Having looked a two reporting tools raven and seomoz tools there are a couple of thoughts I want to share. Raven has the best white label reporting on the market but I still find not one hat fits all so highly recommend if you can that you combine tools for the benefit of each customer. Offer one pdf report covering those KPI (key performance indicators) that they care about. Do not send them a ton of attachments pulled off your reporting tool they wont read them and they dont help them understand what benefits you are delivering. Keep it short precise and focus. If you can only afford one tool then use SEOMoz because the other benefits outweigh the shortfalls of their reporting. Ideally pay for both and combine the best of both.

I have been using all three tools with vengeance as I have new customers and I want to ensure they get the best value for money. When you are deciding how much to spend a month on tools and getting the best for you and your customers. The only way is to try them all and test to see what works for you

So here is a snapshot of what I think so far:

• Raven Tools - by far the best custom reporting - this is the ace card for customer reporting and I really like the flexibility to you have.
• SeoMoz - good reporting with ability to schedule reports - not as much customisation - the help forum is amazing. Some of the tools are not completely integrated yet but I like the back link checker
• Sitebeam is fantastic at creating a site audit report and quickly highlighting issues. Really simple to use and understand - it is predominately for the initial engagement of a customer but you can use to track improvements very effectively - I like the format

I think the winner is SEOMoz for me and I think if you are growing into the role of a SEO Expert you get the most help with this package

• Did you choose the right currency and time zone for your account ?
• Does your campaign and ad group have meaningful descriptive names ?
• Did you choose the right target audience and language for your campaign
• Did you uncheck the Content network and choose only to run Search ads
• Did you set a sensible daily budget?
• Does your credit card have a high enough limit to pay for your campaigns?
• Did you put in the correct landing page for your ad?

Note that Google ads not only appear in search result pages but on millions of websites using AdSense - sites known as the Google Content Network. Ad sense is the flip side of AdWords, and the cash that Adwords generates is split between Google and the websites in the Content Network.


You can get on the first page of Google in Minutes. Google AdWords is easy , choose some keywords you like, write an ad define your target audience and you’re ready to roll. But , to make this process successful requires a lot of thought and know how.


Text ads are charged on Pay Per Click (PPC) basis. This means that every time someone clicks on your ad you have to pay a set amount to Google. Getting the keywords right is very important. You need to begin listing keywords that describe your product and are likely to appeal to your target audience.You can use the Google Keyword Tool to help you find the right keywords. Do more research on what your competitors are targeting using other tools , finding out what keywords are driving traffic to their sites is as important as securing your own list.


Try this video to get started http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx2L6EGa9DY

This is great cheap read

SEO for Firefox

Developed by Aaron Wall, this Firefox browser plug-inallows you to see various stats about a website in the toolbar and beneath that site’s search result.  It tells you:

• PageRank
• Estimate of inbound links via Yahoo and MSN
• Number of .edu and .gov links to the site and pages within
• Number of del.icio.us bookmarks for a page
• Estimated Technorati links
• Alexa ranking
• How many pages are in Google’s cache
• How many page are indexed in DMOZ
• How many Bloglines links
• Whether a site is indexed in Yahoo
• Whois lookup
• Age of a domain
• Google search volume trends
• Popular keywords
• Top keyword bid prices on Overture
• Bid estimates and click volume estimates on Google

Another free tool available, SEODigger shows:

• Which keywords your site ranks high enough for to be in Google top 20
• Analysis of user sites and competition sites
• How well sites are optimized for search
• Information on entire domain as well as pages

This is a great thing but relies on you remembering to do it!, a better way would be to set up a script that runs every right and backs up your website to a specified directory which you can download at anytime, this method backups your home folder contents only so a mysql database back up will also be required separately if required.

Basically we need to set up a script and run that in “Scheduled Tasks (Cron job)” which is a linux tool that allows commands/scripts to be run at set intervals.

1. First create a directory in your root level / (in a Linux environment with cPanel this will be one level higher than public_html) and name it /backups (this is where the backups will go) and create a directory /backupscripts at the same level. This means you have two new directories called backups and backupscripts.
   
   The script files will go in the backupscripts folder - structure will look like this - (in a Linux environment with cPanel this will be one level higher than public_html)
   
   
   • backupscripts/daily/backupdaily.sh
   • backupscripts/weekly/backupweekly.sh
   • backupscripts/monthly/backupmonthly.sh

   Then create directory structure : this is where your backups will live - to keep a daily, a weekly and a monthly back up on hand; so you need to create three directories first at your root level such as at /public_html/:

• /backups/daily/
• /backups/weekly/
• /backups/monthly/

 

 

2. Create three scripts and place each script in the corresponding folder in backupscripts/daily etc etc . Ensure the file permissions are 711 and double check if you ftp them into the folders on the server that they still have the correct file permissions.  Use a simple text editor like NotePad/TexEdit or TextWrangler or via Vi or Pico in the command line and paste the following:



backupdaily.sh:

#!/bin/bash
rm -rf ~/backups/daily/*
tar czf ~/backups/daily/backup_`date +%Y_%m_%d`.tgz ~/public_html




backupweekly.sh:

#!/bin/bash
rm -rf ~/backups/weekly/*
tar czf ~/backups/weekly/backup_`date +%Y_%m_%d`.tgz ~/public_html




backupmonthly.sh:

#!/bin/bash
rm -rf ~/backups/monthly/*
tar czf ~/backups/monthly/backup_`date +%Y_%m_%d`.tgz ~/public_html


2. Create a file called backup.sh in /backups,

#!/bin/bash
tar czf ~/backups/backup_`date +%Y_%m_%d`.tgz ~/public_html

Then create directory structure : to keep a daily, a weekly and a monthly back up on hand; so you would create three directories first at your root level such as at /public_html/:

• /backups/daily/
• /backups/weekly/
• /backups/monthly/

This tells Linux that is a command and will save a compressed zipped file and file it in your /backups folder, name it backup_Year/Month/Day and it is backing up the entire contents of the /public_html folder.

 

3. Change the file permissions of backup.sh to 711 so just the owner has read/write/execute permissions and read permissions for user. Do this through either file manager in cPanel or FTP

 

4. The final thing to do is to set this script/command to run automatically in your cPanel. Log into your cPanel with Ecoweb hosting (and many other cpanel hosters) and use the scheduled tasks button to set a daily weekly and monthly backup.

 

5. Keep an eye on the number of backups and I recommend doing a test restore at a convenient time to check your backup plan is providing real good solid working backups

You should consider that there are lots of directories for RSS feeds and blogs. If you run one of these be sure to submit your rss feed and blog url around. This will be especially valuable if the SEO competition in you industry is on the low end. For example if you blog about XYZ machinery parts and not very many other people do, just the links from the directories in combination with just a few other tactics (onsite optimization, a few natural links, a few reciprocals) may be enough to rank, especially if your producing a lot of content compared to your competition (like if you post twice a week and they don’t even have a blog)

Examples of Quality Directories:

• DMOZ - also referred to as the Open Directory Project or ODP. Free submission, but it may take a long time to get listed as it is ran by volunteers.
• Yahoo! Directory - $299 per year for commercial listings. Free for non-commercial listings.
• Business.com - allows listings in multiple categories and you can point a few deep links at important pages on your site.
• BOTW
• JoeAnt
• Gimpsy

Find More Directories:

• Drill down on in DMOZ or the Yahoo! Directory for categories of directories. ex: DMOZ Software Directories
• Search for your keywords, related keywords, or your keywords + directory. Sites that rank might be decent link sources (depending on other quality signals).
• Look at inbound links pointing to competing websites.
• Use lists of directories. Please note that many directory lists are nepotistic (recommending their own directory as being the next best thing) or heavily influenced by advertising, and small niche high quality directories that are not on lists of 1000 cheesy directories are probably better than lists of directories commonly used to spam search engines. Each list will have some good directories and many junk ones. PageRank is nowhere near as important as other quality signals. Here are a few lists: Strongest Links, SEO Company, ISEDB, and Search Engine Guide.

Things to consider when chasing listings:

• The Google Directory is a clone of DMOZ, organized by PageRank.
• If a directory does not charge a submission fee take extra effort to make sure your description and title are clean and proper (ie: factual and not keyword stuffed). Emulate other listings.
• It is important to mix your anchor text and descriptions to make your link profile look natural. Emulate other listings in your category, and try to use your keywords in some of your link anchors if the directory will allow it.
• Directories count more in verticals where the competition is weak and not well integrated into the web. If your competition is frequently mentioned in the active portions of the web on news sites, blogs, and social sites then you will need to be mentioned on there as well if you want to compete.
• An established site well integrated into the web which already has a clean link profile can be more risky with what sites they get links from, whereas a new site or a site with limited authority would likely do better building links from the higher quality sources first, then maybe getting lower quality links later, only after their site has proven trustworthy.

When you are building a Moodle Course it can take many many hours and the worse thing that could happen is that the course gets messed up either by accident or by database corruption issues. You must have a working backup , yes working. How many web deveiopers actually test their backups work? Well, I do now especially if you have a commercial learning site built on Moodle. The version I am on is 2.1.3 and I recently ran into issues with back up getting this error “DDL sql execution error”, with debugging on the Moodle system further information gets thrown up.

It seems the issue is a rights problem which means that message means that the database user (moodleuser) in charge of handling all the information is missing permissions to create temporary tables.So for MySQL the command, to be executed by some DB admin user should be something like:

GRANT CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON `DATABASENAME` . * TO ‘USERNAME’@‘HOST’;

Anyway I am about to do this and will let you know if it now all works .

Moral :Dont wait to get backup working , it will get you in the end and I bet it will hurt more in the long run…......