The Man in Blue has created a neat Google Rank Calculator. Simply type in your URL and a search phrase to find out where your site ranks within the popular Google Search Engine.

You can View Google PageRank without a Toolbar using this handy web-based tool.

This is very useful if you’re using any browser other than Internet Explorer under Windows, where you can simply install the Google Toolbar to view PageRank.

A series of four articles at sitepoint.com will show you how to Make the Most of Google AdWords.

This series of articles will systematically show you how to:

• Generate the absolute best keyword list for your target market
• Use simple techniques to vastly expand your productive keyword list
• Create highly clickable copy for your ad
• Precisely limit the distribution of your ad to only those prospects who are most interested
• Beat the competition with creative bidding strategies
• Dramatically reduce costs of your campaigns while increasing clickthroughs

Link Equity Explained is a PDF document that will help you create more effective links and recieve higher seach engine rankings as a result.

One way to improve the search ranking of your website is to Build a Linking Campaign.

Everytime another site links to your site, you are in essence recieving a vote that is recognized by most major search engines. These “votes” will help to improve your search engine ranking and thus potentially draw more visits to your site.

Metadata: seven tips for writing better keywords is an article by Gerry McGovern that offers suggestions for writing better keywords.

From the article:

The shift in how search engines treat keywords is significant. They tend to ignore the keyword meta tag and rather look for keywords in the actual page content. This means that you need to figure out your keywords before you write any content. Then, you include them throughout your content, particularly in headings and summaries.

Search Engine Optimisation for Web Developers is a very good article at Sitepoint.com that outlines some of the determining factors of high search engine placement.

According to the article, the factors include:

• Navigation And Accessibility
• Site Architecture And Content Delivery Technologies
• Content Optimisation

The Internet Search Engine Database has a very good article titled – How to increase your ROI with powerful title tags.

The majority of search engines place a considerable importance on the HTML title tag, making it one of the most important tag on all the pages of your website. Your listing on a search engine is usually the text in your title tag, making the title tag even more important.

This article provides some great tips for creating better titles and getting higher serach engine rankings.

For research, breaking news and obscure information alike, people around the world search at the world’s most popular search engine – Google. With a bit of analysis, this flurry of searches often exposes interesting trends, patterns, and surprises.

On a monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily basis, the Google Zeitgeistpage is updated to reflect lists, graphs, and other tidbits of information related to Google user search behavior. These lists show top search phrases used on Google and even break the searches down by country! They also maintain lists of most used browsers and operating systems.

Zeitgeist Explained…
zeit·geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-”gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era