A lot of business owners tend to invest their time and effort into the Internet marketing and search engine optimization. Oftentimes, we are asked a question, "What are the most popular SEO tools that can be used to optimize a website?" In this blog post, we will recommend some of the widely used, relevant and effective SEO tools (some are free and some are paid) that can be used for inbound marketing. These tools are widely used by both SEO dummies and SEO evangelists.
Web Analytics Tool
Every SEO campaign requires a web analytics tool to monitor the progress of a SEO campaign. There is a number of various web analytics tools that can be used. We recommend Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics). This SEO tool is free to use.
Keyword Research Tool
An SEO campaign should have a set of carefully selected keywords that are used to optimize the website. Keyword research can be done by trying to put yourself into the shoes of those who will use search engines to find your business/product or by using statistical (or social media) data to determine which keywords are the most popular and which keywords are the least competitive. We recommend Wordtracker for keyword research (www.wordtracker.com). This is a paid SEO tool.
Sitemap Generator Tool
Having a nicely built sitemap for search engine robots that index your website is always a good practice. Even though it is possible to manually create sitemap.xml files, using a third party sitemap builder can save a lot of time and get the job done right. We recommend using www.xml-sitemaps.com. This SEO tool is free to use.
Website Optimizer Tool
Effective SEO requires having a properly programmed and designed website. Webmasters should keep in mind that they should pay attention to things like duplicate meta and title tags, proper redirects and robots.txt files as well as many other aspects of SEO. We recommend Google Webmaster tool (www.google.com/webmasters) for not only keeping track of different website crawling issues, but also for monitoring the conversion/clickthrough rates for chosen keywords. This SEO tool is free to use.
Other Useful SEO Tools
4 basic SEO tools listed above will get you started with SEO. However, as you progress, you may want to check out SEOmoz tools (www.seomoz.org/tools) or read about our 38 free online SEO tools to get you to the next level. And no matter how much you think you know in SEO, we always recommend to read all major SEO related blogs and forums to keep updated of new development in the SEO and Internet marketing realms.