January 2007 Archives
Funny, but could it happen?
The only real way to track your SEO success is by looking at your traffic logs or a more human readable version of them.
Since Google Analytics does not offer realtime statistics (it was actually offline this morning when I tried to add a new website to my account) it makes sense to have alternatives.
One such alternative is Firestats
I mention some of its features on my main blog.
In order to integrate it with a PhpLinkDirectory install you need to know a small bit about the Smarty Templating engine which the script uses.
First of all you need to install a standalone copy of Firestats. If you've managed to install PhpLinkDirectory, then this should not be an issue, however full instructions are available on their site.
Once you are up and running you simply need to include a call to firestats on all your pages. The default code is a standard php include eg.:
< ?php include('/home/www/www.yourdomain.com/web/firestats/php/firestats-hit.php')?>
which needs to be added to all pages within the head tag.
To do this open header.tpl, which you'll find in your templates directory.
At the very top of the file you should see:
< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
Immediately after that add the following line (edited to fit your site):
{php}include('/home/www/www.yourdomain.com/web/firestats/php/firestats-hit.php');{/php}
If you browse your site and then refresh your Firestats you should start to see hits and information.
Enjoy!
PhpLinkDirectory is a PHP/MySQL link directory that offers SEO friendly URLs. Instead of appending crazy queries to the URLs (eg. index.php?cat=4545) you can have semantic and keyword rich directory paths.
The full source code is available for you to peruse and, if you are up to it, improve on.
One of the system's weaknesses is that you have very little control over page titles "out of the box" ie. you cannot specify the order in which elements appear (some other systems do allow you easy access to this).
By default the page title tags appear as:
Site Name - Sub-Category Level 1 - Sub-Category Level 2
So if you had a site called say "Seo Directory" and a category "Google" you'd end up with:
Seo Directory - Google Seo Directory - Google - Adwords Category - Site Name {capture name="title"}
{if count($path) > 1} - {/if}
{foreach from=$path item=category name=path}
{if $smarty.foreach.path.iteration gt 2}
>
{/if}
{if not $smarty.foreach.path.first}
{$category.TITLE}
{/if}
{/foreach}
{/capture}
This needs to be replaced with:
{capture name="title"}
{section loop=$path name=foo step=-1}
{$path[foo].TITLE}
{if !$smarty.section.foo.last}
>
{/if}
{/section}
{/capture}
You then need to make one minor change to header.tpl:
{if empty ($TITLE)}
{$smarty.const.DIRECTORY_TITLE|escape|trim}
{/if}
{$smarty.capture.title|strip|trim}
{$smarty.capture.title|strip|trim}
While a lot of SEO experts tend to diss other search engines, such as MSN and Ask, I've always felt that it was a bad idea to ignore their users. A customer (visitor) is still a customer regardless of how they ended up on your website.
A few months ago I did a bit of not too scientific analysis of browsers etc., that were being used to access a number of sites that I manage. The results reinforced my suspicions.
But what about the search engines?
What are people actually looking for?
Is there a significant difference between a Google user and a Yahoo! user?
The 2006 Search Wrap-Up would seem to suggest that there are some significant differences.
Google users tend to be more technical it seems, while Yahoo! users are into popular culture if the top search terms of 2006 are anything to go by.
From an SEO perspective I guess that means that you still can't ignore Yahoo! et al :)
