12 No-Cost Tools to Help Improve Your SEO

Even to some who have been online for years, SEO can be somewhat of a mystery. While there are a lot of differing opinions on the techniques that are the most effective for getting your site to the top of the search engines, there’s no doubt that a key factor in your success is being able to effectively access and analyze data. Below are 12 free web-based tools to help you in your SEO efforts:

Keyword Mutation Detection Tool We all strive for our sites to look professional and for our writing to be grammar and spelling error-free, but if you can find a way to incorporate some strategic misspellings into your page, it can pay off. This tool will give you common “mutations” of your key words, including misspellings as well as correctly spelled variations. For example, enter “entrepreneur” and you’ll get: entrepreneurs, entreprenur, and entreprenuer. As these are all commonly entered search terms, there’s an opportunity to capitalize on the mistakes people make when searching.

Term Extractor From SEOmoz, which offers quite a few helpful tools, this one will analyze your pages and determine which search terms it looks like you’re trying to target. It’s a valuable tool, especially if the resulting report shows you’re optimized for terms other than what you had hoped!

Wordtracker Suggestion Tool Enter a keyword into this simple tool, and it will provide you with a list of up to 100 suggested search terms that include your keyword. The nice thing about this tool is that it also provides the number of searches performed for each phrase, so you can target those most likely to drive more traffic.

Keyword Difficulty Check Want to see how hard you’re going to have to work to get on the first page of search results for your keywords? This tool is for you. Just enter the word or phrase you want it to check, and you’ll get a percentage of difficulty result. For example, if you want to be on the first search results page for the word “blog”, you’re looking at a 93.48% (out of 100%) difficulty ranking. Want to be right up toward the top for “sesquipedalian armadillo” though? You’ve got a great chance at just 22.91% difficulty!

Term Target Grader You might not have been an A student in school, but now you can get A’s where it really counts. Enter your URL and targeted keyword or phrase into this tool, and you’ll get a letter grade reflective of how your page actually targets your desired keyword, along with a detailed report. The only catch: unless you’re a premium member of SEOmoz, you’ll only get one of these reports every 24 hours.

Keyword Group Detection Tool Another tool from Microsoft’s adCenter Labs, this one “helps you find groups of words from the pool of online queries that are related or similar to keywords that you enter.” In other words, you enter a keyword you want to optimize for, and it will give you common search words and phrases relating to that keyword for which you might also want to optimize. It’s a good way to get your creativity going when planning your SEO.

SEO Browser is a tool that allows you to see your site as the search engines see it. Offering both basic and advanced modes for free, the resulting report generated by SEO Browser gives you a clear view of your site content, including meta data, text-to-page weight ratio, number of internal and external links, and tons more, all on one page. This allows you to easily identify problems and ways you can improve your site.

Keyword Tracking with Backlink Tracker Meant to be used over time, this very cool free tool tracks your search engine placement (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) for specified keywords over time. This tool also checks search engines for the number of backlinks to your page over time. You’ll need to sign up for a free account and place a PHP script on your server for it all to work. The detailed charts and reports you get make it worth the effort.

SEOToolSet offers several tools, from the not-so-useful source code viewer (your browser does that), to the very cool Competition Research Tool, which analyses your site and finds and compares it with your competitors based on your chosen key words. They’ve also got a keyword tool that returns results detailing demographics (gender and age statistics), click-through rates, and the CPC average for the major engines.

SEO Scores This tool gives you a ton of information about your site. Broken into four sections, the data is well organized and very useful. The areas analyzed are: 1. On-page SEO, which includes metadata, image summary, W3C validation, more; 2. Off-page SEO, including domain information, Google rank, backlinks, last Google crawl date, and traffic rank; 3. Blogosphere, which just tells you if your key words appear in your blog, and your Technorati ranking; and 4. Social Mediasphere, giving you del.icio.us bookmarks and a Digg submission summary.

Google Keyword Tool Meant for Google Adwords users, this simple keyword tool provides local and global search volume numbers for the keywords and phrases you enter, as well as about 150 related terms. It also supplies suggested terms and allows you to export the reports to a text or csv (for Excel) file. There are also some dropdowns with additional options, most of which are specific to those using Adwords.

Reciprocal Link Checker Want to see if people are placing the reciprocal links they promised? This tool does just that. Enter your site and multiple reciprocal sites, and you’ll get a report showing how many (if any) links on their sites point back to you. While this particular tool does not tell you which page(s) on the reciprocal sites are linking to you, it does save the time of hunting for your links on their sites.

These twelve tools should begin to get you the information you need to help improve your SEO. There are, of course, other tools out there. Which ones have you found useful? Be sure to share your experience in the comments below.

All the Latest Tools to Improve Your Website

While you may sometimes feel that the world of Internet marketing is reaching a saturation point, there is a lot to be said for this explosive growth. It is not likely that the market will be saturated any time soon given the ratio of people who are just discovering the media on a daily basis, but the pressure to produce meaningful and productive websites and pages has led to the creation of a huge number of interesting and useful tools. Designed to streamline and make your job as a webmaster a whole lot easier, these tools can save you a lot of anguish!

Feedback is so important and while there is nothing like the process of trial and error to achieve the perfect solution, in an ideal world you would not want to be using potential clients in this way. A number of options have arisen to help you link with independent users. For example, usertesting.com maintains an army of independent reviewers who could be used for a relatively small fee to provide you with targeted feedback. Each reviewer has been pre screened and is rated by service buyers for you, so you can be pretty confident that you will be getting an objective analysis.

If you want to automate the process of website analysis, consider clicktale.com, where you can receive an image of your screen detailing users’ mouse movements, keystrokes and general interaction. This is enabled through the placement of special JavaScript on your page and will enable you to see how users interact and how the general flow of your site works. This can be particularly useful in helping you to optimize forms and other interactive requirements and the service is free for a limited number of page views, with an increasing payment structure for a more enhanced experience.

A number of tools are available that you can use to provide feedback on the composition and technical efficiency of your site. For example websitegrader.com will give your site the once over and may well come up with something glaring that you have missed.

Google is a provider of many free tools, which should be in every webmaster’s arsenal. Google Analytics will provide even the most demanding analyst with a comprehensive breakdown of user experience, Google’s Website Optimizer gives you options for A/B and multivariate testing, and Google Webmaster Tools exposes your best keywords, the efficiencies of your linking strategy and any crawl errors that they detect.

If you are willing to invest a little bit, there are some great comprehensive tools such as SiteRay by Silktide, which goes into great detail about your overall site structure, correct linking, appropriate keyword usage, originality, popularity, technical strength and general usability.

Go to The Scrutinizer for a comprehensive list of hundreds of available web tools to be used for URLs, keyword and IP issues.

One of the best tools that we have found is a Firefox plug-in called Firebug. You can highlight and make changes to HTML and CSS from within your browser, making changes on the fly and see the immediate result. This is great for debugging problems, but remember that you have to make alterations manually elsewhere to be permanent.

For bloggers, check out SEO Blogger, which is a Firefox plug-in to help you optimize your posts as you write them. Go up a notch by choosing Lotus Jump, which will give you a task list of what you need to achieve to improve your rankings according to a handy little manageable timetable.

What tools have you recently used to improve your website?

Adam Toren

I’m Frustrated with DIY SEO! Should I Buy Tools or Pay an SEO Company?

After spending a couple frustrating hours of building links, submitting articles, researching key words and fine tuning the copy on their sites many of us are ready to throw in the towel. Search Engine Optimization seems pretty straight-forward, the thing that keeps most of us from doing it is the immense number of excruciatingly boring and time consuming tasks. There are links to build. There are directories to research. There are titles to write. There are directories to submit to. It’s all pretty exhausting.

So quickly, many of us come to one of two conclusions:

A. Purchase some tools that make the process easier.
B. Hire a company to do SEO for you.

Which of these two options should you put your limited budget towards. Let’s start by understanding what’s available.

Tools of the Trade

There are hundreds of great and useful SEO tools for free, and we’ve talked a lot about them in previous articles. There are only a few that we would actually consider paying money for:

1. WebCEO: www.webceo.com – The SmallBiz addition is about $200. WebCEO does a great job of researching keywords from your competitors’ sites. It also helps you analyze your own site for optimization and a whole lot more.

2. IBP: www.ibusinesspromoter.com – Standard edition is about $250. IBP’s specialty is submitting to directories and link building. It also contains useful tools for analyzing your site’s keywords and your competitors.

3. ISnare: - www.iSnare.com – iSnare is a great service for automating the article submission process. They submit your articles to over 1,000 article directories for a very small fee (under $2 per article). The only drawback is see with this service is that it takes them usually three weeks to approve an article and distribute it.

I’d also consider spending money on a few paid directories

1. Yahoo! Directory - http://dir.yahoo.com/ - $299 per year
2. Best of the Web - http://www.dmoz.org/ - $99.95 per year

Money spent on professional tools is quickly wasted if you’re not actually using them. All of the tools come with some kind of tutorials to get you up and running. I strongly recommend following the tutorials as soon as you purchase the tool. That way it won’t sit idling in your garage, wasting your hard-earned money.

Bring in the Pro’s

Just like owning a professional copy of Photoshop isn’t the same as hiring a professional graphic designer; Professional SEO tools won’t give you the same results as hiring a professional SEO firm. First you need to know what you’re buying. Price for professional SEO is based very much on how much they do. SEO firms fall into 3 categories:

• Premium Agencies ($10,000+ per Month)
Pros: they have several SEOs and they’ve worked with huge websites and in extremely competitive markets.
Cons: extremely expensive for the average company.

• Medium-Sized Agencies ($1,000-$10,000 per Month)
Pros: affordable for average companies. Several years of experience in very competitive markets.
Cons: maybe a little bit expensive for some startups. They won’t do such a great job if you are in an extremely competitive industry.

• Solo SEOs ($500 - $1,500 per Month)
Pros: very affordable.
Cons: most SEOs that charge this little are not that great. There are some exceptions, of course.

The Proof is in the Pudding

Whenever you hire a professional SEO company there are a couple due-diligence items we always recommend:

• Ask for Results – get a list of top 3 Google Rankings that they’ve worked on:
• Ask for References - The best SEO agencies will be happy to give you the contact information of at least 3 clients.
• Ask About Their Tactics – You want a firm that builds your reputation while raising your results.

This is a Guest Post by Zeke Camusio who is a serial entrepreneur, Internet Marketing expert and founder of The Outsourcing Company, an Internet Marketing agency with offices in Aspen, CO and New York. Let’s Do It!, his blog, is read by thousands of people all over the world.

SEO Best Practices: Page Titles, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords

When it comes to onsite optimization, you need to put on your SEO marketing hat. The following guidelines show you how to create optimized page titles, meta descriptions, and meta keywords. Don’t forget quality body copy! If you follow these specific guidelines, you’ll soar to #1 in Google in no time!

A page title holds greater weight over a meta description. Meta keywords aren’t as important as they used to be in the search engines. Keywords should be used sparingly throughout the body copy. Remember these SEO best practices– especially if you want to rank high and get thousands of links.

Page Titles

According to SEO experts, page titles are the MOST important element when it comes to SEO. Writing a dynamic page title can be difficult. It has to LOOK attractive so people will click on your listing (AND you need to include keywords too!) A compelling title needs to use 65 characters or less. Remember not to keyword stuff – this is considered an unethical black hat technique and you’ll either get bumped out of the search engines or lose ranking.

Example of a Good Title:
Los Angeles Sporting Goods – We HAVE What You Need – Kicks Soccer Store

Meta Description

Meta descriptions need to capture keywords but it also needs to look appealing (just like the page title). You only have 160 characters so be creative and make it sound compelling. If you go over 160 characters, your listing will be truncated and ellipsis (…) will appear. This is a “no-no” in SEO because search engines don’t like ellipsis – it will decrease your click-through rate (CTR).

Example of a Good Description:
The Biggest Selection on Sporting Goods in the Los Angeles Area. 50% off and FREE Delivery on All Sporting Goods When You Shop Online. Click Here to Order NOW!

Use active words that entice your visitors and make them WANT to choose and click on your listing. Make sure to include a call to action (“Click Here to Order Now!”) and capitalize the first letter of each word (increases CTR). Capitalize power words such as: FREE, NOW, TODAY, etc.

Meta Keywords
Meta keywords aren’t AS important as they once were in SEO. It’s not a complete waste of time but Google doesn’t identify them anymore. It doesn’t hurt to add them but be careful how you use them.

Warning: Your competition is going to look at the keywords you use. Don’t make your keywords too obvious. Don’t put your relevant/high search volume keywords here either. If you do, your competition will steal them.

Don’t forget to add keywords to the body copy. If you only use keywords in your title, description and meta keywords (tags), it’ll be difficult for you to rank those keywords.

• Use keywords between 3-10 times (for each 600 words).

• Don’t keyword stuff – copy needs to make sense and look natural. WRITE for your site visitors NOT for search engines.

• Remember that you want to get incoming links. If your body copy sounds like nonsense, no one will link to your site and there goes your traffic!

• ALWAYS add VALUE and quality when you write body copy. Sound like an authority/expert in your field.

• Your ultimate goal: to be a resource where people find information. If you keep that in mind, you’ll get high rankings and many links. Poor content will never get you anywhere in SEO.

This is a Guest Post by Zeke Camusio who is a serial entrepreneur, Internet Marketing expert and founder of The Outsourcing Company, an Internet Marketing agency with offices in Aspen, CO and New York. Let’s Do It!, his blog, is read by thousands of people all over the world.

The Best WordPress Plugins for SEO and Marketing

WordPress is one of the most widely used blogging and publishing platforms on the Internet. WordPress has a wide variety of plugins that gives sites a much-needed boost in the search rankings.

Plugins (or add-ons) are software modules that add special features or services to a larger system. These plugins are geared specifically for SEO and marketing functions.

WordPress is easy to use and is popular for its blogging features. Plugins are great SEO tactics but don’t forget to utilize other “on site” SEO techniques.

• Keyword Optimized Content – Pick a few keywords that will rank high in search engines. Don’t “stuff” keywords into your content or you’ll get low ranking or bumped out of search engines altogether. Keep posts to at least 250 words. Lengthy content will lose your readers.

• Find Your Niche – Pick a niche and stick with it. Another key SEO strategy is to keep your sites consistent – a niche blog covering ONE topic is going to rank higher than a “general” site covering hundreds of topics.

• Site Design – Make sure your sites are easy to navigate and are validated (get rid of bad code!) Search engines don’t like a lot of Flash or JavaScript so keep sites simple and clean. Get rid of dead links (update on a regular basis!)

The following sites feature BEST WordPress plugins for SEO and marketing purposes:

1. WP Post Ratings - Ratings filtered by different groups such as: popular by author, month, year, category, all-time, etc.

2. Google XML Sitemaps – Informs search engines (Google) about pages on sites that are readily available for “crawling.”

3. All in One SEO Pack – Automatically optimizes titles and meta descriptions for search engines.

4. Twitter Tools – Integrates Twitter accounts to WordPress blogs

5. FeedBurner FeedSmith – Track stats, clickthroughs, subscribers, etc.

6. Easy Tube – Takes control of video content (YouTube, etc.) by using one tag

7. Lightbox 2 – Changes settings (background colors, etc) and add “lightbox” effect to blog posts

8. Google Analytics for WordPress – Tracks and segments links from posts; tracks image search queries and Adsense clicks

9. Wordpress Global Translator Plugin – Automatically translates your blogs into 41 different languages (includes 4 translator engines such as Babelfish)

10. WP-Cache 2.0 – Efficient page caching system that makes your site FASTER and more responsive.

11. WP-PageNavi 2.20 – Adds advanced paging navigations to blogs

12. Spam Karma 2.3 – Automatically blocks spam on blogs

13. Subscribe2 – Notifies subscribed members each time a new post is made

14. Target Blank In Posts And Comments – Opens links in blog posts and opens comments in new windows – keeps visitors on your pages

15. cforms – Powerful form building plugin. Allows you to have multiple forms on same page

16. Popular Posts – Lists “most popular”/most visited posts on blogs – usually found on the sidebar

17. Subscribe To Comments – Commenters can sign up for email notices of entries– allows them to unsubscribe to certain posts or change notifications

18. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Gives lists of pages or posts related to current entry – subscribers are directed to other related entries/content

19. ShareThis – A simple way for users to add blog posts to social bookmarking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. or share via email

This is a Guest Post by Zeke Camusio who is a serial entrepreneur, Internet Marketing expert and founder of The Outsourcing Company, an Internet Marketing agency with offices in Aspen, CO and New York. Let’s Do It!, his blog, is read by thousands of people all over the world.

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