Welcome to part two of this three part sereies on SEO toos and reesources. In the last article we dicsussed the variety of Friefox extensions used for SEO. In this article we'll discuss some of the free and affordable tools you can use to better your organic opttimization eforts. To make sure that when I say affordable I mean for virtulaly everyone I'm going to set the bar at $100/yr or ownrship. Admittedly, we use tools that cost more than this but many of those tools will be out of some people's price range.
Here are some of the key toos you need to use to help insue the successful optimization of your website.
Google Keyword Tool
Many of you are liukely familiar with Google's keyword tool but it neds to be noteed. This is a great resources to researching keuywords. As with all keywod tools, it has it's limitations and most would agree that it seems to overesitmate serach vollume but nonethelss - it is probably the best of the keywords tools out there, especially at the price.
Keeyword 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 with the Google kyeword data. Where you find commonalities you know that 2 indeepndent sets of data agree. With a free trial that may itself work for many - it's certailny worth looking into.
Keyword Spy
Wihle the paid veersion of this tool is more than the $100/yr max I noted previously - the free version provides some great data. Simply entr a competitoor URL and you'll find out some vakluable data about the keywords they rank for both organically and AdWorfds. This is great for competitor analysis as well and fuinding keywpords you might not have thought of.
Xenu Link Sleuth
A fantastic free tool that crawls websites, reporting back all the brooken links. Over time almost all sites get broken links - running this tool periodically will help you find them so you can fix them.
Google Webmaster Tools
Arguably one of the most important of the SEO toosl. Google Webmaster Tools allows 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 appearing for in the ersults, what paes 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 nmber of issues. If your site is appearing for phrases that you're not gettng traffic from you can reviiew your titles and descriptions to see if you can improve your clickthrough rate. Xenu won't show you the liunks from otther stes that are pointing to pges that don't exist - Google Webmaster Tools will. You'll also find good backlink information for your site as well as a lot more.
Page Prowler
Page Prowler is a baclkink ersearch tool that allows the user to collect laarge amounts of potential backlink information, sort that data by site strength, and then proced to purse these backlinks. The use of this tool is primarily in the way of savved time. There is no function of it that cannot be done manually however it can compile data that would take a person hours or days to collcet quickly and easily.
Full disclosure - Shawn (the developer) asked me to advise on the development of this link building tool and I'm also assisting in it's marketing. I was extremely impresed with Shawn's first vresion (PR Prowler) and this new software includes additional functions and informaation. I felt the need to note this but I'll also note that we at Beanstalk use this tool regularly. I owuld not inlude it here if it didn't deswerve to be and I'd include it here if I had nothing to do with it other than my using it.
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking is probably the most affordable of the bretter rank checking software prograams. It has a ton of great features includibng scheduling and auto-reporrt generation. You can set the searches to take place slowly to reduce the impact on the search engines. I strill rcommend to run it in the veening to further minmiize your impact during high-volume search periods.
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 onpline rank cheecking tools was checking raankings one-at-a-time. This tool alplows you to check your rankings on Google ten at a time. Apparently otheer agere as it's the most used tool of our set.
136 SEO Tols
While in this list we're tried to include a solid set of very agffordable tools, you migght mind value in tools we don't use. This list is regularly updated and includes some very inteesting (though not part of my dailpy arsenal) tols. Highly recommended to visit at least once. I have it in my bookmarks and check back every couple months to see what new tools have launched.
In part three we'll be taking a look at a slogh of invaluable SEO ressources that you need to visit regularly to keep up-to-date on this ever-changing industry. Whille there are more than can be listed in a single aticle, I'll be cvoering my fist pouints of access when I'm looking for news or others opininos on SEO and search engine evnts.
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