Free Search Engine Optimization Software

New New New :)

SEO for Firefox

SEO for Firefox - Import useful marketing data right into Google and Yahoo search results.

Browser Buttons and Bookmarks

Quick links and browser extensions which make it easy for you to access cool free SEO tools from anywhere on the web.

Search Marketing Conferences

It is hard to think of conferences as tools, but social networking is huge in this industry. Here is an industry conference calendar.

Keyword Research / Keyword Generation / Analysis

SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - tool shows top keyword phrases from Overture. Also

• Links to other keyword research tools, including:
  • Overture View Bid
  • Google Suggest (popular Google search phrases)
  • Search results from each of the major engines
  • Google AdWords Keyword Sandbox Tool
  • WordTracker
  • Keyword Discovery
• The tool also links at various vertical databases, blog searches, and tagging systems to show you the top results from other information sources.
• grab the source code

Keyword Phrase List Generator

Keyword List Generator - allows you to quickly create large lists of keyword phrases using keywords and modifiers

• web based
• really fast
• makes generating a ton of keyword phrases for your PPC campaign quick and easy
• open source: grab the source code!

Keyword List Cleaner

Keyword List Cleaner - allows you to quickly create a functional keyword list from most any publicly available keyword source

• try it now
• web based
• really fast
• allows you to take unstructured keyword data and format it, making keyword lists alphanumeric, remove numbers, and remove any poorly targeted words or any phrase containing a poorly targeted word
• open source: grab the source code!

Keyword Misspelling Generator

Keyword Misspelling Generator - allows you to generate various misspellings of a keyword or phrase to match common typing errors. Useful for creating keyword lists around your most important keywords to bid on.

Google Suggest Scraper Tool

Google Suggest Tool - shows frequently search for phrases starting with the words and letters in your query.

• grab the source code

Keyword Density Analyzer

Keyword Density Analysis Tool - finds common words and phrases on your site.

• grab the source code

Free Meta Tag Generator

Meta Tag Generator - Free tips for creating your meta tag. Offers a javascript tool for generating xhtml compliant meta tags.

Link Analysis Tools

Back Link Analyzer

Back Link Analyzer - free Windows based downloadable software.

• downloadable software
• does link anchor text analysis
• fairly quick
• works with API's from Google & Yahoo!
• not open source yet, as I want to make it plug-in friendly first

Link Harvester

Link Harvester - allows you to deeply query the Yahoo! database and gives a good amount of link details.

• web based
• really fast
• makes sorting out duplicate links from the same site easy, which allows you to quickly and deeply query the Yahoo! backlink database.
• does not give anchor text
• gives breakdowns of .edu links and number of C block IP addresses, etc.
• open source: grab the source code!

Hub Finder

Hub Finder - finds topically related pages by looking at link co-citation. post about tool

• web based
• really fast
• makes finding hub pages easy
• open source: grab the source code!

Other Link Analysis Tools

• Reciprocal Link Checker - script to help you automate finding out if your reciprocal link partners are still linking back at your site.
  • grab the source code
• Link Suggest Tool - list of words and phrases like add URL, directory, ezine, etc. where you may be able to add links or buy ads.
  • grab the source code
• Link Popularity Comparison Tool - allows you to quickly and easily compare your link popularity scores to other websites.
  • grab the source code

SEO Competitive Research Analysis

Myriad Search

Myriad Search - makes finding authority pages easy

• web based
• really fast
• makes finding authority pages and cross comparing search results from all major search engines easy
• grab the source code

Competition Finder

Competition Finder - tool looks at how many competing pages there are in Google's index that have your desired keywords in their page title and anchor text.

• learn more about Competition Finder
• grab the source code

Search Engine Saturation

Search Engine Saturation Tool - helps you compare how many pages you have in the search indexes compared against competing sites.

• grab the source code

Page Comparison Tool

Page Comparison Tool - tool compares the page titles, meta information, and most common two and three word phrases between different pages.

• grab the source code

Google Rank Checker Tools

These tools do not use the Google API. :(

• Basic Rank Checker - checks where your site ranks in Google for a specific keyword.
  • grab the source code
• Multiple Domain Keyword Ranking Checker - allows you to see where multiple domains rank for a particular keyword.
  • grab the source code
• Multiple Keyword Phrase Rank Checker - allows you to check where a page ranks in Google for multiple keywords.
  • grab the source code
• Google Advanced Keyword Rank Checker - allows you to look up your rank in Google in regional databases. Offers other advanced search criteria as well.
  • grab the source code
• Common Terms Keyword Rankings Tool - shows where your page ranks for it's most common terms.
  • grab the source code
• Page Text Rank Checker - tool allows you to check where your site ranks for each phrase or term occurring on the page.
  • grab the source code

General SEO Tools

Spider Tester Tool

Spider Test Tool - shows the page size, source code, meta tags, page title, textual copy of the page, keyword breakdown by density (including 2 and 3 word phrases), number of words, number of unique words, and outbound links on a page.

• grab the source code

Other SEO Tools

These are SEO tools I use that I did not create which I find useful.

Browser Extensions & Bookmarks

I can't emphasize enough how useful these are.

• Google Toolbar Buttons - Allows you to add quick links to SEO tools and RSS feeds to the Google toolbar. They only works with the new beta Internet Explorer version of the Google Toolbar.
• Firefox Bookmarks - Links to various useful free SEO tools that you can add to your Firefox bookmarks toolbar.

Jim Boykin's Free Tools

• Top 10 analysis tool - shows how your site's age and backlinks compare to the top 10 ranked sites
• Strongest subpage tool - shows which internal pages of a site are the most powerful

Rank Checkers

• Digital Point's Keyword Ranking Tool - tracks your rankings in Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Makes it easy to look at historical records of rankings to help you evaluate algorithmic changes and effective SEO techniques you are using.

Keyword Research

• My keyword research tool links off to most any keyword research tool I find useful in its results.

Link Checker

• Xenu Link Sleuth - makes it fast and easy to find broken links on your site.

Google Sitemap Generator

• XML Sitemaps - makes free Google sitemaps for sites up to 500 pages in size. Sells a cheap and useful script to build sitemaps for larger site sizes.

From the Engines:

• Yahoo! Site Explorer - allows you to see what pages you have indexed as well as the backlinks to those pages
• Google Webmaster Central - allows you to sign up for Google Sitemaps, shows some crawling errors, and a more complete view of your backlinks.

Information Retrieval & Stuff From the Engines 

• Google TechTalks
• Authors@Google
• Jon Kleinberg on Social Networks

Web Pro News Interviews

Web Pro News interviewed many top names in the search space.

Gareth Davies Videos

Gareth published a variety of seo beginner videos here.

Matt Cutts Videos

Matt Cutts is Google's head of search quality. Keep in mind Google's bias and perspective when watching Matt's videos. They want relevant search results and will not openly disclose some of the bigger holes in their current relevancy algorithms.

• Google Sitemaps Questions, DMOZ Snippet Usage & Qualities of a Good Site
  • make your site crawlable & have a citation worthy marketing hook
  • DMOZ snippet usage is query dependant, but you can use the meta NoODP tag to prevent them from using that as your description
• Some SEO Myths
  • most people do not need to worry about footprints (IP address, hostname, Javascript trackers) unless they are bulk spammers
  • when launching a site you may want to soft launch (ie: do not publish hundreds of thousands or millions of pages right out of the gate)
• Should You Optimize for Search Engines or Users & Code Validation
  • Both are important, but they are not mutually exclusive. SEO brings visitors. User optimization ensures conversion.
  • Validation is not necessary. Compelling content is more important than validation. But having valid code may be another reason some other webmasters may be willing to link at your site.
• Geotargeting SEO, Static vs Dynamic URLs
  • PageRank flows the same to static and dynamic URLs. You probably want to use shorter numbers and limit the number of URL parameters to 2-3 max. Mod Rewrite is your friend :)
  • If you are geotargeting by country treat GoogleBot as a US user, do not make a country just for Google.
• 301 Redirecting a Domain, Information Architecture, Split Testing
  • Most redirects from related sites are fine. If the topics are different then you can run into problems.
  • Organize your site folders based on information architecture more than on keywords.
  • It is best to A/B split test pages which are not cached for Google.
• Supplemental Results
  • Result estimates are highly inaccurate.
  • Supplemental results are trusted less than regular results and are crawled less frequently.
• Duplicate Content
  • There are many stages of duplicate content analysis, from crawl, indexing, to scoring. There is no exact limit to duplication detection.
• Google Terminology
  • Major noticeable index updates are rare since the search index is constantly updated. In the past on old architecture monthly updates were called Google Dances.
  • PageRank is constantly updated. Data refreshes are quite frequent. Large algorithmic updates are quite rare.
• Google Data Centers
  • On one C block IP address most of the results will typically be the same unless one of the data centers is down and you are being switched over due to load balancing.
  • Many new algorithms or data refreshes are rolled out on one data center at a time for testing purposes.
• Lightning Round
  • just random...not lots of stuff
• Reinclusion Requests
  • Sign up at Google Webmaster Central for Google Sitemaps and file for a reinclusion request giving specific information. Also try to convince Google that the quality guideline violations will not occur again.
• SES Tips
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Data Center Comments
  • A fraction of the web is updated every day.
  • Data pushes seem to come out roughly once a month.
  • BigDaddy was a refresh to how they crawl the web and a partially and update to how they index it (as Matt said before here).
• Crawling Patterns
  • Matt Cutts talks about how Googlebot crawls the web and updates page cache dates.
• [AUDIO] Mike Grehan interviews Matt Cutts. Part 1 and part 2.
  • Matt Cutts confirms the Google Sandbox effect as being an accidental side effect which occurred as an artifact of another part of the relevancy scoring algorithm.
• [AUDIO] Matt Cutts with Emarketing Talk Show
• [AUDIO] Vanessa Fox interviews Matt Cutts
  • talks about how results change from searcher to searcher and a couple advanced searching things (like personalized search, and accents vs non-accents)
  • talks about Google webmaster central
  • talks about hacking and link dumping, and catching cloaking by doing an English to English translation of a page

Google AdWords Videos

• how to create an AdWords account - very basic
• how AdSense ads work - very basic
• Google Content Network - talks about Google's AdSense product works.
• Google AdWords learning center - free videos and quizzes about learning how various aspects of the Google AdWords system work.
• Keep in mind Google's bias and perspective when watching their videos. They want to make money and they sell the ads. Their advice on things like budget optimizer (which I would never recommend using) might be a bit self serving.

Dan Thies Videos

• Dan on links (exe Zip file)
• Dan on links, part 2 (web based)
• Dan on keyword research - links to a page about controlling entry page. On that page he offers both Windows and Mac friendly downloads of his keyword research video.
• Dan on PPC keyword list generation

Brad Fallon & Andy Jenkins

• Going Natural Desktop Training Center - conversion tips and SEO related marketing tips in ~ 20-25 minute videos.
  • The first one talks about the power of search in general, and the importance of the concept of the long tail as it relates to search engine marketing.
  • The second one talks a bit about latent semantic indexing and natural link building tips.
  • The third one talks about safety and certification related lemming factors (like using an Alexa.com certified button to be associated with a well trusted brand like Amazon.com). It also mentions that you can rank 1 page websites, but fails to mention that it generally is much harder to build authority if you are starting from 1 page unless you are quite savvy with your other marketing techniques.

Shoemoney on Directories

• Shoemoney interviews DaveN and Oilman about directories

More Audio Programs

• Search Engine Radio - Brad Fallon offers weekly (or sometimes monthlyish) SEO related interviews.
• Webmaster Radio.fm - hosts SEO Rockstars, the Daily Searchcast, and many other search related radio shows.

 Home Page Links

These links are here because some sites require that you link back from their homepage.  Sheesh!