SEO: Tools, Plugins and Resources!

If you own a blog or a website you should be interested in Search Engine Optimisation. It is a smart idea to learn the basics (for example: 1,2,3) and get into good habits. This in turn will bring you more visitors in the long run.

So, once equipped with the knowledge of the significance of H1 tags, alt text, clean code and linking, you might need some extra resources to help you along the way.

1. SEO Quake Firefox Add On: This is a handy good all-round tool you can install into Firefox. My favorite SEO function of SEO Quake is the ‘line through no-follow and no-index links‘ tool. Once you’ve installed SEO Quake, you can right click the icon at the bottom of the browser and select this option. You will then be able to see who does and does not allow Google bots to crawl to other sites from theirs.
Good Features: Keyword density of page tool, many tools that check pagerank, backlinks etc of the page you are looking at.
Bad Points: It can make your browsing experience a bit messy if you have all the tools and toolbars turned on. Perhaps disable them all until you need one?

2. Know Your Competition, Know Them Well: Compete.com offers tools which provide both search and site analytics for a lot of websites. It claims to be ‘powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry.‘
To put it simply, you type the URLs of the sites you are competing against (perhaps a couple of your friends blogs, or if you own a business you can add websites specialising in your area) and you can then view comprehensive statistics about how they get traffic, how much of it they get and their best performing keywords.
Good Features: You are able to find out what works for other sites. You get three free credits when you register for the site, and can download three different reports.
Bad Features: To download any more than three full reports you need to pay. Might be worth it if you are a business.

3. Social Bookmarking: I am a believer in social bookmarking. If people like what you have to offer, they’ll add it to social networks - therefore improving the chance of other people seeing it. This also increases the chances of backlinks. There is no easier way of allowing people to add your site to google bookmarks, digg, stumble, facebook and twitter, (amoungst others) then using the ‘add this‘ tool. Simply register for an account, and copy and paste the free script into your website theme.
Good Features: You can track which pages have been added to social bookmarking sites, and when they were added.
Bad Features: Cannot really think of any currently.

4. Add Add Add Your Links: Got content? Why not find yourself good backlinks? First of all, submit your site to the open directory project. It can take up to months to be approved for a listing - but it is the internet’s largest human edited directory. Even Google syndicates the information on the ODP into its own directory - so it’s worth the wait to be approved. Try looking for other directories which pertain to your site. So if you have recipes on your site, try looking for recipe site directories. On The ODP website there are lots of directories listed. Start with these four, then search for others on the site. (For example, search ‘recipe directories.’)
Good Features: Can find some great places to add free ‘follow’ links to your website, which might help you boost your pagerank, and therefore search engine positions.
Bad Features: Can take months to be approved in directories, it is time consuming, and some sites will not be worth bothering with submitting to.

5. Publish Free Promotional Pages: using websites like hubpages, squidoo, gather, spongefish, vox, sign up and make promotional pages for your website. Brag about your free content, or summarise some of your best articles. Either way, all of these sites offer another platform for you to add your links to, and create opportunities for you to find new visitors to your site.
Good Features: These sites enable you to create relevant pages targeted around your keywords which can link to your site. A lovely bit of internet marketing.
Bad Features: Can take a couple of hours to really shniz up your pages, and create enough of them/add good enough content to them in order to make a big enough impact.

6. Last But Not Least: try some of these XML sitemap tools to help you improve your search engine optimisation too:
Create an XML sitemap to submit to google.
XML sitemap generator for wordpress, a plugin.
Wordpress ‘All-in-one’ SEO plugin.

  Search Engine Optimisation

  firefox, Resources, SEO, social bookmarking, wordpress