Search Engine Optimization Tools & Advice

Search engine optimization tools help you create a measured, long-term approach to organic search rankings and your search engine strategy. Because engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are always improving their algorithms and website crawling technology, you must also be in a constant state of learning, reacting and adapting. Good search engine optimization tools will help you stay on top of the ever-changing search ranking game.

Jump to a list of SEO and Internet Marketing tools.

There are free SEO tools as well as tools that will cost you money. Before we even approach what to look for in a tool for search engine optimizaiton, let’s first look at your SEO strategy. The way you approach search optimization should include the following: identifying keywords, assessing your competition, coordinating with your marketing plan, outlining a blueprint, and developing a process for measuring success.

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Once you have an idea of what your SEO strategy looks like, you can then start looking at the variety of search engine optimization tools. Instead of writing a long list of SEO tools and rating them, we will instead take a look at three main uses for these tools, then list a few of our favorite. As long as the tools you choose provide value in these areas, then you are on the right track. You’ll be hard pressed to find one tool that does it all, which is why we recommend using several tools – some offer the same service, which helps ensure data is accurate.

Identify SEO Opportunities

The first area of value your search engine optimization tools must provide is the ability to identify opportunities. You should expect your tool at a minimum to do the following: identify keyword opportunities, find internal and external link opportunities, find 403/404 errors, identify underpeforming pages, and discover duplicate content. Having a SEO tools that do these things saves you a lot of time and energy.

The next thing your tools should help you with is site optimization management. Your SEO tools should moonlight as link management device, a workflow management tool, a keyword density analyzer and a link or opportunity recommendation tracking tool. Having all your data in one easy to find location and a search engine optimization tool that knows how to manage that data is very valuable.

Lastly, your choice in tools should function as a SEO performance reporting tools. They must provide reports on search rankings, bank links to your website including keyword analysis, offer Alerts when your website pages are indexed, and highlight search traffic. They need to be able to perform a competitive analysis of your competitions keywords, links and search rankings. You can expect to find some tools that provide traffic conversion performance reporting as well.

It doesn’t matter if you choose a free optimization tool or a paid version. Take the above metrics and do a little research into the options for search engine optimization tools on the market – most important of all, use each tool. Some experts love tools that other experts hate, a lot of it is personal preference and the tools user interface.

List of SEO Tools We Use or Have Used

Google Webmasters
Bing Webmasters
Google Keyword Research Tool
Google Traffic Estimator Tool
SEO for Firefox
SEO ToolBar
Rank Checker – SEOBook
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
WordTracker
Keyword Density Analyzer Tool
SEO Elite
Key Compete
SEM Rush
SpyFu
Google Analytics
CopyScape
Google Alerts

These tool groups offer just about everything you need to plan, initiate and manage an ongoing search engine optimization campaign.

SEOBook.com – SEO Tools
SEOMoz Tools – Paid SEO Tools (Complete Suite of Resources)

See More:
Search Engine Optimization Basics
Keyword Research for SEO
Advice to Improve Search Engine Rankings