WebDev3000 » Extras

Panabee

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:30:14 +0000

Remember PickyDomains and BustAName? No need to worry if you don’t, I’ll concentrate those stories in just a few words right now: it’s all about finding the best domain name for your business – nothing less, nothing more. Well, last night I just bumped into another Web-based tool built to help us get this job done and, since I really like the way it works (the looks aren’t bad at all, either), today it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Panabee!

Panabee has a really smart name and visual image, combining a panda and a bee. Why? No need to get into that now, you can find a lot of funny facts about the site and its services in the “Umm, Panabee?” section. How does it work? It’s really simple – all you need to do is type in two words or a domain name (strange enough, it works with three words, too… but the idea is to get a domain name as short as possible, not stuff like freeappdownloadsforyourandroiddevice.com), press that Search button and, finally, wait for a few seconds for the magic to be unleashed – what you will get is much more than just some straight suggestions based on keywords you entered – you get variations, alternate endings, a list of related terms, translations, Twitter and Facebook posts related to your search, even Google results and Wikipedia related terms. Sweet!

To give you a good example of a great domain name I found using Panabee, I just have to say that “free software” seems like a really tough name to find, since freesoftware.com, freesoftwar.com or even stuff like freeesoftware.com are all taken, yet… freesoftwa.re is still ready for you! Feel free to consider this WebDev3000′s gift to you today. I know only one will get it, but all I can hope is that he/she will put it to good use… and drop a message below to let us know that this domain name has been taken, of course. That’s all, folks – enjoy Panabee and be nice enough to share some great finds with the rest of us, all right? Good luck!

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TailWords

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:22:53 +0000

As I am sure most SEO professionals (or amateurs, no discrimination needed) are aware, virtually all tools that can handle keyword research the right way don’t come for free. On the other hand, it may be possible to check popularity and various other stats of simple keywords with tools like Google Trends, but when it comes to long tail keywords, things may get different – like “expensive,” you know… Fortunately, a buddy of mine told me about TailWords two days ago, so I decided to share this priceless piece of info with you.

Before moving on, let’s make one thing clear to those who may not be into long tail keyword research – according to the article on keyword research I found on Wikipedia, “The long tail in keyword research is basically an expansion of a core, generic, high volume keyword phrase to include numerous combinations and permutations of the keywords and their associated or relevant phrases.” To make it even easier to understand, let me say just this – if you can’t compete on “Android software,” you may have a clear shot on “Android software for Chinese tablets” or “free Android apps for HTC Diamond.” That should make everything clear, I hope.

Now, let’s take a closer look at TailWords: I will start by saying that this tool is far from perfect, since it delivered no results when I searched for popular keywords like “Android” or “Microsoft,” but it proved pretty helpful in providing information based on keywords like “news” or “windows.” That’s pretty strange, if you ask me, despite the fact that “Microsoft” seems to be less popular than “Windows,” according to Google Trends…

… but since this is only a suggestion that you should take TailWords for a spin and nothing more, let me just add the things you’ll get after typing in a certain keyword in this Web-based tool: Searches, Results, Results (Phrase), Results (Title), Adwords Price, Adwords Volume, KEI, KEI (Phrase), KEI (Title), Domains, LT Length, LT Volume, LT Searches. More than basic search, you can also use advanced filters and, if any of the results you get seems like something new, you can always check the help page. That’s all, folks – now you can go and make success happen online!

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Page Speed

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:40:21 +0000

As I’m sure you know already, Google’s algorithm has been taking into account the speed of the Web sites checked for quite a while. Obviously, the speed of a page/website doesn’t only depend on the raw speed of the server hosting it, since there’s much more to keep in mind than that, and Page Speed was always one of the best tools to help you evaluate your websites’ performance…

… only that today we’re talking about Google’s popular Firebug/Chrome addon with a twist: Page Speed just got a brand new online version that offers similar functionality to the addon mentioned above, only that it can be used on any Web browser. Using it is really straightforward – all you have to do is enter the URL you want to check, choose if you want to get suggestions for improving your site’s speed on desktop or mobile devices, then browse the results.

If the above doesn’t seem clear enough, then you definitely have to take a look at Page Speed or… just read some of that official mumbo-jumbo right now, despite the fact it doesn’t actually say anything new: Page Speed “is a web-based tool that allows users to analyze pages at any time, in any browser, without downloading an extension. It also features Page Speed Mobile analysis, which lets developers analyze their site as viewed by a mobile browser, and get suggestions specific to mobile optimization.” Got it? Get to it!

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SEMRush

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:30:46 +0000

For some people, SEO is nothing more but words and numbers. After all, the Web is all about money… isn’t it? No, it’s not – at least not for me, so I simply refuse to believe that all people into this huge industry only think about their earnings before anything else, especially when it comes to helping others. In the end, SEO should be the art of delivering your visitors exactly what they’re looking for, not tricking them into visiting your shop and selling them a whole bunch of lies, as it still happens way too often. Well… SEMRush can’t take care of your way of doing things, but it surely helps you see where you’re standing!

Available for a quick try without registering, freely registered users and even as a $49.95/monthly PRO service, SEMRush has one major goal – to help you view the top keywords that your website ranks for organically, providing information such as keyword, traffic percentage, position in search results and more. More than the above, SEMRush can also show you what URLs from your site rank for specific keywords, so everything looks pretty solid…

… especially since you can use regional databases and Google versions for the domain or keyword report, the documentation is extremely well done and the paid plans can deliver up to 100,000 results per report and 10,000 reports per day, not to mention the ability to export those reports to CSV or XLS. What I really hate is that I was only able to check a single URL without creating an account, but even the free account sounds pretty good if you need some valuable information and you don’t want to spend anything to get it.

I guess that’s all for today, folks, but I have a question – if you’re one of those having a free SEMRush account already, can you tell me more about the goodies it offers? All I can see is “10 results per report” and no export capabilities, but I really hope there’s more than meets the eye…

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Google Sets

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:46:33 +0000

So this SEO expert walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor… but in case that doesn’t sound funny enough, think about another one (I just came up with it a few minutes ago, didn’t find it anywhere on the Internet): “A group of SEO experts goes to the Zoo. After a while, they all run like hell. – What happened? – They saw a Panda!” Now… what’s the connection between these and Google Sets? Keywords, that’s the answer, keywords!

Usually described as a Web-based service that “Generates a list of items when users enter a few examples,” Google Sets is very easy to use, but can surely help you find some keywords related to the ones you enter, and since I know everyone runs out of ideas every once in a while… why not take it for a spin? To give you another short quote, they say that “For example, entering “Green, Purple, Red” emits the list “Green, Purple, Red, Blue, Black, White, Yellow, Orange, Brown.” and, in case that’s not enough, there’s no need to look anywhere else but a few pixels below – that screenshots should give you a clear idea, don’t you think?

As it happens with most Google Labs products, Google Sets is a free service, so there shouldn’t be anything to stop you from taking it for a quick run, unless you’re already using some uber-awesome SEO tool that can also get this job of generating similar keywords done. In that case, I must ask you for some help: please enlighten us and share the name of that tool with the rest of the world, will you? Thanks in advance!

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Post Affiliate Pro

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 19:13:14 +0000

Some say that affiliate marketing is a great way to get others sell your stuff in return of a part of the revenue and, sometimes, this really works for everyone involved. Unfortunately, I noticed that over 90% of the products heavily promoted/sold by third parties using this approach are pure junk, especially those programs that promise to make you rich in no time. On the other hand, nothing can stop you from starting your own affiliate program, especially when you have a product you believe in and a free affiliate system such as Post Affiliate…

… despite the fact that its free version can only offer a small part of the features available in Post Affiliate Pro, there’s something even worse to say about it – take a look at this slice of the official mumbo-jumbo now: “We are sorry, but the old version 1.3 of Post Affiliate Free is no longer available for download. We stopped maintaining this version due to its old tracking technology. If you are searching for a stand-alone affiliate software, please visit the home page of Post Affiliate Pro 4 – this is our state of the art affiliate software.”

On the other hand, Post Affiliate Pro looks pretty solid and, if you don’t need a lot of features, its price may not seem something out of your reach. For details regarding the features available with the Pro editions ready for purchase at this time – Express/Professional/Ultimate – please feel free to visit this page.

Before I close this article, let me just say that I spared a few minutes to mess with the demo of Post Affiliate Pro 4‘s Merchant Panel (all demos available can be found here) and I still have to get back to my former self – Post Affiliate Pro 4 looks simply mind-blowing! Obviously, you don’t have to take this for granted – check it for yourselves and then get back here to tell me if I was right or not wrong, all right?

That’s all for today, folks! Bye-bye!

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Open Web Analytics

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:36:28 +0000

Apart from these sites I don’t own but I write for with pleasure, I have a few sites of my own that I update only once in a while, so I couldn’t care less about Google Analytics. In fact, I don’t even use that – WordPress Stats is more than enough for my needs. On the other hand, I would be a fool to deny the fact that a lot of people need some serious Web analytics solutions, so I am sure one that’s also free AND open source would come in really handy. Ladies and gents, here’s Open Web Analytics!

Shortly known as OWA, Open Web Analytics is a not-so-little (current release, 1.4.1, comes in a 5.9 MB archive) piece of code that can be easily used to track and analyze how people use your websites and online applications, offering two vital features: built-in installer for both WordPress and MediaWiki sites! The rest of it is nothing but background noise, but let me give you a few directions…

… if you go to the official site I mentioned above you will find all the things you need to know about Open Web Analytics, but if you really want to be quick in deciding if OWA is worth the effort or not, you should start with the comparison between OWA, Google Analytics and Piwik 1.0. If you’re planning to use it with a WordPress site (or more), you could jump straight to the installation page – believe me, even my mother could make OWA work with a WordPress site!

Anyway, since this article’s intention is far from reviewing OWA, I think it’s enough to take the info above and use it as you see fit. To me, Open Web Analytics looks awesome and all I can hope is that you find it useful for your needs. That’s all, folks!

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SEO Panel

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:39:22 +0000

Is SEO a good thing or the root of all evil? To me, the answer is slowly, but surely, moving to the last answer. Anyway, if Google’s efforts to make things right will take the right path one day and take out of the search engine all the spammy and illegal sites that are allowed to be there simply because they bring too much money to be taken out, then SEO may become again what’s supposed to be – the art of bringing quality content closer to its target, not the art of throwing junk in your face and hoping that it generates some clicks on those ads…

… so you will surely bump into a lot of expensive SEO tools all over the Web if you want to get some SEO job done and you don’t know what to use. Fortunately, tools like SEO Panel make me hope there’s still a future for a decent Internet – it’s free, open source, and packs a lot of firepower, as its official description says: “A complete open source seo control panel for managing search engine optimization of your websites. SEO Panel is a seo tool kit includes latest hot seo tools to increase and track the performace of your websites. It is a free software released under GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE V2. The main feature of SEO Panel is its extendability by using SEO plugins. Any one can easily develop and install required plugins for their seo panel.”

Released back in January 2010, SEO Panel feels great, delivering a lot of info that I know for sure some people pay to get all in the same place. Well, now you just got a golden tip, it’s up to you how you use it! To access the demos for both the admin and user interfaces, just go here and follow the instructions. That’s all, folks! Please, be nice guys and use SEO Panel to make the Internet better, not just to increase your revenue by pushing up the rankings of sites you wouldn’t look at a second time if you were a user, all right?

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Stella

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 23:45:39 +0000

Way after midnight, still trying to figure out what’s wrong with your code? Hey, maybe your code is perfect, but the server running it has some issues, did you consider this possibility? Well, testing the server’s speed sounds like a pretty good solution. In fact, testing how the whole site-server-code trio responds to a certain load is a great idea, so Stella is nothing more but a natural choice for this late Friday night…

… but that doesn’t mean it’s less important than other things we talked about here so far. After all, Stella is much more than a simple freebie that can tell you how fast is your site and what could be wrong with it. The official mumbo-jumbo goes like this: “When you submit a URI, Stella send real HTTP requests to the site. All of the results you see were produced by the open source tool.(..)We measure the response time of the requested URI. This tells you how your application is performing. Note that this means the page assets (images, CSS, and javascript) are not downloaded or processed in any way.”

All right, but what about the paid accounts? Take a look here and you’ll see what you can get and for how much. On the other hand, to quickly check the stuff you can get without paying a single penny, enter some URL to check in the box on the homepage or, even faster, but less satisfying for most of you, I am sure of that, just take a look at the image above. I don’t know about you, but I’ll surely keep this online service in the right folder of my bookmarks collection. That’s all, folks – have a nice weekend and stay safe!

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BustAName

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 22:35:41 +0000

Friday night sounds really bad to me now. The reason? I feel really drained of ideas, despite the fact there are plenty of things rolling around inside my head, most of them related to the stuff I write about. Well, I guess it may be the fact that I had a week full of things that had nothing in common with my work, but… let’s leave that aside and bust a name, shall we?

If the name doesn’t ring any bells in your head, let me tell you that BustAName is a Web-based service that can help you easily find some good domain names by combining a set of keywords you enter, looking for combinations and giving you the free ones found. What some people would appreciate is the possibility to also look for premium domains, but I think that some domains are simply overrated – for example, I searched for Software-Reviews.com some time ago, and that domain was valued at over 2000 bucks. In the end, content is king, trust me!

On the other hand, having a good name for a decent price is also a smart choice, so BustAName is simply awesome – for example, you can check availability of a certain domain on-the-fly, simply by typing a word into the Quick Domain Check field – no captchas to fill, no time to waste – awesome!

At last, if you really want a human mind to forge the domain name you’d kill for, then PickyDomains may be a better idea, although it may also require more time and even some money to be invested. Well, nothing’s free, after all… maybe except some weekends, so enjoy the one that begins as I write this, will you? Good luck!

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