If you’re a search engine optimization expert, you know how important SEO tools are to your day-to-day optimization efforts. Keyword suggestion tools, inbound link analysis software and SERP checkers are essential for keyword research, keyword expansion, link building and monitoring your website’s position changes in search results.
The good news is that search engine marketers don’t have to pay for these tools as there are a number of very effective free SEO tools to choose from on the web. Here is my list of five free SEO tools that I use every day. Hopefully you can find some tools in the list to add to your tool arsenal.
SEO for Firefox – This free tool is a plugin for Firefox by SEO Book. It integrates seamlessly with the Google SERPs to provide tremendous insight into search engine optimization metrics like toolbar PageRank, Twitter mentions, and how many domain and deep-page links my site received. SEO for Firefox also shows which links on a webpage are “nofollow” (highlighted in red), which is a real time saver for link building and link analysis. Other cool features include social bookmark count, Alexa rank, cache date, and Wikipedia citations.
Majestic SEO – If you are link building, this is an invaluable search engine optimization tool for measuring link acquisition. A great feature is the “daily update” which gives you a daily journal of all your new incoming links. Another cool example of Majestic SEO is some nifty tools to help you track your website’s link profile growth with a variety of different cool graphs.
Rank Checker – If you’re obsessed with page rankings like me, then Rank Checker is a must-have search tool. SEO Book’s Rank Checker gives you daily rank updates from Google, Yahoo, and Bing simultaneously. You can export data to Excel and integrate it into a keyword ranking report for your search engine marketing clients. Rank Checker also lets you add multiple keywords at once and save those keyword lists as individual presets, so you don’t have to keep typing the same keywords.
Yahoo link domain – I like to use Yahoo Link Domain to analyze inbound links to my website. Yahoo Link Domain is also useful for examining your competitors’ link profiles to find link opportunities for your own websites. If you are using SEO for Firefox plugin, you can also export Yahoo link domain results to Excel by clicking on the “100” link and then clicking on the “CSV” link to view your competitor’s link profile to be further broken down and investigated.
Google Webmaster Tools – Google’s Webmaster Tools can give you some valuable insights into key performance metrics and your site’s visibility in search results. Features like organic click-through rates on your top 100 keywords and the ability to take inventory of all your internal links really help you optimize your organic search marketing efforts.
Here you go. These five free SEO tools are some of the best you can find on the web. I use each of these tools on a daily basis to make my optimization efforts more effective and efficient and to become a better search engine marketer.
