Types of Girls

Hard Disk Girls:
She remembers everything, FOREVER.

RAM Girls:
She forgets about you, the moment you turn her off.

Windows Girls:
Everyone knows that she can’t do a thing right, but no one can live without her.

Screensaver Girls:
She is good for nothing but at least she is fun!

Internet Girls:
Difficult to access.

Server Girls:
Always busy when you need her.

Multimedia Girls:
She makes horrible things look beautiful.

CD-ROM Girls:
She is always faster and faster.

Email Girls:
Every ten things she says, eight are nonsense.

Virus Girls:
Also known as “WIFE”; when you are not expecting her, she comes, installs herself and uses all your resources. If you try to uninstall her you will lose something, if you don’t try to uninstall her you will lose everything.

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I’ve just spent 3 days at the 25th annual ACCM Show in Orlando, FL and wanted to share with you a few very helpful tools to help you better manage your SEO and Site Optimization campaigns. Oh, and these tools are completely free to use with the exception that you might have to register for a user account or two.

• Google Webmaster Tools
  If you are not using the various free tools that Google provides then shame on you. You’re ultimate goal is to rank well in the search engines and you have the biggest search engine of them all providing you with free tools to help you do just that. With Webmaster Tools you will be able to monitor and adjust how Google search bots deal with your site. It will tell you what errors it has encountered, when it last crawled your site, the top keywords that land visitors on your site and where you rank for those queries in Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
• Yahoo Site Explorer
  This is Yahoo’s version of Google’s Webmaster Tools and although they offer some of the same features Yahoo does offer a few extra features to allow you to basically carve out the way they view your site. You can manipulate your URL’s to exclude some of the extra query information that is tacked on to the end of your site’s pages.
• Rex Swain
  The main tool I am referring to from Rex is the HTTP Viewer tool. This nifty Perl script allows you to read through the page headers of a website and basically see what the spiders and bots are seeing when they visit your website. Another outstanding use for this tool is the ability to view what HTTP responses you are handing back to browsers, bots and spiders. Why would you do this? If you are transferring your site from one domain to another or migrating pages a great way to make sure you have the correct redirect setup is to use this tool and verify it is working how you had planned.
• Google Analytics
  If you are not already using an analytics tool you need to change that as soon as possible. Analytics tools allow you to see how your visitors are using your website. Stop assuming how they use and start making well informed and educated decisions based on actual visitors data. This is the quickest method to find out what areas or your site are working and what areas or not. Once you have analytics setup be sure to setup the e-commerce and site search portions if they apply to your website. The site search allows you to know exactly what your visitors are wanting to find on your site, so repeat the the search yourself and make sure you agree with the results you are presenting. Another analytic to monitor is the bounce rate. Find your highest and lowest bounced pages and try to mimic what you are doing right on the low bounce to the high bounced page. There are much more tips but these should get you headed in the right direction.
• Compete.com
  This website lets you take a very close look at your competitors to see what keywords they are optimizing for and how you are comparing to them for those keywords as well as other factors. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to knocking on the door and asking to login to their analytics account.

Did I miss a great tool (which is very possible since this is such a short list) feel free to share you favorite tools with me in our comments section.

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Did you know when you get someone’s voicemail you can push the # and skip straight to the beep! Thats right, you know that one person you call and always get their voicemail and it’s really long, well now you can skip straight to leaving a message.

No more wasting your time listing to “Hi, this is Mitzi, I didn’t answer the phone….”

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So I stumbled across a central location for some of Microsoft’s PowerToys for Windows XP. I had already tried out of couple of them, like SyncToy and the Slide Show Wizard, but there were a couple of others that caught my eye. Right away I started downloading… ClearType Tuner, Alt-Tab replacement, Tweak UI, Image Resizer, Virtual Desktop Manager, and Taskbar Magnifier.

ClearType - isn’t a big change and you will probably forget you enabled it a day later but in the long run I feel it will help ease eyestrain. (my opinion: install)

HTML Slide Show Wizard - wizard helps you create an HTML slide show of your digital pictures, ready to place on your Web site. (my opinion: use jalbum or picasa)

Alt-Tab replacement - adds a preview of the page your switching to in the Alt-Tab box. Now its not Vista-like but you will enjoy the page preview specially if you open multiple windows of the same app. (my opinion: use TaskSwitchXP)

Tweak UI - gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more. I went through all the options and it offers quit a bit, but I didn’t really change anything. I guess its good I know where to go now to easily change some settings. (my opinion: install)

Image Resizer - enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. About a month ago I went searching for a quick batch image resizer, I came up with Image Converter One. After finding this I will only use the Image Converter One from my portable apps when on the go. (my opinion: install)

Virtual Desktop Manager - allows you to manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar. Have you ever wanted more space on your desktop? Well instead of buying a bigger monitor you should try out a virtual desktop. All virtual desktop managers are pretty much the same, it just depends on how simple or flashy you want it. (simple: Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager; medium: yod’m 3D; flashy; shock 4way)

Taskbar Magnifier - magnifies part of the screen from the taskbar. (my opinion: I would never need it)

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