SEO Tools

Google Analytics - A free to use tool supplied by Google which allows you to get a better feel of how your visitors interact with your website. Find out where and exactly how your visitors are ending up on your site. This is a very powerful tool that will allow you to track and edit your website so that it becomes a higher converter. Very simple to setup and safe to use.

Mint - This is a a tool that is very closely related to Google Analytics, however it does have one major difference in that you can access your statistics in real time [as they happen] where as Analytics will only show you the statistics from 24 hours old or older. But with that plus comes a negative which is that Mint costs $30 per site to track. If you have the money to use this tool I would recommend it and not only that but the site has a great little community that are constantly creating addons for the tool.

SEObook’ Rank Checker - This tool is a firefox browser addon which allows you to easily track and save your progress in the search engines. All you need to do is simply type in your websites URL and then add any keywords you are looking to optimize for and hit the start button. Rank Checker will then go through Google, Yahoo! and MSN to find out which position if any your website is listed. Saves you clicking through each page one by one. This is one of my favourite tools and i highly recommend you guys to use it, the page linked also has a video tutorial on how to setup and use the tool.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool - This tool is again a free tool offered by Google which was initially built for their potential Adwords advertisers, so that they could try get a vague look at how many times each particular keyword specified is searched each month and the amount of competition for that keyword. However as your fast becoming a cunning SEO fox, you’ve already figured out that you don’t have to go ahead with any Google advertising to use this tool, which makes this the perfect spot to plan out which keywords your going to optimize your websites for. This is one of the most important steps in Search Engine Optimization so make sure you don’t overlook this tool!

SEOmoz Tools - Rand Fishkin and his search engine army are constantly attempting to break boundaries in the world of search engine optimization and they’ve offered a variety of tools which can be used for free! Some of their more complex and intelligent tools do require a paid membership but the majority of their tools are free and I recommend you give them a blast.

Link Diagnosis - A tool which allows you to spy on your competition! Type in your competitions website and let this site show you which are their strongest backlinks and for which anchor text they’re being linked with. As you can sort these statistics, you’ll quickly be able to see your competitors keywords and where they got their backlinks to rank where they are.

Google Toolbar - A really quick simple tool that will become one of your browsers best friends. Download this tool bar as per the easy on page instructions and make sure that you activate the ‘PageRank’ of each page when it asks you if you’d like to. If this pop up doesn’t get shown to you, simply add it in the toolbar options once installed. Now I’m not a huge believer in following PageRank as the be all and end all but it certainly helps for you to be able to see individual pages and how their ranking in a simple way like this.

SEO Articles

SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors - I really can’t praise this article enough, it’s bookmarked on all my computers and I make sure I read it every now and again just to make sure the information in this article stays fresh in my mind. This article gathers a huge group of well known SEO’s and asks them to rank each on page factor out of 5. They have then averaged all these totals and created a sort of list of the most important to the least important factors that can determine your search engine rankings. If you skip over this article… your just plain silly!

Great SEO Related Blogs

SEOmoz - The Jack of all trades for search engine marketing which offers SEO services as well as a marketplace listing some of the best SEO services available. It is also a home to one of the best online blogs related to search engine marketing and to top it all off they offer an optional premium account which gives you access to their latest and darkest secrets as well as some very intelligent tools.

Matt Cutts - This guy is the head of Google’ web spam team. In other words he the guy that all SEO’s want to know and talk with about how Google works as he’s pretty much the guy behind it. His blog doesn’t disclose any dark secrets but he discloses some of the fundamentals that all webmasters should be using and you’d be amazed how far the basics will actually get you, a lot of webmasters overlook these. Not only is he the head of the web spam he’s actually a really nice guy who blogs about great topics that you can participate in.

SEObook - The website and blog of Aaron Wall who was actually one of the people who has inspired me in this industry a considerable amount. This blog is a must read to stay up to date with the world of search engine marketing with interviews from some of the big SEO names and general on the ball ongoings with Google’s algorithm.

Yoast - The personal blog of Joost de Valk who is a Dutch online marketer and active Wordpress.com developer. I’m a big fan of using Wordpress.org and some of the plugins and tips that this guy can offer are brilliant and well worth a read. If you are using or are thinking of using Wordpress.org then make sure you visit this site to help optimize it so that Google and your site will be walking hand in hand.

Michael Gray - Also known as Graywolf this site is home to well respected SEO Michael Gray. He has been a guest speaker at some of the largest search engine marketing conferences you can attend to date such as PubCon, SMX and Search Engine Strategies. Some of the tips that Gray offers on his site are a must read for any budding SEO and yes that means you!

Poker SEO - Although this blog is very niche  orientated around poker affiliate webmasters, the majority of the information on this site can be adapted to all area’s. Written and maintained by Randy Ray who is a very well respected member of the poker affiliate Industry who has done search engine optimization work for the current largest online poker site in the world PokerStars.com.

SEO Related Forums

SEO Chat - One of the most visited and active SEO related forums, SEO chat is a great site to be a member of to soak up the mass of information on the boards along with getting the chance to get feedback on your own sites.

Webmaster World - One of my favorite SEO forums mainly because of some of the big names that are members there. Founded by well known SEO Brett Tabke this is by far one of the most active forums with Wikipedia stating it receives over 1 million page views per day.

High Rankings - I’m personally not as active on this forum however it does have some very good content and discussions on there. They’re tagline is ‘Helping Sites Be The Best They Can Be’ and that’s exactly what they’re aiming to do for its members.

Aaron Wall’ SEO Forum - Now this forum is not free and to view it you must pay around $100 per month to gain access to Aarons Full SEO training program. However this forum is well worth it’s money, not only do you get all Aarons training content but you have the ability to speak with Aaron who gives frequent site reviews for free which if you were to hire him could cost you an arm and a leg! Due to the fact you must pay for this forum it really does seperate the men from the boys and I would say it’s worth signing up to.