SEO Tools
What tools do SEO gurus use?
There are a load of SEO tools on the net. What do search engine optimization gurus use?
Keywords
- Google Keyword Tool - Keyword research tool from Google.
- WordTracker - Wordtracker shows keywords from 2 meta search engines with around 0.5%-1% market share. Dogpile and Metacrawler.
- Keyword Discovery - Keyword discovery collects data from specifically made toolbars.
- Compete.com - Compete gets data from ISPs. You can run analysis and see what keywords send referrals to your competitors.
Web Analytics
- Google Analytics - The most popular analytic tool. Free to use.
- ClickTracks - More professional analytic tool, used by some of the biggest brands in the world.
Informational Tools
- WebBug - “WebBug lets you enter a URL, then displays exactly what it sends to the Web Server and, when the response is received, exactly what the Web Server sends back.”
- Xenu Link Sleuth - “Xenu’s Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on “normal” links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continuously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time.”
- Copyscape - Scan the net and check if anyone copied your content. Copyscape is partnered with Google.
- WebPosition - An SEO metric software. It measures rankings, produces reports and monitors positions on all major search engines.
- Google Website Optimizer - Test the performance of your landing pages. You can swap landing pages for each new visitor from PPC, banners or other paid source. A/B and multivariate testing available.
Wed Design / Management
- Photoshop - Standard in image editing
- Dreamweaver - Standard in Web Design
- Excel - Used to manage keywords for both SEO and PPC. Excel 2007 also has an extension called keyword intelligence, where you get pricing directly from Adcenter database.
Other tools that claim to do SEO are merely imitators of what worked years ago. Search engines spent millions, hundreds of millions, hiring some of the brightest minds to develop algorithms. No software toolset is able to automatically duplicate the results. The above tools only help with the process, but certainly don’t do actual SEO. It’s the human element that counts.
