Our friends over at TechEgo just launched their annual analysis of the top eCommerce platforms for 2011.  Magento continues its rise and dominance as the industries most popular platform. We’ve been building with Magento for years now and have to agree with the wisdom of the masses on this one.

I’m still surprised that osCommerce is used so much. I do NOT like that platform- it’s antiquated to say the least. It was interesting to see Zen Cart make such a nice push lately. I’ve yet to use the platform. Anyone out there used it before? Thoughts? Also, I like seeing WP e-Commerce get some traction- as I’d love to see WP become a more robust eCommerce platform.

What is Display Advertising?

In the spirit of engaging ads,  I’ve included Google’s short intro video to do the talking:

Watching this market continue to grow at a healthy pace, and getting questions from our clients about it’s effectiveness, I wanted to include a video showing the late 2010 keynote itself. I’ve included a summary of their predictions as well.

Google’s 7 Predictions for Display Advertising by 2015:

1)  50 percent of ad campaigns will include video that is purchased on a cost-per-view basis.

2)  50 percent of ads will be purchased with real-time-bidding (RTB) technology.

3)  The number one screen through which users will engage with an advertisers’ digital brand will be the mobile phone.

4)  Five other metrics will mean more to advertisers than the “click”. Awareness, recall and other metrics will become more important than just the user’s clicking on an ad.

5) 75 percent of ads on the web will be “social” across dozens of formats and sites. Adding “comment” like features, for example, just like news articles do today.

6)  50 percent of brand-building ad campaigns will include Rich Media Formats.

7)  Display advertising is going to be a $50 billion industry, currently around $12-13 billion in the US.

Feedback: Which of these is most likely to come to pass? Which will be a stretch?

Developer website: http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

Best Features for SEO: The extension is pretty nice for some SEO quick glance analysis. Some of these best features include, Disable CSS, Display Alt Tags, Display Inline Tags and View Meta Tag Information options.

I demonstrate these features in Part 1 of 2, below:

Feedback: How do you use the tool? Is there a better tool?

A quick way to view a site’s status code is to use a free tool provided by seoconsultants.com (there are several other tools, I don’t like the incessant advertising on the page cluttering everything up, but I like the simplicity).  All you have to do is add the URL into the input box provided and then click the ‘Check Server Headers’ button.

After a few seconds you will see a section with the current date, your IP address and the response from the server. The section you want to pay attention to is the code to the right of the ‘HTTP/1.1′ text. The code here indicates the status code of the page.

What do the codes mean?

Just below the server results, you will find a list of the different status codes and a short definition. The only problem this is really ugly. I prefer a couple of the resources in the industry that have added a little style as well as substance. They make for nice little resources that can be printed off and handed out at work.  Here is a look at two of my favorite.

SEOmoz HTTP Status Code Infographic

SEOmoz doesn’t disappoint with the creation of this very simple and straightforward infographic that is a nice educational resource. I LOVE the inclusion of the ‘Juice’ icon representing how much SEO juice is being passed when the corresponding code is delivered. Obviously, SEOs will want to return a 200 or 301 status code to pass the most juice possible.

SEOgadget HTTP Status Code Infographic

Another nice Status Code  infographic includes a little more context (the definition of Server Header Response at the top is especially helpful for newer SEOs) and information about the status codes, with interesting stats about how many pages return which types of codes. Also, I love the cool custom 404 Error Page examples.

Feedback: What tools do you use to check server headers? What other information do you pull from these tools that helps out your SEO? Do you have a favorite infographic or educational resource to help you our your team understand Server Heading Status Codes? If so, please share! I love passing some link love for great content and sharing the resources with everyone.

What are HTTP Headers? HTTP is an acronym for ‘Hypertext Transfer Protocol”. A protocol used by the entire internet. If you have more than 15 minutes of internet experience, you know this- and are begging me to get on with it. But hey, you are the one who went ahead and read a paragraph that started with the phrase ‘What are HTTP Headers’, so this is on you, my friend! Back on track…every time a page is requested the HTTP header is sent over from the server and it will include a status code, telling the browser how the request is doing…you know a quick Facebook-like status update from a server to the browser. Depending on this status code, the user may see different things. If all is good- they will see the site. If there are errors then the visitor may see something else. We’ll get to that in a bit.

Why are HTTP Headers important? SEOs can determine quite a bit about the health of a site by this status code. They will be able to see if everything is okay, if a 301 redirect has been correctly done, if a page has been lost in the internet’s elephant graveyard and leading a visitor to a dead end or if an internal error has occurred. The remedy will depend on identifying and understanding the status code returned by the server. So let’s take a look at a) identifying the status codes and b) understanding them.

Identifying Status Codes: Learning what status code the sever is sending back upon the page request is fairly straight forward, especially when using some of the may tools available on the internet.  A couple of my favorite tools include:

Firefox Live HTTP Headers Add-On

Although I just wrote the obituary for my personal Firefox usage, I still love this little tool. So, I’m not sure I’ll be able to peel completely away from Firefox. The plugin makes it easy to view the status code of any URL you are currently on. Once installed, simply right click on the current page. Instead of clicking ‘View Page Source’ select ‘View Page Info’. You will now see the page info pop up, only now it has an additional ‘Headers’ tab on the far right. When selected, this options displays the Request and Response Headers. In the ‘Response’ section you will see the status code from the server.

Next- HTTP Headers and Status Codes Part II: I know insomnia is not cured by one article, albeit brilliant and informative, so Part II will go over another great tool for identifying status codes. Then I’ll share what these codes mean and share a couple of my favorite infographics that clarify their meaning, so you’ll know what to look for as you find these codes.

Firebug has long been my favorite browser de-bugging tool. It has not been able to keep up with the changes made to Firefox, as Firefox tries to keep up with a much more competitive browser landscape. Chrome has been stealing Firefox market share as the premium IE alternative. I posted a blog reviewing my favorite ways to view and analyze source code. Although I love the competition between browsers, I’m going to miss the lovable Firefox, but I just don’t think the development community can keep up with the beef that Google is putting into Chrome- especially in the mobile and soon to be emerging ‘Chrome Book’ space. I wish Firefox luck and I leave them with fond memories and I’ll send out a letter of recommendation if they request one.

Feedback: How many of you use Chrome vs. Firefox? Are there any extensions that are keeping you with Firefox over Chrome? Let us know.

Pros: The Keyword Density analyzer provides nice graphs that help make clear the keywords that are most common on the page. Additionally, a ‘Wizard’ score shows what phrases are the most prevalent on the page- in actual count and implementation into key code sections of the page (meta data, anchor text, etc.). The ‘Page Elements’ tab shows information that goes into some of the key SEO elements and what keywords are used the most within these elements. Finally, in-bound and out-bound link information, coupled with Google ranking information add to the depth of the tool.

Cons: Although I really like the tool there are a couple things I’d like to see improved. First, the tool uses a ‘Wizard’ to grade certain terms, but little information about what this wizard means and the factors it looks into. Some ‘help’ information could quickly make this more clear for SEOs. Even simple hover over help- like they provide for other phrases, such as ‘Prominence’- would help clarify their proprietary terms and ways of analyzing for a phrase.

Secondly, although not necessarily a feature that would clarify relevancy, an page load time stat would be helpful- due to it’s impact on user experience and rankings. Not a major concern, just a nit-picky part of my wish list.

Video Tutorial: Ranks.nl provides a concise, albeit silent, intro to some of their Keyword Density and Analyzer tool’s new features and updates.

Feedback: This post concludes our 3-part series on keyword relevancy tools. What other tools do you use? Have any of you SEOs used this Ranks.nl tool? If so, what do you think? Are any of the wish-list features I mentioned above included, but I’m out of the loop? Let me know what I’m missing so I can better utilize this very practical and robust tool.

Basics: David Naylor’s free tool has grown into a pretty good part of any SEOs repertoire. Simply enter the URL and a keyword phrase and the tool will analyze the page and deliver all kinds of great information relevant to SEO.

Pros: The tool offers great information about the keyword usage in the title tag, links, heading and on-page text- giving a percentage for each. It also shows which words are most common in the text on the page- for one word and two word phrases. An additional feature I enjoy is it’s analysis of internal and external links, letting the SEO know if their are too many links pointing outwards (the more links pointing out- the less value the page may hold). The link information is summed up in a nice ‘Link Ratio’ clearly showing the need to favor inbound links over outbound.

Cons: Link all keyword-density tools SEOs can easily fall prey to the sirens call of over optimizing a page for a phrase, spitting out a page that looks like gibberish, but with great density stats. Remember, have a copy editor look over pages to make sure it reads well and answers the visitors most pressing questions and reflects the company brand more than just being ‘SEO’ed.

Coming Next- Part 3: Ranks.nl Keyword Density and Prominence Analyzer

Feedback: Have you ever used Dave Naylor’s Keyword Density Tool? If so, what are your findings? Is there a tool you prefer more? Let us know.

SEOmoz Term Target Tool (Now On-Page Keyword Optimization)

Basics: SEOmoz has a lot of fantastic SEO tools and one that we utilize quite a bit at Gravitate Online is their Term Target Tool. They’ve gone and changed the name of us, it’s now the On-Page Keyword Optimization tool. It’s especially helpful as it adds a grade to each page for a specific keyword phrase. This makes it easy for clients to get it and simple for us internally to feel good about a high grade.

Pros: Super easy and straightforward. Simply input a URL and the keyword phrase and it gives you a letter grade. Then you’re given a detailed list of comments, including details on improving your score. It now includes a bit of perspective with indicators showing if the proposed changes are critical, high importance, moderate, low or just optional improvements. We find this helpful for newer SEOs and clients, also.

Cons: Sometimes a low grade may incent an SEO to cram keyword phrases into a page at the expense of good copy. The tool may show a higher grade- but the readability and overall quality of the content may suffer. Because of this temptation, we have an on-staff copywriter look over pages to assure they look great for site visitors first and search engines second. With a little quality control and a willingness to get a lower score for good copy and this won’t be an issue.

Coming Next- Part 2: Dave Naylor’s Keyword Density Tool

Feedback: What other tools do you recommend for on-page keyword relevancy for SEO?