A Few SEO Tools YOU Should Use

Every SEO company or SEO Expert has their own cache of SEO tools which they use every day to help them rank websites higher.

Here are is a small list of SEO tools which can be used to help rank websites at the top of the search engines. You’ll see that there is a strong focal point on Google – this is because ranking a website at the top of Google will, in my opinion, drive anywhere between 10x and 100x the traffic of a top ranking on Yahoo or MSN pooled.

1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool – this is a free tool provided by Google, which provides keyword suggestions based on ‘descriptive words’ or ‘website content’.

2. Google Adwords Traffic Estimator – this is a free tool provided by Google, which provides Adwords advertisers with an estimated cost of running a PPC campaign using specific keyword phrases.

3. Google Webmaster Tools – this is a free service provided by Google to provide information to website owners about how Google views their website.

4. XML Sitemap Generator – use this tool to generate an XML sitemap of your entire site, and then upload the sitemap inside of Google Webmaster Tools.

5. SearchStatus – this is a Firefox plugin which provides a range of competitor SEO analysis information through a toolbar, including PageRank, Alexa Rank, Yahoo Backlinks, Highlighting Nofollow Links, Indexed Pages and Whois Information.

6. SEO Quake – this is another Firefox plugin which provides information similar to SearchStatus. The main difference with SEO Quake is that it displays the competitor analysis information within the search results, rather than the toolbar, which means that you can see information such as PageRank, Backlinks, and Domain Age etc. without having to actually visit a website.

7. Google Analytics – this is a free analytics service provided by Google. Simply open an account and paste the tracking code on every page of your website and you’ll be able to see a wide range of information about your website visitors.

8. WordPress – this is the leading blogging platform for SEO professionals because of the internal linking structure of the blog software as well as the customizations and plugins available. (We use WordPress to publish the blog you are reading now!)

9. Google Trends – this is yet another free service by Google which shows the trends of particular keywords over time. You can compare the trends of multiple keywords against one another, with a specified country.