What are your top 10 SEO tools?

[heatseeker]

Hello All,

Let's pretend you are running a small Mom&Pop type web site where you're trying to make a living online. What are the top 10 SEO tools you would consider most useful? Perhaps a tool showing you what do people search for (to help you find and narrow your niche); perhaps a tool to identify what competition is there for your selection of keywords; or is it something like title and meta tags generator and optimizer; or perhaps a tool to spy on your online competition?

Anything goes. From finding good keywords with little to none competition to web server log analyzers, to search engine digging (find your and your competitors position), etc.

Sincerely,
Catalin IONESCU
Technical Vision Software Ltd.
Software development outsourcing made easy

[mizambar]

Catalin,

I don't really have a top ten. The main tool that I use (and probably everyone else as well) is the Overture tool to look up search requests:

http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ays/index.jhtml

I would definitely be interested in seeing what other people use. Maybe you also should post this question in the Search Engine Discussion Forum.

Scott

[heatseeker]

Scott,

Yes, I know and use the Overture keyword tracking tool. By the way, an easier way to directly reach the back-end engine is at http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ory/suggestion

It loads only the bare minimum, no Flash ads and the rest.

I imagine after you search a few keywords in Overture you'd go and study the competition a bit for your chosen ones. After that you go buy out a domain name, preferably one that contains one or more keywords stuffed in, and that's where another round of searches is in order until you find one that's both available and suitable.

So far I see 3 processes that can cost a lot of time and that can be automated from a programmer point of view. For me these 3 steps are the beginning of a new site, and I find it tedious to do it manually again and again, wasting hours better spent focusing on marketing the site.

I'd include 3 tools that help me:
1. Find good keywords that are searched;
2. With little to none competition;
3. And with a good domain name
amongst the Top 10. Using the right tools, each of the above processes shouldn't take more than a couple minutes to finish.

P.S. I'd cross-post the same question to Search Engine Discussion Forum if I knew cross-posting is allowed. I suppose this thread needs maximum exposure to turn into something useful, perhaps even making it into WPW newsletter ;-) Moderators? Help? :-)

Sincerely,
Catalin IONESCU
Technical Vision Software Ltd.
Software development outsourcing made easy

[mizambar]

Maybe if we keep writing each other, people will start to notice the discussion :-)


I know that there are tons of tools that speed up the research process. Unfortunately, I don't have the budget to afford many of these tools...

BTW, I am pretty sure cross posting is allowed. I see it all the time...

Scott

[heatseeker]

Scott,

I know most of us run on really tight development and advertising budgets. What if I could offer you all the tools you need to develop your online presence for only $95? How about for $65? All the tools I mentioned that help you search for keywords, analyze competition, find a suitable domain name, spy on your competition, build and maintain a linking campaign, analyze and profile your visitors and many more?

Now, I don't say I can offer all these right now, but what if I could at some point in future? Would less than $100 be a fair price for all the above tools, and many more to be added constantly, with free upgrades and life time support?

I'll check on the forum rules about cross-posting.

Sincerely,
Catalin IONESCU
Technical Vision Software Ltd.
Software development outsourcing made easy

[jomariet]

But will your tool write the content? Whatever else you do to SEO your site, without well written content you are unlikely to achieve your goals.

A "Site Writer" - now that would be interesting!

JM

www.crucibledesigns.com

[heatseeker]

Jo,

Unfortunately the tools I am seeking don't write content. That would be the user job ;-)

But what they can do is free up a large amount of time otherwise spent in daunting tasks so you have more time to concentrate on writing content. Repeated and boring tasks are something I, lazy as I am, want to avoid by building replacement tools such as the ones I am trying to identify. Writing content I find to be creative and better left to human brains.

Sincerely,
Catalin IONESCU
Technical Vision Software Ltd.
Software development outsourcing made easy

[DarrenC]

I use a set of free tools from the DigitalPoint website www.digitalpoint.com which I have to say has saved me HOURS of work every day!

[bloodxus]

My top SEO tool for the last month has been a program called "Traffic Equalizer". If you guys and gals haven't heard about it, here is what it does:
Creates content rich pages from a keyword list that you supply. I was skeptical at first until i tried it. Google listed about 3,000 of my pages within the first two weeks and the targeted traffic was superb! The program costs about $150. Tell ya what i'll do. If someone wants to see how it can affect your targeted traffic, i will help you out and make pages for you. All I ask is like 10 bucks for my time. I can create as many pages as you want with links to your main page ect... Email me at allfree29@hotmail.com so we can talk about it.
Have a good day,
James

[HellaCooL]

The best SEO tool you will find is this and other forums that deal with the issue. I have never used any tools and managed, all by my self, to in four months get my website on the first page of Google for a very competitive keyword.
BTW I use keyword density analyzer http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm to see how well I optimized my website.