Welcome to part two of my three part series on search engine optimization (SEO) tools and resources. In the last article I told you about the variety of Firefox extensions used for SEO. In this article we will discuss some of the free and affordable tools you can use to better your search engine optimization efforts. By affordable I mean affordable for virtually everyone, therfore I am going to set the bar at $100/yr or ownership. Admittedly, SEO professionals use tools that cost more than this but many of those tools will be out of some people's price range (and too difficult to use).
Here are some of the key tools you need to use to help ensure the successful optimization of your blog or website.
1. Google Keyword Tool
Many of you are already familiar with Google's keyword tool, but it needs to be mentioned. This is a great resource for researching keywords. As with all keyword tools, it has its limitations, and most would agree that it seems to somewhat overestimate search volume but nonetheless it is probably still the best of the keyword tools out there, especially at the price.
2. Keyword Discovery
No individual set of data is perfect and no stage of the SEO process is more important than keyword research and selection. Keyword Discovery is a great tool to compare the Google keyword data with. Where you find commonalities you know that 2 independent sets of data agree. Keyword Discovery is a free tool that may be all the average user needs – it is certainly worth looking into.
3. Keyword Spy
While the paid version of this tool costs than the $100/yr. max I noted above - the free version provides some great data. Simply enter a competitor´s URL and you will be presented with some valuable data about the keywords they rank for both organically and in AdWords. It is a great tool for competitor analysis as well as for finding keywords you might not have thought of.
4. Xenu Link Sleuth
A fantastic free tool that crawls websites and reports back all the broken links. Over time, almost all sites get broken links. Running this tool periodically will help you find them so you can fix them.
5. Google Webmaster Tools
Arguably one of the most important of all SEO tools. Google Webmaster Tools allows webmasters (and everyone performing SEO of course) to see their website the way Google does. With this tool you will get to see what your site is appearing for in the results, what pages on your site are linked to but do not exist, and a wide array of errors and statistics.
With this information you can work on a number of issues. If your site is appearing for phrases that you are not getting traffic from, you can review your titles and descriptions to see if you can improve your click-through-rate (CTR). Xenu, for instance, will not show you the links from other sites that are pointing to pages that do not (or no longer) exist - Google Webmaster Tools will. You will also find good backlink information for your site – an a whole lot more…
6. Page Prowler
Page Prowler is a backlink research tool that allows the user to collect large amounts of potential backlink information, sort that data by site strength, and then proceed to pursue those backlinks. The value of this tool is primarily in the time it saves. It does not offer anything that could not be done manually, but it can compile data quickly and easily that would otherwise take a person hours or days to collect.
7. Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking is probably the most affordable of the better rank checking software programs. It has a ton of great features, including scheduling and auto-report generation. You can set the searches to take place slowly to reduce the impact on the search engines. I highly recommend running it in the evening to further minimize your impact during high-volume search periods.
8. Multiple Keyword Rack-Checking Tool
This is probably one of the most popular tools on the Beanstalk site. One of the pet peeves I always had with online rank checking tools was checking rankings one-at-a-time. This tool allows you to check your rankings on Google ten at a time. Apparently a lot of people agree as it is one of the most widely used keyword checking tools.
While I have tried to include a solid set of free and very affordable tools in this article, you might find value in tools I do not use. The “136 SEO Tools” page is regularly updated and includes some very interesting tools. I highly recommend you visit at least once. I have it bookmarked and check back every couple of months to see what new tools have been added.
Outlook: In part three of this article series we willbe taking a look at a nimber of invaluable SEO resources that you need to visit regularly if you want to keep up-to-date on this ever-changing industry. While there are far too many than can be listed in a single article, I am going to cover my first points of access when I am looking for news or others' opinions on SEO and search engine events.
Related articles:
Your SEO Toolkit Part 1: Firefox Add-ons
Your SEO Toolkit Part 3: Ressources
Do-It-Yourself SEO (with a Twist)
18 Highly Effective SEO Techniques
2 Comments:
Nice......
K K Nayak
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