Top 21 SEO Tips and Tricks

Google says on the record, “Don’t write for Search Engines, Write for your readers/audience/users.” While this may sound ridiculous, there are plenty of reasons to follow the advice. More often, newbie falls in the trap and often gets confused where to start from. Don’t sound to be too harsh, but do not always listen to almighty Google.

We (bloggers & web entrepreneurs) are mere small creatures and we must write for our readers/users while keeping search engine behavior at the corner of our brain! Producing great content that reader’s love is something not everyone’s cup of team. So how would you start your venture as an expert ? What are the best SEO practices that you should follow? Without further ado, let me present you top 20 SEO Tips.

Excellent SEO Tips To Follow

I have used an adjective here – Special. These tips are special not because they are something that you have never heard of, but they are special as you have not understood these basic ones quite effectively!

Keyword Analysis inclusive of Competition Analysis

1. Determine Strategy for Keywords

This must be your first and foremost step. You should be clear with your goals that what keywords you want to play around with. This depends on what you want to gain by your online presence and venture. The question in the previous sentence can be answered with information regarding your target audience.

It may look like a flow chart or catch 22 for you, don’t worry, you are right and it is so. We have solutions for it. You can use certain keyword tools like www.keywordspy.com, www.spyfu.com, www.ispionage.com and www.compete.com. In order to get complete market scenario you must look at your competitor’s website. You can enter that website’s URL to any of the mentioned tools and get an estimation of competition.

2. List The Potential Keywords

You have now, different results from different tools as all of them use different methodology. You can collaborate all the results depending on your common analytical sense and list out 50-100 potential keywords. Create an MS Excel sheet for these Keywords.

3. Check Competition of Keywords

Keyword competition is something most newbies/expert ignores. While sorting out bunch of keywords from Google adword keywords tool is the first step to follow, people often forget that the checking Keyword competition is equally important. There are plenty of tools available out there, but we recommend to try out tools like Traffictravis first.

Later, you can go for the premium tools like SEOMoz keyword difficulty and SERPIQ keyword competition analysis tool. Both the tools delivers the great result and cut down considerable work required in doing competition analysis as well as keyword competition analysis.

On Page SEO Tips

4. HTML

Use a content management service such as WordPress, Blogger or Drupal and optimize your HTML tags with the keywords. Make sure you also maintain text to HTML ratio. Always try to keep the ratio high so that Google can understand your content better.

5. Title

Keep the character count under 70 and preferably under 66. Use various plugins available for various content management platforms for SEO. The WordPress beginners should start with WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to make on page SEO as much better as they can. There are also many third-party paid options available in the market, but we do not recommend using them.

Also see : How to write a best SEO title tag to get maximum benefit in Search results

6. Meta Tags & Description

Your keyword must be there in your Meta tag and description. Your meta description must be in the vicinity of 157 characters. This is most important as Search Engines read meta description for understanding the post content.

7. URL and/or Permalinks

Your page URL must contain your key word or keyword phrase. If it is a phrase, words must be separated by hyphens. Use some plugins to remove stop words from the URL/permalinks. It’s always good to minimize the use of STOP word in the permalink

8. First Paragraph

While this is not necessary a big factor in ranking, try to include important keyword in first paragraph, so Google can clearly understand what the topic is about. While there is no hard and fast rule, make sure you include primary keyword within first few words of the article.

9. Content Length

As per Guidelines provide by Google, the length of your content must be more than 300 words. We advise you to write content with word count above 500 words. (It will help to protect you from “Animal Hit”). However, we recommend to go over 600-700 mark whenever possible. Instead of writing a simple post without proper information, you should focus your energy to provide quality content with necessary bullet point and images to back-up what you say.

10. Content Quality

Your content must be unique. Thinly copied contents are also getting Panda Hit nowadays so stay away from copy and plagiarism. Make sure you follow proper internal linking strategy without over optimizing anchor text.

Also see : Google Panda Recovery Tips and Tricks

11. Keyword Density

Keyword density must be between 2-4%. It means your keyword must not be repeated more than twice or thrice in each 100 words block so if your are writing a 500 words post your keyword count must not exceed 10-15 repetitions. If it does, then Google will count it as over optimization.

12. Image Optimization

Optimize Image ALT tag with your keyword. It is always a good idea to save the image name with the keyword and upload them on the server with the same name. Also attach necessary ALT tag to the image, so Google can understand what the image depicts. Remember, Google is blind, and you need to supply information to Google to understand the image. Moreover, try to provide a wrap up text to explain what the image is all about. This will increase the relevancy as well.

Sitemap

13. Sitemap Submission

Submit your site to the major search engines. Create an XML site map and make sure the search engines can find your site map. Use Google’s webmaster’s tools to verify your sitemap is being read correctly: http://www.google.com/webmasters/

14. HTML Sitemap

Creating an HTML sitemap is an essential part of your SEO endeavors. This confirms you that search engine crawlers are crawling the site properly.

Back-End

15. Avoid DHTML and Excessive HTML

Search Engines can’t read DHTML menus quite easily, so avoid them in your menu. Also, try to maintain HTML to text ratio. Having too many HTML makes the ratio high which is often undesired. Make sure you provided meaningful insight in each and every paragraph and/or article by providing more text.

16. Avoid Major Content in PDF or Flash

Publish your content in HTML format instead of Adobe PDF and Flash. Valuable content that is locked in these formats cannot be easily crawled and indexed.

17. Robots.txt

Make sure your robots.txt file is configured correctly to include and exclude the appropriate directories and files on your website. This file instructs search engines that which portion of your site is not accessible to search engines. Often people misunderstands this concepts which results in duplicate content or the description is unavailable due to robots.txt configuration.

Off Page Optimization

18. Use Social Media Effectively

Market your content on various social networks and media. Try various titles and descriptions that can engage users with your online venture. Initially, target twitter, Facebook, Google+, Stumble Upon, LinkedIn and Reddit. Google is now giving more importance to social media signals to rank website. Now is the time to utilize social media platform and turn the tale in your favor.

19. Generate Quality Backlinks

There are various techniques to generate backlinks. Guest post on other high authority site from same niche, Commenting on the posts related to your site content, Forum Posting and many more techniques are there which should be used moderetly to gain more trust. Well, backlink is itself a big chapter and can cover tons of pages, but we do not want to go that route for the moment.

Please note that Google introduced an update called Penguin to penalize the overly optimized sites, which means that those sites which are having spam backlinks and using black hat backlink techniques.  I will explain you in detail  how it will identify the spammers, see if there is a site on Diabetes (Health Niche) and the site site owner purchased a bulk of backlinks for the anchor text “diabetes symptoms in children” to rank for that keyword.

This can get a red flag and can get  penalty because if that is a genuine quality site/article then there should be lot of variations in the anchor test linking to that particular page, because it is a common sense that not everybody in the world will link to the exact anchor text right ?  … Yes, that is not at all possible because they may link to that via various anchor texts like

• diabetes signs and symptoms in children
• diabetes in children
• children and diabetes : signs and symptoms
• what are the symptoms in children with type 2 diabetes
• type 1 diabetes symptoms in children and adults

Analysis

20. Use Google Analytics

Install Google Analytics on your website.( http://www.google.com/analytics/ )If you’ve already done this, use the data from: Traffic Sources > Keywords to find additional keywords you may want to optimize.

21. Keyword tracking

Tracking your major campaign and keywords in the Google will give you a clear information about your efforts. It’s therefore very necessary to keep track of all your keyword ranking. For this purpose, you can use free and paid tools available online. Even, you can manually track the keyword in the Google. We recommend to use “whatsmyserp.com” or similar service to check your keyword ranking.

Hopefully, the above SEO tips will help you to start your new venture or website. Make sure you follow each and every one of them closely.

Visual Basic 6 and Excel VBA Made Easy Books

Visual Basic 6 and Excel VBA Made Easy Books

VISUAL BASIC 6 MADE EASY is an eBookwritten to compliment Online Visual Basic 6 Tutorial so that you can read it offline in your leisure time. It has more contents than the free online tutorial. You can use this book as a textbook for the tutorial. For your information, the print version of this book is published and marketed by Amazon.com.

By reading this book ,you can:

1. Understand the basic concepts of Visual Basic 6 programming
2. Create your own VB6 programs right from the beginning
3. Get programming ideas from many interesting sample programs. The sample programs include star war, snakes and ladders game, reversi, home loan calculator, BMI calculator, library system, calculator and more.
4. Modify the codes easily to suit your needs.

This book was written using simple English without technical jargons so that you can understand programming concepts even if you have no technical background.

You can also use the book in many ways, such as:

• As a source of reference for your programming hobby.

• As a source of reference for your school or college projects. Please feel free to use the materials in my book for your assignments.

• As teaching material if you are a school teacher or college lecturer who teaches computer programming. (The book was used as a recommended textbook for the first year computer science students of the University of Wesleyan of USA by Professor Dr. Michael D. Rice )

• Teach your kids how to program in VB6 if you are a parent.

EXCEL VBA MADE EASY is an eBookwritten to compliment Online Excel VBA Tutorial so that you can read it offline in your leisure time. You can use this book as a textbook for the tutorial. For your information, the print version of this book is published and marketed by Amazon.com. Excel VBA tutorial.

By reading this book ,you can:

1. Understand the basic concepts of Excel VBA programming
2. Create your own Excel VBA programs right from the beginning
3. Get programming ideas from many interesting sample programs.
4. Modify the codes easily to suit your needs.

This book was written using simple English without technical jargons so that you can understand programming concepts even if you have no technical background.

You can also use the book in many ways, such as:

• As a source of reference for your programming hobby.
• As a source of reference for your school or college projects. Please feel free to use the materials in my book for your assignments.
• As teaching material if you are a school teacher or college lecturer who teaches computer programming.
• Teach your kids how to program in Excel VBA if you are a parent.

How to success with your Affiliate program !!!

First time Affiliate?  Follow these 6 steps to success…

You got your Affiliate links and now what?  I’m assuming up to this point this may be your first time promoting an Affiliate Program and you understand basic HTML for installing your links.  Use the guide below to help you start making Money with your new links. Or, if you’re considering Affiliate Marketing as a source for monetizing your blog the below steps let ya know what you’re getting into.  Buckle your seat belts!  (believe it or not, the ride can be more fun than you think!)

1.Where your links should direct.

The homepage is simple but for more targeted content and banners, you should ask your program manager to link to specific product pages or search results relevant to your site.  Doing so may mean a greater chance of a conversion. $$$

2.How to promote your links.

The most popular methods are blogs, websites, and newsletters.  Of course, there are other clever ways of promotion.  Newer technologies allow for social media and apps.

3. Develop the content.

Depending on the link you’re promoting, you’ll want to be as relevant as possible. For example, affiliate links for pet food products typically do well on sites that talk about pets. There are different ways of developing your content depending on what you wish to promote.  However, that is deserving of  a post all its own.  (Check out this blast from the past)

4. Get traffic to your site.

The more eyeballs on your site the greater the chance someone to click your links.  There are lots of different methods but here are some of the most popular…..
Social Media – do you blog?  If so tweet out your articles with a relevant account. ?  Start a Facebook fan page for your website.  Pinterest?  Make sure your pins are relevant to your content and forward back to your website.
Comment and Engage.  Get visitors by commenting in forums, commenting on others blogs, tweeting to engage your followers, etc.By being vocal you are letting others know you exist.
Ever try Google AdWords?  Bidding on Keywords can be a way to ensure that when people search for your chosen keywords they are provided with a display and option to click to your site.  Be careful though!  Many Affiliate Programs will list restrictions on this technique in their Terms of Service.  Disobeying could get your account blocked. Ruh-roh!
SEO (search engine optimization). Develop your content in a way that allows search engines to find you and rank your site depending on your relevancy.  Lots of companies pay big bucks to get trained or have someone perform this service for them.

5. Check your stats.

Keep tabs on traffic you are sending to affiliate offers and your conversions.  Tweak your site or link placement to try to achieve the highest click through for maximum conversion possible.

6. Receive your commissions!

This is the fun part!  Make sure to always have up to date payment information for your Affiliate Program Manager to send prompt payment.
Not so scary huh?!  If you’re new to the Affiliate Marketing, I suggest finding Affiliate Programs that provide opportunities for you to promote what you already love.  If you dig what your web site or blog is about your more apt to keep plugging away until you receive commissions.  Hang in there!  It may take at least 60 days for your commissions to arrive. Celebrate that first payment! Woot!
Got an Affiliate Marketing question?  Ask away in the comments below.

Truecaller – Caller ID & Block Premium Pro v5.10 apk

Caller ID & Block Premium Pro v5.01 apk

Take the Right Call with Truecaller

The easiest way to search contact numbers, block spam and identify incoming calls on your mobile phone so that you always have access to the right information, people and businesses you need.

• Search for any number whether it’s local or across the world
• Know who’s calling you even if you don’t have their number in your address book
• Block numbers from spam callers and telemarketers
• Tweet and Follow a person on Twitter directly from Truecaller
• Yelp integration for faster business lookup results
• Keeps your phonebook clean, organized and up-to-date with contacts’ profile photos from social networks
• + more features to make contact management run smoothly[plinker count=3 heading=”3 More you can choose”] [plinker]

Over 85 million people around the world use Truecaller to help manage their contacts and calls!

Truecaller NEVER uploads your phonebook to make it searchable or public. 3G or WIFI is required for Truecaller Caller ID to work. Operator charges may apply.
* The block SMS feature is currently not supported for devices with Android 4.4 (KitKat).

If you have any feedback or questions, 

Download : http://www.gulfup.com/?vHWOXg

Top List Free Best SEO Tools

Top List Free SEO Tools

Completely free tools and tools with both free and paid options. Enjoy!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.

(copy the links below, add http:// if necessary  and paste to your browser)

Google Keyword Planner

adwords.google.com/keywordplanner

Keyword Research

The tool to replace Google’s popular keyword tool has been derided by some, but still offers data not available anywhere else.

Google Analytics

google.com/analytics/

Analytics

The most popular of all the analytics tools available, Google Analytics continually innovates and sets the standard.

Google Analytics API

support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008004?hl=en&ref_topic=1008008

API, Analytics

The Google Analytics API is great for building custom reports and tools, and also for pulling data straight into Excel or Google Docs.

Google Map Maker

google.com/mapmaker

Local

Among other things, Google Map Maker allows you to contribute to public map information, which may be shared and incorporated into Google Maps.

Google PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

Speed

Tools, data, and insights to improve your page speed. Page speed is correlated with better rankings and user engagement, so this matters.

Google Public Data

google.com/publicdata/directory

Content

Drawing on vast public databases, Google public data offers a great starting point for content research, infographics, and more.

Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool

seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html

Technical SEO, CRO

That SEO Mofo! Use this tool to see how your snippet may appear in Google’s search results. Add structured data, review stars, and more.

Google Structured Data Testing Tool

google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Structured Data, Technical SEO

If you use Schema.org microformats or any other type of structured data, this tool will verify your markup.

Google Trends

google.com/trends/

Keyword Research

See what’s trending in Google search results and view keyword search popularity over time. A must for trends.

Google Webmaster

google.com/webmasters/

Tools Suite, Diagnostic

The interface recently received an overhaul, and Google Webmaster remains a must-have resource of diagnostic and health tools for site owners.

Bing Webmaster Tools

bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Tools Suite, Diagnostic

Similar in function to Google Webmaster Tools, Bing offers a suite of interesting research tools and resources for webmasters.

                  

Domain Hunter Plus

domainhunterplus.com/

Link Building

This magic extension for Chrome not only helps you find important broken links, but also tells you if the links point to an available domain.

Easel.ly

easel.ly/

Infographics

Free tools for creating and sharing inforgraphics. The templates allow anyone to create a professional-looking graphic.

Email Format

email-format.com/

Email, Productivity

Email Format helps you find the proper structure for thousands of companies and organizations across the web.

FindPeopleonPlus

findpeopleonplus.com/

Social

The ultimate Google+ directory that’s great for research, outreach, and link building. Sort by keywords, profession, country, and more.

Frobee Robots.txt Checker

frobee.com/robots-txt-check

Robots.txt, Technical SEO

Many robots.txt files contain hidden errors not easily visible to humans. Run your file through this tool and you never know what you’ll discover.

GetListed

getlisted.org/

Local, Moz

This awesome local SEO tool scores your local SEO visibility and gives you actionable next steps to raise your score.

              

IFTTT

ifttt.com/

Productivity

IFTTT stands for IF This, Then That. The tool allows you to create automatic triggers between various apps, like Gmail and Twitter.

Infogr.am

infogr.am/

Infographics

A great free Infographics resource that allows you to easily create graphics and data visualizations.

Internet Marketing Ninjas SEO Tools

internetmarketingninjas.com/tools/

Tools Suite

The Ninjas are some of the best SEOs and online marketers out there, and they’ve put some of their best tools online for free.

Linkstant

linkstant.com/

Link Building

This nifty analytics tool alerts you anytime someone links to your website. Great for outreach and intelligence gathering.

Linksy.me Email Guesser

linksy.me/find-email

Email, Link Building

Need to send an email, but you don’t have the recipient’s address? Type in what you know and this nifty tool will help you figure it out.

MailTester.com

mailtester.com/

Email

Need to send an email to an untested address, but you don’t want to spam them? Check it first with this mail tester to verify.

MozCast

mozcast.com/

SERP Tracking, Moz

Want to know if Google is testing its algorithm this week? MozCast gives you a daily weather report to track changes in the SERPs.

Anchor Text Over Optimization Tool

removeem.com/ratios.php

Link Research, Technical SEO

Worried about Google’s Penguin algorithm hitting you for over-optimized anchor text? Simply type in your URL for a full report of which links might raise flags.

Bitly

bitly.com/

Social, Analytics

Most people use Bitly for URL shortening, but the real power of this platform comes from its analytics.

Boomerang

boomeranggmail.com/

Email, Productivity

Boomerang lets you follow up on emails, even when you forget. Great for link building or any time you send a lot of emails.

Buffer

bufferapp.com/

Social

Optimize your online social media sharing. Buffer allows you to share with your audience at the optimal times for greater visibility.

BuiltWith

builtwith.com/

Competitive Intelligence

Use BuiltWith to discover what technology nearly any website was, well, built with. Great for competitive intelligence as well.

Buzzstream Tools Suite

tools.buzzstream.com/link-building

Link Building, Tools Suite, Email

Most people know Buzzstream as an outreach platform, but they also offer a number of free link-building tools. This company gets it.

Caption Tube

captiontube.appspot.com/

Video

Free and easy resource used to create captions for YouTube. Helps with usability and offers viewers a readable transcript.

CircleCount

circlecount.com/

Social, Analytics

Google+ analytics ramped up. Free resource to track your followers and analyze your shares. See how many followers you’ve gained over time.

Content Strategy Generator Tool

seogadget.com/content-strategy-generator-tool-v2-update/

Content

This tool from SEOgadget helps you plan your content strategy intelligently, using keyword research and estimating your audience size.

Convert Word Documents to Clean HTML

word2cleanhtml.com/

Content, Productivity

Despite the rise of Google Docs, Word still dominates much of the world. Copying and pasting has always been a hurdle, but this tool makes it easy.

Copyscape

copyscape.com/

Content

Copyscape serves both as a plagiarism checker and a duplicate-content checker. Great to use if your content has been distributed across the web.

MyBlogGuest

myblogguest.com/

Link Building, Content

Guest blogging is still alive and thriving. MyBlogGuest helps you find the good opportunities out there.

Panguin Tool

barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

Analytics

This awesome tool connects with your Google Analytics account to help you see if and when you’ve been hit by Google Algorithm updates.

Pingdom

tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

Speed

Pingdom offers an entire suite of speed tools to help analyze page load, DNS issues, and connectivity.

Piwik

piwik.org/

Analytics

Piwik is a lightweight web analytics solution, and a great alternative to Google Analytics.

Rank Checker for Firefox

tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/

Rank Tracking

This light and easy desktop tool checks rankings with the click of a button. Quick, easy and free.

Rapportive

rapportive.com/

Email, Link Building, Productivity

Rapportive works with your Gmail inbox to give you near-instant rich contact information for almost everyone you want to reach. A must-have for marketers.

Remove Duplicate Items

ontolo.com/tools-remove-duplicates

Productivity

Ontolo offers a suite of link building software and a few helpful productivity tools for link builders. The remove duplicates tool solves a common problem.

Robots.txt Checker

tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml

Robots.txt, Technical SEO

Use robots best practices and discover hidden errors in your robots.txt files that may cause search engine crawling problems.

Schema Creator

schema-creator.org/

Structured Data, Technical SEO

Everyone loves using Schema.org, but the microformats are difficult to write by hand. This generator from the folks at Raven simplifies the task.

Scraper for Chrome

chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scraper/

Productivity

If you’ve never scraped a webpage, you’re missing out. Scraper for Chrome puts the power of simple web scraping in your hands without the need for code.

Seer Toolbox

seerinteractive.com/seo-toolbox/

Tools Suite, Analytics, Link Research

SEER opened up its internal toolbox for everyone in the world to use. These are the same tools used in-house at SEER, and they rock.

SEO Toolbar

tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/

Tools Suite, Toolbar, Technical SEO

On of the most popular tools available, The SEO Toolbar puts a ton of information at your fingertips including backlinks and competitive research.

SEO Tools for Excel

nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/

Tools Suite, Analytics, Social

You don’t need to be an Excel ninja to use Niels Bosma’s SEO Tools for Excel. This plugin does so many things many SEOs won’t work without it.

SEOgadget Links API

seogadget.com/api/

API, Link Research

The SEOgadget Links API lets you easily gather not only backlink data but contact information as well. A huge time saver.

SEOgadget Tools

seogadget.com/tools/

Tools Suite

This suite of tools from the Gadget lab includes several Excel plugins, a content strategy generator, and more.

SEOQuake

seoquake.com/

Toolbar, Tools Suite, Technical SEO

More raw data than any other SEO toolbar out there.

SharedCount

sharedcount.com/

Social, Analytics

Want to know how any piece of content was shared socially across the major services? This is the tool to use.

SharedCount API

sharedcount.com/documentation.php

API, Social

Harnessing the combined statistics of Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and more, the SharedCount API puts a ton of social data at your fingertips.

Similar Page Checker

webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php

Content, Technical SEO

Use this tool to check for duplicate content issues. The Similar Page Checker will give you a score of how closely the HTML of two pages resemble each other.

Sitemap Generators

code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/wiki/SitemapGenerators

Sitemaps

Google offers a slew of free, top-notch sitemap generators. Most of these live on your server and generate new sitemaps automatically.

Social Authority API

followerwonk.com/social-authority

API, Social

How much reach and social authority do your followers have? How about the people you’re trying to connect with? The free Social Authority API will tell you.

Social Crawlytics

socialcrawlytics.com/

Social, Analytics

Social Crawlytics allows you to conduct competitive research by showing you your competitors’ most-shared content. Lots of other features as well.

Social Mention

socialmention.com/

Social

Social mention offers real-time social media search and analysis. Enter a search term and see who’s sharing what, right now.

Text Cleaner

textcleanr.com/

Content

Some of the best tools solve the simplest problems. Text cleaner cleans up all kinds of text formatting when copying and pasting between aplications.

Ubersuggest

ubersuggest.org/

Keyword Research

Every SEO loves Ubersuggest for its ease of use and wealth of keyword research ideas. Utilizing the power of Google Suggest, it returns hundreds of potential results.

URI Valet

urivalet.com/

Technical SEO

A great tool for digging into server headers, canonical information, analyzing redirect problems and more.

Virante SEO Tools

virante.org/seo-tools

Tools Suite

Virant offers a number of high quality SEO tools to the public. These are often the same tools developed for the Virant team, opened up for public use.

Wayback Machine

archive.org/web/web.php

Competitive Intelligence

Want to see the history of your website or your competitor’s site? The Wayback Machine allows you to step back in time and track important changes.

WebPagetest

webpagetest.org/

Speed

Quick and easy website speed tool. Offers suggestions for improving performance.

Wordle

wordle.net/

Content

Create beautiful word clouds. Great for visualizations, graphics, and research.

Wordstream Free Keyword Tools

wordstream.com/free-keyword-tools

Keyword Research, Tools Suite

In addition to its paid offerings, Wordstream offers a suite of free keyword tools offering access to thousands of keyword suggestions.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth

home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Diagnostic, Technical SEO

Winner of the ugliest-SEO-tool-on-the-planet award, Xenu is also one of the most useful. Crawl entire sites, find broken links, create sitemaps, and more.

XML-Sitemaps.com

xml-sitemaps.com/

Sitemaps

XML-Sitemaps offers probably the easiest sitemap creation solution anywhere. Great for smaller sites when you need a sitemap in minutes.

Yahoo Pipes

pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

Content, Productivity

A great mashup tool that combines different feeds into content and other magical creations. Used for link building and whatever you can dream of.

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

Technical SEO

If you could only choose one WordPress plugin for you site, the first would be from Yoast, and so would the second. This one sets the standard.

YouTube Analytics

youtube.com/analytics

Video, Analytics

Offers video-specific analytics for YouTube videos. A must-have for YouTube video publishers.

Free and Paid

Ahrefs

ahrefs.com/

Link Research, Link Building

One of the more popular link research tools, Ahrefs offers a large index and nice anchor text distribution charts. Mostly a paid tool, but they offer some free data.

Banana Tag

bananatag.com/

Email

Banana Tag allows you to track your emails after you send them. For example, check your email open rates from Gmail.

CloudFlare

cloudflare.com/

Speed

How do they make CloudFlare free? It works both as a CDN and a security service to provide your website with speed and safety.

Followerwonk

followerwonk.com/

Social, Analytics, Moz

Perhaps the coolest thing about Followerwonk is the ability to track your followers. Smart SEOs also use it for outreach and research.

Keyword Eye

keywordeye.com/

Keyword Research

Keyword eye adds a twist to keyword research by adding rich visualizations — essential when you want to move beyond keywords to valuable concepts.

KnowEm

knowem.com/

Social

KnowEm allows you to check 100’s of social profiles at once to check availability. Looking for the perfect brand name? Check KnowEm first.

Majestic SEO

majesticseo.com/

Link Research, Competitive Intelligence, Link Building

You’ve probably seen Majestic SEO link charts all over the Internet. Great crawling technology combined with several free options make for great link research.

Majestic SEO API

blog.majesticseo.com/general/majestic-seo-api-now-explained/

API, Link Research

Majestic makes much of its backlink data available for free via its API.

MozBar

moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar

Tools Suite, Toolbar, Moz

The standard SEO toolbar for legions of marketers, the MozBar allows you to perform over 50 key tasks right from your browser. Highly recommended.

Mozscape API

moz.com/products/api

API, Link Research, Moz

Companies everywhere incorporate the Mozscape API into their own products, but it’s also available to individuals, and much of the data is free.

nTopic

ntopic.org/

Content

nTopic is one of the few proven methods for giving your content a relevancy score and offering keyword suggestions to improve it.

StatCounter

statcounter.com/

Analytics

Free, quick, and lightweight analytics solution. Often used by those who want to avoid using Google Analytics for privacy reasons.

Trello

trello.com/

Productivity

Project management and tracking made simple. Used and endorsed by Moz.

Whitespark Local Citation Finder

whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/

Local

Finding local citations is key to local SEO. Whitespark offers a number of free and paid solutions to find the local citations to rise above the competition.

Whois Lookup

whois.domaintools.com/

Competitive Intelligence

Find registration, contact, and administrative information for any domain.

Wistia

wistia.com/

Video

The king of online video, Wistia offers SEO-friendly solutions for video hosting. Both free and low-cost options available.

Open Site Explorer

opensiteexplorer.org/

Link Research, Moz, Competitive Intelligence, Link Building

When Google and Yahoo started removing backlink data from the public, Moz built Open Site Explorer to fill a huge need. See backlinks, anchor text, popularity metrics and more.

Piktochart

piktochart.com/

Infographics

A cute and easy infographic generator. No experience required.

RowFeeder

rowfeeder.com/

Social, Analytics

RowFeeder allows you to track social usernames, hashtags and keywords and load that information into Excel for easy social media monitoring.

Screaming Frog

screamingfrog.co.uk/

Diagnostic, Technical SEO

A powerful website crawling tool with a ton of features and customizations. A must-have for most serious SEOs.

Searchmetrics Visibility Charts

suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research

SERP Tracking, Competitive Intelligence

Track the search visibility of any website, in addition to tracking winners and losers in Google’s search results.

SEMrush

semrush.com/

Tools Suite, Keyword Research, Competitive Intelligence

The paid and organic keyword data offered by SEMrush is often scary good and comprehensive. Also great for researching competitors’ ads.

SERPmetrics

serpmetrics.com/flux/

SERP Tracking, Competitive Intelligence

SERPmetrics flux charts track the flux for US search results across Yahoo, Bing and Google over a 30-day period. A paid API is also available.

SimilarWeb

similarweb.com/

Competitive Intelligence

Impressive competitive intelligence across a number of online industries. Competitor website stats are hard to come by, but Similar Web does a good job.