Bruce Clay has been giving away SEO advice for years, and as a result his site is rich with expert advice on the entire process of optimization, from how to build a site that is optimized from the start to promotion tactics for a site that needs a search engine boost. You'll also find free and fee-based tools such as keyword density analyzers and competition ranking reports. No SEO maven should be without his industry-beloved Search Engine Relationship Chart, which is a free PDF suitable for color printing (just the thing for that bare spot on your wall) that tracks the myriad, murky and ever-changing relationships between search engines and directories.
Some of the "Fantomaster's" tools and tips are frowned upon by search engines. However, Ralph Tegtmeier (AKA Fantomaster) is, probably, one of the most technically adept, professional search engine optimizers around. His new Fantomas ShadowMaker software is described as "heavy duty industrial-strength cloaking - generating 100% relevant and unique content..." This can be scary stuff in the hands of the wrong person. But, in the same way as the Surgeon General infers smoking CAN kill you - not WILL kill you... you're grown-ups, you know the risks - you decide. Excellent gratis newsletter here too, by the way.
It's Google’s technology playground! This is where Google posts ideas that "aren’t quite ready for prime time" and asks for your feedback. Google News Alerts and the Google Glossary are graduates of the Google Labs, while (at the time of this writing) a Google Deskbar and Google's search by location feature are in the lab testing phase. If you're a search engine fan, you owe it to yourself to see what's cookin' in the Lab.
Even if the role of search engine optimizer is just one of many of your Internet marketing hats, you can still reference and even belong to Google Webmaster Central. This is your one-stop shop for from-the-source information about how Google crawls and indexes websites. Google even provides tools that will enable you to diagnose crawling issues, study statistics on how your site is doing in Google's index and tell Google exactly how you'd like your site to be crawled and indexed. To access the information, you need to verify that you are the site owner, which means that you need to either add a special metatag to your site's index file (which Google will look for), or you need to upload an HTML file to your site with a specific file name (which Google will supply for you). It's all very SEO confidential, but if you are serious about taking your Google optimization to the next level this is an excellent way to do so. Tip: Don't try to impress anybody by talking about this at a cocktail party.
This tool reveals in real time the most promising yet least utilized keywords that drive traffic to your site organically (ie., from organic search results as opposed to PPC advertising). It is based on the "long tail" economic concept, which states that the collective demand for less-popular items can exceed the demand for all the most popular items added together. Therefore, by zeroing in on the specific keyword phrases that drive organic traffic to your site and taking advantage of this knowledge by doing more within your site via content and SEO to support those specific keyword phrases, the more highly qualified organic traffic you will drive to your site.
That means you potentially spend less money on pay-per-click advertising. To put HitTail in action you cut and paste some code into your site. At the time of writing, some HitTail services were complimentary; others were available with a paid subscription.
Not all inbound links to your website are created equal. Did you know that the more inbound links your site has from .edu and .gov domains and certain human-edited website directories, the better your search engine standings will be? The quality of the sites linking into your site is, not surprisingly, called your "Inbound Link Quality (ILQ)". Search engines have been assessing that factor for quite some time. For example, they give your site more credence if major authority hub sites in your topic category link in to your site. In the case of this tool, the theory is that links coming in to your site from educational or governmental sites or from human-edited Web directories such as the Yahoo! directory or DMOZ.org cannot be purchased and used to manipulate the search engine system. This tool shows the number of inbound .edu, .gov and website directory links your site (or any URL entered) has and assigns an ILQ score for that URL based upon a proprietary weighted system (each .edu inbound link gets 45 points, each .gov inbound link gets 67 points, etc.).
Think of this site as a right-brained keyword density analysis tool. Enter any URL, and this tool will show you a visual collage of the keywords found in that site. Some of the keywords are in larger fonts and some of the keywords are in smaller fonts. The keywords in larger fonts have a higher "keyword density", meaning that they occur more frequently in that website. Ideally, your preferred keywords should be the largest words in your site's keyword cloud. For example, a check of the keyword cloud for the website of Web Digest For Marketers (WDFM) shows the words "marketing", "Internet", "online" and "tools" in enormous fonts, whereas other less prevalent (yet still important) keywords such as "Larry" and "Chase" appear in slightly smaller fonts. ;)
You may want your website to rank #1 in Google for the keyword phrase "luxury car" just as much as this editor wants to win the lottery. In other words, what you want simply may not be possible based upon your competition, your budget and other pesky details. This tool will tell you just how difficult it would be to rank within the top 10 results for specific keywords or keyword phrases, based upon a percentage score. The higher the percentage, the more difficult it will be. Luxury car? 74%. Keep dreaming.
This keyword research tool (formerly Trellian) allows you to find the most popular keywords used by the general searching public for your type of business, product or service so you can optimize your site for the right keywords. For example, this editor recently conducted a keyword optimization strategy for an executive recruiter. The company could have spent lots of time and resources optimizing its site for keywords such as "recruiter" and "search firm", but according to keyword research the most popular keyword in that area of business is "jobs"... so why bother optimizing for keywords that far fewer people will use to find the site? The data is compiled from over 26 billion searches done in the last 12 months within 180 different search engines. There is a complimentary trial available for this subscription-based service. Once at this site, you may want to also look at the subscription-based competitive intelligence services, where you can analyze which keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic to their sites via both PPC (pay-per-click) and organic SEO (search engine optimization) campaigns. It appears at the time of writing that the fee is $250(US) per year for each competitor site you wish to track.
Many search engines offer a "behind-the-scenes" look at what people are actually searching for. How is this helpful? By tapping into the Web surfer zeitgeist, you can add content and metatags to your site that may boost your search engine rankings. Lycos is notable because it supplies daily editorial ponderings on the why and wherefore of popular searches (in addition to straightforward keyword lists). This is an invaluable insight into consumer interests, thereby indicating marketing trends. You'll also find various niche Top 10 lists, such as the Top 10 Athletes, Top 10 Music Artists and Top 10 European nations most frequently searched for by Lycos users.