Top Free SEO Tools

• Bing Webmaster Tools — It would be silly not to start paying attention to Bing-referred search traffic when measuring the effectiveness of an SEO campaign, especially considering the Bing/Yahoo search alliance represents an estimated 30 percent market share in search, and that many find conversion rates from Bing-referred traffic considerably higher than Google. Not unlike Google Webmaster Tools (detailed below), Bing Webmaster Tools provides information pertaining to content performance: content crawled, indexed, and trafficked. Unfortunately, Bing Webmaster Tools doesn’t yet provide as much information as Google Webmaster Tools.

  Can help answer the questions: Why has my Bing-referred traffic changed? What keywords trigger results for my content in Bing?

• Xenu Link Sleuth — Best described as a PC-based crawler, this handy tool spiders your website for links and ensures they are valid, executable (when pointed at files), and search engine friendly (if redirects).

  Can help answer the questions: Are all the links on my blog still valid, or are they broken? Are all the broken links that were found now fixed?

• Yahoo Web Analytics — A highly customizable web analytics solution rivaling the likes of Omniture Sitecatalyst (yes, it’s almost that powerful, and it’s free). The only downside is that you can’t necessarily get started right away — you have to know someone who is a member of the Yahoo Consultant Network.

  Can help answer the questions (in real-time): Where do most of my organic search-referred visitors live? Aside from the page they clicked in a search engine, what other pages did they visit? What do my search-referred visitors have in common, how do they differ based on multiple visitor segments?

Google’s “No Cost to You” Tools

Maile Ohye of the Google Webmaster Tools team uses the phrase “provided at no cost to you” as a subtle reminder that although these tools are indeed free to use, they don’t come without a cost. Google invests a lot of time and money into developing tools that help users make the most of their search-referred traffic, advertising dollars, and website user experience.

• Google Webmaster Tools — The definitive tool enabling webmasters to diagnose Google search indexing issues, research keyword visibility (impressions, clicks, click-through rate, average position, position distribution), article popularity on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) and overall website speed.

  Can help answer the questions: Why has my Google-referred traffic changed? What keywords trigger results for my content in Google? Where does my content rank (on average) in the SERPs? How does my Google visibility change over time?

• Google External Keyword Tool — External meaning available outside of Google AdWords, this tool provides invaluable keyword research information such as average competition, global monthly searches, local monthly searches, and local search trending. Somewhat dated now that Google Insights for Search has arrived (see below).

  Can help answer the questions: What keywords are the most popular for websites in a given category? Which keywords are becoming more popular over time? Which keywords have a good balance of high search volume and low competition?

• Google Analytics — Arguably the most powerful tools you would ever need in order to maximize the ROI of your SEO campaigns are found in your web analytics software. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you get from Google if 100 percent of your visitors recall their experience as — Avinash Kaushik puts it best — “I came, I puked, I left.” Think of Google Analytics as the natural extension of Google Webmaster tools, two halves of the same coin; ultimately the coin you put in your pocket.

  Can help answer the questions: Where do most of my organic search-referred visitors live? Aside from the page they clicked in a search engine, what other pages did they visit? How many visitors from a given keyword completed goals on my site? What’s my conversion rate?

• Google Trends — Put simply, this tool provides a trended representation of the most popular topics and search queries, and helps explain the context of those terms using content segmentation (news articles, blog posts, web results, etc).

  Can help answer the questions: Why did an old article I wrote months ago about Tom Brady’s resilience become so popular again (if you lived under a rock)?

• Google Trends for Websites — An easy to use tool that can profile estimated traffic to almost any website (given sufficient traffic numbers) and provide visitor region, other websites trafficked by visitors, and search terms used by visitors.

  Can help answer the questions: How does my website’s overall traffic compare to other websites I consider competitors (or partners)? How does the distribution of visitors from different regions to my website compare to my competition?

• Google Insights for Search — A considerably better tool than Google’s External Keyword Tool (mentioned above) for keyword research because it provides in-depth (annotated) trending, categorization, localization (regional interest), and more — all in a sophisticated, interactive interface.

  Can help answer the questions: What global events triggered the popularity of a given keyword? What keywords are highly seasonal and cyclical, and when should I consider targeting those queries with relevant content?

• Google Instant/Google Suggest — Some say that Google Instant will change the rules of engagement for SEO, while others say Google Suggest has been around a while, and already provides value to intelligent content creators. If Google isn’t your first stop for keyword research plus competitive content ideas, it should be.

Toolbars and Browser Plug-ins

In general, all the tools in this category are great in assisting SEO professionals determined to discover the nitty-gritty details behind successful content creation, link building, and user experience. Whether it’s to help optimize preexisting content, or reverse engineer competitive content.

• SEO Book.com SEO Toolbar — A comprehensive toolbar for Mozilla Firefox that includes a variety of link segmentation information, competitive intelligence metrics (Compete, Alexa, Quantcast, Google Trends for Websites), website comparison tools, and even non-related SEO features like an RSS reader.
• SEO Quake — The granddaddy of SEO browser plug-ins, the primary “must-have” feature of this tool is an extremely powerful overlay of parameters that influence SEO success, right on top of those SERPs.
• SEO Site Tools for Chrome — Dubbed “the SEO tool that may make you switch to Google Chrome,” it has fast become a favorite in the SEO community due to the ridiculous amount of “awesome sauce” it provides. From standard metrics affecting SEO success to overlays in Google Analytics, Google Webmaster tools, Google SERP, Yahoo SERP, and Bing SERP, this is the current plug-in to beat.

Top “Freemium” SEO Tools

• Open Site Explorer — A powerful tool created by the fine folks at SEOmoz.org that measures and compares link popularity of websites, top pages on a domain, and anchor text distribution. Although the free version doesn’t really limit the number of results returned (1,000 links is a lot), it limits some of the metrics in any given report. Subscriptions start at $79/month.
• mozBar — Yet another popular SEO toolbar, this time from SEOmoz.org. The free version of this tool provides a number of auto-loading metrics such as page authority, number of inbound links, and the root domain authority for pages you visit. I also love the “Show Nofollows” button, which highlights no-follow links using an overlay. Subscriptions that unlock additional metrics, plus several other SEOmoz.org tools starts at $99/month.
• Majestic-SEO — Similar to Open Site Explorer, this tool provides comprehensive backlink information on over 2.4 trillion unique URLs (as of Sept 3). The tool is free to try out, but link information for external backlinks by type requires free registration. Subscriptions that scale the volume and detail of reports are reasonably priced and start around $15/month.

Top Paid SEO Tools

• BuzzStream Link Building — Automated tools to make researching keywords and managing link building relationships easier than ever.
• SEOClarity — Full-scale SEO web analytics suite capable of managing data-driven and actionable insights tied to ROI.
• Lotus Jump — Link building software that takes the guesswork out of SEO, scanning thousands of websites for opportunities and returning actionable tasks including social media participation, content generation, and more.
• Compete — Provides competitive intelligence reporting including website traffic comparisons, inbound link analysis, and search analytics.
• Experian Hitwise — Advanced competitive intelligence reporting including website traffic comparisons, comprehensive industry/category rankings, search intelligence, clickstream analysis (upstream/downstream websites), and demographics information.

By no means is this list comprehensive, but it includes many tools several of the expert contributors here at Search Engine Watch recommend. Feel free to comment and add your own.

Dofollow article directories are very important for any article marketing campaign. Article marketing is as simple as submitting your articles to article directories to build backlinks and drive targeted traffic to your blog or website. But we all know that when it comes to backlinks and page rank, not any backlinks is worthy.

When it comes to your blog’s page rank, Backlinks generated from dofollow article directories tend to carry more wight than backlinks from article directories with nofollow attribute. And of course article directories with higher page rank are much more effective in getting a higher page rank.

Although finding dofollow article directories and their page rank isn’t that hard, its very time consuming to sort through hundreds of article directories to determine their page rank and whether or not they are dofollow. That’s why I decided to do some research and gather a list of dofollow article directories along with their page rank, so you don’t have to.

34 Dofollow article directories page rank 1 to 6

Dofollow article directories PR 6
http://ezinearticles.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.isnare.com

http://www.selfgrowth.com

Dofollow article directories PR 5

http://www.buzzle.com

http://www.articledashboard.com

http://www.articlecity.com

http://www.site-reference.com

http://www.thewhir.com/article-central

http://articlet.com

http://www.articlecircle.com

http://www.articlepool.com

http://www.articleblast.com

Dofollow article directories PR 4

http://www.easyarticles.com

http://www.articler.com

http://www.articlesfactory.com

Dofollow article directories PR 3

http://www.talkinmince.com

http://www.articlecompilation.com

http://www.ideamarketers.com

http://www.articlerich.com

http://www.allbestarticles.com

http://www.web-source.net

http://www.articlepros.com

http://www.articleco.com

http://www.articleonramp.com

Dofollow article directories PR 2

http://www.everyonesarticles.com

http://www.amazines.com

http://e-articles.info

http://www.articlesphere.com

http://www.s-article.com

http://articledirectory.com

Dofollow article directories PR 1
http://www.myfreearticledirectory.com

http://articleresource.org

http://www.articlegold.com

Please keep in mind that the dofollow and page rank status of these article directories may change from time to time. But, I will do my best to update this list as often as I possibly can.

If you know of any dofollow article directory that is missing from this list, please feel free to let me know and I will add it to the list. Thank you.

Update:

Here are some new dofollow article directory suggested by our  readers who happen to be the owners of these directories.

http://www.fourpxarticles.com   PR 2

http://www.articlesxpert.com      PR 2

http://www.freearticlesinc.com   PR 2

web 2.0 sites can be used in many different ways. But, if you are working on your blog or site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) you can use web 2.0 sites for building link wheel. As you know, link wheel is one of the most advanced and best SEO methods, and it’s extremely effective when it comes to giving your site a boost in its ranking. Web 2.0 sites are free and with their high page ranks, using them to build link wheel will help your blog rank higher as well. Here is a big list of web 2.0 sites, web 2.0 properties, blogging platforms or whatever you want to call it, along with their current page rank:
 

List-Web 2.0 Sites

PR9

http://wordpress.com

PR8

http://squidoo.com

http://weebly.com

http://livejournal.com

http://bravenet.com

PR7

http://blogger.com

http://blogsome.com

http://www.wetpaint.com

http://www.wikispaces.com

http://www.xanga.com

http://www.tripod.lycos.com

http://tumblr.com

http://quizilla.teennick.com

http://viviti.com

http://webs.com

http://knol.google.com

http://friendster.com

PR 6

http://bigadda.com

http://blog.co.uk

http://blog.com

http://www.zimbio.com

http://gather.com

http://diaryland.com

http://edublogs.org

http://opendiary.com

http://sosblog.com

PR5

http://20six.co.uk

http://blog.ca

http://hubpages.com

http://blurty.com

http://upsaid.com

http://tabulas.com

http://tblog.com

http://terapad.com

http://shoutpost.com

http://thoughts.com

http://blogskinny.com

http://free-conversant.com

http://freeflux.net

PR4

http://blogeasy.com

http://blogstream.com

http://blogstudio.com

http://blogtext.org

http://insanejournal.com

http://journalfen.net

http://journalhub.com

http://bloxster.net

http://bloghi.com

http://mynewblog.com

http://netcipia.com

http://wikyblog.com

http://blogigo.com

http://freeblogit.com

PR3

http://blogono.com

http://blogr.com

If you know of any web 2.0 sites that I have missed, please feel free to leave a comment and I will added to the list. Remember not to build too many link wheels too fast. Make it appear as natural as possible and in a few weeks and in some cases in a few days you will start to see a rise in your page rank thanks to the power of link wheel and high ranking web 2.0 sites.

Link wheel is an advanced search engine optimization method for achieving higher ranking, and the good thing is that it can be build by almost anyone, even if you don’t know what exactly search engine optimization is. Link wheel is basically an advanced and speedy way of getting quality backlinks to your site form authority sites. If you don’t know how exactly it works, you can read about it here, what is link wheel.

To build a link wheel you need to pick a few blogging platforms or web 2.0 properties. They are free and easy to build and most of them are high ranking sites. Most people start with set of 6 site. You can use as many as you like. Here is how to build a link wheel.

Lets say your main blog/site (the one that we are building the link wheel for to get it rank better) is about making money online. And lets assume we chose these 6 web 2.0 properties to build our link wheel:


wordpress.com
Hubpages
Blogger
Ezine
Squidoo
Vox

1- On wordpress.com write and publish a unique article with 1 link in it pointing back to your main site and another link pointing to hubpages.

2- On Hubpages write and publish a unique article with 1 link in it pointing back to your main site and another link pointing to Blogger.

3- On Blogger write and publish a unique article with 1 link in it pointing back to your main site and another link pointing to Ezine.

4- On Ezine write and publish a unique article with 1 link in it pointing back to your main site and another link pointing to Squidoo.

5- On Squidoo write and publish a unique article with 1 link in it pointing back to your main site and another link pointing to Vox.

6- On Vox write and publish a unique article with 1 link in it pointing back to your main site. At this point point you can either choose to leave the wheel as it is, and leave it “open” or you can close the wheel by linking your website back to your wordpress.com blog. Either way, you will see an improvement in your blog’s search engine ranking.


Remember not to make too many link wheels too fast. It should look natural. Most blogs and websites don’t get hundreds of back links over night from high ranking sites, so you don’t want to make Google and other suspicious of all the quality backlinks your getting. If you can use it wisely, link wheel can be a great tool for achieving a higher search engine ranking.

What is link wheel? How can using link wheel help your Site achieve a higher page rank?… When it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and specifically search engine ranking, link wheel is one of the most powerful and most advanced methods for achieving a higher ranking. We know that the more links point to your site, specially links from quality and authority sites, the higher your blog or website will ranks. Link wheel is based on this idea. Making a link wheel basically means building back links to your site, but, with a twist!


What is link wheel?
A link wheel basically is a process in which you build a dozen or so new blogs/web pages using web 2.0 properties such as squidoo, blogger, hubpages and etc, all on the same topic as your main blog or website. Then, on each of these mini sites, you write one (or more) unique quality article that includes a link to your main website or blog and another link to one of the other new blogs you just built.

The difference between link wheel and traditional link building
When building backlinks using traditional link building methods, you just link back to your site from any other site you can. But, link building with link wheel is different than traditional link building, in a sense that you don’t just build links pointing only to your site, you also build links pointing to other sites on which you have a link pointing to your site. …confused?

How Does a link wheel work
Lets assume your have 6 web 2.0 sites that you want to use to make a link wheel for your blog (by the way web 2.0 properties are great for link wheel since they are free and pack a punch when it comes to Google liking them). You write 6 unique articles, each with one link pointing to your main site, and another link to one of the 6 web 2.0 sites your using, and post one article on each. It’s sort of like an interconnected web.

When you get to the last site, you can either link it to any one of the other 5 sites, completing a complete link which goes in a circular motion(yes, that’s why its called link “wheel”), or you can leave it open.

Why is link wheel so effective?
Backlinks build with link wheel carry much more weight when it comes to giving your site a push towards higher ranking, compere to backlinks built using traditional link building methods. Simply because those new sites that we are building, are on web 2.0 and blogging platforms such as squidoo, hubpages and blogger, which are pretty established sites, and they are counted as authority sites by Google ad other search engines. And any site built with their domain extension is counted as an authority site. Do you see the point?


Basically we are using the authority of these web 2.0 sites to clime up the search engine and achieve a higher search engine ranking. Not only that, we are passing the so called “link juice” to those sites as well. Remember we said each article links to our main site as well as to one of the 6 small sites? By interlinking and linking #1 to #2 – #2 to #3 - #3 to #1 and so on, we are passing value from one site to another, while linking to our main site from authority sites. And this process is what link wheel is all about.

Article submission helps you on many different levels. Submitting articles to article directories is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site for free, and it also helps you build quality back-links. But, submitting articles to article directories manually is a time consuming task, and article submission services are expensive. So what do you do? Whats the best and fastest way to submit your articles to hundreds of directories for free?


Article submission softwares are expensive
Well, the solution is automation. Using an article submission software to submit articles to directories. Unfortunately, automated article submission softwares are usually costly, which most of us can not afford. That’s where free article submission tools come in. Sadly, just like most other free automation tools, free article submitters don’t really work well. I have used almost all free submission tools, and non of them were quite worthy. It takes you more time to fix bugs and the problems associated with the tool, than submitting article manually.

Article Submission Helper- FREE article submitter
That was until I came a cross this free article submission software, called the Article Submission Helper. This tool is by far the best free article submitter I have seen. Although free, article submission helper is much more useful and easy to use than most paid article submission softwares I have used. There is no catch, no upgrade, nothing, just a great 100% free article submitter.

an Article submission software that is easy to use
Another great thing about article submission helper is that it’s very easy to use. You know how most automation tools, have a whole bunch of icon and this and that, which for most people who aren’t tech savvy including myself, takes a few days figuring how to work with the damn thing. With article submission helper, everything is clear and easy. You copy and past your article title, summary, body, keywords and click a button and you are good to go.

Article directories on ASH
Article submission helper has about 100 article directories in it, but you can easily add more directories which I would suggest you do, specially dofollow article directories. You can also delete directoires you don’t want.


By the way, I do not have any affiliation with ASH. I mean its free, so there is no affiliate program for it any way. I don’t even know the creator. But, I really really think this free tool does what even most expensive paid article submission softwares can’t do.

So, if you keep putting your article marketing campaign off, because you don’t have time to submit your articles manually or don’t have the money to buy an automated submission software, download ArticleSubmissionHelper for free, and start building backlinks while generating targeted traffic for your site by submitting your articles to hundred of article directories with one click, using the best free article submitter.

Some people believe that to get the most exposure from press release, its best to submit to the paid pres release submission sites. But, one thing is for sure, you will benefit greatly from press releases, no matter which one you use, paid press release sites or free press release submission sites.

Free Press release submission sites, why are they so important? Why would you, as a blogger or an internet marketer need a list of press release distributions sites?…

Press release are a great way for giving your blog exposure, establishing yourself as an authority figure in your niche, driving traffic to your blog… I can go on and on about the benefits of press release, but unless you submit your pres release to the right press release sites, you won’t see any of these benefits. With that said, here are 50 best press release submission sites where you can submit your press release for free.


50 Free Press Release Submission Sites


PR 9

http://www.npr.org/about/pitch/story.html

PR 7

http://newslink.org/

http://www.marketwire.com/

http://editorandpublisher.com/

http://www.prweb.com/

PR 6

http://www.betanews.com/

http://www.directionsmag.com/

http://news.thomasnet.com/

http://www.prlog.org/

http://www.newswiretoday.com/

http://www.nanotech-now.com/submit-press.cgi

http://www.pr-inside.com/release_new.htm

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/

http://www.pr.com/

http://www.threadwatch.org/

PR 5

http://www.pressexposure.com/submit/index.php?

http://www.1888pressrelease.com/

http://www.prleap.com/

http://www.free-press-release.com/

http://www.clickpress.com/releases/index.shtml

http://www.openpr.com/news/submit.html

http://express-press-release.net/

PR 4

http://www.pressbox.co.uk/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi

http://www.theopenpress.com

http://www.free-press-release-center.info/

http://www.ukprwire.com/

http://www.freepressreleases.co.uk/

http://www.freepressindex.com/

http://www.afly.com/

http://www.prwindow.com/

http://ecommwire.com/

http://www.free-news-release.com/

http://www.pr9.net/

PR 3

http://www.prbuzz.com/

http://www.filecluster.com/submit-press-release.html

http://www.pressreleasespider.com/AddFeed.aspx

http://www.pressabout.com/submit-press-release/

http://www.itbsoftware.com/submit/

http://www.pressmethod.com/

http://www.i-newswire.com/submit_free.php

http://www.mediasyndicate.com/index.php

http://prmac.com/

http://www.publicitywires.com/

http://www.seenation.com/

http://www.pressreleasecirculation.com/

http://addpr.com/

PR 2

http://news.eboomwebsolutions.com/addnews.php

PR 0

http://pr-gb.com/

http://www.sanepr.com/

http://www.techprspider.com/AddFeed.aspx

Last night, Matt Cutts of Google gave a talk to the attendees at the PubCon. I was in the audience and I wanted to share my personal key takeaways from the talk. Specifically items Matt mentioned that I found to be new or interesting.here are Top 10 suggestion From Google’s Matt Cutts Talk At PubCon.

• Spam reports get 4 times priority in the spam queue at Google.
• Google has 200 ranking factors but those ranking factors may have 50 or more variations within a single factor.
• Google will soon be offering specific notifications via Webmaster Tools informing webmasters of spam on their site. Specifically, Google will warn of doorway pages, parked domains and 3 other spam issues to start.
• Matt recommends SEOs do not “chase the algorithm” and instead try to predict where Google will be going in the future.
• Google knows there has been more web spam in the search results and it is due to moving web spam resources to other projects. Those resources are coming back and Google will be working on patching up that issue.
• Google reduced the number of hacked sites showing up in Google’s search results by 90%
• Matt made a point to mention that users are more likely to click on the first link in an article as opposed to a link at the bottom of the article. He said put your most important links at the top of the article. I believe it was Matt hinting to SEOs about this.
• Google will be building a new paid link tool to block only the paid links on a page and let the other links, that are not paid, pass link juice.
• Google disregards the canonical tag when it can hurt your site, specifically if you canonical link to a 404 page.
• Google Places and Android App Market spam will improve over time.
• Google will be looking at why exact domain matches rank so well. For example, if you have a site at www.blue-widgets.com it may rank a bit too well for the keyword phrase [blue widgets].

These are in no specific order but the key takeaways that I personally found interesting, new or worth noting to you all.I should warn that these are my interpretations of Matt’s talk and I may have misunderstood what he has said but I believe all these points are indeed correct.

Last spring, Google AdWords introduced Broad Match Modifier, an innovation that shows Google has been listening to its customers.

 For many years paid search experts have complained that broad match is too broad and phrase match is too narrow so I for one was pumped to hear about the modifier a few months back and couldn’t wait to start testing it.To start, let’s define the term “broad match.” As the name suggests, broad match keywords generate relevant (right Google?) keyword variations for your campaign.

 Using broad match in a campaign is useful for a lot of reasons. It generates a large search query list you can then turn into phrase and exact matches, helps accumulate data during growth phases and vastly increases impression share. However, they can make you run through some serious budget. Also, broad match lacks the control of other match types and typically results in low efficiency (high CPA).The Google broad match modifier can help get a client the best of both worlds.

By adding a plus (+) sign within a broad match keyword, the modifier will ensure that any time your client’s ad is served up on a search, that search must include the token (word within the keyword phrase) that has a + sign in front of it to be served.For example, a keyword like “expensive shoes” on broad match could possibly display for a query for “expensive sneakers.” However if the keyword has a modifier like “expensive +shoes” the user’s query must use the word “shoe” like “pricey shoes”.

Also, it will not display for “pricey sneakers” since “shoe” was modified and therefore a required term. Additionally, your ad will display for stemmings (like “floor” and “flooring”) as well as misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms.The modifier adds a level of specificity that can help control your budget while accumulating data and mining relevant search queries.

It can also help generate additional volume on campaigns that use a high % of phrase match.Ultimately, the decision to move forward with broad match modifier should be carefully considered on a campaign by campaign basis. Putting a plan in place from the onset of a PPC campaign will go a long way towards determining whether broad match modifier falls in line with your client’s objectives and spend. Still, the modifier certainly appears to deserve an “A+” for the majority of PPC programs.

Relate search  :AdWords tools,Broad Match Modifier Overview,google keywords tools,ppc tools,New Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool