Essential Tools for SEO

RAVEN

(http://www.raven-seo-tools.com/) Raven is a toolset for the serious link builder, especially agency and inhouse teams. Among other things, it includes a Firefox toolbar that allows you to access some of the features directly from your browser while viewing other sites, such as the “Add Link” tool, which records and collects information about sites from which you want to seek links.

Raven's Link Manager will also alert you if a link you've secured has changed in some way, such as a “nofollow” attribute being added, the anchor text being changed or, most important, the link being removed. You can even tie the Raven data into Google Analytics data for more robust engagement and conversion tracking.

SEOMOZ LINKSCAPE

(http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape) Linkscape is the crown jewel of SEOmoz's tools. It provides basic reports for free, but the real meat is the detailed data you get as part of the SEOmoz PRO membership. SEOmoz reverse-engineered Google's PageRank algorithm metric and in the process created its own approximation of PageRank — called mozRank — which provides qualitative authority metrics on pages and domains.

Linkscape provides insight into a Website's 3,000 most important links, including insight into anchor text, redirects and whether links are nofollowed. In addition to all the slicing and dicing of data you can do for a domain, you can also run competitive reports that will compare your site to your competitor's sites.

LINKRESEARCHTOOLS.COM

(http://www.linkresearchtools.com/) Developed by link-building firm Cemper.com, Link Research Tools could quite possibly turn you into an SEO superhero. The suite of tools includes the Common Back Links Tool (for identifying common sites from where your top competitors got great links), the Common Outbound Links Tool (for finding well-cited sites that get commonly linked by authority sites), the Back Link and Anchor Text Tool (for discovering where your competition has links and which are the real gems), and the Link Juice Tool (for ascertaining the link authority of the pages on a Website).

ADVANCED LINK MANAGER

(http://www.advancedlinkmanager.com) Unlike the other tools we've looked at, Advanced Link Manager doesn't run online from the provider through your browser. Rather, it's software that you download and run from your own computer.

Because of this, it comes in various flavors, from standard to enterprise level, so review the different levels to make sure that the features that are most important to you are available in the version you want.

Keep in mind that a software version like this still isn't a one-time purchase, but will require ongoing maintenance plans. Depending on the version chosen, it may be used primarily as an analysis and monitoring tool, or be used to help find sites from which to seek links.

Remember that the greatest SEO tool is not a software program or a Website; it's the gifted SEO practitioner who either works for your company as an employee or with your company as a vendor. Invest in these folks, give them the tools they need to do their job well. Then watch your profits soar!

Brian R. Brown is lead consultant/natural search marketing strategist and Stephan Spencer is founder/president of SEO agency Netconcepts (www.netconcepts.com).