Some SEO sites

So in my off/unemployed time I've been building up my SEO and online reputation skills - a friend recommended to me a few good sites, figured I'll post one here for future reference :)

http://www.woorank.com/ - Great site - for *free* it will scan your site's code and overall will tell you weak spots (alt texts are off, no meta tags or descriptors, etc.) - been using this to help speed up the site-optimization process :)

Obviously for a fee they'll dig into things like your individual pages, but still - a good site overall.

I'm working on a HTML/XML parser in excel that will allow me to dump the raw code in and pull out "problem" areas because while a site like woorank is helpful, often enough I need to compile documents detailing exactly what needs to be changed, and where. Anything to speed it up :)

Back in action!

Great articles on Search engines & their respective Bots (why Yahoo.com named theirs "Slurp" is completely beyond me):

http://ghita.org/search-engines-dynamic-content-issues.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard

Posting these as I'm assisting in some SEO/online reputation work now :)

More to come!

Still finding that excel is the best top-level site-content parser, especially for search engines - they only have a few variable responses (probably tested and limited because they're trying to find the balance between stopping automated querying of their services (much like the old API they scrapped - by-passed ads and their revenue) and confusing their users with too many different cases.

Blog Updates

I'm aware this has basically completely dropped off. Good news:
1) My twitter is ranked naturally at #3
2) I actually got a promotion to Product Manager, which while great, is very time consuming

There's some thought as to taking this blog and merging it with my other site, where I can centrally manage content, as well as get some other people contributing.

Thought process around this is that a lot of the content that was supposed to drive my other site is actually generated from a program called Google Talk, which is a chat/IM program that allows you to archive AND search all chats you've ever had, via the Gmail interface. Since I've added more people in the last 3 months, conversations have increased as have the general content (pictures, links, recommendations, odd stories, etc.) and it's just too much to manage 2 sites.

I'm still interested in online reputation (it's a KEY and growing factor in business relations), my focus has just shifted elsewhere for now. I will keep this site up, but most of the content will be ported to the new site which will be decidedly less dry (or appropriate) but ultimately more interesting. And interesting is what drives content, and content is king!

Updates to site

I've made some updates to the site, as well as my Flickr account (some new photos, more on the way). I've mentioned StepRep a few times now. The widget on the right is a great ORM/SEO "tool" that uses queries you specify (such as the "Vincent Hayes Analyst" one) to generate a list of searchable results that's constantly updating. All you have to do is go into your StepRep "Reputation Management" profile, and approve/deny and "post to widget", and anywhere you have the widget uploaded will automatically create new relevant content. Currently all of my queries are oriented towards finding results for me, but I'm going to edit these shortly to start bringing up more content-related results :)

It's free, very easy to use, and uses your Google login.

I've been attempting to determine how their searches work, because it's not matching up with the Google results; for example, as proven, qualifying my name with 'Bridgeport' immediately brings up a lot of results (top 5!), but this tool cannot identify them for some reason - weird.

Just a quick note, updating my Flickr tonight, this is a placeholder post to track time of tags/content upload to ranking :)
I did update some of the tags on the pics I had up already.

Tried searching for my Facebook again, Google is definitely ranking it, but just cant find it in natural search (no qualifiers).

Oi. Content creation requires some time, unfortunately. I just started up Ultimate Frizbee practice a few weeks back and that's taken up a decent amount of my free-time :) I'll get some photo's up on my flickr soon. Anyways, a quick update on where I'm currently ranking:

• 3 ( was 31) - LinkedIn Directory result, not very helpful


• (was 7) - My actual LinkedIn page (with some cross-linking) continues to hold page 1


• Can't find (couldn't find at last update either) - Oddly, my facebook has completely(!) disappeared! I looked all the way through 110 results, nothing! No idea what's causing this at all.


• 5 & 72, 92 (19) - Twitter. I've been watching this sporadically since the last update, it has started to rank fairly consitstently in the top 10 - hosting links, retweeting people, and updating my Loopt (iPhone app that allows you to "tweet" but with GPS tagging) at least once a day


• 20! (56) - The blog, content updates are key. I need to update this more often.
  


• ?? (21) - ClaimID has completely disappeared, unclear what drove this
  


• 27 & 76(70) -Naymz, massive improvement. Key drivers: syncing this profile up with Twitter allows for constant, crosslinked content updates, and fleshing out the profile more, with pics


• 48 (New!) - StepRep, mentioned previously, is an interesting site, ranks well. I'll discuss it more later.
• 2 other random ones, Wikinames (68 just the top results for Google, relisted) and Spock.com (69), which annoyingly is grabbing my very old myspace page. Only benefit is that it's got an image on there from my Ju-Jitsu days.

It appears as though the primariy competitor in my NameSpace has started some SEO/ORM stuff himself, so this is going to get awful. ThankfullyI grabbed the twitter when I did!

StepRep, Loopt, and other fun things (Updated ranks!)

Almost 2 weeks! Last time I checked in everything was getting a nasty hit in the natural search, though qualified search was doing better. A friend with some SEO experience told me that what probably happened was that Google initially ranked me and my sites well, then did a comparison to the other "Vincent Hayes"(s) and deemed me less relevant than a blues musician or artist (a fair assertion). The interesting part is the person who suddenly ranked well for Twitter, even though they only have one mention of my (probably our) name, and it's not even in his profile, nor does he update his Twitter account that often. Frequency of mine is at least once a day, especially since I've linked it to Loopt, which is on my iPhone. Annoyingly, Loopt does not have any way to access member profiles or update-data, so it's value as a content-distributer is fairly limited.
Anyways, new rankings!:

• 31 ( was 7) - LinkedIn Directory result
• 7 (was 8) - My actual LinkedIn page (with some cross-linking) continues to hold page 1
• Can't find (couldn't find at last update either) - Facebook continues to have completely disappeared, which is very odd - going to upload more photos soon (tonight?) and then upload those to Flickr as well, which hasn't ranked yet
• 19 & 119(10) - Twitter is all over the place (see previous posts), hard to determine what's driving relevancy here
• 56 & 109 (88) - This Blog! Moved up a bit, presuming regular content updates will help this
• 21 (new) - ClaimID, a good site, especially considering that it's pushed rankings very quickly
• 70 (new) -Naymz! Unfortunately it's a directory result, but I'm the only one on that site, so it's technically a direct link ;)

Some very frustrating results, looks as though Google's liking me less and less, though I'm glad for the top 10 ranking for my LinkedIn, which is arguably the most important anyways.

My boss @ work sent me the link for a online reputation management site called 'StepRep' which is actually pretty interesting. It lets you track your name or any particular query string that you want, though it limits it to five, and there is a "top stories" widget which will actually update content based on the results of the queries that you choose to promote. I'm still learning it, and will post the link to the profile (and cross-link it) as soon as I have a public profile via their site.

On a site note, I did find my myspace page, annoyingly tagged with my online gaming handle and worse, has a terrible picture of me. I linked it just for humor's sake. I haven't updated that page in forever, but it includes some more info about myself (and where I've been for the last couple of years). I don't think I'm going to update the page as it was basically my first foray into the online social media & networking arena, and I personally hated it. Facebook is much, much easier to set up and use.

Hey please check out the author's site of "Radically Transparent", a book I just finished reading - very interesting stuff regarding online reputation! More on this to come :)