SEM Labs SEO Tools
SEM Labs is an SEO Tools site developed by Mutiny Design, the home of David Hopkins- the 1000th commenter. I promised David a full review of the site of his choice for this milestone, even a negative review of a competitor or other blogger, but I’ll be looking at his SEO Tools site today.
This site is relatively new, with two tools so far. On is a simple rank checker and the other is a great tool for finding old domains with PageRank.
User Interface
Before I get into the tools, lets talk about design. I think David has done a great job with providing a simple interface. Good contrast, and the beakers full of what can only be link juice, the site looks good. What’s more, is the ability to resize everything on the layout and change to a lighter design.
I’m not too keen on the light design because it just doesn’t provide the good contrast the dark one does, but it’s not he default. Why a user would want to stray from the dark design I do not know, but the light/dark thing seems like an option for the sake of an option.
Rank Checker
The rank checker finds your site for a specific term in the results for the 4 top search engines. The tool uses AJAX to get your results, and unlike mosts tools of this nature, this can go 1000 results in. Most tools like this I’ve found only go to 100. While searching for 1000 results the script will take time with all four search engines, but otherwise the script is quick.
One things I noticed was the automatic form checking in this tool was a little intrusive. I entered my domain to check, but changed my mind as to what site I wanted to check. I tried to click up to my domain field before entering a search term, but a large box overlay faded in (nicely I might add) but wouldn’t go away. I would recommend a smaller box above the search field. It could slide and fade in to keep the theme and not limit accessibility.
Domain Finder
This is an interesting tool that grabs the domains for sale by SEDO and tells you the domain’s respective PR, Yahoo! Inlinks, niche category (like “Technology”, etc…) and when the domain was registered. There’s some interesting stuff that comes up. Some sites have upwards of 50k links and I even found a PR6 site with 100k links.
For this tool I would not change much. Adding a simple AJAX sorter would be awesome. Being able to order the sites by backlinks, PR, date registered, etc… would be absolutely fantastic. Do it with the fancy effects that the site maintains so far, and even better.
One last thing, a little nit picky, but the pagination at the bottom does not highlight the current page. It’s simple, and adds a little convenience. Also, the URLS with pagination keep adding &pg=1 etc… to the URL, instead of changing the number. So instead of having ?page=etc&pg=1&pg=2&pg=3 it’s just ?page=stuff&pg=3. Also, some cleaner URLS with mod_rewrite would do you some good.
The Rest
Overall I think it’s a good site that just needs time. There are only two tools thus far, but if the quality is maintained in the future additions, I think it’ll be alright.
One last thing, again a little nit picky, but the credits page is a little redundant. I’d just put ‘full site development by David Hopkins’.
Leave a comment
David Hopkins
September 4th, 2007 at 2:02 PM
Thanks for pointing out that problem with the overlay on the form. I had totaly forgot about that. Also thanks for the other bugs you’ve pointed out. Being nit picky is an essential attribute in any top web professional. If anyone would like any extra countires added to rank check let me know. Or if you have any ideas for new tools it would also be good to hear.
Checking the stats, this is the first site i’ve ever had with a 0% bounce rate for a week
Katrina
September 5th, 2007 at 12:45 AM
I like the design, I like the concept, but I think there are still a couple of things that need to be fixed. When I tried the rank checker I got no results back for the first one I tried, so I went to try another - but the button seems inactive now.. probably should get that fixed.
I also agree for the credit page, unless you had multiple people working on it, it seems silly to break up the different roles when it was all one guy.
Also one more thing - I noticed on each page it says Sept 5. Is this the day it was posted or are you just reminding me what day it is for the fun of it?
All in all seems like a good site, best of luck with it and I will keep checking to see how its going.
Qdoos
September 8th, 2007 at 11:36 AM
That little unique selling point is needed. I have seen all of this before. Nice design though.
Robert MacEwan
September 9th, 2007 at 4:50 PM
David,
I was unable to rerun a query after deselecting all sites but Google.
Neil Turner - Acopic Web Design
September 21st, 2007 at 10:41 AM
Yeah - still having the problem with the form overlay (validation thingy).
Rank checker tool has been done to death, but I like the domain finder. Very useful.
Login »