Website and Search Engine Optimization Tools

Search Engine Optimization and Website Optimization are important to everyone today.  So how do you determine what you should do to optimize your website?  Or if you have hired someone, how do you make sure they are doing a good job?  The answer is simple.  Use these free and easy to use tools to measure the results and to improve or make suggestions yourself.

1. Google Analytics

Before you start doing anything, you need a way to track the traffic.  Google Analytics is free, and provides a boatload of information.  It will tell you what keywords users are using, what search engines they are coming from, what websites are sending users to yours.  It is so information rich, you could spend days reading the report.  It lays out the most important items in the ‘dashboard’, so it will show the basics without any extra work.

2. Website Grader

The Website Grader is an awesome tool to directly measure changes you make to a page.  It’s simple and free.  You enter the URL of the page you want to test, click ‘Generate Report’ and within seconds you have a score and suggestions to improve your site.  As you make improvements, re-score your site and watch your score improve.

3. Compete

The third tool I love to use is Compete.  Using Compete, you can enter up to 4 competitors and track the history of their site traffic compared to yours.  Compete offers a lot of valuable information as well, such as how users end up on your site as well as your competitors site.  It will also tell you where users are going when they leave.

There are a lot of tools out there, although these 3 are the first I turn to when starting a new search engine optimization program.  Best of all, these are all free systems.  If you are a SEO specialist, or have used other systems that you have worked well for you, please share.  If you try any of these systems and like them, come back and tell me how you used them and how they helped you.