Seo Blog | Search Engine Marketing News

Different Search Engine Optimisation tools hold different meanings for different web masters and bloggers, and it is really difficult to compile a list of “the best SEO tools”. Still, most of the SEO requirements are generic in nature, for instance, your typical Search Engine Optimisation campaign entails:

• Optimised source code
• Keyword analysis
• SEO-optimised content
• Meta tags analysis
• Search engine submissions and monitoring
• Getting quality back links

I’ll be listing here the best SEO tools you can use to handle the Search Engine Optimisation tasks mentioned above.

Source code validation

From the SEO perspective it is very important to have clean, validated markup. The two online tools that help you write validated markup are:

• The W3C Markup Validation Service
• WDG HTML Validator

Keyword analysis

It is very critical to know what are the right keywords for you. Getting tons of traffic for wrong keywords can prove to be a costly affair both in terms of lost business and bandwidth costs. Here are some tools you can use to find out what are the right tools for you:

• KeywordDiscovery.com Keyword Research Tool
• Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Overture Keyword Tool
• WordTracker Keyword Service
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

Search Engine Optimised content

Although it is very hard to find a tool that writes optimised content for you, you can use some tools to gauge the keyword density of your content. Here are a few online tools that can help you check your keyword density.

• Linkvendor KeyWord Density Tool
• Webconfs Keyword Density Checker
• SEOChat Keyword Density Tool

Meta tags analysis

Some say meta tags are important and some say they are no longer important. Well, why take chances. Properly using meta tags, using the right meta tags with right information in them, and using them in right manner doesn’t harm. The following tells help you analyse your meta tags.

• SEOChat Advanced Meta Tag Generator
• Web Master Toolkit Meta Tag Generator
• RankRequest Meta Tag Analyzer

Search engine submissions and monitoring

For search engine submissions and monitoring I think the best tool is hard work. Automated tools are not recommended to submit your website to various search engines and online directories. So for search engine submissions I think the best tool is you.

Link popularity

Link popularity has become a potent SEO tool. It’s always been around in the form of those thousands of link exchange programs but now the search engines have developed more sophisticated algorithms to measure genuine link popularity. Hence the web masters and bloggers take their link popularity campaigns very seriously. Here are some online tools you can use to track your link popularity.

• Submit Express Link Popularity Check
• Web Master Tool Link Popularity Check
• AddPro Link Popularity Check
• SEO Chat Link Popularity Check

This is going to be a constantly evolving list as I’ll be adding more links here as I come across them, so either bookmark this post or add it your favorite bookmarking website.

Also, if you have any SEO tools that you think I should check out and include in this list, please let me know.

Website Traffic Analysis

I don’t know how I missed Matt Cutts’ video on Webmaster Central Blog on removing your content from Google. Anyway it’s not too late to give a summary of the talk especially since it is very useful.

There are several options for removing your content from Google although not all options are very good. Dan, at Doublespark-SEO blog, recently discussed two options, robots.txt file and the nofollow attribute. To learn more about both options please read the posts there. The great thing about Matt Cutts’ talk is that I preferred the robots.txt method before, but now after listening to the talk, it simply makes sense to use the two methods he favored.

Best Options:

• .htaccess - Use this to password protect a directory. This method is really good for preventing a page/directory from being indexed since Google bot won’t even attempt to guess the password and so won’t even be able to crawl the page.
• URL Removal Tool - The URL removal tool in Google’s Webmaster console is the best option for removing pages that are already indexed. In case you make a mistake (like removing your entire domain) you can simply revoke it instead of having to email Google about the mistake.

Other options:

• robots.txt - An ok option but sometimes pages still get referenced by Google. Make sure the robots.txt file is error-free by testing it first using Webmaster Tools.
• noindex - Good but if Google sees a link to the page and does not crawl the page yet it might reference the link since it hasn’t read the noindex meta tag yet and so won’t know that the page shouldn’t be indexed. The page if crawled will not be indexed at all. However, MSN and Yahoo still references those pages.
• nofollow - Not a good option. Unless you can be sure that all links to the page has a nofollow tag, then bots can still still follow other links to the page and thus index the page that way.
• not linking to the page at all - Very poor option. Even if you don’t link to the page someone else might accidentally link to that page. Though a remote possibility, it can happen. Aside from that if someone surf’s the page and his referrer settings are on then the bot will be able to find the page through that.