Search Engine Tools You Can Use

This was one of the more interesting sessions I went to on the first day of PubCon Vegas 2006.  They listed a ton of tools that might be a good idea.  I’ll list them below with my comments. 

With so many “SEO Tools” out there, it’s hard to know what’s good and what’s not.  Personally, we like Web CEO, XSitePro, and ClickTracks.  They are our three primary tools.

The tools talked about in this session were more like online tools that you can use to learn more detailed information specifically about your website, your clients’ websites, or competitors.

As such, they focused on “SEO Swiss Army Knifes”.  In other words, tools that can get multiple pieces of information at once…

Rankquest (Toolbar for Firefox) - This is pretty cool.  It is a toolbar that includes a series of tools that includes how to learn more about any site, such as Keyword density, Code to text ratio, and Web speed report.  Any SEO has got to check this out.  Everything at your fingertips.

SearchStatus (loads in the status bar of FireFox or Mozilla) - Includes website information such as inbound link analysis, Robots.txt reviewer, link to Wayback Machine, and Alexa information.  It seems to focus more on performance of the site.

DomainTools.com (web based) - Gives domain information, server data, reverse IP lookup, etc.  NOTE:  This is the old www.Whois.sc.

XENU’s Link Sleuth (downloadable software) - Crawls your site and brings back lots of information.  It was recommended that you could run this program on your competitors to learn more about what you could do for your site.

Alertra and Googspy were also recommended for website monitoring.  Hitwise was also recommended to gain information on your competitors.  However, I had to laugh when one audience member asked if Hitwise was free.  Not hardly.

By the way, www.HostMySite.com was recommended as a web host that has good customer service for a good price.

Overall, a good session.  The first two tools seem to be the most interesting.  Something else that is interesting is that most everyone here is using FireFox.  Looks like IE is losing some serious ground with this group.  I’ve noticed that already in the search engine community comments online.  But it’s especially apparant here.

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