"SEO Tools And Resources - Your Quick Reference Guide"

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Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, or any sort of practical, web-related knowledge has four pillars:

Passive learning - through books and courses (such as this newsletter). Experience - by practicing what you have learnt. Active Learning - interaction with other people in your field of interest, sharing knowledge and gaining from their experience. Industry Support - tools that can help you do your work better.

An email course like the one you are reading right now usually covers a mixture of all four: I talk to you about different strategies, show you how to use tools to build links or optimize your web pages, I aim to focus this course by writing about what you want discussed, and I occasionally tell you about new tools that you can use to speed up the optimization process.

Today I'll tell you about two dedicated methods of learning website promotion and optimization: SEO forums and SEO tools. Not only are these resources completely free, they are (and should be) an essential part of any webmaster looking to build a serious online business.

SEO Forums

There are several high quality forums to get you right in the middle of webmasters and online business owners (just like you) trying to increase their web site traffic, conversion rates and sales. If you are looking for discussions on cutting-edge information regarding search engines, these forums are the place to go.

More often than not, forum members tend to help out newcomers, so don't be afraid to participate in forum conversations and threads - just remember to keep your posts relevant.

All the forums listed here have free registration, but some forums have separate members' only sections as well.

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SEO Chat

SEO Chat is part of the Developer Shed network, one of the most popular destinations for webmasters on the Internet. The real strength of SEO Chat is the large collection of informative articles on search engine optimization, but because of the site's popularity, the SEO Chat forums have become increasingly important for discussions on both the articles on the website as well as everyday SEO issues.

Visit the SEO Chat Forums and tell others about this course. The ultimate goal here is to spread the knowledge to everyone, so tell all your friends.

SearchEngineWatch

Created by Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineWatch has quickly evolved into an industry leader in terms of search engine news. If you are interested in receiving daily updates on what is happening in the search engine world, consider signing up for their SearchDay newsletter. I read it religiously every day, and almost always find some new resource or information that can help me improve my business.

The SearchEngineWatch Forums are the highest rated within the SEO community, for the simple reason that so many big name search optimization experts frequent these forums. While it can be a bit intimidating to jump headfirst into the unknown, nothing can replace the value of learning first-hand from webmasters who are facing the same issues as you.

Visit the SearchEngineWatch Forums.

WebmasterWorld

WebmasterWorld was created by Brett Tabke several years ago, and proudly holds the highest Alexa ranking for an SEO / webmaster forum. The sheer volume of members makes the first experience overwhelming, but if you focus on the issues that you want to discuss, learn or ask questions about, you'll find that you can get answers within minutes of your first post.

WebmasterWorld also has a paid-membership section, which is less "crowded" and more frequented by the "pros". The investment pales in comparison to the value of advice you will get from the people in this forum. And of course, with gems like "26 ways to 15K visitors a day", WebmasterWorld is unarguably the sort of forum that should be on your "daily list".

Visit the WebmasterWorld Forums.

HighRankings

Jill Whalen's HighRankings forum is highly focused on strategies designed to achieve the highest possible rankings for your website. While it is less formal than the previously mentioned forums, HighRankings gives you street-wise advice on attaining top rankings, and includes several useful resources (including a comprehensive guide on linking strategies).

Visit the HighRankings Forums .

Just four out of thousands of forums might not seem like a big sample, but these are the best of the best internet marketing and SEO forums on the Internet today.

But learning from forums is just one part of the equation. You also need to know which SEO tools to use in order to get that edge over your competition.

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SEO Tools

When you think of SEO tools, the first thing that comes to mind is paid-for, powerful programs like SEO Elite. The fact is, there are many no-cost, small-scale and highly useful SEO tools available on the Internet. Looking for keywords? Got it. Looking to check your website's rankings for particular keywords? Got it. Link popularity? Got it. Keyword density? Got that as well.

Free Link Popularity Check

The folks at Axandra have a useful tool that you can use to check the link popularity of any number of websites across several search engines. A must-have tool to keep a regular check on your websites.

Find out more about Free Link Popularity Check.

NicheBot

If you are looking to do keyword research, WordTracker is the tool of choice for building huge keyword lists. But the service comes with a price, and if you are looking for a free alternative that still packs a decent punch, NicheBot is the tool you should be using. It uses both WordTracker (the trial version) and Overture to generate keyword lists, and pulls data from Google to give you basic competitor information and search results' numbers.

NicheBot also allows you to save and export your selected keywords, making it the ideal choice for new webmasters who don't want to invest in a professional keyword research service like WordTracker.

Visit NicheBot.

Digital Point

With an Alexa rank of 525 (as of June 2005), DP is second only to WebmasterWorld in this article in terms of popularity. Digital Point boasts a vast array of webmaster and SEO tools, including keyword research tools, back links tools and keyword position tools. Registration, although free, is required to use many of these tools. Definitely an excellent choice for business owners who prefer a hands-on approach to their search engine marketing campaigns.

Digital Point also has a vibrant forum community, which has sprung up around the popularity of the various tools and services that DP provides.

Visit Digital Point Tools and Digital Point Forums.

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SEO Chat

SEO Chat is not only about quality, insightful arguments and a vibrant forum community. They also have an amazing list of practical webmaster tools that focus on every small aspect of your SEO needs. Need to check the PageRank of every search term on Google? Or need an easy way to generate Meta Tags? One of their best tools is the Keyword Density tool that analyses a given web page and returns the keyword density values for all one, two and three word phrases.

SEO Chat Tools also includes nifty keyword tools not usually found elsewhere, such as a tool for generating spelling mistakes (a significant number of searches on search engines contain spelling errors) and a tool for ordering and sorting your keywords list.

Visit SEO Chat Tools.

SEO Tools

When you have a whole web site dedicated to providing quality SEO tools for free, you know that you are getting a great deal. SEO Tools betters many of the 'regular' SEO tools by mixing up the staple tools such as keyword density and backlink analysis with search engine spider simulations and similar page comparisons, as well as that almost forgotten tool for checking your website in different resolutions (you still do that, don't you?).

Visit SEO Tools.

There are many other excellent SEO tools available for free on the Internet:

As you can see, there are many, many quality SEO resources, forums and tools available on the Internet for free.

The question is, what are you going to do about it?

If you don't participate in forums, pick one of the 4 (5 if you include Digital Point) from the list above and browse around. Find a topic you want to participate in. Have a problem you want a peer's opinion on? Register and make your first post. Just a simple step towards interacting with the webmaster community will take you a long way towards helping you build your business.

Anything in the SEO tools list that you think you can use? If you are limited to Overture searches for your keywords, try using NicheBot, and then take your results to Keyword Tumbler. How do you manage your website's progress through the search engines? Take Digital Point or the SEO Chat tools for a spin.

Whatever you do, take something away from both of these lists, and I can guarantee that you will improve your search engine rankings in a significant way.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next lesson, and keep those lesson suggestions coming!

 

Brad Callen
Professional SEO
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