Tom Doyle :: TALK

To manage any online marketing campaign, the onus is on the search engine optimiser to find tools that will help them create an unbeatable search engine marketing service. So I have put together a list of tools that every SEO expert should have in their toolbox!

1. Nichebot Keyword Research Tool
   Researching your target keyphrases could not be easier than this. Not only is it an extremely powerful tool, it’s completely free to use the basic service!
2. Link Popularity Checker
   There are hundreds of these available on the web, all of them do pretty much the same thing. Here’s one that we use.
3. Google Dance Tool
   Google has many many data centers each updating a different times. This tool allows you to check how your site is performing in the search results on other Google datacenters.
4. Keyword Density Tool
   Keyword density is important because search engines use this information to categorize a site’s theme, and to determine which terms the site is relevant to. This tool allows you to check your sites keyword density.
5. Indexed Pages Tool
   You’ve added new pages to your website, but google has google picked them up yet? I tend to use the “site:www.domainname.com” in a google search to find this out, but this checks the number of pages indexed across the major search engines!

I will add more overtime, so keep coming back!

“People can get [tab] for free on the internet, and it’s hurting the songwriters,” MPA president Lauren Keiser told the New York Times.

So now the MPA want to remove all our beloved guitar tab sites that allow us musicians to quickly learn the latest number ones.
To say that these websites are hurting songwriters is a bit over the top. Ok, songwriters get some royalites for the sale of books with their music notations in them, but it’s by no means their main source of income.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that it is actually helping songwriters as opposed to hurthing them. The easier it is for us musicians to quickly learn tunes, the more time we spend playing them, hence promoting their work.

From my experience, I never once bought one of those books with guitar tabs in them. I’d do one of the following.

1. Buy a guitar magazine, any guitar mag was always full of the latest or greatest track in tab.
2. Do it the hardway, by ear. A lof the fun about playing an instrument is tryin to figure out how it’s done. Our buzz is emulating our idols or being able to play our favourite track. Sitting down for a couple of hours figuring out a new song is good fun!
3. A worst case scenario is that we have a gig tonite and haven’t got the time to try figure out if it’s a C or a G they’re playing. So you go into a music shop, have a look for one of these books and right it down on a piece of paper and leave the shop…. people do it all the time.

The music industry needs to understand that we musicians are promoting their music, we’re not trying to rip you off!

On Thursday, Microsoft encouraged web developers and IT professionals to go through their IE7 RC1 with a fine toothcomb.

They also released a huge list of improvements, which can be seen here >> 

If you want to download and test it, you can do so here >> 

I have tried it out myself, still not keen on it, but hey, we all have to change!

I was trying to avoid saying anything on this topic. But as I’m long term fan of Roy Keane I thought I should at least comment on his apparent new profession.

We all knew Keane would end up in management, the talk of him becoming a manager when his career was over started many years ago. Ferguson always touted Roy Keane as a great manager for the future.

Personally, I was shocked I have to admit, when it was reported that Keane would manage Sunderland. Ok, he had a row with Niall Quinn, when Quinn came out against him in Saipan. But Keane is bigger than that and Quinn obviously is too.

Will Keane do well at Sunderland? Well he has the drive there’s no doubt about that. His passion will stir on the whole team and hopefully the club. But I think the most significant part of this appointed me is actually the appointment of Brian Kidd as assistant manager.

I personally think that when Man United let Brian Kidd go that it was the real change of Man United. There was no-one at United (or who they brought in) that could coach, motivate and spot young talent coming through. It’s the one area that I fear Keane may lack, which is why brining in someone like Brian Kidd will make all the difference.

So best of luck to Keano, I’m sure he’ll be a great success.

I had the pleasure of being at the Pearl Jam concert in The Point Depot on Wednesday night. I have to admit, I’m am not a huge fan of Pearl Jam, in fact, I wouldn’t even have any of their records in my record collection….

But a good friend of mine coaxed me into going and in a way I’m glad he did. Although they are not the most crowd interactive band I have ever seen, I enjoyed the atmosphere at this gig.

Musically, they are a very talented bunch of guys. As I’m a drummer myself, I was enthralled watching Matt Cameron playing, what a great bloody drummer!

All in all, a very good gig - but god, they did a really poor rendition of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys are Back in Town”. I hope they only thought about doing this while caught up in the moment, because if they had rehearsed this….. hhhmmmm…. it was a very poor attempt!

Apparently Pearl Jam are rebels against the strict finishing up times that all venues seem to adhere to nowadays and Wednesday was no different. The main lights in the point were turned on at about 10.45 but they continued through this until 11 O’Clock… I’m sure the point depots management weren’t very happy about this!
All in all, I’m still not a fan and the gig certainly wasn’t worth the amount I paid for the ticket, which I didn’t get at cost price!

Google lost market share in July with a 1% drop in searches made. Google’s share of search traffic amassed to a mere 43.7% ahead of its nearest rival Yahoo! with 28.8%

Microsoft sites remain in 3rd position with a 12.8 share of searches. AOL however bombed again, now with only a 5.9% share.

Manchester United started the season on a high by thrashing Fulham 5 goals to 1. Although it seems like an impressive scoreline, it was in fact a pretty dismal display by Fulham.

The game itself was liking watching a preseason friendly. United completely dominated every part of the field and within 20 mins were 4-0 up. Fulham just weren’t in it. It’s no wonder they are one of the favourites to go down this season.

United however looked really good. Their passing, moving and pace looked as good as it was in their hey day. But there were a few dodgy defensive errors that would have been punished by a stronger side. That worried me a little, but you could also put that down to lack of concentration due to the score in which they were winning by.

In other games at the weekend I was impressed with Chelsea. They were back to their old selves with what they call their skeleton squad. If this is not their first team, we should all be worried!!

Liverpool and Arsenal on the otherhand got off to a poor start. Liverpool just didn’t play as well as they did against Chelsea in the Charity Shield. But they did dominate the second half and looked pretty good.

An interesting start to the season, but if Liverpool or Arsenal want to be taken seriously this season they need to stop dropping points against lower teams!

Generating links back to your website is an extremely important part of any search engine optimisation campaign. Some links from other websites are worth more than others, so it’s important to find sites that will allow you to generate quality links back to your website.

And of course, since we like making your job as easy eas possible, we have put together a list of sites that you can generate links back to your website from. In this article, we are focusing on the free backlinks!

So here we go:

www.abilogic.com
www.browse.ie
www.dmoz.org
www.gimpsy.com
www.linketeria.com
www.linksarefree.com
www.netinsert.com
www.search.ie
www.searchme.ie
www.shanganagh.com/l/directory

I will continuously add to this page, so please bookmark and visit regularly.

Rooney and Scholes have each been handed a 3 game ban for their sendings off in the Amsterdam Tournament.

How the FA can justify this is beyond me. Would they have issued a 3 match ban if this was to have happened in a different competition? unlikely…..

Ok, Scholes deserved to be sent off, two rash challenges that we have all come acustomed to when watching Paul Scholes. But Rooneys sending off was totally unjust. He should never have been sent off at all.

But yet again, the FA think that they should be judge and jury on this and have made a decision on something that really has nothing to do with them.

It’s no wonder talk of a European super league still exists…

That time of year again, the launch of the Premiership Season 2006-2007 was marked with the traditional Community Sheild event.

This year it was the turn of Liverpool and Chelsea. A game that you think would provide immense entertainment. Chelsea ready to showcase their new signings Ballack and Shevchenko  to the preimership. While Liverpool were ready to show the rest of league that they have what it takes to be a serious contender for the leaugue this season.

Ballack had a warm welcome to the premiership. Only 6 minutes into the game, he had earned himself a yellow card for a rash challenge. Fifteen minutes later he was taken off with an injury to his hip.

Throughout the first half Liverpool looked the betterside. You could see that they really wanted to win this game and fought for everything in the middle of the park.

Chelsea to me looked like they had lost their shape as they tried to facilitate Ballack and Shevchenko. 4-3-3 just didn’t seem to suit them very well. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t drop Ballack deeper into a diamond shaoe formation to that he could be creative behind Shevchenko. But then again, maybe that’s what Lampard was supposed to be doing??

There were two moments of brilliance in the first half… Riise’s goal, which although was put down to a Goalkeeping error by commentators, was an outstanding goal in my opinion. To take the ball from his own box and score the way he did was fantastic. Even if the keeper did save it, it still would have been a magnificent effort.

The second moment of brilliance came from Shevchenko. You just knew he was going to score the moment the ball was played through the air to him from Lampard.

All in all, I thought Liverpool totally dominated Chelsea throughout the game and thoroughly deserved the win.

Chelsea to me looked over confident, lacking creativity and out of shape.

If this is the team we should all fear this season we have nothing to worry about. I do expect Chelsea to sort out these problems though and go ahead and win the premiership again this season.

My predictions for the premiership this season are:

1. Chelsea
2. Man United
3. Liverpool
4. Arsenal
I think United and Liverpool will be very close, but Chelsea will walk away with it again.