15 SEO Tools for Beginners

by Yan

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of optimizing your site blog to rank higher in SERP or Search Engine Result Position.

Being on #1 or page one of Google is the ultimate goal of any blogmaster. It’s the key that separates the average site from the extraordinaire. Simply put, the higher you are on the search results, the more organic traffic you will get.

Study has shown that most searchers don’t go beyond page three so if your site is found no where in the first 3 pages on your keywords, you have probably not done enough SEO, so to speak.

Now the question is how do you know if you are doing the right thing?

That’s where online SEO tools are available at your disposal to check and diagnose the SEO status of your site so you can take all the necessary steps to improve your overall search engine ranking.

The Best 15 SEO Tools for Beginners

PageRank Checker is a free tool to check Google Page Ranking of any site and its pages easily and instantly. Google PageRank or PR is a measure of any sites popularity based on Google kept-secret algorithm. The PR is an indication of certain authority to your site and how important it is in the eyes of Google. For the uninformed, here’s how Google calculates your PR.

PageRank Search allows you to search Google using any keyword(s) you wish. It will then return, in order of Google relevance, the sites associated with those keywords. Each result displays a graphical bar with the PageRank of that particular site.

Internal Pages PR Checker will check the page rank of all of your site’s inner pages index by Google and it’s useful to use right after the PR update.

Link Popularity Checker is a tool that checks total number of pages in each search engines index that contains a link to your site, including your own website. It is used to measure your site’s online visibility. The popularity of your site is an important factor in your search engine ranking. The more popular your site is, the better it will be ranked on the search engines.

Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer help you determine the backlinks of your site and anchor text (link text) used to link to your site. Link building is all about getting the quality backlinks along with the quantity. The truth is getting a few of the right links, from the right places can be more valuable than getting 100 links from the wrong places.

It’s all about using the right keywords you are trying to optimize as your anchor text (link text) from the right neighborhood.

Reciprocal Link Checker helps you ensure that your link partners are linking back to your site and determines what anchor text is used. Gone are the days when reciprocal links are considered important, the big G is now putting more weight on one-way (the best option) or three-way links (site A site C, site C site B and site B site A)

Keyword Density refers to the measurement in percentage, the number of times a keyword or phrase appears compared to the total number of words in a page which needs to balance correctly. Too low and you will not get the optimum benefit, Too high and your page might get flagged for “keyword spamming”.

This tool parses the most frequently keyword of a website and calculates its percentage share.

Keyword Suggestion Tool will help you with choosing of the right keywords for your website and analyze which keyword combinations are more popular. Choosing the right keywords is critical for a success of your site. Target the wrong keywords and you have lost.

There is pure gold hidden in less competitive keyword combinations and variations.

Link Analysis of External and Internal Links – The link analysis display all internal and external links of a website with the corresponding anchor texts in a summary table. It’s one of the best I have ever used.

SERP Position Checker is the keyword position analysis used to check on which position your domain is ranked for a given keyword and compare the first 100 results by Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Robots.txt Syntax Checker is the simplest tool to check the contents of your site’s robots.txt against the search engines standard, along with providing warnings on the wrong use of syntax.

In case you aren’t in the know, robots.txt file is the key to stopping search engines robots from indexing certain pages of your site which are deemed unnecessary to be included in the search results, yet many people still fail to get the syntax correct.

Copyscape scours the net and finds sites that have copied your content without permission, as well as those that have quoted you. It is designed to protect you against online plagiarism and article theft.

Search Engine Placement Check is a verification tool that checks if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword. It’s important to be in the top 3 pages of a search result because most people using search engines don’t go past the 3rd page.

Bad Neighborhood Checker checks link pages and reports if there are links to bad neighborhoods. This tool will scan the links on your site, and on the pages that your site is linking to, and flag possible problem areas. This can greatly ease your SEO efforts.

Website Grader is a free SEO report that measures the marketing effectiveness of your site. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how your site can be improved from a marketing perspective. Check out the SEO report for thoushallblog.com.

Last But Not Least

SEO is never intended to be seen as touch-and-go effort in much the same way no success can be achieved overnight. It really takes a lot of patience, commitment and the know-hows to succeed. All the above tools will not bring you to #1 in search results but it helps you to be aware of ‘where you are now’ and ‘where you should aim to be in future’.

Knowledge is the key to SEO success

Indeed there are no hard and fast rules to SEO, it all boils down to the right mixture of quality content and quality inbound and outbound links with proper keywords optimization and all these tools will tell you if you are getting the right combination to move you closer to #1.

If you are in the mood for more SEO tips, here’s 15 SEO Tips for Beginners.

Good luck with your SEO. Any opinions or feedback are welcomed. I’m all ears.

On Another Side Note

Congrats to those of you who have just gained your PR status on the recent update. It’s another milestone for you and I’m sure you are pretty excited about it. Well, getting the PR is the easy part, maintaining it is a different ball game altogether.

I have just updated my PR list and if your blog (with Top Commentator) is not included in the list, drop me a line and I’ll put you in the list.

Did I say that’s one-way backlink?

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{ 152 comments… read them below or add one }

Michael October 15, 2008 at 2:06 am

Wooow! It help me a lot, especially the tool for check backlinks quality, I bookmarked this tool. Thanks!

Michael´s lastest post..DEXTER – 3º episódio – 3ª temporada – AVI e RMVB LEGENDADO

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Yan October 16, 2008 at 5:08 am

Hey Michael

Thanks for the bookmark and I’d appreciate it if you do make an effort to share it for the benefit of your readers.

Welcome to thoushallblog.com and looking forward to seeing more of your participation here.

Yan

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Paul October 16, 2008 at 2:07 am

Great article, and a few resources I havent seen before!

I use dnfame.com (http://www.dnfame.com) and blinkrs (http://www.blinkrs.com) for backlinks, pr, social bookmarking results etc….

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Yan October 16, 2008 at 5:11 am

Paul

I’ll check out what the buzz is all about. Thanks for the heads up and welcome…

Yan

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Joel Drapper October 16, 2008 at 7:42 am

Wow. Great list! I have used a lot of them before, but it is nice to have them all in one place. I really should go and del.icio.us them all I gues.

Joel Drapper´s lastest post..How to Comment Like a Pro

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Yan October 18, 2008 at 3:00 am

I tell you what..I think you should..;) Glad you like it….

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I Am Downloader October 18, 2008 at 12:42 am

Thanks for this great help!

I’m really looking for this.

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Yan October 18, 2008 at 3:01 am

You are welcome. Stick around, buddy as the best is yet to come..

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Brian D. Hawkins October 21, 2008 at 9:18 am

Wow, great list Yan. You could have wrapped that up into an ebook and sold it. Nice job.

Brian D. Hawkins´s lastest post..Searching For The Perfect Domain Name

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Yan October 23, 2008 at 3:09 pm

That’s worth a thought and thanks, Brian.

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Phil Barnhart October 23, 2008 at 2:07 pm

I concur its a great list – can I recommend a site I learned about via Sphinn that’s great for providing a snapshop of many of the things you recommend? DNFrame is a new tool I started using last week.

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Yan October 23, 2008 at 3:12 pm

Thanks, Phil for the recommendation. I’ve used it once before and almost forgotten about it. Oh ya, welcome to thoushallblog.com and hope you’ll stick around.

Yan

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serviced office October 24, 2008 at 7:03 pm

Thanks for sharing Yan, I will bookmark this site, if you can provide such list then why not I read more regular post.

Mon

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Jerry October 25, 2008 at 7:49 am

I’ve just started blogging, and am interested in learning as much about it as possible. I stumbled upon your blog, and am thrilled with how much I am learning from it! I’m going to bookmark your site and come back and learn more. Thanks for helping us beginners! We need more folks like you!

Jerry´s lastest post..Socialism?

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PHP Programmer Philippines October 29, 2008 at 3:48 am

Thanks you very much for this great list its very usefull specially for me who is just starting in the seo world thanks i bookmarked it :)

PHP Programmer Philippines´s lastest post..Always back up your site files – a lesson learned

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Running Watch October 30, 2008 at 11:27 am

Great stuff, thanks for sharing. So much to learn……

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brandon alan scofield November 2, 2008 at 5:42 pm

I am blogging for money since 3 month ago, yeah I am a beginner,
three months i googling for useful seo tools, I find some new seo tools i never knew about before, reciprocal link checker , my favorite ones

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brandon alan scofield November 3, 2008 at 4:46 pm

serp position checker, that’s my favorite tool :)

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Valeria | TimelessLessons November 6, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Great list, I have used several of those and they are very accurate and effective. The bad neighborhood is one I’m really grateful for.

Thanks Yan!

Valeria | TimelessLessons´s lastest post..10 Effective Ways to Improve Your Body Language

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j November 7, 2008 at 7:50 am

i’ve been using some of the tools that you mentioned in your article and i definitely have to agree with you. thanks for writing this one. i’m definitely sharing this to all the others.

j´s lastest post..Peek Behind Great Colors For Your Blog Design

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Sohail November 7, 2008 at 8:44 am

Some great tools there will need them as i go Thanks for help :)

Sohail´s lastest post..Windows 7 Pre-beta – Download the trial version and extend it for 120 days for FREE

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Ben November 8, 2008 at 3:36 pm

hey, very nice tools.

Ben´s lastest post..günstig telefonieren, O2 Genion L Spezial

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jamil November 9, 2008 at 10:48 pm

It’s wow article. I’m a SEO newbie. Keep on sharing your tips and trick. Tks. Salaam.

jamil´s lastest post..Make A Translation Widget for Your Blog

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Ryan Jenkins November 20, 2008 at 2:57 am

Link building will always be an important part of ranking well in search engines. I found one of the best ways to find relevant, quality website to get links from, is a tool called Trackur. It is primarily meant to monitor your brand online, however I have found it to be a better link building tool. You enter a keyword that you are looking to rank for and the tool will scour the web for websites, blogs, forums, discussion boards, videos, images, and social media sites for any mention of the keyword. The tool is reasonably priced for what it can do, or you can try their free trial before you buy. Hope this helps with everyone link building campaigns.

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property in spain November 27, 2008 at 1:03 am

Much appreciated list, i looked at this about 4 hours ago and i got sent off on the greatest chase of great things to read.
Knowledge is the key and the fun!

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beverly November 29, 2008 at 9:16 pm

Great information. Thanks

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SRS December 6, 2008 at 4:57 pm

Good stuff. I found you stumblingupon and give you thumbs up. Best I’m not sure about, but your links are unique and that’s even better.

SRS´s lastest post..Sun Tzu Was A Sissy

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emma james December 12, 2008 at 3:48 am

Hey Yan -
Great info, as always! Question, though…

I used the link popularity checker you listed above, and it turned up my posts with urls using the default permalink even though I just changed my permalink settings to list post names instead (also, thank you, due to one of your instructional posts). Any idea why it would do that? It also listed a couple of links to categories, but not all the categories and not all the posts. I’m thoroughly confused. Has this ever happened to you?

emma james´s lastest post..Loving Airport Anonymity

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Yan December 12, 2008 at 11:08 am

Emma

I’m sorry…. I don’t get it. Link popularity checker will only show you how many pages within your site are indexed by search engines. It will not show specific urls.

OK, maybe you clicked on the link and it directed to Google, let me just assume and you saw some of the pages still on the default permalink, is that right?

If that’s the case, it’s common as it takes a day or two, possibly a week for Google to update your url. It really depends on how often the Google crawlers come to your site or a specific page within your site.

Does it answer your question?

Yan

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emma January 2, 2009 at 2:23 am

Yes, Yan, that answer (days ago, but away for holidays so just read it) DOES answer my question. I’m still jiggering my site and Google still isn’t picking it up, but I’ve decided to have some patience! ;)

Happy New Year!

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Bob Denver Real Estate Guy January 11, 2009 at 4:27 pm

Wow, This is perfect. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise on SEO and blogging. I’m a newbie to blogging but a seasoned veteran to Denver real estate and just learning how to spread the word better about my business. I’ll be a student of your blogucation and look forward to updating you on my progress.

-Bob

Bob Denver Real Estate Guy´s lastest post..Cherry Creek North

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Yan January 11, 2009 at 6:57 pm

Hey Bob

Welcome to the community! I love the term ‘blogucation’ I guess you are the first I heard it from.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing your progress. Let me know if there is anything I can help.

Yan

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Frank January 27, 2009 at 2:42 pm

Its clearly described SEO tools for beginners, every can easily understand this tool , Nice blog.

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Mark February 14, 2009 at 6:20 pm

I am new in the field of blogging as I am going to create my own blog in near future. And I have certain plans to make my blog popular over period of time. As an SEO(fresher), I have known some of the tools and have used some of them. But I don’t know about all the tools. I am going to check it all, lets hope they are going to help me a lot to make my blog batter.

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Jeremy February 16, 2009 at 2:04 pm

Fantastic article, thank you very much for the insight and list of amazing SEO tools – please check out our Amazing New SEO Tool SEOintelligence.com (just released in Beta!).

Click here to improve your Search Engine Rankings with SEOintelligence.com Today.

Get a Free SEOiQ Scan Now!

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Utah SEO February 19, 2009 at 12:39 am

Thanks for the article. You should go in depth on each aspect if you haven’t already. Explaining why PageRank is so important, and why beginners should seek after links from those higher PageRanked sites.

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Jeff February 20, 2009 at 2:27 am

Great list. I have used many of these tools to boost my SEO. I use the search engine position tool at http://www.seohosting.com/seo-tools.php it allows you to check the top 1000 positions in the search engines, although yahoo never seems to work. There are some other good tools there also.

Take care,

Jeff

Jeff´s lastest post..Where can I get a Personal Domain Name

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Seo Tools March 1, 2009 at 3:29 am

Thanks For Sharing this post with us . Very informative

Seo Tools´s lastest post..SEO Powerpack

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Amulekone March 3, 2009 at 12:49 am

Great post Yan. Thank you for your helpful tips. Will surely take your advises and get right to it.

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Brad Long March 8, 2009 at 3:52 pm

Yan I just stumbled on your blog and I am glad I did. You have a lot of relevant information here that I can use. I am a fairly new blogger so im trying to learn as much as possible with seo and marketing promotions online for my blogs and websites. Other than blog commenting in the various blogs in your niche what other suggestions would you advise on doing seo for your sites/blogs? I have recently started to do some article marketing and set up a squidoo lens. I understand that some even write press releases for their blogs as well but I have not done that yet. Another question I do have is what is the best strategy to be top commentor on various blogs you post to? Thanks for the info and I have bookmarked your blog and subscribed so I will be back. Thank you.

Brad Long´s lastest post..Finding Online Multiplayer Sports Games

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Zaldy@DeViLnoAnGeL InFo March 24, 2009 at 12:47 am

Hi Yan,
I’m glad to visit your blog,
I just want to know, can you make an article about Wordpress plugin for beginners, i assume you use wordpress for this blog.
Hope you will help me and the others who are beginners

Zaldy@DeViLnoAnGeL InFo´s lastest post..How To Disable ‘Use the Web service to find the correct program’ Displayed in Windows Vista

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Yan March 24, 2009 at 1:59 am

Welcome to TSB, Zaldy. Stick around and join the discussion. Oh, don’t forget to subscribe to TSB.

Yan

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Paul March 27, 2009 at 11:38 pm

Thanks for these article.

I basically went to each link and am using almost all of these tools!

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Chris April 1, 2009 at 4:18 am

Good list I use the Bad Neighborhood Checker from time to time but I wish there was a better tool for that… it’s not the prettiest tool. I keep an up-to-date tool list on my own site.

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Maltese SEO April 13, 2009 at 6:06 pm

Many say that keyword density is not a player any longer for SEO. In fact I do come across a lot of websites which rank very well for keywords for which they have an extremely low density or not included in the content at all.

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SEO Expert Pak April 22, 2009 at 9:03 pm

Grate colletion , thanks for sharing SEO tools.

SEO Expert Pak´s lastest post..Search Engine Optimization – SEO Services

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game4power May 10, 2009 at 3:35 pm

Great post, will definitely come in handy, have bookmarked.In case you aren’t in the know, robots.txt file is the key to stopping search engines robots from indexing certain pages of your site which are deemed unnecessary to be included in the search results, yet many people still fail to get the syntax correct.

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Miami SEO May 14, 2009 at 12:08 pm

just found this blog for the first time! amazing resources and excellent recommendations. added to bookmarks and will definitely be sharing this.

Miami SEO´s lastest post..A resource guide to writing quality link requests

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Best Affiliate Programs June 2, 2009 at 7:18 am

Yan

I just noticed this site is a nofollow too bad did you get a lot of spamming here is that why you had to change it?

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Merchandising Expert August 18, 2009 at 11:14 pm

Great work Yan, I’ve even printed the blog out so I can keep going back to it. It’s key information like this that can help the smaller companies step up against the big boys on the world wide web.

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Chuck Deezy August 30, 2009 at 4:10 am

SpyderMate is a great tool for beginners with it’s easy to use interface, but it also has features for advanced users too! Take a look:

http://spydermate.com

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ravi September 29, 2009 at 7:49 pm

Wow. Great list! I have used a lot of them before, but it is nice to have them all in one place. I really should go and del.icio.us them all I gues.

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Brian Ratzker September 30, 2009 at 7:04 am

Still a great list of tools for anyone trying to do SEO on their own. Although, I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on Reciprocal Links, they don’t carry much weight anymore and should only be done in moderation.

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joel October 7, 2009 at 1:56 pm

Good Work Yan. It is not only useful for the seo beginners but also would be a great help for the people experienced in the field.These tools will create a good impact on SEO ranking factors of a site. Thanks for linking all the resources in one place and sharing them.
Keep the good work going.

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ariston | My 15 SEO Related New Year's Resolutions December 31, 2009 at 5:00 pm

Happy New Year! =)
Just found your site after searching some SEO related keywords on Google. I don’t event know that some of them are exist… a very helpful list indeed!
Thanks! :)

Reply

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