The Essential Entrepreneur SEO Toolbox

Search engines are the most powerful drivers of traffic to websites, so search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for any entrepreneur running a business online. A host of companies, including search giants Google and Bing, provide analytics tools to help website owners maximize their positioning in search engines and thus increase traffic.Here are some of the most popular SEO tools:

SEOmoz

SEOmoz offers paid products, free guides to SEO techniques, and a robust community for support and SEO-related discussions. SEOmoz Pro crawls the user’s site each week and monitors rankings of keywords. The application can watch competing websites for their keywords and link metrics, and analyze your site to suggest potential improvements. SEOmoz also offers a browser toolbar that provides statistics on keywords and other analytics while you surf the web. In addition to the features within the application, paid users receive access to SEOmoz labs, which includes extra tools and new services in development. Perhaps most importantly, though, is the knowledge of the community of over 250,000 users.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics includes a group of products that not only help with SEO in Google’s search results, but also integration with its AdSense and AdWords programs. Best of all, Google Analytics is completely free to use. Analytics allows users to access data about who visits a site, how long visitors spend there and a long list of other detailed data points. Combined with Adwords and Adsense, users can find out what content is most effective for driving traffic and creating advertising revenue.

Google Webmaster

Google Webmaster provides Google’s view of your site as well as detailed reports on your site’s visibility in search results and which searches send visitors to your site. Its Website Optimizer tool tests how changes to your site’s content would affect its ranking in search results. Using the rich data sets and utilities within these programs allows website owners to make targeted improvements to their sites and watch search rankings improve.

Bing Webmaster

Bing, Microsoft’s answer to Google, offers a set of tools similar to Google Webmaster. Users can find out how Bing reads their website, which keywords generate traffic and discover which sites are linking back to yours. It’s not just a one-way street, however, since users can interact with Bing, too. Blocking URLs, sharing content and uploading sitemaps back to Bing are all options for improving how Bing evaluates your site.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools is unique on this list because it integrates many of these other programs into a suite of tools. It turns to Google Analytics for tracking traffic and search rankings, to SEOmoz and SEM Rush for keyword and competitor analysis, and other tools for increased functionality. Raven Tools combines these separate utilities powerfully so that you can create a link, monitor traffic and prepare a detailed report all within the program. In addition, leaders can share data with team members, yet control who has access to what and even allow clients to see a read-only version of their accounts. Cross-platform integration does not stop with SEO tools, but also works with messaging from Basecamp, social networking registration from KnowEm and numerous other tools.

Link-Assistant SEO Powersuite

Link-Assistant’s software, SEO Powersuite, includes four tools to address all aspects of SEO. The software is easy to use and guides novice users through a step-by-step process. The Website Auditor tool optimizes both the site for its domain and the page for content by crawling the entire site to identify problems on each page, like broken links, HTML errors or missing meta descriptions, which hurt SEO performance. Its Rank Tracker tool researches keywords and tracks search engine ranking. It can analyze top sites for your keywords to help you discover what the other sites are doing right. For links, the Spyglass tool researches competitor backlinks and facilitates link building, while LinkAssistant creates link directories and partnerships.

Keyword Spy

Not surprisingly, Keyword Spy’s focus is on keyword research. Users can discover what keywords other sites are using, find combinations of profitable keywords and ad copy, and even track keywords in real time on Google, Yahoo and Bing. The system alerts users when competitors begin using new keywords or ad copy. Keyword Spy offers Agency and Enterprise solutions for companies with greater technical requirements.

While entrepreneur’s love to think big picture, sometimes the basics and tedious measurements are big picture. I didn’t realize this for a long time, but now see how important SEO is to compliment any marketing effort.

Hope you enjoy these tools – are you there any that you would add to the list?