The catch-all term "SEO" is a bit misleading. This is because search engine optimization is actually the result of many different practices that are all done with one goal in mind: to improve the organic search result ranking of your website and its individual pages.
But to succeed in doing this, you can't just optimize the content of your site to utilize the keywords most likely to be used by your target audience; you must also work on the architecture of your site, research, analyze, track, test and repeat. Oh, and if you want to be successful across the Web, that often means that you have to optimize for all of the major search engines, not just Google.
For those Web businesses without big, dedicated IT teams (read: most of them), this can be time consuming and difficult to manage, but that's why humans created tools, right? Keep reading for a big list of SEO tools that includes everything from webmaster tools to keyword checkers to domain tools and beyond. Google SEO Tools
Since we're talking about something search related, Google is the obvious place to start. The Internet giant offers a variety of different, independent SEO-focused solutions, including Google Webmaster Tools, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool (and a YouTube keyword tool), Google Insights, Google Real Time Insights Finder, Google Page Speed Online and, of course, good old Google Analytics. The company's offerings rank among the best free SEO tools available. I think it's safe to say that Google knows what it's doing when it comes to search.
This tool specializes in link analysis. Users enter their desired URL to see the number of backlinks attached to it, as well as each one's type (e.g. text, no-follow, redirect, image or frame), referring IPs and domains.
With both free and premium webmaster tools, SEO Book offers a massive suite of capabilities, including a keyword suggestion tool, keyword list generator, keyword list cleaner, a meta tag generator, a link suggestion tool, keyword density analyzer, a page comparison tool and even a typo generator, among many others.
Users can run a free website review with this tool, which then provides them with tips on how to improve their SEO efforts and even find the right SEO company for their needs.
SEO Doctor is a Firefox extension that provides users with a brief overview of their site by looking at all of the elements that pertain to search engine optimization. It then alerts the user of where improvements need to be made to improve its rank based on the current algorithm requirements.
This is a popular free Web analytics solution that lets users study their websites to see how well it meets SEO standards.
In order keep people from directly copying another's content for use on their site, Tynt SEO places a piece of code on every single page on a site. Each time text or an image gets copied, it's automatically tagged with an attribution link back to the original Web page, so that the source site is always given a backlink when its content is copied elsewhere.
If you're just looking to check the keyword density of a page on your site, Ranks.nl is a great tool. And in addition to its Keyword Density Analyzer, it also has an Article Analyzer, Keyword Proximity Analyzer, Search Engine Comparison Tool and other useful SEO solutions.
To stay competitive with Google, Microsoft released its SEO Toolkit as Bing's answer to all of Google's comprehensive webmaster and keyword tools. It analyzes websites based on Bing's search engine algorithm, and it can tell users how fast their websites are so that they can know if it is performing up to par.
This is a pretty comprehensive suite of SEO tools for not just search engine optimization, but also website analysis and research. getRank tools include website rank checkers, link tools, keyword tools, header/tag tools, search engine tools, IP tools, source code tools and many more.
With the free version of SEMRush, users can input up to 10 queries a day. The solution analyzes domains and returns a listing of organic keywords, potential competitors, ad suggestions and more.
Here is a suite of SEO tools that can analyze meta tags, link popularity, page rank, keywords positions, search engine saturation, page keywords and keyword density, and also offer users keyword suggestions.
SEOquake is great because it works seamlessly with all of the major Web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox and even Internet Explorer. The tool will gather information about a user's Web pages and then arrange them by priority, which is decided by the keyword density of each page.
SEOrush provides an opportunity for users to get a free report on their URLs, as well as the URLs of their competitors. It will provide them with on-page SEO and off-page SEO analysis, plus information on their social presence, indexed pages, validation, meta information, standard domain information and rankings.
Users can quickly and efficiently evaluate their SEO practices and social visibility with LinkVendor's suite of Web analysis, keyword server, domain and, of course, link tools, among others.
The Search Engine Genie is a totally free service that is jam-packed with more than 100 tools that help users optimize their sites for the Big Three search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing). This includes, but certainly isn't limited to, rank checkers, domain age checkers, backlink analyzers, a Google datacenter checker, JavaScript tools, keyword tools, an HTML validator, page comparison tools and much more.
Xenu's Link Sleuth tool works like a spider and analyzes a website to see if it has endless loops, broken links, redirect detections and much more.
After users simply enter the URL they want to check out, BROWSEO will create a "search engine version" of the site that lets them see the site the same way Google does when it's crawling it, so that they can identify the faults and see what needs added, subtracted or enhanced on their site.
One of the more comprehensive suites of SEO tools on the Web belongs to SEOmoz. Though it's one of the few paid packages on the list, it can certainly be worth the money if one is in need of a heavy-duty SEO solution. Users can analyze keywords, research backlinks, do on-page analysis, identify accessibility issues and track their rankings from within one easy-to-use platform.
