Search Enging Optimization Resources

• Spy Fu - Best tool for SEO, highly recommended.
• SEO Book - Best SEO book on the net
• SEO Moz
• SEO Chat
• Self SEO
• Yahoo! Webmaster Guidelines
• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• MSN\Live Webmaster Guidelines

Google Webmaster Resources

• Google Webmaster Central
• Submit Content to Google
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Use our site status wizard
• Analyze your visitors
• Gadgets for your Webpage
• Add site search to your website
• Leverage Google's Developer Tool
• Promote your website with Google AdWords
• Earn money from your website
• Optimize your content

WordPress Resources

• Official WordPress Guide - Must read if wanna be good WordPress blogger
• Official WordPress Plugins - Download WP plugins from here, safest.
• Download WordPress - Official WP Download page
• Free WordPress Blogs - If you want to creat a free blog on WordPress.com.

Nice Google Searches

• Free CSS templates
• Free WordPress Templates
• Free SEO Tools
• Free Online Games

Self SEO Tools

SEO Tools

• Alexa Rank Checker
• Check Google Pagerank
• Domain Typo Generator
• Google Pagerank Prediction
• Google ban check
• Link Popularity Checker
• Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Keyword Misspelling
• Search engine ranking report
• Number of pages indexed

Internet Tools

• Find IP address of a website
• Find host by IP
• HTTP Headers Check
• International WHOIS
• IP to country
• Ping test
• Server Status Check
• What is my IP ?
• Your browser details

Webmaster Tools

• HTML Optimizer
• HTML Source Viewer
• Link Extractor
• Search engine spider simulator
• Meta tags Generator
• Meta tags Extractor
• Website speed test

I guess the update just happened because it's end of Febuary in the US, and it's already 1st of March here in Asia. I'm not sure about this, but I'm sure about one thing, my PR increased.

Well, I am so glad to see my homepage is at PR 3. Most my pages and some posts are at PR 3. I still don't know how some post got PR3 for just a few external links to them. Previously, I was so disappointed because most my pages are at PR3 and posts at PR2.

I know it's nothing to brag about because most people have their blog at PR 4+ already. Seriously that's not what I'm bragging about. What I'm really surprise is to see the following blogs are at PR 0 (zero):

• MixedMarketArts.com (previously 4)
• Yeepage.com (estimated 3+)

I'm mentioning those because I'm their frequent reader. I guess those sites got some sort of Google sandbox or PR penalties for involving in selling text links.

Perhaps Collin (MixedMarketArts.com) is too eager to make money online by telling people some black/gray hat SEO tactics and so his PR got busted. Collin and Simon, if what I assume here is wrong please leave a comment on this post, and forgive me. I really hope you guys can get your PR back and grow bigger because I like your works.

Another surprise is that the following blogs have their PR dropped as well (or remain lower tha their potential) :

1. Johnchow.com still PR 3 and no where to see in search result for his chosen keyword, even his own name 'John Chow'. Did anyone mention his PR was 4?
2. Shoemoney.com still PR 5. Unfortunately for Shoe, the words Skills To Pay The Bills didn't return his blog on first position, but I believe he is happy being at first page. I still don't know what Shoemoney's targeted keyword is, or perhaps he is already too happy with the RSS subscribers.

But hey, there my be some error. The PR data centers might be in the progress of updating. The results for those rediculous low PR for those popular blogs might just be result of some lag?

How did I get all this results? If that's the question, then here is the answer: I use SEOBook's SEO for Firefox.

I used many online PR checker and all disappointed me. They worked for a while and then later on when I come back somehow they break up. I hope this SEO for Firefox tool can remain functioning longer because I really love it. It give me the PR for the pages on Google search results straight away so that I don't have to those lengthy URL again and again.

I'm eager to see your answer to my open questions. Especially I love to see you brag about your own PR here. So go ahead and start commenting

1. Manually check the size;
2. Using calculation tools; and
3. The negative effect on visitors

1. Manually check the size

Here is how you can manually check the weight of webpage:

1. Press Ctrl+S for short. Or on Firefox click File > Save Page As..., on Internet Explorer click File > Save As...

2. On the Save As dialog, select the folder where you want to save the page to, and remember it.

Make sure in the Save As Type, you check the Web Page, complete option so that all images, scripts, css files, everything is downloaded. Internet Explorer makes things much easier by giving the option to save as type: Web Archive, single file (*.mht).

3. Open the folder where you save the files, select the file and folder downloaded from step 2.

4. Right click to activate context menu, then click Properties.

5. Read the file size from the dialog box, it should look similar to this:

2. Using calculation tools

OK, you just learned how to check the file size manually. Now come the question, why do such time consuming work by yourself? Well, the answer is more accurate in size. But what about the analysis? Here is a tool that allow you to analyse your web page and estimate the load time.

The tool is Web Page Speed Report. Give it a try and applause the maker for giving away such wonderful tool for free. My warning is that this report doesn't include IFRAME pages from Google Ads and the images loaded by external javascript.

Here is the ... very disappointing fact about my home page, which acording to the tool the size is only 160595 bytes but the speed result are:

3. The negative effect on visitors

I thought about writing the effect of page weight on the visitor waiting time, but I found this perfect article about it. I don't think it's wise to re-invent the wheel so I would like to use that article as a reference. You can start reading Page Weight Tested to get some insight about page weight and its importance.

The page load time will sure depend on the server processing time, too. It depends on how many and what type of plugins you use as well. That's another story to tell. Here is what you need to know before you make a mistake with your over weight pages:

As you can see, I'm not very happy with my blog homepage weight because it's over 200KB. According to the research found on Page Weight Tested that's over 26s load time on a dial-up browser and that's driving 95% of dialup visitors away from my homepage.

Fortunately with the minimal design and minimal sidebar usage my homepage is still smaller than the vast of other blogs. With the weight in mind I made my blog post less than 100KB.

What's next?

Do you still remember my opinion about Major Issues With common Blog Layout? If you haven't read that post then it's a good time to do so now. This post is one of the the first series of 10 upcoming posts. I will try my best to complete all those in the list shortly after the new design is out.

Now you know how to check the Web page weight, it's time for you to take actions. If you are here, I would love to see you leave a comment to say about your own test results?

Update 19/01/2007: The blogosphere seems to be interesting. I found a few posts related to web page size today:

• Does your page load size suck? Mine does
• The Neverending Saga of Bad Webpage Decisions… Ad Placement and Impressions

In Australia I spent most of my time working as a computer service technician. My job was to fix broken computer and maintain a network of around 20 computers for Internet cafe. It cost people up to $80 for a repair I done in few hours. Even when not at work, tweaking and maintaining a Windows PC is just my daily life.

I've been too busy with learning to blog. If the same amount of time that I read, I spend to write, now I would have few hundred articles up and running. Unfortunately, life is like that, learning make you slow down, but after that it give you much more benefit than not learning at all.

Recently I stumbled upon this blog called Web Tools and Tips because of some link bait. At first, I thought it's just some commercial blog up for nothing. But slowly when I repeatedly visit it I found it really match my taste.

If you have a blog, you should link to me now, whisper me and I will put a back link to your page too. My linking strategy is much more generous than many other bloggers. For instant you can check this article Top 65 Ping Sites for WordPress Blogs, see how many inbound links I get from there, and compare how many outbound links from this post.

Silky the author behind Web Tools and Tips is writing a lot about computers tips and tricks. This really turn me on because it's my expertise. I always wanted to write tips and tweaks for Windows. At the time I write this article, the latest tips from Web Tools and Tips is: Make your Windows XP Computer run faster. Since this is what I know well and what I do, I would like to have a quick look at the advices. Here are the main point from this article.

1. Remove unwanted software from your PC
2. Remove unwanted programs from Start up
3. Turn off the fancy Windows XP graphics
4. Clear Browsing History and Temporary files

Well, allow me to give some humble opinions here, even though it's a little off-topic. I strongly agree with the first 3 points. By following those 3 advices you will greater improve the performance of any computer. However, I disagree on number 4. The author said:

If you are a consistent user of your web browser, then over a period, many unwanted Temporary Internet files, cookies, browsing history, your passwords etc. get accumulated in the memory, and is a drain on the PC resources. You can selectively delete them, specially the Temporary Internet files.

Source: http://webtoolsandtips.com/uncategorized/make-computer-fast/

No! If you delete the temporary Internet files you are loosing performance. The purpose of caching is to speed up the online browsing speed. The longer the history and temporary files the faster you will browse the Internet.

Just a simple example, imagine when you get hit a 10MB flash file. If you delete it from the cache, it will have to be downloaded the next time you view it... do you like that 2 minutes wait? If you leave it there, the next hit may take only 1 or 2 seconds.

The temporary files you need to clean up often, are not Temporary Interent Files, but the Temporary System files reside in C:\Temp, C:\Windows\Temp, and %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp.

Oh, that's just a quick look at something I'm good at. There are more to say, but not at this time and not in this article. Silky might not like my honest opinion but that's how I work. I always will give honest opinions even it is negative. I know it hurts because the person (even myself) would feel a little embarrassed, even angry sometimes. However, if that person (including myself) can take that as a positive criticism than they can improve very quickly and become more successful.

Overall, I found Web Tools and Tips very interesting blog and I will definitely be a loyal reader. I particularly like Tips 'n' Tricks category from this blog. It remind me to put something into my Windows category.

Why comment smartly?

Search engine relies on links to calculate link popularity and hence prioritize pages on the search results. If you have a website or blog you would like to have the search engines to recognize it.

One method of building link popularity is to include your home page address in the comments that you leave on other blogs. However, most of those blogs block search engines from seeing your address.

Fortunately, there are aware and open-minded bloggers who realized the issue. They use some plugin to remove the nofollow tag and open the search engine vision to those links. The links to your website on those blogs are search engine friendly and count toward your link popularity (hence PageRank).

It is white-hat-SEO if you really do participate on the discussions. Otherwise it is black-hat-SEO if you just spam out messages unrelated to the topic written on those blogs.

There are many lists of those blogs on the Internet. However those lists are very limited because you don't know how many blog you have to click before you find the one you like. But that's about to change.

Dofollow Search Engine

CommentHunt is search engine that let you search high PageRank blogs those don't have nofollow tag. Hence you can improve your own link popularity by actively participating in discussions on those blogs.

With this tool, now you can gain the benefit of searching, discussing, and building link popularity at the same time.

I found it by reading Commenthunt helps you build links to increase website traffic. I tried tried it out, it works.

What's next?

I will definitely use this tool to search for the things I need and discuss it on the way. I prefer a stone get 2 birds, to both have passionate discussion and SEO.

Please, don't be too greedy and hold yourself back from participating on nofollow blogs. You gain more benefit from commenting on the same topics of interest, especially related to your website, then dofollow but unrelated topics.

In fact, I like this brilliant idea, and I know how to do it. Wait for my version of similar search engine with more features.

"What? How come my PageRanks are all 0? Did Google penalize me for something?"

Popular Tools Cause Surprise

It came to a calm-down when I check the PageRank for www.google.com, which also returned 0/10. Then I check PageRank for yahoo.com, johnchow.com, etc, all returned 0/10. The same results came from the following PageRank checkers:

1. Check Page Rank
2. Page Rank - whats my page rank

Here is the result from CheckPageRank.com:

Here is the result from WhatIsMyPageRank.com

Then I felt OK, that means Google is doing something at their base that cause all PageRank. Or there maybe a technical breakdown somewhere with their API.

Less Famous Tools Still Functional

Today, I check again and surprisingly found that out of the first tools found while Googling, this BLOGFUX pagerank tool works. Here is the result from their page:

SEOOpen's Check Google PageRank tool also is functional, here is their result:

Conclusion

After all the guesses and worries, what really happen here is that there might be some changes made at the Google PageRank API that broke all those tools. Any thoughts?