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By Ann Smarty @ SE Journal

Have you ever heard about microformats? If you still need someone to clearly explain what it is about, check out Joe Hall’s post on development trends that will impact SEO.

Microformats look for a new way to format markup languages. Essentially, they offer a new standard for identifying important information.

There’s one really nice FireFox addon that uses Microformats to analyze the page content: “Operator” is an extension for Firefox that adds the ability to interact with semantic data on web pages, including microformats, RDFa and eRDF. It can turn really useful for spotting the essential microformats used on the page.

Once you install it, you’ll be able to see the toolbar that can be toggled using View > Toolbars > Operator Toolbar. (Useful tip: To make the tool hassle-free, find the checkbox in Options that causes the toolbar to auto-hide when there is no data on the page).

The toolbar breaks data found on a page into the following sections:

• Contacts;
• Events;
• Locations;
• Tagspaces;
• Bookmarks;
• Resources.

Here are a few examples of what each section stands for:

::Full content::

Creating new landing pages for testing is getting cheaper. And scalable.

So there are fewer and fewer reasons for SMBs not to be testing their landing pages and sites to optimize conversion rates.

Testing landing pages has long been a preoccupation of mine, particularly because of the traditionally prohibitive costs.

Even if you use a design contest at a place like 99Designs.com, you’re still paying $300 – $500 for a good graphic look and feel. Plus you often need to pay about $100 for a competent graphics slicing shop to handle your job.

(Yes, others can do this for less, but you’re taking a few risks:

• Unreliable people vanishing with your money
• Getting crap code and being unable to evaluate that
• Getting an ugly, non-functional design)

And that’s just the first landing page – you need alternatives so you can test! A simple A/B/C split test (eg with three variations) could thus run you $1,200 -  $1,800 for graphics and code. (Assuming you start with completely different designs; if you just split test headlines or hero shots or calls to action, you’ll probably be able to do it for “just” $400.) ::Full content::

By Ann Smarty @ SE Journal

I already listed a couple of great Greasemonkey scripts combining Bing with Twitter:

This time I am following up with more cool Greasemonkey scripts for early Bing adopters: ::Full content::

By Sherice Jacob @ SE Journal

You’ve had your domain for a long time and it has served you well.  Today, though, you’re looking to expand your online business and the old domain just won’t do the trick.  You need something new, fresh and exciting and perhaps you’ve already registered the ideal name.

There’s just one problem.

Your old site has earned a good search engine ranking for your best keywords.  You’ve got tons of “link juice” to both give and receive – and you don’t want to lose that.

Keep in mind, we’re not just moving files or folders here – but moving an entire site to a new domain name without it affecting your ranking.  To do this, you’ll need two tools – .htaccess and mod_rewrite.

The following tips will work on a Linux/Unix server running Apache – which most web hosting companies use.  Before you start, check with your respective web host to ensure they support the mod_rewrite module and .htaccess. ::Full content::

Today, Microsoft released IIS SEO Toolkit Beta – downloadable for free through the Microsoft Web Platform. The IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit helps Web developers, hosting providers, and Web server administrators increase the number of visitors to their Web site by making the site content more search engine-friendly.

This release is another piece of the larger Microsoft Web Platform strategy, which enables developers and end-users to build great websites, experiences, and achieve success in the Web ecosystem.

The IIS SEO Toolkit includes three components: Site Analysis module, Robots Exclusion module, & Sitemaps and Site Indexes module.

The components allow you to perform detailed analysis, and offer recommendations and editing tools for managing your Robots and Sitemaps files.

The IIS SEO Toolkit Beta will:

• Improve the volume and quality of traffic to your Web site from search engines
• Control how search engines access and display Web content
• Inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing

You can download the IIS SEO Toolkit by visiting the IIS Website.

Additional Links:

• Microsoft Web Platform Portal
• Scott Guthrie’s Blog
• Lauren Cooney’s Blog