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Software Review: Beef Up
Your Web Site's Search Ratings
by Heather Steele, LSC member
I’ve recently taken on the role of Web Site Administrator for my company, and I wanted to learn more about how to drive searchers on the Web to our site.
Part of my research included visiting the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association’s quarterly meeting on October 15th. The presentation topic was “51 Essential SEM Tools You Can Use,” which is exactly the information they gave us. The night was a rapid-fire explanation of 51 (mostly free) tools everyone can use to learn more about their Web sites.
I wanted to share this list of tools with you all. Take some time to check them out. An hour of poking around with the reporting tools showed me more about our Web site than I had learned after months of being the Administrator.
DFW SEM Association 51 Essential SEM Tools
| Tool / Location | Function | Price |
|---|---|---|
SEO Digger |
Ranking report tool, shows common search terms for your site | Free |
| Touch Graph www.touchgraph.com |
Provides visual link maps | Free |
| Yahoo! Site Explorer | Shows back links and indexed pages for your site | Free |
| Aaron Wall's SEO Tool Bar tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html |
Works through Firefox |
Free |
| Trellian's Keyword Discovery www.keyworddiscovery.com |
Provides keywords and brainstorming tools using real data from popular search engines | $69.95/mo. |
| We Build Pages’ Toolset | Back link and anchor text tools Keyword frequency tool Spider viewer |
Free |
| Deep Link Ratio Checker | Shows deep link ration of a site: inbound hits not to home page | Free |
| Web Confs webconfs.com |
Checks keyword density Creates tag clouds |
Free |
| VeriClix www.vericlix.com/ |
Pay-per-click reporting Auditing tools Fraud monitoring |
Free |
| Data Center Search Tool seocritique.com/ datacentertool/ |
Provides Google search results across data | Free |
| Google Website Optimizer services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/ |
Tool through adwords testing tool | Free |
| Google Adwords Editor | Easy way to update your adwords for Google | Free |
| Web Position 4 | Checks natural search engine rankings | $149/ 5 domains |
| Agent Web Ranking | Similar to Web Position 4 | |
| OptiLink | Checks natural search engine rankings | |
| Advanced web ranking advancedwebranking.com/ |
Mimics a user as it checks natural search engine rankings | $99–399 |
| Advanced Link Manager advancedlinkmanager.com/ |
Shows how links evolve over time Lets you compare your site to competitors |
$59–149 |
| Combinewords.com combinewords.com/ |
Keyword list expansion tool | Free |
| Poodle Predictor Gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go |
Shows what your site will look like in a live search engine result | Free |
| Server Header Checkers www.webrankinfo.com/ |
Checks URLs and redirects | Free |
| SEO Quake www.seoquake.com |
Provides search engine parameters (Back links, Indexed Pages, Alexa rank) Lets you download search engine parameters into Excel |
Free |
| Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ |
Provides popularity numbers from Yahoo Brainstorming tool |
Free |
| Hitwise.com hitwise.com |
Competitive insights on keywords | $60,000/yr. |
| WordTracker.com WordTracker.com |
Provides new keyword ideas | $299/yr |
| Microsoft adCenter Tools adlab.microsoft.com |
Toolbox of advertising and keyword tools Learn more about user intent behind keywords |
Free |
| Quintera.com quintera.com/ |
Visual search engine tool | Free |
| Google Cheat Sheet | Reference guide to Google search products | Free |
| Google Site Map Generator www.xml-sitemaps.com/index.php |
Spiders your site and creates an XML site map Automatically updates based on parameters you set |
Free |
| Market Leap marketleap.com/siteindex/default.htm |
Back link checking tool Search engine saturation reports |
Free |
| Archive.org www.archive.org/index.php |
Historical Web page archive View your Web page from 10 years ago |
Free |
| W3 Code Validator webxact2.watchfire.com/report.asp |
Checks your code for errors | Free |
| Isapi rewrite | Rewrites URLs to be search engine friendly | |
| Joost de Valk’s non-personalized results plugin | ||
| Page Rank Bot www.seo4fun.com/php/pagerankbot.php |
Provides site-wide page rank filtration More control over internal distribution |
Free |
| Google Toolbar | Checks page rank Keyword highlighting tool |
Free |
| Google Webmaster Central www.google.com/webmasters |
Many tools for checking your site | Free |
| Google Analytics www.google.com/analytics/ |
Tracks where visitors come from and how they interact with your site Some privacy issues with this tool |
Free |
| Google Base base.google.com/ |
Helps searches find what you sell | Free |
| Ranks.nl ranks.nl/ |
Shows side-by-side Web site rankings | Free |
| Google Traffic Estimator adwords.google.com/select/trafficestimatorsandbox |
Traffic estimates of keywords Gives quick ballpark numbers |
Free |
| Google Adwords Keyword Tool adwords.google.com/select/Login |
Keyword ideas Brainstorming tool |
Free |
| Google Suggests (Included in Google toolbar) |
Brainstorming tool | Free |
| Yahoo search assist (Included in Yahoo toolbar) |
Brainstorming tool | Free |
| Click Tracks Clicktracks.com |
Search analytics tool | $79/mo. and up |
| Leadmaverick.com leadmaverick.com/ |
Full analytics Lead generation Great for local business Lets small business quickly create optimized Web sites |
Free to certified re-sellers |
| Bruce Clay SE Relationship Chart www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf |
Visual diagram of SE distribution relationships | Free |
| CrazyEgg.com crazyegg.com/ |
Landing page design tool | Free |
| Aspin.com aspin.com/ |
Keyword analyzer | Free |