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No-Cost SEO Tools to Help You Increase Your Website Traffic
By Kyle Henrie | June 3, 2008
The right SEO tools can work wonders for your search strategy. You can save time, effort and investment, not to mention improve your rankings. A big thank you to Marketing Sherpa for providing the background for each of these.
Google Advanced Search
Cost: Free
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
Description: This tool can be found by going to Google, clicking “Advanced Search” and then clicking the “+” symbol next to “Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more.” Now you should see a field titled “Where your keywords show up.”
This lets you limit a search to:
o Anywhere in the page
o Title of the page
o Text of the page
o URL of the page
o Links to the page
The big one is “links to the page.” By selecting this option and searching for your competitors, you can find which sites are linking to them. You can also limit the search by date to uncover the links that have been created most recently.
Google Trends
http://google.com/trends
Cost: Free
Description: Google Trends reveals keywords’ historic search volume on Google (but not the exact figures). Say you’re torn between two keywords. Type them into the text box, separate them with commas and click to see which has received the most search traffic over time. The data dates back years and is illustrated with graphs.
Use the tool to:
Decide on a keyword, i.e., should you go with singular or plural?
Search engines return different results for singular and plural forms of a noun. So, a tractor manufacturer might rank well for the term “tractor” but not for “tractors.”
Rank Checker
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/
Cost: Free
Description: Rank Checker is a Firefox plug-in that takes keywords and reports your rankings on:
o Google
o Yahoo!
o MSN
o Google in other countries
If you check your rankings by typing in search engines and sift through results, stop now. This tool automates that process.
SeoQuake
http://www.seoquake.com/
Cost: Free
Description: SeoQuake is a Firefox plug-in that’s great for researching your search competition. It can resort search results based on a range of factors, including:
o Number of Web pages
o Number of links from Yahoo!
o Number of links from MSN
o Alexa rank
o Domain age
o Links from del.icio.us
Today’s Hot Trends
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X
Cost: Free
Description: Another Google Trends feature is Today’s Hot Trends. You can access it by clicking “More Hot Trends” on the Google Trends homepage. “It’s been talked about for a while, but I don’t think a lot of people are using it,” Reynolds says.
Today’s Hot Trends is updated every hour and shows the top 100 fastest-rising search terms on Google.
Yahoo! Search Assist
http://www.yahoo.com/
Cost: Free
Description: When you’re using the search box in Yahoo!, you might notice a gray textbox of terms that appears when you start typing a phrase. The words in the box are Yahoo!’s suggestions for related keywords, loosely based on word content and search volume.
The difference between this tool and many others is the fact that Yahoo!’s suggestions are not based on character order alone. For example, typing “bug” into some tools will only return keywords that begin with “b-u-g” like “buggy” or “bugs.” Yahoo!, on the other hand, returns “fashion bug,” “bugs bunny” and “bed bugs.”
Topics: SEO Tools, Website Strategies |
