SEO Tools That Work

One thing is for sure – there is no such thing as the perfect tool for keyword research. After having worked for Lycos and AOL Time Warner, I can tell you that even an “insider” can’t gain access to the actual number of searches performed against a given keyword. The best you can do is get estimates.WordTracker: This tool is the default standard for most search engine optimization companies. WordTracker works by compiling a database of over 300 million search terms which, according to its website, is updated on a weekly basis. All search terms are collected from the major metacrawlers – Dogpile and MetaCrawler.Keyword Discovery: I have found Keyword Discovery to be very helpful, especially when doing keyword research for businesses that have to consider seasonality. For example, a business that specializes in selling flowers might want to look at the period preceding Valentine’s Day to get a more accurate picture of searches performed during this season.According to its Web site, Keyword Discovery collects search term data from over 200 search engines worldwide. It claims the largest keyword database containing over 36 billion searches. Keyword Discovery also offers many language-specific keyword databases sourced from regional search engines and users from those regions including: Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and the UK, with plans to offer many others.Site Structure AnalysisW3C Validator: While having a “valid” Web site does not guarantee rankings, having clean and solid code is a good indicator of having a quality, search engine friendly Web site.Section 508 Validation: Again, having a Web site that abides by Section 508 does not guarantee better search engine rankings. However, as with W3C compliance, fulfilling Section 508 standards is a pretty good indicator of a Web site pursuing search engine optimization best practicesCompetitive Analysis: There are many great tools here, so I’ll just point out a couple. We Build Pages’ Cool SEO Tool is a great place to get a snapshot of your Web site versus those ranking on given keywords.There is also Yahoo! Site Explorer, which provides great information on the number of pages indexed in Yahoo! as well as the number of backlinks leading to a particular Web site. Google and MSN’s numbers when searching “site:www.sitename.com” can be suspect, but Yahoo!’s information is usually pretty solid.Link Analysis: Again, there are many tools available. We Build Pages created another great tool with its Neat-O Backlink Checker. This tool allows you to see the backlinks of any Web site as well as the associated anchor text for these links. Even better, the summary report will show the number of times a specific anchor text phrase is in use, as well as the total number of unique backlinks. See Yahoo! Site Explorer, too, for information on backlinks to a particular Web site.Ranking ReportsWebPostion: While I wouldn’t count on this software providing you everything that you need to know to optimize your Web presence, it is a solid product for regular ranking reports and competitive information.AdvancedWebRanking: Some clients, I have found, prefer the reporting from AdvancedWebRanking. This system is the only option for those concerned with ensuring that it works on multiple platforms. So, if you’re using a PC, Mac or Linux, this is the tool for you.