Here’s a little taster of what’s in store for my presentation at SMX London. This tip combines two SEO tools to make one awesome SEO weapon. SEOmoz’s “Top pages on Domain” and HttpFox, a server header analyser plugin for Firefox.
Want to work quickly through a new client’s domain to make sure all their high authority (or most linked to) pages are loading correctly or are being properly redirected?
Analyse your top URLs in sequence, quickly and easily
Install HttpFox and head to SEOmoz’s Labs area*. Do a query on a domain and activate HttpFox:
*I edited out all the text between the search box and the “Displaying 1 to 25 Top Pages” to make a decent screenshot. How did I do that? Ubiquity. But, that’s a different blog post that I’m waiting for Tom to do sometime soon…
Now unclick the “autoscroll” check box and click start. With your top page URLs in view, click a link. A new Firefox tab will open and Httpfox will tell you the server header response straight away. If you’re happy with the outcome, press “Clear” and click the next link in the list.
Here’s something I found earlier:
The 9th most linked to URL on this domain is no longer live and gives a 404 server header response. Low hanging fruit I’d say. Work through your top URL list for your new client, noting URLs to redirect as you work through the list. Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t always report 404 errors like this, which is why this tool combo packs quite a punch in your SEO arsenal.
Searchenginewatch, if you have a few authority URLs in error state available, I can supply a list of domains you could redirect them to?