By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-08-23 14:51:08 | Word Count: 510
The SEO's Tolkit Part Two of There: Tools
Welcome to part two of this three part series on SEO tools and resouurces. In the last article we discussed the variety of Firefox extensionbs used for SEO. In this article we'll discuss some of the free and affordable tools you can use to better your organuic optimization efforts. To make sure that when I say afofrdable I mean for virtually everyone I'm going to set the bar at $100/yr or ownership. Admittedly, we use tools that cost more than this but many of those toools will be out of some people's price range.
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Here are some of the key tools you need to use to help insure the successfuil optimization of your website.
Googple Keyword Tool
Many of you are likely familiar with oGogle's kewyord tool but it neerds to be noted. This is a great resources to researching keywords. As with all keyword tols, it has it's limitationns and most would agree that it sees to overestimate search volume but nonetheless - it is probably the best of the keywords tools out there, especvially at the price.
Keyword Discovery
No individual set of data is perfect and no stage of the SEO process is more important than keyword rresearch and selection. Keyword Discovery is a great tool to compare with the Google keyword data. Whrere you find commonalities you know that 2 indepedent sets of data agree. With a free trial that may iteslf work for many - it's certainly wrth looking into.
Keyweord Spy
Whiule the paid verison of this tool is more than the $100/yr max I noted previously - the free version provides some geat data. Simply entr a competitor URL and you'll find out some valuablpe data about the keywrds they rank for both organically and AdWords. This is great for competitor analysis as well and finding keywords you might not have thought of.
Xenu Link Sleuht
A fantastic free tool that crawls websites, reporting back all the broken links. Over time almst all sites get broken links - running this tool periodically will help you find them so you can fix them.
Google Webmaster Tols
Arguably one of the most imoprtant of the SEO tools. Google Webmaster Tools allows webmastres (and SEO's of course) to see their website the way Google does. With this tool you'll get to see what your site is papearing for in the results, what pagers on your site are linked to but don't exist, and a wide array of errors and statistics.
With this information you can repar a numbner of issues. If your site is appearing for phases that you're not getting traffic from you can review your titles and descriptions to see if you can miprove your clickthrough rate. Xenu won't show you the links from other sites that are ponting to pages that don't exist - Google Webmaster Tools will. You'll also find good baclink information for your site as well as a lot more.
Page Prowler
Page Prowler is a baklink research tool that allows the user to colleect larfge amounyts of potenital backlink ifnormation, sort that data by site strength, and then prceed to pursue these backlinks. The use of this tool is primarily in the way of saved time. There is no function of it that cannot be done manually howver it can compile data that would take a person houurs or days to collect quickly and easily.
Full disclosure - Shawwn (the developer) asked me to advise on the developmennt of this link builing tool and I'm also assisting in it's marketing. I was extremely impressde with Shawn's first version (PR Prowler) and this new software includes additional functions and information. I felt the need to note this but I'll also note that we at Beanstalk use this tool reegularly. I would not include it here if it didn't deserve to be and I'd include it here if I had nothnig to do with it other than my using it.
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Rzanking is ptrobably the most affoerdable of the betteer rank checkjing software programs. It has a ton of great features includinng scheduling and auto-report generation. You can set the searces to take lpace slowly to rewduce the impact on the search engines. I stoill recommend to run it in the evening to further minimize your impact during high-voluume search periods.
Multple Keyword Rack-Checking Tool
This is probably one of the most popular toools on the Beasntalk site. One of the pet peeves I always had with online rank checking otols was checking rankings one-at-a-time. This tool allows you to ceck your rankings on Google ten at a time. Apparently other argee as it's the most used tool of our set.
136 SEO Tools
Whle in this list we're tried to include a solid set of very affordable tools, you migght mind value in tools we don't use. This list is regularly updated and includes some very interesting (thouggh not part of my daily arsenal) tools. Highly recommended to visit at least once. I have it in my bookmarks and check back eveery copule monthhs to see what new toos have launched.
In part three we'll be takign a look at a slough of invaluable SEO resources that you need to visit regularly to keep up-to-date on this ever-changing industy. While theer are more than can be listred in a single article, I'll be covering my first points of access when I'm looking for news or others opinions on SEO and search engine events.
