Unit – V

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Understanding SEO, Search Engine Optimization Process - Goals, On-Page Optimization, Off-
Page Optimization and Analyze, Search Engine Result Process (SERP), SEO Tools.

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Understanding SEO:
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to techniques that help your website rank higher in
organic (or “natural”) search results, thus making your website more visible to people who are
looking for your product or service via search engines.

➢ SEO is part of the broader topic of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), a term used to
describe all marketing strategies for search. SEM entails both organic and paid search.
With paid search, you can pay to list your website on a search engine so that your website
shows up when someone types in a specific keyword or phrase.
➢ Organic and paid listings both appear on the search engine, but they are displayed in
different locations on the page. So, why is it important for your business‟ website to be
listed on search engines? On Google alone, there are over 694,000 searches conducted
every second. Every second that your website is not indexed on Google, you are
potentially missing out on hundreds, if not thousands of opportunities for someone to
visit your website, read your content, and potentially buy your product or service.
➢ Practicing SEO basics, as well as more advanced techniques after those, can drastically
improve your website's ability to rank in the search engines and get found by your
potential customers. Then about paid search, you can pay to have your website listed on
the search engines. However, running paid search campaigns can be quite costly if you
don't know what you're doing. Not to mention, about 88% of search engine users never
click on paid search ads anyway.
➢ Because the sole purpose of a search engine is to provide you with relevant and useful
information, it is in everyone's best interest (for the search engine, the searcher, and you)
to ensure that your website is listed in the organic search listings. In fact, it is probably
best to stay away from paid search all together until you feel you have a firm grasp on
SEO and what it takes to rank organically.

How does a Search Engine Work?

Search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results.
➢ Crawling - Process of fetching all the web pages linked to a website. This task is
performed by a software called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, in case of Google).
➢ Indexing - Process of creating index for all the fetched web pages and keeping them into
a giant database from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing
is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the
page to particular keywords.
➢ Processing - When a search request comes, the search engine processes it, i.e., it
compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database.
➢ Calculating Relevancy - It is likely that more than one page contains the search string,
so the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index to
the search string.
➢ Retrieving Results - The last step in search engine activities is retrieving the best
matched results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser.

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Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! often update their relevancy algorithm dozens of
times per month. When you see changes in your rankings, it is due to an algorithmic shift or
something else beyond your control.
Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor differences
between their relevancy algorithms lead to major changes in the relevancy of results.

What is Search Engine Rank?

When you search any keyword using a search engine, it displays thousands of results found in its
database. A page ranking is measured by the position of web pages displayed in the search
engine results.
If a search engine is putting your web page on the first position, then your web page rank
will be number 1 and it will be assumed as the page with the highest rank. SEO is the process of
designing and developing a website to attain a high rank in search engine results.

Search Engine Optimization Process & Goals:

Search Engine Optimization Process:

Before beginning a search engine optimization (SEO) project, it is important to understand the
process involved in an effective SEO campaign. To that end, we break the process down into the
six steps shown below and describe the
activities involved in each of these steps.

One word on search engine optimization in

general first, though. SEO does not start and
finish with these steps and the initial work that
we do. In order to have ongoing success, it is
important to monitor results and build
meaningful content on a continual basis.

1. Keyword Research
2. Reporting & Goal Setting
3. Content Building
4. Page Optimization
5. Social & Link Building
6. Follow Up Reporting & Analysis

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1. Research
Keyword Research
Keyword phrase research involves identifying a group of keyword phrases that will be used
in optimization. This step is critical and requires a considerable amount of time to find a
good set of phrases that offer a balanced combination of two important factors: high usage by
searchers and relatively low competition within the search engines.
Determining the most used phrase that contains your targeted keyword(s) is
relatively easy. Online tools allow you to enter a particular keyword or words and will return
all the ways in which that word(s) was used by searchers in the last month and in what
volume. A more effective approach is to find a set of phrases that are heavily used by
searchers but somewhat less competitive in terms of the total number of search results.

Competitive Research
Once armed with the target keyword phrases, we do a thorough competitive analysis of the
subject site against its 7 – 10 biggest competitors (using both offline and online
competitors). We use a series of SEO metrics, including indexed content, Alexa rating,
inbound links, domain age, and social media following among others. Through this process,
we are able to gauge the client site’s starting position against its competition and identify
areas requiring priority in the subsequent work.
For example, if we see that relative to the competition, the client’s site has 50% less
indexed content, then content building would be a priority in the goal setting that happens in
the next phase.

2. Reporting & Goal Setting

After establishing your targeted keyword phrases and starting position relative to the site’s
competitive set, it is important to understand what the subject site’s starting position is within
the search engines. Doing so ensures that you know the specific areas that need work and
provides a baseline against which to gauge the subsequent campaign’s success.
Access to site traffic information is very important. These statistics show how
searchers are finding and interacting with the subject site, e.g., which search engines, what
keyword phrases are being used, bounce rates, most popular content, etc. Understanding the
site’s traffic level and the source of its referrals can also be a critical tool in making other
online marketing decisions.
After developing a complete picture of the site’s starting position, goals are set for
the SEO plan. These goals are measurable (one big advantage of SEO over other advertising
options) and tied to the specific business objectives of the site. In the ongoing progress of
reporting and follow up, progress towards the plan’s goals are analyzed and reported.
Adjustments to the SEO plan can be made according to the findings of these progress reports.

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3. Content Building
Content is king in search engine optimization. The search engines love text; high volume,
high-quality content related to your business will serve you in a couple of important ways.
First, a site loaded with high-quality content of interest to site users will give them a
reason to stay and a reason to come back. After all, the reason they came to your site was to
find information. Second, you will receive the added benefit of serving up exactly what the
search engines want – content. Search engines will have more information to store about
your business and products; that information will translate directly into the ranking they give
your site for related keyword phrases. For more information on content development and
specific ideas about ways to expand your site’s content, read our, Content is Still King.
We often find in the Competitive Research phase that the client’s site is falling behind its
competitors in the amount of indexed content. In those cases, this phase of the process takes
on additional importance.

4. Page Optimization
Following the addition of new, high quality content, we tackle on-page optimization.
▪ Page Titles
▪ Text-Based Navigation
▪ Prominence of Targeted Keyword Phrases
▪ Site Map
▪ ALT and META data
▪ Clean up the Code

5. Social & Link Building

Social Media - In marketing, you fish where the fish are. And, the fish are using social
media in increasing numbers. The power of online sharing through social media provides
tremendous opportunities for companies willing to commit the time to using it. During this
phase of the process, we help clients establish a social media presence and consult with the
client on how best to use those social media profiles to share site content and connect with
customers and potential customers.

Building In-Bound Links - Each new, quality link to your site increases the likelihood of
both the search engines’ spiders running across your site as well as searchers looking for
services or products like yours. Google views links to your site (as long as they are links
from high quality sites) as votes for your site and rewards the site accordingly. You can
check your link popularity with a variety of free online tools. In addition, Google’s
Webmaster Tools provides information regarding the inbound links to your site. We consult
with our clients on ways to build their online reach and influence with new, high-quality
inbound links.

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6. Follow Up Reporting and Analysis
The same reporting done in the initial phase of the campaign is done again at regular
intervals, post-optimization. Rankings, site traffic levels, social signals and other key metrics
can then be compared to pre-optimization levels, giving measurable results to the SEO
campaign. The specific metrics used in an SEO plan will depend on the goals of that site.

Search Engine Optimization Goals:

The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase the site’s usability so that you can bring the right people
in from the search engines. The purpose of your site should be clearly defined so that you can
make sure your site achieves that purpose.
➢ When search engine visitors see that your site meets their expectations after they find you
on a web search, this means your usability is solid. If visitors are disappointed, the site
has missed its mark.
➢ The goal is to follow the best strategies possible for ranking in the search engines, and to
do this you need to understand how they want things done. When the search engine
crawls your site, the bots look for certain pieces of information. If the bots deem that the
information is up to par, you’ll be rewarded with better rankings. To insure that you
understand what they’re looking for, it helps to become familiar with their terms and
conditions and Webmaster guidelines.
➢ Because of this constraint, the battle to get to the top of Google, Yahoo! Bing and the like
has become quite a challenge. You need all the help that you can get! Proper SEO that
use white hat techniques, or those that fall in line with what the search engines determine
are their “best practices” will be a big step in the right direction.

SEO Strategies
➢ All search engine optimization spawns from diligent keyword research. This involves
finding out just how people are coming to your website – what terms they use, what
questions they ask, etc. If you know how people are looking for sites like yours, all you
have to do is provide them with the answers they seek. This is all about appealing to your
audience. You need to think of popular and related keywords that suit your sites content,
then you can incorporate them into the content and the marketing techniques that you
employ.
➢ Another part of SEO is link building, and it’s always changing. Link building is where
you have a link to your site appear on other sites. Instead, your focus should be on
building content and let the linking occur naturally.
➢ Tactics that worked in the past, such as posted links on articles you write on other sites,
are now considered spammy and if there are too many of these, your site can get a
penalty.
➢ To fully understand SEO, you should consider getting some sort of consultant to guide
you along. There are so many different marketing techniques out there, making it hard to
find just the right one for you. You can use someone else’s experience to narrow down
your options and pinpoint the perfect strategy to help you reach your audience.

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On-Page Optimization:

On-Page SEO refers to how well your website’s content is presented to search engines. On page
optimization involves ensuring whether a particular webpage is structured in a manner so that it
gets found by the search engines for given
keywords and key phrases. It not only
helps in getting good search engine
ranking but also increases overall
readability of the site. The best part is that
not much has changed about the on-page
optimization approach. It can still be
improved immediately by tweaking
incorrect elements on a webpage.
There 5 key elements of a successful on
page optimization:

1. Page Copy

A good content copy is really the key to

your success. It is an open secret that you
need to produce original, unique and high
quality content of relevance on a continuous basis to perform well and rank high on search
engines. There are few things you need to keep in mind while creating the content copy.

Keyword

Each piece of content should be created keeping the focus primarily on a single keyword or a key
phrase. This word or phrase should at least be mentioned for a specific number of times in the
whole content and this process is known as keyword density. Each content copy is supposed to
maintain a keyword density of 3-5% as par industry standard. Keep a mix of primary and
secondary keywords and key phrases in your content but optimize your content around only
those keywords and phrases on which you desire to achieve top organic search rankings.

Quality over quantity

You don’t essentially need longer articles for better search engine rankings. Web pages with
more content intensity and depth have started performing better on search engine ranking since
the 2011 Google algorithm update.

2. Title Tags

Arguably title tag is the most important element among the “big three”, the other two being page
copy and inbound links. Title tag contains the words which appear in the clickable link of the
search engine result. Google has limited the page titles up to 70 characters, so it is extremely
important that your title tags are keyword-relevant yet concise. For example, when looking up in
Google for a query, you might have noticed the chopped off title tags in few results, that’s
because the title tags for that page are too long. To optimize the title tags primary keywords and

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secondary keywords should be mentioned in the same order and the branded keywords at the
end, this is a rule to follow except for the home page.

3. Meta Data

Meta data is a well-written description summarizing the content of a particular webpage. It used
to be one of the most important factors affecting search engine optimization in pre-Panda era.
Meta data completely lost its importance in influencing Search Engine rankings from September
2009 after Google’s declaration. It was majorly devalued because of a wide practice of spam
techniques. Google crawlers though look at the Meta keywords to get an idea about the topicality
of the page content. Meta descriptions have to be created within a limit of 155- 160 characters
which essentially should not include anything but alphanumeric characters. It can’t influence
search engine rankings but do help in getting a high click through rate.
Meta description works more as an ad copy for the organic search results which influences the
readers to click on a particular link. It can also intelligently accommodate the primary keywords
within it, Google especially highlights them if searched key phrase contains the exact key words.

4. Heading Tags

These are the tags which define the content of your page section wise, just like traditional
headings and subheadings. There should be one <h1> tag every page, which should include the
most relevant key phrase or key word. This tag can be created up till <h6>, though general
practice is to use this till <h3>.
Apart from the primary keyword mentioned in the <h1>, you can include the other important
keyphrases in <h2> and <h3> tags to define the other sections of the content. The <h1> tag
should be optimized well as search engines still give this some value.

5. Interlinking

Strategically, linking one of your website pages to other similar pages on your website provides
context to the search engine and to the readers as well. Some best practices are:
1. Include links in the main content of each page.
2. Paragraph links carry the most weight.
3. Use keyword-rich anchor text in links.
4. Avoid using non-descriptive anchor text (for example, read more, click here, etc).
5. Link to relevant, deep pages.
6. Use breadcrumb navigation on every page
7. Monitor your inbound links through Google Webmaster Tools.
8. Avoid multiple links to the same page from a single page.
9. Less links= More authority per link.
The most common practice of showing “related links” or “tags” at the end of a page or in a
sidebar is done to thematically relate one page to another.

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Off-Page Optimization:

Off-Page SEO refers to your website’s overall “authority” on the web determined by what other
websites say about your site. Off-page optimization is a long-term process and takes the time to
improve. Simply put, off page is all about
your online reputation. Off page
optimization includes acquiring backlinks
to your page from the authority sites in
your niche. Backlinks are the currency of
any off-page strategy. And, unlike on-page
optimization, off-page optimization efforts
are not apparently visible on the webpage
itself; it does the background work for a
better search result.

But, after the recent Google Panda and Penguin updates, off-page optimization scenario has
drastically changed. Many effective old school practices became obsolete and negatively affected
many big websites with high page ranks.Off page optimization effort can be grossly divided into
two parts:

1. Acquiring Backlinks
Acquiring backlinks to your pages from higher authority sites is now more important than ever.
Search engines treat link popularity as one of the key factors for a better search engine ranking.
Though, link popularity is not the top ranking factor anymore, as it can easily be manipulated.
Nowadays, search engines focus more on the quality of your content and the level of
engagement on the site, over the number of links pointing towards your site. So, the success
factor is not building a long list of inbound links but building a trail of quality links for your site.
Creating quality content that informs and educates your target audience is more important than
ever.
TIP: Getting a number of links from multiple domains relevant in your industry are the key.
Buying backlinks from non-related domains won’t earn you goodwill in search engine results
and can even penalize you.

2. Leveraging social interaction with your site

Use of social metrics or social engagement as a ranking factor is an increasing trend. Besides
backlinks, Google now gives prominence to social signals around your content. Whether it’s the
number of people who tweet, ‘Like’, social bookmark, or “vote” via Google +1 for your content,
your site’s social footprints has a direct relation with your rankings. SEO has now evolved into
social.

3. Promote your content via social channels

Make sure to promote your content through multiple social media channels to obtain some social
media traction. You can use multiple platforms to engage your audience, keeping the focus on
the ones creating maximum buzz for you. There are various platforms at your exposure:
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Facebook
Facebook is the social platform with the maximum number of active users at this moment. You
can share your content there but don’t use a promotional tone, rather keep it light as people come
to Facebook mostly with an intention of socializing in a casual mood. Especially interesting and
light topics with pictures get more attention in the form of Likes and Share on Facebook.

Twitter and LinkedIn

You can distribute your content on both these platforms. You can share your content in the form
of an article, video, image or even in the form of a simple update. You can join relevant
LinkedIn groups and share you articles there too. If you have content of great quality you’ll
surely be able to create buzz around it.

Google+
It has become very important to share any content you create on Google+, as it is from the search
engine provider itself. Recently, there is a lot of noise that Google+ has a indirect correlation
with your website’s ranking in the search engine. Google also have introduced a new feature
called Google Authorship. It shows the picture and name of an author with his articles in
Google search results. This has come across as a major factor to counter the duplicate content by
giving weightage to the authors and the content they have created.

Pinterest
Pinterest is the latest social media sensation. The image sharing website allows you to share
pictures from your post to appeal to your target audience. If you have an e-commerce site,
Pinterest can help you drive your sales.

Quora
This is a question & answer platform where a lot of people come searching for the solution to
different problems and queries. You can post your content or your opinion in any of the relevant
discussion thread and readers can up vote or down vote it. This is in fact the future of
commenting. The platform can help you establish yourself as a subject matter expert in your
field.

Video Sharing
You can create informational videos on topics like make-up tips or different marketing strategies
to share them on free video hosting sites like Vimeo, YouTube etc. generating billions of unique
viewers every month.

4. Add social book markings

Social bookmarking is one of those old yet useful off-page SEO techniques being used from the
pre-Panda and Penguin age. There are many sites like Tumbler, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious,
Digg being the most prominent ones, where people come in searching for different content
topics. You can add a social bookmarking panel to your website and share all the content you
produce.

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5. Guest Blogging
Another way of acquiring strong back links in post Panda era is guest blogging. You have to
create relevant and high quality content and submit to the blogs with higher page ranks. If your
article contains real good stuffs it will get published and to do that you have to observe the
content types and categories your target blogs are covering, it’s even great if there are some
common or related categories both of you cater to.
For a long term and successful search engine optimization strategy, you need to work on your
site structure as well as on building your online reputation by getting backlinks and creating the
community around your content. And, ultimately, it boils down to creating interesting and
informative content people would like to read and share. Content is still the King.

Search Engine Result Process (SERP):

A Search Engine Results Page, or SERP, is the web page that appears in a browser window
when a keyword query is put into a search field on a search engine page.
➢ The list of results generally includes a list of links to pages that are ranked from the most
popular to the least popular from the number of hits for the particular keyword.
➢ The list will include not only the links, but also a short description of each page, and of
course, the titles of the webpage. The term “search engine results page” may refer to a
single page of links returned by a query or the entire set of links returned.
➢ Many search engine results pages have different types of listings. These types of SERPs
are found most commonly in larger search engines, such as Google.com and Yahoo!.
They include results such as:
▪ Contextual
▪ Algorithmic
▪ Sponsored listings
▪ Images
▪ Maps
▪ Organic search listings
▪ Definitions
▪ Suggested search query refinements
✓ Major search engines can also offer specific search engine results pages that pertain to
specific the specific types of listings. Search engine results pages can also be the results
page for an image search, a map search, a news search, a blog search, or many of the
other options major search engines offer.

The main elements of SERP are:

1. Direct search results, consisting of links to sites. This is the natural issuance of search
engines, where sites are struggling for the highest positions. The search results page
contains, by default, 10 links, but the number can be changed in the search settings;
2. Blocks with contextual advertising;
3. Small fields before search results. They can contain typing errors, a quick response to a
user request, a calculator, and so on;
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 4. Pictures are issued in response to a particular search query;
5. Related queries – the search query is refined. The user is offered word forms or similar
requests;
6. Elements of management – this includes links to go to the site, prompts when entering
a user request.

A search engine results page (SERP) is the list of results that a search engine returns in response
to a specific word or phrase query. Each listing includes the linked Web page title, the linked
page URL (Uniform Resource Locator), a brief description of the page content and, in some
cases, links to points of interest within the website.

There are three main types of results on a SERP:

1. Pages that the search engine spider has crawled and indexed;
2. pages that have been manually added to the search engine’s directory;
3. and pages that appear as a result of paid inclusion.
The highest-ranking hits generally link to the most useful information; links grow less relevant as
they move farther down the list.

Search Engine Results Pages: What They Are and How They Work
Search engine results pages are web pages served to users when they search for something online
using a search engine, such as Google. The user enters their search query (often using specific
terms and phrases known as keywords), upon which the search engine presents them with a
SERP.
Every SERP is unique, even for search queries performed on the same search engine
using the same keywords or search queries. This is because virtually all search engines
customize the experience for their users by presenting results based on a wide range of factors
beyond their search terms, such as the user’s physical location, browsing history, and social
settings. Two SERPs may appear identical, and contain many of the same results, but will often
feature subtle differences.
The appearance of search engine results pages is constantly in flux due to experiments
conducted by Google, Bing, and other search engine providers to offer their users a more
intuitive, responsive experience. This, combined with emerging and rapidly developing
technologies in the search space, mean that the SERPs of today differ greatly in appearance from
their older predecessors.

SERPs typically contain two types of content – “organic” results and paid results.

1. ‘Organic’ Results
Organic results are listings of web pages that appear as a result of the search engine’s algorithm.
Search engine optimization professionals, commonly known as SEOs, specialize in optimizing
web content and websites to rank more highly in organic search results.
In the following figure, the highlighted results are all organic results:

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Organic results on the SERP
The box on the right side of this SERP is known as the Knowledge Graph (also sometimes called
the Knowledge Box). This is a feature that Google introduced in 2012 that pulls data to
commonly asked questions from sources across the web to provide concise answers to questions
in one central location on the SERP. In this case, you can see a wide range of information about
Abraham Lincoln, such as the date and place of his birth, his height, the date on which he was
assassinated, his political affiliation, and the names of his children – many of which facts have
their own links to the relevant pages.
Some SERPs will feature significantly more organic results than others, such as the
example above. This is due to the differing intent of various searches. There are three primary
types of Internet search: Informational, Navigational and Transactional.

▪ Informational searches are those in which the user hopes to find information on a given
topic, such as Abraham Lincoln.
▪ Navigational queries are those in which the user hopes to locate a specific website
through their search. This may be the case for individuals searching for a specific
website, trying to locate a website whose URL they can no longer remember, or another
type of navigational objective.
▪ Transactional searches have high commercial intent, and search queries leading to
transactional SERPs may include keywords such as “buy” and other terms that suggest a
strong desire to make a purchase.

2. Paid Results
In contrast to organic results, paid results are those that have been paid to be displayed by an
advertiser. In the past, paid results were almost exclusively limited to small, text-based ads that
were typically displayed above and to the right of the organic results. Today, however, paid

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results can take a wide range of forms, and there are dozens of advertising formats that cater to
the needs of advertisers.

Some paid results on your SERP:

In the example above (a SERP for the search query “lawnmowers”), all of the results on the
SERP – with the exception of the map and business listing beneath it – are paid results. The three
large text-based ads at the top of the SERP are typical PPC ads.
Of those three ads, the lower two (for Craftsman.com and Husqvarna.com) both feature ad
extensions allowing prospective customers to navigate to specific pages on their websites
directly from the ads.
The image-based ads on the right of the page are Shopping ads, a feature offered on the
Google AdWords platform that allows ecommerce retailers’ product information to be displayed
alongside other results on the SERP. Shopping ads can contain a wide range of information, such
as product availability, user reviews, special offers, and more.
There are two additional PPC ads directly beneath the Shopping ads that also feature the
user review ad extensions, indicated by the star ratings directly beneath the destination URL.
The map and business listing are the only results on this SERP that are not explicitly paid results.
This map is shown based on a user’s location, and feature listings for local businesses that have
set up their free Google My Business listing.

Ranking Signals and Search Algorithms

Organic results are listings that have been indexed by the search engine based on a number of
factors, also known as “ranking signals.”
For example, the search algorithm used by Google features hundreds of ranking factors, and
while nobody outside of Google knows precisely what they are, some are thought to be more
important than others. In the past, the link profile of a site – the number of external links that link
to a specific website or web page from other websites – was an important ranking signal. It still
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is to some extent (which is why Wikipedia ranks so prominently in organic results for so many
queries), though search advances at such a rapid pace that ranking signals that were once crucial
to the search algorithm may be less important today, a source of constant frustration to SEOs.

SEO Tools:

1. Google Page Speed Insights

Check the speed and usability of your site on multiple devices
Enter a URL, and this tool will test the loading time and performance for desktop and for
mobile, plus identify opportunities to improve (and pat you on the back for what you’re
doing well). The mobile results also come with a user experience score, grading areas like tap
targets and font sizes.

2. Moz Local Listing Score

See how your local business looks online
Moz crunches data from more than 15 different sources—including Google, Foursquare, and
Facebook—to score your brick-and-mortar business on how it looks online. Results come
complete with actionable fixes for inconsistent or incomplete listings.

3. Keywordtool.io
700+ keyword ideas based on a single keyword
Enter a keyword, and the Keyword Tool provides a
huge handful of long-tail keyword opportunities,
organized alphabetically.

4. Google Analytics
Complete web stats and search insights
In addition to tracking pretty much every bit of traffic
you could imagine on your website, Analytics also
surfaces many keyword insights as to which terms
people use to land on your pages.

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5. Google Webmaster Tools + Bing Webmaster Tools
Constant website analysis, alerts, and error reports
These webmaster tools help give you a taste of what the
two top search engines think of your site. It’s helpful to
see any bugs, alerts, and indexing issues.
Each of these two tools requires a bit of installation on
your site. If you’ve got a WordPress website, you can add
the webmaster code automatically through a
plugin like Jetpack or Yoast.

6. Open Site Explorer

Comprehensive link analysis
The free version of Open Site Explorer gives you a quick look a full range of link analysis,
including a look at the most impactful links coming your way and your most linked-to pages.

7. Google Keyword Planner

Know what people search for
Enter a keyword or group of keywords into the tool, and Google will return all sorts of
helpful stats to guide your keyword strategy: monthly search volume, competition, and even
suggested terms you might not have considered.

8. Google.com in an Incognito Window

Discover auto-fill opportunities
Searching Google.com in an incognito window will bring up that all-familiar list of autofill
options, many of which can help guide your keyword research. The incognito
ensures that any customized search data Google stores when you’re signed in gets left out.
Incognito may also be helpful to see where you truly rank on a results page for a certain term.

9. Google Trends
Changes in search volume for key terms
A quick browse or search through Google Trends can show you the hockey-stick rise of
potential terms and SEO opportunities for your content.

10. QuickSprout Website Analyzer

Full analysis of your website
The QuickSprout tool does a comprehensive look at just about everything: SEO optimization,
speed, tags, keywords, social, links, and even competitor comparisons.

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11. Schema Creator
Uber-customize the way your search results appear
Create custom code so that your reviews, events, organizations, and people are displayed the way
you want on search pages. Once you’ve created your schema code, copy and paste to your
website, or try the free WordPress plugin for an even easier implementation.
Here’s an example of schema in action:

12. SimilarWeb
View site stats for any domain
Use this tool to compare traffic between two websites, a helpful tool for competitor research.

13. SERPs Rank Checker

See where your site ranks for certain terms
You can run Rank Checker one of two ways: Input your keyword and your website and see
where you land, or leave the website field blank to view the top-to-bottom list of results for a
keyword.

14. XML Sitemaps

Build a sitemap
Simply enter your site’s URL and some optional parameters, and XML Sitemaps will create a
sitemap that you can upload to Google Webmaster Tools.

15. Browseo
See your website the way a search engine sees it
Enter your site, and this tool will strip out everything but the guts, revealing your website the
way search spiders see it. This particular view can be helpful to see the hierarchy you’ve given
particular elements (maybe without realizing it!).

16. SEO Site Checkup

Audit and score for your website
Site Checkup runs through a fast audit of your site, checking for proper tags and surfacing any
errors that might come up.

17. Searchmetrics Website Analyzer

Performance dashboard for search and social rankings
The free version of the Searchmetrics report shows you a taste of how your website ranks in
search and social, along with a preview of top terms.

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18. Find Broken Links
Discover errors on your site
The link report from Ninja Internet Marketers combs through your whole site and highlights a
number of link insights, including the internal and external links that need fixing.

19. Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and Backlink Checker

Complete overview of your website, pages, and links
A free (and substantial) sampling of what ahrefs offers, the dashboards for referring pages and
inbound links are rich and informative.

20. Copyscape
Check for duplicate content
Enter a URL for a blogpost or website, and Copyscape can tell you where else that content exists
online. You might find results that you’ll need to follow-up with to help get your SEO in order.

21. Moz toolbar

I’ve shied away from referencing any toolbars thus far, but the Moz toolbar is just too good to
pass up. Once installed, the Moz toolbar can show you SEO insights from within Google search
results pages and at any particular website.

22. Robots.txt Generator

Robots.txt files let the web robots know what to do with a website’s pages. When a page is
disallowed in robots.txt, that’s instructions telling the robots to completely skip over those web
pages. There are some exceptions in which case a robots.txt might be ignored, most notably
malware robots that are looking for security issues.

23. Structured Data Testing Tool

Structured data helps to provide context to the information on your page. This tool from Google
uses live data to validate the structured data for any web page, or you can copy/paste code to test
it.

24. Microsoft Free SEO Toolkit

The Microsoft SEO Toolkit combines quite a few different tools into one. Used together, it can
analyze your site and provide recommendations on how to make your site’s content more SEO-
friendly, including tweaks to your sitemap and robots.txt. Sorry to all of the Apple folks, this one
seems to be Windows-only!

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