With my recent blog entries I’ve been talking about budget SEO and how to build a decent low-budget (US$500) SEO scheme. The first entries were more or less about limitations a low budget SEO has, now is the time to start presenting some tools and methods for the job. This first set of essential tools for budget SEO is loosely related to on page optimization and copywriting. The first tool on my list is Macromedia Dreamweaver, a de facto tool for any web site / application developer. Most of the time it is used to build web pages, but it has also a very good range of reporting tools (which many sadly miss). With a few mouse clicks it is possible to:
- analyze website accessibility (WAI and other standards)
- analyze website coding practises
- find empty or missing title tags
- find empty or missing image alt attributes
- analyze link structure (orphaned files, external links, and broken links)
- And store everything into nice reports anyone can view in HTML-format.
To make things even nicer, most of the noticed errors / warnings are possible to fix automatically either directly or indirectly. And even better, it is possible to extend the above list of available default tools with scripting and extensions.
The second tool is Xenu’s Link Sleuth – a simple link based crawler. Web developers use Xenu to check for broken links on regular basis, but for SEO purposes the best value comes in form of simple internal linkage analysis. By ordering the Xenu sitemap by “links in” and “page level”, it is easy to detect possible internal linking abnormalities that either distract PageRank flow or decrease anchor text value; and of course all this information can be saved as a report. Xenu gathers loads of information, and it is very useful tool even for in-depth SEO purposes. There are of course loads of other link analyzers, but this is my recommendation for on page optimization.
The third tool I’m very keen is Microsoft Word . Although it may seem a very unconventional tool for web developer / SEO, it is undeniably one of the best copywriting and publishing tools that all users are familiar. Microsoft Word has several in-build features that help to produce high quality content, analyze existing content, fix and locate essential grammar errata’s, and above all easily automate & synchronize all the features and changes with other users and publishing tools. For more tech savvy folks, there is always the scripting option for fine tuning. I was more than happy to hook into few Web Services and fetch SEO / document related information.
Like with most SEO tools, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Properly used above tools can be very helpful; for the untrained eye or for wrong kind of task they can cause pain and misery. Whereas making a proper on page optimization usually takes tens of hours even for a relatively small site, it is possible to cut it down to less than 2 hours with tools and methods described above. Of course there is a difference in quality of work and documentation compared to normal priced SEO services, but it is only realistic not to measure the 5,000 and 500 US$ SEO with same metrics.
Interesting article. I'll have to go and take a look at the previous 2 parts.
This is a very interesting concept. Most likely the first hours of SEO on a site are the most productive. This approach probes at getting the biggest bang for the buck.
I don't know if the cookie cutter approach will work since there are so different types of sites, all in different stages of SEO condition. However, a couple hours of appraisal with a "to do list" that has been cost estimated and ranked according to return vs investment might be a good way to go.
smdstudios, here are direct links to previous parts: 1st part and 2nd part.
Egol, I do believe this system will work in it's *unique way*. Of course the differences between site types and stages are something to take into account, but this is pretty flexible stuff. IMO the solution suites best for static and small (less than 35 pages) sites, but I think even larger sites would go if the timespan was increased... Alltough I focus on the blog about technical views, in the end of day it's all about providing enhanced revenue/conversion for customer. This is something where personal skills of SEO are the ruling factor, and automation and technology are tools/assets any SEO uses to make things more efficient.
Bruno & sorvoja, thanks for further comments. As said earlier, there are various limitations and acknowledging those limitations is important. Automated tools may help to increase website accessibility in skilled hands, but they never go all the way. If they did, most SEOs and accessibility consultants would be out of business ;)
Once again, please remember we are talking about 500US$ plan, NOT the 5,000 or 25,000US$ SEO plan. . This is a totally different ball game than most of us professional level SEOs are accustomed to play with. Imagine a situation where you have max. 8 hours of time to analyze, fix and SEO customer website. Is the goal crazy? Most likely! Is it possible? I think so, but it requires heavy automation and recycling of information (topic sensitive backlink data for example)! Does it enhance website possibility to rank better? Definitely yes!
If you make valid template page, all other will be valid also, if you just change content on others page's, there is no need to check each page.
This applies only if you are using Dreamweaver for editing & don't mess with the code/structure (It's possible to mess the code inside template)... Most of the low budget sites offered for optimization don't rely on templates or any good design issues you and I know/follow, so they have to be validated entirely (and if it takes only a minute why not to play on the safe side? )
Yes, taking a new valid template and fitting content inside it is one very good option, but like most solutions it also has a set of drawbacks you would have to face.
DW provides useful hints, but my position on this remains the same.
Any tool could only report on the criterias that could be tested by a machine, e.g. if a image has a alt text or not. All of the important accessibility criterias, e.g. the use of clear and simple language could only be tested manually. I am very doubtful of any use of the word '''accessibility''' for any automatic validation process. I sometimes enounter web sites that are unaccessible for anyone, but where the web design firm proudly proclaims that it is "Bobby approved".
You don't need Dreamweaver for that, validator.w3.org is enough. I hope you don't use Dreamweaver for accessibility and coding practises.
Bruno & Sorvoja. Thanks for comments. Please keep in mind that I'm showing/building here methods for decent low budget (500US$) SEO scheme. It means work with limited time, resources and results; for example manual analysis and reports are wiped out to very lenghts...
Sorvoja... I can assure you that DW does extremely good job with accessibility. The reports are by no means as readable and in-depth as a manual analysis at best, but still of superb value; and something you can get with few mouseclicks. Also you must note that the basic functionality can be extended either by purchasing extensions or scripting the DW API...
Bruno... online validator is good for single page validation only. DW can analyze entire site with one mouse click. List of inbuild validators is long, but names like XHTML, CSS, WAI (triple A) and WCAG 2 say IMHO a lot about the power of Dreamweaver...
So I would try to be very open minded. These tools are very usefull when building a low budget SEO, but they provide loads of goodies (and room for extensions) even for more advanced SEO/SEM usage.
Ok, DW is useful alot, i do use him every day atleast couple hours but :)
"Bruno... online validator is good for single page validation only."
If you make valid template page, all other will be valid also, if you just change content on others page's, there is no need to check each page.
sitepoint.com/article/automated-accessibility-trap
A proper web site accessibility report must be done by hand since the nature of the test criterias makes any automated validation impossible.