A little while ago I posted about Google Webmaster Tools and how good it is to get link data straight from the horses mouth.

However, one problem with the tools are that they don’t show the anchor text or PageRank of the links pointing to a site, which is very important information when analysing your backlinks.

This great extension for Firefox by Joost de Valk fixes this flaw. It adds the PR and anchor text to the link information provided by Google Webmaster Tools. You can find it on his blog http://www.joostdevalk.nl/code/greasemonkey/gwt-external-links/.

It requires the Greasmonkey extension.

That’s what we all want right? One possible source is links from Word cloud sites.

Of course, as with most things in life you get what you pay for and most SEO experts would say that Word Cloud sites provide a low quality link because:

• Most are just a page of links with no content.
• There are often hundreds of links on a page.
• Some could be considered ‘bad’ link neighborhoods.
• Many are on dropped domains.
• Sometimes the PageRank (PR) they display is not valid.
• They are usually unrelated to the sites they link to.

However, everyone knows that PR is important for ranking in Google and if that’s all you are interested in, you can get a link on a PR4, 5 or 6 Word Cloud site cheaply, quickly and easily.

I posted a list of Word Cloud sites back in January, and have had another look to see if how PR and prices had changed. Here are a few of the better ones (in terms of PR and price):

PR 6

• http://www.the444links.com/ – $10.00
• http://www.333links.net/ – $19.00

PR 5

• http://www.fatcalico.com/ – $1.50
• http://www.geofrontiers05.org/ – $1.95
• http://www.prestigetransfert.com/ – $3.00
• http://www.eliteone2one.com/ – $3.00
• http://www.bgcrv.org/ – $3.00
• http://amanojaku.org/ – $3.95

PR 4

• http://www.geek417.net/ – $0.50
• http://www.greatwallszechuanhouse.com/ – $0.95
• http://www.industriesettechniques.com/ – $1.00
• http://foursquare.ws/ – $1.00
• http://calgovrace.com/ – $1.95
• http://www.yagi3.com/ – $1.99
• http://www.intercedenow.com/ – $2.00
• http://www.gdsavoy.com/ – $2.00
• http://tak-team.org/ – $2.00
• http://www.raasmzone.com/ – $2.00

Note, all I have checked is the Google Toolbar PR and price. It’s up to you to check if the PR is valid and if the sites are active.

After a few posts about directories, I thought it was worthwhile summarising some of the features to look for when deciding whether to buy directory listings.

There is no doubt that submitting your site to paid directories is a great way to obtain one-way links, increase the PageRank of your site and can sometimes generate traffic as well. But how are we to decide which are the best to spend money on?

There are a number of factors to consider such as PageRank, Page Strength and number of back links. Several lists have been published that compare these factors, such as the strongest directories list at Aviva Directory and the web directory list at Linksjuice. Directory Critic is another great site that lists and compares directories.

However, these lists concentrate on the quality of the directory as a whole and many of them are of a very similar ‘strength’. So does it just come down to price?

Price is obviously an important factor, but it is also important to consider the quality of the specific page a site is to be listed on.

1. Does it include relevant keywords in the URL, page meta-title and on page title (H1 tag)?
2. What is it’s PageRank, Page Strength and number of backlinks?
3. Are there many outgoing links on the page? Direct links out from the page will dilute the PageRank and lessen the strength of the link to your site, but this needs to be balanced with ….
4. How relevant are the other listings and links on the page? Relevant outgoing links make the page authoritative and increase the value of the link to your site. (Lots of irrelevant site-wide links are not good.)

Finally, consider the additional links offered by some directories. The facility to add links to pages within your site is a valuable extra feature.

An important point to note is that by adding your site to a directory page where competitors are listed will help negate the effect of the link to their sites (although how long the link has been there is also a factor). Buying a featured listing that lists your site above your competitors could make your site look more important to the search engines.

‘Link Bait’ is any content that encourages other site owners to link to a site, and the Text Link Ads Blog juice Calculator is a great example.

It is another tool that allows bloggers to assess and rank the ‘value’ of their blog.

Similiar to SEOMoz page strength and Google PageRank, it uses the number of Bloglines subscribers, Alexa rank, Technorati ranking and Technorati inbound links to give a blog a score out of ten. Blog owners can then display their rank on their site with a badge – which links back to Text Link Ads.

Tools like this are a great way to get traffic and links to a site, bloggers are always interested in knowing how popular their blog is.

The best bit about this tool is that it almost automatically qualifies the links back to Text Link Ads. Those who are likely to add the badge to their site are those who have a high score – great sites to get a link back from!

(See the definition of link bait in the SEO glossary)

Best of the Web Directory is offering 25% off new submissions in August with the promo code: SIZZLE25

This saving is also available on Blog directory submissions, sponsorship ads and blog advertising.

With Stirling so strong against the dollar, it’s a great time to buy if you’re from the UK.