Must Have Free iPhone Apps

My Must Have iPhone Apps

---

I am not ashamed to admit that I was a very late adopter of the iPhone. I've always liked Apple products, their design, simplistic yet powerful UI and their marketing is simply brilliant.

What I didn't like about Apple was the people who bought their products & the way that everything was 'cool' just because it had an Apple logo .... this attitude may have stemmed from my private school education where everyone came in with a new phone every week ... I just didn't get it ... if it worked and did what you wanted it to do, why change?

That said, I now don't know what I'd do without my iPhone .... it is the central hub of my digital life. So here are my must have iPhone apps (in no particular order) ... some you'll have heard of, others possibly not ... but all of them are great (and all 100% free!)

Runkeeper

Link: www.runkeeper.com
Cost: FREE

This app tracks your exercises via GPS (if you're outdoors) and plots it on a map. It then sync's it automatically with your profile on the website so you can keep track of distance & calorie burn.

MyFitnessPal

Link: www.myfitnesspal.com
Cost: FREE

I use this in conjunction with Runkeeper, they don't automatically sync but hey-ho we can't have everything, can we? Plus it only takes a few seconds to transfer the data.

This is both a calorie counter with a huge database of predefined foods and an exercise / weight tracker.

Dropbox

Link: www.dropbox.com
Cost: FREE

We've all been out and about and get a phone call asking for a document but it's on the laptop at home and you'll send it when you get back (invariably forgetting to send it).... not anymore!

Dropbox at it's most basic is a folder on your computer & whatever is in that folder is automatically synced to your online account & is therefore available on any device or computer.

With the dropbox app your documents are always with available and you can view and send your documents straight from the app.

Facebook

Link: www.facebook.com
Cost: FREE

This is probably installed on 90% of the iPhone's out there, but I've actually found it makes me go on facebook on my phone less & pretty much never from my laptop.

The new iPhone OS will enable multiple app running (or you can get it now by jailbreaking your iphone) so that should make things like chatting easier.

Echofon (Twitter)

Link: www.echofon.com
Cost: FREE

I love Twitter (follow me if you like @agseo). This free app gives great control & access to all of Twitters features including sending photos, geotagging tweets & seperate @you mentions.

It really baffles me what more I could want that I'd be willing to pay for in a Twitter app?


GrabRadioLite

Link: www.grabradioworld.com
Cost: FREE

GrabRadio is a radio application for the iPhone. The lite (free) version only gives a handful of stations but it's got BBC Radio 1 on there so that's all I wanted it for :)

Sky News

Link: www.sky.com/news
Cost: FREE

Everyone wants to catch up with the latest news at some point, don't they?
Just wish it had the ability to tweet stories directly from the app.....

MoBank 2.0

Link: www.mobank.co.uk
Cost: FREE

This great free app links to your bank account and gives you real time access to your statements, balance and accounts .... handy to see just how much money you don't have :)

You can also pay for things directly from the app ... it's totally secure too!

Wordpress

Link: www.iphone.wordpress.org
Cost: FREE

Just for the blogger / site admin side of things but this free app from Wordpress allows you to quickly and easily edit / create blog posts & admin comments from your iPhone - basically anything you can do via a laptop can be done on the go from the app!


Other notable apps I have installed:

Skype

Link: www.skype.com
Cost: FREE

Free voice calls (only when connected via WiFi) and instant messaging. Again, falls down from the lack of multi-app running... will be great when it can be run in the background.

F1 2010 App

Link: http://www.formula1.com/mobile_services/live_timing.html
Cost: FREE

All the geeky data you'll need. Car positions on track, lap times, best lap, sector times, track status (flags), straight line speeds, safety cars & even air humidity and pressure readings!

Just be sure to watch the race as well as your phone!

Tap Tap Revenge 3

Link: www.tapulous.com/taptap
Cost: FREE

Guitar hero style finger jamming for free! Download loads of free tracks (really good ones, too) and of course there is the option to purchase tracks.

2 player & online play are good too.


Do you use these apps, got any must have's yourself that I may have missed? Post a comment & let me know!

Creating Multiple Sites - Pointing to Main Domain

---

Here's another question I see time and time again on the SEO forums:

"Should I create multiple small (one page) sites focused on a single keyword and then point them to my main domain?"

Here's why this is largely a waste of time:

When you build a new site it starts at zero. Zero content, zero backlinks, zero visitors & zero reputation.

Therefore for every new site you build for a keyphrase you'll have to build dedicated backlinks, content and promotion strategies for each site.

If you build 10 new sites then you're creating 10 times the amount of work than simply creating a dedicated, keyword focused page on your existing site.

Don't forget, if you've done it right you're existing site will already be indexed, established, have some good backlinks and be getting spidered regularly.

Don't waste your time with small keyword focused sites, just create a new page on your existing site and optimise that well!

Why PageRank Doesn't Matter

Why Google PageRank Doesn't Matter

---

What is PageRank (PR)?

Google's pagerank is a measure created by Google of a sites trustworthiness in the eyes of Google.

It is important to realise that PageRank applies to each individual page on a site & is not a sitewide value. One page can be PR 5 and another could have no PR.

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

That is why you'll hear search engine professionals talking about how a single link from an authority (high PR) site can be worth more than lots of links for a low PR site.

---

What? Two Versions?

Google has two versions of PageRank, a publically displayed metric and an internal value that they do not release to the public.

The public version is only updated once every 3 months or so (there's even rumours that it only gets updated once a year).

Therefore the public toolbar PR is almost always out of date by up to 3 months.

That's reason #1 why your PR doesn't matter.

---

Rankings & PageRank

It is well known in the search marketing industry that good (high) pagerank doesn't equate to good (high) rankings. A PR 0 site can easily outrank a PR4 or PR5 site (and above).

Therefore concentrating on building PageRank in the hope that it will automatically convert into higher rankings for your keyphrases is a waste of time.

That's reason #2 why PR doesn't matter.

---

Pagerank alone doesn't pay the bills, it doesn't generate enquiries, sales or conversions. A little green bar will never make your business or website a success, no matter how optimistic you are.

A great site with a PR0 doesn't make it a bad site. It may be a new site, have had recent server problems (downtime) or the toolbar itself may be reporting bad data.

As has been said many times before, concentrate on building quality content that people will want to share with others & build your inbound links to get rankings that bring traffic, the PageRank will follow ... but if it doesn't ... so what?!!?!

PS. You don't just have to take my word for it, most SEO experts agree on this. Here, and here and even here.

Location and Previous Searches: Affect on Google Results

How does Location & Previous Search History Affect Google Results?

---

If Google (and other search engines) know where you're located, they can (and will try) to display more relevant results based on that location.

For example if you're searching for pizza shops or plumbers or car dealers & you're located in London, you're going to want ones that are nearby and not a pizza shop in Edinburgh.

If you sign in to your Google account (Youtube is obviously included in this) and you have previously searched for MS and been looking for pages and information about multiple sclerosis then you're likely to want to see the same sort of result should you search for MS again. Rather than seeing results for Microsoft or manuscript or milestone.

Of course, there is the option to opt out of these services and clear your browser history and cookies but most people will find that providing Google with your location is a small price to pay for much more targeted results.

Does Google use META tags to categorise its web pages?

---

They no longer use the keywords meta tag to rank sites in the results pages.

They do use the TITLE tag, meta title tag (two seperate entities) & the meta description along with other tags such as the robots meta tag.

While the meta description doesn't have a huge (if any) impact on ranking position, the keywords used to search will be bold in the description. Therefore a well written description tag will increase CTRs to your pages.

It is worth noting that the search engines can choose whether or not to use the description tag but in most cases they will.

Pingomatic Button for Firefox

Pingomatic browser button for Firefox

---

Wouldn't it be great if you could ping a page instantly as soon as you land on it. Well now you can.

Pingomatic is a multi-service ping engine that basically informs various bots (including Google) that the page is new or has recently been updated. Therefore the spiders will rush to the page in an attempt to index it as quickly as possibly.

This method doesn't require any browser addons or additional software.

Here's the code if you want to see the workings of it (Text File Download as Blogger doesn't like embedding live code).

Alternatively you can simply drag this to your Firefox Toolbar and everything will be setup and ready to go --> Ping This Page

Free iPhone Ringtones from iTunes Tutorial

This post has moved to here:

Make iPhone Ringtones with iTunes - Free