Learn the Tricks of the SEO Trade: SEO Tips and SEO Tools
There are dozens of SEO tools available online, it is easy to get overwhelmed. So I collected some of my favourite SEO tools and SEO resources to share with you. Enjoy! And in return, bookmark this page.
Best SEO Keyword Research Tools
The four tools below will provide a great combo for your SEO keyword research. Do not attempt an SEO project without doing your keyword research. Be diligent, use all four tools and compare the results. Alternatively, you can use only Google tools.
Wordtracker Free Keyword Research Tool
This free tool is the SEO industry's darling. Simply enter your keywords, hit search, and look at the results! What you would see is a list of synonyms in the order of user popularity. Wordtracker uses real life user queries entered in the past few months. Please note that the actual values may not be correct. You should not interpret them literally. Instead, look at them in relative terms. This tool is great for comparing keywords to see which ones generate more user interest. There is also a paid version of this tool , but I would recommend it only if your field is very broad and oyu would need to check and cross-compare dozens and dozens of keyword. For most small businesses, the free version is sufficient.
Google Keyword Tool
In my view the Google keyword tool is over-hyped. I find it works great to help Google make more money via AdWords. In that, Google wants you to use more keywords and pay for more keywords. But you can't not use this tool, obviously. It's by Google, so you do need to cross compare your keywords via this tool. If you have an AdWords account, check out Google search-based keyword tool. I find it is more useful.
Google Trends
This sweet, and of course free, tool not only allows you to check what the world is searching for, but it also lets you conduct market analysis, get the best news and reviews on any subject. Try your most important keywords one by one in the order of priority and note the websites that come up on the first two pages. Ideally, you would want to have a link back from those websites. This will skyrocket your SEO!
Keyword Discovery
This tool is not free, but there is a free trial available. The free trial, however, has limited capabilities. I recommend the paid version of the tool if you need to do some serious kick-ass SEO research.
Best Website Diagnostics and Competitive Scan Tools
In many cases it is not necessary to spend hours on competitive analysis and website audit, especially if you run a small business. The references below provide you with a good set of tools to conduct sufficient website diagnostics and competitive scans.
Yahoo Site Explorer
This is a great free tool to conduct a quick scan of your own website and those of your competitors. Note that you don't have to "Add My Site". Use the "Explore" search bar. The tool will show you the number of pages your website has as well as the number of external back links (those coming from other websites). Note the order in which those links are presented and draw your conclusions from there.
Google Verify Tool
This tool is exceptionally useful, but it requires a Gmail account. After you sign up, you need to "verify" your site first. Google will generate a line of code which you will need to paste onto your website. Shortly after that, the Google Verify tool will display your site's vital statistics, i.e. the number of back links, the number of pages it indexed, your coding errors (if any), and some other information. Please note that the number of back links Google shows is not correct, and by a large margin. We can speculate that back links are so important to Google, and perhaps, the order in which they are presented, that they prefer to keep this information only partially available. The information is not in real time, it takes a few days for new changes to get recorded in this tool.
Google Analytics
Should I even mention Google Analytics? Doesn't everyone know it by now? But how can I not, really? So here you have it. Google Analytics is the industry's best website analysis tool, and I am not being sarcastic. It is very comprehensive, despite the fact that it is free. If you have not signed up with Google Analytics yet, do it right away.
Website Grader
This is one of my favourites tools. The website grader provides a report on your website's vital statistics, such as the number of back links, number of pages indexed by Google, and age of your domain. If you enter your competitors' websites in the search bar, it will generate a comparative table for all of them. It gives a brief analyses of your META data and your image alt tags. And it even gives you a score! However, this tool - like most software tools - is not precise. On my site, for example, it does not see a blog and reports "no blog present" whereas I do have a blog and it is linked via the main menu, so there is no good reason why the tool doesn't see it. So like with any tools, do not expect precision.
Best SEO Information
There are millions of SEO websites. In fact, there are over 160 million websites that talk about SEO. Here is a very short list of the best SEO information resources I can recommend:
- Best SEO Checklist
- Smashing SEO Tool Set
- Google's webmaster spokesman Matt Cutts's blog
- Google's SEO guide for beginners (only 22 pages but a must for SEO!)
- High ranking advisor by Jill Whalen (I've been reading Jill's articles since 2000 and I love her style!)
- SEOmoz
- SEOchat
