As a freelance SEO, I’m always on the lookout for tools to help automate a process. Recently added to my arsenal is this handy dandy free SEO tool by SEOmeter.com. Let’s take a look at what it is.
SEO Meter allows you to add your site to their list, and keep track of Google’s crawl rate. For those new to the game, Google not only crawls and indexes your site, but keeps a record of it’s last crawl, and how your site looked at that time. This version, I feel, plays a large part in your site’s position for a particular term. Google also implemented this as a means for a surfer to take a look at this older version because a page has changed, or needs to load the page faster (Google’s servers are faster than most, and if you have a slow connection, the cache version of a page will likely load much faster for you).
You can see an example of how to get to the cached version here:
And once you go to that cached version, you will get the page you requested, with the addition of an information banner at the top:
On this banner, Google tells us when the cached version was taken, and provides us with a link to the current version.
For The SEO
SEO Meter already provides a pretty good explanation of what the crawl cycle is and why we would want to know this information here, but simply put, the more often Google crawls your site, the more authority it can be assumed to have. It’s also an indirect reflection of links pointing to your site (the more quality links to your site, the higher the chance of a crawl).
Where Does SEO Meter Come In?
I mentioned that I love automation of process. All of this information about a site can be obtained by doing a search or looking into Google Webmater tools, but wouldn’t be easier to just set it and forget it? In this case I say yes.
Once you add your site to SEOmeter.com’s list, they keep a running record of your site’s crawl cycle for 3 months. This way, you can see any changes and keep up with your site’s progress, or more importantly, catch trouble spots early. So, let’s take a look at SEO Meter’s stats and such.
We can see the diagram for Cnn.com which shows a steady flow of crawling:
With the diagram, you can quickly catch any spikes. This is pretty and all, but I like to see numbers:
Let me try to explain these numbers. The crawl cycle is determined by the last crawl, a 1-month period, and a 3-month period. think “days” with these numbers. So in this example we can see that Cnn.com was crawled just over one day ago, it’s 1-month average is almost 2 times per day, and about the same for a 3-month period.
The use of this tool is pretty much self explanatory at this point. I don’t really need to say anymore, but I’m a bored blogger right now…so I will.
SEO Meter allows for the free submission of the top-level domain, but charges $20 for internal URLs. If you run a blog, news site, or very large site, then the fee will probably become worth it. Expecially if they can come up with an API to integrate into your own application to keep trac of all your URLs in one spot. But I have to tell you, free is something you just can’t buy. At the very least submit your URL for bragging rights. They let you generate a snippet to place on your site showing your CC numbers. (Hint: you can even have fun with fellow bloggers by using cnn.com’s code and just put it on your site).
All in all. Pretty gosh darn neat if you ask me.
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