Our list of top SEO tools
Google Keyword Tool – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
(Use this as an indicator only) statistics are far more accurate in Google’s webmaster tools and analytics, but it’s a good starting point for checking the value of your keywords and getting ideas about what other keywords to use.
Alexa Page Rank and Traffic: http://www.alexa.com/
Provides an Alexa traffic rank (the lower the better) and Sites Linking In. This is a great tool to learn the types and value of sites that are linking in to you or your competitors’ websites.
Wayback Machine or Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/
Take a look at the history of your website or your competitors, this identify the age of websites and has archived most websites since 1996. This tool is also a must for professional domainers.
Yahoo Site Explorer: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Gives Yahoo’s snapshot of the cached pages and inbound links.
Google Site Info
Type “info:yourdomain.co.uk” into Google’s search bar to get statistics about your site. It provides stats on Similar Pages, Cached Pages, Back links and Webpage Mentions. This tool is also a must for determining domain name value and internet presence statistics and is a great method to see Google’s impression of your competitors site information.
Google Webmaster Tools: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Need I say more! For those that are not familiar with webmaster tools, please do nothing else until you have done this. Create a sitemap of your website using: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ (Free XML site map generator). Upload the XML file to your root level directory of your website (If you are using wordpress there are appropriate plug-ins available to install). Then sign into Google webmaster tools, verify your site and then click configure site then add site map.
The beauty of Webmaster tools is that it gives you every page that Google recognised webpage or site that is linking into your website. It also provides your Google position for your recognised keywords and gives you the amount of impressions that your site is making in the SERP.
Google Analytics www.google.com/analytics/
If you don’t have it on your site, get it!
Google Tool Bar (or page rank plug-in of choice that works well with your browser)
Provides quick statistics like Google Page Rank, Cached Snapshot of the page and Back links. You’ll need to install the plugin in your browser. Google is the provider, so if you want it do a search in Google for “Google Tool Bar.”
Some other good keyword and SEO tools that help with research, link building, reporting and organisation of data (they cost though) are:
We could fill up this page with keyword, ranking, link building, analytics & competitor analysis tools. Check Google, there are literally thousands or visit Smashing Magazine’s complete list of SEO tools (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/09/22/complete-list-of-best-seo-tools/)
A Word to The Wise: Although some SEO tools are a must and excellent for research and organising large amounts of online data, it may not always a good idea to employ technologies that rapidly perform methods that normal people could not do. For example: Submitting your website to every known directory with the help of an automated directory submitter is an example of a spamming tactic and can leave a trail. This trail can definitely be seen by Google’s Robots.
A different approach that would yield better results is to submit your website to high ranking and industry specific directories, (some SEO tools will help you find them) – YES, you might have to even pay for some! It may cost more and will take you longer but this will achieve much better results than allowing your software to spam on your behalf.
DO NOT BUY INTO ANY AUTOMATED MASS ARTICLE OR DIRECTORY SUBMISSION SOFTWARE – THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER AND IS NOT THE EASY WAY TO SEO. In the case of link building, quality is far superior to quantity.
Tags: analytics tools, keyword tools, seo tools
