Every SEO uses different tools and resources. Some tools are paid, some are free and some are internally developed tools that we use for ourselves and our clients – but we all use them. Very often I get asked what tools people should use if they’re looking to optimize their own sites and what resources they should use to keep up with the latest going’s on. While telling people how to optimize their own sites and what the tools we use isn’t generally the best of business practices – I just can’t help myself. If your budget doesn’t allow for the hiring of a professional SEO company – trying it yourself may be the only option. I also try to remember that once-upon-a-time I was optimizing my own sites and was new to SEO and without the open advice of others already involved in the community – I wouldn’t be running a successful SEO company today. To this end, it only seems right to provide a list of some of the main tools we use on virtually every site.

When I initially started writing this article I was going to cram a slew of various tools and resources into one article, but the article was going to end up running WAY too long to hold your attention (or mine) so I’ve cut it into three EZ parts (as opposed to three EZ payments which you’ll be familiar with if you too watch late night TV with a laptop in front of you writing things like SEO articles). But let’s get to the meat of this article shall we? The series will be divided into three parts:

• Firefox
• Free & Affordable Tools
• Resources

So let’s begin with Firefox. Let me first say, I don’t know if Firefox is officially the browser of SEO’s, but if not – it should be. You can download it at Mozilla.com.

And now the extensions that make this browser invaluable to SEO’s …

SEO Quake

If I had to lose all but one of my SEO tools – this would be the one I’d keep which is why it gets listed first. This little tool allows me to quickly look at the top 10 results in the SERPs and within seconds see all the PageRank, indexed page numbers, backlinks to that page, domain backlinks, the age of the site and much, much more.

This tool doesn’t provide any revolutionary information in that it’s all data that can be accessed directly. However, it reduces the time taken for tasks that would take minutes to seconds. It then provides easy links to more detailed information. A fantastic tool.

Oh, and it also adds a line through all nofollowed links. Very handy when link building.

SEO for Firefox

Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has added a great tool to the mix that duplicates a lot of functions of SEO Quake but which has enough additional features to be very useful. Basically – neither is a replacement for the other.Like most tools – it provides information that can be accessed in other ways, BUT with this Tool Aaron allows users to find tons of relevant site and keyword information quickly and painlessly. From keyword traffic to keyword trends, from backlink counts to social media mentions – this tools gives
quick access to tons of information.

Admittedly, I prefer the layout of SEO Quake and some of the easier functionality.

SEO Link Analysis

A HUGE thumbs way up (two of them in fact) to Joost de Valk who made all our lives simpler when this tool launched. What this tool does is display the PageRank and anchor text of every link when you perform a backlink check on one of the major engines. I suppose you could visit every single site and get this information yourself and there’s value in that to be sure, but when you need a quick analysis of a site’s backlinks – this tool is invaluable.

As a sidenote – it works VERY well with SEO Quake.

Web Developer

With this tool we’re getting a bit more advanced. For those of you who understand coding or are learning (and you should be), this tool is incredible. It allows for quick testing and viewing of a site’s structure including, image info, table and cell information, W3C compliance, CSS details and MUCH, MUCH more.

I can’t possibly list off all the functions this tool offers and admittedly I don’t use them all but I use enough of them regularly for this tool to make my top 10 list.

IE Tab

This is an odd tool to add and it’s purely a convenience tool but like adding a second monitor to your system – once you have it and realize that it saves you just a few seconds dozens of times per day you quickly realize that your productivity relies on it.

With a simple click of a button, this tool loads Internet Explorer into your Firefox tab so you don’t have to go back-and-forth between browsers when testing. I could survive without it, but since you have Firefox anyways…

Search Status

This is another tool with many uses. On the surface it simply displays PageRank, Alexa and Compete rank and mozRank data but with a right-click of the icon you get access to a whole slew of additional information, including fast links to whois, the robots and sitemap files, keyword density information, Archive.org info, and it will even highlight nofollow links.

A lot of these features overlap other tools noted above, but I will say – I have it installed and so should you.

These are the main extensions I have installed for Firefox (read: the ones I use virtually every day). This isn’t to say that’s all there are, and I can’t stress enough the benefits of
visiting addons.mozilla.org and looking for more useful extensions specific to your needs (RSS, Twitter, coding, etc.) I have about a dozen more installed than are listed here, but those above are the main Firefox SEO tools I use daily.

In the next article, we’ll be taking a look at free and affordable tools that you can use to help improve your website rankings. Be sure to keep your eyes open as there will be many invaluable tools listed there too.

Building a great landing page should be on top of your priority list if you want your website visitors transformed into customers. While a great looking website  can grab the attention of your visitors, a strong landing page will keep them involved and get them to buy your products/services.

Wikipedia defines a landing page as:

the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-ngine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

Wikipedia’s definition sums it up nicely but there is certainly more to a great landing page then relevant and keyword rich content. Here’s 10 things that you should be looking at when optimizing a landing page:

• § Relevant Content
  A landing page’s content should be directly related to organic search results, PPC campaign, anchor text in inbound links and any other targeted inbound advertising, online and offline. If people don’t get what they expect, they will be more likely to leave.
• § Multiple Landing Pages
  A landing page shouldn’t necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page. However, for more targeted traffic and better results, you want a landing page to be focused on specific offer and specific call for action. To accomplish this, a given website should have multiple landing pages. Create some deep link landing pages that will focus on specific offer and your conversion rate will be higher.
• § Focus on Functionality
  More and more visitors seem to judge the professionalism and credibility of a site by its design. To satisfy this, many website owners concentrate on the design aspect instead of focusing on its functionality. A well-designed landing page is essentially worthless if the prospect can’t accomplish anything. While I wouldn’t suggest skimping on the design, it shouldn’t be your priority. Focus on the exact steps you want your visitor to take and design a page with that in mind.
• § Call To Action
  You got visitors to your landing page, now direct them to take action. Make it clear a highly noticeable without overwhelming your audience. Whether it’s a sign-up form or a “buy now” button, make it the focus of your page.
• § Send a Clear Message
  Keep your landing page clean and clutter free so your visitors stay focused on your message. Emphasize the biggest reasons that they should carry out the applicable call to action with larger text, contrasting colors, images. Make it easier for them to scan the content by using lists and getting right to the point.
• § Offer Incentive
  Bribing your visitors with freebies and samples is a proven method of enticing them to sign up. Offer more then your competition but don’t sell yourself short either. Provide a list of reasons why your offer is better and what exactly the visitor can expect. Provide references and testimonials.
• § Make Visitors Stay
  Avoid sending your visitors to another page unless it is absolutely necessary. That includes any internal navigation as well as external banners. If you remove all distractions and limit navigation options, you stand a better chance of keeping your visitors around.
• § Simple is Better
  Make it easy for your visitors to complete the action you want them to. Less confusion and decision making for your visitor means better conversions rate for your landing page. Don’t offer multiple choices and throw in optional extras. Focus on the offer the page was created for.
• § Power of Freebies
  Everyone likes free offers. They are hard to resist and can be a powerful conversion tool. Whether a call to action is free or something free is received as a result of carrying out a call to action, it certainly doesn’t hurt. If your competition charges for something and you offer it for free, you’ll win the customer. Remember, just because you make a free offer doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be quality.
• § Testing
  In a recent post I’ve stressed how important testing is in finding out what your visitors like. Testing various text, call to action forms, layouts will give you true idea what produces the best results as far as conversion. Using a tool like Google’s Website Optimizer you can easily monitor the conversion rate, bounce rate, and tons of other useful metrics found in most modern day web analytics apps. Using these metrics you can easily figure out which version will be your optimal page, one that maximizes the results.

Creating a successful and effective landing page takes a lot of work but should be the focus for anyone involved with a website. Whether you are a website owner, web designer, web developer or a web marketing specialist you must be aware of the components that comprise a solid landing page. After all this can mean website’s success or failure.

There is a common misconception that a website automatically catapults a business to global stardom. This could be true – with a lot of time and money spent on it – but in isolation, a website is next to useless. No doubt all you SEO experts out there will think I’m teaching grandma to suck eggs but there are literally thousands of people starting out who just don’t realise what it takes.

The truth is, a website on its own is akin to opening a new shop at the bottom of a dark, gated alleyway – with no signage or advertising. Passers-by will do exactly that, pass by, never knowing what wonderful products you are selling. Without the brightly lit signs, local press, opening launches, special offer flyers and other advertising, nobody will ever know your shop is there!

It’s the same with a website, unless people know it’s there, they will never visit it.

So what does it take to get noticed?

Well, for a start, you should register your URL as early as you possibly can. Put up a page stating “website under construction”. Google rates websites, amongst other criteria, for how long they have been up and running. A new website will take many months before Google’s bots will start giving your site any credence.

Next, when you build your site you need to ensure it is built to be optimised for search engine spiders. There is a lot of information out there about how to do this but unless you are a web developer my advice would be to find a reputable company to do it for you. You get what you pay for. In my experience, a cheap website will end up costing you more in the long run. Better to employ a company with a proven track record than to to spend months messing around with a sub-standard site.

Then you will need to be constantly updating your site with fresh content so the spiders know you are a live business and so that your readers or customers have something to keep them coming back .

Establish links to your website from other sites that are high page-ranked. There are a number of ways to do this.

1. You can email the webmaster and offer to provide reciprocal links or manually enter your website details into the many thousands of directories or you can purchase software to part-automate the process. Again, this process takes a lot of time and effort and tests the greatest of patience.

2. Write articles and post them to the big article directories. If readers like your article they can publish them as content on their site, which then provides a link to your site.

3. Participate in forums, using your expertise, use blogs and social networking sites to get your url out there as much as possible.

Okay so all this takes time. What about getting business in the meantime?

Well this is where we come to sponsored links. Sponsored links can give you the immediate exposure that you need. This is where you and your competitors essentially bid to be seen on the right hand side of Google’s Results Page. I read all sorts of articles about the pros and cons of using this facility and I get the feeling that the overall message is a negative one, that somehow paying to be at the top of the listings is cheating. Well I don’t subscribe to this. The organic listings have created a situation that is very similar to the rise of the supermarkets and decline of the greengrocer and butcher and fishmonger. It is hard to compete with their buying power.

This is not so different. To get a good flow of visitors on your site you need to be on the first page of Google for your chosen keywords. To be on the first page is not easy, as I said before it takes a lot of time, effort and money to get there and stay there. Most small businesses, particularly those who are just starting out, don’t have the time, money or know how to do this. But they may well be offering a really good service, product or whatever. It isn’t cheating; it is just a way of getting noticed by your target audience while you gradually develop your SEO skills.