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Writer's Notes - By Jeanne Dininni

WritersNotes.Net: Helping Writers Follow Their Dreams Through Information, Inspiration, and Encouragement!

How Often Does Google Crawl Your Site?

January 31st 2008 00:12

Google Crawl Cycle: An Important Metric

Would you like to know how often Google crawls your site? If not, why not? According to the folks at SEOmeter.com, "How often search engine [sic] visits and crawls website content is an often neglected, but important metric for search engine optimization." They explain that a site's Crawl Cycle, or CC, is an important indicator of how much the search engines "trust" a particular website. The shorter the website's CC, the more trusted the site.


Why Is Crawl Cycle Important?

The main reason you might want to pay attention to this metric is that the degree of trust your website enjoys with the search engines is directly reflected in your site's search engine ranking. SEOmeter offers a free tool (free at least for your top-level domain and/or sub-domain) which will help you track your own site's Google Crawl Cycle. (If you'd like to track internal URLs using this tool, however, there is an annual payment.) The SEOmeter site has been in operation for about a month, so far. To read more about the site and the SEOmeter tool, visit the site's blog.


SEO Meter's Widgets

Here are examples of some of the nifty widget styles you may choose when you use SEOmeter on your website:


80 x 15 pixel button:


writersnotes.net - SEOmeter SEO tools


120 x 60 pixel button:


writersnotes.net - SEOmeter SEO tools


120 x 90 pixel button:


writersnotes.net - SEOmeter SEO tools


125 x 125 pixel button:


writersnotes.net - SEOmeter SEO tools



Other SEO Meter Features

Another neat thing about this site is that you can compare the Crawl Cycle of different websites, which are broken down into categories, with the top 20 in each category conveniently listed on the Top-20 Most Crawled Sites on the Web page.

You can also display the Crawl Cycle of your site and two others on a line graph, if you'd like to see a visual of the comparative CCs of the three sites to find out where your site ranks in relation to others in your niche.


Ease of Use/Benefits

The SEOmeter and other handy features of this website are easy--and even fun--to use and can help you keep track of your site's popularity with the search engines, since any attention your website or blog receives from Google is likely to be reflected in Yahoo! and other search engines, as well.

What could be easier than placing the SEOmeter tool on your site and simply watching it continuously recalculate your website's Crawl Cycle? Though I've only had mine for a few days, I have a feeling that, as I continually monitor it, I can expect to learn a lot.


Want to do the same?
Jeanne


NOTE: The only thing I had trouble figuring out was why all four of the widgets used as examples above weren't displaying the same Crawl Cycle. I'd wondered whether this indicated inaccuracy in the tool or something else. After e-mailing SEOmeter, I received the following explanation from Peter:

To reduce our server load, we do not calculate the statistics on the widget for each page refresh on your blog, but store (cache) the previously calculated stats somewhere in our server, and show it on the widget. And this caching thing happens for each size of widgets independently. So in this case, 1.9 was an outdated number, which was previously cached.

I just tried clearing the stat cache on your widgets, and they are now corrected. The stats on the widget get updated once every 24 hours, so even if you see an outdated/mismatching number, dont worry about it. It will be self corrected within the next 24 hours.

I certainly appreciated that explanation! Thanks, Peter!




Did you enjoy this post? Have any thoughts or any other handy SEO tools of your own to share? We'd love to hear from you!



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Blog Day 2007 Badge - red


Blog Day 2007: Celebrating New Blogs Worldwide

Today is Blog Day 2007: A day to celebrate new blogs all over the world! In honor of Blog Day, bloggers have been asked to list, describe, and link to five new blogs--preferably representing a different country, culture, or focus than our own.

Here's what the Blog Day website has to say:

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.

After writing our Blog Day posts, we are also asked to notify the bloggers we've chosen, which I plan to do via a comment on each one's blog.


Five Great New Blogs You Should Definitely Visit

Here are my choices (in no particular order) for five of the best new blogs from different parts of the U.S. and around the world. (Well...only one is currently outside the U.S: Confident Writing, which comes to us from Scotland; though one will soon be moving to Germany: Content Done Better. Yet, for some of you, the U.S. is on the other side of the world!) All these blogs are either only several months old or under new ownership.

I will let the bloggers who create the magic of the written word on their blogs speak for themselves, via quotes from their About pages and blog posts.


Pro Blog Design

Pro Blog Design. Michael Martin has this to say about his very helpful blog and also about blog post formatting:

I have been designing websites for a few years now, and enjoying every minute of it.

Over time, I’ve learnt a lot about working with blogs, and through Pro Blog Design I hope to share that knowledge with others. Content on a blog is of course, King, but does the King get the attention he deserves when draped in ragged garments? Of course not! In the same way that the grandeur of the King is crucial to his success, your blog’s design is crucial to yours. (from Michael's About page)

As bloggers, we write pages upon pages of content each week. We spend hours promoting the articles, choosing the right words and trying to get our point across as clearly as possible. How can formatting be used to further improve our posts?

There are a few basic tools that you will have heard mention of time and time again, such as bolding words. The first section re-explains their purpose, and the second will explain how to perfect your usage of them to achieve optimal formatting. (from Format Blog Posts for Readability and Legibility)


Confident Writing

Confident Writing. Joanna Young says the following about her quality site and about why she writes:

Hello I'm Joanna Young, The Confident Writing Coach...My aim is to get people writing with confidence. To realise the power of their words. How we work is partly up to you - but my approach is based on a blend of coaching, teaching, editing and writing - tailor made to your needs. (from Joanna's Welcome and Work With Me sections)

(Post Title: Why Do You Write?.) For me, it's something to do with the power of connection: the connections we can make with other people, the connections we develop between our own ideas, making sense of our experience, pulling together spaghetti strands of random thoughts and creating something new, connecting back to our roots and our selves and coming out with a stronger sense of who we are.

But then again maybe it's that thing I call realising: the sweet, slow dawning of realisation. Recognising the things that you always knew to be true. Recognising - with a jolt - your self in your words. Realising the power of your words, and taking responsibility for their power and impact: on yourself, on other people, on the world. Grounding yourself with the specificity of words. Validating your experience with words which are not real - but can make us feel that our experiences are. Allowing ourselves to be changed by the words that we write. (from Why Do You Write?)


ChrisBlogging

ChrisBlogging. Chris Bibey describes himself and his insightful blog and shares a few words of wisdom on freelancing:

For more than three years I have been earning a full-time income online. My main sources of income include a wide range of freelance writing projects, and of course, blogging.

But although I do not know the first thing about web design or coding, I still earn three times as much as I did as a corporate slave.

The goal of Chrisblogging.com is to show you how I make money, how you can join me, and much more! (from Chris's About page)

There is no denying that a few big jobs make up a large part of my monthly freelance writing income. But guess what? I also believe that smaller jobs are every bit as important. Sure, I would love to work on high paying jobs only, who wouldn’t? But the reality of the freelance writing industry (at least for me) is that this is not always possible. For this reason, I always think twice before I turn down any small jobs that I am offered. (from Don't Always Turn Down the Small Jobs)


ProBloggers Matrix

ProBloggers Matrix. Mark gives us this inviting welcome to his blog, and some great info about blogging (taken from one of his excellent posts):

Hello, I’m Mark.

Welcome to ProBloggers Matrix. I’ll be sharing blogging tips. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to post them in the comments. (from Mark's About page)

If you’re like me, you love to write, you love to publish great articles on your authoritative blog and you also enjoy reading excellent articles in many fantastic blogs. That can be very time-intensive, but you need to get out and exercise! Get the blood flowing! Get into The Zone! (from How to Stay in the Zone and Keep Wowing Your Readers with Spectacular Articles)


Content Done Better

Content Done Better. Michi Beck's blog has an intimate, inviting atmosphere, due to her personal, engaging writing style. Her Under New Ownership section tells us this about her background, followed by an apt quote from one of her posts:

During her career she has written many informative articles on various subjects including economics, technology, local happenings, and human interest stories.

In addition to the newspaper and Internet work, Michi has had poems published and is currently working on her first novel, of which the first draft is nearing completion. She enjoys both fiction and non-fiction writing, and often takes the time to write about the smaller things in life, as she believes those things have lessons behind them that most people do not realize. It is not only the big things that are important in our daily lives, and since she is often reminded of that it appears frequently in her particular style of writing. (from Michi's Under New Ownership page.)

(Post Title: When It Rains, It Pours.) Have you ever noticed that? You could be in a ‘dry spell’ in your work life and then all of a sudden things go crazy, and you’re left shaking your head and wondering how you’re going to get it all done.

I mention this because it happened to me, rather recently. I’m not sure whether to be overwhelmed and annoyed that everything showed up at once or happy because of the work and income. Hmmm…..I think I’ll go with “happy because of the work and income.” (from When It Rains, It Pours)


Five Great Blogs to Bookmark and Visit Again and Again!

Be sure to visit the above blogs soon--and often! And don't forget to give these hard-working and insightful bloggers a little link love! It will be more than worth your while, as you continually enjoy their latest words of writing wisdom.

Congratulations go out to these five new bloggers for making their blogs places where we can go to pick up the best info, tips, techniques, and advice, to make us all better, more responsive, and more productive bloggers!

Happy Blog Day!
Jeanne


Technorati Tag: Blog Day 2007


P.S. I realize I posted this a little late in the day--particularly for those of you on the opposite side of the world to the U.S., where I live! My apologies. But, I believe I did manage to post it in time--though barely! If I missed the deadline in anyone's time zone, Happy Belated Blog Day!







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A Hi-Tech Tool to Test Website Viability/Blog Vitality

I've recently learned about a couple of fairly comprehensive diagnostic tools that can help you determine the viability of your website or the vitality of your blog. (Thanks go out to K-IntheHouse at ShanKri-la, for the info, passed along in a guest post at Blog About Your Blog. A link to the post is provided below.) I wanted to pass along this info to my readers, in the hope that you'll be able to use it to make your website/blog better and more successful.

In this post, I'll cover the first of these two great online diagnostic tools: Website Grader. A great deal has already been written about these tools, so I'll limit the info I include in this post, providing a few links to other great content on the subject. Should you be interested in finding more info than these sources provide, I suggest a Google Search, which will generate many more links related to this topic. (I know; I checked.)


Website Grader

Website Grader gives your site an overall rating (so many points out of 100), which boils down to a percentage (e.g., 85/100 = 85%). Website Grader allows you to either diagnose your own site's condition exclusively or compare it to a couple of your most competitive website rivals, which is an interesting feature for those who want to know how they rank within their niche.

Some things you'll learn from Website Grader:

-Website Grade
-Google Page Rank
-Alexa Rank
-Technorati Rank
-Google Inbound Links
-Yahoo Inbound Links
-Delicious Saved Count
-Google Indexed Pages

Of course, many of the above are facts you already know about your site; however the others can certainly be helpful to learn, and even more helpful are the explanations which follow the chart listing the above data. That's where you'll find all your site's specific problems clearly spelled out for you--as well as all its positive points, using "alert" icons, consisting of either a yellow lightbulb or purple exclamation point, along with yellow or red highlighting of each of these problem sections. Blue "i" icons are used to indicate the non-problem portions of your site.


A Comprehensive Report on Your Site

The report generated by this tool is worth much more than the price of admission! (It would have to be--because it's free!) But, seriously, the report is very comprehensive. In fact, Website Grader will even e-mail you a link to the report so you can go back and look at it again later. (However, I would recommend copying and pasting it into Word [or whatever other word processing program you use].) Word will retain the formatting of the grading chart, in case you'd like to reproduce it on your blog or elsewhere, or even print it out.)

The original post from which I learned about Website Grader, as I mentioned earlier, was written by K-IntheHouse as a guest post at Blog About Your Blog. This post gives more great info about the tool. Here's the link: 2 Great Ways to Check Your Blog Health

The Website Grader report generates far more detailed information than I have mentioned here. So why not check it out for yourself and learn what's good about your website and what isn't. It will give you a great starting point for revamping your site to make it the best it can be. You'll then be able to measure how much progress you've made by plugging your site's URL into Website Grader again, as recommended by Wild Bill at Passionate Blogger, in his post, Does Your Blog Get a Failing Grade? How to Get an A+!

Happy diagnosing!
Jeanne







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Freelancing Journey, a blog which refers to itself as "The Road to Business Success for Writers & Bloggers," is literally loaded with info, tips, links, leads, techniques, advice, and other resources that can help you, the freelance writer, make the most of your own website or blog. Covering many different aspects of the freelance writer's creative, professional, practical, and even personal development, this site has something for everyone interested in any type of freelance writing.

One post, "Page Rank, Back Links and Blogging," posted June 22nd, 2007, explains why page rank is important and provides tips on how to obtain quality backlinks to your blog. Another, more recent post, titled "Definitive List of Paid to Blog Services," dated June 28th, 2007, links to a very comprehensive discussion of the subject found in a post on another helpful blog. In addition, Freelancing Journey's "Roll of Honour" includes a long list of links to other blogs about writing--and blogging--as well as numerous other writing resources, markets, and marketing blogs.

Freelance writers are busy people, whose time is often severely limited. But taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule today to pick up some timely tips and advantageous advice could just save you a great deal of time and trouble over the long term.

So, check out Freelancing Journey, and see if you don't agree that this blog contains some helpful literary and marketing signposts to guide you along your freelance writing travels.


Bon Voyage!
Jeanne



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