Free Search Engine Optimisation Tools
Free Search Engine Marketing Tools
There are an abundance of Search Engine Marketing tools on the web that can assist web site owners and webmasters on determining their websites visibility, optimisation, rank and position, some of these tools are very good while others are not so.
A summary of what i consider the best of the best tools, are easy to interpret and offers optimisation improvements which can improve a websites visibility.
Keywords and Key Phrase Tools
Searchers type keywords and phases into the search engines when they are looking to find something, the search engines return a list of possible matches from their site indexing.
The optimisation tools listed below provide the number of times the keyword or key phrase were recently searched, they also offer alternative words that were similar to the keyword entered.
Ideally choosing your keyword phrases should be completed prior to designing a website, however an established website would benefit from choosing new keywords that are relevant if the site is to be redesigned or the website is just not attracting sufficient traffic.
- Google Suggest (free)
- Google Adwords (free)
- Word Tracker (Free trial)
- Yahoo Keyword Selector (free)
Keyword Density & Prominence
Having completed your keyword analysis and produced your website, the amount of times the keyword phrases are repeated within each individual page needs to be established. Ideally each page should contain one or two key word phrases, each phrase should account for approximately 5% of your total content.
The placement of your keyword phrases is also an important factor in terms of optimisation. Key phrase prominence is where your keywords feature on the web page. A keyword or phrase near the top of a page is more prominent that a keyword near the bottom of a page.
Your keyword phrases and their prominence can be determined by using the following tools.
- Keyword Density Tool (free)
- Keyword Density and Prominence Tool (free)
Keyword density is an important factor within optimisation but you can over do it !
Google, Yahoo & MSN Indexing
The Search Engines can take a number of weeks to visit and index a new website. If you have a existing website it is likely to have already being crawled. Either way you need to verify that the main Search Engines have indexed your site
Your websites saturation can be determined by using the following index tool.
Website Validation
Website validation ensures your site is error free, fully cross browser compatible and incorporates a minimum level of accessibility.
The validation process checks any site against the W3C standards which is headed by Tim Berners Lee, who was one forerunners in developing the web while working at CERN.
The W3C works to standardise and implement improvements to the web. Any site that validates against these standards are allowed to incorporate their validation logo into a website, signifying to users the site visited is compliant.
Compliant websites are not only beneficial in terms of optimisation, it ensures the users are provided with a consistent experience no matter which browser they using. Sites that fail validation may not appear correctly, images may fail to appear, incorrect fonts may be displayed, navigation systems may not work as intended. Unless the web designer checks the sites using the various browsers and viewing settings there is no way of telling how the site would appear.
Unlike conventional programs, the browser interprets the web design. Should it encounter a programming error or code the browser fails to recognise, the browser will ignore the instruction resulting with the site appearing completely different in separate browsers.
Simply enter you websites address into the W3C validator to check for errors.
Backlinks & Anchor Text
As the web revolves around the linking of one site to another, relevant links add value to a site rank. The backlink tool identifies who is linking to a site and the relevant anchor text.
