My favorite validation tool is Is My Website Working
A Great Site for Checking Your WordPress Compression and Caching. Here is what the results look like on my personal blog uber.la.

And let’s run it on FluentSearch as well.

So if uber.la is SLOW at 1.12 seconds, then Fluent is WAY SLOW at 4.39 seconds. I have not migrated Fluent from my old servers. Uber.la was really hammering my old host and causing not only problems for my visitors but problems for the host as well. Doesn’t seem possible, but my little ol’ neck of the web was being punished my constant stream of 3 – 5 concurrent visitors. Even with caching on I was getting timeout errors.

But the move was not easy. Anyone reading Fluent here, have any good tools for migration, besides the old export/import process? I couldn’t get the target URL to resolve to the actual domain until the DNS servers had been updated. So a lot of my uber.la images were pointing to something like this 128.33.3.33/uber.la/images…  and that little IP address string was wreaking havoc on my site. But I can’t figure out how to do the import, into a live WordPress site, unless the WordPress site is UP. And I could only access the pre-DNS transferred site with the IP address included. UG! There’s got to be a better way.

Okay, next tool.

+++

Compete’s Site Profile Extension
See what Compete Sees for Any Site

This information is displayed in the bottom edge of the browser. I’d like to know what “Neutral” is. And at the moment I DON’T accept ads on uber.la so my “Deals” and $$ sections are grayed out.

And from the looks of the preferences panel they need to update for BING.

+++

Google’s Page Speed Extension

This is a variation on the Y-Slow from Yahoo. They are both FireBug additions. So you have to have FireBug installed first.

Here is what Page Speed reported about FluentSearch.

Yikes! I’ve got a little work to do.

And here’s how Y-Slow runs the same report.

Double Yikes!

Let’s run them on uber.la just for comparison.

Page Speed

And Y-Slow:

Well I guess I don’t always do what I say. I will look over these reccomendations this weekend and see if I can improve both sites.

+++

The BING and GOOGLE Comparinator (sounds like something from Phenias and Ferb, but okay)

One of the best ways to understand Bing’s new humanized-search function is to compare it to the Google results.This little tool does a bit of the work for you. The first screen is merely a search entry box. But when you do a search here’s what you get:

I’ll do a deeper exploration into Bing in a later post. But go poke around and see what you like and what you don’t. It’s a new dawn in search. Certainly not a Google-killer, but perhaps a Yahoo-hurting-2nd-tier search option.

So that’s 5 tools for today (plus Firebug, makes 6, so even a Bonus Tool!)

Go have at it.

Let me know if you have other favorites in the comments or by contacting me directly.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/SEO-Tools

So if you get this far, and I need to listen to the full Ad Sense one, then it is time to put these ideas into practice.

And then really… Focus on your content. Even writing for an audience of 10 gets your blogging muscles flexing. And the more you blog the more you will come up with ideas and ways of expressing your passions.

Thanks to copyblogger for putting these out, for free.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/wordpress-training

The video links on CopyBlogger:

1. How to Get More Search Engine Traffic With One Simple Tweak
2. How to Make More Money With AdSense
3. Feedvertising: Make Money With Your RSS Feed
4. More Feedback, Less Spam: WordPress Contact Form Plugin
5. How to Increase Comments and Page Views With One Quick and Easy Plugin
6. How to Stop Comment Spam without Lifting a Finger
7. Back Up Your Blog or Risk Losing It All

Defining the Social Graph

Your community is a set of concentric circles, beginning with your closest relationships and expanding out as far as your would like to reach. My friend Brian Massey, the Conversion Scientist calls it, “my social strata.”

Edited from a Wired PR Works post that is no longer available, here is the outline for a presentation on Enterprise and Commuity:

1. Discover who you are and how you relate to your community
Values + Communities = Core Business Values
* values: how to determine your core values
* communities: internal, external, vendors
* business values
Illuminating question: What types of communities do you belong to or resonate with?

2. Reveal how your community relates to you
Target x Questions = Answers + an active customer advisory board
* current target market
* interview questions
* evaluating answers
Illuminating question: Choose your top ten customers and interview them to find out how your business fits into their lives.

3. Listen to your customers tell your story
* common vocabulary
* case studies = successes
* open lines of communication
Illuminating question: Can you tell your story in your customer’s voice?

4. Connect your inner circle of communities
* who: customers, partners, vendors
* what: you do for them
* what: they do for you
Illuminating question: How do you fit together?

5. Cascading communications in tiers
* internal: inside
* external: outside
* online: on screens
* offline: direct
* in person: face to face

Illuminating question: The most effective communication plan delivers consistent messaging to every audience via sequencing to maintain a visible presence in each community.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/social-graph

Related Posts:

The Social Media Formula: People [multiplied by] Platform [divided by] each Individual’s ability to express themselves during the connection [minus] Misses or clash of style that degrades the communication.
The expression: P x P / I – M = T [trust ratio of a connection/community]

1. The idea. (tbd)
2. Domain and hosting setup. (7 minutes - according to godaddy)
3. Install and add plugins and themes to taste. (5 minutes)
4. SEO and SEM everything (10 minutes)
5. Measure and probe with Analytics and WebmasterTools (6 minutes – setup accounts)
6. Write (2 minutes – cleanup, edit your hello world post to actually say hello)
7. Comment (tbd)
8. Respond (tbd)
9. Promote (tbd)
10. More funtionality and plugins (tbd)
11. Join Forces! (tbd)

This blog is meant as a launching point, a free training center, a social experiment in showing EVERYONE how to do it for themselves.

<inner dialogue>

Q: What’s the business model you have in mind with this project?

A: Does there always have to be a business model, an ROI? Isn’t a vision enough?

Q: Business first.

A: Well, okay, I hear you, but I am going with vision on this one.

Q: And that means…

A: Think of the education as a gift.

Q: Oh. Okay, thanks.

</inner dialogue>

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/wordpress-milestone

[And here's a funny thing: these days I don't open Word much, I just start and finish within WordPress's Tidy editor. It's now where I take notes. I have access to it where ever I am. I can share it quickly. And I can switch back and fourth between HTML and Visual Layout quickly to make adjustments to the display. Just a moment of reflection: WordPress is becoming my word processor and GTD capture system of choice.]

Using WordPress and all the free SEO+google analytics+SEM optimization plugins and tips available, we are going to market Fluent Search Marketing, as a SEO and SEM service and information provider. The results will be tracked and presented as we go along.

So let the spiders begin.

permalink for this study: http://bit.ly/google-seo