When trying to fix something, do you rely mostly on your own capabilities, or do you use tools to help you do a much better job? I guess your answer is “Of course I use tools!”, because, let’s face it – sometimes, we all need some help and a shortcut here and there. Like a friend in our time of need, tools are there to help us improve and fix things.

In the SEO field, instead of hammers and corkscrews, we use a bunch of different SEO tools that help us get the job done – faster and better. But here’s a little problem – there are so many SEO tools out there, free and paid, and it’s so hard to figure out which tools are good and which tools are not worth the time or the money. Here are 8 SEO tools we absolutely love and cannot live without:

1. Google’s Free Keyword Tool
Google’s external keyword tool great when it comes to keyword research. It’s free, and it gives keyword ideas which are based on actual Google search queries. When you type in a keyword, you get a list of keywords that are related to the term you’re looking for. Aside from the related keywords, Google serves you the following information:
– Estimated Average Cost-Per-Click
– Advertiser Competition
– Local Search Volume
– Global Monthly Search Volume
– Search Volume Trends
– etc.

2. SEOBook’s SEOToolbar
In my opinion (and thousands of others!), Aaron Wall’s SEOBook is one of the best training and SEO sites on the web. The site offers a free, downloadable SEOToolbar which gives you a lot of helpful information about a particular website:
– PageRank
– Domain Age
– Cache Date
– Number of Cached Pages
– Number of Backlinks in Yahoo!
– Number of Links of Every Individual Page on the Site
– Number of .edu Links
– Number of .gov Links
– and much, much more!

3. SEO-Browser
I like this tool because it helps you see any given site from the search engines’ point of view. Just type in your URL and see what spiders see once they land on your site!

4. Compete.com
Compete.com shows you traffic trends for competing websites. The best thing about this tool, in my opinion, is the option to compare two or more websites side by side. It gives you site traffic history and competitive analytics that is much needed in the SEO industry.

5. OpenSiteExplorer
OpenSiteExplorer is one of tools that SEOMoz offers and it gives you a complete link data you HAVE to know. This tool is powered by Linkscape, SEOmoz’s web index. Here are some of the link data OpenSiteExplorer shows:
– Number of Links Pointing to Your Site
– Anchor Text Used When Linking to Your Site
– Number of Different Domains That Point to Your Site
– and much more!

6. Archive.org
Archive.org is not a tool, but a digital library offering free access to books, movies & music, and 150 billion+ archived web pages. We like to use this site as a tool, as it helps us determine the age of any given website, gives us an overview of how the site looked in the past, and everything else you’d like to know about a site’s past.

7. Xenu’s Link Sleuth
Xenu is a free tool, which many of us consider to be a free detective. It acts as a spider, and helps you determine whether a site has any broken links, endless loops etc. It was written by Tilman Hausherr.

8. Rank Check Tool: You
Now, time to let go of SEO tools. Although there are many, many great rank checking tools on the web that might save you some time and nerves, we always do all of our ranking checks manually. Is it time consuming? Yes.
But in my opinion, it’s worth it. I found that many automated rank checking tools don’t give me exact rankings – some people are satisfied with knowing only approximate rank of their keywords. Not me. I like to check it all manually. That’s why I suggest you ditch rank checking tools, roll up your sleeves, get to work and get dirty.

Author Bio: Ines Maric offers Internet Kamagra jelly marketing consulting services.

Category: Internet Marketing/Search Engine Marketing
Keywords: seo, search engine optimization, seo tools, seo help