Resources

Here’s the shortlist of what we’ve found to be super-useful in all your SEO work.

Checklists

Use these job aids with your team to make sure you’re following all the best practices

Tools

Just like batman, professionals in our industry have a tool belt we use to save the day. Here’s what’s in it:

  • Search Engine Tools – Get lots of useful data about your website, straight from the horse’s mouth, so-to-speak.
  • Diagnostic Tools – they’ll help you find the problem, fast!
    • Firebug [Firefox] – perhaps the best thing since sliced bread. Let’s you inspect and change nearly every element of a webpage & http request.
    • Web Developer Toolbar [Firefox] – allows you to turn on/off page resources, like CSS, images and JavaScript.
    • Live HTTP Headers [Firefox] – allows you to trace the HTTP request and check out the redirects, and caching options being specified.
    • User-Agent Switcher [Firefox] – pretend to be anyone you want, googlebot, slurp, msnbot or IE6. Useful for checking for cloaking.
    • Flashblock [Firefox] – makes it really obvious where flash is being used.
    • Fiddler [IE] – really sophisticated network trace tool that let’s you do pretty much anything. Very useful, if you have internet explorer.
    • Developer’s Toolbar [IE] – poor man’s version of firebug for Internet Explorer. At least it gives some insight into how IE is rendering the page.
  • Keyword Research Tools – turn’s out keywords are really important, just ask danny.
    • Google AdWords – really sophisticated, and lots of really solid data. Who knows more about keywords?
    • Microsoft AdCenter Excel Addin – all the MSN Search keyword data directly in Excel. Also includes demographic data like gender, age, income and geography.
    • Google Trends – find relative popularity of keywords over the past couple years. Also tells you what are the hottest keywords on any given date.
    • Wordtracker – solid all around keyword research tools.
    • Keyword Discovery – another solid research tool.
  • Rank Checking Tools – not as important as you think it might be, but can be useful to establish a baseline
  • Link Tools - find out who’s linking to who. The search engine tools listed above have the best and most acurate link data

Websites

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