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SEO Checklist: Best Practices

azghar — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:57:51 +0000

Continued from Part 1: 29 Worst Practices & Most Common SEO Failures.

Best Practices

Implementing the 14 best practices below (or at least some of them) and avoiding the worst practices should offer you a straightforward approach to better visibility in search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

Best Practice	Doing now	Will do soon	Won’t or N/A
1. Are the keywords you are targeting relevant and popular with searchers?
2. Do your page titles lead with your targeted keywords?
3. Is your body copy of sufficient length and keyword-rich?
4. Does the anchor text pointing to various pages within your site include good keywords?
5. Do you employ text links from your home page to your most important secondary pages?
6. If you must have graphical navigation, do you use the CSS image replacement technique as a workaround, and do those graphics have descriptive and keyword-rich ALT attributes that are useful for both humans and engines?
7. Does your Web site have an XML Sitemap, as well as an HTML site map with text links?
8. Are the URLs of your dynamic (database driven) pages short, simple, and static-looking?
9. Does your home page and other key pages of your site have sufficient PageRank (link authority)?
10. Does your site have an optimized internal linking structure?
11. Do your pages have keyword-rich meta descriptions with a compelling call to action?
12. Does your site have a custom error page that returns the correct “status code”?
13. Do your filenames and directory names include targeted keywords?
14. Are you actively building links to your Web site?

Best and Worst Practice Explanations

Curious about the importance or relevance of some of the questions on the checklists? Read on for full descriptions of the implications of these questions.

Best Practices Explanations

Are the keywords that you are targeting not only relevant but also popular with searchers? There is no point going after high rankings for keywords that no one searches for. Compare relative popularity of keywords using Google’s free tools (Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Google Insights for Search) and/or paid tools like KeywordDiscovery.com and WordTracker.com before deciding what keywords to employ on your Web pages.
Despite the popularity of individual words, it’s best to target two- or three-word phrases (or even longer). Because of the staggering number of Web pages indexed by the major search engines, competing for a spot on the first or second page of search results on a one-word keyword will typically be a losing battle (unless you have killer link authority). This should go without saying, but the keywords you select should be relevant to your business.

Do your page titles lead with your targeted keywords? The text within your page title (a.k.a. the title tag) is given more weight by the search engines than any other text on the page. The keywords at the beginning of the title tag are given the most weight. Thus, by leading with keywords that you’ve chosen carefully, you make your page appear more relevant to those keywords in a search.

Is your body copy of sufficient length and keyword-rich?Ideally, incorporate at least several hundred words on each page so there’s enough “meat” there for the search engines to sink their teeth into and determine a keyword theme of the page. Include relevant keywords high up in the page, where they will be weighted more heavily by the search engines than keywords mentioned only at the bottom of the page, where it’s almost like an afterthought. This is known as keyword prominence. Think in terms of keyword prominence in the HTML, not the rendered page on the screen; Google doesn’t realize that something is at the top of the third column if it appears low in the HTML. Be careful not to go overboard to the point that your copy doesn’t read well; that’s called “keyword stuffing” and is discussed later, under “Worst Practices.”

Does the anchor text pointing to various pages within your site include good keywords? Google, Yahoo, and Bing all associate the anchor text in the hyperlink as highly relevant to the page being linked to. So, use good keywords in the anchor text to help the engine better ascertain the theme of the page you are linking to. Keep the link text relatively succinct and tightly focused on just one keyword or key phrase. The longer the anchor text, the more diluted the overall theme conveyed to the engine.

Do you employ text links from your home page to your most important secondary pages? Text links are, by far, the better option over ALT attributes in conveying to the search engine the context of the page to which you are linking. (An ALT attribute is the text that appears in a small box when you hover your cursor over an image.) ALT attributes can have an effect, but it’s small in comparison with that of text links. If you have graphical navigation buttons, switch them to keyword-rich text links; if that’s not an option, at least include text link navigation repeated elsewhere on the page, such as in the footer (note however that footer links are partially devalued), or consider the CSS image replacement technique, described below.

If you must have graphical navigation, do you use the CSS image replacement technique as a workaround, and do those graphics have descriptive and keyword-rich ALT attributes that are useful for both humans and search engines? Image Replacement is a technique that employs CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to substitute in replacement copy and HTML – such as a text link or heading tag – when the stylesheet is not loaded (as is the case when the search engine spiders come to visit.) The text-based replacement is weighted more heavily by the engines than the IMG ALT attribute — thus it is preferable to relying solely on the ALT attribute. Of the many ways to implement the image replacement technique, most use CSS to physically move the text off the screen (text-indent: -9999em; left:-9999em;display:none, etc), which is not ideal because the search engines may discount this as hidden text.
Important: resist the temptation to work in additional keywords or text into the text replacement, or your site may be hit with a penalty. A few CSS image replacement methods exist that are preferable because they don’t physically move the content off-page and are still accessible, namely The Leahy/Langridge Method, The Gilder/Levin Method and The ‘Shea Enhancement’. It is still useful to have ALT attributes on your images, more for usability/accessibility than for SEO. ALT attributes should contain relevant keywords that convey the key information from the image that the user would not receive if she had image loading turned off.

Does your Web site have an XML Sitemap, as well as an HTML site map with text links? An XML Sitemap file provides the search engines with a comprehensive list of all the URLs corresponding to the pages/documents which are contained on your website. This helps ensure all of your pages end up getting indexed by the search engines. But the XML Sitemap is more than just a list of URLs; it can include additional information about each URL, such as the page’s last modified date and priority (which can impact how frequently the page is visited by the search engine spiders and thus how quickly it is refreshed.)
It’s abest practice to also include the location of your sitemap file(s) in your site’s robots.txt, so that the search engines can “autodiscover” the sitemaps on their own without you having to specify the location of the file(s) in each search engine’s Webmaster Center. An HTML sitemap is a different thing altogether. It’s simply a page on your website with links to all your important pages, displayed usually in a hierarchical fashion. A link to the sitemap is typically present in the footer of every page of the site.

HTML sitemaps have long been touted as good “spider food” because it provides the search engine spiders with a links to key pages to explore and index. Use text links, since they are more search engine optimal than graphical links, as already mentioned. Bear in mind that you should ideally try to stay within 100 links per page, as a recommended best practice by Google (this is a rough guideline, not a hard and fast rule). That may mean breaking up your site map into multiple HTML pages.

Are the URLs of your dynamic (database-driven) pages short, simple and static-looking? Pages with URLs that contain a question mark and numerous ampersands and equals signs aren’t as palatable to the search engines as simple, static-looking URLs. Either install a server module/plug-in that allows you to “rewrite” your URLs, or recode your site to embed your variables in the path info instead of the query string; or, if you need to minimize resource requirements by your IT team, you can enlist a “proxy serving” solution such as Organic Search Optimizer.
I’ve written about this at length in this two-part article. Another, oft-neglected aspect of URL optimization is making them short for improved click-through from the search results. In my previous article on URL optimization I discussed an interesting study by MarketingSherpa that found that short URLs get clicked on twice as often as long URLs in the Google SERPs.

Does your home page and other key pages of your site have sufficient PageRank (link authority)? PageRank is Google’s way of quantifying the importance of a Web page. Put another way, it’s as much about the quality of the links pointing to a given Web page as it is about the quantity (more so, actually). PageRank has been the cornerstone for Google’s ranking algorithm since the beginning. The more important (PageRank-endowed) pages wield more voting power; the page’s “vote” gets divvied up among all the links on the page and passed on to those pages.
Of course, this is a massive over-simplification, and the PageRank algorithm has evolved over the years to include such things as trust and authority to stay ahead of the spammers. Nonetheless, a form of PageRank is still in use today by Google. You can check Google PageRank scores using the Google Toolbar. Mouse over the toolbar’s PageRank meter to display the numerical rating, an integer value between 0 and 10. Yahoo’s importance-scoring equivalent to PageRank has been referred to internally as both LinkFlux and Yahoo! Web Rank at various times. It’s best to refer to the PageRank-like algorithms of the three major engines more generally as “link authority,” “link equity,” or “link juice”.The PageRank scores delivered by Google’s toolbar server are on a logarithmic scale; meaning that integer increments are not evenly spaced. Thus, garnering more links and gaining in PageRank score from 3 to 4 is easy, but from 6 to 7 is a lot harder.

Also bear in mind that the PageRank displayed in the Google Toolbar is not the same PageRank as what is used by Google’s ranking algorithm. In fact, the correlation between the two PageRanks has degraded over time. Potentially a better predictor of your true PageRank score is the “mozRank” score available from Linkscape. “mozRank” approximates Google PageRank using a sophisticated algorithm and an index of 30+ billion pages. mozRank scores are also on a logarithmic scale. A PageRank or mozRank score for your home page of 7 or 8 is a laudable goal.Note that each page has its own PageRank score. Because most of the inbound links your site has garnered point to the home page, your home page almost invariably ends up being the highest PageRank-endowed page of your site. The PageRank that has accumulated on your home page is passed to your internal pages through your internal linking structure.Bottom line: if a given page on your site doesn’t have enough PageRank (I’m referring to the super-secret, internal PageRank that Google doesn’t share with us SEOs via the Toolbar), then it doesn’t deserve to rank.

Does your site have an optimized internal linking structure? Your site’s hierarchical internal linking structure conveys to the search engines how important you consider each page of your site, comparatively. This of course impacts these pages’ PageRank scores and ultimately their Google rankings. The deeper down a page is in the site tree (i.e. the more clicks away the page in question is from the home page), the less PageRank with which that page will be endowed.
Therefore, it’s critical you think carefully about how you spend that hard-earned PageRank, i.e. where and how you link from your home page and from your site-wide navigation to the rest of your site.Generally speaking, the deeper in your hierarchy you hide key content, the less important that content appears to the search engines — if they even find it (which is not a given if it’s very deep). As an aside, this concept applies not only to your linking structure but also to your URL structure: too many slashes in the URL (i.e. too many sub-directories deep) and you convey to the engines that the page is unimportant. A flat directory structure, where you minimize the number of slashes in the URL, helps ensure more pages of your site get indexed.

Do your pages have keyword-rich meta descriptions with a compelling call to action? Because meta tags are tucked away in the HTML and hidden from the view of the human visitor, they have been abused like crazy by spammers trying to hide keywords out of view. The original purpose of meta tags was to provide meta-information about the page which could then be used by search engine spiders and other algorithms. One such piece of meta-information is a description of the page (e.g., its content and its purpose), a.k.a. the “meta description”. Although it won’t improve your rankings to define a meta description (or meta keywords or any other meta tag, for that matter), it is useful from the standpoint of influencing what text appears within your listing in the search results (i.e. the “snippet”), in order to better persuade the user to click through to your site.
Yahoo will frequently employ the meta description as the description in your search results listing. Bing is also displaying the meta descriptions in the search listings. Google may incorporate some or all of your meta description in to the snippet displayed in your search listing; it’s more likely if the searcher’s keywords are present in your meta description. More on the intricacies on Google snippets here. The user’s search terms, and related keywords, like those with the same root – are bolded in the search listing, which improves the clickthrough rate to your page (from the search results). This is known as KWiC (KeyWords in Context).

Does your site have a custom error page that returns the correct “status code”?Don’t greet users with the default “File not found” error page when they click through from a search engine results page to a page on your site that no longer exists. Offer a custom error page instead, with your logo and branding, navigation, site map, and search box. Important from an SEO standpoint – make sure that “File not found” error page returns in the HTTP header a “status code” of 404 (or potentially a different 400 or 500 level status code depending on the nature of the error), or it 301 redirects to a URL that returns a 404. You can check this with a server header checker, such as this one. If you send a mistakenly send a 200 status code instead, this error page will likely end up in the index, and thus the search results. This is discussed further in the “Worst Practices.” No matter what the reason for the page’s unavailability (e.g., discontinued product, site redesign, file renamed, server or database issues), you shouldn’t be driving visitors away with an ugly error page that doesn’t provide a path to your home page and other key areas of your site.

Do your filenames and directory names include targeted keywords? Google engineer Matt Cutts has blogged that this is a useful “signal” to Google, so if it’s easy to do, why not? Separate keywords with hyphens, not with underscores. Avoid having more than a few keywords into a filename or directory name, as it could look spammy to the search engines.

Are you actively building links to your site? A steady stream of high quality links don’t just “happen”; just like ongoing, consistently great media coverage doesn’t just “happen.” If it did, link builders and public relations pros would all be out of a job.The most basic of starting points for link building is the authoritative directories like the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory. Not only do the high quality directories improve your PageRank and consequently your rankings; they also drive direct click-through traffic. If you aren’t already listed in the Yahoo Directory or Open Directory then you should identify the category most relevant to your business and submit your site. A listing in Open Directory also ensures a listing in the (largely forgotten) Google Directory and numerous other directories powered by Open Directory.
Submitting to Yahoo’s directory costs $299 then $299 per year recurring (it’s free for noncommercial sites, though.) Submitting to Open Directory is free but it’s become practically impossible to get into, at least in the most appropriate category for your site, since the Open Directory’s owner (AOL) and its volunteer editors have left the Directory semi-abandoned. Don’t waste your time and money submitting to hundreds of directories, just pick the most critical ones that are relevant to your business/industry and that Google would likely consider authoritative and trustworthy.

For example, a business-to-business company may wish to submit to business.com and ThomasNet.com. Directories that primarily target webmasters and SEOs to sell them listings, rather than end users who would actually browse the directory, are most likely being devalued by Google and thus would be a waste of your time and money to submit to.

29 Worst Practices & Most Common Failures in SEO

azghar — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:55:48 +0000

Many consider search engine optimization as a sort of black box. But once the essential features of a search engine optimal website are laid out in a concise list, SEO is not nearly as mystifying.

That’s where these checklists come in. They are designed for web marketers and web developers so that they can easily understand SEO and start tackling it. You can read a full description of each best and worst practice at the end of this, after the two checklists.

Worst practices in SEO

Partially indexed, poorly ranked, penalized and possibly banned: such is the unpleasant fate of a website that’s not duly optimized for search engines. Even if you mastered all “best practices”, your site may not be safe.

The mission of search engines is to supply their visitors with relevant results, so penalizing or banning sites that appear to interfere with that mission is a necessity. Understanding which practices adversely impact your search engine rankings is a prerequisite to a well-optimized site.

Whether inadvertent or not, any of the following worst practices could doom your site to suboptimal traffic levels. Here are 29 critical “must nots” in SEO (this is not a comprehensive list, by the way):

Worst Practice	N/A	Will stop	Won’t stop
1. Do you use pull-down boxes for navigation?
2. Does your primary navigation require Flash, Java or Javascript to function?
3. Is your web site done entirely in Flash or overly graphical with very little textural content?
4. Is your home page a “splash page” or otherwise content-less?
5. Does your site employ frames?
6. Do the URLs of your pages include “cgi-bin” or numerous ampersands?
7. Do the URLs of your pages include session IDs or user IDs?
8. Do you unnecessarily spread your site across multiple domains?
9. Are your title tags the same on all pages?
10. Do you have pop-ups on your site?
11. Do you have error pages in the search results (“session expired”, etc.)?
12. Does your File Not Found error return a 200 status code?
13. Do you use “click here” or any other superfluous copy for your hyperlink text?
14. Do you have superfluous text like “Welcome to” at the beginning of your title tags?
15. Do you unnecessarily employ redirects, or are they the wrong type?
16. Do you have any hidden or small text meant only for the search engines?
17. Do you engage in “keyword stuffing”?
18. Do you have pages targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords?
19. Do you repeatedly submit your site to the search engines?
20. Do you incorporate your competitors’ brand names in your meta tags?
21. Do you have duplicate pages with minimal or no changes?
22. Does your content read like “spamglish”?
23. Do you have “doorway pages” on your site?
24. Do you have machine-generated pages on your site?
25. Are you “pagejacking”?
26. Are you cloaking?
27. Are you submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) link pages and link farms?
28. Are you buying expired domains with high PageRank scores to use as link targets?
29. Are you presenting a country selector as your home page to Googlebot?

Worst practices explained

Do you use pull-down boxes for navigation? Search engine spiders can’t fill out forms, even short ones with just one pull-down. Thus, they can’t get to the pages that follow. If you’re using pull-downs, make sure there is an alternate means of navigating to those pages that the spiders can use. Note this is not the same as a mouseover menu, where sub-choices show up upon hovering over the main navigation bar; that’s fine if done using CSS (rather than Javascript.)
Does your primary navigation require Flash, Java or Javascript? If you rely on search engine spiders executing Flash, Java or Javascript code in order to access links to deeper pages within your site, you’re taking a big risk. The search engines have a limited ability to deal with Flash, Java and Javascript. So the links may not be accessible to the spiders, or the link text may not get associated with the link. Semantically marked up HTML is always the most search engine friendly way to go.
Is your site done entirely in Flash or overly graphical with very little textual content?Text is always better than graphics or Flash animations for search engine rankings. Page titles and section headings should be text, not graphics. The main textual content of the page should ideally not be embedded within Flash. If it is, then have an alternative text version within div tags and use SWFObject to determine whether that text is displayed based on whether the visitor has the Flash plugin installed.
Is your home page a “splash page” or otherwise content-less? With most webites, as mentioned above, the home page is weighted by the search engines as the most important page on the site (i.e., given the highest PageRank score.) Thus, having no keyword-rich content on your home page is a missed opportunity.
Does your site employ frames? Search engines have problems crawling sites that use frames (i.e., where part of the page moves when you scroll but other parts stay stationary.) Google advises not using frames: “Frames tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links and so on, because frames don’t fit the conceptual model of the Web (every page corresponds to a single URL.) “Furthermore, if a frame does get indexed, searchers clicking through to it from search results will often find an “orphaned page”: a frame without the content it framed, or content without the associated navigation links in the frame it was intended to display with. Often, they will simply find an error page.What about “iFrames”, you ask? iFrames are better than frames for a variety of reasons, but the content within an iframe on a page still won’t be indexed as part of that page’s content.
Do the URLs of your pages Include “cgi-bin” or numerous ampersands? As discussed, search engines are leery of dynamically generated pages. That’s because they can lead the search spider into an infinite loop called a “spider trap.” Certain characters (question marks, ampersands, equal signs) and “cgi-bin” in the URL are sure-fire tip-offs to the search engines that the page is dynamic and thus to proceed with caution. If the URLs have long, overly complex “query strings” (the part of the URL after the question mark), with a number of ampersands and equals signs (which signify that there are multiple variables in the query string), then your page is less likely to get included in the search engine’s index.
Do the URLs of your pages include session IDs or user IDs? If your answer to this question is yes, then consider this: search engine spiders like Googlebot don’t support cookies, and thus the spider will be assigned a new session ID or user ID on each page on your site that it visits. This is the proverbial “spider trap” waiting to happen. Search engine spiders may just skip over these pages. If such pages do get indexed, there will be multiple copies of the same pages each taking a share of the PageRank score, resulting in PageRank dilution and lowered rankings.If you’re not quite clear on why your PageRank scores will be diluted, think of it this way: Googlebot will find minimal links pointing to the exact version of a page with a particular session ID in its URL.
Do you unnecessarily spread your site across multiple domains? This is typically done for load balancing purposes. For example, the links on the JCPenney.com home page point off to www2.jcpenney.com, or www3.jcpenney.com, or www4.jcpenney.com and so on, depending on which server is the least busy. This dilutes PageRank in a way similar to how session IDs in the URL dilute PageRank.
Are your title tags the same on all pages? Far too many websites use a single title tag for the entire site. If your site falls into that group, you’re missing out on a lot of search engine traffic. Each page of your site should “sing” for one or several unique keyword themes. That “singing” is stifled when the page’s title tag doesn’t incorporate the particular keyword being targeted.
Do you have pop-ups on your site? Most search engines don’t index Javascript-based pop-ups, so the content within the pop-up will not get indexed. If that’s not good enough reason to stop using pop-ups, you should know that people hate them – with a passion. Also consider that untold millions of users have pop-up blockers installed. (The Google Toolbar and Yahoo Companion toolbar are pop-up blockers, too, in case you didn’t know.)
Do you have error pages in the search results (“session expired” etc.)? First impressions count . . . a lot! So make sure search engine users aren’t seeing error messages in your search listings. Hotmail took the cake in this regard, with a Google listing for its home page that, for years, began with: “Sign-In Access Error.” Not exactly a useful, compelling or brand-building search result for the user to see. Check to see if you have any error pages by querying Google, Yahoo and Bing for site:www.yourcompanyurl.com. Eliminate error pages from the search engine’s index by serving up the proper status code in the HTTP header (see below) and/or by including a meta robots noindex tag in the HTML.
Does your “file not found” error page return a 200 status code? This is a corollary to the tip immediately above. Before the content of a page is served up by your Web server, a HTTP header is sent, which includes a status code. A status code of 200 is what’s usually sent, meaning that the page is “OK.” A status code of 404 means that the requested URL was not found. Obviously, a file not found error page should return a 404 status code, not a 200. You can verify whether this is the case using a server header checker and then into the form input a bogus URL at your domain, such as http://www.yourcompanyurl.com/blahblah. An additional, and even more serious, consequence of a 200 being returned with URLs that are clearly bogus/non-existent is that your site will look less trustworthy by Google (Google does check for this).Note that there are other error status codes that may be more appropriate to return than a 404 in certain circumstances, like a 403 if the page is restricted or 500 if the server is overloaded and temporarily unavailable; a 200 (or a 301 or 302 redirect that points to a 200) should never be returned, regardless of the error, to ensure the URL with the error does not end up in the search results.
Do you use “click here” or other superfluous copy for your hyperlink text? Wanting to rank tops for the words “click here,” eh? Try some more relevant keywords instead. Remember, Google associates the link text with the page you are linking to, so make that anchor text count.
Do you have superfluous text like “Welcome To” at the beginning of your title tags?No one wants to be top ranked for the word “welcome” (except maybe the Welcome Inn chain!) so remove those superfluous words from your title tags!
Do you unnecessarily employ redirects, or are they the wrong type? A redirect is where the URL changes automatically while the page is still loading in the user’s browser. Temporary (status code of 302) redirects — as opposed to permanent (301) ones — can cost you valuable PageRank. That’s because temporary redirects don’t pass PageRank to the destination URL. Links that go through a click-through tracker first tend to use temporary redirects. Don’t redirect visitors when they first enter your site at the home page; but if you must, at least employ a 301 redirect. Whether 301 or 302, if you can easily avoid using a redirect altogether, then do that. If you must have a redirect, avoid having a bunch of redirects in a row; if that’s not possible, then ensure that there are only 301s in that chain. Most importantly, avoid selectively redirecting human visitors (but not spiders) immediately as they enter your site from a search engine, as that can be deemed a “sneaky redirect” and can get you penalized or banned.
Do you have any hidden or small text meant only for the search engines? It may be tempting to obscure your keywords from visitors by using tiny text that is too small for humans to see, or as text that is the same color as the page background. However, the search engines are on to that trick.
Do you engage in “keyword stuffing”? Putting the same keyword everywhere, such as in every ALT attribute, is just asking for trouble. Don’t go overboard with repeating keywords or adding a meta keywords tag that’s hundreds of words long. (Why even have a meta keywords tag? They don’t help with SEO, they only help educate your competitors on which keywords you are targeting.) Google warns not to hide keywords in places that aren’t rendered, such as comment tags. A good rule of thumb to operate under: if you’d feel uncomfortable showing to a Google employee what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.
Do you have pages targeted to obviously irrelevant keywords? Just because “britney spears” is a popular search term doesn’t mean it’s right for you to be targeting it. Relevancy is the name of the game. Why would you want to be number one for “britney spears” anyway? The bounce rate for such traffic would be terrible.
Do you repeatedly submit your site to the engines? At best this is unnecessary. At worst this could flag your site as spam, since spammers have historically submitted their sites to the engines through the submission form (usually multiple times, using automated tools, and without consideration for whether the site is already indexed). You shouldn’t have to submit your site to the engines; their spiders should find you on their own — assuming you have some links pointing to your site. And if you don’t, you have bigger issues: like the fact your site is completely devoid of PageRank, trust and authority. If you’re going to submit your site to a search engine, search for your site first to make sure it’s not already in the search engine’s index and only submit it manually if it’s not in the index. Note this warning doesn’t apply to participating in the Sitemaps program; it’s absolutely fine to provide the engines with a comprehensive Sitemaps XML file on an ongoing basis (learn more about this program at Sitemaps.org).
Do you incorporate your competitors’ brand names in your meta tags? Unless you have their express permission, this is a good way to end up at the wrong end of a lawsuit.
Do you have duplicate pages with minimal or no changes? The search engines won’t appreciate you purposefully creating duplicate content to occupy more than your fair share of available positions in the search results. Note that a dynamic (database-driven) website inadvertently offering duplicate versions of pages to the spiders at multiple URLs is not a spam tactic, as it is a common occurrence for dynamic websites (even Google’s own Googlestore.com suffers from this), but it is something you would want to minimize due to the PageRank dilution effects.
Does your content read like “spamglish”? Crafting pages filled with nonsensical, keyword-rich gibberish is a great way to get penalized or banned by search engines.
Do you have “doorway pages” on your site? Doorway pages are pages designed solely for search engines that aren’t useful or interesting to human visitors. Doorway pages typically aren’t linked to much from other sites or much from your own site. The search engines strongly discourage the use of this tactic, quite understandably.
Do you have machine-generated pages on your site? Such pages are usually devoid of meaningful content. There are tools that churn out keyword-rich doorway pages for you, automatically. Yuck! Don’t do it; the search engines can spot such doorway pages.
Are you “pagejacking”?” Pagejacking” refers to hijacking or stealing high-ranking pages from other sites and placing them on your site with few or no changes. Often, this tactic is combined with cloaking so as to hide the victimized site’s content from search engine users. The tactic has evolved over the years; for example “auto-blogs” are completely pagejacked content (lifted from RSS feeds). Pagejacking is a big no-no! Not only is it very unethical, it’s illegal; and the consequences can be severe.
Are you “cloaking”? “Cloaking” is the tactic of detecting search engine spiders when they visit and varying the content specifically for the spiders in order to improve rankings. If you are in any way selectively modifying the page content, this is nothing less than a bait-and-switch. Search engines have undercover spiders that masquerade as regular visitors to detect such unscrupulous behavior. (Note that cleaning up search engine unfriendly URLs selectively for spiders, like Yahoo.com does on their home page by dropping their ylt tracking parameter from all their links, is a legitimate tactic.)
Are you submitting to FFA (“Free For All”) links pages and link farms? Search engines don’t think highly of link farms and such, and may penalize you or ban you for participating on them. How can you tell link farms and directories apart from each other? Link farms are poorly organized, have many more links per page, and have minimal editorial control.
Are you buying expired domains with high PageRank scores to use as link targets?Google underwent a major algorithm change a while back to thwart this tactic. Now, when domains expire, their PageRank scores are reset to 0, regardless of how many links point to the site.
Are you presenting a country selector as your home page to Googlebot? Global corporations sometimes present first-time visitors with a list of countries and/or languages to choose from upon entry to their site. An example of this is at EMC.com. This becomes a “worst practice” when this country list is represented to the search engines as the home page. Happily, EMC had done their homework on SEO and is detecting the spiders and waving them on. In other words, Googlebot doesn’t have to select a country before entry. You can confirm this to be the case yourself: do a Google search a “cache:www.emc.com” and you will see the EMC’s U.S. home page.

Closing thoughts

If you’ve read this and thought, “Hmm, that was interesting” but you didn’t actually tick any marks on the above checklists, then you have extracted only a fraction of this article’s value. The simple action of printing out the checklists and checking the appropriate boxes one by one is the first step to doing things differently. Remember: if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.

If you adhere to the advice laid out for you above, and stay tuned for Part 2 of this article which will include a checklist covering best practices in SEO, you’ll be well on your way to a search engine optimal website. Go astray, and your rankings and perhaps even your reputation with the search engines could suffer.

Checklists are just the beginning on the path to SEO success. It’s important to engage with an SEO expert to help guide your organization through the changes necessary to optimize your site.

17 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques

azghar — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:52:51 +0000

Businesses are growing more aware of the need to understand and implement at least the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). But if you read a variety of blogs and websites, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of uncertainty over what makes up “the basics.” Without access to high-level consulting and without a lot of experience knowing what SEO resources can be trusted, there’s also a lot of misinformation about SEO strategies and tactics.

1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.

2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.

3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It’s your job to know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so forth.

4. Become a student of SEO. If you’re taking the do-it-yourself route, you’ll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can. Luckily for you, there are plenty of great web resources (like Search Engine Land) and several terrific books you can read. (Yes, actual printed books!) See our What Is SEO page for a variety of articles, books and resources.

5. Have web analytics in place at the start. You should have clearly defined goals for your SEO efforts, and you’ll need web analytics software in place so you can track what’s working and what’s not.

6. Build a great web site. I’m sure you want to show up on the first page of results. Ask yourself, “Is my site really one of the 10 best sites in the world on this topic?” Be honest. If it’s not, make it better.

7. Include a site map page. Spiders can’t index pages that can’t be crawled. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your site, and help the spider understand your site’s hierarchy. This is especially helpful if your site has a hard-to-crawl navigation menu. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links. I tell clients 75 is the max to be safe.

8. Make SEO-friendly URLs. Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such asyourdomain.com/red-widgets.html. Don’t overdo it, though. A file with 3+ hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it. Related bonus tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a “space,” while underscores are not.

9. Do keyword research at the start of the project. If you’re on a tight budget, use the free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, both of which also have more powerful paid versions. Ignore the numbers these tools show; what’s important is the relative volume of one keyword to another. Another good free tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, which doesn’t show exact numbers.

10. Open up a PPC account. Whether it’s Google’s AdWords, Microsoft adCenter or something else, this is a great way to get actual search volume for your keywords. Yes, it costs money, but if you have the budget it’s worth the investment. It’s also the solution if you didn’t like the “Be patient” suggestion above and are looking for instant visibility.

11. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on every page. The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor. It’s rare to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without that term being part of the page title. The meta description tag won’t help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should include the relevant keyword(s) and be written so as to encourage searchers to click on your listing.Related bonus tip: You can ignore the Keywords meta tag, as no major search engine today supports it.

12. Write for users first. Google, Yahoo, etc., have pretty powerful bots crawling the web, but to my knowledge these bots have never bought anything online, signed up for a newsletter, or picked up the phone to call about your services. Humans do those things, so write your page copy with humans in mind. Yes, you need keywords in the text, but don’t stuff each page like a Thanksgiving turkey. Keep it readable.

13. Create great, unique content. This is important for everyone, but it’s a particular challenge for online retailers. If you’re selling the same widget that 50 other retailers are selling, and everyone is using the boilerplate descriptions from the manufacturer, this is a great opportunity. Write your own product descriptions, using the keyword research you did earlier (see #9 above) to target actual words searchers use, and make product pages that blow the competition away. Plus, retailer or not, great content is a great way to get inbound links.

14. Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally. Anchor text helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about. Links that say “click here” do nothing for your search engine visibility.

15. Build links intelligently. Begin with foundational links like trusted directories. (Yahoo andDMOZ are often cited as examples, but don’t waste time worrying about DMOZ submission. Submit it and forget it.) Seek links from authority sites in your industry. If local search matters to you (more on that coming up), seek links from trusted sites in your geographic area — the Chamber of Commerce, local business directories, etc. Analyze the inbound links to your competitors to find links you can acquire, too. Create great content on a consistent basis and use social media to build awareness and links. (A blog is great for this; see below.)

16. Use press releases wisely. Developing a relationship with media covering your industry or your local region can be a great source of exposure, including getting links from trusted media web sites. Distributing releases online can be an effective link building tactic, and opens the door for exposure in news search sites. Related bonus tip: Only issue a release when you have something newsworthy to report. Don’t waste journalists’ time.

17. Start a blog and participate with other related blogs. Search engines, Google especially, love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured data. Beyond that, there’s no better way to join the conversations that are already taking place about your industry and/or company. Reading and commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links. Related bonus tip: Put your blog at yourdomain.com/blog so your main domain gets the benefit of any links to your blog posts. If that’s not possible, useblog.yourdomain.com.

What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?

azghar — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:49:39 +0000

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines. All major search engines such asGoogle, Yahoo and Bing have such results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.

Start With A Movie!

New to SEO? Why not take three minutes and watch our video introduction to search engine optimization? It’ll quickly cover the basics:

Search Engine Land worked with Common Craft to produce the video, and they have many more great explainer videos like this in the Common Craft video library, so check that out!

More Advice For Newbies

For more basic but also in-depth advice, our Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors, shown below, introduces you to all the key concepts you need to know:

You can click on the table to view a larger version of it. You can download a copy to print for easy reference!

Search Engine Land’s Guide To SEO

As a companion to the table, Search Engine Land’s Guide To SEO explains the ranking factors in more depth, in a tutorial providing tips and advice on implementing them. Links to the entire guide are shown below (start at the beginning, and each page will take you to the next):

TIP: If you’re a Search Engine Land member, the Search Engine Land Guide To SEO is available as a downloadable eBook. It’s just one of many benefits you get. Not a member? Consider signing-up!

More Guides & Books

Another excellent guide is Google’s “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.” This is a free PDF download that covers basic tips that Google provides to its own employees on how to get listed. You’ll find it here.

Also well worth checking out is SEOmoz’s “Beginner’s Guide To SEO,” which you’ll find here, and the SEO Success Pyramid from Small Business Search Marketing.

There are also a variety of print books you might consider. Here’s our review of some newer books: A Roundup Of Best SEO Books.

SEO Resources From Around The Web

There are a number of blogs and forums that focus heavily on SEO topics, including: aimClear, Blogstorm, Bruce Clay Blog, David Naylor, Eric Ward, Fire Horse Trail, High Rankings Forum, John Andrews, Matt Cutts, Michael Gray, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Nine By Blue, Outspoken Media, Search Cowboys, Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Sebastian’s Pamphlets, SEOmoz, SEOoptimize, SEO By The Sea, SEO Book, SEO Copywriting, SEO Gadget, Stone Temple, The Link Spiel, WebProNews and WebmasterWorld.

Looking for an easy-to-scan compilation of SEO news? Check out Alltop. For compilations of the best articles on search engine optimization in a given year, visit The Semmys.

At Search Engine Roundtable, you’ll discover a regular compilation of important discussions happening on a variety of search marketing forums. For definitions about terms like SEO and other technological issues, check out Webopedia.

Don’t forget to take our free SearchCap newsletter! SearchCap provides a recap of all the day’s SEO-related news from sources all over the web.

Search Engine Land Columns

Search Engine Land has a variety of columns that cover SEO issues mainly from an in-the-trenches perspective:

Search Engine Land’s Library

The SEO Library is an area within Search Engine Land that provides a collection of all stories we’ve written on the topic of SEO. We also have sub-categories, including:

Also see our related Link Building category and these sub-categories:

In addition to covering SEO generally, Search Engine Land also has search engine optimization areas specifically for each of the major search engines:

Also within our library is the How To: SEO section, which is devoted to practical tips and tactics about search engine optimization.

7 Tips For Boosting SEO Of Your Facebook Page

azghar — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:45:41 +0000

Brands and businesses are moving away from traditional websites, and placing more and more emphasis on their Facebook pages. This is great from a customer service and interaction standpoint, but certainly muddies the waters from an SEO perspective.

It used to be that with the right mix of keyword-laden text, reciprocal links, and clever use of heading text, a crafty SEO expert could push a website up in the rankings. But now the focus is on your Facebook page, and you still need to get your brand or business in the top of the rankings. Here’s seven tips to help you do just that.

1. Push Your Brand Or Business Name

The names of your Facebook page, custom URL, and custom tabs are of utmost importance. Search engines see these titles in Heading 1, which means they’re heavily ranked by search engines. Craft the title of your page, tabs, and URL carefully, making sure they contain the name of your brand or business.

If you’re the proud owner of Joe’s Garage, but instead opt for “Mechanics You Can Trust,” Joe’s Garage isn’t going to rank highly on the SERPs. Your brand or business name is how you’re known and how you’re found, so be consistent when labeling your page, URL, and tabs. And once you’ve named your page or picked your vanity URL, commit to it.

2. Get Links From Multiple Sources

As is the case with traditional SEO, getting links to your Facebook page and custom tabs is extremely beneficial. Links are like recommendations. If one friend recommends you eat at a certain restaurant, you’ll consider it. If a number of your friends echo that recommendation, you’ll be convinced.

If Google sees that your tabs and pages are being linked to by numerous sources, both on and off of Facebook, then your page and tabs must be important. But search engines also take into consideration where the links are coming from. A link to a custom tab on your business page will be weighted much more heavily if it’s from a popular, recognized source.

3. Get The Most Out Of Wall & Custom Tab Content

More of your Facebook page is indexed by search engines than you may realize. For instance, your wall posts are indexed. But since wall posts lose their relevancy in time, they aren’t given much weight. Still, using your target words and phrases in your wall posts isn’t a bad idea.

Your new custom tabs you painstakingly created? Relax, those are indexed too. And given quite a bit more weight than wall posts. Remember, well-earned Likes are a significant ranking factor in Bing, and building Likes is one of the easiest and strongest things you can do for ranking Facebook content on Bing.

So if you haven’t already, build some custom tabs and name them appropriately. Use Heading 1 text, emphasize titles, and add bold text. Custom tabs have staying power, you and your friends can create links to your custom tabs, and you can even provide links to your custom tabs from external sites, so aptly named tabs with multiple links to them will be will be very beneficial in your SEO efforts.

Here’s where it gets tricky, though. If you use third-party applications to build tabs, make sure they’re configured so they’re indexed on Facebook and not on the third-party’s servers.

4. Don’t Hide From The Search Engines

Google doesn’t “Like” your page. It’s a non-fan. So if you’ve got some key content on your custom tabs hidden behind a fan gate, Google can’t see it. And if Google can’t see it, it can’t be indexed.

While you may be inclined to build these gates to create a buzz about your page and drive up your fan count, carefully consider whether or not you want your content gated, because it will be hidden from search engines.

5. Put SEO-Rich Text In The Right Place

It may seem like common sense, but search engines can’t parse images, which means they can’t tell if there’s text inside an image. So don’t put your SEO-rich text within an image that you add to a new custom welcome tab. It can’t be indexed there. Instead, put that text on the About and Info tabs.

But remember that Facebook is a place for social connection and interaction, so don’t go overboard with SEO-rich text. Material that isn’t social won’t hold your fans’ attention, and can even cause abandonment.

6. Optimize Your Multimedia

Videos are the easiest form of multimedia to optimize because the titles are heavily weighted. So make sure you’re giving your videos good titles, both on Facebook and on sites like YouTube and Vimeo. Similarly, the images and logos you use on Facebook can be optimized by naming the files accordingly.

7. Nothing Beats A Well-Run Page

Being a good community manager is just as important as an SEO campaign. The popular Facebook pages have all those likes because those pages embrace the ideology of Facebook: they’re interactive, engaging, and usable pages. Facebook, at its core, is about connecting with people, so don’t sacrifice the interactivity of your page for the sake of SEO.

Searchengineland

The 100 Best Extensions for Chrome

azghar — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:23:00 +0000

On this page, you will find the best 100 Chrome extensions for all your browsing needs.

We’ve taken the effort to categorize the extensions and picked only those we believe to be the best ones and which will most likely be useful to you.

By Category:
Bookmarking	Browsing Aids	Developers	Email
Maps / Weather	Mobile	Music / Video	News / Feeds
Productivity	Security	Shopping	Social Stuff
Tab Management

Bookmarking

Diigo
A perfect tool for students/researchers. Diigo lets you highlight, sticky, share and save web pages for organization.

Download

Read Later Fast
Read selected content both online and offline. It includes an excellent interface for organization of content you want to save quickly and easily.

Download

Xmarks
Xmarks syncs your data across both computers and browsers. With Xmarks, you’ll also be just a few clicks away from your bookmarks, passwords and tabs.

Download

Browsing Aids

Autopager With Autopager, the next page on a website is loaded automatically as you scroll. Won’t work with every site but is compatible with many, including The New York Times, Google, and Amazon. Download	Clickable Links This extension automatically detects and turns any link text into a hyperlink. Download	Download Assistant Download Assistant lets you use third party download managers in place of the default manager in Chrome. Download
FlashBlock As the name suggests, this extensions will block Flash from running in Chrome. You can whitelist sites, however, so that Flash isn’t blocked when it is crucial. Download	Goo.gl URL Shortener This handy extension lets you shorten URLs with Google URL shortener from the browser itself. Download	Hover Zoom Hover Zoom solves this by making images larger when you hover your cursor over them. Download
Plain Clothes Plain Clothes reduces webpages to a less attractive, but simpler, format. Download	Stylish Stylish lets a user add their own style elements to a website and the save them. The opposite of Plain Clothes. Download	Readability This extension cuts fancy features and sexy styles and enhances the text, but only when you want it to. Download
Bubble Translate Bubble Translate allows you to translate specific text on a web page immediately. Download	Google Dictionary by Google Want to know what that word means? Just double click! A definition will appear in a pop-up bubble. A number of major languages are supported. Download	Google Quick Scroll Automatically highlights the text on a site that was relevant to your search and scrolling directly to it. Download

Developer Tools

colorPicker 0.9 ColorPicker 0.9 lets you experiment with colour and hex codes. Download	IETab IETab helps developers who enjoy Chrome see what their sites look like in IE. Simple, but crucial. Download	Image Properties Context Menu Displays the properties of an image and makes that information easier to access. Download
IP Address With this extension, you can find out your IP in the blink of an eye. Download	PageRank Status What’s the PageRank of your site? This extension will help you keep track of your site’s performance from the Chrome toolbar. Download	Pendule Consider Pendule to be a toolbox. It can validate code, disable style elements on the fly, show hidden page elements, and much more. Must-have for serious developers. Download
QR Code Generator Want to let a visitor send something to their mobile device? This extension will create QR codes with no fuss. Download	Speed Tracer (by Google) Web page performance can impact its ranking in Google. This tool will help you see how your site’s load times fair, and provide what you need to find the culprits behind slow performance. Download	WhatFont? See a font that you like? Use WhatFont and discover what font it is in seconds. Download
Zemanta Zemanta is a blogging dashboard designed for bloggers who frequently make reference to other online content. It supports popular blog platforms including WordPress, TypePad and Blogger. Download

Email

WiseStamp
WiseStamp makes it easier to send out a signature with your social networking information with all of your emails or just some, if that is what you prefer.

Download

Minimalist for Gmail
Allows you to disable entire features, change colors, and more in Gmail.

Download

Boomerang for Gmail
Do you know that you need to send an email, but you won’t be near your PC? Boomerang adds email scheduling functionality to Gmail.

Download

Rapportive
Rapportive searches and displays available information about your email contact, including their occupation, photo, and even location.

Download

Offline Google Mail
Another extension that fills the gap between Gmail and traditional email clients.

Download

Send From Gmail (by Google)
Allows you to compose email in Gmail whenever you click on an email address. Quite handy, and works smoothly.

Download

X-Notifier
Receive Android alerts when you receive email from a variety of services including AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo.

Download

Maps and Weather

Full Screen Google Maps
This is an excellent extension lets you make Google Maps full screen. Great for browsing Maps.

Download

Rain Alarm
Thinking of going for a walk, but don’t want to get rained on? Rain Alarm can help by alerting you when precipitation is incoming. It tracks snow, too.

Download

Weather Watcher Live
This simple weather extension adds a real-time temperature readout to Chrome, which can be clicked for additional local weather information.

Download

Quickrr
Click on the Quickrr icon, enter the search term, and you’ll be directed to Google Maps search results instantly.

Download

Mobile

Android Push Contacts
Push, shove, and send contacts from your browser to your phone. You can even send SMS messages straight from your computer.

Download

MightyText
Another way to send SMS messages to and from your Android while using Chrome. Requires its smartphone counterpart.

Download

Chrome to Phone
Want to open a link on your phone, but don’t want the hassle of emailing it? Chrome to Phone can help.

Download

Music / Video

Anesidora
Like Pandora? Don’t want to keep it open in a tab while listening? Anesidora can help by building Internet radio straight in to Chrome.

Download

Clea.nr Videos
Another un-styling extension focused on YouTube and Amazon video. It eliminates almost everything on a page except for the video itself.

Download

Auto HD for Youtube
The name says it all. With Auto HD, you’ll never have to mess with YouTube resolution settings again.

Download

Illimutix
Great extension for those who download videos online. It bypasses the free usage restrictions of sites like MegaVideo.

Download

Radio Player Live
Bored with Pandora? Radio Player Live is a multi-channel online radio player. You’ll need to download additional plug-ins, but the effort is worthwhile.

Download

Turn Off The Lights
This extension solves the problem of videos embedded on light backgrounds with a single mouse click.

Download

Xbox Live Dashboard
This Chrome dashboard will let you go on Xbox Live. It includes a friends list and allows for reading and replying to messages.

Download

YouTube Options
No surprises here. With YouTube Options you’re able to make change how the site looks or disable certain video features, such as annotations.

Download

News and Feeds

Feedly
This extension organizes feeds into an attractive thumbnail-and-headline centered format.

Download

Google Alerter
Need to be notified of the latest events from multiple sources? Google Alerter draws information from Google Reader, Gmail, Voice and Wave at once.

Download

iReader
Despite the name, this as nothing to do with Apple. It’s a reader that strips out extraneous page elements and allows users to view multiple feeds at once.

Download

NewsSquares
This feed reader organizes feeds visually in your web browser. It’s the most attractive reader around, very functional.

Download

RSS Subscription Extension (by Google)
A must-have for anyone who uses RSS. Automatically places a RSS subscription button in the browser when you visit a page that supports RSS.

Download

Unburner
Unburner removes junk data from RSS subscriptions. You’ll no longer have to slog through Feedburner code you don’t need to see.

Download

Minimalist for Google Reader
Minimalist for Google Reader can significantly clean up the interface and completely customizable.

Download

Productivity

Send to Google Docs This extension lets you save websites using your Google Account and sends it to Google Docs and is thus accessible from any PC. Download	StayFocused StayFocused can help by providing an on-screen timer and alerting you when you’ve wasted more time than you’d wanted. Download	Sumo Paint Sumo Paint is a web-only image editor. It is free, quick, and acts as a real web app. Download
Time Tracker Logs how much time you spend on various websites. Keeps track of your productivity if you don’t have a boss leering over your back. Download	Write Space This text editor is easy to use, and the app is entirely self-contained and offline, so it can be used at any time on any computer with Chrome. Download	Webpage Screenshot Takes a PNG/JPG image of a website which can then be shared. Because it captures an image, the content you share can’t be changed, altered or taken down. Download
Minimalist for Google Calendar Much like the Gmail extension, Minimalist offers a wide range of customizations for Google Calendar. Download	Awesome Screenshot Awesome Screenshot makes it possible to capture all or part of a webpage as an image, then annotate or apply basic edits if you desire. Download	Cloud Save Save online content using the cloud service or services of your choice. Save links, images and more by right clicking and using the new menu option. Download
Quick Note Quick Note allows you to type and organize notes online, then access them on other computers with your Diigo account. Download	Mega Button Mega Button acts a simple interface improvement that makes many features of Chrome accessible from a single “mega” button. Download	Smooth Gestures Smooth Gestures makes it even easier to navigate your browser through mouse gestures. Many functions are available, and gestures can be customized. Download

Security

Click&Clean
This extension clean your hard disk, scan for malware, erase temporary files, and much more.

Download

Ghostery
Ghostery takes the veil off the web, exposing tracking cookies, hidden page elements, and much more.

Download

Hide My Ass! Web Proxy
Sometimes you may want to bypass site restrictions or browser the web anonymously. Hide My Ass! can help by sending your connection through a proxy server.

Download

LastPass
Saves and encrypts your passwords on the LastPass web server. Log in to websites with a single click.

Download

Personal Blocklist (by Google)
Frankly, this should be included by default. It adds the ability to block websites that you find suspicious (or just annoying) at any time. They’ll no longer appear in search results.

Download

ScriptNo
Tired of websites running scripts without permission? ScriptNo can fix that by blocking some or all of them.

Download

ViewThru
With ViewThru, you’ll be able to see the full site URL before clicking on any shorted link, which can be a huge benefit in terms of security.

Download

Web of Trust
Web of Trust rates websites based on the experiences of others, so you can avoid sites that are known to be harmful and stick to those known to be legit.

Download

Shopping

Add to Amazon Wish List
Wse this extension to add anything you want to your Amazon wish list. Wish List is also available on most smartphones via Amazon’s mobile app.

Download

Currency Converter
Looking to buy something from a store that doesn’t use your currency? Currency Converter supports most world currencies and can convert to multiple currencies at once.

Download

eBay Extension for Chrome
This official eBay extension is essential for anyone who uses the site frequently. It notifies you have new bids, allows for easy auction monitoring, and much more.

Download

Ookong
Of the several Amazon price trackers on the market, this is the best. It provides a clear and accurate price history for items on Amazon.

Download

PriceBlink
PriceBlink’s big advantage is that it is cross-platform and cross-store. It will help you find pricing on products from multiple stores.

Download

Social Stuff

Amplify Amplify lifts character limits in social networks and makes it easier to share blog posts. And as a bonus, clips you share can be viewed later in the Amplog. Download	Buffer for Chrome Buffer helps by putting your tweets in a queue and sending them out over time. You can write many tweets at once, and then have them sent throughout the day. Download	Facebook for Chrome This unofficial extension brings Facebook features to the Chrome interface. Must-have for anyone who frequently checks the news feed or uses the chat features. Download
No Theater Facebook Image Gallery Removes the newer Facebook Image Gallery in favor of the older solution, where each image was displayed on its own page. Download	Pigeon Carrier Pigeon Carrier makes it possible to share files over Twitter using your Dropbox account. Share files in your tweets by clicking the Add Attachment button. Download	Reddit Companion A must-have for any Reddit fan, this extension places site functions such as vote, save and more in the Chrome interface. Download
Replies and More for Google+ Want to reply to someone who has posted an update on Google+? This extension adds Reply and Reply to Author links, as well as a few other seemingly random enhancements. Download	Silverbird Once installed, Silverbird makes it possible to access Twitter functions from a button in the Chrome interface. Download	Shareaholic This simple link sharing extension can connect with a number of social networking services including Facebook, Twitter, Evernote and more. Download
Surplus Surplus provides access to Google Plus in Chrome through an interface button. Desktop notifications are also available. Download	TweetDeck Another alternative Twitter interface, TweetDeck works in full screen and re-arranges the interface so you can see more at once. Download	G+me for Google+ Like Google+, but feeling a bit overwhelmed by the updates to your stream? G+me simplifies this by making comments collapsible. Also adds notification features that will help you stay informe. Download
eBuddy Web Messenger Just a nice, unified web messenger built in to Chrome. It supports Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, FaceBook Chat, AIM and more. Download	Imgur Add screenshots, photos and other images to your Imgur account directly from Chrome. Download

Tab Management

MuteTab
It lets you mute audio from as many tabs as you’d want, so you can listen to what you want to without interference from other sites.

Download

Reload All Tabs
Reloads all open tabs. Obviously, that’s much quicker than reloading each tab individually, so this is a must-have for serious tabaholics.

Download

TabCloud
Tab Cloud lets you transfer your browsing session from one computer to another. You can also see saved sessions with a built-in interface.

Download

Tabs Expose
This extension provides an alternative tab interface that includes thumbnail previews. It’s a good choice for users who keep 5-20 tabs open at once.

Download

TabsPlus
TabsPlus lets you modify the default behaviors of tabs. You can change what happens when a new tab is opened, or the tab Chrome will switch to when you close an open tab.

Download

Tab Scissors
Snip! Now your single browser window is cut in two. This is an awesome extension for people who need to compare websites or online documents side-by-side.

Download

TooManyTabs
Designed for people who keep 20+ tabs open at a time, this extension offers a unique tiled tab interface, tab search, tab restore, and much more.

Download

Speed Dial
Speed Dial replicates the functionality of the New Tab page, but allows for customization. Specific sites can be added or removed.

Download

Disclaimer: All extensions listed were thoroughly reviewed. MakeUseOf is not responsible for any damage and/or data loss
that might result from use of any of the above mentioned extensions.

10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy

azghar — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:02:36 +0000

Facebook statistics show that it has 250 million active users each with an average 120 friends. More than 1 billion photos are uploaded every month by its users, over 70% of whom use applications like games and quizzes in Facebook. Unfortunately, most users don’t know the implications of entering personal information, making friends, and playing games on Facebook.

This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy.

1. Organize Friends in Lists

What do you do when your boss, mother-in-law, or a casual web acquaintance sends you a friend request on Facebook? Use Friend Lists. Friend Lists are the foundation of your Facebook privacy settings. Select Friends from the top menu, and use the Create link to create friend lists like Co-workers, Family, College Friends, etc. Your friends can’t see your lists, so you can name them whatever you like.

Tip: On your left sidebar, all your friend lists may not show up by default. Click More to see all of them, and drag and drop those you want above the separator.

2. Customize Profile Privacy

Click Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile. Select which parts of your profile will be seen by whom.

If you choose Customize in the drop down, you can be more specific. This is where the Friend Lists you created before become really useful.

Also go to the Contact Information tab and choose how you want your contact information to be shared on the Internet.

3. Set Facebook Privacy Level of Photo Albums

On the Photos tab of your profile page, click Album Privacy. Here again, you can use your Friend Lists to set the privacy for each photo album.

Note that your profile pictures go into a special album that is always visible to ALL your friends.

4. Restrict Search Visibility

Click Privacy > Search to set your visibility when someone searches Facebook for people. This is an important way to safeguard your Facebook privacy. You can also select what will be visible in the search results.

5. Control Automatic Wall Posts and News Feed Updates

Your actions in Facebook such as comments, likes, appear as highlights on ALL your friends’ home pages. You cannot use friend lists here, only turn them on or off.

Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall and choose whether you want your boss or ex-girlfriend to know that you’re in a relationship.

6. Set Facebook Wall Privacy

Go to your profile page, click Options > Settings under the status box.

Here you can control whether your friends can post to your Wall, and who can see the posts made by your friends.

7. Avoid Appearing in Advertisements

Facebook has two types of advertisements: third-party and Facebook. Third-party advertisements are currently not allowed to use your pictures, but there is a setting to disallow it if it is allowed in the future. Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads tab to turn this off.

The Facebook ads shown to your friends are about “˜social actions’ like becoming a fan of something. You can turn this off at the bottom of the page.

8. Protect Yourself from Friends’ Applications

Go to Privacy > Applications, and click the Settings tab and uncheck all the boxes. These settings control what information about you is visible to applications installed by your friends. By default, these are set to visible. This means that your religious, sexual, and political preferences, pictures, etc. are readily available to one of the million worldwide Facebook application developers, each time any of your friends takes a quiz, plays a game, or runs any other Facebook app. This is obviously a Facebook privacy issue.

This is the most commonly misunderstood aspect of Facebook privacy. These settings control what applications installed by your friends can see about you, even if you don’t install the application yourself.

Why is this important? Because these settings will not change anything about what you are sharing with the applications you install yourself. For that, go to the next step.

9. Privacy from Your Applications

There is no way to control what applications see about you; it is an all-or-nothing affair. Takethis quiz developed by the American Civil Liberties Union to check what anonymous application developers can know about you and your friends each time you take a quiz.

The Burton Group’s Identity Blog features the Facebook Privacy Mirror, an application that you can use to find out what applications know about you and your friends. If you really want to see exactly what profile data of each of your friends is visible to application developers,Privacy Mirror shows it in detail.

The only thing you can do is to authorize only those applications you require and trust. Go toSettings > Application Settings from the top menu. Change the drop-down from Recently Used to Authorized. Here you can see all the applications you have authorized to get access to ALL your profile information. Remove the ones you no longer need.

Also check the list of applications Allowed to Post and Granted Additional Permissionsto remove unwanted ones.

10. Quitting Facebook? Delete, Don’t Just De-Activate Your Account

You can easily deactivate your account in Facebook from the Settings page. But deactivation will retain all your profile information within Facebook, including pictures, friends, etc. If you want to permanently delete your Facebook account, click here to submit a deletion request. Note that:

There is an unspecified delay between submitting your delete request and actual deletion.
If you login to Facebook, your deletion request is automatically cancelled.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to confirm that your request was completed.
Even after permanent deletion, Facebook says that copies of your photos may remain on their servers for technical reasons.

Also, note that once in a while, there is news of a Facebook hack or leak that can expose your information on the Internet. It is better to be safe than sorry by avoiding using Facebook for anything that may embarrass you.

I hope this article gives you a better understanding and insight into Facebook’s privacy. Have any questions or concerns? Liked the post? Please tell us in the comments!

50 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For

azghar — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:47:01 +0000

As we prepare to give thanks for our delicious Thanksgiving meals (and impending food comas), let’s not forget to pay our yearly tribute to the wonderful developers who bring us our favorite free apps.

Dropbox

Category: Online storage and syncing
See also: The Cleverest Ways to Use Dropbox That You’re Not Using, The Cheapskate’s Guide to Getting Free Dropbox Space, How to Get 8GB+ Extra Dropbox Space for Free with Google AdWords, and more Dropbox coverage
Google Chrome

Category: Browser
See also: The Power User’s Guide to Google Chrome, How to Really Browse Without Leaving a Trace, Which Browser Should I Use: Firefox or Chrome?, How and Why Chrome Is Overtaking Firefox Among Power Users, and more Chrome coverage
Firefox

Category: Browser
See also: Why I’ve Switched From Chrome to Firefox 4, Top 10 Must-Have Browser Extensions, Which Browser Should I Use: Firefox or Chrome?, and more Firefox coverage
Evernote

Category: Note taking
See also: Expand Your Brain with Evernote and Clever Uses for Evernote and more Evernote coverage
Notepad++

Category: Text editors
See also: Five Best Text Editors, AutoSave Adds Reassurance to Notepad++ Editing, andHow to Get More Plus out of Notepad++
Skype

Category: VoIP
See also: our full Skype coverage
VLC (Video Lan Client)

Category: Media Player
See also: Master Your Digital Media with VLC, Set a Video as Your Wallpaper with VLC, and more VLC coverage
Gmail

Category: Email
See also: Master the New Gmail with These Tips, Shortcuts, and Add-Ons, How to Set Up Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts (Properly) on iOS, Fix Gmail’s Newest Annoyances with These Userstyles and Userscripts, and more Gmail coverage
7-zip

Category: File Compression
See also: Hive Five Winner for Best File Compression Tool: 7-Zip
TeamViewer

Category: Remote Desktop
See also: Download of the Day: TeamViewer (Windows), TeamViewer Arrives on Android for Small-Screen Remote Control and Tech Support, and How Do I Troubleshoot My Parents’ PC Remotely?
uTorrent

Category: BitTorrent Client
See also: uTorrent 3.0 Alpha Adds Web Interface Support for iPad, Android, How to Boost Your BitTorrent Speed and Privacy, and more uTorrent coverage
Spotify

Category: Music Streaming
See also: Spotify Is the Best Desktop Music Player We’ve Ever Used, The Essential Spotify Tools, and more Spotify coverage
Google Maps

Category: Maps
See also: Our complete Google Maps coverage
Google Reader

Category: RSS Newsreader
See also: Our complete Google Reader coverage
Google Voice

Category: VoIP
See also: A First Look at Google Voice, The Most Helpful Ways to Use Google Voice that You’re Not Using, Top 10 Clever Google Voice Tricks, and more Google Voice coverage
HandBrake

Category: DVD Ripping
See also: Best DVD-Ripping Tool: HandBrake, Rip DVDs to Friendlier Formats with HandBrake, and Calculate the Perfect HandBrake Video Encoding Settings for Your Device and How to Rip DVDs with Handbrake
CCleaner

Category: Utilities
See also: CCleaner 2.0 Decrapifies Your PC, Run CCleaner on a Schedule to Keep Your PC Crap-Free, and more CCleaner coverage
GIMP

Category: Image Editing
See also: Is GIMP better than Photoshop?, Tweak GIMP to be More Like Photoshop,Cartoonify Photos with the GIMP, and more GIMP coverage
WordPress

Category: Blogging
See also: The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog and more WordPress coverage
FileZilla

Category: FTP Client
See also: Hive Five Winner for Best FTP Client: FileZilla, FTP File Transfer Across Platforms with Filezilla 3.0, and Build a Home FTP Server with FileZilla
ImgBurn

Category: DVD Ripping
See also: Download of the Day: ImgBurn (Windows), Hive Five Winner for Best CD and DVD Burning Tool: ImgBurn, and Turn Your PC into a DVD Ripping Monster
VirtualBox

Category: Virtualization
See also: The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox, How to Run Mac OS X in VirtualBox on Windows, and more VirtualBox coverage
KeePass

Category: Password Manager
See also: Best Password Manager: KeePass and Eight Best KeePass Plug-Ins to Master Your Passwords
Launchy

Category: Utilities
See also: Integrate Everything Search Tool and Launchy, Take Launchy beyond application launching, Screenshot Tour: Tweaking Launchy, and more Launchy coverage
Mint.com

Category: Personal Finance
See also: Is Mint Ready for Your Money?, Best Mobile Personal Finance Tool: Mint, andmore Mint coverage
Paint.NET

Category: Image Editing
See also: Download of the Day: Paint.NET 3 (Windows), Pinta Brings Paint.NET’s Just-Enough Image Editing to Every Computer, and Basic image editing with Paint.NET
Rainmeter

Category: Desktop Customization
See also: Best Desktop Customization Tool: Rainmeter and How to Create an Attractive, Customized Desktop HUD with Rainmeter
Revo Uninstaller

Category: Utilities
See also: Completely Remove Programs with Revo Uninstaller, Clean Windows Systems on the Go with Revo Uninstaller Portable, and The Best App Uninstaller for Windows
Simplenote

Category: Note Taking
See also: The Holy Grail of Ubiquitous Plain-Text Capture, Simplenote Offers Synchronized Notes on iPhones-And Now It’s Free, mNote Syncs Your Simplenote Notes with Android Phones, and The Holy Grail of Ubiquitous Plain Text Capture
Winamp

Category: Media Player
See also: Manage your music with Winamp, Control Winamp Remotely from Any Browser, and more Winamp coverage
XBMC

Category: Media Center
See also: Build a Silent, Standalone XBMC Media Center On the Cheap, Turbo Charge Your New XBMC Installation, Transform Your Classic Xbox into a Killer Media Center,Turn Your XBMC Media Center into a Video Game Console, The Ultimate Start to Finish Guide to Your XBMC Media Center, and mor XBMC coverage
CyanogenMod

Category: Android Custom Firmware
See also: How to Choose the Right Android ROM for You and more CyanogenMod coverage
Eclipse

Category: Software Development
See also: Tips for Using Eclipse Effectively
Google Calendar

Category: Calendar
See also: Our full Google Calendar coverage
Inkscape

Category: Image Editing
See also: Manipulate Vector Images with Open Source Inkscape
LastPass

Category: Password Manager
See also: The Intermediate Guide to Mastering Passwords with LastPass, How to Automatically Fill in Repetitive Web Forms (and Avoid Tons of Tedious Typing), andmore LastPass coverage
Linux

Category: Operating System
See also: Our complete Linux coverage
Open Office

Category: Office Suite
See also: A First Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0, OpenOffice.org 3.2 Improves Startup Times, Office 2007 Compatibility, OpenOffice.org 3.1′s Usability Tweaks, Install and Switch to LibreOffice in Ubuntu, and more OpenOffice coverage
Opera

Category: Browsers
See also: Opera 11 Alpha Brings Chrome-Like Extensions to the Speedy Browser, Top 10 Must-Have Browser Extensions, and Opera’s Android Browser Updates to Show Your Data Usage and Bandwidth Savings
Picasa

Category: Photo Manager
See also: How to Upload and Share Photos on Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook, Picasa 3.5 Organizes Your Photos with Facial Recognition, Picasa Now Offering Virtually Unlimited Photo Storage, Brings Google+ Tagging, and more Picasa coverage
PuTTY

Category: SSH Client
See also: Put PuTTY in the Tray with PuTTY Tray, Add Tabs to PuTTY with PuTTY Connection Manager, and KiTTY Adds Session Saving, Portability, and More to PuTTY
SoundHound

Category: Music Identification
See also: SoundHound Is a Near Total Music App Replacement for iPhone and Shazam vs. SoundHound: Battle of the Mobile Song ID Services
Thunderbird

Category: Email
See also: our full Thunderbird coverage and Backing up Gmail with Thunderbird, Eight Killer Thunderbird Extensions, How to Sync Your Desktop Email Client (Outlook or Thunderbird) Across Multiple Computers, and more Thunderbird coverage
Twitter

Category: Social networks
See also: Six Ways You SHould Be Using Twitter (that Don’t Involve Breakfast), Navigate the New Twitter Like a Pro with Keyboard Shortcuts, Five Best Twitter Clients, How to Deal with Your Biggest Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ Annoyances, and more Twitter coverage
Wunderlist

Category: To-Do List
See also: Wunderlist Is a Simple, Elegant, and Free To-Do App that Synchronizes Across Your Machines, The Best To-Do App for Windows, The Best To-Do App for Mac OS X,The Best To-Do App for Android, and The Best To-Do App for Linux
TrueCrypt

Category: Encryption
See also: Best File Encryption Tool: TrueCrypt, Geek to Live: Encrypt Your Data, andHow to Add a Second Layer of Encryption to Dropbox
AutoHotkey

Category: Utilities
See also: Automate Windows with AutoHotkey, Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut, and The Best Time-Saving AutoHotkey Tricks You Should Be Using
Instapaper

Category: Bookmarking Tool
See also: Battle of the Bookmark-and-Read-Later Apps: Instapaper vs. Read It Later andmore Instapaper coverage
Quicksilver

Category: Utilities
See also: Hack Attack: A beginner’s guide to Quicksilver and Top 10 Quicksilver Plug-ins
Pidgin

Category: Instant Messaging
See also: Chat Across IM Platforms with Pidgin 2.4, Ten Must-Have Plug-ins to Power Up Pidgin, Use Dropbox to Sync Your Pidgin Profile Across Multiple PCs, and Best Instant Messaging Application for Windows

Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer’s Boot Time

azghar — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:25:00 +0000

If there’s one thing everyone dreads, it’s rebooting their computer. It may only take a minute or two, but it can seem like forever. Here are our top 10 tweaks that’ll make your computer boot a little faster.

Photo by Alex Schwenke.

This is a pretty controversial topic, as there are a lot of startup-tweaking myths out there. So, we took to the streets (of the internet) and searched for as many easy, well-supported tips as we could find. There may be others, some of which are controversial, but these 10 things are almost sure to get you a faster-booting machine.

10. Tweak Your BIOS

When you first set up your computer, your BIOS is set up to make things a bit more convenient for you, but once you’re all set up, those things can be disabled. If you hold the DEL key when you start up your computer (or whatever key your BIOS tells you to enter setup), you can turn on the “Quick Boot” option and move your hard disk to the top of the boot priority list. The Quick Boot setting will turn off the tests your computer runs when it first turns on, and the boot priority tweak will tell your computernot to look for CDs, thumb drives, or other media when it first starts, which will get you booted into your OS quicker. If you ever need to boot from CD though, you’ll have to go back into the BIOS and change this again before you do.

9. Clean Out Programs that Launch at Startup

One of the most tried and true ways to speed up your boot process is to keep unnecessary programs from starting up with your computer. You can do this by runningmsconfig from the Start Menu’s search box, and going to the Startup tab. This applications list will tell you what each of those applications does, so you know which ones you can disable and which ones you don’t want to. Previously mentioned Soluto is also a fantastic way to clean up these programs, and these days it’s got a bunch of other handy features that make it worth a download.

8. Delay Windows Services That Run at Startup

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Many people argue that disabling Services from msconfig will also speed up your boot time, but we’ve found that this is more problematic than anything. However, you can delay certain startup services so that your computer boots quickly and then worries about them later—after all, you don’t need all those services the minute you start up your machine

7. Change Your Boot Menu’s Timeout Values

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If you’re dual-booting your machine, then your boot menu probably has a “timeout value”, meaning the amount of time it waits for you to make a selection before it just boots into the default OS. On Windows, this timeout value is often 30 seconds, which is a long time to wait if you aren’t looking directly at your screen. To change this timeout value, head to msconfig and click on the BOOT.INI tab, and change the number in the timeout box to something lower. If you’re dual-booting with Linux, you’re probably running the GRUB boot menu, and you can change the timeout on that too.

6. Disable Unused Hardware

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Your computer loads a lot of drivers when it first starts up, some of which you might not even use. Head into the Device Manager from the Start Menu’s search box, and look for anything you aren’t using—Bluetooth controllers, modems, and virtual Wi-Fi adapters are common culprits. Right-click on the entry you want to disable and hit “Disable”. Remember to only do this with things you don’t actually use—if you use Wireless Hosted Networks, you’ll need to keep those virtual Wi-Fi adapters enabled. It’s also worth mentioning here that keeping all your drivers up to date will help this portion of the startup time, too (which you can do with the help of a program like previously mentioned Device Doctor).

5. Keep Your Antivirus Running and Up to Date

This should go without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: install some antivirus software, keep it up to date, and run a regular scan. This is more of a preventative measure than an actual boot-speeding tip, but if you everdo get malware, it’s sure to slow your computer’s boot time. With a good antivirus around like Microsoft Security Essentials, you’ll be more protected against that happening. Don’t like MSE? There are somegreat ones out there too, so there’s no reason not to have one around.

4. Remove Unnecessary Fonts

Since the dawn of time, Windows has loaded fonts at startup and slowed down the boot time. This is less of a problem than it used to be, but it can still slow you down a bit. Windows 7 loads over 200 fonts at startup; even more if you’ve installed Microsoft Office. Chances are, you use very few of those fonts, so you can hide them to speed up that process. In Windows 7, open up the Fonts folder from the Start Menu’s search box, and check off all the fonts you don’t need. Then click the “Hide” button in the toolbar. This way, if you ever want them, you can bring them back, but Windows won’t load them at startup. Note that just removing a few fonts probably isn’t going to make a noticeable difference—you’ll probably need to get rid of a few hundred. That said, you might have hundreds more fonts installed than you realized, so that isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds.

3. Upgrade Your RAM

Installing more RAM has always been an effective way of speeding up your computer, and that hasn’t changed. RAM is pretty cheap these days, so if you’re running low, there’s no reason not to stock up and make your computer run a little smoother. We’ve gone over how to replace it in both a desktop and a laptop, and even for the inexperienced, it’s a pretty simple procedure.

2. Give Your Computer a Static IP

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When you first start up your computer, it spends a significant amount of time asking the network for an IP address. You can get rid of this process altogether by giving your computer a static IP address that never changes. Not only does this make your network easier to manage (since each computer will always have the same IP address), but it can shave a bit more time off your startup. Here’s how to do it in different versions of Windows.

1. Install a Solid State Drive

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These days, your hard drive is probably the biggest bottleneck in your machine. One of the best upgrades you can make to your computer is to install a solid state drive, which has super-fast read times that can speed up your startup considerably. They’re certainly not a cheap upgrade, nor are they without their own maintenance requirements, but if you want to speed up your computer and its boot time, you can’t go wrong by installing an SSD. The difference will be shocking.

Lifehacker

Our List of the Best Windows Downloads

azghar — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:18:41 +0000

Whether you’ve just reinstalled Windows or you need to fill some holes on your software collection, we’ve got everything you need in our annual Lifehacker Pack. Here, you can grab our all-time favorite downloads in one, simple installer.

Once again, we’ve gotten the folks at Ninite to help us out by creating a one-click installer for the Lifehacker Pack. Install all the apps below or just the ones you want, all one easy installer package. And, just like in the past, we have two different packs: an “essentials” pack, with our must-have apps that almost everyone will use, and the “extended” pack, which is for those looking to go a little deeper or replace certain apps in the extended pack that they don’t like.

PRODUCTIVITY

Notepad++

When you edit documents, you use an Office suite, but when you edit plain text or code, you need something specialized. Notepad++ adds a ton of features to plain text editing, like text searching, tabbed editing, syntax coloring for code, and built-in scripting that let you add in pretty much any feature you want.

Need something a bit simpler? Try Notepad2. You can also find other similar apps for a price, like SublimeText, but all they really bring you is a more attractive interface.

Download Page

PhraseExpress

Text expansion can save you hours of typing every week, and PhraseExpress is probably the best text expander on Windows. It isn’t perfect, but it’ll get the job done (though we recommend removing all its built-in autocorrect features). Just set up your custom snippets, and with a few choice characters you can instantly fill in long passages, lines of code, or other info like the current date and time.

If you’d like something a bit more minimal, we recommend you also check out Texter, a text expansion program written by our own Adam Pash, or just create your own text snippets in AutoHotkey.

Download Page

Belvedere

Also written by Adam Pash, Belvedere is an automatic file sorter based on Hazel for Mac. Belvedere lets you automatically keep folders clean by moving and sorting files with a certain extension, deleting files based on their creation date, and a ton more. Just set it and forget it, and you won’t have to worry about keeping your desktop clean or backing up those documents to Dropbox ever again.

Download Page

SumatraPDF

Let’s be honest: nobody likes having to open Adobe Reader to read those PDF files. SumatraPDF is everything Adobe Reader isn’t: simple, fast, and easy to use. It opens PDFs almost instantly, and supports most PDF features like tables of contents. Plus, for you keyboard junkies, it has some nice shortcuts for flipping through those PDFs at lightning speed.

Want something a little more advanced? Try PDF-XChange.

Download Page

INTERNET/COMMUNICATION

Google Chrome

Chrome has overtaken Firefox as the most popular browser among power users, and it’s easy to see why. It’s fast, extensible, and syncs your preferences, extensions, passwords, and more all through your Google account. Plus, it updates pretty frequently, improving itself every few weeks through small, incremental updates.

Download Page

Thunderbird

Most people have switched to web-based email, but we still recommend having a mail client on your system for backup, offline access, or for when the web service goes down. Thunderbird is the best of the bunch, supporting any IMAP-capable mail account out there, and is incredibly customizable due to the number of plugins available.

If you want something a bit more advanced and are willing to pay, both Microsoft Outlook and the Thunderbird-based Postbox are good alternatives.

Download Page

Pidgin

If you want all your IM accounts in one place, look no further than Pidgin. Pidgin lets you chat from AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, MSN, Facebook Chat and more all in one combined buddy list. Plus, with a ton of third party plugins that let you add other IM networks, themes, notifications, and integration with social media services, it’s the perfect one-stop-shop for all your IM and communication needs.

If Pidgin doesn’t do it for you, you might prefer the polish of the cross-platform Trillian or the social network-focusedDigsby.

Download Page

Adobe Flash

Whether you like it or not, lots of the web still uses Adobe Flash to play videos, power webapps, or just plain navigate their site. So while it may not be the most stable or speedy plugin around, we still recommend you install it for a better web experience. If it’s causing a lot of problems, you can always block it using FlashBlock for Chromeand FlashBlock for Firefox, too.

Download Page

Skype

Skype’s still the biggest name in video chat, not to mention one of the cheapest ways to make international phone calls. And, it’s available on nearly every platform imaginable, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android, and more. Even if you aren’t a Skype fan yourself, it’s a program you’ll want to have on hand, since chances are someone you know uses it—and when it comes time to chat with them, you’ll have it at the ready.

Of course, when given the option, we’re pretty big fans of Google Chat and the new Hangouts feature in Google+.

Download Page

UTILITIES

µTorrent

µTorrent is easily our favorite BitTorrent client for Windows, being both extremely lightweight and full-featured. Beyond the basic downloading of torrents, you can easily share files with your friends, remote control torrents from the web interface, and even stream videos as you download them. And, while you’re at it, you can tweak these settings for increased speed and privacy.

Download Page

SABnzbd

If you don’t like BitTorrent for one reason or another, Usenet is another great way to share and download files, and SABnzbd is our favorite Usenet client out there. It’s super easy to set up, runs in the background, and lets you control it from any computer through your web browser. It automates nearly every step of the process, too, so you just need to load up the NZB you want to download and it’ll do the rest.

Download Page

Dropbox

Dropbox is still the best file syncing tool around, letting you back up files to the web and sync them between all of your machines and mobile devices. You get 2GB of space to start, but it’s easy to get more space for free, and useful for so much morethan just syncing your documents. It’s a must have on any system you own.

If you don’t like Dropbox or have problems with it’s recent security issues, there are a lot of alternatives out there to consider.

Download Page

Crashplan

Everyone should back up their computer, and Crashplan is our favorite backup tool around. Not only can it back up to local drives and remote computers, but you can also back up your data to Crashplan’s cloud service for an affordable fee, which protects your data in case of fire or other local catastrophe. Of course, if you’re really against paying, you could always back up your data to a friend’s computer and they yours, to keep your backups in more than one place.

Download Page

ImgBurn

If you ever burn live CDs or rip movies, you’ve probably come across image files before. ImgBurn is a simple utility that will burn them to disc in just a few clicks. Just start it up, load your ISO, and hit Burn.

Download Page

CCleaner

Over time, your hard drive gets filled up with leftover files, temporary caches, and other cruft that can slow your computer down. CCleaner is the best tool around for cleaning it up, and you can even run it on a schedule so you never have to think about it. If you’re using Windows, it’s an essential tool to have.

Download Page

Revo Uninstaller

Windows has its own built-in uninstaller, but sometimes it misses certain files (which is why we need CCleaner to keep things neat). Revo Uninstaller is much more effective at removing every trace of a program from your system, and can even help you manage your startup items to keep things running smooth from the moment you power on.

Download Page

7-Zip

Windows can handle ZIP files natively, but all other archives (like 7Z, RAR, and tons more) require an external program. 7-Zip is a simple yet powerful archive tool, letting you both unzip files with the press of a button or zip them up securely.

Download Page

MUSIC, PICTURES, AND VIDEO

KMPlayer

VLC may be the most popular play-anything program on Windows, but KMPlayer is really our favorite of the bunch. With a light footprint, codecs for just about any video and more settings than you can shake a stick at, it can make even the lowest quality video files watchable—even if they’re damaged. If you watch videos on your system, this is the program to use.

If KMPlayer isn’t for you, we’ve included VLC in the extended pack below. We also recommend checking out Media Player Classic, SMPlayer, and PotPlayer for your video-playing needs.

Download Page

Picasa

If you have photos to manage, Picasa’s the program to do it in. Just import your mishmash of photo folders, and Picasa will help you organize them into an easy-to-browse library, and even give you some dead simple editing tools while you’re at it. Plus, with Picasa Web Albums, you can upload them to share them with your friends or just keep them backed up.

If you don’t like Picasa, Windows Live Photo Gallery is a good Windows-integrated alternative, and seasoned photographers might like the more advanced Adobe Lightroom.

Download Page

Paint.NET

When something like Photoshop or the GIMP seems like overkill, Paint.NET is the perfect program to do simple photo edits. With Paint.NET you can do anything from cropping to removing red eye, and even work with layers—just without an overwhelming feature set like you’d find elsewhere. It isn’t the most powerful program on the block, but it’s more than enough for the majority of users.

Download Page

iTunes

iTunes isn’t our favorite music player, but it is the most ubiquitous, and if you have any Apple devices in your backpack, you’re going to need iTunes to manage them. It’s got more than enough basic library functions to satisfy the average user, and chances are, it’s the music program that most of you need, so we’ve included it in the essentials pack.

Download Page

SECURITY

Microsoft Security Essentials

Antivirus programs abound on Windows, but you really don’t need to pay money to get good security. Microsoft’s tools are great at catching viruses, integrate well with Windows, and do their job in the background without ever nagging your for money. It’s also lightweight, which is a big plus in the security department. Save your money—Microsoft Security Essentials is all you need.

Download Page

THE EXTENDED PACK

Firefox

Chrome may be our favorite browser, but that doesn’t mean Firefox doesn’t have anything going for it. Firefox is still more customizable than any other browser you’ll find, and it’s getting faster all the time. And, with multiple channels, a rapid release cycle, and a new interface on the way, it’s catching up to Chrome big time.

Download Page

LibreOffice

OpenOffice doesn’t have the momentum it used to, and the OpenOffice community has left Oracle’s offering in favor of LibreOffice, the new standard open-source office suite. It’s got a few features OpenOffice doesn’t, as well as a more active community. If you don’t want to pay for Microsoft’s offerings, LibreOffice is the way to go.

Download Page

Microsoft Office and Office Viewers

Love it or hate it, many of you might need to edit documents in Microsoft Office (or at least view them). Thus, we’ve added a trial version of Office 2007 Standard to the pack, as well as the Office Viewers for those that only need to open a file here and there.

.NET, Silverlight, and Java

You’re probably going to need all three of these frameworks for something. Better to install them all now and get it over with—after all, waiting for Silverlight to download is a pretty big buzzkill when all you want to do is watch Netflix.

Recuva

Accidentally deleting files is a horrifying thing that can happen to anyone. Recuva can often get it back, so it’s a good tool to have in your back pocket to help keep you cool in those emergencies.

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Teracopy

When you have to copy big files between drives, TeraCopy is a great alternative to Windows Explorer. It’ll move them as fast as possible, pause and resume, and even recover from errors.

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K-Lite Codec Pack

Windows Media Player is actually a pretty nice player, and if you’d rather use it than install a separate program, this pack of codecs will make sure that it—and any other player—can handle every video format you might run into.

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VLC

We understand that many of you are still in love with VLC, and we understand—it might not be our favorite video player, but it’s still one of the best and most popular out there. If you can’t live without the lightweight, play-anything VLC, we’ve included it in the extended pack for you.

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Foobar2000, MediaMonkey, and Winamp

If you’re lucky enough to be free of iTunes (or you only use it to manage your iPod), these three players are some fantastic music managers. Foobar2000 is minimal and customizable, MediaMonkey is an library-organizing monster, and Winamp is just a great all-around player for any user.

Spotify

While the above players are each desktop powerhouses in their own right, we’ve also fallen in love with the cloud music service Spotify. It’s great for discovering new music and testing it out before you buy, so even if you have a local music player, we can’t recommend Spotify enough.

Download Page

Adobe Reader

It’s slow, naggy about updates, and somewhat insecure, but unfortunately, sometimes you just need Adobe Reader. Whether you’ve got PDF files with special features Sumatra doesn’t support, or your file just won’t open correctly, chances are it’ll work in Adobe Reader. We recommend keeping SumatraPDF as your default reader, and keeping Adobe around for those unfortunate occasions.

Download Page

AutoHotkey

it’s one of the geekier selections on our list, so it isn’t for everybody, but AutoHotkey is one of the most powerful, useful programs you can get for Windows. With just a bit of code, you can turn just about any action in to a keyboard shortcut, or even create your own little programs. It may look intimidating, but it’s surprisingly easy to learn, so if you’ve ever thought “my life would be perfect if I just had this keyboard shortcut”, AutoHotkey is a godsend.

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10. Tweak Your BIOS

9. Clean Out Programs that Launch at Startup

8. Delay Windows Services That Run at Startup

7. Change Your Boot Menu’s Timeout Values

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5. Keep Your Antivirus Running and Up to Date

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Foobar2000, MediaMonkey, and Winamp