDA, several of the tools that use
his KDA allow you to analyze and compare pages from other sites without
having to download the page to your hard drive.
These analysis tools can be a time saver, as you do not have to search
for the competition in the various search engines and then download
the pages to your hard drive. Mr. Clay's tools can do both for you.
By analyzing and comparing your pages with his KDA program to the competition,
you can see where your pages may need additional optimization. Documentation
for the various his KDA tools suggests matching the percentages of the
various page areas to effectively compete with the competition. Another
tactic that I have used when analyzing the competition with a KDA program
is to average the percentages of the top-10 sites and use this as a
base with which to start. As you begin seeing results then you can tweak
one area at a time to see how it affects your rankings. Mr. Clay's Keyword
Density Analyzer does these calculations for you and then some. If you
run the Research Summary, there is a button at the bottom that will
analyze and combine all of the results. It will analyze each site, giving
nice comparative tables for the words in the search phrase, then produce
(High, Low, Average, Mode, Mean, and Standard Deviation) stats for each
column, and even predict an initial suggested starting point for each
area. You can also run this comparative analysis in the search engine
specific research reports.
For submissions, Mr. Clay advocates manual submissions, and I agree.
Most of the search engines state in their submission policies that you
only need to submit your URL and they will crawl your site, and AltaVista
has its anti-automated submission page. This, in my opinion, makes manual
submissions almost as easy and fast as using automated submission software.
Mr. Clay's domain ranking tools can be instrumental in determining
those pages needing further analysis and optimization after submission,
indexing and ranking. To access the various reports after running the
Domain Ranking Monitor tool, you must use the "Client Reports"
link on the Visitor Resource Manager page. Use the various reports to
view your rankings in different table formats as described above in
the SEOToolSet section.
Additional Tidbits
Mr. Clay's also offers a couple of additional tools that I did not try
out, Dynamic Site Mapping and LinkMaps.
Dynamic Site Mapping "is a patent pending method for obtaining
web page access information, compiling web site statistics pages that
provide page visitation data and reports for client marketing purposes,
creates static HTML files for each mapped page, facilitates the spidering
of each page mapped, and provides a powerful search engine for your
site that has indexed your popular dynamic and static content! You have
a private deep-crawled searchable index for your site." It costs
extra, but may prove to be invaluable for owners with database driven
sites or other types of dynamic pages on site.
LinkMaps is "a method for obtaining web page maps within your
site of external pages linking to your site. These maps facilitate the
identification and indexing of these linking pages, thus helping to
boost your link popularity. You add a link to these pages from your
home page, and submit the directory for these pages to the search engines."
Essentially, this tool identifies the sites that are linking to yours
and creates a directory of those sites. It does not help you identify
new sites to ask for reciprocal links. Rather, this tool can be helpful
in identifying those sites that have linked to you, and by creating
the LinksMap page, uploading it to your domain, linking it to your home
page or site map, and submitting it to the search engines, in time all
the search engines will know about all the sites that link to yours.
Again, there is an additional cost for this tool.
Downers
I did find a few problems or annoyances with the SEOToolSet. Mr. Clay
recently reengineered the tools and redesigned the site, and was looking
for some feedback. He appreciated the positive feedback and suggestions,
and, he will be incorporating many of the suggestions I offered within
the next few months to help subscribers get even more out of their subscriptions.
So within the next few months, the problems and annoyances that I found
should be eliminated, making Mr. Clay's SEOToolSet even better than
I found it to be.
Pricing
Mr. Clay's SEOToolSet is a bargain at an annual subscription rate of
$179. Considering all the tools and the invaluable information they
can provide, the price is extremely inexpensive.
In Mr. Clay's own words: "I believe that a competent KDA is key
to tuning within a page, and that this is the most comprehensive (and
accurate) KDA available anywhere.
"I also believe that all tools for $179 per year when other KDA's
alone are twice that makes this a slam dunk. Oh, yes -- the monitor...
I think the accuracy of the monitor and the 'at a glance' understandable
reports also make this ideal for SEO practitioners."
Conclusion
Despite the few annoyances and problems I encountered, SEOToolSet by
Bruce Clay is an extremely powerful set of search engine optimization
tools, especially at the low annual subscription price of $179. And
it will only get better as Mr. Clay implements additional help documentation,
search engine specific information and other planned upgrades. I've
not seen any other program or online service that provides the combination
of detailed analysis and reporting tools that Mr. Clay offers.
I must point out that at this time the SEOToolSet is not for the casual
or beginning search engine optimization specialist. You need to be thoroughly
familiar with a Keyword Density Analyzer program in order to understand
and accurately analyze the information and data provided before you
can use it to optimize your pages. This may change once additional help
documentation and the tutorial are added in the next few months.
Bruce Clay has put together an extremely useful and powerful set of
tools, and I highly recommend that search engine optimization specialists,
especially those with experience with a KDA program, visit his site,
http://www.bruceclay.com, and
either sign up for the subscription service or try out the free visitor
version. If you are thoroughly familiar with a KDA program, you won't
be disappointed in the data you receive.
Thank you to Bruce Clay for generously giving me a free subscription
with which to test out his impressive tools for this review.
***About Bill Gentry:
Bill Gentry has been a professional Web designer since 1999 and a Search
Engine Optimization and Online Marketing specialist with Look Sharp
Designs since February 2000. Earning a Bachelor's of Science in Geology
and a Master's of Business Administration in addition to his employment
as an Aircraft Armament Systems Specialist for 10 years contributed
to his attention to detail.
Review may not be reprinted without permission of Look Sharp Designs.
To request permission for reprinting rights, please contact Look Sharp Designs.
