Bookmark these SEO tools.
SEO is a wide topic – one minute you are researching, the next managing someone’s reputation in the SERP’s. Luckily some of this can be automated, and over the years some sites have positioned themselves as leaders in providing tools that every SEO needs. Hopefully this roundup summarises some of them. Feel free to bookmark. ;o)
404 / 500 detection
Detecting when a link is either broken or giving the wrong status code is an important part in the diagnostics part of an SEO campaign. Time to pull out the automated tools to find these links that are potentially not indexed in Google, or worse, passing incorrect status codes.
HTTP Status code checker – check you are getting the correct status code for pages.
Xenu’s Link sleuth – great for finding 404′s on your website.
Online Broken Link checker – online version of Xenu – doesn’t crawl as deep though.
WordPress Broken Link checker. plugin checks your posts and alerts you to problems.
W3C 404 Link checker tool.
1000 links checked by the Link Tiger.
Sitemaps
A sitemap can help to get your website further indexed in the search engines. There’s no point in having bucket loads of content, if the Big G cant see it. Each of the search engines now share the sitemap protocol, so you can just generate one, and submit to the right place.
Generate Sitemap online – XML Sitemap crawler
Google XML Sitemap generator plugin for WordPress
Dagon Design – alternative site map generator plugin to the above.
Submit Sitemap to Google here, MSN here, and Yahoo here.
Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research is an important part of a site development and promotion as well. I’ve mentioned it before. So here are some of the tools out there that can hopefully help you in finding out what keywords to chase. Some of these tools can also help brainstorm secondary phrases and terms, as its important to mix it up in your copy, and in external link text.
Priority Submit’s research on keywords
Webmaster Toolkit Keyword Research Tool.
Keyword suggestion tool from SEO Chat.
Keyword forecast tool from Microsoft Adcenter
Highposition Keyword research Tool
Keyword Discovery – free api access.
Google Trends – keep an eye on seasonal trends.
Powered by Wordtracker Aaron wall’s keyword tool is great.
Google Sets tool finds related terms
Msn clustering tool
Rank Checking Tools
Rank checking allows you to see progress when you’ve started building up authority and links. Some of these require you to login and add API key’s that collect data over time; others you can visit at various intervals to quickly lookup results at set times.
Market Leap’s Rank checking Tool
The infamous Digital Point rank checker
Search Engine Genie Rank Checker.
Mike Ranking Reports across multiple engines.
Page Rank bot - determines pr across datacenters.
Keyword Density Tools
Keyword density on page is a bit 1999, when the search engines were a bit stupid. I don’t really stress much about keyword density – I’d rather concentrate on off page seo..but a few people still feel that is is relevant. Read here for other SEO opinions on Keyword density. But for those of you who want to knock yourself out.
Analyse on page keyword density with Ranks spider
Rankquest Keyword density tool
SEO Chat Keyword density tool
SEO Plugins WordPress
WordPress has become one of the more popular blogging platforms out there, and with a few SEO tweaks can rank really well organically. The below are some seo plugins for WordPress that can help it along in the right direction.
Joost De Valk’s Meta Robots WordPress plugin
HeadSpace Plugin.
SEO Title tag plugin
All in one SEO Plugin for WordPress
301 Redirection plugin – useful for moving blog posts
Another WordPress Redirect plugin.
Removes common words from your URL slugs.
Search Meter – Record internal search terms.
Page Strength Tools
The ‘moz have pretty much rapped it up with their awesome trifecta tool, which can measure social media, estimate traffic and can be used to find out where your weaknesses lie. PopUri.Us pulls in data from a couple of services to give a feel for site popularity – but isn’t really that serious a tool.
SEOMoz Trifecta – Domain blog and page strength tool.
PopUri.Us – Quickly check popularity
Backlink Tools
Backlink tools can let you see where your competition are picking up links, and if there is low hanging fruit, you’ll be able to pick it up too. They are also useful for sitting back and admiring at your linkbuilding efforts. ;o)
Yahoo Site Explorer – retrieves backlinks to your site.
LinkHounds Yahoo Backlinker tool – filters the results into unique IP
Domain Backlinks Checker. – sorts by first and second level domains
Anchor Text Backlinks Analysis – finds the backlink text that you’ve been linked with.
Link Analysis Tool from Majestic SEO.
Page Speed Tools
Page speed isn’t directly linked to SEO, but a fast site, is a site with a lower bounce rate. Visitors get a better experience, and leave your site with a positive opinion. It also helps to encourage the spiders to crawl your site faster. If you get crawled faster, you break news faster.
Rankquest’s Web Speed Report
Broadband Speed Tester.
Web Page Speed Report
Priority Submits Page Size Extractor
Smush.it from Yahoo compress loads of stuff.
WordPress plugin for Smush.it
Firefox SEO Extensions
Firefox gives talent SEO the processing power of the desktop and client machines meaning that they can often execute faster than online tools. The following firefox SEO tools cover on page highlighting of SEO factors such as link text and no follow attributes.
Firefox seo analysis of current page via Firefox
Aaron Wall SEO plugin for Firefox
Search Status Firefox plugin. Includes No-follow highlighting.
SEO Quake for Firefox plugin.
Bruce Clay Firefox SEM Toolbar.
Rank Checker for Firefox.
User Agent Switcher to detect cloaked content.
SEO Workers Analysis Tool for FF.
RedFly’s Google Global Tool for country specific results.
Pagerank tools
Pagerank is only one of 200 other factors google may use to rank you in the SERPs. If you concentrate too hard on it, you are missing the other important things to take into account. Ultimately this should only be used to determine sites that are worth getting links from and likely to be generating decent traffic – rather than a bragging right.
DigPageRank -checks over 700 datacenters.
Another online pagerank checker.
Page Rank Checker - checks alexa rating / Dmoz / Domain Age amongst others.
Check the Pagerank of your backlinks
Reputation Management
Reputation management allows you to keep an eye on your brand and brandnames across the web. The following tools should help you do that, and may also show interesting patterns and opinions that you’d ordinarily miss.
Who Tweeted your URL’s? Backtweets.
Find out where your competitors comment.
DIY reputation management with Netvibes.
Track conversations on the Web with UberVU
buzzstream monitoring
Twitter brand monitoring tool SplitTweet
Who’s Talking about you?
Facebook Lexicon – Monitor Facebook
Domain Monitoring Tool
AddictoMatic Inhale the Web.
Analytics / Usability Testing
I’ve lumped anaytics and usability tools in together here as there is some overlap. Some of the tools below also track users mousemovements and clicks on a website in real time. This can be really insightful, as it shows things such as site objects which potentially look like buttons, and are getting un-neccessary clicks. It can also highlight other potential problems which are preventing site goals from being met.
Google of Course.
Reinvigorate – Another real time Analytics package
Woopra – Real time tracker.
Userfly – Records mouse movement on a site, and plays back to you.
Robot Replay. Similar to Userfly only FREE!
CrazyEgg – Heat Mapping Analytics package
SilverBack – Usability testing for Mac’s from the guys at clearleft.
Bad Neighbourhood Detection
A bad neighbourhood is a section of the web which is potentially known by Google to be spammy. You should avoid obtaining links from these places to avoid penalties in the SERPs.
Queries Google’s Safe Browsing API.
Neighbourhood checker from Majestic SEO
Compilations
Some sites offer a variety of tools, both commercial and free for SEO research. The following are the sites that I know offer a variety of different tools, and are relatively well known in SEO circles.
Randfish and the SEOMoz Team’s Tools
Bruce Clay’s List of Tools.
Khrindo Free SEO Tools compilation
Aaron Wall’s SEO Tools.
Information Tools
These are just general tools which may be useful for webmasters and developers alike. Still worthy of a mention as some research needs to find out other information.
Domain information – Whois
Visitor IP address / Browser Info. – Great for Web Dev’s too.
Is Google down or is it just me?
A variety of domain lookups etc.
Check your Mx Records online (for mail diagnostics).
Reverse IP Lookup – find other domains on the same IP Address.
Whats that server running and uptime monitoring at Netcraft.
Estimate Web Traffic with Web Traffic 24
More competitor analysis tools over here. (shameless plug)
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About the Author (Author Profile)
Paul is a regular 28 year old web bloke / programmer with a penchant for online marketing. This blog is a personal outlet, with an eclectic mix of articles.Subscribe
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- 7 strategic content tips to help your website grow | October 20, 2010
WOW…
Thank you a lot Paul, this is a great resource :)
No problem Bruno – glad you enjoyed.
and thanks for the kind words!
Paul
Amazing! How many years did it take for you to collect all these? [lol]
Just kept a nice organised bookmark list to compile this Marius. Simple as. ;o)
nice outframe of things – better content written – highly appreciated
Nice post! but you fogot about mazecore – http://monitor.mazecore.com
Great post Paul.
Quick question: What about web hosting companies? I read somewhere that there is a certain reputation hierarchy to hosting companies which can directly affect an individual website hosted with them. A tarnished host = lower web rank.
Where I can find more info or which hosting companies do you recommend?
Thanks!
Hi Edward,
Google doesn’t really pay much attention to that – sounds like you’ve been reading myths.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsSwqo16C8s
This Video from Google’s Matt Cutts talks about this. HTH,
Regards,
Paul.
Learn something new everyday.
Thanks so much. I appreciate this.
RE: hosting companies – make sure you read the contract thoroughy… ensure that you get all the services you think you’ll get!