This article isn't about how to achieve a high ranking. That topic has been done to death over the past few months. We all know the basics now. Submit your site to the major search engines, scatter a generous helping of the right keyword phrases throughout your site in real sentences, then get a lot of other relevant sites link to your site. That's it.
This article is about what tools to use to make your job easier.
1) Choosing Keyword Phrases (costs approx USD$7.50 per day) To decide what keyword phrases to use, subscribe to www.wordtracker.com for a day and do some analysis.
Simply enter a keyword and WordTracker tells you how often people have searched for that keyword in the last month or two, how many competitor sites are using that keyword, and how many searches it expects in the next 24hrs.
2) Measuring Keyword Density (FREE) To measure the density of the keyword phrases on your page, go to Gorank.com and type in the domain and keyword phrase you want to analyse.
It'll give you a percentage for all the important parts of your page, including copy, title, meta keywords, meta description, etc. The higher the density the better.
3) Check How Search-Engine-Friendly Your Site Is (FREE) Search engines send out spiders (or robots) to investigate your site
This tool allow you to see your site from the spider's point of view. 1-hit.com - enter your URL and it gives you a summary of the things you could improve.
4) Check How Many of Your Pages are Indexed (FREE) Go to just about any search engine and type site:www.yourdomain.com.
The search engine will then tell you how many of your pages it has indexed.
5) Monitor Your Position in Google (FREE) No need to waste time clicking through hundreds of Google search results looking for your site.
This tool allows you to enter a keyword and a domain name, and it searches Google to see where your domain is positioned. Go to Cleverstat.com google-monitor-query to download the setup file. Then just install.
6) See How Important Sites Are (FREE) The Google Toolbar is an indispensable tool. One of the things it can tell you is the "importance" of every site you visit (in Google's eyes at least).
You've probably heard a bit about PageRank or PR. PR is Google's measure of the importance of a site. Basically, the higher your PR, the higher your ranking. This tool gives you a snapshot of the PR of every site you visit. Go to toolbar.google.com.
TIP: It's good to get links from other sites with high PR - especially if they contain the same keywords as your site. WARNING: Apparently the Google Toolbar monitors your internet usage. As yet, it's unclear what it uses this information for.
7) Monitor What Sites are Linking to Yours (FREE) Google News Alerts
(Google.com) and Google Web Alerts (Google.com) will tell you who's linking to your site. Simply set up an alert to be notified when Google finds www.yourdomain.com.
8) Getting Help (FREE) If you're new to SEO, the first thing you should do is check out Google's guide to SEO at Google.com - Webmasters.
If you already know the basics, there are a number of forums you can subscribe to to post questions. These forums are free, and they're frequented by countless SEO experts.
And when I say "experts", I mean EXPERTS! Some of these people do SEO all day, every day. And like many technical experts, they're only too happy to help - for free. The best forum seems to be Webmasterworld.com, but Searchengineforums.com is ok too.
If all else fails, you can try sending Google an email. Go to Google.com.au - Contact, but don't hold out much hope of help here. They'll eventually answer, but there's no guarantee on the quality of their response. This is just a snapshot of the tools available out there, but these will certainly get you started.
Some additional resources: 123promotion.co.uk - promotion tools. Various Web Promotion Tools Enjoy!
Related Articles
- Four Free E-mail ToolsI like to find the occasional good deal as it comes to E-mail tools and tricks of the trade. Looking outside the conventional box, you can find many tools that have been created to solve some of the simplest problems we have. Here are a few free E-mail tools I think you will be able to get some use ...
- How to Find Good LinksThis is where it gets tricky. The first thing you need to do is find a number of sites on a similar theme to yours. You can do this through the search engines, or from other peoples links lists. Try to build up a small list of sites that you want to tra...
- The Secrets About Search Engine Optimization You Need To Know!Nowadays, the Internet practically equates to Search Engine Optimization. Its the way of the Web world. Make sure you know SEO to succeed online!
- SEO Trade Secrets - 8 Great Tools for Search Engine OptimizationAbout 80% of website traffic comes through search engines. And research shows, if you
- The Secret of Search Engine OptimizationHow to do search engine optimization is one of the best kept secrets in the world. Even though you would think it is all out there in forums and other websites, when you try to figure it out, you will find you can
- Magicians at WorkLooking at graphic designs, you may begin wondering how each is extremely different from another. You would not see deigns that look the same. There are also similarities, maybe in colors and in concepts, but that is where it ends...
- Power Linking Strategies and Website Promotion SecretsMore and more folks are realizing that building a solid themed reciprocal link directory is an affordable and highly effective way to increase inbound traffic. Not only is traffic generated through direct external links, but weight is also given to search engines, as they assume that your website is...
- Robots.txt FileWe all know search engine optimization is a tricky business. Sometimes we rank well on one engine for a particular keyphrase and assume that all search engines will like our pages, and hence we will rank well for that keyphrase on a number of engines. Unfortunately this is rarely the case. All the m...
- Article Marketing Secrets and SEO TechniquesYou wont find many article marketing secrets being given away online, because very few people properly understand the power of this internet marketing tool. It is more than simply a way of getting links back to your website, but a very powerful tool that if used properly can increase your sales to....
- How To Find Expired Domain NamesEvery day thousands of domain names expire. Some owners no longer have any use for the domain name and let it expire. There are owners who have no idea that their name has expired. Once the domain name expires it can also be referred to as a deleted domain name.