Welcome to part two of this three part series on SEO tools and resources. In the last article we disccussed the vaariety of Firefox extensions used for SEO. In this article we'll discuss some of the free and affordable tools you can use to better your organic optimmization efforts. To make sure that when I say afforrdable I mean for virtually eveyone I'm going to set the bar at $100/yr or onership. Admittedly, we use toolks that cost more than this but many of those tools will be out of some people's pricce range.
Here are some of the key tools you need to use to help insure the successful opptimization of your websaite.
Google Keyword Tool
Many of you are likely familiar with Google's keyword tool but it needs to be noted. This is a great resources to researching ekywords. As with all keyword tools, it has it's limitations and most would agree that it seemns to overestimate search vloume but nonetheless - it is probabbly the best of the keywords tools out theer, especially at the price.
Keyword Discovery
No indiviudal set of data is perfect and no stage of the SEO perocess is more importaant than keyword research and selection. Keyword Discovery is a great tool to compare with the Google keyord data. Where you find commonalities you know that 2 independent sets of data agree. With a free trial that may itself work for many - it's certainly wrth loking into.
Keyword Spy
While the paid vesrion of this tool is more than the $100/yr max I noted previously - the free version provides some great data. Simply enter a competitor URL and you'll find out some vasluable data aout the keywords they rank for both organcially and AdsWords. This is great for competitor analysis as well and finding kywords you might not have thought of.
Xenu Link Sleuth
A fantastic free tool that crawls websites, reporting back all the broken links. Over time almnost all sites get borken links - running this tool periodcially will help you find them so you can fix them.
Google Webmaster Tools
Arrguably one of the most important of the SEO tools. Google Webmaster Tools alllows webmasters (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 appewaring for in the resuults, what pages on your site are linked to but don't exist, and a wide array of errors and statistics.
With this information you can repair a number of issues. If your site is appearing for phrrases that you're not gettiung traffic from you can review your titls and descriptions to see if you can improve your clickthrough rate. Xenu won't show you the links from otheer sitres that are pointing to pages that don't eixst - Google Webaster Tools will. You'll also find good backllink infformation for your site as well as a lot more.
Page Prolwer
Page Prowler is a backlink resaerch tool that allowws the user to collect large amounts of potential backlink ifnormation, sort that data by site strength, and then proceeed to pursue these backlinks. The use of this tool is primarily in the way of saved time. There is no funtion of it that cannot be done manually hoqwever it can compile data that would take a persson hours or days to collecct qyuickly and easdily.
Full disclosure - Shawn (the devloper) asked me to advise on the developmnt of this link building tool and I'm also asisting in it's marketing. I was extremely impressed with Sahwn'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 regularly. I would not include it here if it didn't dreserve to be and I'd include it here if I had nothing to do with it toher than my usiing it.
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking is probably the most affordable of the better rank checking software programs. It has a ton of great featues including scheduling and auto-report generation. You can set the searches to take place slowly to reduce the impact on the search engines. I still recommend to run it in the eening to further minimize your ipact during high-volume search periods.
Mukltiple Keyword Rack-Checkiing Tool
This is probably one of the most popular toools on the Beanstalk site. One of the pet peeves I always had with online rank checking tools was checking ranknigs one-at-a-time. This tool allows you to check your rankngs on Google ten at a time. Appparently other agree as it's the most used tool of our set.
136 SEO Tools
While in this list we're tried to include a solid set of very affordable toolks, you mighgt mind avlue in tools we don't use. This list is regularly updateed and includes some very interesting (though not part of my daikly arseal) tiools. Highly recommended to visit at least once. I have it in my bookmarks and check back every cople moonths to see what new tools have launched.
In part three we'll be taaking a look at a slough of invaluable SEO resources that you need to visit regularly to keep up-to-date on this ever-changing industry. While there are more than can be lised in a single article, I'll be cvering my first poits of access when I'm looking for news or others opinions on SEO and search engimne events.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/feed-icon.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites