When it comes
to free SEO tools, there are many out there used for different purposes such as
checking backlinks, pageranks, keyword research, analytics etc. It becomes
difficult to decide the relative importance and usability of each tool. Hence,
in this article I have compiled a list of free SEO tools I use which have made
my work easier;
Google AdWords Keyword tool:
The first step in
any SEO campaign is identifying the keywords/key phrases you want to use -
popularly known as keyword research. Google AdWords Keyword tool is the most
widely used and acclaimed free tool for keyword research. It will let you know
which keywords to target, the competition for those keywords, and will also
offer suggestions on popular phases you might not have even thought of. There
are other paid keyword research tools like keyword discovery and wordtracker
which are good as well, but this tool is valuable and efficient when it comes
to a free SEO tool.
XML Sitemap Generator:
If you place a
formatted XML file with site map on the web server, you enable Search Engine
crawlers (Google) to find out what pages are present on your website and which
ones have been changed recently. Whenever you add new content to your site you
will obviously want to make sure Google knows about it. Sitemaps help search
engine's spiders crawl your site and understand what it's about. The XML
sitemap generator will create a sitemap compliant with the search engine that
you need to upload to your home directory every time your site is updated.
SEO Book's Rank Checker:
A Firefox
plugin that enables you to check where your website is ranking in keyword
searches. You can save details of every campaign and run reports from your
browser in seconds. It helps you analyze website rankings on the three major
search engines - Google, Yahoo and Bing. SEO Book's Rank Checker is a widely
used tool which is highly recommended to check your search engine rankings.
Hubspot's Website Grader:
This free SEO
tool can perform a health check on your website before awarding it a grade and
offering advice on how it could be improved. A few interesting features are
blog analysis, indexed pages analysis, metadata, domain info, inbound links,
last crawl date, social media grader etc. You can discover how effectively your
site is described (language) and how often it has been bookmarked on Digg or
Delicious. Also, you can add a Website Grader widget (which provides you with a
code to paste into your site) displaying a badge featuring your search
marketing quality score.
Backlinks Watch (backlinkwatch.com):
SEO revolves
around backlinking. This tool gives you a clear count and analysis of your
website's backlinks including the page they are on, anchor text and the total
number of backlinks on that particular page. This useful tool will let you know
who's linking to your content and track the success of your link building
campaign. Another backlink tracker I also use is Majestic-SEO (majesticseo.com)
Google Analytics / Google Webmaster
Tool:
These two tools
together make the fundamentals of search engine marketing. Based on Urchin,
Google Analytics is a top analytics tool available to everybody for free. This
analytics gives you details about traffic behavior, funnel information,
conversions, landing pages and much, much more. Google webmaster on the other
hand gives you a view of what Google "sees" on your site including
crawling speed, crawling rate, highest pagerank of your site and more.
SpyFu (spyfu.com) :
SpyFu lets you
enter either a keyword or domain into its search box to begin the process. You
are afterward presented with results to help you decide if a particular keyword
is an appropriate choice for your SEO or ad campaigns and other keyword
possibilities. From domain searches, you can see your competitors and discover
details of their organic or paid search campaigns. There is paid version of
spyfu.com which offers more features, but the free one has quite a lot as well.
Compete (compete.com) :
This is a great
tool for analyzing your competition. You can see traffic and engagement metrics
for any website; identify sites for affiliate and SEO link building. Also you
can analyze competitor keywords and search strategies for free. Other features
include; analyzing subdomains, tagging, comparisons, portfolios and CSV
download of information. Compete.com also has a subscription based paid service
which you can use to attain additional features.
Google Analytics:
Use Google Analytics
for website traffic analysis. Search Engine Traffic, Content performance and
Keywords are the three primary SEO elements measured by this tool. Site
activities like hits, page views, bounce rate, pages viewed per visit, page
views and average time spent by users in the website etc can easily be tracked
by using this free tool.
Key Word Complete:
It is easy to
track the keywords of the competitors. This tool tracks the keywords via the
PPC campaigns. A number of features of this online tool provide complete
assistance.
Widexl:
Analyzing the
keyword density, meta tags, page load time etc is extremely easy with the meta
tag analyzer of Widexl. One can also use it to determine the pages which are
linked with specific website, for that reason one has to use the link
popularity tool.
IWEBTOOL:
This website is
particularly useful for it provides many tools that serve different needs for
successful Search Engine Optimization. Some features like Google PageRank
Prediction and Link Popularity, Website Speed Test are used by several webmasters.
While Google PageRank is use to predict ranking of site in Google, Link
Popularity is used to keep a check on number of links of any specific domain.
One can measure the time a specific site takes for loading using Website Speed
Test.
SEO Logs:
On-Page SEO
tools play very important role in exploring webpages for further scope of
keyword optimization. In addition to many other On-page SEO tools, SEO Logs
provides Keyword Difficulty Check and Web Page SEO Optimizer. The main use of
Keyword Difficulty Check is to evaluate the extent of difficulty faced by a
keyword in order to secure a position in Search engines. Some other tools like
HTTP Headers, Alexa Rank, Backlinks Analyzer Tool, and AdSense Profit
Calculator are also provided by SEO Logs.
Link Diagnosis:
It is one of
the most effective tools to scrutinize link competition, only one has to
provide key details about competitor's links. Page ranks and Anchor reports are
some of the vitals results generated through this tool.
SEOmoz:
The tool has
various uses. One of these is to obtain reports from giant search engines like
Alexa, Google and Yahoo. The same tool is used for site error detection,
keyword research, traffic tracking.
Alexa:
It effectively
weighs up the status of website in terms of popularity. But one should note
that it should be used generate reports for only 100,000 sites for its does not
promise correctness for sites beyond that.
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