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Using Google Toolbar for SEO

Google Toolbar

One of the best tools for doing many of the basic SEO analysis of a web site is provided by Google. The Google toolbar shows:

So why are these things so important…

Page Rank (PR) – PR is Google’s measure of the link popularity of a site. The scale is roughly logarithmic so a PR 0 corresponds to a site with no links pointing to it. If the PR bar is greyed than it could show that the site may actually be banned and non-indexed. A PR 1 corresponds to a site with only 1 link in…PR 2 approximately 10 links…PR 3 approximately 100 links…and so on. The scale in theory goes up to 10, but strangely Google itself is a PR 11, which is the great thing about being the one who makes the rules. It is important to note that a site can actually be a greater than PR 1 without actually having more than 1 link. This is due to that fact that all links are not created equal, so 1 PR 8 link coming into a site could actually boost the PR score to PR 6 or 7. The main point is to understand that the higher the score generally the more competitive the site will be. When reviewing competitors it is it is a good thing to check first.

Shows Google’s cache of the page – If you click the PR bar, you are given the ability to see “cached snapshot of the page”. First this shows when or if Google has indexed the page. If you click “text-only version” it gives you a better understanding of the way Google sees the page. Especially because many sites now use style sheets to hide large font you can actually see how the font looks to Google. Remember the search engines give a boost to larger fonts and for the use of header tags. You can also see alts and links more clearly. Also, take note of the first piece of text. Most sites use tables or DIVs which can change the order in which text is read by the search engine crawler. A well optimized page will have the first piece of text containing the targeting keyword rather than navigational links for example.

Provides a highlight tool – The highlight tool is another nice feature for SEO because it highlights searched text so you quickly see how often the search terms are used and where they are. Sometimes seeing things visually helps a lot when trying to understand the on page factors which are influencing a site’s ranking. If you search for the text in quotes then you can see the exact appearances of the keyword text.

Gives quick link buttons – Taking the highlight tool one step further the text link jump allows users to jump quickly within a document to the search phrase or keywords.  I like using it to see if the keywords appear at top middle and end of a document. By repeatedly clicking the quick link button this test of the level of optimization can be checked.
You can download the Google toolbar at http://www.google.com/toolbar/ff/index.html

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Any questions about Google's toolbar, please feel free to contact me at 905-417-9470 or by email at allanp73@gmail.com