Oh say can you SEO?

[George Nicol]

Evan Leibovitch wrote:

> I'd be greatly thankful if folks here can point me to good resources 
> (books, websites, etc.) in the field of search engine optimization 
> (SEO).

Better late... than never to reply. Hey, SEO is an iterative process so 
maybe this is timeless regardly.

I did a whois on a website using http://www.domaintools.com/ which is 
*much* more informative than a simple, generic whois. The results page 
contains a lot of links and, of course, showcases other services and 
power tools that "DomainTools" offer, many (most?) for free.

The initial query provided an "SEO Score" (95%) and is a link to their 
"SEO Text Browser" tool. I'll let them explain:

"The SEO Text Browser tells the user what things could be improved with 
the current web page they are browsing. New webmasters don't need to 
know every SEO trick, a quick spin around the block with the SEO Text 
Browser tells most of the major corrections that are needed to rank 
better with on-page content. Best of all this is a free service by 
DomainTools for all the white hats out there."

"The SEO Text Browser allows even the newest webmaster to easily view a 
detailed and customized list of tasks to fix. Experts that know what 
they are doing use lynx or study the source code. The SEOTB actually 
gives easy step by step instructions on how to improve the web page the 
user is surfing."

They go on to list the 5 "Step-by-Step Instructions To Fix SEO" and you 
can find out more here: http://www.domaintools.com/seo-score/

Caveat #1: Finding DomainTools was a happy (?) accident I had today. 
Just scratching the surface, so far. But I'm favourably impressed.

> Some of the sites I've been looking at so far promise "free" stuff 
> that look like a one-way trip to their "hire me" section.

After a brief look around, I'd say they're looking for profit from 
Domain Registrations and by promoting Web Hosting Providers. Dunno.
Ah, they have paid user account subscriptions, as well, which will 
likely be of interest when I put my computer forensics hat on.

Caveat #2: The SEO Text Browser is Beta. If you provide feedback, you'll 
be helping them build a better ($aleable?) tool. I haven't checked on 
the license they're using. If this is FOSS, of course, it's mutually 
beneficial, as we wish everything could be.

Caveat #3: Their English is nearly perfect but still hints that it's not 
their mother tongue. So what. Too many native uni-grads are no better. 
(I'm an Equal Opportunity adherent when offensive.) Maybe I should use 
DomainTools' whois to discover more about them or the outfit that may be 
their parent: Name Intelligence, Inc. http://www.nameintelligence.com/

Anyone experienced? Bueller?

Hope this is helpful, Evan. Feedback would be good.
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