SocialMediaFish » SEO

10 Essential SEO Tools

Roger — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:12:18 +0000

I’m making this post in response to a Tweet made by Roger who works as a Social Media Consultant about this article: 10 Great SEO tools and resources. Roger invited me to write my own list because I said that the list Josh Chambers published at Viget.com missed quite a few essential tools…

So here are 10 SEO tools that I use regularly and consider essential:

Advanced Web Ranking – Best tool I’ve used to keep a track of SERPs.
SEO Elite – Great for analysing competition and getting detailed backlink reports.
Market Samurai - Useful tool for researching keywords and SEO competition. Market Samurai plugs into several tools including Google’s keyword research tool.
Google Analytics – It goes without saying that web stats are really important for measuring, monitoring and mining keywords.
Google trends – Particularly useful when checking keyword trends between the UK and US.
Google Webmaster Central – Useful for detecting crawl errors and checking pages with external links.
SEOQuake – Plugin for Firefox and IE which displays several important website stats including: PageRank, Google Crawl date, Pages indexed on Google/Yahoo/MSN, Yahoo SiteExplorer stats, Domain age, Whois info, keyword density, page’s internal links and the page’s external links.
SEOmoz PRO Linkscape toolbar – For SEOmoz Pro members, it’s nice to have the Linkscape toolbar which displays mozRank, mozTrust, Domain mozRank and Domain mozTrust.
CopyScape – Essential for ensuring unique content and checking for duplicate content.
Pidgin – IM client that makes it possible to connect to MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo and AIM all at the same time and in one place. Great way to ensure I’m available to vote friends’ content on Digg and StumbleUpon etc. (Feel free to send me your content: MSN: itsdavidtowers@live.co.uk, AIM: itsdavidtowers, Google Talk: itsdavidtowers@googlemail.com, Yahoo: itsdavidtowers).

Honourable mention: Woopra – Ok, so it’s not essential and it shouldn’t replace Google Analytics yet, but Woopra’s real time web stats are definitely worth checking out!

What do you think about this list? Have I missed out any tools that you think are really useful?

David Towers is an SEO Manager at Mediaedge:cia based in Manchester (UK). David blogs about SEO, online marketing and Joomla at Good Web Practices.

Early Google PR (page rank) update December 2008

Roger — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 06:05:04 +0000

I’ve always been interested in the Google PR (Page Rank) of my sites probably stems from when I started learning about SEO and spent some time in an infamous forums at DigitalPoint ;)

SEO is Branding

Roger — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:58:04 +0000

Lately, I've been developing ideas around the ideas of how it would be best to 'teach' someone SEO. It has always occurred to me that because of the intricacies and the continual evolution of search marketing and SEO more specifically, it really must be quite difficult to pin down in regards to methodology or content to teach.

6 Reasons Why SearchWiki was launched and it’s mistakes

Roger — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:46:55 +0000

So, SearchWiki came, died, and rose from the dead. But whether you like it, is irrelevant. Why would Google launch this new product with no beta first? We had Google Suggest for a few months and then it was live for all to use and see. But Google SearchWiki becomes live within a few weeks of even hearing about it (Although SearchWiki was in beta for a year it was a very sloppy rollout and partly why there is a large outrage). I have 6 reasons why I think Google did this.

A bit of SEO humour

Roger — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:08:25 +0000

Funny Search Engine Optimization comic strip brought to my attention by @KursaalTom, click on the picture for more in the series!

SEO Tool suggestions

Roger — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:18:02 +0000

Yesterday afternoon I made a call out on Twitter for any suggestions for Good SEO tools. Some people kindly answered. Two responses were;

SEO, See with your Eyes then Optimize

Roger — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:35:29 +0000

The title 'See with your Eyes then Optimize' will basically represent the mission of continuous optimization and we will use this blog as an example if it fails then you know not to follow these steps! ;)

Google penalizes Video Bloggers for Keyword Stuffing

Roger — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:58:33 +0000

Blackhat SEO techniques are the bane of our lives at Google and it has been brought to our attention that after year's of work from the Google team our endeavors have to take a new twist. We recently started indexing Video posts and have been very concerned with the results from some authority figures using 'Keyword stuffing' and other subliminal techniques to hypnotize their visitors into action's that they would not normally take like buying that blogger's latest sensational ebook!

The First 4 of ’7 Steps in Courting Google’

Roger — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:51:26 +0000

Step 1

You see her across the room!

You know Google but she doesn’t know you, you’ve put up your content but what to do first you don’t want to go straight in and mess it all up with your big mouth so you need to think about your first steps carefully!

I would suggest getting yourself looking good before you even think about that first contact! If your breath smells or your hair looks bad your not going to get a second chance!

Check your Title tag’s, read this post to help with that ‘Quick and Easy SEO Tips – Title Tags’

Also check your META and more META and ALT tags.

Check that your Robots.txt file is not going to exclude you from any dates.

Some people might tell you that all these way’s of preening yourself are old hat but why not be a Gentleman and do them your not going to lose points for it and she might just be impressed by your old school charm.

Step 2

Check out your competition

There are no Search Engine Optimization secrets — just ranking and placement methodologies to follow in order to beat your competition in obtaining a high ranking for desired search keywords. SEO training, content and link services are just one small part. This site targets improving search engine rankings by using a “follow the leader” approach to keyword selection and page wording. Once you know what keywords and search engine marketing services (not spam) worked for the “leaders”, you can “beat the leader” and do even better! Bruce Clay

You may look good smell good and be the funniest guy in the world but there is always someone out there better. Use some of these tools and articles to check out your competition and get one step ahead:

13+ Fantastic Tools For Knowing How They’re Doing It

SEO Competitive Analysis

SEO & PPC Competitive Analysis & Keyword Research Tools

An old one but still some good tools, ‘The Best SEO Competitor Tracking Tools Online’

Step 3

Get a mutual friend to introduce you this breaks the Ice easier and gets you on a friendly footing from the get go!

Step 4

Know what women want

Remember the movie? What if you could read her mind and know what are your faults as well as your good points…

Set yourself up with a Google Webmaster account add your site, verify it, submit your sitemap and then analyze.

And don’t forget humour in all of these points before the first date!

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Who are the SEO Elite

Roger — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:10:46 +0000

After reading the post ‘SEO Company, SEO and Search Engine Optimization Google Results Are a Disgrace’ by @onreact_com Tad, I came up with the notion that if the search results for SEO and Search Engine Optimization are so bad, who can we trust? and asked fellow twitterers to suggest some people / companies that THEY would trust with their SEO…

@xirclebox I worked on an SEO project a while back with Avenue A / Razorfish that went extremely well.

Razorfish

Anonymous Slingshot is an excellent SEO firm. Also see SEOMoz’s recommended firmslist.

Slingshot SEO

SEOMoz Marketplace

@bc42 Don’t know much about it but a friend recommended this one Customer Magnetism

Customer Magnetism

These are some recommendations from Twitter users do you have some? Drop a comment!