Summer´s finally arrived here in Barcelona and therefore my time spent in front of a laptop reading my feeds is diminishing by the day!

In my post from March 2009 Link building advice from 11 Experts, some real experienced professionals gave great advice on how to best gain links.

But I just stumbled across this interesting post on Keeping track of links with link building tools & spreadsheets. Anyone who ever done link building knows how important it is to keep track of URLs, anchor text, dates etc. Especially keeping track of all data is paramount during link building campaigns, when more than 1 person is working on gaining links.

The 3 link building worksheets & guidelines mentioned are as follows:

• The öntolo Link Qualification Work Sheet
• Ask Kalena link building help
• Your SEO Plan, from the book “Search Engine Optimisation an hour a day” by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin.

Additionally in the comments of Ann Smartey´s post are a couple of link building tools listed, which some of you may find helpful.

• Raven SEO tools, which also offer a 30 day free trial (you have to enter your credit card details for the trial!)
• Wordstream

And here are a couple I would like to add to the mix:

• Internet Business Promoter, which allows you to download a trial version, which is sufficient if you just work with one website.
• WebCEO, which also offers a free version for download but has some limitations of course.

For anyone pretty new to SEO and link building, this should give you a good overview of what’s available to ease some of the link building tasks for you. I am sure there are many more tools out there, feel free to share them with us!

written by Feli \\ tags: Link building, link building tools, seo tools

My post from last week about Social Media Metrics for Google Analytics received a positive response from readers of my blog. Thanks!

Erik Vold from VKI Studios also commented and has pointed out another handy Google Analytics Firefox Extension he’s written, which also includes the Greasemonkey Social Media Metrics features. The main features are as follows:

• Auto access your Google Analytics account
• Cleaner Profile Switching
• Export to Google Docs from Google Analytics
• Google Analytics Absolute Conversion
• Google Analytics Advanced Date Selection
• Google Analytics Table Sorting
• Social Media Metrics

Find more information on the Better Google Analytics Firefox extension on the VKI Studio’s site, where you can also download it.

Exciting stuff for all Google Analytics fans out there and again a shoutout and a big “Thank you” to Erik Vold, Michael Freeman, Arty V, Tyson Kirksey and André Scholten.

written by Feli \\ tags: firefox extensions, Google Analytics, google analytics firefox extension, tools

It’s always nice to wake up in the morning and check your Google Analytics account- and WOW – there are new custom reporting features.

Bizarrely enough, sometimes new Google Analytics features may have been live for a while in the US or in the UK but not here in Spain or vice versa. Therefore I had already read and heard about these features but my account hadn’t been updated with them until today.

So what are these new features, still residing in Beta?

1) Custom reporting

2) Advanced segments

The custom report can be set up using a combination of metrics and dimensions. It is vital to verify first which combination of metrics and dimensions can be used together and should be checkedin the chart here.

Metrics can be any of the following:

• Site usage
• Content
• Goals
• E-commerce
• Advertising

Dimensions are divided as follows:

• Visitors
• Traffic sources
• Content
• E-commerce
• Systems

Creating the reports is very easy. There are already colour-coded fields for “metrics” (blue) and “dimensions” (green) and once you click on the respective fields, a variety of buttons unfold themselves, which can easily dragged and dropped onto the predefined fields. Once you’ve chosen all the metrics and dimension combinations you would like to appear in one report, you can preview it and if you are happy with it click on “create report”.

I’m very excited about these custom reports, as it enables to get more specific information without having to create filters in a variety of profiles.

Have fun with these new Google Analytics reports!

written by Feli \\ tags: custom reports, dimensions, Google Analytics, metrics, reporting, SEO

To be honest I was never really that much into social networking sites. I’ve boycotted them for years, when there was the big MySpace hype and only started a Bebo account, because my friend opened one for me.

Now that I have moved to Barcelona and live away from most of my friends I see the real value in Facebook and Twitter. It’s an easy way of telling your friends what you are up to and be able to take part in your life from the distance. Now when I start up my PC, I generally check my email, then open Google Reader and check my feeds. After that I normally check Facebook and Twitter. But it becomes quite tedious and time consuming opening all these applications in different tabs. I came across this really interesting post on the Softonic blog Top 5 Firefox add-ons for social networks and found Twitter, Facebook and YouTube add-ons, which are a real time saver.

The Facebook toolbar is really handy, as it enables you to sign into your account straight from there, update your status and customise the toolbar to your specific needs. Also any new updates from your friends appear automatically, just the way you see who signs in when you are signed into MSN messenger or Skype, which enables you to react quickly to your friends status updates, if you like.

Twitterfox is really neat as well, as once you download it, you can sign in straight from your status bar. By clicking on the Twitter “t”, a little window opens and shows you the lastest updates since the last time you logged in. Additionally there is a small window, which allows you to type in your updates easily.

The YouTube “YouPlayer” is also really handy. It is basically a video player where you can enable playlists, very similar to Winamp. It allows you to drag a video link into a playlist and then either just play it or watch it or even download it. Very nice!

Here are a few more, which I didn’t talk about in detail:

1) Flickrfox

2) MySpace Toolbar

3) Bookmarker – opens a sidebar, where you can easily access sites, such as del.icio.us, digg.com, diigo.com, ma.gnolia.com, google.com, mister-wong.de, netvouz.com, linkarena.com, alltagz.de, bobrdobr.ru

Happy networking!

Related posts: Social media posts

written by Feli \\ tags: del.ici.ous, digg, facebook, firefox add-ons, firefox extensions, myspace, Social Media, social networking, toolbars, tools, twitter, youtube