The Google Toolbar & SEO

The Google Toolbar & SEO
Website: LilEngine.com

Like many other useful toolbars out there so is the Google Toolbar.
I consider this toolbar a must have for any serious search engine
optimizer and anyone who searches the internet on a regular basis.
Here's whyà

The Google Toolbar has grown significantly in features since
inception. It now features several new useful features but the main
focus of this article is on those that aid in search engine
optimization. So without further ado here's the Google Toolbar
unfolded.

PageRank
Upon installation of the full Google toolbar you will notice a small
bar near the center of it that may or may not be partially filled
with a green color as displayed in the diagram below.

< toolbar image to be added >
http://www.lilengine.com/images/googletoolbar/toolbar1.gif

This is the Google PageRank indicator. PageRank is one of
Google's ways of rating your website and plays a role in the
position of your site in their search results. This value is
calculated based on several variables including the PageRank value
and the number of sites that link to that page. Sites with a higher
page rank tend to have better rankings than other sites if all other
things are kept equal. I have personally noticed a significant
increase in the search engine placement of our Search Engine
Optimization (http://www.lilengine.com) site whenever our Google
pagerank is increased.

The Google toolbar enable you to, at a glance, view the PageRank of
your website as well as your competitors' sites. This helps when
looking for sites to engage in with link building as more links
coming from sites with a higher PageRank than yours help to increase
your site's PageRank. It is also said that when looking for site
to link to yours that you should aim for sites with a PR 4 or
higher. LilEngine personally accepts links from any useful and
related resources, links from sites with a PageRank of 4 and above
are an added bonus. Contact us for an exchange at info@....

A side note
There are times when the Google Toolbar will display your website as
having a PageRank of 0 or even no rank at all. If your site
previously had a PR greater than 0 and you notice this, watch it for
a while or close your browser and reopen it to check as there are
times that this feature seems to be a bit buggy possibly due to
updates etc at Google.

Cached Version
When Google spiders your site it records the latest version of your
site that it has spidered and this can be viewed using the Google
Toolbar by going to the Page Info button and selecting cached
version. Your browser must be on the page you would like to see the
cached version of at the time you choose to do this.

< toolbar image to be added >
http://www.lilengine.com/images/googletoolbar/toolbar2.gif

How can this help you with your SEO campaign?
If you have optimized your website in hopes of increasing your
search engine results in Google, this will indicate whether or not
Google has updated their database with the new version of your page.
If the Googlebot visits your site regularly the cached version of
your site will be updated more frequently than otherwise.

Backward Links
The Google Toolbar also has a pretty useful feature that displays
all the web pages that link to your web page, which Google counts
towards your PageRank. This information isn't regularly updated
and can't be expected to take between 1 û 3 months before
changes
can be seen. Backlinks deal with quality and not quantity. A site
with 1000 mediocre backlinks may not have as high a Page Rank as a
site with 800 high PR backlinks.

Highlighting
You have the option of adding a highlight feature to your Google
Toolbar that highlights all instances of your search term on the web
page reached from your search. This can help you see how many times
your competitors use specific keywords on their pages and you may
modify your SEO campaign accordingly. You may also use this to check
your own pages and see if you are or are not using enough of your
target keywords on your page for optimum search engine placement.
Besides those features listed above there are also some other cool
tools on the Google Toolbar such as:

Popup Blocker: This only works in IE 5.5 or later but is a great
addition as we all know that there are many sites on the web that
bombard you with popups. Some of these even go as far as almost
preventing you from going anywhere else as more and more windows
keep popping up. Annoyance factor 10/10.

Google Web Search: You can easily search the web using the Google
Search Engine via the Google Toolbar by typing in your search terms
in the search box area and then clicking enter or clicking
the `Search Web' button on the toolbar.

Translate: Easily translate sites into English that you may be
interested in for one reason or another.

Unfortunately there is no version of the Google Toolbar for browsers
other than Internet Explorer 5.0 and greater but hopefully they will
be adding this in the near future.

There are many more features available with the Google Toolbar.
Learn more and download it here, http://toolbar.google.com/.

®Copyright LilEngine.com.

About the author:
*******************************
Alec Duncan is the founder of LilEngine.com a Search Engine
Optimization[http://www.lilengine.com] resource site. Visit
http://www.LilEngine.com for search engine optimization tools and
strategies. Get a free Google ranking tool
[http://www.rankdetective.com/free-ranking-tool.php] on your site.



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