Search Engine Optimization - SEO tools

SEO Tools

Much of the craft to SEO is knowing how to use time effectively. SEO is an extremely time intensive process. These are the tools I use to save time with SEO. None of these links are affiliate links. I get paid nothing to recommend these tools to you.

SEO Forums

The ability to gain near real time answers to your SEO questions makes SEO forums extremely valuable. I have my opinions about which ones are best, and likely you will have your opinions about which ones you will like best. A good forum has a good sense of community, but different SEO forums have different goals. Generally I support the fact that good SEO is generally making good ideas that would want to spread and / or gaining a large quantity of links into a website. The forums that allow open discussion of and support effective SEO ideas are my favorite.

You will learn a bunch of your SEO knowledge from personal experience, but forums will also help speed along the learning cycle.

• Free: Review of and links to most of the major SEO forums (and many smaller ones too). Most SEO forums are free also. (http://www.seobook.com/archives/000161.shtml)

Keyword Selection

Doing SEO effectively starts with finding the right words, phrases, and ideas to target.

• Free: Digital Point keyword suggestion tool - free web based tool which compares Wordtracker and Overture search frequencies. (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/)
• Various Prices (approximately $7 / day to $250 / year): WordTracker - web based leased product which has many more features than the other tools. WordTracker traffic is generally more representative of actual traffic than Overture's tool since many fewer automated bots scour its data collection network than Overture's. (http://www.wordtracker.com)
• Various prices: Keyword Discovery -- deep database of keyword data. Contains historical data. Some of their partners made them sign a non disclosure agreement. The database may not be as clean as the WordTracker database, but it does contain more data. (http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/)
• Free: Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool - offers search frequency for the prior month throughout the Overture network. Please note that many bid checkers and other automated bots cause this number to skew high. (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)
• Free: Google Keyword Sandbox - shows related search terms but not search quantity. (https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox)
• Free: Google Search Suggestion Tool - auto-completes search queries to help you find more related search terms (http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en)
• Free: Google Sets - shows groups of related keywords. (http://labs.google.com/sets)
• Free: Good Keywords - free downloadable software which can be used for preliminary keyword research. (http://www.goodkeywords.com)
• Free: Ontology tool - finds related keywords using the Google ~ search. (http://www.gorank.com/seotools/ontology/)
• Free: Competitors websites and related search suggestions from various search engines such as Vivisimo and Teoma.

Download here