Pocket SEO » Tools

Joongel – Firefox Search Plugin

Josh — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:19:42 +0000

I’ve just started using this search plugin and it has potential:
Joongel search plugin

It allows you to search many social media sites from the Firefox search box (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-k).

IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad Recommendation

Josh — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:35:43 +0000

I had some hardware problems on my laptop over the past couple of days. I wanted to post a recommendation for Lenovo ThinkPads for anyone who is thinking about buying a laptop.

I have the ThinkPad T43 which I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s extremely sturdy, had a great keyboard, and runs Ubuntu Linux well. It also has 5 handy buttons on the touchpad.

The fan was making a noise recently that got so bad by Tuesday I had to turn my computer off.

I had the ThinkPlus extended service agreement which offers 3 years of on-site, next business day repairs with free parts and labor.

I called up Lenovo and told them about the problem, “my fan is broken”. The response time was actually two days because their first employee had entered my phone number incorrectly. The repairman came on the second day and replaced my laptop’s fan with no questions asked.

I also had another hardware problem about 6 months ago where Lenovo came to the office and replaced the entire motherboard without asking any questions or arguing.

I paid just $119 for 3-years of this repair service.

In contrast, when I had a Toshiba laptop and had hardware problems my computer was out of commission for 6 weeks and I spent hours on the phone arguing with them about it.

ThinkPads are a little more expensive than other brands, but it’s worth it. I probably would have had to buy three regular laptops in the time that I have been using this T43.

I highly recommend ThinkPad laptops. I don’t know if they make the T-43 model anymore, but the T-60 looks good. The T-43 is a little lighter than the T-60. When I replace this laptop in a couple of years I may go for the X-series which is even lighter.

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Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon and Google OS – Linux on the Desktop

Josh — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:12:55 +0000

I recently upgraded from Ubuntu Dapper Drake to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. I highly recommend Linux as a desktop operating system. Here is a video of the latest Ubuntu release:

If you have never used Linux before, start with a dual-boot system so that you can go back to Windows occasionally if you need to. It is also possible to install Linux on an external hard drive.

Linux has a reputation as being difficult to use, but it’s not like that anymore. Linux is comparable to Windows or Mac (though I think Linux is better). Some of the best new features in the latest version of Mac OS X have already been in Linux for a long time, like “Spaces” (virtual desktops).

Head over to Ubuntu.com and download the live CD. You can try Linux without installing it by running the Live CD.

The Linux desktop is finally hitting mainstream with the release of the gOS (Google OS?) computer — a $199 computer from Walmart that runs a version of Ubuntu Linux that is designed to work with Google products instead of Microsoft. Screenshots on Wired.com. You can also download the gOS here.

The Worst Thing About WordPress SEO

Josh — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:46:17 +0000

WordPress is generally considered an SEO-friendly blogging system. I think that it’s one of the best of the free blogging systems, but it has some critical SEO issues.

You can SEO a WordPress site with some work, but the one issue that continually bothers me is the lack of precise control over URLs. You can only have one universal permalink structure for your blog and it’s difficult to change it in the future.

In Drupal each node (a node is an item of content, like a “post” or “page”) can have a URL alias. You get a URL control panel to view and edit every individual URL on your site. In Drupal you also have the ability to display custom views with URL arguments (using the Views Module).

I built PocketSEO.com in WordPress because I wanted to become more familiar with WordPress by using it regularly, but I often find myself wishing that it were a Drupal site.

Here are 10 reasons to use Drupal for an SEO-friendly CMS.

My order of preference for blogging:

Drupal — The best open-source CMS. Great for blogs and for larger portal sites also.
WordPress — Decent for a blog, but the URL control is a serious problem. The templating is also a bit disorganized compared to Drupal.
Blogger — I hate to even mention it as a possibility, but it’s an absolute last resort for sites that cannot run WordPress and that need a custom blog on their domain. E.g., http://example.com/blog/

Are Your WordPress Plugins Secretly Injecting Links in Your Blog?

Josh — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:06:24 +0000

I built PocketSEO.com in WordPress because I haven’t used WordPress regularly since version 1.5 and I wanted to become more familiar with it. (I generally prefer Drupal.)

As I was experimenting with WordPress plugins and themes I noticed that they would often embed outbound links in my blog. I don’t mind a footer link to the developers’ Web sites (I keep my credits on a separate credits page), but I found one WordPress plugin called Gregarious that secretly embedded a hidden sitewide link in my footer:


<a href="http://dev.lipidity.com/feature/wp-plugin-gregarious"
style="display:none;visibility:hidden;">Socialized through Gregarious 42</a>

I don’t mind giving links to a WordPress plugin developer, and I assume that most regular widgets have links back to the developers’ sites, but I wasn’t happy about the way that the link was sneakily inserted and hidden with CSS. I removed the plugin and use something else now.

Edit: As I mentioned below in the comments, this hidden link doesn’t appear in the gregarious plugin code. The hidden link may be loaded remotely.

Has anyone else found WordPress plugins that secretly add links to your site?

12 1/2 Essential Firefox Extensions for SEO

Josh — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:37:22 +0000

Firefox is one of the most useful tools for SEO. Here are a few Firefox extensions that should be in the toolkit of every SEO:

Search Status Firefox Extension: The Search Status Firefox Extension shows Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and Compete Rank in the Firefox status bar. It also has an option to highlight all rel=nofollow links on Web pages so you can see which links on pages have been rel=nofollowed.
Web Developer Toolbar: The Web Developer Toolbar should be installed on everyone’s computers. There are too many features to list here, but I will mention a few. The first thing to do after installing it is go to Disable -> Referrers. That not only increases your privacy when browsing online; it also prevents you from sending referrers to your own site when visiting it from the SERPs which may distort your stats if you visit your site often. Another useful tool is the ability to turn off cache and CSS. The shortcut to turn off stylesheets is Ctrl-Shift-s. The Images and Information menus also have many useful functions.
Customize Google Firefox Extension: Customize Google give you increased privacy from Google, as well as adds links to other search engines on the Google SERPs so that you can search across Google, Yahoo, and MSN with just a few clicks. The screenshot below shows the extra links that Customize Google puts on the Google SERPs:
Live HTTP Headers Firefox Extension: A great tool for checking headers on Web sites is the Live HTTP Headers Firefox extension. To open Live HTTP Headers in the sidebar just hit Ctrl-l (lowercase L). Then visit the page you want to check. You will be able to see whether the URL is sending 200 OK headers, or is doing 301 or 302 redirects. It will also tell you whether a site is sending Google’s new X-robots header.
User Agent Switcher Firefox Extension: If you want to see whether a site is cloaking and sending different content to Google than to human visitors, install the User Agent Switcher Firefox extension. You can add new user agents with the convenient user agent import file.
HTML Validator Extension Firefox Extension: The Firefox HTML Validator Extension will point out errors in Web pages’ HTML code. It also gives you detailed information about the errors when you view the source (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-u).
Show IP Firefox Extension: To see if sites are hosted on the same or similar IP addresses, install the Show IP Firefox Extension. The IP address of all sites will then show in your Firefox status bar. Extra IP tools can be found by right clicking on the IP address in the status bar.
X-Ray Firefox Extension: The X-Ray extension overlays HTML tags on top of Web pages. It’s a quick way to check if sites are using
elements or other SEO-related HTML elements.
No Script Firefox Extension: Search engines cannot read JavaScript. If you are doing SEO full time and want to view sites more as search engines view them, install the NoScript Firefox extension. It turns off JavaScript, but allows you to enable it on a site-by-site basis.
Firebug Firefox Extension: The Firebug extension may look complex at first, but it’s one of the greatest tools available for Web developers. There is a Firebug tutorial here. The screenshot below shows how in the HTML tab you can hover over an HTML element (in this case a div) and have that section highlighted on the Web page with padding and margins shown in different colors. The CSS is shown in the lower-right sidebar. The HTML and CSS can be edited to help find tricky CSS bugs and other useful information.
ScreenGrab Firefox Extension: The Screengrab Extension takes several different kinds of screenshots of Web pages, and it has the ability to capture entire Web pages even when they scroll off the screen. It is especially useful for taking screenshots of client sites.
Scrapbook Firefox Extension: The Scrapbook Extension allows you to save and annotate Web pages and read them offline. It is especially useful for saving online tutorials to your hard drive. The screenshot below shows a saved page with some added highlighting and a note.
Firefox Profiles: This post refers to “12 1/2 Firefox Extensions” because this last one is not really an extension but a feature of Firefox. When you use Firefox all of your settings, extensions, bookmarks, and other data are stored in a profile folder. You can create several profiles, each with different settings, bookmarks and modules. So you could create one Firefox profile for regular surfing, and another Firefox profile for viewing sites as search engines see them (e.g., with JavaScript, CSS, and Images turned off). If you like to use a lot of Firefox extensions and they are conflicting with each other, you could install different sets of Firefox extensions to different Firefox profiles. That way they would not conflict. The screenshot below shows the Firefox Profile Manager: