SEO Tools

There are a lot of repetitive tasks to be done when optimizing your site for the search engines. To make your life easier, we've compiled a list of the most popular SEO Tools (nearly all 100% free) and categorized them into the following:

Keyword Discovery
Before you can begin to optimize your site for search engines, you must first know which keywords you are going after. Use these tools to find which things people are searching for in your industry!

• Google Adwords - Google's tool is probably the easiest to use and maybe the best if you think about the fact that Google is the most used search engine in the world (meaning they have access to the most data).
• AdCenter Keyword Group Detection - Microsoft's unique tool that will analyze a word or phrase that you give it and determine related phrases.
• Term Extractor - This tool will take a URL that you give it and return the relevant keywords from that page. It might be smart to insert an article about your industry and see what keywords they're using.
• KeyCompete - This program finds out what terms a site is advertising on with their Pay Per Click campaigns. Let them continue to pay for those keywords while you work on ranking #1 in the search engines and getting all your traffic for free!
• Popular Searches - If you have no idea what you want to have your site be about, consider using this tool which keeps track of the most popular search terms overall.

Keyword Volume

Almost as important as knowing what people are searching for is determining how many people are searching for it. Use these tools to get a rough estimate of the number of people searching for a keyword or phrase.

• Google Adwords External Tool - This has become a lot more helpful, as it now displays the actual volume of searches in a month.
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - This tool uses wordtracker's API to get the estimated number of searches a keyword receives on each search engine (Google, Microsft, Yahoo).

Keyword Density

• Term Target - This tool takes a URL and the keyword you're attempting to target and returns a letter score (A-F) on how well you have done. Fun, but it's hard to determine exactly how accurate it is as the search engines have not released their formulas for dterming how relevant pages are for a given keyword.

Backlink Tracker

• Site Explorer - Yahoo's extensive backlink tracker tool. It has become the first choice of many who like to keep an eye on who's linking to them and how many links they have.
• Keyword Ranking - Digitalpoint's keyword tracking tool also has an option for you to look at how many backlinks your site has. It's a little hard to find, but it's there.
• Google "link:" query prepend - By typing "link:" followed by a domain name like espn.com, you can see a sample of backlinks that Google knows link to that site. It should be noted that this is only a sample, not a complete list.
• Domain Stats - Looks at the top three search engines to see how many backlinks to your site are showing up in for each.
• Backlink Analyzer - Currently in beta, this is something that you have to install on your computer. It is a computer application that does not run through a website and you can feel safer that no one is spying on your data.

Site Popularity

• Alexa - Using toolbars installed on people's browsers, Alexa measures how popular your site is compared to every other site on the web. It tends to be accurate only for sites in the top 100,000.
• Trifecta - Determines how strong your page is based on several factors, such as: age of domain, page rank, backlinks and a few more metrics.

Keyword Rankings

• Rank Checker - Keeps track of your ranks in the search engines without sharing it with anyone but yourself. However, you do have to download it and install it to your computer.
• Keyword Rankings - One of the first popular keyword trackers out there. It will tell you your daily, weekly, and monthly changes for each term that you enter. It also has a nice graph feature so you can see your progress graphically!
• Rank Checker - A very unique name, and it does what it says.

Firefox Addons

• SEO for FireFox - An extension for your browser that changes your Google search results into MIT dissertation. Well maybe not that awesome, but it really does give you a lot of information relevant to why certain sites are showing up in the top 10 results of Google and what kind of competition you'd experience trying to get into those ranks. Also a nice way to find sites that are using the nofollow attribute.
• Greasemonkey - Used by more advanced users who would like to create their own scripts or use other Greasemonkey scripts for SEO purposes.

Other

• Google Analytics - Although this isn't really related to SEO, Google Analytics has a section that displays all the search terms that your visitors used to get to your site.
• Advanced Google Searches - A bunch of advanced Google searches that are done automatically with this nifty little tool.
• Crawl Test - Looks at a given URL to check for any common problems that might prevent your site being crawled properly by a search engine.
• Google Webmaster Tools - A decent collection of tools from Google that also will notify you if your website is being penalized (if you verify yourself as the site owner).
• SEOToolbox - A bunch of random tools from Seomoz.

Where to Buy Links

There are several places to buy links. Some types of purchasable links have been around for years, and others are quite new. Expect to see this list change in the future, as it's one of the more volatile parts of SEO there is.

• Directories
• Forum Signatures
• Text Link Ads
• Blog Reviews
• Directly Contacting a Webmaster

Directories

There are literally millions of directories that you can submit your website to. Not only that, but there are services out there that will automatically submit your site to hundreds of directories, for a fee. These directories and services are, for the most part, worthless. The search engines caught on long ago to the people mass-submitting to directories, and now, only a select few directories pass on the link love they used to.
It should be noted that directories which are easy to get into are most likely going to contain a great deal of poor-quality sites. When the search engines figure out that a directory is not filtering submissions, the value of the link will be worth next to nothing. This is why we recommend that you focus on the three directories listed below (or niche directories for your industry). Avoid low quality general directories!

DMOZ

Viewed as the golden child of Google, the dmoz directory has often been the source of much anger and frustration from webmasters trying to get their site listed in this king of directories. Although the value of a link has decreased over the years, a link from dmoz.org can still significantly affect your search rankings. To be listed on dmoz all, you need to do is navigate to a category related to your site and submit a free submission.
However, don't expect an immediate response. dmoz is notorious for being slow to add links (and sometimes never) for a variety of reasons they probably won't tell you. Also, if you resubmit your site to a category you are often placed at the end of the queue, so don't submit more than once a year and hope for the best!

Best of the Web

One of the oldest sites on the net, Best of the Web has been around since 1994 and is pretty strict about who they let into their directory. To be considered for a listing you must pay a fee. They also have two different types of payment plans: annual or lifetime. If you're serious about your site being successful on the search engines, pay the lifetime fee, as it will pay for itself soon enough.

Yahoo

Yahoo's directory is similar to Best of the Web, but the quality is a little less. However, all search engines still consider this a valuable directory and a listing here will definitely boost your rankings.

Forum Signatures

Forums are a great source of traffic and link love for sites that are just starting out. First you need to find a forum that supports links in the signature, then you simply have to post on the forums to get links. Another option is to sponsor a member of that forum in exchange for them including a link to your website. However, it should be noted that some forums do not allow this, and you should research this issue before investing any money.
Important note: Some forums have a system where links are automatically marked with the attribute "nofollow", which means that they are marking the links as untrusted. Read up on our no follow lesson to see how this will affect the link love you receive from that site.

Text Link Ads

Although this isn't exactly a permanent form of advertising, these types of links tend to be a bit more below the radar than a typical site sponsorship deal. There are several text link ad brokers that have a network of sites that are willing to put text links on their website in return for a monthly fee. At some of these sites you can even get placed on a single page on the site, rather than on every page (this is good because then your link doesn't look like a normal sponsored link!).

Blog Reviews

With the rise of blogging popularity, it was obvious that something was going to come along to allow the massive amount of bloggers to make an extra buck. Well, there is a new option for bloggers to make money using ReviewMe, SponsoredReview, PayPerPost, and V7NContextual. All of these sites have a network of bloggers that are waiting to make a post for your company if you're willing to pay a fee. These posts can range from a full review of your product to a simple mention of your website in a post that's about the industry you work in.
These links are forever, but make sure you don't purchase links from blogs that have too many paid posts. The search engines are getting better at sniffing these sites out and will often penalize these blogs, preventing them from giving out link love if all they do is post sponsored reviews.

Directly Contacting a Webmaster

Often, the best way to get a nice link on a website is to talk to the owner of the website directly. By doing this, you can select sites that do not have a great deal of paid links already, and you can get a whole bunch of value at a reasonable price. The downside to this approach is that it takes more time and effort than it does going through another company that has streamlined the process for you.

Get Links from Related Sites

When building your site's authority on the web, you should always be striving to get links from sites that are in the same industry as you. Google tends to give more weight to links that are in the same industry, especially when the link is from a site that Google views as an authority (a Pagerank over 6).
Don't worry about only getting links from sites that are in your vertical, but if you have a choice between a link from a general blog and a blog that specializes in your industry, always go with the industry related site first!

What is the PageRank and Alexa Rank?

What PageRanks do your competitors homepage have? If your site is a PageRank 1 and your competitors' are a PageRank 9, there's no way in hell you're going to be ranking above them in the foreseeable future. However, if you're a PageRank 4 and they're a PageRank 6, with a little dedication, you'll be able to chip away at that gap and eventually pass them with a long-term plan.
Alexa ranks are a completely different beast. A site may rank 100,000, and yours may rank 800,000, but your site may very well receive more traffic that the other does. This is because Alexa gathers data from users who have decided to install the Alexa toolbar on their browser. So, if a site has a group of Alexa users that happen to frequent their site, their site will be artificially inflated. If the Alexa rank is in the top 100,000 there is a fair amount of data gathered and you can be more confident in Alexa's results.

What is page rank ?

Page Rank is a ranking system that previously was the foundation of the infamous search engine, Google. When search engines were first developed, they ranked all websites equally and would return results based only on the content and meta tags the pages contained. At the time, however, the PageRank system would revolutionize search engine rankings by including one key factor: a site's authority.

To determine how important, or authoritative, a site was Google chose several big sites, such as cnn.com, dmoz.org, and espn.com. These sites were clear authorities, and Google figured that if these websites chose to link to another site (let's say site B), then site B would receive a piece of that site's authority. If site B were to link to another site (how about C), then site C would also receive a piece of authority, though much smaller.
Using this system of passing authority, Google would then count up how much authority a site had and give it a PageRank from 0 to 10. The PageRank system has become more complicated since then, but this is how it all started.

Improving SEO

To improve SEO you should follow................

1. You can have good template.
2. Make sure you have quality content and the back links should be the best.
3. The look and feel of the website should be great.

Create quality back links by performing the following activity
1. Directory Submissions
2. One way link
3. Local Search Engine Optimization
4. Article Writing & Submission
5. Press Release Writing & Submission
6. Blog Comment on Relevant Blogs
7. Classified Submission
8. Facebook and Twitter Marketing
9. Social Bookmarking

What SEO?

Search Engine Optimization refers to the collection of techniques and practices that allow a site to get more traffic from search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). SEO can be divided into two main areas: off-page SEO (work that takes place separate from the website) and on-page SEO (website changes to make your website rank better). This tutorial will cover both areas in detail! Remember, a website is not fully optimized for search engines unless it employs both on and off-page SEO.