Hey search fans

I’m tired, sore and grumpy today so just a short post from me.

I’m not sure why I’ve not heard of this site before but some Twitter homies put me on to it today. If you’ve ever wondered how search engines see your site when they index it, check out SEO Browser. It parses your site just like a search bot and displays your site in the format that most search engines “see” it in.

It works just like the old Lynx browser, but is web-based so you don’t need to download anything in order to use it. Simply enter your URL and watch the magic.

So why is it helpful to view your site as search engines see it? Well I’m glad you asked. That’s because you can gauge what parts of your code are being indexed first, what parts are ignored and what parts could be tripping up bots.  Is there extraneous code impacting your keyword density for the page? Is the meaty part of your text being pushed down the indexing chain because of a serious case of code bloat? Is that Flash file stopping robots in their tracks? SEO Browser can answer all those questions.

If you choose the Advanced Analysis you even get a mini SEO review, including word count, link count, meta tag check, server response codes, redirects and text to page weight ratio. It’s a great tool and one I’ll be adding to the recommended resources for Search Engine College students. Nice work Ian!

Spread the joy!