My SEM Toolbox
I finally got around to posting this. It's what I presented at the SES London gig;

I’ve been trying to locate the ‘summary’ page from SES London to save myself some time in recreating this tidbit but cannot find it anywhere so I guess I’ll write it all over again.

I was on the ‘My SEM Toolbox’ with DaveN (Dave Naylor) *** a few other really respected (at least in my eyes) SEO’s.

My view on this panel was conflicted…There were plenty of n00bies, plenty of website owners *** a ton of top-line SEM’s in the room…so how do you come up with tools that everyone can potentially use, benefit from *** not be old news?

After much consideration, I found the answer under my nose. Mention them all, highlight a few, *** give a real-life application of what I consider to be one the best.

Unfortunately, no ONE tool stood out, but combining a few definitely did.

So here’s my favourite tools I use daily.

Link Building is huge. It is how the SE’s grade your homework. So I’m going to tell you how I train my ppl to build links to our clients sites.

You’ll need to get a few things;
Microsoft Excel (If u do not already have it) or Google Spreadsheets
Firefox Browser
SEO Quake Firefox Extension
IBP (Internet Business Professional)

Now my purpose here is to show a new way to find potential link partners.

First off search your top keyword string in FF. Be sure the little “SQ” at the bottom right of the browser does not have a red X over it. If it does click on it to activate SEO Quake.


http://farm*.static.flickr.com/*63/...8aff579.jpg?v=0

Don't know why vbCode isn't working here...srey


Ok. So you should see a bunch of stuff under the url’s. This is information that you can use for many purposes. I don’t have all of the optional information available showing in the above example. These are just the ones that I use. It can show the PR, # of pages indexed, Google Backlinks, *** when Google last visited your site. You can also do the same with Yahoo, plus the Directory listings, *** the same for MSN. You also can opt to see the Y***ex, Rambler, Baidu, DMOZ, Alexa, the Webarchive age, del.icio.us, Technorati *** Diggs, as well as total page links *** even keyword density of each listing.

Those that know SEO can see why I like this so much. It takes awhile to load *** is a bit messy in FF if you have a bunch of the options turned on, but this stuff is great information, *** all on one page.

From here I sort by either Page Rank (If I am looking for potential backlinks), Links from Google (The more the better because you will be scra***g the sites for email addresses), or one of the social bookmarks (for popularity *** trust considerations).

Then I pull everything into an excel file *** junk everything except the url’s.

Now open up IBP *** go to the tab for Arelis. Go down to the “Find Web Sites That Link To Your Competitors” link *** select it. In the window that opens, paste the urls *** hit next. Select your desired engine, then hit next *** next. IBP goes out *** scrapes these sites looking for email addresses.

The reason I like this is because it identifies who links to the competition. These are more than likely going to be easier to get links to your site from. It identifies forums ***/or potential blogs that you can add links to as well. An even better way of doing this is to enter this into Google’s search bar [search Engine Optimization allinurl:forum] This will give you url’s that have ‘forum’ in the url string.

I also have ppl that use SEOQuake *** the whois link to find the owners or webmasters contact information *** then pick up the phone. Offer to run an optimization report (with IBP of course) or create a unique article or review in the form of a story for a link rather than go the reciprocal route. In the end you will get around *5% to add one-way links

If you notice on Arelis you can also find sites by using keywords, or sites that already link to you. In the latter, I contact the company *** either ask that they adjust the link if the anchor text isn’t quite what I like, to ask for additional links, or just to identify the links for a client.

So there it is.

There are many other ways to use these tools. This is just one.

Along with the above I also furnished a list of other tools that I use, or have used in the past. I put this list somewhere else in the forum but don’t recall where.

Here they are;
SEO Tools
FireFox Browser
with SEO Add-Ons (*) , (*) & (3) (Density, links, code cleaner, W3C Compliance, etc.)
Google Analytics - Provides deep analysis on all traffic, including paid search.
IBP - Several tools for checking rank positions, basic SEO page analysation *** link building tools
Web CEO - Site optimization, promotion *** analysis.
We BuildPages - Free software for SEO analysation, back link & Anchor text tool.
Link Building *0* - Basic Link Building Instructions *** Tips.
Link Baiting - Good Link Baiting Tutorial
Google Webmaster Central – Statistics, diagnostics *** management of Google's crawling *** indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission *** reporting.
Pay Per Click Tools
Word*****er -Data is based on the Metacrawler *** Overture search engines.
KeywordDiscovery - Data is based on the number of search engines.
Keyword Optimizer - Enter a list of keywords *** this tool will remove any duplicate entries *** re-order the list alphabetically.
Google Analytics - Provides deep analysis on all traffic, including paid search.
Google Suggest - As you type, Google provides the top *0 most popular keywords that begin with the keyed-in letters, in order of popularity.
SpyFu - Find out what competitors are biding on *** estimates for the cost of PPC advertising *** others bells *** whistles.
Hittail – Finds *** easily groups the actual terms being used to find your site into an excel format. Great for finding niches *** long keyword strings.
Google Trends - Graphs historical trends of various Google searches.
Google Keyword Tool External -Historical trends in keyword popularity.
Bid Center - A good tool for comparative analysis *** easy to use
SEO Sleuth - Find what AOL users search for (AOL produces *x the retail conversions as any other engine)
ROI Calculator - This calculator measures the ROI (return on investment) of a CPC (cost per click) campaign.
Other Tools*
C-Class Checker - Use the Class C Checker if you own several cross-linked sites. If you do, it may be more efficient (for SEO purposes) to host them on different Class C IP ranges.
Code to Text Ratio - This tool will help you discover the percentage of text in a web page (as compared to the combined text *** code).
Future PageRank - This tool will query Google's various data centers to check for any changes in PageRank values for a given URL.
Internet Officer - Checks for Redirects
Live PR - The Live PageRank calculator gives you the current PageRank value in the Google index, not just the snapshot that is displayed in the toolbar.
Keyword Cloud - This tool provides a visual representation of keywords used on a website.
Keyword Difficulty Check - Use the Keyword Difficulty Check Tool to see how difficult it would be to rank for specific keywords or keyword phrases.
Page Size - This tool will help you to determine HTML web page size.
Site Link Analyzer - This tool will analyze a given web page *** return a table of data containing columns of outbound links *** their associated anchor text.
Spider Simulator - This tool simulates a search engine spider by displaying the contents of a web page in exactly the way the spider would see it.
URL Rewriting - This tool converts dynamic URLs to static URLs. You will need to create an .htaccess file to use this tool.
Keyword Misspelling Generator - allows you to generate various misspellings of a keyword or phrase to match common ty***g errors. Useful for creating keyword lists around your most important keywords to bid on.
Keyword Density Analysis Tool - finds common words *** phrases on your site.
Hub Finder - finds topically related pages by looking at link co-citation. post about tool
Page Text Rank Checker - tool allows you to check where your site ranks for each phrase or term occurring on the page.
XML Sitemaps - makes free Google sitemaps for sites up to 500 pages in size. Sells a cheap *** useful script to build sitemaps for larger site sizes.
PageRank Toolbar For Mac - A widget to show PageRank for the site you are on.
[http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength/] SEOMoz Page Strength Meter[/url] – Neat tool
*Special Thanks to SEO Chat, DigitalPoint *** SEOBook

Edit - *** * late additions;
Live PR | Live Pagerank | Check Your PageRank | PageRank Checker
Google Data Center Multiple IP Address SEO Research Tool

GaryTheScubaGuy