Third Party SEO Resources
We feature what we consider to be the most useful resources on the topic of search engine optimization here. Because Abalone Designs.com is already rich with SEO content, we only list sites here that provide special tools or anything we can't write about ourselves. If you want to suggest a great resource for us to feature here, Contact Us. Just be prepared - we are strict in what we link to and only list the very top SEO resources.
WordTracker
The free version lets you search for up to 100 phrases based on a keyword and displays an estimate of the daily search volume. The paid version is well worth the cost for serious SEO's with many clients.
KeywordDiscovery
What some consider to be superior to Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery provides search data and trends. The link here is to the free version (you need to sign up for an account first) but the paid version has way more features. A bit more expensive than Wordtracker, but again, a necessity for serious SEO's.
SEO for Firefox Extension
I love Firefox as a browser when doing SEO because the extensions available make it such a power tool. SEO for Firefox from SEOBook.com is one of them. Install and enable it and then do a Google search. The amount of info at your fingertips is amazing. It displays a page's PageRank, age, Alexa ranking, backlinks and all sorts of other useful information for SEO's.
Keyword Density Analyzer
Easy-to-use SEO tool that checks the keyword density of two web pages and compares them. Great for finding out where you stand against your competitors. It checks all aspects of the page- page title, meta tags, visible content, anchor text, alt tags and more.
W3C Link Validator
An essential tool for web developers and SEO's alike. Checks links on a web site and displays detailed information on any potential problems. Checking links is important for SEO's to ensure that all important pages of a site can be crawled properly by search engines. Broken links are also a problem for users who can't find the info they're looking for due to poor linking.
Search Engine Spider Simulator
Ever wondered how a search engine spider sees your web page? Well this tool shows you exactly what content the robots read when visiting your site.
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
Yet another keyword tool, only this one gives you the daily search volume of keywords along with important PPC advertising information such as competition levels, average cost-per-click, average ad position and other trends. Definitely an essential tool if you run Google AdWords campaigns.
Web Directory Check
This checks to see if a web site shows up in the major directories. It can be a time saver to see first where a site is already listed before devoting time to web directory submissions.
Internet Wayback Machine
Most people have heard of this one, but if you haven't, ever wondered what a web page looked like years ago? This fascinating tool keeps track of the history of most web pages on the Internet. It can be handy (and somewhat embarrassing!) to see what web sites were doing back in say, 2003.
Web Page Analyzer for SEO
Analyzes parts of a web page and displays information in a list. Areas included are title and meta tags, page headers, hyperlink relevancy, keyword and content analysis.
XML Sitemaps Generator
If you need an XML sitemap to submit to Google, this is your tool to use for larger web sites. The benefit of creating such a sitemap is that you can tell Google all the web pages of your site it might not crawl on its own.
Future PageRank
If you use this tool during a PageRank update (updates can typically last a few days to a couple weeks) you might see what your future PageRank value will be.
Matt Cutts' Blog
Personal blog of Google engineer Matt Cutts regularly updates readers on Google updates and changes, search engine conferences and generally anything that's making the new with respect to Google products and SEO.
Yahoo Search Blog
Yahoo news udpates from the world of search as it pertains to the Yahoo search engine.
Live Search Blog
News from the Live Search team at MSN. Ocassionally you'll find some interesting tidbits about optimizing for MSN Live search here, but generally it's just a plug for Microsoft products.
301 Redirect Instructions
Helpful info on setting up a 301 permanent redirect on every platform including PHP .htaccess, ASP .NET, ColdFusion and more. The 301 redirect is a great way to ensure pages don't get orphaned or lose their link juice when you change their filename or structure of the site.
HighRankings Forum
One of the top SEO forums on the web today. HighRankings.com was started in 1995 by SEO guru Jill Whalen.