SEO Tools

Here are links to some of the tools that I use frequently for SEO:

Keyword Research Tools

• Microsoft adCenter Labs – A collection of interesting tools to help with keyword research.  Some examples include a tool that shows predicted demographics for given keywords, entry and exit keywords and frequent misspellings for keywords.
• Touchgraph – Enter a keyword or URL and this tool will return a graphical representation of sites that are related to your entry.
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool – Is this an AdWords tool?  Yes.  Do I still use it for SEO?  Yes.  Even though this tool is normally for paid search, I still like to use it to see how traffic volume for one keyword compares relative to another keyword and not by taking the data as absolute metrics.
• Keyword Geotargeting Tool – Input your keyword and your geographic targeting information and this tool will wrap your keyword with that information.
• Competition Finder Tool – Use this tool to see how many results are returned in Google for the keyword that you enter.  Returns results for the keyword, as well as intitle and inanchor results.
• The Shorter Thesaurus – Input your keyword and this tool returns a list of synonyms that are shorter than your original keyword.

Link Tools

• Web Workshop’s PageRank Calculator – A great tool that lets me see how PageRank flows though a site based on the parameters that I specify.  Want to see how internal and external linking can effect your site’s PageRank?  This is the tool for you.

Site Architecture Tools

• Pingdom Full Page Test – Allows me to see how long it is taking a landing page to load, and even breaks down each element so I can see exactly what is slowing down the load time.
• Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer – I use this tool primarily to see what header response is returned for a given URL.  This tool also provides a lot of additional information, such as the user agent, host IP address, and even the source code for the page.
• Webconf’s Search Engine Spider Simulator – This tool lets me see what the search engine spider sees.  It helps me to identify what content is getting displayed to the search engines and what content is getting left out.
• Cloaking Detector Tool – This tool lets me see what a site is showing to users and what it is showing to the search engines.
• Sitemap Building Generator – This is a pretty robust tool for generating sitemaps, especially considering the fact that it is free.  Runs on Java.