3 SEO Tools Worthy of Your Time

In recent weeks I’ve come across three SEO tools that I’ve found to be very useful. Here is a look at each of these (free) tools.

Rank Checker

Aaron Wall of SEO Book recently released a powerful new Firefox add-on called Rank Checker. If you’re working on moving your site up in the SERPs, you’ll obviously want to know where you stand and to be actively tracking your progress.

As a Firefox add-on this tool is both free and very convenient to use. With Rank Checker you can input the URL that you want to track and a list of keywords that you are targeting (or just researching). You’ll then be able to choose which search engines to check (including all of the international versions of Google). The tool will then go out and get the data and bring it back to you in one convenient place.

There are plenty of other ranking checkers out there, but this one is different for a few reasons. First, it’s a Firefox add-on that can be used easily from within the browser. Also, it has a number of customizable options, including the international versions of Google, other search engine options, and the time delay between queries. Additionally, you can save preset lists of keywords so that you don’t have to enter all of your keywords every time you want to use the tool. This is a great feature if you are working on multiple websites and each one has its own unique keywords to track. What makes this tool even more powerful is that it can be automated to run the reports on its own at set time intervals.

After you have run the Rank Checker you can easily export the results as a CSV file to use in Excel or another program. Aaron created a quick 5 minute video at the download page to explain the tool and how to use it. After spending just a few minutes to download the add-on and watch the video you’ll be able to use this tool with no problem. That’s what I like best about Rank Checker, it’s powerful but very simple to use.

SEO Quake

SEO Quake is another Firefox add-on that you’ll probably want to download. With SEO Quake you can optimize your site by gaining tons of information about other pages that are ranking well. After downloading and installing the add-on, run a Google search for the primary search phrase that you are targeting. Under each of the listings you’ll see addition information provided by SEO Quake, such as the PR and Alexa ranking of the page, plus the number of pages indexed from that URL and the number of inbound links (you can customize a lot of this data to meet your needs).

If you are looking to gain new inbound links to your site, you can find one of your competitors that has a high number of inbound links (you’ll probably want to use the data coming from Yahoo for this) and click on that number, which will open up the page displaying all of those inbound links. This will give you a list of sites that may be interested in also linking to you.

SEO Quake also has plenty of options, including the ability to save data in a CSV file. One thing to be aware of is that SEO Quake will slow down your load time when you’re surfing, but you can easily de-activate it when it is not in use.

34 comments from readers

1 Scott Fillmer Apr 16, 2008 at 9:30 pm

Great list of tools, thanks for sharing them. I also use the “search status” add on for firefox, which gives you the PR, Alexa, and Compete. I didn’t realize how much I use that one until I removed it by accident.
2 Vandelay Design Apr 16, 2008 at 9:38 pm

Thanks Scott. I’ll have to try that one.
3 Vinh Le Apr 16, 2008 at 9:45 pm

I use all the first two tools so I can say that they are pretty damn useful. I would add http://www.websitegrader.com/ to it as well. I found it very interesting and it lets you compare how well your site does against your competitors.
4 Vandelay Design Apr 16, 2008 at 9:55 pm

Thanks Vinh. I’ll check that one out too.
5 Moucki Apr 17, 2008 at 4:43 am

I currently use Rank Checker, and I love it ! Thanks for the Web Grader tool info, I didn’t know it…
6 April Apr 17, 2008 at 9:29 am

Personally I use KW Elite and SEO Elite but they are pretty complex to use and not that cheap. So the free tools you have listed above should really help people out.
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8 Andrew Flusche Apr 18, 2008 at 10:19 am

Thanks for the Rank Checker link. I’ve been looking for a competent, free tool that will do exactly that. Awesome!
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10 arin2u Apr 20, 2008 at 4:47 am

I was using Rank Checker tool already but I found this open source link analysis tool really handy as the way it works. Hence downloading it for working on my official sites
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12 teddy Apr 20, 2008 at 11:20 am

Thanks for your advice, but about SEO quake’s negative reviews?
“This add-on is dangerous! Google may block you, as written at http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=86640&topic=&useful=1&expand_useful=1&#helpful”
and
“Google may block you when you perform too much querries to it. So, please set - “load parameters by request” or change your ip, use proxys and clear your coockies. or disable seoquake when you surfing on web for fun, not for work.”
Did any of you experience problems?
13 Vandelay Design Apr 20, 2008 at 4:51 pm

Teddy,
Thanks for the warning. I have experiences no problems, but I only use it temporarily and then I disable it right away. It slows down surfing when you’re not using, so there’s really no reason to leave it on.
14 Miami web design Apr 21, 2008 at 8:44 am

I could also recommend the SearchStatus plugin. with it you can always see the google and alexa ranks of the page you are viewing, plus you can check whether the links on the page are follow or non follow. Nothing the plugins you mentioned can’t do, but it is more handy = saves time
15 Teenage Love Apr 21, 2008 at 12:22 pm

Good list. Well done. But there is a more detailed list at digitalpoint.Thanks.
16 Pugsley - More Conversions Apr 21, 2008 at 2:14 pm

Really a good post and thanks for the lists of new plug-ins.
I believe we need all the help we can get these days to grow our businesses and save time, thanks for the heads up about these products.

Pugsley
17 Zoobie Joy May 5, 2008 at 10:56 am

I agree..these Internet Marketing products are great and useful..^^ but I also agree with April that SEO Elite is also a great tool to use..^^..although a bit expensive but still worth the money..^^
18 JD May 7, 2008 at 12:37 pm

Thanks for these great marketing tools!
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20 Dave Stein May 9, 2008 at 11:50 am

I agree with Vinh. I have been using http://www.websitegrader.com/ for quite some time. They constantly make improvements and give suggestions into just about all aspects of SEO.
21 Dave Stein May 9, 2008 at 11:55 am

Sorry for two in a row but i Just noticed the comments here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3036

They warn about SEOQuake being SpyWare
22 Vandelay Design May 9, 2008 at 12:15 pm

Thanks Dave. I hadn’t seen that before. I know it slows down surfing, but I didn’t know anything about SpyWare.
23 excel marketing analysis May 9, 2008 at 9:25 pm

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24 G.Suvorov May 12, 2008 at 6:58 am

To Dave:
These comments is a spam from enemys of our new service - adsspy.com …
so, they want to denigrate SeoQuake, because everyone of SeoQuake users now can easily research Made-For-Adsense sites and block them in Adwords campain etc…
All source of SeoQuake code is open and it has been tested by Mozilla.org and Softpedia and our users many times.
And you can test it yourself if needed.
25 seo May 18, 2008 at 1:31 am

Very informative and useful, now I can easily learn this and adapt this in my blogging..
26 Biodun May 21, 2008 at 4:12 pm

Great! Thanks for this Rank checker link, its very useful for me
27 Lform.com May 30, 2008 at 10:19 pm

Here is a list of free SEO tools that I find extremely useful:

WhoLinksToMe.com
TestEverything
BackLinkWatch
BackLinkSpot

provided by Lform | Website Design
28 Alex Jun 2, 2008 at 8:27 pm

Nice list, I also would recommend KGen for Firexfox, it retrieves every word of a page and lets you know how many times they appear on it and their weight in the page (a word in the title of a page has a stronger weight than a word in a paragraph).

You can read more about it and about some more add-ons for Firefox on: 46 Firefox Plugins For Power User, Web Designer, Web Developer And SEO Experts

http://afrison.com/firefox-plugin-power-user-web-developer-seo-expert-add-on/634/
29 Los Angeles Seo Jun 5, 2008 at 7:48 pm

Thank you for the SEO quake link — one of the first things I do when doing SEO is check the competitor’s link profile. This will make the job much easier.
30 Andos Jun 10, 2008 at 9:54 am

Thank you for that link. I only use one addon before.
31 SEO Jun 26, 2008 at 5:10 am

Thanks. Never tried that before.
32 Jacqueline from SEOGroup Jun 26, 2008 at 10:50 am

Good round-up!

Of course, I also use my company’s SEO tool often - http://seogroup.com/evaluation/

It saves your reports forever, so you don’t have to constantly submit your site.
33 Sean Jul 23, 2008 at 10:28 am

What do you think of WEB CEO as s tool? I have heard multiple opinions on this system, but we seem to like it.
34 Vandelay Design Jul 23, 2008 at 6:29 pm

Sean,
I used Web CEO a year or two ago (the free version) and I thought it had some pretty useful tools and reports. I don’t spend a whole lot of time on SEO, but for someone who does I would think it’s worth using. I’m not sure what the SEO experts would say. I only used a few basic tools like ranking checkers and I forget what some of the others were.

Custom Website Design

3 SEO Tools Worthy of Your Time

34 comments from readers