Search engine optimization represents a large part of online marketing. Maybe not the most important one (some internet marketers would have something to say about that), but surely an essential one.
If you have an internet business, if you are selling products on line, be them physical products through dropshipping or informational products through direct download, you know the role that SEO plays in your traffic generation strategy.
When it comes to search engine analysis, probably the most used tool is Google external keyword tool. But this is not the purpose of this article. Today I would like to talk to you about some other tools I used every day in my search engine strategy that help me, and can sure help you too, to get the kind of information you normally can have only through paid software tools.
The first one is the Search Bar Status Plugin for Mozilla FireFox.
This plugin exists only for Firefox and it is not available for Internet Explorer. But if you deal with online marketing I assume you are using at least both of them, so that this feature is not a limitation at all for you. This application can give you lots of useful information directly from your browser about any site while you are surfing it. Information like:- Google page rank.
- Compete rank.
- SEOmoz rank.
- Meta tags.
- The robots.txt file.
But my favorite feature is the one that shows you all the indexed pages of the domain you are surfing and all its backward links.
The second one is SEO all-in-one plugin for WordPress. If you have a bog, believe me, you NEED this plugin. Its installation is easy like any other plugin, but its features are very powerful.
- It allows you to manage your WordPress platform in order to make it really SEO friendly.
- You can modify all the meta tags of your blog page (title, keyword and description).
- The meta tags are optimized and generated on autopilot for all the other pages.
- It sets Your URLs as canonical ones automatically.
In other words, a lot of work that would be so much difficult to do on your own is done without you even thinking about it. And it works fine.
The last tool I want to present you is actually a website, called SeoBook.com. On this site you will find a lot of useful tool covering all the features of the first plugin we talked about.
You will find:
- Search analysis and keyword research tools (this last one is probably the most professional one I've ever seen).
- Competitive research (I love this one) and PPC tools.
- A Firefox plugin and a toolbar collecting all the tools available on site right on your browser.
- The site offers lots of free training on how to use all his tools, too, and a blog up to date on the latest SEO news.
To resume, I find these tools so much useful for my online business. They are not the definitive solution to success, but they help me a lot to improve my rankings.
Maybe you can buy a piece of software including all their features as a whole (well, except for the wordpress plugin), but these ones are all free.
Further more, you can test them and draw your own conclusions.
Nothing more to say right now. So good luck, and remember keep an eye out for the next article.
If you are interested in more resources like this ones, regarding SEO, list building and traffic generation, you will find more information on Blog AutoPoster's Blog.
My 3 All-Time Favorite SEO Tools