SEO-Browser.com Update

One of the nice things about being the co-creator of an SEO tool like the SEO Browser is that when I have an idea for something I'd like fixed or added, it's a lot easier to make sure it happens ;)

Of course, I have to pay for it, but at least it happens...

For those of you who don't know what the SEO browser is, it's an online SEO tool that lets you see your site the way a search engine sees it. Although this sounds like something you can do in any text only browser like Lynx or Firefox with certain options turned off, there is a lot more to it than that.

Some of the features (some you have to go into "Advanced Mode" to see. It's at the top of the SEOBrowser page):
  • Text only mode browsing of the site.
  • Image and object alt attributes are shown, but Italicized to let you know it's alt text.
  • Issues with robots, metatags, etc are highlighted
  • The character count for titles, meta information, etc are listed.
  • You can see pages in advanced modes, such as with "stop characters" removed or in compressed mode (how a search engine actually stores the page)
  • You can see WHOIS info, DNS Info, Header response etc
  • Toggles Highlights your keywords so you can visualize the page easier.
  • Lists the KeyWord Density for every keyword on the page.
One of the only things it doesn't do is give advice. It's a tool for professionals to gather information with, not some sort of mechanical SEO tool. I don't believe in programs that try to replace the skill of a real SEO. Basically, I designed it to do what I needed. Then shared it.

Anyway, I'm pretty proud of the latest tweak. It's such a simple thing, but can be huge when you are dealing with complicated sites. When you go to each page, it lists the response code at the top in orange.

That's all. But in practice, it's actually really important. I'll give you a few examples. Non-SEO's may not appreciate these, but the rest of you should be able to figure out why I like this so much.

First, you can just go to my home page: mcanerin.com [SEO Browser Version]

You'll see it's just a 200OK. Big deal. Now, lets get more interesting. Check out these pages by loading them into the seobrowser:
Cool huh? And very, very useful for people debugging sites. Try to spot the errors (some of them serious) in the example sites above. Then maybe take a look at your own.

Ian

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

very cool update! i'm definitely going to show this to my programming friends to use...it makes dissecting the problems with sites that much easier. :) not only that, but i love how it highlights the problems so you don't have to search for them.

Anonymous said...

Very, nay, amazingly useful. I've just added the link on my Firefox link toolbar. Thanks so much for helping us all see pages a little more like search engines.