10 Free SEO Tools

You don’t have to break the bank to apply search engine optimization to your website. Here are ten free tools that will assist you in your SEO efforts:

1. SEO Quake – This toolbar for Firefox and Chrome provides important metrics for any website you visit, including Google PageRank, number of backlinks to a page and to a domain, number of pages indexed in Google, Alexa rank, and many others. This is a great place to start competitive research.
2. SEMRush – This free tool lets you see what phrases a given website is ranking for in Google. By looking at the phrases your competitors rank for, you can get an idea of what phrases you should be optimizing your own website for.
3. Google Webmaster Tools – This tool helps you ensure that there are no problems with your website that will hurt you in Google. You can see if you have any 404 errors, duplicate title tags, missing meta descriptions and many other issues. You can also submit an XML Sitemap to help Google crawl your entire website.
4. Online Spider Simulator – See any page of your website the way search engine spiders see it. This is a great way to make sure all of your content is visible to the search engines.
5. Keyword Density Tool – Provide a page url to this tool and it will return the keyword density of all phrases on the page. This will help you determine if your page is over-optimized for any phrases. Note that any phrases with a keyword density over 5% are likely over-optimized.
6. Rank Checker – This Firefox plug-in provides your website’s Google, Yahoo, and Bing rankings of up to 100 keyword phrases at a time. Track your rankings over time to ensure that your SEO efforts are not in vain.
7. Yahoo Site Explorer – See what websites are linking to your website or to your competitors’ websites. By looking at your competitors’ backlinks, you can identify pages that may be likely to link to you as well.
8. Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer – Determine the quality of your backlinks by seeing what are the most commonly used anchor text variations that link to your website.
9. Google Keyword Tool – Research keyword phrases in your industry that people are searching for. This tool will give you suggestions of related keywords, as well as the number of times the phrases are searched each month and competitive data.
10. The Internet Marketing Club – This community of online marketers is a great place to find out new SEO information, exchange tips and ideas, and ask questions of industry leaders. There is also a free weekly webinar that teaches members various aspects of search engine optimization and other internet marketing principles.