Tools
Top Search Marketing Blogs
Search Engine News and Ranking Tips
Web Marketing Forums
Search Engine Optimization Tools
SEM and Keyword Suggestion Tools
Social Marketing Resources
Web Stats and Analytics
Competitive Analysis and Intelligence
Other Online Marketing Tools
Are you new to online marketing, an SEO or SEM by trade, or an expert? No matter what your level of expertise, keep reading… there’s something here for you.
The tides have changed from promoting web sites through submissions and directories and link building to content, accessibility, and alignment with how search engines digest information (and it keeps changing!).
If you’re just learning about Internet marketing, you’ll probaby want to check out all the free information floating around about SEO (search engine optimization), web analytics, and indexability. Start out by reading the blogs, news sites, and snoop around in the forums to get a taste of what’s out there .
Bookmark this site or Add it to Your Favorites to come back again and again to use all of the great tools compiled here.
A short bit on buying and selling links: Don’t do it (or, at least don’t get caught)! Here’s what Matt Cuts of Google has to say…
Top Search Marketing Blogs
SERoundTable.com – Conference Coverage
This site is worth thousands of dollars in one visit! SeRoundTable.com makes it their goal to blog on all of the sessions that happen at each SES (Search Engine Strategies) conference, which online marketing professionals pay upwards of $2,000 for excluding travel costs. The best part? It’s live, as it happens – so you’re sure to get the latest, greatest info.
StuntDubl.com – Search Engine Optimization
My favorite section on Todd Milicoat’s site is the Welcome to the Rabbit Hole Alice article, which includes a plethora of information and links to show you how SEO is done right.
Matt Cutts – Google Happenings
Google’s own, Matt Cutt’s has a personal blog where he regularly discusses what’s happening at Google and answers webmasters questions. I usually take this information with a grain of salt. He’s helpful in the sense that he’s on the inside of search, but I think reading things like Sphinn and SearchEngineWatch.com give you additional, necessary insight into how you handle the latest hype.
Avinash Kaushik – Web Analytics
Avinash is a brillant man with a gift for teaching. It’s very rare that someone so technically inclined is able to articulate complex ideas in simple terms that anyone from a novice to an expert can appreciate and learn from. His voice, examples, and illustrations will help you discover the world of web analytics, measurement, and beyond. This is one blog that should be on your frequently hit list.
BruceClay.com – Search Engine Optimization
Back in the day (10 years ago), I found the search engine maps extremely helpful. As we’ve grown past that, this site still offers a weath of knowledge and information. Also, take a look at the SEO Tool Set by the Bruce Clay team, which has some free and paid tools – you can sign up for the entire tool set free for 30 days, and if you don’t like it, there is a money back guarantee. There’s some funny stuff in the Bruce Clay Blog that’ll give you an inside look at their organization and thought processes.
SEO Copywriting 2.0
Learn how to write entertaining copy that the search engines digest well. Another good read is Copy-writing 101 by Copyblogger.com.
Search Marketing News: Latest Trends, Ranking Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
SearchEngineGuide.com
Not only is Search Engine Guide packed full of useful, current search news, but the content is also wity, wry, and original. The site is updated daily with what’s hot in search engine optimization, social media, and web
Sphinn.com
Started in July of 2007, Sphinn is the Digg equivilant for search marketers. You’ll find the latest, greatest, and sometimes lamest buzz here, but the stuff that makes the homepage is usually worth read.
SearchEngineWatch.com
This is Danny Sullivan’s baby, but he’s jumped ship. Since 1996, Search Engine Watch has been providing up-to-the-minute news on what the latest search.
The Internet Marketing Book
This 163-page e-Book (PDF), provided by MarketingSherpa.com is a great resource for anyone getting started with online marketing. Read 68 essays on improving search engine optimization, search engine advertising, and social media optimization.
Webmasterworld.com
This site used to require a $99 annual registration fee to read or contribute to the forums. Now, it’s free reign, and you’ll frequently find that webmasterworld ranks high in searches regarding web marketing and design.
High Rankings
Jill Whalen is very well respected in the field of online marketing, and she’s quite active on this forum.
Search Engine Forum
This is a great place to ask questions and get feedback. One of the most valuable sections of this forum is ‘Site Reviews.’ Post your site and get feedback on the design, navigation structure, usability, and search engine readiness of your site.
Cr8ate Site Forum
This is a very active forum where lots of top-notch search marketing professionals, designers, and code monkeys lurk around. If you have any questions related to your website, this is a great place to start.
Check Your Ranking
Search Engine Rankings offers instant, online reports of web site rankings in 9 top search engines and web directories, including Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN, AOL, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Yahoo! Directory, Open Directory (Dmoz), and LookSmart.
One-way Link Spider
This is called the recipricol link spider, but we all know recipricol is not the name of the game anymore. Use this tool to quickly check to make sure your links are posted where they should be. Also, check out the back link anchor text analyzer.
Web Site Grader
This is a tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like webite traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors.
SEO for FireFox – FF Plug-in
Use this plug-in for FireFox to look at your search results in Google in a whole new way – with all sorts of ranking data including: PageRank, domain age, number of .edu and .gov links. Once you download the plug-in, click on the little SEO icon in the lower right hand corner of your browser – when it’s in color, it’s on.
Search Status SEO Tool - FF Plug-in
This is a FireFox plug-in that will allow you to see how any website in the world is performing. You be able to see Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
Link Search
Use this tool to search for places like directories, url submissions, resources, and sponsorships where you can begin your link development strategy.
Google Sets
This tool is helpful for creating meta data, category ideas, and designing silos thats Google can easily, read and process for higher ranking. Just type in several keyphrases, and Google will come by with many other related keyphrases – some that you might not even have thought of!
Bulk Class C IP Address Checker
It’s helpful to know which sites are on the same IP block to determine link quality when investigating sites for potential link building. One way links are great, but only if they are from high quality sites, targeted to your industry with good anchor text. Or check out the Bad Neighborhood Checker.
Google Datacenter Ranking Tool
At last count, Google had over 700 data centers… This tool is great for finding out where your ranking is headed. Ever notice that you you get different rankings minute-to-minute? That’s because the data has not had the chance to populate across all of the data centers.
Cool SEO Tool
Another spectacular tool from the folks at WeBuildPages.com. This tool is great for comparing your site to other sites using the same keyword to find the number of pages indexed, age of domain, Yahoo! ranking, number of .edu backlinks, etc. This tool would be useful not only in determining your own sites performance, but for link building as well.
SEO Toolbox
collection of 11 free SEO tools developed by the team at SEOmoz, including a backlink checker, URL inclusion checker, an outbound link checker, domain age detection and a PageRank checker.
Internet Marketing Videos
Check out the latest in YouTube video for online marketing. There are a few gems here, but beware of the MLM and eBay schemes.
WordTracker
Look up a key phrase and this tool will show you related search terms and rank them by approximate daily search volume.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Get ideas for keywords to use in your AdWords campaign – this report generates bar charts outlining how competitive the keyword is along with the search volume associate with it.
Keyword Selector Tool
The old Overture tool for finding keywords that get the most traffic. Learn them and integrate those keywords into your title tags, meta data, and content. BTW, it’s still current data – the last data was collected in January of 2007.
Google Webmaster Center
This is where Google tells you “what’s up!” In all seriousness, when you login here you can see information about your website ranking, optimization for Google, etc. There are a billion resources here… you could spend days just keeping up with the new information.
Yahoo Site Explorer
Like Google Webmaster Center, only for Yahoo! Yahoo is always riding in the coat tails of Google these days. 
Social Media Sites and Buzz Monitoring Tools
130 Social Media Networks
Don’t know much about social media? Confused at where to start? Think it’s only for young people? Think again. Wise search marketers realize that social media can be just as powerful as search engine optimization as far as sheer traffic goes. The traffic might not be engaged, but it still counts for link juice, which enevitably boosts your Google ranking. Bill Hartzer’s list of 130 social networks, widgets, bookmarking devices, and web 2.0 apps will more will keep you busy for a while.
Social Media Marketing: 12 Essential Tips for Success
Download the marketing brief, and learn how to effectively engage customer communities with a new, social marketing mix.
Blog Pulse Conversion Tracker
It’s not enough to know that a blog is spreading positive or negative buzz about your company, you should also know who’s linking to that article to get a well rounded view of what’s being said, which is exactly what the BlogPulse Conversion Tracker does.
Google Alerts
Set alerts that will notify you the moment that new blogs are posted with the mention of specific search terms. This is especially helpful for listening to the blogosphere’s voice about your brand or company.
Way Back Machine
Not everyone knows about this, so let’s keep this our little secret. Most of the web has been recorded, whether it’s been taken offline or not. Remember that cheesy photo or the embarrassing story someone posted about you or your business? Did you plead with them to take it down? If the archiver found it, you’re SOL. It still exists… Find old websites and have fun with this cool tool. This tool is useful to find information and blog posts that have since been removed.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is worthwhile to compare to your other web analytics packages. Like most web analytics packages, Google Analytics does take getting used to. To do more sophisticated web analytics, deeper segmentation, and automatically compare Yahoo! search campaign data, you’ll need something like ClickTracks or one of the other web analytics packages on the market.
AWStats
AWStats generates advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically. This log analyzer works as a CGI or from command line and shows you all possible information your log contains, in few graphical web pages. If you have cpanel on your web server, this is automatically installed, just make sure it’s turned on – and you can look at these stats within the cpanel interface. AWStats is good for comparing datasets and different statistics packages to keep you on the right track.
Webalizer
Webalizer provides decent general statistics. It’s good for looking at where your traffic is coming from and looking and general overall trends in traffic month by month.
UrlTrends
Watch any url that UrlTrends monitors via My Watchlist, RSS Feeds or by email. One of the newest and most powerful features of My UrlTrends is called My Watchlist. Use this to monitor your competition as well as your own PR efforts.
Alexa.com
Alexa gets their information by aggregating data of Alexa tool bar users… the information is not accurate as far as raw numbers go, but it’s a good comparison tool for looking at the competition and finding related sites .
Compete.com
A lot like Alexa.com, only better. A great tool to measure against Alexa for accuracy and trend information.
LinkedIn.com
Get a lead from your lead capture form and curious who Robert Klien is? Look ‘em up on LinkedIn. Online marketing folks seem to have taken akin to LinkedIn. Now, you can use it as a lead qualifier, a method of looking at your competition, and a tool that will allow you to see the professional history of both individuals and organizations. LinkedIn has a cool plug-in for MS Outlook 2003+ to invite and view others with profiles. LinkedIn is the ultimate social network for professionals – if you’re not LinkedIn, you’re on the outs.
Google Trends
An often overlooked tool, Google Trends can be used to check your keyword popularity over the years compared to other search terms. This has several applications, including typing in your competitions keywords alongside yours – along with understanding visitor behavoirs as an aggregrate over the years. Remember to use commas between keywords and you’ll get access to some really interesting traffic volume charts that can be broken down by time period and geographic location.
Whois.sc Lookup
Curious who your competitor is? Need a jumping off point for more research about a specific website? Whois.sc is your friend. If you type in http://www.whois.sc/examplesite.com, you’ll be able to see everything from the Alexa and Complete.com ranking to information about the domains history, owner, IP history, etc.
Other Tools: Link Checkers, Code Generators, and CSS Layouts
Xenu Link Checker
Xenu’s Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on “normal” links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria.
Robots.txt Generator
Automatically generate a file that will sit at the root of your server and tell the search engines which pages they are allowed to index and which pages to avoid. Also check out the robots.txt syntax checker to make sure your robots file is in correct form.
SEO Friendly Layouts
Getting tired of trying to configure out CSS (cascade style sheet) layouts that will push your site to the next level of design, consistency, and search engine friendliness? Copy these layouts, they’re free!
XML Site Map Generator
This is a difficult document to construct yourself, and it will help the search engines find all of your pages easier. This tool is free for sites with 500 pages or less.