The "CurrencyRates" SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tool

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)


Note! Owing to a change in the the source of the rates used, versions of this tool below 2.00 will no longer work. You must use that version (or later) for correct results!

Providing Search Engines With "Fresh" Pages

One of the points on which there seems to be general agreement in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) community is that search engines--and especially Google®--like to see fresh content--which is to say pages whose content changes frequently.

There is a package on this site--BookAdder--that can provide you with thousands of relevant, daily-changing pages. But those pages are more or less a world unto themselves; what would also be useful to most webmasters is something simple they could just paste into their "regular" site pages that would automatically provide frequently changing content of a sort that would actually be at least interesting and possibly useful to their site visitors.

The tool provided here is one of a series of possible answers for that need. (See this site's main page for other possibilities.) This one, CurrencyRates, provides a one-line statement that you can place on any web page that will drop into that page a box showing the exchange rates to and from some selected currency (any one of the nearly four dozen that the International Monetary Fund reports can be selected) and a selectable set of other currencies; you can even, if you choose, display cute little national flags.

(Obviously, this too's usefulness to you depends on the degree to which international currency-exchange data are relevant--or at least not obviously irrelevant--to the theme of your site. As noted above, I have other such tools, so that the chances of your finding one that will marry well with your pages increases.)

To give you an idea of what the dropin looks like, here is an operative sample. Note well, please, that you can vary the number of currencies display, the identity (and display order) of the particular currencies, the base (to/from) currency, the background color of the display, and the color of the display text.


To convert values in U.S. Dollars to foreign currency:
To get:
 
Multiply
USD by: 		EU
Euro

0.7142 		British
Pound

0.61 		Japanese
Yen

95.93 		Canadian
Dollar

1.1628 		Mexican
Peso

13.2245 		Swiss
Franc

1.0842
To convert values in foreign currency to U.S. Dollars:
Multiply:
 
 
     by: 		EU
Euro

1.4002 		British
Pound

1.6393 		Japanese
Yen

0.0104 		Canadian
Dollar

0.86 		Mexican
Peso

0.0756 		Swiss
Franc

0.9223
(Code by SEO Toys)


Here is another example--the currencies of some Commonwealth nations--made to "fade into" the page by using an identical background color (and, for novelty, green lettering):



To convert values in U.S. Dollars to foreign currency:
To get:
 
Multiply
USD by: 		British
Pound

0.61 		Canadian
Dollar

1.1628 		Australian
Dollar

1.2602 		New Zealand
Dollar

1.5921
To convert values in foreign currency to U.S. Dollars:
Multiply:
 
 
     by: 		British
Pound

1.6393 		Canadian
Dollar

0.86 		Australian
Dollar

0.7935 		New Zealand
Dollar

0.6281
(Code by SEO Toys)




(Here is the "Rates" v. 2.00 tool package as a single ZIP file.)


Change History:

0.10: initial release

0.11: removed forgotten (non-critical) non-php from imfsee.php

0.20: substantially upgraded install routine and docfiles.

0.30: major rewrite to imfget.php to accomodate (unannounced) drastic change in IMF exchange-rates data file.

0.40: major rewrite to take advantage of the IMF's now updating data throughout the business day (instead of once daily); combined two old scripts (imfget.php and imfsee.php) into a single new rates.php that grabs live data at evry call.

0.41: fixed dumb error so flags will now display OK.

0.50: changed timeout values so if IMF datafile is missing altogether toy will not hang unduly long (c. 15 secs.).

1.00: major rewrite: much smarter caching, added in new currencies from IMF, greatly simplified installation, added "transparent background" option.

1.01: major rewrite: switched from IMF to NYFRB as data source. Lost a few minor currencies, but data is much more reliably available.

2.00: major rewrite: switched from NYFRB--which unexpectedly dropped daily quotations--to CNN as data source. Lost a couple of minor currencies, gained a couple of others, but data is (again) reliably available.


To link to this page, please copy and paste this exact code:
<strong><a href="http://seo-toys.com/currency-rates-tool/rate-exchange-tool.shtml">the "Rates" SEO Tool </a></strong>

--Site Directory--

Search this site, or the web:
Google
  Web seo-toys.com   

owl logo This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites.       Pair Networks logo Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend. We invite you to click on the Pair link (or their logo) for more information on getting your site or sites hosted on a first-class service.

Click here to send me email.

And why not look in at Is it a blog yet?

So that you need not be a victim of the "Browser Wars," I have taken the trouble to assure that
this web page is 100% compliant with the World Wide Web Consortium's
XHTML Protocol v1.0 (Transitional).
You can click on the logo below to test this page!

Not every browser renders proper HTML correctly (Internet Explorer famously does not);
so, if your browser experiences any difficulties with this page (or, really, even if it doesn't),

(It's free!)

All content copyright ©2004 - 2008 by The Owlcroft Company