SEO Software and Tools

On going research and analysis are an integral part of search engine optimisation. It can be a difficult and time consuming process but several tools have developed to streamline SEO research and analysis

Keyword Density Tools

Keyword density is an important factor in on-page optimisation. If you have optimised your information architecture effectively, each page should be focused on a specific set of keywords/key phrases. The keyword density tool allows you to find out whether you've been successful in writing keyword rich copy. If you haven't, you can tweak your copy and re-run the keyword density tool until your happy with the results. Keyword density tools often have functionally to discount Meta tags and alt text. It's useful to check keyword density without the inclusion of Meta tags and alt text to get a clearer picture of your keyword density. You may also find it useful to check keyword density on single keywords, 2 word phrases and 3 word phrases. This is especially useful for long tail optimisation, if your target key phrase contains 2 words, run the keyword density for 3 and see if common 3 word variations are present. For instance, seo tool has common secondary search terms such as; Google seo tool and free seo tool.

Indexed Pages Tools

The search engine you're likely to be most concerned about getting pages indexed in is Google. To find out how many indexed pages your website has in Google, run the search query site:www.yourdomain.com, (this figure can vary between google.com and google.co.uk etc). Note that subdomains and domains started http://yourdomain.com will be treated as separate websites and need to be queried individually. This is information is useful to gain an overview of your Meta titles and descriptions but most importantly highlight indexing issues such as; important pages being absent or pages you don't want indexing appearing. After highlighting problems areas you can work towards solving them and improve how your website is indexed.

Google Keyword Tool

Keyword volume tools use different measures to determine search volume, often giving approximate results or proportional information. Google have the ability to make use of their own data to extrapolate keyword search volumes. Spending some time exploring search volumes using Google's keyword tool not only helps to find which keyword and phrases have the most search, it's also useful for finding related search terms for long tail optimisation.

XML Sitemap Generators

It is recommended that you have an HTML sitemap and an XML sitemap in your domains root. XML sitemaps shouldn't be included in the navigation and exist purely to make crawling and indexing easier for search engines. If your website is particularly large XML sitemaps make crawling much more efficient, they are also useful when you website isn't otherwise navigable by spiders, i.e. websites built in flash.

Robots.txt Generators

Robots.txt files contain a set of instructions for spiders (robots) that crawl and index the content of your website. It can be used to instruct spiders what they can and cannot index. It call also be used to provide the location of sitemaps and set other crawling preferences. There are several robots.txt file generators, including one in Google Webmaster tools. The robots.txt file provides the opportunity to control the pages you have indexed in search engines.

Link Popularity Tools

Inbound links are critical to Google’s PageRank and therefore crucial for search engine optimisation. Link Popularity tools help you determine how many inbound links you have on each page and where they are coming from. Any long term SEO strategy will include link building and link building popularity tools are a great way to monitor the number and quality of links.

HTML and CSS Validation Tools

Although there haven't been definite statements from Google referring to HTML and CSS validity playing a role how web pages are ranked, there is evidence that it is indeed one of the many factors taken into account. Furthermore, valid HTML and CSS make development easier, especially when it's a collaborative project. HTML and CSS validation tools provide quick error checking and reporting so you can resolve any coding errors present.

Keyword Clouds

Keyword clouds are similar to keyword density tools but they have advanced filtering for stop words such as: the, and, was. The visual presentation of keywords more prevalent your copy and an overview of the proportionality of each keyword provides another useful insight into keyword density.

Keyword Position Tools

Keyword position tools are useful when looking for opportunities and tracking success. Write an exhaustive list of relevant keywords you would like to gain high search engine positions for and use a keyword position tool to assess your current positions. Using this information you can find keywords you’re on the brink of good positions for and do some extra optimisation work to boost them in the rankings. Checking keyword positions is an on-going process and should form part of your data set for defining campaign successes and future optimisation opportunities.

Ranking Reports

Ranking reports combine a range of SEO tools and often provide useful data regarding keywords, links and search engine positions displayed using graphs and pie charts etc. Having set up a ranking report with keyword and competitors it can then be run on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis to track progress on a periodic basis.

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