The best tools for SEO

Search Engine Optimisation, SEO is a doing word, a verb. In terms of basic grammar it goes along with building, cleaning or reinforcing. Like those actions SEO is a task that requires tools. While many parts of SEO are purely common sense, to make your SEO strategy the strongest and best it can be you need to spend some time getting familiar with the tools of the trade.

As a first point of call you need to be familiar with the words and phrases used by your customers. A certain amount of keyword research can be done within Google or Bing but the real powerhouse tool is WordTracker. This program allows you to test keywords for their KEI (the ratio between how many times that key phrase is searched and the number of websites competing for this phrase) and also to test the efficiency of alternate keywords and phrases.

Because Search Engines are always altering their algorithms SEO is a very mutable process with few specific rules. One way to establish what works is by keeping an eye on the sites that are always at the top, especially if they are your competitors. There are tools available such as SEO Elite that will show you who is linking to these sites and the anchor text used in their linking campaign. This should give you insight into their strategy and maybe even reveal some tactical holes that you can exploit.

Because all SEO relies on search engines reading your site it is best to write your code in such a way that the web crawlers can understand it easily. The easiest way to ensure that this is the case is to ensure that the site is Web Standards Compliant. Again the compliancy standard is quite mutable so it pays to use the tools provided by the organisations responsible for the Web Standard.

Finally your site is ready. Or is it? like all good jobs the devil is in the detail and the detail is in the finishing and checking. The SEO Junkies Toolbar allows you to strip away all the visual elements of a site, taking away all the niceties required for a human to appreciate your information and letting you see your site as the search engine robots that crawl the web see it. This way you can check your keywords are in the right place, that all your headers are working for you and that all the information you need to be indexed is easily accessible.

You can get even more knowledge by signing up for one of our SEO training days, give SEO Junkies a call to find out more