SEO Toolbook 2017

INTRODUCTION

Search Engine Optimization or “SEO,” of course, is the art and science of getting your company or organization to the top of relevant searches on Google. SEO, in other words, is how smart people get free advertising on Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

With 85% market share, Google dominates search, and it is to Google that most customers go 24/7 to find companies, products, and services. Being on page one of Google, for free, or even better in one of the top three “organic” results on the search giant, means a free ad on Google running 24/7, a free ad appearing when potential customers search for your company, service or product. To get on Bing or Yahoo is just icing on the cake and more free advertising.

What, my friend, could possibly be better than free advertising on Google?

UNDERSTAND HOW SEO TOOLBOOK WORKS

First and foremost, SEO Toolbook assumes a working knowledge of SEO. This toolbook has many wonderful free tools, but the tools alone are useless without a knowledge of how the game is played! (If you need that knowledge, I recommend you check out my SEO Fitness Workbook (on Amazon at http://jmlinks.com/8c), online courses at https://www.jm-seo.org/, or call 800-298-4065 to learn more about my SEO one-on-one training and consulting services).

Second, this book emphasizes only free tools. Despite the fact that there are quite a few paid SEO tools out there, none are any better than the free tools identified in this Toolbook. Indeed, in today’s tight economy, why pay when you can get them for free? Not to mention, why pay when the most important element, i.e. a knowledge of how SEO is played to win, can’t be obtained from any tool?

Third, I have reviewed each tool in the Toolbook for relevance and ease of use. Almost without exception, the tools in the Toolbook require nothing more than a Web browser and active connection to the Internet. Easy is just as important as free. Generally speaking, if a tool requires registration or has only a “trial” period, it has been excluded.

REGISTER YOUR COPY ONLINE

If you’ve purchased this Toolbook in hard copy format, be aware that if you register online, you get instant access to a PDF copy, which has easy, clickable links to all resources. To do so, simply:

Go to http://jmlinks.com/8d.
Sign up as indicated.
You’ll be transferred to my “SEO Dashboard”

— There, you’ll have easy access to the BEST tools as identified herein.

— You can also download a PDF copy of this Toolbook which can be read online and will have clickable links.

Note: if you email me your Amazon receipt, I will rebate you 50% of your cost once you sign up for the email alert system.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Toolbook follows the steps to effective SEO that I teach in my SEO Fitness Workbook, online classes, and contains the following categories of tools:

FAQs – tutorials and “frequently asked questions” documents on SEO
Keywords – tools to identify and measure your keywords
Page Tags – tools to help analyze your on page HTML tags
Link Building and Social Mentions – tools to identify link and social media targets
Content Marketing – tools and tips for building a content-marketing system to feed your website (and social media) with fresh content
Blogs and Blogging – tools to help you be a better blogger as well as identify bloggers who might help you with links or social mentions
Press Releases – services to publish your news, for free, on the Internet
Rank – tools to measure your rank on Google searches
Diagnostics – tools to “diagnosis” the health of your website as well as conduct SEO check-ups
Website Structure – tools to create the most effective SEO website structure
Local Search – tools to help get your company to the top of Google+ local and local searches
Google+ – information and tools about Google’s social media network, Google+, which can help you tremendously with your SEO performance
Google – a cornucopia of all the free resources and tools provided by Google
Metrics – tools to help you measure (and understand) your inbound web traffic
Media – the top blogs and resources to stay up-to-date on SEO
Shows & Conferences – the top conferences on search engine optimization
Books – my favorite books to learn Search Engine Optimization, both free tutorials and paid books.
Easter Eggs – humorous hidden treasures inside the Google search engine, wonderfully designed to waste time and impress your (nerd) friends

Finally, the Toolbook is really mean to be read “online” rather than “on paper,”. As you read about an interesting tool, I encourage to search and check each tool out. SEO is a learn-by-doing art, and so are the tools!

Let’s get started!

ACKNOWLEDGE THE COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER

Copyright © 2017, JM Internet Group and Excerpti Communications, Inc., All Rights Reserved. No reproduction or citation without written consent of the publisher. For details and to contact us, visit our website at https://www.jm-seo.org/.

Search engine optimization is an art, and not a science. The requirements, rules, tools, and best practices change without notice, as does the behavior of search engines such as Bing, Google, or Yahoo. Neither Jason McDonald nor the JM Internet Group nor the parent corporation, Excerpti Communications, Inc., assume any responsibility for the effect of any changes you may, or may not, make to your website based on the (perceived) recommendations of the Toolbook. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners, and all content is subject to change without notice. This is a completely unofficial resource to Google, Bing, and Yahoo; no individual or party at any of these entities participated in this Toolbook in any way.

Make Changes at Your Own Risk

Any changes that you or your organization make to your website content, link building, social media marketing, content, or any element of your Internet marketing and/or search engine optimization strategy or tactics are made your own risk. By downloading and using the Toolbook you are agreeing to the terms of service: you are completely responsible for all changes you may, or may not, make to your Internet marketing strategy.

FAQS

You got questions? They got answers. I, of course, recommend that you either purchase my companion SEO Fitness Workbook on Amazon (http://jmlinks.com/seo), or sign up for my paid classes at https://www.jm-seo.org/. But recognizing the importance of free, here are my favorite free “Frequently Asked Questions” documents and tutorials on SEO. Never stop learning!

GOOGLE SEO STARTER GUIDE – http://jmlinks.com/googleseo/

Here’s a concept. To succeed at SEO, do what Google tells you to do! This is an older but basic guide by Google on it’s official todos for SEO success. It’s excellent as a basic guide to On Page SEO, but has ZERO coverage of Off Page tactics such as link-building, and no coverage of keyword theory or selection. Still, you gotta read it.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tutorial

BRUCE CLAY SEO TUTORIAL – https://www.bruceclay.com/seo/search-engine-optimization.htm

This search engine optimization tutorial, full of SEO tips from industry pioneer Bruce Clay, is a step-by-step SEO guide. Lessons teach you what is SEO and how to optimize a website for search — complete with free SEO tools you can use!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

MOZ SEO BEGINNERS GUIDE – https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

MOZ is one of the top providers of (paid) SEO tools. It provides this basic introductory tutorial to SEO. Aimed at beginners, and (over)emphasizes technical SEO. But, hey, it’s free.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tutorial

SEARCH ENGINE LAND’S GUIDE TO SEO – http://searchengineland.com/guide/seo

Search Engine Land is clearly the top blog on search engine optimization. They provide this in-depth and pretty useful guide to SEO for their readership. They have a periodic table of SEO factors, which is a completely bizarre way to explain factors that have different ranks. But, oh well, they failed chemistry in High School but paid attention in math. This guide is a useful, basic guide to the subject.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tutorial

THE WEEBLY GUIDE TO SEO – https://www.weebly.com/seo

Weebly’s short, sweet, and to-the-point guide or tutorial to SEO.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

HOBO SEO GUIDE – https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-tutorial/

Yet another short but good overview to search engine optimization. Updated for 2016, with great embedded YouTube videos from the ‘experts’ at Google.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tutorial

SEO FOR WORDPRESS – https://yoast.com/wordpress-seo/

This guide is by the YOAST folks, who produce the most popular plugins for SEO and WordPress. It is very, very technical and as such completely overemphasizes the technical side of SEO to the huge detriment of the marketing/content marketing side of the equation. So it shows its age and its old, traditional perspective on the subject. But it is a useful checklist of technical things to do in WordPress, for sure.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

QUICKSPROUT SEO GUIDE – http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-seo/

Billed as an ‘Advanced’ guide, this is really more of a basic or beginner’s look at SEO. Like the MOZ guide, it overemphasizes technical SEO and underemphasizes content marketing.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tutorial

SEO – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION WIKIPEDIA ENTRY – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

Wikipedia – the free online encyclopedia – has a great starting point to SEO and SEO topics. It begins: “Search engine optimization (SEO) as a subset of search engine marketing seeks to improve the number and quality of visitors to a web site from ‘natural’ (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results.”

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: overview

WORDPRESS SEO – http://www.wpbeginner.com/wordpress-seo/

Yet another short, basic, and decent SEO tutorial, this time focused on WordPress.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tutorial

HOW GOOGLE SEARCH WORKS – http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/

Have you ever wondered how Google works? This somewhat cheeky guide is by Google about Google. It’s a beginner’s guide to how Google crawls the Web, and how it ranks the results on the Google search response page. Beginner level, but the basics of SEO are incredibly important!

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: overview

KEYWORDS

Keywords are fundamental to SEO. Your customers start their quest to “find you” by typing in keywords or keyphrases into Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Therefore, identifying and organizing customer-centric keywords is the foundation of effective SEO. Your best keywords match your unique value proposition with high volume keywords used by your customers. Think volume plus value as you chart out your keyword worksheet.

keywords research

Here are the best free SEO keyword tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

GOOGLE GLOBAL MARKET FINDER – http://translate.google.com/globalmarketfinder/g/index.html

This is a new and different spin on the Google keywords tool. You can use it to browse keyword trends by countries, and you can drill down into synonyms based on the primary Google keyword tool. In some ways it’s just a cooler, faster way to generate a list of keyword synonyms even if you aren’t really interested in geography. Check it out, it’s a COOL TOOL.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

SEED KEYWORDS – http://www.seedkeywords.com/

This is a wonderful human / machine tool. Gather your team together (or they can be in diverse cities). Create a prompt, such as ‘your hungry and you love Italian food, what would you search for?’ This then creates a ‘workspace’ and as people type in their ideas it consoldiates them into a master list. Excellent and fun tool for keyword brainstorming!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

BING WEBMASTER TOOLS – http://bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Interested in Bing? This is the Bing Webmaster Tools home page. Similar to the Google suite. Has some new features that are radically improving this tool from Bing. Includes a good keyword discovery tool.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

SERPS.COM KEYWORD TOOL – https://serps.com/tools/keyword-research/

Bye bye keyword planner and hello Keyword Tool. SERPS.com has done a great job on this easy-to-use, powerful, and FREE alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

SEOCHAT KEYWORD TOOL – http://tools.seochat.com/tools/suggest-tool/

This most awesome keyword suggest tool is like Ubersuggest, but pulls keyword suggestions not just from Google or Bing, but from YouTube, Amazon, etc. Awesome for keyword brainstorming.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

KEYWORD NICHE FINDER – http://wordstream.com/keyword-niche-finder

Really this tool is about finding related keywords. Enter a target keyword and the tool will generate a list of closely related keywords. Then click on any one of those, and the right hand side of the screen will show clusters of those related tools. It is a good tool for keyword discovery, not unlike Google’s Wonder Wheel or related searches.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ADWORDS KEYWORD PLANNER – https://adwords.google.com/ko/KeywordPlanner/Standalone/Home

Who got the data? Google got the data. Use the Keyword Planner for keyword discovery for both SEO and AdWords, but be sure to know how to use it. Not the easiest user interface, and remember it ONLY gives data for EXACT match types. NOTE: you MUST have a paid account to use, and be LOGGED IN.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

SEM RUSH – https://www.semrush.com/

Similar to KeywordSpy, this tool allows you to enter a domain or a competitor, and returns a list of AdWords keywords they are running under as well as their organic keywords. Use it to track a competitor, as well as to generate a keyword list (keyword discovery).

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

KEYWORDSPY – http://www.keywordspy.com/

KeywordSpy currently operates in USA, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Through this keyword tool and keyword software, you can perform advanced keyword research and keyword tracking to study what your competitors have been advertising in their AdWords campaigns and other PPC campaigns. You can get complete in-depth analysis, stats, budget, affiliates & ad copies of your competitors.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

UBERSUGGEST – https://ubersuggest.io/

This tool pulls the “autocomplete” data from Bing, and provides you an easy way to “shop” for keywords.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

KEYWORD IT – http://www.keyworddit.com/

Most keyword tools are great at taking a ‘core’ keyword and helping you find the ‘helpers.’ This tool is a messy but great way to look for broader keyword ideas. It is excellent for EARLY keyword research and brainstorming!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

KEYWORD FINDER – https://kwfinder.com/

A very fun, interesting tool to discover keywords. Input some keywords, and get quick ideas for related terms, helper words, and more.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

THESAURUS.COM – http://thesaurus.com

Thesaurus.com takes the concept of the old paper thesaurus and puts it online. Enter a search term such as, ‘lawyer,’ and find relevant synonyms and keyword ideas such as ‘attorney,’ ‘barrister,’ ‘law firm,’ etc. Great for keyword discovery!

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

FREE NEGATIVE KEYWORD TOOL – http://wordstream.com/negative-keywords

Enter your core keyword and this tool gives you ‘food for thought’ in terms of possible negative keywords. Negative keywords are critical for AdWords, since you pay per click – use this tool to help you find words you DO NOT WANT.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SEOCENTRO KEYWORD SUGGESTION TOOL – http://seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-suggestion.html

Enter a keyword and it polls Google, Bing, and Yahoo to consolidate their suggestions. Great for keyword discovery as it will suggest a close, or related keyword terms.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SERPSTAT – http://sg.serpstat.com

Yet another amazing and fun tool based on Google suggest/suggested searches. Enter your keyword and brainstorm keyword ideas. Allows you to select Google top level domain (e.g., google.com, google.co.uk) for non-US search suggestions.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

HIGH PAYING KEYWORDS – http://www.pagerank.net/high-paying-keywords

This tool helps identify highest CPC (Cost Per Click) keywords/keyword phrases (i.e., search terms) advertisers are bidding on. This enables you as a website owner/marketer to understand the most valuable keywords, both for Google AdWords campaigns and/or organic SEO efforts.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

KEYWORD SUGGESTION – http://www.pagerank.net/keyword-suggestion

Yet another tool for keyword discovery. Enter a ‘starter’ keyword and get suggestions based on volume and value.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE SUGGEST AND GOOGLE RELATED SEARCHES – https://www.google.com/

From the Google home page, enter a target keyword phrase such as ‘flower shop’. First, notice the keywords ‘suggested’ in the drop-down list – this is called Google Suggest, and can be very useful. Second, do an actual search, then scroll down to the VERY bottom, and look for ‘Searches related to flower shop’ to see searches related to your search term. Fantastic ways to identify potential target keywords and key phrases!

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

YOAST KEYWORD SUGGEST TOOL – https://yoast.com/suggest/

Yet another tool based on Google suggest. The interface is not sexy and pizazzy (is that a word?), but it works.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

TWINWORD KEYWORD TOOL – https://www.twinword.com/ideas/

Billed as the first “LSI” (Latent Semantic Indexing) tool and the first semantic keyword research tool that can sort by relevance. Useful for keyword discovery and finding related words, especially when writing a blog post.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

TAGCROWD – http://tagcrowd.com

Input your website URL or any URL, and this nifty program will create a tag cloud of keywords density on your site. It’s a useful self-check for keywords/keyword density. Note: does NOT work on https: sites.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

FERZY KEYWORD TOOL – https://ferzy.com/

Yet another, good, solid, and free keyword tool.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

MOZ KEYWORD EXPLORER – https://moz.com/products/pro/keyword-explorer

Yet another pretty good keyword discovery tool from the cool dudes (and dudettes) at MOZ.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SEO CHAT’S RELATED KEYWORD TOOL – http://tools.seochat.com/tools/relatedkeywords-tool

Another tool to find related keywords.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SPYFU – http://www.spyfu.com/

SpyFu will track your ads and competitors ads. Similar to KeywordSpy but not as good. Nonetheless, input a competitor’s domain and you can see their ads and some basic information on their keywords and bids.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SOOVLE – http://soovle.com

Let the web help – generate your keywords, that is. Type a keyword or phrase that interests you for SEO into Soovle and this nifty tool will generate phrase upon a phrase of helper keywords. Very useful for idea generation and blogging.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SEARCH TERM SUGGESTION / KEYWORD DISCOVERY TOOL – http://keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Free trial of the Trellian keyword discovery tool. Enter a keyword and it finds many synonyms and phrases. Great so you don’t miss out on the soda/pop, sneaker/tennis shoes, attorney/lawyer synonyms.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

BRUCE CLAY’S SEOTOOLSET TOOLS – http://www.seotoolset.com/tools/free-tools/

Bruce Clay is a guru in Search Engine Optimization. Use this page to access many of his free tools. The best are Single Page Analyzer, Link Analysis Report, Keyword Suggestion Tool. Useful primarily for keyword discovery and checking your page tags vs. target keywords.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE TRENDS – https://trends.google.com/trends/

Use Google’s interface to monitor keyword trends! This tool is like the person in High School voted ‘most likely to succeed’ and then he totally failed, and now is either in jail, homeless or dead. Google has ALL the cool trending information on the search, and yet they produce this pathetic, useless, teasy-tease tool. Oh, Google – you are such a tease!

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

NEIL PATEL’S KEYWORD TOOL – http://neilpatel.com/keyword-tool/

Formerly Ubersuggest. This tool allows you to input keywords and get a smorgasbord of ideas. Unfortunately, the new tool is much messier and not just an autocomplete tool as was the classic Ubersuggest.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

DANZAMBONINI KEYWORD TOOL – http://seo.danzambonini.com/

Input a few keywords, and this tool will mix and match them into phrases.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

KEYWORD TOOL – http://keywordtool.io

Similar to Ubersuggest, this tool builds upon Google Suggest to provide a list of ‘helper’ words and phrases. For example, enter insoles and you’ll see shoe insoles, insoles for runners, etc. It also provides questions containing the keyword users enter when searching Google and keyword suggestions for YouTube, Bing, and Apple App Store. Great for finding helper words as part of keyword research. Additional related data like keyword search volume and CPC requires paid account.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE CORRELATE – http://google.com/trends/correlate

Built on Insights for Search, this tool attempts to allow you to enter a search term (say, ‘Flowers’) and find what other search terms correlate in search trend activity with that term. Not that useful (yet) but since trend spotting is a very important marketing tool, it does make our list.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

PAGE TAGS

HTML is the language of Google, and you must “speak HTML” to propel your pages to the top of Google, as well as the other search engines. It isn’t enough to just write your pages in HTML; all web pages are in HTML, after all. Rather, you must weave your priority keywords into strategic page tags such as your <TITLE> tag, <H1>, or <A HREF> tags. Page tags communicate to Google what your page is “about” on a priority Basis.

page tags

Here are the best free Page Tags tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

SEOCENTRO META TAG ANALYZER – http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/metatag-analyzer.html

SEOCentro designed this Meta Tag analysis tool to help webmasters analyze their web pages. This tool analyzes not only Meta Tags but where your keywords are positioned on the page, plus provides information on keyword density. When using Firefox, use CTRL+F to highlight your keywords in the results. In doing so, you can quickly check to see if a target keyword is well positioned vis-a-vis important tags like the TITLE or META DESCRIPTION tag.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE SEO STARTER GUIDE – http://jmlinks.com/googleseo/

Here’s a concept. To succeed at SEO, do what Google tells you to do! This is an older but basic guide by Google on its official todos for SEO success. It’s excellent as a basic guide to On Page SEO but has ZERO coverage of Off Page tactics such as link-building, and no coverage of keyword theory or selection. Still, you gotta read it.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tutorial

SEO TAG COUNTER TOOLS – http://nightbirdwebsolutions.com/tools/title-description-tag-free-counter-tool

The TITLE tag should be less than 69 visible characters. The META DESCRIPTION should be less than 155 characters. This free tool allows you to input your text and count it automatically. Great for using as you write these two important META TAGS for SEO.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

SEOCENTRO KEYWORD DENSITY TOOL – http://seocentro.com/tools/seo/keyword-density.html

One element critical to SEO success is having good keyword density. A page that has good keyword density – such as three to seven percent of content – will outrank a page with lower density, all things considered. However, you also don’t want to go overboard and have too many keywords. Input a web URL into this tool and it generates a cool ‘keyword cloud’ as well as helping you see the density.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

KEYWORD DENSITY CHECKER – KEYWORD CLOUD – http://www.webconfs.com/seo-tools/keyword-density-checker/

This tool provides two perspectives on keyword density. Enter a URL and this tool will create a Keyword Cloud and provide a Keyword Density listing. A Keyword Cloud is a visual depiction of keywords used on a website. Keywords having higher density are depicted in a larger font. Ideally, your main keywords should appear in larger fonts at the start of the cloud. The Keyword Density listing is a list of all keywords on the page ordered by count and density percentage. You can also pop a competitor in here to get keyword ideas!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

YOAST – https://yoast.com/

Yoast is the No. 1 recommended SEO plugin for WordPress. Highly recommended, as it adds needed functionality to WordPress such as splitting the TITLE tag from the Post TITLE, META description, and a nice ‘focus’ tool to analyze how well your post is optimized for on page SEO vs. a target keyword.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

TAGCROWD – http://tagcrowd.com

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SEO SITE CHECK UP TOOLS – http://seositecheckup.com/tools

This site has a cornucopia of free tools to check your on page SEO. For example, you can check your HEADER tags or you can check your robots.txt. Or, you can check your IMG ALTs.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

WORD COUNT – http://wordcountertool.com

This nifty tool will count your characters as you type. Remember that an optimal TITLE tag is less than 80 characters, with only the first 69 or so visible on Google. An optimal META DESCRIPTION tag is 155 characters.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

LETTER COUNTER – http://www.lettercount.com/

The TITLE tag should be LESS THAN approx. 80 characters, with the MOST IMPORTANT being the first 59 characters (VISIBLE on Google). Your META DESCRIPTION should be less than 155 characters. Use this nifty online tool to copy/paste your tag text and it will automatically count it for you (characters and spaces).

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

WORD COUNTER – https://wordcounter.net/

Need to count characters or words? Useful for SEO, especially for TITLE and META DESCRIPTION tags for which limited characters are displayed in search results. Also useful for blogging.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

PINEBERRY SEO ANALYSIS TOOL – https://www.pineberry.com/en/analysis-tool/

This nifty little tool allows you to enter a page URL and a target keyword. It then will compare your target keyword vs. the on page aspects such as your tag structure, keyword density, etc. Good for a quick heads up analyzing your page content vs. target keywords.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION TOOL – http://internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/free-optimization/

This web page optimization tool analyzes existing on-page SEO and lets you see your website as a spider sees it and allows for better web page optimization. This tool is helpful for analyzing your internal links, meta information and page content to develop better on-page SEO.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SEO QUAKE – https://www.seoquake.com/

Many people love this SEO tool, a plugin for Firefox. Once you install it, you have a toolbar wherein you can search the web, look at competitors, and view their PageRank, link analysis, keywords, etc. It also alters how your Google appears. Decide if you like it. It can be overwhelming.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SIDE-BY-SIDE SEO COMPARISON TOOL – https://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/seo-compare/

Wondering why two pages rank differently on Google search? Enter the URL of each page, and this nifty tool compares them using on page SEO. (Remember, of course, that off page (links) are incredibly important as well).

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

PHPJABBERS SEO TOOL – https://www.phpjabbers.com/seo-tool.php

This is another SEO analysis tool. Enter your URL and then it analyzes the on-page SEO aspects of the page.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

BRUCE CLAY’S SEOTOOLSET TOOLS – http://www.seotoolset.com/tools/free-tools/

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

FREE SEO SCORECARD – http://freeseoscorecard.com

This is a quick tool for on page SEO analysis. It’s a bit campy and annoying but does provide the page entered a score, and some helpful hints on tag basics.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

TITLE TAG EVALUATION TOOL – http://nightbirdwebsolutions.com/title_creator_tool.php

This tool will evaluate how your existing Title tag relates to the content on the page, and it can suggest an order for the words based upon your content. The tool can also evaluate a new web page title to compare to an existing title.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

LINK BUILDING

Links are the votes of the Web. Google and the other search engines richly reward sites that enjoy many high-quality links from high authority web pages. How do you identify link targets? How can you measure PageRank or Domain Authority?

link building

Here are the best free link-building tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

OPENLINKPROFILER – http://openlinkprofiler.org

FREE tool for backlink analysis. Input your site, or that of a competitor, and see NEW links to that site. What’s great is that it focuses on newly found links, not just all links, so that gives it a unique niche in the crowded field of backlink analysis tools. It also alerts to you to anchor texts and suspicious links.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

MOZ: OPEN SITE EXPLORER – https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/

This wonderful tool tells you who links to whom on the Internet. Enter a URL and the tool will then identify backlinks to that URL. Input your own website and check up how many links you have; enter a competitor, and ‘reverse engineer’ who links to them.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

BUZZSUMO – http://buzzsumo.com/

Buzzsumo is a ‘buzz’ monitoring tool for social media. Input a website (domain) and/or a topic and see what people are sharing across Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media. Great for link-building (because what people link to is what they share), and also for social media.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

LINK BUILDING TACTICS – THE COMPLETE LIST – http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

This blog post isn’t just about link building – it is link building. This massive list of ideas is massively linked to because, quite frankly, it’s really good. Read this list and brainstorm your own link building tactics.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: article

SOLO SEO LINK SEARCH TOOL – https://www.soloseo.com/tools/linkSearch.html

This simple, but nifty tool, will take a target keyword and generate a list of Google searches for blogs, catalogs, and other sorts of sites. Very simple, but very useful as a starting point on your link building exercise!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

LINK BUILDING QUERY GENERATOR – http://tools.buzzstream.com/link-building-query-generator

Another input keywords and generate Google or Bing link tools. It creates an easy to use first step, but then you have to do the hard work to go and look for all those link targets!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

REMOVE’EM – http://www.removeem.com/anchor-text-ratios/

This nifty tool analyzes your backlink profile and gives you some guidance if you have over-optimized your anchor text. Useful in the post-Penguin link environment.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

MAJESTIC SEARCH EXPLORER – https://majestic.com/

Who’s winning at your keywords, and why? We know it’s a function of a) on page SEO, and b) off page SEO, namely links. This incredible tool looks at the Google results for your keyword query and shows the link score for the top players. A very revealing look at how links impact search engine results page ranking (SERP rank).

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GUEST POST – https://guestpost.com/

Guest posting is finding blogs that are looking for your content, and then soliciting them to accept your articles. This free / paid service helps you along the way. Great for blogging AND link-building. Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service DISAVOW.IT – http://disavow.it/ disavow.it help you to quickly compile/clean a Disavow file, ready to upload to Google Search Console. You can also apply your disavow file to a list of URLs to see which would and would not be disavowed.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GUEST BLOG POST OPPORTUNITY FINDER – http://mangiamarketing.com/free-link-building-tools/guest-post-opportunity-finder

This nifty little tool takes your keywords and creates Google searches to help you find guest blogging opportunities.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

CHARITY NAVIGATOR – http://www.charitynavigator.org/

Sponsoring charities, and getting links FROM the charity or non-profit to your website, is a great link-building technique. Use this site to find charities you might sponsor to receive links from in return.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

LINKARATI’S LINK BUILDING GUIDE (PAGEONEPOWER) – http://www.pageonepower.com/link-building-resources

OK, we’ve taken the (link)baitl. This article, once published by Literati and now owned by PagePower, is a compendium of both link-building tools AND points to deep-dive articles. Once you’ve graduated from the basics, dive in to topics such as link-bait, badge-bait, broken link building and more esoteric topics that separate the men from the boys, and women from the girls.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: article

TALKWALKER ALERTS – http://www.talkwalker.com/alerts

Similar to Google Alerts, Talkwalker allows you to input your keywords, and then get alerts on new sites, and new mentions (e.g., a keyword or your brand name).

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE’S DISAVOW LINKS TOOL – https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

Use with caution! Experts only! Could be a scam! Google introduced this tool so that the SEO community would rat each other out by identifying bad sites that are participating in links schemes. Oh, oops, we didn’t say that. Google introduced this tool so that you can ‘disavow’ bad links into your website. Google wouldn’t be evil, would it? Use with caution!

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

EXPIREDDOMAINS.NET – https://www.expireddomains.net/

Identifying, purchasing, and then populating with content ‘expired domains’ is a good and valuable… albeit somewhat ‘Black Hat’ tool of link-building.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GUEST POST TRACKER – https://www.guestposttracker.com/

This service (for a fee) keeps an updated list of blogs that accept guest posts. It also keeps track of what the website owners charge for the guest post and help you track all of your guest posts in one place. Register now to submit a guest post.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

AHREFS – https://ahrefs.com/

AHrefs takes its name from the A HREF element/attribute (i.e., HTML hyperlink tag). This tool helps you investigate links and link-building issues for any website. A useful tool to use in companion with Open Site Explorer. You can also use it to reverse engineer competitor keywords.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

RMOOV – https://www.rmoov.com/

This tool helps you find, and disavow, ‘bad’ links in the post-Penguin link world. Has both free and paid versions.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

BACKLINK EXPLORER – http://explorer.cognitiveseo.com/

This tool, based on a freemium model, allows a few ‘free’ back link searches – enough to see how you and your competitors align. Enter a URL, and see who links to whom. Has a lovely visual ‘picture’ of links.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

PIKTOCHART – http://piktochart.com

Free infographic creator. Useful for blogging and creating ‘link bait’ for link building.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

BROKEN LINK CHECK – http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/link-checker.php

Use this tool to scan a site – your site, a competitor, a list of links – and identify ‘broken links.’ In that way useful to debug your site, and to identify broken links to ‘fix’ by helping them out with your own links.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

LINK BAIT GENERATOR – http://www.contentrow.com/tools/link-bait-title-generator

This is a combination blog headline generator, and concept generator for link bait. Plus it’s just fun to enter a word, and watch the ideas spin out.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SEO QUAKE – https://www.seoquake.com/

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

MONITOR BACKLINKS – https://monitorbacklinks.com/seo-tools/free-backlink-checker

Yet another backlink checker; only provides a teeny-tiny taste of the backlinks, before you are required to register.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

TINEYE REVERSE IMAGE – https://www.tineye.com/

Images can be great ‘link bait,’ especially if you nag people who ‘steal’ your images that they MUST link back to them.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

CHECK MY LINKS – http://tinyurl.com/l4tgjqf

Check my links is a nifty Chrome extension that allows you to visit your website, and then check your links to see if any are 404 / not found (which is bad).

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

LINK BLACKLIST TOOL – https://www.mariehaynes.com/blacklist/

Thinking of getting a link from site “A”? Well is site “A” a naughty site, possibly on Google’s blacklist? You can check that potential link, here.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SIMILAR CONTENT TOOL – https://skyrocket.digital/tools/similar-content-prospecting-tool/

The creator developed the similar content prospecting tool so that you can identify high-quality link prospects who have already shared and linked to a similar or related piece of content.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

LIKE EXPLORER – http://www.likeexplorer.com/

Type in a URL and see its shares across social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon. Very useful for link-building and competitor research.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

CONTENT

Content is king – now more than ever. We have entered the era of “content marketing.” For both SEO and SMM (Social Media Marketing) you need to create a content marketing system. Ranging from how you construct your home page, to how you build your anchor landing pages, to how you create a plethora of blog posts and other types of content – you gotta get content!

content marketing

Here are the best free content marketing tools and services on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

BUZZSUMO – http://buzzsumo.com/

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

FEEDLY – https://feedly.com/

Feedly is a newsreader integrated with Google+ or Facebook. It’s useful for social media because you can follow important blogs or other content and share it with your followers. It can also spur great blog ideas.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

YOUTUBE CREATOR HUB – http://youtube.com/yt/creators

Help center for those creating YouTube content. Learn how to better edit your videos, get them up on YouTube, etc. Has lessons on growing your audience, boot camp, and how to get viewers and even how to earn money via YouTube.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

DRUMUP – https://drumup.io/

This incredible tool or service allows you to automatically scour the Web / blogs for your content by keywords. Then you can instantly schedule posts to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Similar to Feedly but with less control on content but built in posting (which is pretty cool)!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

CONTENT MARKETING GENERATOR – http://bit.ly/contentgen

From Online Ventures Group: input your target customer or reader, plus an idea and it generates a barage of blog headlines or blog ideas. No more writer’s block!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

YOUTUBE TOOLS – http://bitly.com/ytcreatecorner

YouTube has done more and more to make it easier to publish and promote videos. This page lists six tools: YouTube Capture, YouTube Editor, Captions, Audio Library, Slideshow and YouTube Analytics. All of them are fantastic, free tools about YouTube by YouTube.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

PHOTOPIN – http://photopin.com

Get in the habit of creating blog posts with images by using PhotoPin. PhotoPin searches millions of Creative Commons photos and allows you to preview, download any of multiple sizes to upload into your posts, and provides handy cut and paste HTML for attribution, a small price to pay for royalty-free images. Adding images to your blog posts doesn’t get any easier than this.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

MOZ GUIDE TO CONTENT MARKETING – http://bitly.com/mozcontent

MOZ is the producer of fabulous SEO tools. Read this free in-depth guide to CONTENT MARKETING. It is a bit techie, and of course emphasizes SEO.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

YOUTUBE CAPTURE – https://youtube.com/capture

YouTube Capture is an app for your mobile phone, which makes it easy to capture and edit videos right on your phone. Imagine you are a marketer / retailer and you want to use your phone to easily capture customer interactions, and upload (quickly / easily) to YouTube. Get the picture?

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

TAG BOARD – https://tagboard.com/

Hashtags have moved beyond Twitter. This amazing cool tool allows you to take a hashtag and browse Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, etc., so see posts that relate to that hashtag. Then you can find related tags. Oh, and you can use it as a content discovery tool, too.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

QZZR – https://qzzr.com

Create online quizzes and share with your social network. What cat breed are you? If you were a Twilight character, which character would you be? Fun quizzes to encourage social sharing.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE NEWS – https://news.google.com/

Excellent for reputation management as well as keeping up-to-date on specific keywords that matter to you and your business. First, sign in to your Google account or gmail. Second, customize Google news for your interest. Third, monitor your reputation as well as topics that matter to you. Go Google!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

CREATIVE COMMONS SEARCH – https://search.creativecommons.org/

Another resource to find royalty-free images, clip art, sound and music to share or utilize with other content. Great way to find shareable images to embed into blog posts.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

FOTER – http://foter.com

Add some color (or monochrome) to your blog posts with Foter. Search over 200 million high-quality, free, downloadable stock photos. Don’t forget to copy and paste photo attribution credits included with the images details into your blog post.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

COMPFIGHT – http://compfight.com

Unclear where the name comes from, but no matter. This incredible tool allows you to search for royalty-based and royalty-free images via FLICKR. Great for finding images for blogging and posting to social media. Quickly locate royaltyfree images!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

NETVIBES – https://www.netvibes.com/

Another personalized web home page service. First, identify industry news sites, blogs, and even competitor sites to “keep an eye on.” Second, set up Netvibes. Third, log in on a periodic basis and keep up-to-date on shareable content for your content marketing. Sweet.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

START.ME – https://start.me/

Very easy-to-use way to create a customized ‘dashboard’ for your SEO and social media marketing efforts. It’s free, too! Similar to Feedly, but it allows easy bookmarks of key industry blogs, even canned Google searches.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool
PABLO – https://pablo.buffer.com/

Take an image, add some text. Presto! You have an engaging image for your blog post or social sharing. Memes, anyone?

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

RECITE – http://recitethis.com/ Got quotes?

‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ – Ben Franklin. Use this tool to take a quote, and instantly put it on top of an image.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE EMAIL ALERTS – https://www.google.com/alerts

Use Google to alert you by email for search results that matter to you. Input your company name, for example, to see when new web pages, blog posts, or other items surface on the web. Enter your target keywords to keep an eye on yourself and your competitors. Part of the Gmail system.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE AND CONFERENCE – http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/

These are sort of the guys that ‘invented’ content marketing, and they run the best conference in content marketing, located in Cleveland (yes, Cleveland). The website, event, and magazine are all fantastic if you want to deep dive into content marketing, and then there’s a trip to Cleveland in your future. Yes, Cleveland. And we went to Cleveland, and we loved it – so please go.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: conference

EASELY – https://www.easel.ly/

Use thousands of templates and design objects to easily create infographics for your blog. Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool PIKIZ – http://getpikiz.com Take an image, add some text plus a lot of emotion and it might just go viral. This is a free/freemium image maker plus textifier. Memes, anyone?

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE BOOKMARKS – https://www.google.com/bookmarks/

Use Google to add and organize your bookmarks. Useful for content curation.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

EMOTIONAL MARKETING VALUE HEADLINE ANALYZER – http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

Brought to you by the Advanced Marketing Institute, this tool attempts to analyze the emotional content of your blog post headline. It doesn’t seem to work particularly well, because it’s hard for computers to get angry or sad or depressed. But – I’m crying as a I write this – it’s still worth a try.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

CONTENT MARKETING WORLD – http://www.contentmarketingworld.com/

Content Marketing World is the one event where you can learn and network with the best and the brightest in the content marketing industry.You will leave with all the materials you need to take a content marketing strategy back to your team and implement a content marketing plan that will grow your business and inspire your audience.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: conference

SLIDESHARE – https://www.slideshare.net/

PowerPoint slides for the Web. Create a “deck,” upload it to SlideShare and have a) a place to put content in slide format, and b) a platform that can also lead to discoverability. PowerPoint on the Web, PowerPoint gone social.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

HUNTER FOR EMAIL – https://hunter.io/

Input a domain (like jm-seo.net) and uncover available emails. This is a good way to guess / research emails and then send out an email to influencers. Useful to promote your content.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

MENTION – https://mention.com/en/

Similar to Google Alerts. Enter your email address and get free email alerts when topics are mentioned. For example, use your company name (personal name) and monitor your reputation online.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

YOUTUBE EDITOR – https://www.youtube.com/editor

While there is Microsoft Windows Movie Maker and Apple iMovie, there is also a free YouTube editor for your videos. Not incredibly powerful, but free and easy to use ‘in the cloud.’

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

IGHOME – https://www.ighome.com/

IGHome. What a name, right? Use this to set up a “personalized web page,” pulling information from your favorite blogs, industry news sources, etc. Great to “pre-curate” content.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

PIXABAY – https://pixabay.com/

Pixabay is a photo sharing community and a great source of royalty-free, attribution-free, stock images for your blog. Ignore the first row of sponsored images in the search results.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

MEME GENERATOR – http://memegenerator.net

Memes are shareable photos, usually with text. But how do you create them? Why, use memegenerator.net. Oh, and if you visit this site, you will spend about half an hour just laughing at stupid, funny memes. Now, get back to work, Keanu Reeves.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

MAKE MY BUYER PERSONA GENERATOR – http://www.makemypersona.com/

Need help making your persona? This step-by-step wizard will guide you through the process of creating your own personalised buyer persona.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

PIKTOCHART – http://piktochart.com Free infographic creator.

Useful for blogging and creating ‘link bait’ for link building

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

INFO.GRAM – https://infogr.am

Another free way to create infographics and charts. Free plan is limited to 10 infographics, 10 uploaded images, no private sharing and no downloads or live connections.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

POWTOON – http://www.powtoon.com/

PowToon provides animated video production using the freemium pricing model. Play around with it to create animated videos to present anything you want about your business. Paid plans available, but you can do some cool stuff for free.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

INBOUND – http://www.inbound.com/

INBOUND fuels the passion that drives the most innovative and successful business leaders of our time. INBOUND’s purpose is to provide the inspiration, education, and connections you need to transform your business. More for content marketing than for SEO, but since content is king.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: conference

CONVERSION CONFERENCE – http://www.conversionconference.com/

Whether you’re a web designer, an optimization or analytics pro, a marketer or a business owner, you can learn, grow and profit from the secrets of the highest converting websites in the world by attending Conversion Conference.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: conference

RECITE.COM – http://recite.com/

Enter a quote, pick a template, and presto – you have a potentially viral image / meme.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

PAPER.LI – http://paper.li/

Create a curated set of content just for your audience. Paper.li is a content platform – you define what you want on a page, and it builds a custom newspaper on the Web for you (and your customers).

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

QUOTES COVER – https://quotescover.com/

Input some funky text, like a quote, and generate a cool image. Great for creating fun images for Facebook and Instagram.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

CONTENT MARKETING CONFERENCE – http://www.contentmarketingconference.com/

CMC’s core focus is to deliver the tactics and techniques you need to grow your business organically, the content marketing way. CMC’s speakers are so great, we decided to call them superheroes this year, celebrating their commitment to rid the world of bad content, and help us grow our businesses organically, the content marketing way!

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: conference

STENCIL – https://getstencil.com/

Easily create images like quotables for social media sharing. Has free and freemium versions.

Rating: Stars | Category: tool

BLOGS

Google likes “fresh content” and strongly rewards sites that blog. But beyond just having a blog and using “on page” SEO tactics, you can adjust your blog to make it a stronger link attractor. In addition, you can identify bloggers on the Web who might let you “guest blog” or serve as partner sites for your content. Blogging, like press releases, can be a bridge between your “on page” and “off page” SEO strategy.

blog seo tools

Here are the best free SEO-friendly blog tools and services on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

CONTENT MARKETING GENERATOR – http://bit.ly/contentgen

From Online Ventures Group: input your target customer or reader, plus an idea and it generates a barage of blog headlines or blog ideas. No more writer’s block!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

TWEAK YOUR BIZ TITLE GENERATOR – http://tweakyourbiz.com/tools/title-generator/index.php

Good blog post TITLES are critical. You should include your keywords for SEO purposes, but add some pizazz, some sex appeal, some please-click-me oomph. This nifty tool gets your ideas flowing for good TITLES.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

YOAST – https://yoast.com/

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

LINKEDIN PULSE – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/discover

Need ideas for your next blog post? Look no further than LinkedIn Pulse where top business influencers post their thoughts daily. Even better, you can post to LinkedIin Pulse and become a LinkedIn superstar as well. Even even better: post to both LinkedIn Pulse and your own blog.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

WORDPRESS PLUGIN DIRECTORY – https://wordpress.org/plugins/

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform. This is their complete directory of plugins. Don’t forget to install an SEO plugin to improve your searchability!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

WORD TO CLEAN HTML – https://word2cleanhtml.com/

If you write in Microsoft Word, and then copy / paste into your blog, you’ll get insane formatting in the HTML. Thanks Microsoft! Just what we needed: a more bloated web. No worries, Word To Clean HTML to the rescue. Copy into this tool, and it removes the crazy embedded formating. Useful.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

PITCHERIFIC – https://pitcherific.com/

Blogging is a lot like ‘pitching’ clients. You need a good headline, an angle on why this is important, often you are ‘solving’ a ‘problem’ with a ‘solution.’ This fun tool will help you devise a pitch, which could also become a great blog post.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

THE HEMINGWAY APP – http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

Let’s face it. Americans, and people everywhere, aren’t getting smarter. This app allows you to paste in text from your blog post or email, and check the ‘grade level.’ It also identifies hard-to-read sentences. Can you say DUM IT DOWNE?

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

CREATIVE COMMONS SEARCH – https://search.creativecommons.org/

Another resource to find royalty-free images, clip art, sound and music to share or utilize with other content. Great way to find shareable images to embed into blog posts.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

PORTENT CONTENT IDEA GENERATOR – https://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker

Better blog headlines! Very fun and mind-provocative tool for content ideas and better blog titles. Enter some keywords and the tool will generate some funny titles. So start with keywords and then generate your amazingly, funny and hypnotic blog titles. These then become the HEADLINES on Google by which you can attract more clicks!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

PHOTOPIN – http://photopin.com

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

BLOG TOPIC GENERATOR – https://www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator

If you’re hurting for blog topic ideas, try this fun tool from HubSpot. Enter three nouns, then watch the tool generate a weeks worth of blog topics. If none of the generated topics pique your interest, hit the back key and try, try again until one does.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

FOTER – http://foter.com

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

BLOG POST HEADLINE ANALYZER – http://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

Want to write better blog headlines? Use the Blog Post Headline Analyzer to get a feel for how effective your blog post headlines are. This tool analyzes entered headlines across numerous criteria including keywords, sentiment, structure, grammar, and readability to produce a headline score in an attractive graphical format. Try it and see.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

COMPFIGHT – http://compfight.com

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

DRAGON DICTATION – http://bit.ly/dragdictate

This is not a free tool, but it is so useful for blogging that it deserves an ‘honorable mention.’ Download and install, and you can simple TALK to your computer. Unlike free programs such as those available in Windows, the dictation engine is pretty good ‘out of the box’ at recognizing speech. Makes blog post writing as easy as talking to your computer!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

FACEBOOK COMMENTS PLUGIN – https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/comments

Want more comments on your blog? Want people who comment to have those comments go viral? This Facebook Plugin makes it easy for people to comment on your blog, no more annoying double registration, plus if they comment you can encourage them to post the comment to their Facebook page – hence, viral marketing!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

PIXABAY – https://pixabay.com/

Pixabay is a photo sharing community and a great source of royalty-free, attribution-free, stock images for your blog. Ignore the first row of sponsored images in the search results.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

GUEST BLOG POST OPPORTUNITY FINDER – http://mangiamarketing.com/free-link-building-tools/guest-post-opportunity-finder

This nifty little tool takes your keywords and creates Google searches to help you find guest blogging opportunities.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

ANSWER THE PUBLIC – http://answerthepublic.com/

This super CREEPY tool is actually a really fun way to brainstorm blog ideas. Input a keyword, ignore the really creepy old man, and then you get a visual wheel of who, what, where, when, and why phrases relating to your keyword.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

BLOGGER – https://www.blogger.com/

Need a blog? Google’s Blogger platform, sometimes referred to as Blogspot, while not as pervasive as WordPress, is quick, easy, and very SEO friendly. If you want a straightforward, hosted, business blog, Blogger might be a better choice than WordPress.com. You can even attach a domain!

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

COPYSCAPE – http://copyscape.com

Since Google can penalize websites with plagiarized content, avoid being penalized for someone stealing your content with Copyscape. Enter the page URL and Copyscape will return pages which may have duplicated its content. Copyscape even provides some tips and resources should content have been plagiarized.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

LINK BAIT TITLE GENERATOR – http://www.contentrow.com/tools/link-bait-title-generator

Despite the name, this is really a blog headline generator. Great for both social media marketing and SEO. Input a few keywords and generate ‘ideas’ for blog headlines and blog content.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

TWINWORD KEYWORD TOOL – https://www.twinword.com/ideas/

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

WORD COUNTER – https://wordcounter.net/

Need to count characters or words? Useful for SEO, especially for TITLE and META DESCRIPTION tags for which limited characters are displayed in search results. Also useful for blogging.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

ULTIMATE HEADLINE FORMULAS – https://blog.bufferapp.com/headline-formulas

If you’ve wondered how to create headlines for blog posts, articles, emails, etc., which will entice readers to click and read on, this article gathers a gaggle of formulas from some of the best sources for headline writing in one place. It also includes a free, downloadable PDF of the best headline formulas.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: article

WORDPRESS SEO TUTORIAL – http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo

This is a very good guide for WordPress SEO using the Yoast plugin for blogs. It covers only the technical issues, however, but when combined with our classes and an understanding of keyword research, website structure, and off-page SEO link building – this guide is very helpful for crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s of a strong SEO-friendly WordPress website.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

READABILITY TESTER – http://www.webpagefx.com/tools/read-able/

Use this tool to measure the readability of your content and you’ll end up with a masterpiece tailor-made for your audience. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with poor readability What you say is often less important than how you say it!

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SMUSH.IT – http://www.imgopt.com/

Image optimization is an art that not many people master. There are many good image editing tools that allow us to get the best visual result for a certain file size but “under the hood” a lot more optimization can be done. Smushit.com is a service that goes beyond the limitations of Photoshop, Fireworks & Co.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

EMOTIONAL MARKETING VALUE HEADLINE ANALYZER – http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

WORDPRESS SUPPORT – http://wordpress.org/support

WordPress is the No. 1 blogging platform but it is anything but simple or intuitive. Use the support site to ‘get started’ with WordPress as a blogging platform, as well as to learn the more esoteric elements of WordPress.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GUEST POST – https://guestpost.com/

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

CANVA – https://www.canva.com/

Canva makes design simple for everyone. Choose from hundreds of professional templates to create social media graphics, presentations, flyers, posters, invitations and so much more. Design blog post images, background photos, and even items for Pinterest.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

HEADLINE GENERATOR – http://internetmarketingcourse.com/freeheadlinegenerator

Got writer’s block? Wondering how to generate a snazzy headline for a product page, blog post, or even news release? Answer a few questions about your blog post or product page, and this tool will generate a list of suggested headlines.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

LINK BAIT GENERATOR – http://www.contentrow.com/tools/link-bait-title-generator

This is a combination blog headline generator, and concept generator for link bait. Plus it’s just fun to enter a word, and watch the ideas spin out.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

COFFIVITIY – THE SOUNDS OF A STARBUCKS NEAR YOU – https://coffitivity.com/

This is a very fun idea. Turn it ‘on’ and you can recreate the ambience of a coffeehouse near you, without actually going to one. Great if it helps you concentrate to have some background noise. You can also drown out the kids.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

MEDIUM.COM – https://medium.com/

Medium is to blogging, well, like Twitter is to Twitter. So the some of the folks who did Twitter jumped ship (sort of) and did Medium, which is sort of like a Tumblr imitation just seems like more serious people use it. Blogging, anyone?

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: resource

SEO INTERNAL LINKS (WORDPRESS PLUGIN) – https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-internal-links/

Link scuplting is an important part of ON PAGE SEO. This nifty plug in allows you to define your target keywords (e.g., from your KEYWORD WORKSHEET) and then automatically link every occurrence of a word / phrase to your target landing page. Unfortunately, not compatible with all versions of WordPress and it tends to slow down the site.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

FLICKR ADVANCED SEARCH – https://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

Yet another way to find royalty-free images for your blog. Flickr Advanced Search.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: service

TITLE CAPITALIZATION TOOL – http://capitalizemytitle.com/

Don’t KnOw the RuLES of capitALIzation? Well, this tool does. Input your blog headline, and it will correctly capitalize it for you.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

PRESS RELEASES

Press Releases are an underutilized form of SEO. With the advent of “real-time search” and syndication services like PRWEB.com, Google rewards sites that have frequent press releases and blog posts. First, it rewards them with links from the Google search page directly to their press releases and blog posts – especially if they are created in an SEO-friendly way. Second, press releases can be part of your “link-building” strategy. And third, Google rewards sites with frequent, keyword-heavy press releases that are Panda- and Penguin-compatible, with a “better reputation” and thereby more frequent spidering. It’s a three-for-one benefit!

press releases tools

Here are the best free press release syndication tools on the Internet, ranked with the best services first!

PRWEB – http://www.prweb.com/

Not free, but inexpensive, PRWeb does an excellent job of taking your news release and syndicating it across the Internet. For about $200, you can reach thousands of websites, blogs, portals and other media plus encourage Google to index your news release and new content. Because it is so good, we make an exception to our general rule of only identifying free resources. Well worth $200.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: service

PRLOG PRESS RELEASE DISTRIBUTION – https://www.prlog.org/

PRLog is a free online press release service. First, create your press release on your own website in SEO-friendly HTML. Second, log in to your free PRLog.org account. Third, input your press release for distribution. Fourth, publish! This free service is a fantastic way to syndicate your press release, gain instant links, encourage Google to index your website and more. The news is still an effective way to boost SEO!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: service

PRESSRELEASEPOINT – http://www.pressreleasepoint.com/

PressReleasePoint offers both free and paid distribution services. PressReleasePoint.com is a free press release distribution website to connect PR professionals with journalists and media outlets. Online marketers can generate media visibility and maximize online presence by distributing press release through PressReleasePoint.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: service

NEWSWIRE – https://www.newswire.com/

Another press release service (paid options only). In comparison with PRWEB / Cision, Newswire is a bit less expensive and a bit better at optimized links, but doesn’t have quite the network as Cision.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service Category: service

ONLINE PR MEDIA – http://www.onlineprnews.com/

Online PR Media, in its own humble words, is the premier source for publishing SEO press releases. After years of research (again in their own humble words) we’ve combined all of the features that Internet marketers, business owners, and journalists have asked for in an online press release distribution site. Has a limited free service.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

HELP A REPORTER OUT (HARO) – http://www.helpareporter.com/

A service journalists use to put queries out into the ether. Sign up to receive queries from working journalists, and then ‘pitch’ them on contacting you and your company, usually as an expert.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

24-7 PRESS RELEASES – http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/

Yet another press release distribution service. Most plans are paid but offer a limited free trial plan which includes one free press release per day.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

INSTANT PRESS RELEASE TOOL – http://ducttapemarketing.com/IPR.htm

This tool from Duct Tape Marketing helps you write a draft press release. Enter the city, state, headline, first paragraphs, etc. and presto, see your press release instantly!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

JUST REACH OUT – https://justreachout.io/

This is a paid service with a free 7-day trial. Once you have the ‘carrot’ such as a new product, eBook or free offering, you can use this service to email key journalists your ‘pitch.’

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

PRESSRELEASE.COM – http://www.pressrelease.com/

Yet another press release service.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

ERELEASES – http://www.ereleases.com/

A relatively expensive news release distribution service, eReleases has a strong affiliation with the AP wire service and PR Newswire. Competes with PRWeb.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: service

PR URGENT NEWS – http://prurgent.com

Free press release and news distribution website which publishes high-quality press releases, which will get you visibility in major search engines and news sites including Google News, MSN, Yahoo, Bing, and others.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: service

BRIEFINGWIRE – http://www.briefingwire.com/

Free press release distribution service. Basic and to-the-point.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: service

CLICKPRESS – http://www.clickpress.com/

ClickPress offers free press release distribution. Once news submitted to ClickPress has been approved, it is available not only to site visitors but also to major web and news search engines. All submissions are free and news releases remain in searchable archives indefinitely.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: service

RANK

SEO is a lot like physical fitness! Just as you should measure your “Body Mass Index” (BMI), before, during, and after your fitness program, so you should measure your “Rank” on Google before, during, and after your SEO fitness efforts. The fact that your rank can vary greatly depending on your target keywords complicates rank measurement, but fortunately there are some great tools for automating this process. You can incorporate your rank measurement to identify strengths and weakness in your SEO strategy. Finally, if you are conducting paid AdWords advertising, you can feed your rank data into AdWords and thereby build on your SEO strengths and “target” your weaknesses for advertising support.

Here are the best free rank-checking tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

SEOBOOK FIREFOX RANK CHECKER EXTENSION – http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/

Sign up for a free account, and you can use this tool to track your rank on Google and other search engines. It works only on Firefox, so be sure to install Firefox first. Then, here are the steps. First, input your domain – be sure to use lower case. Second, input your keyword list. Third, input any competitor names. This handy tool will track your SERP rank (your position on a Google search). You need to be in the top ten.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

FAT RANK (CHROME EXTENSION) – http://jmlinks.com/25w

This is a NIFTY Chrome extension. Visit a website (such as yours), and then you can quickly enter a keyword, and PRESTO it will tell you the rank on Google. It’s free, and it’s fast. Excellent for a quick spot check to rank.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

SEM RUSH – https://www.semrush.com/

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

LOCAL RANK CHECKING VIA ADWORDS – https://adwords.google.com/apt/AdPreview

This is the OFFICIAL Google AdWords preview tool. But, guess what. You can use this to vary your city location, and check your rank against various cities. If, for example, you are a pizza restaurant serving San Jose, Milpitas, and Santa Clara, you can type in ‘Pizza’ and see your rank in different cities. You can login to your AdWord account and click Tools – Preview Tool or use this direct link.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

CUTERANK – http://cuterank.net

CuteRank is a download-only tool that will allow you to input ONE domain for free and then measure its rank, over time. It’s a pretty good tool, though not as useful as SEOCentro PageRank Checker.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

CODER DUCK RANK CHECKER – http://www.coderduck.com/keyword-rank-checker

Rank checking tool. Allows you to enter more than one word and check both Google and Yahoo.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SERPLAB RANK CHECKER – https://www.serplab.co.uk/serp-check.php

Enter your domain AND some keywords, and this tool will tell you your rank. A bit slow to use, but pretty accurate.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SEOCENTRO RANK CHECKER – http://seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-position.html

This online tool allows you to input your domain as well as that of a competitor and a keyword. It then quickly tells you your rank (SERP) on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Not as robust as the Firefox Rank Checker extension from SEOBook, but a very quick and easy way to check your SERPs.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

DYNAMIC KEYWORD GENERATOR TOOL – http://rustybrick.com/keyword-phrase-tool.php

This tool enables you to enter your primary, secondary and even tertiary keyword phrases separated by comma (,) into the appropriate fields and click Generate Keywords to receive a robust list of keywords to copy and paste into your program of choice. For rank-checking, it makes it easy to generate a longer keyword list.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

BING IT ON – BING VS. GOOGLE – http://www.bingiton.com/

This site, created by Microsoft, allows you to compare Google and Bing search results. Input search terms and see Bing results vs. Google results side-by-side, leaving you to guess which is which. Snazzy, quick way to compare the two major search engine providers side by side.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

DELETE DUPLICATES KEYWORD TOOL – http://angular.marketing/free-tools/delete-duplicates

If you are building a long list for rank-checking, or for AdWords input, you often will unknowingly generate duplicates. Then when you pull your reports, they will often not correspond to your original, because rank checker and other tools autodelete duplicates. Use this tool to prevent this from happening in the first place.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SERPS.COM RANK CHECKING TOOL – https://serps.com/tools/rank-checker/

Another tool to check your rank on Google. Very slow.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

KEYWORD POSITION TOOL – http://smallseotools.com/keyword-position

Another quick and dirty keyword rank checker. Enter your keywords and your domain…and this free tool will check your position in the top search engines for specific keywords to determine what is working, and what needs more work on your website.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SMART SERP KEYWORD RANK CHECKER – http://smartserp.com/free-rank-checker

Yet another slow tool to check your rank on Google.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

DIAGNOSTICS

“To diagnose” means to identify the nature of an illness or other problem by the nature of the symptoms. For your website as a whole and for your SEO efforts, effective diagnostic tools can not only identify when you have a problem but tell you what that problem is and even guide you to possible solutions.

page insights

Here are the best free diagnostic tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

WOORANK – https://www.woorank.com/

Assuming you know some SEO (especially page tags), this really slick tool will take a web URL (such as your home page) and generate a quick report. HubSpot has a similar tool, but this tool is way cooler and faster! Then, use the report to check your website. Are you using the proper tags? Do the keywords you need show up in the correct spaces? A powerful free tool in the hands of someone who is SEO educated.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE (WEBMASTER TOOLS) – https://www.google.com/webmasters/

Google Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools) provides detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google. To get started, simply add and verify your site and begin seeing information right away. Get Google’s view of your site and diagnose problems. See how Google crawls and indexes your site and learn about specific problems they’re having accessing it. Discover your link and query traffic. Also contains an extensive education section with videos and articles to help you get found on Google.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

FOUND SEO TOOL – https://www.found.co.uk/seo-tool/

This all-in-one SEO website checkup tool gives you not only on page information, but checks things such as canonical domain issues. It also access Moz’s link database and provides some basic inbound link analysis for free.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

IS IT HACKED? – http://isithacked.com/

Has your website been hacked? The funny thing is it may have been hacked, and yet you won’t know. Hackers often inject hidden code and links into your site. If Google finds these, it may harshly penalize your rank on searches. So it’s a good idea to check.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

PINGDOM TOOLS – http://tools.pingdom.com/

Diagnostic tools, such as how fast your website loads, and the DNS health of your domain name. Useful for optimizing your website performance which is increasingly important to Google. Speed, baby, speed (matters).

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

COMPLEX SEO AUDIT – http://www.seomastering.com/

Want to know where your website is really hosted in the physical world? How fast it is? What the keywords it appears to be targeting. This nifty tool answers all those questions.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE PAGESPEED INSIGHTS – https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

Use this Google tool to measure how fast your website is. Size might not matter, but speed does. Google likes speedy websites! It gives you a score, plus recommendations on what you can do to speed up your website. Not just what’s wrong, but what to fix. Cool tool.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

VARVY SEO TOOL AND ANALYSIS – https://varvy.com/

How well does your website follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines? This allin-one SEO analysis of your website will tell you. This site also has quite a few other microtools that are pretty good.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

SEOPTIMER – http://www.seoptimer.com/

Another all-in-one diagnostic tool. Enter a website address, click Analyze, and it will give you feedback, including some interesting data on ‘social shares’ such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE SITE: SEARCH OPERATOR – http://google.com/search?q=site%3Ajm-seo.org

Use the site: search operator on Google to find out a) how many pages of your website are in the Google index (the first step towards getting to the top of Google), and b) to see your indexing patterns. Simply click on the left column, ‘Show Search Tools,’ and browse by week, month, day to see how frequently Google is indexing your website. You can ‘train’ Google to index your site more frequently!

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

NIBBLER – http://nibbler.silktide.com/

This is a nice diagnostic for your ‘entire’ website, with a good focus on all sorts of issues that are likely to be in the Google algorithm, such as page loading speed, your ‘likes’ on Facebook, etc. It’s a good overview to whether your website is doing its on page SEO job well (or poorly).

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SIMILARWEB – https://www.similarweb.com/

Unlike other monitoring tools previously mentioned, SimilarWeb monitors your competition’s website. Use this tool to find out how your competitors are doing, see how much traffic they get and where it comes from. A great tool for anyone with some competition, aka everyone.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

IP ADDRESS BLACKLIST CHECKER TOOL – http://www.ipvoid.com/

If your website traffic goes way, way down, it can indicate your site may have been infected with malware. This tool will check if your IP address has been listed on various Internet blacklists.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GEOPEEKER – https://geopeeker.com – https://geopeeker.com

Measure how fast your website loads in various places in the world. Great as a testing tool for website loading speed and performance.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

GTMETRIX – https://gtmetrix.com/

Slow website got you down? Want to go mobile? Already gone mobile, but your site is terribly slow? This diagnostics tool helps you understand what’s wrong (and then fix it). Submit your site, and then give the report to your developer to fix.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

SUCURI MALWARE CHECK – https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/

If your website is infected with malware, Google will quickly block you – creating a catastrophic drop in your rank on Google. This tool pre-scans your website for malware and infections, so you can see minute-by-minute if you have an issue.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool Category: tool

MOBILE-FRIENDLY TEST – https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

The mobile web is now so pervasive, many designers take a mobile-first design approach. Evaluate your existing web pages for mobile-friendliness with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tool. It analyzes a URL and reports if the page has a mobilefriendly design, per Google standards. You’ll be glad you did.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool : 3 Stars | Category: tool

PINEBERRY SEO ANALYSIS TOOL – https://www.pineberry.com/en/analysis-tool/

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SITELINER – http://www.siteliner.com/

This is a scan tool that scans your site for things like duplicate content, overlapping content, outbound links and other metrics. It’s a good way to check you ON PAGE SEO and see if you are likely to be provoking a PANDA penalty for duplicate content.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool : 3 Stars | Category: tool

SEO ANALYZER BY NEIL PATEL – http://neilpatel.com/seo-analyzer/ – http://neilpatel.com/seo-analyzer/

Neil Patel is a guru of search engine optimization, and there is his nifty diagnostic tool, primarily of ‘on page’ factors.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

BUILTWITH – https://builtwith.com/

Useful for competitive analysis, this free tool takes a competitor website and analyzes the technologies it was ‘built with.’ It also highlights advertising technologies used (e.g., Google remarketing) and the hosting system they employ.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

OPEN SEO STATS (CHROME EXTENSION) – http://tinyurl.com/openseostats

A really SEO extension for Google Chrome to easily access the Alexa Rank, Compete Rank and Quantcast Rank of the current web page, in addition to getting information on backlinks, indexed pages, cached pages, socials, Whois, Geo IP location and more.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SERPSTAT – http://serpstat.com/

Enter your domain (or that of a competitor) and see an analysis of your SEO competitive position. Useful to find out who competes with whom, and then to use that competitive set for keywords and link research.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

WEBPAGETEST – http://www.webpagetest.org/

If you are having page speed issues, this tool will take your website and analyze how fast it loads by constituent part. You can then reverse-engineer what parts load slowly vs. quickly, and optimize accordingly.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

HUBSPOT MARKETING GRADER – https://website.grader.com/

HubSpot sells HubSpot software, which isn’t the best in my book. It’s a bit of reselling stuff you can do on your own, and fluffing it up to make it look more important than it is. That said, they do have a nice all-in-one analysis tool. It tends to focus on on page, just a little bit on links, and way way too much on Twitter. But still it’s fun and informative.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

GODADDY WHOIS – https://www.godaddy.com/whois

WhoIs provides basic information about who registered a domain. Also useful to identify available domain names as you brainstorm new ones.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

MOBILE FRIENDLY TEST BY GOOGLE – https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

Is your site mobile friendly? Google wants you to be ‘mobile first,’ and created this easy mobile testing tool.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: service

ZADROWEB SEO AUDITOR – https://zadroweb.com/seo-auditor/

This quick and easy SEO audit tool provides only basic data. Unfortunately, it does not allow you to enter a keyword or group of keywords and compare / contrast your web page to that target.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

WEBSITE STRUCTURE

Website structure – the “organization” of your website – is an advanced element in effective SEO. While good page tags and link-building are more important and more powerful, effective website structure can mean the difference between securing Page 1 Position 1 and being downgraded to Page 3 Position 4, especially for “highly competitive” keywords. How you name your files, how you “reach out” to Google, and how you optimize your landing pages all combine to make a good SEO strategy, great!

website designing

Here are the best free website structure tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

GOOGLE WEBMASTER ACADEMY – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6001102

Google’s learning site for SEO. Basic stuff, and a bit salesy, but a good starting point. Just remember who’s talking – Google – and take it all with a grain of salt.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE (WEBMASTER TOOLS) – https://www.google.com/webmasters/

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

XML SITEMAPS GENERATOR – https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Create XML sitemaps for – the easy way! If you own or maintain a website or intend to own one, wouldn’t it be great if you get frequent visitors who find satisfaction in getting exactly the information they need from your page? This free tool will index a site up to 500 pages and create your XML site map for you. Then simply upload to your site, and tell Google it exists via Webmaster tools. Presto!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

BING WEBMASTER TOOLS – http://bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE PAGESPEED INSIGHTS – https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

FREE SITEMAP GENERATOR – https://freesitemapgenerator.com/

This tool creates a sitemap as defined by Google for your site. Enter the URL of your website(s), and the tool will generate a sitemap for you and download the compressed sitemap later. The good thing about this tool is it isn’t limited to just 500 links like most of the free generators. The bad thing is it can be painfully slow and take several days to generate your free XML sitemap. There is a paid version, which (not surprisingly) is faster!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE (WEBMASTER TOOLS) HELP – https://support.google.com/webmasters#topic=3309469

Webmaster essentials from Google. Includes Google’s official statements on SEO. To be taken with a grain of salt, because Google obviously has a huge vested interest in no one understanding how its algorithms work and thus being able to ‘manipulate’ search results. But here are the help files for webmasters – especially useful on webmaster issues like robots.txt, sitemaps, xml sitemaps and other ‘best practices’ for webmasters. Note: Google Webmaster Tools has been renamed Google Search Console.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: overview

GOOGLE WEBMASTER CENTRAL BLOG – https://webmasters.googleblog.com/

The official blog about the Google site index, and very useful to keep up-to-date with their most recent news and new developments. It’s a little geeky at times, but is especially useful with website structure issues such as naming files, robots.txt, xml sitemaps, etc.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: blog

GOOGLE WEBMASTERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – https://www.youtube.com/c/googlewebmasters

If you are a webmaster or someone interested in search engine optimization, this is a great site of YouTube videos created by Google. Of course it is the ‘party line’ from the biggest player in search – dare we say, the view of the search monopolist on what constitutes acceptable behavior? Especially useful on technical website structure issues.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: video

UPTIME ROBOT – https://uptimerobot.com/

Your website can NOT go down your website can NOT go down your website can NOT go down. You need to check it every five minutes every five minutes every five minutes. For free for free for free.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

WEBMASTER CENTRAL FORUM – https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters

Google’s official user forum and self-help free-for-all of webmasters helping other webmasters.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

RICH SNIPPETS (WORDPRESS PLUGIN) – https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-schemaorg-rich-snippets/

This nifty plugin allows you to specify the MICRODATA that gets exchanged to Google about your website / web page. In this way, you can communicate data such as your reviews, recipe information, calorie count, location, etc.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SEO FRIENDLY IMAGES – https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-image/

SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress SEO plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes for SEO purposes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

LINK CHECK – https://www.drlinkcheck.com/

This tool allows you to input your website, and then check its outbound links (both internal and external). Great for finding broken links on your website.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

BUILTWITH – https://builtwith.com/

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE STRUCTURED DATA TESTING TOOL – https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

With the Schema.org standard, use this tool to see if structured data you have created and inserted into your web pages is being correctly interpreted by Google. Also can be used to test local JSON-LD markup as used by Google local.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

CHECK MY LINKS (CHROME EXTENSION) – http://tinyurl.com/cklinkschrome

Paul Livingstone has done us all a favor with this nifty link-checking tools. Enter a URL (e.g., your home page) by visiting it with this CHROME extension. Then it will analyze all the outbound links and tell you which ones are ‘broken’ and need to be fixed.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

.HTACCESS GENERATOR – http://www.htaccessredirect.net/

Instructions called redirects placed within a file named .htaccess on some webservers allow you to redirect one URL to another, for example jm-seo.org to www.jm-seo.org. Redirects are especially useful when moving or renaming a web page on your site. This utility will help you create the correct .htaccess file for your website, which is sometimes not straightforward.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

SEO INTERNAL LINKS (WORDPRESS PLUGIN) – https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-internal-links/

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

CHECK MY LINKS – http://tinyurl.com/l4tgjqf

Check my links is a nifty Chrome extension that allows you to visit your website, and then check your links to see if any are 404 / not found (which is bad).

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

ROBOTS.TXT GENERATOR – http://tools.seobook.com/robots-txt/generator

A robots.txt file is simple enough, but this tool makes it even simpler. Just type in your parameters and it will create the file for you. Then copy paste it into a TXT file (using Notepad, for example), and you have your robots.txt file. You still have to upload it to your root directory, as in http://www.jm-seo.org/robots.txt.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tool

LOCAL SEARCH

So much of search is local. “Dallas Roofing Company,” “NYC Personal Injury Attorney,” “Pizza,” and so on and so forth. For many companies, therefore, going local is a big part of successful SEO. Local search crosses into social media, so you want your SEO to support your local search social media efforts (Get reviews!) and vice-versa. Here are the best tools and listing services for improving your local search SEO, ranked with the best tools first!

GOOGLE LOCATION CHANGER – https://serps.com/tools/google-search-location/

Since Google took away the easy-to-use location function, it’s been hard to see the world “as if” you were in Tulsa vs. Dallas vs. Los Angeles. Not any more. Use this tool to change your location, and view Google “as if” you were in that location.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS (GOOGLE+ LOCAL / GOOGLE PLACES) HELP CENTER – https://support.google.com/business#topic=4539639

A wonderful and rather hidden microsite in the Googleplex with many help topics to learn about, modify, and update your Google+ Local listings. Google Local begot Google Places begot Google+ Local begot Google My Business. You and I both wish Google would settle on a name for its local service!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS (GOOGLE LOCAL / GOOGLE PLACES) – https://www.google.com/business/

Google My Business is the new official name, but behind-the-scenes they still call it Google Places or Google Local or Google+ Local. Or whatchamacallit. This is the official entry point to find and claim your small business listing on Google’s local service.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

MOZ LOCAL – https://moz.com/local/overview

If local matters to you, you need to see where you’re listed (Google+, Yelp, etc.), and how you’re listed. You also want consistent address, phone number, and other data across local sites (called ‘citations’). Moz has a new paid service for this, but this free tool will analyze (and find) your listings pretty easily.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE+ REVIEW LINK GENERATOR – https://www.grade.us/home/labs/google-review-link-generator

Lost as to how to find your company’s Google+ reviews? Use this nifty tool to find the exact URL for your reviews. You can also use this to give to clients, directly.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

2017 LOCAL SEARCH RANKING FACTORS BY MOZ – https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Here is the DEFINITIVE list of the factors that get your company to the top of Google local (i.e., the snack pack and/or any time that Google results vary by location). Well worth the read!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

YELP HELP CENTER – https://www.yelp-support.com/

Here is the official Yelp help center, for both consumer and businesses. If you are new to local marketing, this is a great place to understand how it works from an official Yelp perspective. Remember, however, that what is officially presented as ‘how Yelp works’ isn’t 100% accurate.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE REVIEW LINK GENERATOR – https://whitespark.ca/google-review-link-generator/

Use this free tool to easily find your business and generate your unique Google Review link. Then share the short URL with your customers and grow your Google reviews.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE AND YOUR BUSINESS HELP FORUM – https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Google-My-Business/ct-p/GMB#

Forums by people using Google Places, er Google and Your Business. You can get help from the community here, which is often more effective than those annoying canned emails you get from Google itself!

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS (GOOGLE PLACES / GOOGLE LOCAL) HELP CENTER – https://support.google.com/business

Help with Google Places, conveniently hidden by Google..but here is where you can browse helpful articles on setting up and managing your free advertising and promotion efforts via Google Places.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

BEST LOCAL CITATIONS BY CATEGORY – https://moz.com/learn/local/citations-by-category

If you’re ‘into local,’ then you gotta know your citation sources. Obviously, Google+ is the most important for Google, and in many markets Yelp is #2. But for a plumber vs. a chiropractor, where to get citations (listings on local sites) can be different. Moz breaks out the ‘best’ citation sources by common category.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: article

LOCAL RANK CHECKING VIA ADWORDS – https://adwords.google.com/apt/AdPreview

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GET FIVE STARS – https://www.getfivestars.com/

This is the new (PAID) thing in local review marketing. Services like this, ask customers to first rate you, and then if, and ONLY IF, they like you, the customer is prompted to leave a review on Google / Yelp, etc. Probably a violation of the official terms of service, but this is probably the future of the thin gray line between what’s allowed and what’s not. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

YELP SUPPORT CENTER (FOR BUSINESS OWNERS) – https://www.yelp-support.com/Yelp_for_Business_Owners?l=en_US

Yelp’s site to support both users and businesses. As a business owner, click on the links to the left, or on ‘Yelp for Business Owners’ card. It’s better than nothing, but Yelp still has a long way to go to be easy-to-use for business owners. Easy password reset?

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

SYNUP SCAN – http://scan.synup.com/

Yet another tool wherein you input your company name and information, and it scans the major sites such as Google, Yelp, CitySearch, etc., and it tells you your listings.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

REVIEWBUZZ – http://www.reviewbuzz.com/

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

JSON-LD SCHEMA GENERATOR FOR SEO – https://hallanalysis.com/json-ld-generator/

One of the easiest ways to add Schema’s structured markup to a page is to use JSON-LD (which is the format preferred by Google). With this tool you can quickly generate the correct JSON-LD for any page on your site. Just follow the instructions.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

THE JSON-LD MARKUP GUIDE TO LOCAL BUSINESS SCHEMA – http://bit.ly/2nf5o5T

WhiteSpark explains the JSON-LD framework and how Schema works. Useful as a background before using a NERD tool to actually implement this on your website for local SEO.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: overview

WHITESPARK – https://whitespark.ca/

WhiteSpark is an excellent and inexpensive service that for a fee will identify and synchronize your NAPs (Name, Address, and Phone Number) citations across the Internet. A useful todo for your local SEO effors.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

YEXT – http://www.yext.com/

Follow the instructions to ‘scan your business.’ This nifty tool allows you to input your business name and phone number and it will go out and find all the relevant listings across many, many different local listings services. Then you can (pay) to have it fix many of them. Not perfect, but a good start on identifying logical local listing opportunities for your business.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

YELP – http://biz.yelp.com/

Yelp is a local reviews service. Businesses can have (and claim) a FREE listing on Yelp, which can be helpful for local listings and local link building. This link is to the ‘business’ portal at Yelp – how to find, and list your business.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

BRIGHTLOCAL REVIEWBIZ WIDGET – http://brightlocal.com/seo-tools/review-biz

Technically not a free tool, but getting reviews is so important, and this little widget makes an all-in-one how to ask for a review widget.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

BING PLACES FOR BUSINESS (BING LOCAL) – https://www.bingplaces.com/

Bing is a distant #2 to Google, behind probably Yahoo Local, but nonetheless, for local search purposes, it’s still valuable to find (and claim) your local listing on Bing Local. So go for it, be a Binger!

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

GOOGLE REVIEW HANDOUT GENERATOR – https://www.whitespark.ca/review-handout-generator

This very slick tool allows you to input your company, website, and logo and then it generates a very nice-looking PDF / handout you can give your clients and thereby solicit Google reviews. The PDF is very well done.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

MOZCON LOCAL – https://moz.com/mozcon-local

MOZ.com is a leading provider of SEO tools. Not surprisingly, they have a few conferences up their sleeves. Among them MozCon Local. Learn from the true geeks of local about everything relating to local SEO.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: conference

GOOGLE STRUCTURED DATA TESTING TOOL – https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

SCHEMA GENERATOR – https://www.jamesdflynn.com/json-ld-schema-generator/

Schema.org protocol communicates to Google many aspects of your local business, such as your NAP (Name Address Phone). This incredible tool translates your inputted information into the Schema framework, using JSONLD Markup.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GEORANKER – https://www.georanker.com/local-rank-checker

Check your rank on Google searches city-by-city.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

YELP REVIEW ESCALATION FORM – http://bit.ly/2pD5LWR

Need to escalate a dispute on Yelp about a alleged fake review about your company? First, click dispute on the review itself in Yelp. Then fill out this form to escalate your complaint.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

MICRO DATA GENERATOR – http://microdatagenerator.org/localbusiness-microdata-generator/

Microdata is very important for effective local SEO. Use this tool to generate the microdata you need, especially in the so-called JSON-LD preferred by Google.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

LOCAL KEYWORD LIST GENERATOR – http://5minutesite.com/local_keywords.php

Don’t know your local geography? What about all those pesky zip codes and small suburban towns? Enter a zip code or city into this tool, and it generates a nifty list of possible nearby locales and zips for your SEO efforts. A time saver if local search is important to your SEO.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

OFFICIAL YELP BLOG – https://www.yelpblog.com/

Official blog by Yelp about Yelp. If Yelp matters, you should pay attention to the company’s official blog but be skeptical about what you hear – sometimes it’s more official propaganda than true information.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: blog

GEORANKER – https://www.georanker.com/

With both a free and paid version, this tool checks your company’s rank on Google based on DIFFERENT locations. Useful if you have multiple locations, or want to rank in different communities, and you want accurate data.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: service

GOOGLE+

Google+ is the (troubled) kid on the social media block, and this kid has a powerful daddy: Google. Google+ has a disproportionate impact on local search results. So if local matters to you, so does Google+.

google+

Here are the best free Google+ tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

GOOGLE+ REVIEW LINK GENERATOR – https://www.grade.us/home/labs/google-review-link-generator

Lost as to how to find your company’s Google+ reviews? Use this nifty tool to find the exact URL for your reviews. You can also use this to give to clients, directly.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS (GOOGLE LOCAL / GOOGLE PLACES) – https://www.google.com/business/

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS (GOOGLE+ LOCAL / GOOGLE PLACES) HELP CENTER – https://support.google.com/business#topic=4539639

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE+ PAGE SEARCH – http://www.gpluspagesearch.com/

Use this nifty site to find competitor Google+ pages easily. Just enter a competitor name (or your own business name), and this search engine will identify the relevant Google+ page.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

OFFICIAL GOOGLE SOCIAL MEDIA – https://www.google.com/press/blog-social-directory.html

Does Google use Social Media? Of course, it does. Whatever Google product you are into (SEO, AdWords, G+), you can identify the blog, the YouTube channel, the Twitter, etc., of your Google product. Follow Google on social media.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE+ BADGE – https://developers.google.com/+/web/badge

This page explains how to add a Google+ badge to your website. Similar, we think, to the Facebook Like button or Like box, this feature will allow users to directly add your page to their Google+ account.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

GOOGLE+ +1 BUTTON – https://developers.google.com/+/web/+1button

The Google+ +1 button allows users to ‘vote’ that your page is cool and important, and they can share it across Google+. This document is intended for webmasters and programmers who want to add and customize the +1 button for their website. Customizations range from simply changing the button’s size to advanced loading techniques.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: service

GOOGLE+ HELP CENTER – THE NEW GOOGLE+ – https://support.google.com/plus

Already lost? Here is the official Google+ support pages, focused mainly on users of Google+. But, as a business, these help pages give good insights into how your customer might use Google+. Make sure to be a user of Google+ as well as a producer – and here’s where you go to learn how to use Google+.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE+ SEARCH – https://plus.google.com/people

Beyond just searching plus.google.com, you can use this feature ‘inside’ of Google+ to find people, pages and posts that might be interesting. Curious how hard Google has made Google+ to search, isn’t it? That’s just weird, but this is how you can search for people on G+.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

FRIENDS+ME – https://friendsplus.me

This nifty tool allows you to share your Google+ post to other social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE+ RECOMMENDED USERS – http://www.recommendedusers.com/

Think no one is on Google+? That there’s nothing fun under the sun? Think again. Use this site to find the cool, fun, cognoscenti in the world of Google+.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

CIRCLECOUNT – http://www.circlecount.com/

Interesting statistical tool which analyzes your Google+ Profile and Pages in addition to providing a wealth of general Google+ usage information including users with highly engaging content, most followed profiles, most followed pages, to name just a few.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

ALL MY + STATISTICS – http://www.allmyplus.com/

This third-party tool helps you analyze what, if anything, is going on in your Google+ account. Make the stark interface more understandable by clicking the ‘more info’ links to display helpful explanations for each function.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE+ WIDGET – http://widgetsplus.com

Are you, or your company, REALLY active on Google+? This nifty widget will stream your posts to your web page or blog, allowing users to see your posts and hopefully decide to follow you on Google+.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS EXPLAINED – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B7XKTxvZSg

This is an official video by Google about Google my business. Learn the official viewpoint on how to get listed on Google, and how to optimized your Google My Business listing for your business. But be skeptical, everything is not exactly as Google says!

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: video

GOOGLE

Throughout this Toolbook, we have mentioned many official Google resources. Google produces a cornucopia of free tools and resources for the SEO aficionado. Here, in this chapter, we bring them all under one roof: everything free by Google, about Google.

Here are the best free official Google tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

GOOGLE SUPPORT CENTER – https://support.google.com/

The ULTIMATE place to find Google help. It’s kind of hidden in the Googleplex, but this is the master Google support center. Type any Google-related question into the search box and simultaneously search YouTube, AdWords, Analytics, and all Google products for answers. You got questions? Here are the answers to everything Google-related.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE WEBMASTER ACADEMY – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6001102

Google’s learning site for SEO. Basic stuff, and a bit salesy, but a good starting point. Just remember who’s talking – Google – and take it all with a grain of salt.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS – https://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Analytics is an enterprise-class web analytics solution which provides detailed insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful features let you see and analyze your traffic data to be more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS (GOOGLE LOCAL / GOOGLE PLACES) – https://www.google.com/business/

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE (WEBMASTER TOOLS) – https://www.google.com/webmasters/

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE SEO STARTER GUIDE – http://jmlinks.com/googleseo/

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tutorial

GOOGLE WEBMASTERS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – https://www.youtube.com/c/googlewebmasters

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: video

GOOGLE INSIDE ADWORDS BLOG – https://adwords.googleblog.com/

The official blog for Google AdWords. It’s more for sophisticated users than for newbies, but – that said – you should pay attention to it if you are spending money with Google.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: blog

GOOGLE ANALYTICS BLOG – https://analytics.googleblog.com/

Official blog by Google Analytics Team. The horse’s mouth, as it were. Pay attention to the ‘back to basics’ tag. This blog is more for professional, really serious Google Analytics folks. That said, you can search the blog and find some interesting content.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: blog

GOOGLE PRODUCT FORUMS – GET USER HELP – https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!home

This is the MASTER link for ALL of the Google product forums, such as AdWords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, etc., wherein users help users and, if lucky, official Googlers chime in with helpful hints, tips, tricks and secrets about individual Google products.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE (WEBMASTER TOOLS) HELP – https://support.google.com/webmasters#topic=3309469

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: overview

GOOGLE WEBMASTER CENTRAL BLOG – https://webmasters.googleblog.com/

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: blog

OFFICIAL GOOGLE SOCIAL MEDIA – https://www.google.com/press/blog-social-directory.html

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – https://www.youtube.com/c/googleanalytics

Official YouTube channel for Google Analytics. In conjunction with Google’s Conversion University, this YouTube channel has a wealth of information on Google’s web analytics and online advertising products in easy-to-use video format. Ideally, Google channels on YouTube would be centralized, but if you pay attention to this channel as well as Google My Business, you have the primary Google venues covered.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: video

GOOGLE BLOG (OFFICIAL) – https://www.blog.google/

This is the official Google ‘corporate’ blog. This has anything and everything about Google by Google, but is really a corporate marketing vehicle. In most cases, webmasters and SEO people will need to look deeper at the more nuanced blogs on the blogosphere by Google on Google for help and issues.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: blog

GOOGLE ALGORITHM CHANGE HISTORY – https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

For history buffs, the Google algorithm change history from Moz should prove interesting reading. If you’re an analytics nerd and can’t figure out why your page hits suddenly dropped without explanation, the dates of these Google updates might provide an Aha! moment.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE EMAIL ALERTS – https://www.google.com/alerts

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

GOOGLE WEB & APP ACTIVITY – https://myactivity.google.com/bundle

Prepare to be creeped out. If you are SIGNED IN to your Google account, and click on this link, you’ll see a HISTORY of EVERYTHING you have searched for, if you haven’t disabled this. Remember privacy? Oops, that is soooo 1999. You can ‘delete’ your history but then again, can you trust that Google really, really deletes it?

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

WEBMASTER CENTRAL FORUM – https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters

Google’s official user forum and self-help free-for-all of webmasters helping other webmasters.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE HELP FORUMS – https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!home;lang=en

Got a questions? Perhaps someone else who cares about Google has an answer. Use these online forums to post questions and get answers from the Google web community. Has threads on AdWords, Webmaster Tools, Blogs and more!

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: newsgroup

GOOGLE SEARCH OPERATORS – https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433

You can use Google search in special ways for your SEO strategy. One is to use the syntax site:yourcompany.com to find out how many pages are already in the Google index. Another is to use the phrase related:domain.com to find pages ‘similar’ to a page. Type related:nytimes.com to find sites that are ‘similar’ to the New York Times. Finally, use the ~ (tilde) character to ask Google for synonyms. ~CPR will give you first aid, for example.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: overview

GOOGLE TAKEOUT – https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

If you are a frequent user of Google tools, such as Google Docs, this nifty application allows you to download a copy of your data stored withing Google products, thereby retaining all your stuff.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ON FACEBOOK – https://www.facebook.com/Google

Google’s official page on Facebook. Do you like Google? Like Google on Facebook.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ADVANCED SEARCH – https://www.google.com/advanced_search

If you don’t know all those esoteric Google search operators, use Google Advanced Search. As any smart small business marketer will tell you, competitive intelligence is very important. So use advanced search to do ‘market research’ on your industry, including keyword targets for SEO.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE YOUTUBE CHANNEL – https://www.youtube.com/Google

The official Google channel on YouTube, oriented mainly at consumers and full of Google ads.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE DRIVE – https://drive.google.com/

If you have a Google account, you already have access to ‘Google Drive.’ Google Drive is Google’s FREE cloud drive – you can upload documents, spreadsheets, even notes and then share these. You can even create surveys for customers on Google Drive.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

GOOGLE GET YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE – https://www.gybo.com/

Google will literally give you a website if you do not have one as a small business. For one year, you can get a free Google website. So now there really is no excuse not to have a website!

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: resource

THINK WITH GOOGLE – https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/

This flashy, very Madison Avenue ad agency guide is a gateway to fun and sometime informative studies by Google about Google, and about Internet advertising and marketing in general. It pushes AdWords, of course, but still has a wealth of fun stuff about Internet marketing.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING DIRECTORY – http://google.com/press/twitter-directory.html

Can’t get enough Google? Don’t forget about Google on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and of course Google+. (Larry, Sergei, and Eric are all on Google+ plus their moms so that makes six people). Here is a directory of all the Google outposts on social media.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: misc.

METRICS

Google Analytics is the best free Web metrics tool available today. But what should you measure? What information can you get out of your website that you can feed back into your SEO strategy for further improvement? The first step is to figure out what you want to measure. Second is to set up a basic Google Analytics account. Third is to use advanced Analytics to “slice and dice” your data to obtain data you can really use. Beyond Google, there are other great metrics tools out there as well.

google analytics

Here are the best free metrics tools on the Internet, ranked with the best tools first!

GOOGLE ANALYTICS ACADEMY – https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com

If you are using Google Analytics, this is a must-see treasure trove of information on how to use that powerful platform. Ironically, it can be very difficult to jump from Google Analytics over to the Google Analytics Training and Certification site. Only Google knows why they made it so difficult. That said, check out the topics and videos here. If you are serious, you can study and become qualified as an Analytics Expert!

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tutorial

GOOGLE ANALYTICS – https://www.google.com/analytics/

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE (WEBMASTER TOOLS) – https://www.google.com/webmasters/

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRAINING RESOURCES – http://support.google.com/analytics/answer/4553001

Another gateway to the wonderful world of Google Analytics training and learning. It has a set up checklist, links to seminars and videos, as well as the Analytics and Academy IQ learning centers. A MUST VISIT site if you are interested in mastering Google Analytics and gaining certification.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: resource

TAG ASSISTANT FOR CHROME – http://tinyurl.com/tagasst

If you’re using AdWords and Google Analytics to track conversions, you need to verify you have the right ‘tags’ running as Javascript on your website. Ask your developer to get the conversion tracking code from AdWords and install on ALL pages of your website. Then use this Chrome extension to double check / verify it actually is there.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ANALYTICS BLOG – https://analytics.googleblog.com/

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: blog

GOOGLE ANALYTICS CAMPAIGNS URL BUILDER – https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

Use this tool to build URLs to track your ad campaigns. For instance, if you have ad campaigns on Facebook or LinkedIn, or an email newsletter, you can use this tool from Google to make them easier to track in Google Analytics.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ANALYTICS HELP CENTER – https://support.google.com/analytics

‘High level’ site of all the support and help options for Google Analytics. Most are covered elsewhere, but they do have an official partner network. So it’s a good place to start if you want to hire an analytics consultant.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE TAG MANAGER – https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/

Tag manager is Google’s latest attempt at making it “easy” to manipulate various tracking codes on your website, called ‘tags.’ For example, you can install Google Tag Manager and then use it to control both Google Analytics and Bing advertising tags. They claim it’s easy, but they’re Googlers so they thought calculus was easy, too. It’s very hard to use, but very powerful.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ANALYTICS YOUTUBE CHANNEL – https://www.youtube.com/c/googleanalytics

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: video

GOOGLE ANALYTICS ON GOOGLE+ – https://plus.google.com/+GoogleAnalytics Official

Google Analytics page on the Google+ network.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS PRODUCT FORUM – http://bit.ly/adw-ganal

This is the official Google Analytics product forum, wherein users can post questions and get answers from other Google Analytics users as well as official Googlers. Unfortunately, it is clearly now part of AdWords, so everything is a bit tilted towards the needs of AdWords (and Google’s bottom line).

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS ON FACEBOOK – http://facebook.com/GoogleAnalytics

Do you like Google Analytics? Really, really like Google Analytics? Then ‘Like’ Google Analytics on Facebook for all the fun that is, and can be, a good metric stroll down the lane in Google Analytics.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GA (GOOGLE ANALYTICS) CHECKER – http://www.gachecker.com/

Once you sign up for Google Analytics, the tracking code must be included on EACH and EVERY page you wish to track. This nifty tool crawls your entire site, and gives you a report of pages that DO NOT have the tracking code.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

PIWIK – https://piwik.org/

Does Google knowing everything, including your site Analytics, give you the creeps? Then fight the power with Piwik, an open source analytics platform that allows you to own your data. Download the self-hosted version for free or pay for the hosted service. Piwik provides all the web analytics features you’d expect, including a customizable dashboard, goal conversion tracking, and a wide-variety of predefined reports.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: service

RAVEN URL BUILDER FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS – https://raventools.com/marketing-reports/google-analytics/url-builder/

This RAVEN tool does the same thing as the Google URL builder, but is perhaps a bit simpler. With the Google Analytics URL Builder, you can easily tag URLs with custom campaign variables. Campaign variables allow you to track which of your promotions are generating the most traffic/conversions. Use it in combo with a URL shortener like bit.ly, tinyurl, or goo.gl to embed into your emails for tracking purposes.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ANALYTICS ON TWITTER – https://twitter.com/googleanalytics

Follow every tweet, every twist, every turn of metrics and analytics by following your friends at Google Analytics on their official Twitter profile.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS SOLUTIONS GALLERY – https://www.google.com/analytics/gallery/#landing/start/

Here are some pre-formatted reports, Advanced Segments, and other goodies that Google has collected from its community for small business users. Rather than re-invent the wheel, browse the Gallery to find an example of what you need. Then quickly import it into your own Google Analytics account.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS PARTNERS – https://www.google.com/analytics/partners

Find a Google analytics certified partner, or find an app. Perhaps the problem you have has been ‘solved,’ so browse away. Whether you need the help of an implementation or analysis expert, or are looking for a turnkey solution for your business, Google Analytics technology and certified partners can be a good place to look.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS PARTNERS APPS – https://www.google.com/analytics/partners/search/apps

Marketplace containing widgets, apps, and offerings from Google and other experts in the Google Analytics area. Useful if you want to ‘outsource’ some of your Google Analytics functions.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS TEST – http://www.googleanalyticstest.com/

Are you go-go for Google Analytics? Do you like punishment? Want to rekindle fond memories of multiple choice hell from High School? If so, this resource is for you. It’s a deep dive into Google Analytics in preparation for taking the Google Analytics qualifying exam. If you like punishment, or just Google Analytics, this is the go-to learning site for you.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

W3 COUNTER – https://www.w3counter.com/

Add W3Counter to your site and learn all about your website visitors — where they come from, how they use your site and which pages they love.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

MONSTER INSIGHTS – WORDPRESS ANALYTICS PLUGIN – https://www.monsterinsights.com/pricing/

MonsterInsights brings you Google Analytics for WordPress. If you’re running WordPress, this is a ‘must install.’ (Unless you use Tag Manager).

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ANALYTICS OPTIMIZE – https://www.google.com/analytics/optimize/capabilities/

Whether it’s a custom-tailored message at checkout or a completely revamped homepage, Google Optimize (beta) shows you which site experiences engage and delight your customers and gives you the solutions you need to optimize your website and improve its performance.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

OPEN WEB ANALYTICS – http://www.openwebanalytics.com/

Open Web Analytics (OWA) is open source web analytics software that you can use to track and analyze how people use your websites and applications. OWA is licensed under GPL and provides website owners and developers with easy ways to add web analytics to their sites using simple Javascript, PHP, or REST based APIs. OWA also comes with built-in support for tracking websites made with popular content management frameworks such as WordPress and MediaWiki.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

CLICKY – https://clicky.com/

You (and only you) will see the on-site analytics widget in the corner of your web site. See how many total visitors are on your site and how many are on the page you’re currently viewing, with the ability to view those visitors right from the widget. Heatmaps and heatmap segmentation can be launched from the widget as well.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE ANALYTICS COMMUNITY – https://plus.google.com/communities/101074850362306833265

Love Analytics? Here’s the official Google Analytics community on Google+. Nerd alert. However, it’s a good place to browse for new information, or post a question, reach out to a nerd for help, be humiliated but maybe just maybe get your question answered. Full of spam these days, sadly!

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: resource

GOOGLE ANALYTICS DEVELOPERS – https://developers.google.com/analytics

If you are a programmer or have one who works for you, this is the ‘go to’ resource for hard core programming resources on Google Analytics. Not really for mere mortals, however.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: resource

MEDIA

Google, Google, Google. For many webmasters and web surfers, it’s Google 24/7. But for the busy small business owner or marketer, how can you keep up with all the changes in SEO? It’s not easy, but fortunately there are a few really good publications and conferences on search engine optimization. Beyond the official Google blogs and sites, here are third party blogs and publications on SEO.

Here are the best free media sites on SEO, ranked in priority order.

SEARCH ENGINE LAND – http://searchengineland.com/

Search Engine Land is a news and information site covering search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry and is led by journalist Danny Sullivan, one of the world’s foremost search experts.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: portal

SEM RUSH BLOG – https://www.semrush.com/blog/

SEM Rush produces one of the best toolsuits (paid) for search engine optimization. Out of the goodness of their hearts and minds, they also produce one of the better blogs.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: blog

BACKLINKO BLOG BY BRIAN DEAN – http://backlinko.com/blog

An irreverant, fun, and ACTIONABLE blog by one of the gurus of the SEO industry. Doesn’t have a huge volume of posts, but those that it does have are ACTIONABLE. I love it when someone doesn’t just pontificate, but actually tells you what to DO. Doing is better than just learning, isn’t it?

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: blog

SEARCH ENGINE WATCH – https://searchenginewatch.com/

One of the more popular blogs on Search Engine Optimization. However, full of marketing fluffy fluff, so you have to ignore 80% to find the 20% that is good content.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

SEARCH ENGINE ROUNDTABLE – https://www.seroundtable.com/

Search Engine Roundtable reports on the most interesting threads taking place at the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) forums. By enlisting some of the most recognized names at those forums, the Roundtable is able to report on these outstanding threads and provide a synopsis that provides greater detail into those threads.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: portal

SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL – http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

Search Engine Journal helps marketers succeed by producing best-in-industry guides and information while cultivating a positive community. It covers the marketing world daily with breaking news, in-depth subject guides, market information with perspective, argumentative and observational posts by expert guest contributors, infographics, videos, interviews, and more.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: blog

MOZ BLOG – https://moz.com/blog

Moz (formerly SEOMoz) is the leading source on SEO by nerds for nerds. It’s a bit hard to digest as much of it is ‘nerdspeak.’ But, that said, these people really know their stuff, and if you are serious about staying informed on SEO, follow these guys.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: blog

CONFERENCES

It’s funny. SEO is all about the Internet, and Google is nothing if not a virtual company. Yet there are real-world trade shows / conferences where carbon-based life forms (that would be you and me), go to meet and greet. If you have a budget, attending an SEO conference can be a great investment, especially after you’ve mastered the basics.

SEO Conference

Here are the best trade shows or conferences on Search Engine Optimization.

SEARCH MARKETING EXPO (SMX) – http://marketinglandevents.com/smx/

Search Marketing Expo, or SMX, is the search engine marketing conference from Third Door Media, the company behind the Search Engine Land news site, and the Search Marketing Now webcast series. SMX is programmed by the sharpest minds in search marketing.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: conference

UNGAGGED: BLACK HAT WORLD CONFERENCE – http://www.ungagged.com/

Ready to go to the dark side of SEO? Well, not exactly the dark side, but the gray side mixed with some hype and some secrets and the cognoscenti of technical SEO? Ungagged is your conference. Learn everything Google doesn’t want to tell you amidst some really smarty pants people from the world of technical SEO. Bring your pleasant smile; you’ll need it.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: conference

MOZCON – http://moz.com/mozcon

Bringing you the brightest minds in search, social, inbound marketing, and more, MozCon is known for its dynamic, advanced content and idea-filled sessions. Roger, the Mozbot, can’t wait to see you. Amazing content from industry leaders. Actionable tips and deep insights. Three days and one amazing experience.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: conference

MOZCON LOCAL – https://moz.com/mozcon-local

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: conference

SEARCHLOVE CONFERENCE – https://www.distilled.net/events/

SearchLove provides search marketing insight across a 2 day conference. Attendees learn how to drive higher quality traffic to their site, get actionable advice on the latest search engine advancements and discover page conversion strategies, all delivered by search marketing experts who implement these tactics every day.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: conference

STATE OF SEARCH – http://www.stateofsearch.org/

The SEO cognoscenti sure make the rounds, don’t they? Yet another conference on SEO with yet another round up of pretty much the same people. This event will be held in Dallas, so if you’re local, go. If you’re not, then look for another one of the SEO conferences, as many of the same people and most of the same topics will be covered in the other ones such as SMX.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: conference

PUBCON – http://www.pubcon.com/

Pubcon is an annual social media and optimization conference supported by the industry’s leading businesses, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors involved in social media, Internet marketing, search engines, and digital advertising, and offers an in-depth look at the future of technology presented by the world’s top speakers in provocative cutting-edge sessions.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: conference

SEJ SUMMIT – https://www.searchenginejournal.com/sej-summit/

n invite-only, top-shelf conference series for enterprise digital marketers in the US and the UK. Presented by Searchmetrics.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: conference

BOOKS

Books, compared with blogs or conferences, have the advantage of being a step-by-step, in-depth explanation of SEO. In addition to the fabulous SEO Fitness Workbook (shameless self-plug at http://amzn.to/2gD8PBB), there are other great books in the area of search engine optimization. Here are my favorites:

THE ART OF SEO: MASTERING SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION – http://amzn.to/2ci29CN

Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, and Jessie Stricchiola have brought us the ‘Bible’ of SEO. This is a very, very, very, very detailed book about technical SEO. What’s a canonical meta tag? Are 301 redirects better than 302s? How should you deal with duplicate content, and is correlation really the same as causation? Nerd alert: this book will give you the gory, gory details of SEO at a technical level. Excellent book for those who know the basics. Published: 2015.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: book

SEARCH ENGINE LAND’S GUIDE TO SEO – http://searchengineland.com/guide/seo

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tutorial

MOZ SEO BEGINNERS GUIDE – https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

MOZ is one of the top providers of (paid) SEO tools. It provides this basic introductory tutorial to SEO. Aimed at beginners, and (over)emphasizes technical SEO. But, hey, it’s free.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: tutorial

SEO 2017 LEARN SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION WITH SMART INTERNET MARKETING – http://amzn.to/2iLN2be

An updated 2017 version of a very popular SEO Book by author Adam Clarke. In its own words, ‘No matter your background, SEO 2017 will walk you through search engine optimization techniques used to grow countless companies online, exact steps to rank high in Google, and how get a ton of customers with SEO.’

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: book

SEO FOR GROWTH – http://amzn.to/2iLCqcq

Authors John Jantsch and Phil Singleton have brought a new book from a more ‘marketing’ perspective to the area of search engine optimization. They see and advocate the value of organic SEO efforts, but are a somewhat lacking on technical details and a systematic approach.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: book

SEO 2017 & BEYOND: A COMPLETE SEO STRATEGY – DOMINATE THE SEARCH ENGINES! – http://amzn.to/2iLGXM8

Andy Williams writes, ‘Do you want to learn an SEO strategy that works? SEO where you can build authoritative links that will catapult you to the top of the SERPs, without risk of a Google slap or penalty? I’m talking a pure White-Hat SEO strategy where you can sleep at night, and build traffic-busting websites. In 2017, how many SEOs can offer that type of search engine optimization? This book can!’

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: book

TUTORIALSPOINT SEO TUTORIAL – http://www.tutorialspoint.com/seo/

This online SEO Tutorial is pretty good at the basics of SEO, especially On Page optimization. However, it assumes you have a basic technical knowledge of the subject, so I recommend you first buy the SEO Fitness Workbook or another basic book before utilizing this guide.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tutorial

SEO DECODED: 39 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION STRATEGIES TO RANK YOUR WEBSITE FOR THE TOUGHEST OF KEYWORDS – http://amzn.to/2bGXvlZ

Shane David brings us some strategies to help rank on difficult keywords. The book covers the basics of On Page and Off Page, and includes a chapter on WordPress SEO. It also has a list of tools.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: book

HOBO’S SEO TUTORIAL FOR BEGINNERS – http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-tutorial/

Updated in June, 2016, this guide dives into SEO pretty quickly. It has links to topics such as ‘What is the Perfect Keyword Density’ and often includes YouTube videos. Like many online guides, it assumes some basic knowledge and overview. It’s heavy on the technical SEO and light on the strategy.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tutorial

QUICKSPROUT SEO TUTORIAL – https://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-toseo/

First of all, this tutorial has the most ANNOYING continual pop up nags to join the email list. That makes it nearly unreadable. However, if you can keep clicking no, no, no, the guide itself is very well done, and easy-to- use. It’s heavy use of pictures makes it very nice.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tutorial

BRUCE CLAY’S SEO TUTORIAL – http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/search-engineoptimization.htm

Bruce Clay has one of the best SEO books out there – SEO for Dummies. But, true to the adage of why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, you can find his free tutorial and use that. It’s more basic than the book, and a bit out-dated, but it covers the basics. It also has nice video links.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tutorial

SEO – THE SASSY WAY OF RANKING #1 IN GOOGLE – WHEN YOU HAVE NO CLUE! – http://amzn.to/2vG8mWh

By Gundi Gabrielle, Published in 2017. In her words, ‘A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE to optimizing your website and blog posts for SEO and RANK IN GOOGLE Have you ever wondered how websites end up on page 1 in Google – and…. why your site isn’t there? Does it just “happen”? Is it luck? Do you need to know someone at Google? Or…… are there actual techniques that can help you get to #1? The good news is: there are! The Art of Ranking in Google is called SEO and people who do it well, make a LOT of money! Why?’

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: Book

SEO: SEO BIBLE & TIPS – GOOGLE, BING, YAHOO! – http://amzn.to/2bIHfhu

Published in May, 2016, SEO: SEO Bible & Tips is a short, sweet to-the-point booklet about SEO. It has a heavy emphasis on content and content-marketing, and is a bit short on the technical details such as tag structure on pages, and the site content structure as a whole. If you’re looking to understand SEO-friendly content marketing, it’s a good investment and at its price point, why not?

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: book

INTERNET MARKETING 2016 – QUICK & DIRTY ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGIES TO GET TONS OF TRAFFIC – http://amzn.to/2bOrxAA Uday

Shankar Byri has brought us a short quick book that crosses social media marketing and SEO. He explains, for example, how to write ‘killer’ headlines for your blog posts that not only show on Google but get a lot of social sharing. He covers podcasting, viral marketing, and even SlideShare as tactics. So, rather than really be a book about SEO, this is more a book about social media and content marketing. It’s the new, new thing!

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: book

SEO MYTHS AND HALF-TRUTHS: SLICE THROUGH THE VEIL OF MISINFORMATION TO UNCOVER THE SECRETS TO SEO PROFITS – http://amzn.to/2cdV8mi

David Hood brings a dose of cynicism to the books on SEO. This book discusses the myths and half-truths that dominate the public information on SEO. What’s good about the book, therefore, is that it exposes you to the idea that a lot of what is taken as ‘true’ about SEO isn’t true at all, and/or there are a lot of huckster SEO people out there, so buyer beware. It includes some coverage of how to hire an SEO expert.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: book

SEO: MARKETING STRATEGIES TO DOMINATE THE FIRST PAGE – http://amzn.to/2cuWVrz

Grant Kennedy’s 2016 SEO book begins with some history about SEO, especially so-called ‘White Hat’ vs. ‘Black Hat’ strategies. He gives you tips and strategies, and covers the basics of AdWords at a conceptual level.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: book

SEO 2016: LEARN THE BEST SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING STRATEGIES FAST – http://amzn.to/2iLRGX5

According to the WordPress Genie, ‘In 2016, it is vital to know how to use Google search engine optimization (Google SEO) to position your small business website for search engine visibility, page views and sales conversions. SEO is CRITICAL for your business as it boosts your website’s Google rankings and places it in the top of the search engine results and as an online small business owner or simply if you have a website online, you want two things: traffic directed to your website, and the conversion rate of traffic to sales.’

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: book

GOOGLE’S WEBMASTER ACADEMY – https://www.google.com/webmasters/learn/

This is Google’s official learning resource on SEO. It’s pretty bad – super oversimplified with goofy graphics, and quizzes. It is, however, so light on information that it’s pretty much a joke. Included just to show you that, sometimes (often), Google is NOT the best source of information on SEO. It’s too tangled up in the conflict of interest of making money off of AdWords advertising yet also trying to speak to a community that just wants the free stuff on Google thank you very much.

Rating: 1 Stars | Category: tutorial

EASTER EGGS

If you’re not a computer programmer, you might not know what an “Easter egg” is. “Easter eggs” are hidden, funny secrets hacks inside of computer programs. Since Google is very much an engineering company, it is not surprising that there are secret “Easter eggs” inside the Google search engine.

google easter eggs

Here are the best Easter eggs on Search Engine Optimization. Check them out and impress your (nerd) friends.

DO A BARREL ROLL – http://google.com/search?q=do+a+barrel+roll

Search for ‘Do A Barrel Roll’ on Google and the screen will, well, roll.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: misc.

ZERG RUSH – http://google.com/search?q=zerg+rush

Zerg rush…that overwhelming attack feeling in a video game. It’s also a Google Easter Egg. Type ‘zerg rush’ into Google and see what happens.

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: misc.

ATARI BREAKOUT – http://google.com/images?q=atari+breakout

Bored at work, and love classic video games? Search Google Images for ‘Atari Breakout.’ Then use the blue panel at the bottom and your cursor to play (but we didn’t have to tell you that, because you remember Atari breakout, right?)

Rating: 5 Stars | Category: misc.

ASKEW GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS – http://google.com/images?q=askew

Light-hearted search results display from Google. Search for ‘askew’ on Google and it will tilt the results page. Sometimes (but not always) ’tilt’ will do the same thing.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: misc.

BLINK HTML – http://google.com/search?q=blink+html

Type ‘blink html’ into a Google search, and guess what, the words html and blink, will – wait for it – blink.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: misc.

ASK GOOGLE TO DEFINE ANAGRAM – http://google.com/search?q=define:anagram

An anagram, of course, is a word, phrase, or name formed by rearranging the letters of another, such as cinema, to form iceman. If you try to ‘define: anagram’ on Google, it will ask you if you mean ‘nag a ram.’ If you try ‘define anagram,’ it will ask if you mean ‘nerd fame again.’ Ha, ha. Nerds of the world: unite.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: misc.

GOOGLE SEARCH FOR FESTIVUS – http://google.com/search?q=festivus

Type ‘Festivus’ into Google and pay attention to the left side of the page. Festivus, according to Wikipedia, is a parody holiday celebrated on 12/23 as an alternative to commercialized Christmas festivities that dominate the culture.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: misc.

GOOGLE PACMAN – http://google.com/search?q=google+pacman

Type ‘Google Pacman’ into Google and you can play Pacman. Just click on the famous Google doodle that appears, and use your ‘arrow’ keys on your keyboard to play. Next, think longingly of that much simpler time before cell phones, YouTube, multilevel multidimensional multiplayer games, and no driving while texting. Ah, it was so good before it all become so wonderful.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: resource

Z OR R TWICE – https://www.google.com/#q=Z+or+R+twice

Do a barrel roll too boring for you? Type ‘Z or R Twice’ into Google and you get the same effect.

Rating: 4 Stars | Category: egg

WEBDRIVER TORSO – http://google.com/search?q=webdriver+torso

Type in ‘Webdriver Torso’ to Google and the logo on the top left becomes a series of blinking blocks. Click on the link to Wikipedia to learn that: ‘Webdriver Torso is a YouTube account made by Google that posts mostly 11-second videos consisting of blue and red rectangles that change position, accompanied by a series of beeps which change in pitch. ‘

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: resource

ANSWER TO THE ULTIMATE QUESTION OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING – http://bit.ly/ypqeE9

Search Google for ‘answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything’ and it returns the phrase = 42, a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

BLETCHLEY PARK – http://google.com/search?q=bletchley+park

Do a Google search for ‘bletchley park,’ and watch Google decode the name on the search results page. (Bletchley Park was the place where the British broke the German secret codes during World War II).

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

RECURSION ON GOOGLE – http://google.com/search?q=recursion

Recursion, of course means ‘the repeated application of a recursive procedure or definition.’ Search Google for either ‘recursion’ or ‘define:recursion’ and you’ll see ‘Did you mean: recursion?’at the top of the search results page. Get it? Nerd humor.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

THE LONELIEST NUMBER – http://google.com/search?q=the+loneliest+number

Search for ‘the loneliest number’ and Google returns: 1. As in the song.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

CONWAY’S GAME OF LIFE – https://google.com/search?q=conway’s+game+of+life Type

‘Conway’s Game of Life’ into Google, and watch the far right of the screen evolve. Then click the first search result from Wikipedia, to learn what ‘Conway’s Game of Life’ is really about.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: tool

GOOGLE IN 1998 – https://google.com/search?q=google+in+1998

Flashback. Party like it’s 1999. We mean 1998. Type ‘Google in 1998,’ and Google will show you what its search results looked like at the very beginning.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

PLAY SOLITAIRE ON GOOGLE – https://www.google.com/search?q=solitaire

Are you bored? Are you lonely? Are you a pathetic engineer at Google with nothing else to do than create an Easter Egg that harkens back to the free games on Windows 3.1? Well, if the answer is yes to one of these questions, then try out Solitaire on Google.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

TIC TAC TOE ON GOOGLE – https://www.google.com/search?q=tic-tac-toe

Play tic tac toe on Google. Sheldon Cooper called and he said you can’t win, and then Amy erased his tic tac toe board, and she won.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

USE THE FORCE LUKE – http://bit.ly/2ir3sGk

Technically this is a YouTube easter egg, but search YouTube for Use the Force Luke’, and watch the page move around, randomly�as if it were being moved by the ‘Force.’ Must be a Star Wars nerd to get this one.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

FUN FACTS – https://www.google.com/#q=fun+facts

Are you bored? Really bored? Type ‘fun facts’ into Google and get an ENDLESS series of fun facts. Fact #1 – you’re bored.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: egg

METRONOME – https://www.google.com/#q=Metronome

Turn on the speakers, and get out your dancing shoes, because Google has a builtin metronome. Also useful for self-hypnosis when your boss and coworkers are driving you nuts.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: egg

ROLL A DIE – http://google.com/search?q=roll+a+die

Need to roll a die? (You know, what some people call a ‘dice,’ when really they mean just one, which is a die.) Anyway, just type ‘roll a die’ into Google and a dice simulator pops up. We mean a ‘die’ simulator, but not that kind of ‘die.’ Oh ugh.

Rating: 3 Stars | Category: misc.

PLAY DREIDEL – https://www.google.com/#q=play+dreidel

Playing with the dreidel is a traditional Hanukkah game played in Jewish homes all over the world, and rules may vary. Here’s how to play the basic dreidel on Google.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: egg

FLIP A COIN – http://google.com/search?q=flip+a+coin Need to flip a coin?

Who carries real coins these days? Just Google ‘Flip a Coin,’ and Google will provide you a coin flip simulator. Next up: Bitcoin flips.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: misc.

LET ME GOOGLE THAT FOR YOU – http://lmgtfy.com

Ever really need to ‘show’ someone how to Google something? This third-party Google ‘easter egg’ does just that. Worth a chuckle. 1) type a search query, 2) copy / paste the quick link it generates into your browser address bar, or send it to a friend, 3) when you load that link, it will ‘literally’ walk you through how to Google it.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: misc.

DO THE HARLEM SHAKE – http://youtube.com/results?search_query=do+the+harlem+shake

Go to YouTube and type in ‘Do the Harlem Shake,’ and pay attention the YouTube logo on the left. If you have sound, you’ll also hear the obnoxious music. Cool, huh?

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: misc.

BACON NUMBER – http://bit.ly/2isTZOG

How many degrees of separation is someone from Kevin Bacon? The answer is called their ‘Bacon Number.’ Enter a name of a celebrity followed by ‘Bacon Number’ in Google search, like ‘Kim Kardashian Bacon Number,’ and Google will tell you.

Rating: 2 Stars | Category: misc.

The Insights

SEO Toolbook 2017

INTRODUCTION

FAQS

KEYWORDS

PAGE TAGS

LINK BUILDING

CONTENT

BLOGS

PRESS RELEASES

RANK

DIAGNOSTICS

WEBSITE STRUCTURE

LOCAL SEARCH

GOOGLE+

GOOGLE

METRICS

MEDIA

CONFERENCES

BOOKS

EASTER EGGS

About the author

Michael Doyle

Categories

MEDIA RELEASESOUR PARTNERSOUR CONNECTIONS