Tag Archives: css

Track Any Page Changes in Google Chrome

Posted on by
Reply

We are pretty good at tracking page changes at FireFox already. I did a detailed overview of all the addons that track any page for changes and notify you in various ways. I also mentioned that those tools are awesome for various purposes: You can track Google SERPs (especially the newest results that change daily) and thus easily see your brand name mentions; You can track social media sites like Digg or Sphinn to get timely notified about new hot stories on any category page (or new search results); You can use page trackers instead of an RSS reader to monitor new front page stories, You name it! So while we can do that in FireFox, some (many?) of us may have switched to Google Chrome. So the good news is that they can do the same thing there as well! Page Monitor is a fun Google Chrome extension that allows your browser to monitor changes to web pages. The great features of the extension include: The ability to monitor any number of pages for changes. One-click adding of pages. Smart comparison system that ignores ads and code changes. Highlighting of changes that happened to a page since the last check. The ability to set separate check interval for each page. Get it installed in seconds and notice a tiny icon in the toolbar (next to the page address). The icon is used to add new pages to monitor as well as to notify you of the number of updated pages: So when on any page you want to monitor, click that icon and easily start tracking the page changes: Now whenever this page changes, the monitor icon will display a notification on its badge. Of course, you can repeat this for any number of pages. If you want to see the actual changes on the page, click “View changes” (see the screenshot above) and you will be able to see what has been added (green color) and what has been removed (red color): The tool offers to customize some settings as well. To access options, right-click on the icon and select “Options”. From there you can: Stop monitoring any page or rename any page record; See how long ago the tool checked the page; Set the checking interval; Set tracking changes to particular elements on the page (e.g. a price tag on a shopping site) by specifying a CSS/jQuery selector or regular expression to match against the page’s source code (the result of applying this selector/expression is compared). Of course, this feature requires that you know how to use selectors or regular expressions . Set some general look and feel (highlight color, sound alerts, sorting, etc); Import and export the list of pages to monitor: Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Track Any Page Changes in Google

Mobile SEO Future Planning

Posted on by
Reply

2010 is the next year that has been talked about year after year as far as mobile online use truly taking off. The iPhone was indeed revolutionary and provided the true smartphone leap forward, that has been followed and in many ways being surpassed by Android , with more and more mainstream users browsing online via mobile devices. How does this impact & affect the SEO that you have already carefully crafted for your sites?  Not much…for now. Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated at the 2010 Mobile World Congress their new mantra & current strategy is “ Mobile First ” thus you can be first by getting ahead of your competition by planting these mobile seeds into your site: Create a mobile version of your site optimally in a mobile subdomain or  subdirectory rather than a separate domain or TLD such a .mobi Render this mobile version of your site via mobile user agent detection while also providing the user an opt out to the standard web version. The mobile version of your site should have the following DocType declared above the HEAD code:  The SEO coding elements will remain the same in the mobile version but to improve usability & reduce any possible duplicate content issues its best to strip extraneous content, JavaScript & graphics out – optimally via CSS. A mobile site should have at least half the load time in comparison to the standard site with a true target of under 2 seconds load time on an Edge or non-3G signal. A mobile sitemap XML should also be created which has as the main difference from the standard sitemap XML a declaration after each URL listing – Google Mobile Sitemap Instructions Affirm your mobile progress by using the tools at W3C & MobiReady to validate your code for mobile readiness as well check load time and actual mobile device rendering. Currently Google Mobile search is nearly identical to the standard search but there is a separate mobile index which will only grow in providing differentiated results. I will detail in next month’s mobile post at Search Engine Journal a key set of code that will give you this mobile search edge. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Mobile SEO Future

How to Use “Linearize Page” Option of Web Developer Addon

Posted on by
Reply

I know plenty of people who use Web Developer FireFox Addon and yet don’t have the clue about the real value of some of its features. This post looks at one of those underutilized features: “ Linearize Page “. As the one who has mentioned the Web Developer addon quite a few times, I get a lot of questions about it from our readers and most of them ask me about using the linearizing option. So let’s see how it can turn useful. What does it do? Basically, the tool removes all positioning and tables from the page in order to “linearize” it. The tool uses the following CSS to “linearize” the current page: How to use it to test usability and accessibility? 1. The tool is thus perfect for previewing the order in which audio or small screen browsers will present information of the page. 2. It is also very useful for checking accessibility of tables : in order for a screen reader to interpret a page the content gets linearized: so always make sure the table (or table-based design) makes sense when linearized. The tool also helps to see if: the order of headings and page elements makes sense (for a screen reader); multiple groups of links (for example, on a home page) have a logical sequence. 3. The tool is also invaluable for testing the design for typical mobile browsers which convert multi-column layouts into a single column, and the order in which elements are displayed is determined by “linearized” document order. Thus, the tool helps to see if the content reads logically, or are parts of it mixed up because tables have been used poorly to lay out the content. How to use is to for SEO? Unlike all-CSS-disabling feature, this one allows to see “the source order of the content without removing all the other styles that affect how an element is displayed.” (which thus provides for an easier preview) For more information on designing web pages for “linear” content be sure to read this awesome article . Linearized page: The same page with Disabled CSS: Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Use “Linearize Page” Option of Web Developer

3 Simple Tools to Find Hidden Links (and Text)

Posted on by
Reply

Like on-page linked text analysis in general, identifying grey areas like hidden links (and text) should be an important and thoroughly considered step. You will want to research hidden links: (!) When you need to diagnose a recently hacked site; (!) When you need to test a web design (some hidden text may be totally innocent and only appear illegal); (!) When you need to identify the reason of the possible penalty; (!) When you want to resd possibly rearch your competitors’ grey tactics (and possibly report them); (!) If want to find out if your hidden links can be found manually by search engineers or competitors; (!) Etc. For the sake of an expriment I have hidden a link in my blog sidebar and will now try to find it using the three methods listed below. To hie the link, I created a new div class of links that have the same color as the site background and used it for my link: Now, what wil the tools say? 1. Spam

3 SEO-Friendly WP Plugins to Display Featured Posts

Posted on by
Reply

Giving your selected content more exposure via featuring it is a good idea because this way: (1) You attract more attention to your best articles (or those that you need more attention for); (2) You allow your best and most important posts to be easier accessed by search engine bots. The three WordPress plugins compared in this post have two things in common: They all allow to select which posts to feature manually (there are other types of plugins that automatically generate the list by the number of comments, amount f traffic, visitors’ preferences, etc; this post doesn’t mention those at all); They are all SEO-friendly (the links to the posts are in HTML and easily accessed by spiders). How the list is created The placement Additional settings YAFPP You pick any posts Insert anywhere in the template Can display excerpt; you can set permissions to edit the list WordPress Featured Post List2 WITH IMAGE You pick any posts Insert anywhere in the template Can display image Hundred Feature Post List First selected then random (configurable) Sidebar (via widget) CSS class on the feature container and / or widget Now, a few details on the installation process: Yet Another Featured Posts