SEO-Ward
Jim Seward – SEO Myth Buster
The modern SEO’s Toolkit by @willcritchlow #searchlove
Published October 24, 2011 | 
Marketing with computers!
If you’re not learning the technical things, your job’s in danger from the upcoming kids who are
Our ability to use APIs, scrapers, multiple tools is going to be super-critical.
Will’s going to be talking not about tools, but about the skills that you need and how you can by them and how you can use them to be better at your job, very much about the toolkids and not the tools.
“Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet, unknown program” Doug Mcllroy – Basics of unix philosophy
Will’s going to describe an SEO challenge and the tools that they used to do it….Awesome!!
Problem
You need to find all the googlebot visits in the certain time-period in a 22gb apache log file
Answer
Use bash, grep and sed to cut down the log file from the command line, not as hard as it seems
Will’s arguing that old skool toolsets still have their place @imaoldskool
Problem
You need to explain to a client or dev team the changes you want to make to a site
Answer
Use a prototyping tool and wireframing (Balsamic) – takes a screenshot of a website and annotates it with a sticky (this is kinda awesome and a learn for me) Will recommends Skitch (mac only currently but coming to windows)
Also use instant screencasts, use Screenr’s web-based screen recorder (although it makes it public) great for stuff to tweet not for sensitive stuff, it’s easy to use video 
Great for quickly getting a point across. Try google hangout with a limited circle.
Talking about project management, check out Trello
Problem
You need to classify a bunch of URLs. But you need to discover the classifications as you go along
Answer
You can do it in excel using a really massive nasty IF statement. Use F( to evaluate your IF statement
Sorry, lost my way there as I mailed Will’s Screaming frog recommendation to a collegue
but returning to the presentation
Get used to using the dev elements of Chrome (I have to say, they are awesome and better than a lot of others such as firgebug)
To sort out why things don’t work
- Reproduce
- Simplify
- Isolate
- Document (++velocity)
- hack
- sleep, shower
Problem
You need to gather dfata about the proportions of people tweeting different phrases
Answer
Twitter streaming API, Use APIs to find out what people call their breasts…..
Twitter streaming API, Use APIs to find out what people call their breasts…..
Problem
You need to whip up a quick website to display the contents of a database to others in your team
You need to whip up a quick website to display the contents of a database to others in your team
Answer
Use Django which has great tutorials running my python
Use Django which has great tutorials running my python
Checkout jquery framework and animate.css
HTML5 is just a few new tags that have more semantic meaning. Canvas tag lets you draw, the rest is javascript and css3
Problem
To grab a screenshot of the your site every day.
To grab a screenshot of the your site every day.
Answer
Check out phantomJS – How cool is that. I definately have a need for that one…Thanks Will
Check out phantomJS – How cool is that. I definately have a need for that one…Thanks Will
The best tool Will has learnt in the last year is GITHUB, check it out
Will’s giving us a pile more tools we don’t have time for to go into on his deck, but his deck will be available soon
Check out:
- Grep The Web
- DataCouch
- ThinkUp
- Chrome extensions
- Server Density
- & others
You can check out Will’s deck (which includes a pile of his tools) here
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