The Google Toolbar & SEO
by Alec Duncan
The Google Toolbar & SEO
Like many other useful toolbars out there so is
the Google Toolbar. I consider this toolbar a
must have for any serious search engine optimizer
and anyone who searches the internet on a regular
basis. Here's whyÉ
The Google Toolbar has grown significantly in
features since inception. It now features several
new useful features but the main focus of this
article is on those that aid in search engine
optimization. So without further ado here's the
Google Toolbar unfolded.
PageRank Upon installation of the full Google
toolbar you will notice a small bar near the center
of it that may or may not be partially filled
with a green color as displayed in the diagram
below.
This is the Google PageRank indicator. PageRank
is one of Google's ways of rating your website
and plays a role in the position of your site
in their search results. This value is calculated
based on several variables including the PageRank
value and the number of sites that link to that
page. Sites with a higher page rank tend to have
better rankings than other sites if all other
things are kept equal. I have personally noticed
a significant increase in the search engine placement
of our Search Engine Optimization (http://www.lilengine.com)
site whenever our Google pagerank is increased.
The Google toolbar enable you to, at a glance,
view the PageRank of your website as well as your
competitors' sites. This helps when looking for
sites to engage in with link building as more
links coming from sites with a higher PageRank
than yours help to increase your site's PageRank.
It is also said that when looking for site to
link to yours that you should aim for sites with
a PR 4 or higher. LilEngine personally accepts
links from any useful and related resources, links
from sites with a PageRank of 4 and above are
an added bonus. Contact us for an exchange at
info@lilengine.com.
A side note There are times when the Google Toolbar
will display your website as having a PageRank
of 0 or even no rank at all. If your site previously
had a PR greater than 0 and you notice this, watch
it for a while or close your browser and reopen
it to check as there are times that this feature
seems to be a bit buggy possibly due to updates
etc at Google.
Cached Version When Google spiders your site it
records the latest version of your site that it
has spidered and this can be viewed using the
Google Toolbar by going to the Page Info button
and selecting cached version. Your browser must
be on the page you would like to see the cached
version of at the time you choose to do this.
How can this help you with your SEO campaign?
If you have optimized your website in hopes of
increasing your search engine results in Google,
this will indicate whether or not Google has updated
their database with the new version of your page.
If the Googlebot visits your site regularly the
cached version of your site will be updated more
frequently than otherwise.
Backward Links The Google Toolbar also has a pretty
useful feature that displays all the web pages
that link to your web page, which Google counts
towards your PageRank. This information isn't
regularly updated and can't be expected to take
between 1 Ð 3 months before changes can be seen.
Backlinks deal with quality and not quantity.
A site with 1000 mediocre backlinks may not have
as high a Page Rank as a site with 800 high PR
backlinks.
Highlighting You have the option of adding a highlight
feature to your Google Toolbar that highlights
all instances of your search term on the web page
reached from your search. This can help you see
how many times your competitors use specific keywords
on their pages and you may modify your SEO campaign
accordingly. You may also use this to check your
own pages and see if you are or are not using
enough of your target keywords on your page for
optimum search engine placement. Besides those
features listed above there are also some other
cool tools on the Google Toolbar such as:
Popup Blocker: This only works in IE 5.5 or later
but is a great addition as we all know that there
are many sites on the web that bombard you with
popups. Some of these even go as far as almost
preventing you from going anywhere else as more
and more windows keep popping up. Annoyance factor
10/10.
Google Web Search: You can easily search the web
using the Google Search Engine via the Google
Toolbar by typing in your search terms in the
search box area and then clicking enter or clicking
the `Search Web' button on the toolbar.
Translate: Easily translate sites into English
that you may be interested in for one reason or
another.
Unfortunately there is no version of the Google
Toolbar for browsers other than Internet Explorer
5.0 and greater but hopefully they will be adding
this in the near future.
There are many more features available with the
Google Toolbar. Learn more and download it here,
http://toolbar.google.com/.
©Copyright
LilEngine.com.
About the author:
*******************************
Alec Duncan is the founder of LilEngine.com a
Search Engine Optimization[http://www.lilengine.com]
resource site. Visit http://www.LilEngine.com
for search engine optimization tools and strategies.
Get a free Google ranking tool [http://www.rankdetective.com/free-ranking-tool.php]
on your site.
Return
to FREE articles index
|
Visit Our Sponsor! WebPosition
Gold