10 Essential SEO Tools

January 6, 2009

Written by, David Towers

David Towers is an SEO Manager at Mediaedge:cia based in Manchester (UK). David blogs about SEO, online marketing and Joomla at Good Web Practices.


I’m making this post in response to a Tweet made by Roger about this article: 10 Great SEO tools and resources. Roger invited me to write my own list because I said that the list Josh Chambers published at Viget.com missed quite a few essential tools…

So here are 10 SEO tools that I use regularly and consider essential:

  1. Advanced Web Ranking - Best tool I’ve used to keep a track of SERPs.
  2. SEO Elite - Great for analysing competition and getting detailed backlink reports.
  3. Market Samurai - Useful tool for researching keywords and SEO competition. Market Samurai plugs into several tools including Google’s keyword research tool.
  4. Google Analytics - It goes without saying that web stats are really important for measuring, monitoring and mining keywords.
  5. Google trends - Particularly useful when checking keyword trends between the UK and US.
  6. Google Webmaster Central - Useful for detecting crawl errors and checking pages with external links.
  7. SEOQuake - Plugin for Firefox and IE which displays several important website stats including:  PageRank, Google Crawl date, Pages indexed on Google/Yahoo/MSN,  Yahoo SiteExplorer stats, Domain age, Whois info, keyword density, page’s internal links and the page’s external links.
  8. SEOmoz PRO Linkscape toolbar - For SEOmoz Pro members, it’s nice to have the Linkscape toolbar which displays mozRank, mozTrust, Domain mozRank and Domain mozTrust.
  9. CopyScape - Essential for ensuring unique content and checking for duplicate content.
  10. Pidgin - IM client that makes it possible to connect to MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo and AIM all at the same time and in one place. Great way to ensure I’m available to vote friends’ content on Digg and StumbleUpon etc. (Feel free to send me your content: MSN: itsdavidtowers@live.co.uk, AIM: itsdavidtowers, Google Talk: itsdavidtowers@googlemail.com,  Yahoo: itsdavidtowers).

Honourable mention: Woopra - Ok, so it’s not essential and it shouldn’t replace Google Analytics yet, but Woopra’s real time web stats are definitely worth checking out!

What do you think about this list? Have I missed out any tools that you think are really useful?

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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Dunki3 (Cristian Vasile) 01.06.09 at 11:15 am

10 Essential SEO Tools http://bit.ly/168gk via @styletime

2 LegoAssassin (Lego Assassin) 01.06.09 at 11:21 am

RT: Essential SEO Tools http://bit.ly/168gk from @styletime

3 commonplaces (commonplaces) 01.06.09 at 12:21 pm

10 Essential SEO Tools: http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

4 iamthelovejoy (iamthelovejoy) 01.06.09 at 12:26 pm

RT @styletime: Ten essential SEO tools for all you SEO-ers out there. http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

5 seotips2go (Martin Canchola) 01.06.09 at 5:08 pm

10 Essential SEO Tools http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

6 Patrick 01.07.09 at 5:28 am

Nice!

Two other essential tools you should not forget:

http://yoast.com/seo-tools/link-analysis/
Great Firefox extension to enrich your link data in Google Webmasters Tools

http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html
SEO Firefox extension. This one is essential!

Patrick´s last blog post..Het onmisbare lijstje voor 2009

7 divinewrite (Glenn Murray) 01.07.09 at 7:48 am

Reading: “10 Essential SEO Tools” ( http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c )

8 MissMktr (MissMktr) 01.07.09 at 8:43 am

These tools never go out of style RT @divinewrite: Reading: “10 Essential SEO Tools” http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

9 the_gman (Gerald Weber) 01.07.09 at 10:05 am

Reading: “10 Essential SEO Tool” ( http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c )

10 jabisanchez (jabisanchez) 01.07.09 at 10:07 am

10 Essential SEO Tools http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c via @ShareThis

11 robercapla (Roberto Carreras) 01.07.09 at 10:11 am

10 Essential SEO Tools http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

12 Josh Chambers 01.07.09 at 1:14 pm

@David:

Thanks for the additions! As I said in my original post, any additions will be updated to the post to make a big ol’ SEO list.

Woopra = no good.

I’m going to checkout “Advanced Web Ranking” — we’ve been using another tool that I’m not thrilled with. Will “Advanced” give keyword placement reports on multiple engines?

And be honest…are you link baiting right now?

13 Marc 01.08.09 at 10:58 am

I have been beta testing woopra for a while now and it has some serious advantages, but im still a big fan of google analytics. just to name a few, i still love linkdiagnosis.com, spyfu and the compete.com toolbar. the google search based keyword tool is useful as well.

Marc´s last blog post..State Senator-elect Hiram Monserrate Caught on Video Abusing Girlfriend!

14 styletime (styletime) 01.09.09 at 7:10 pm

RT: @Styletime Just been reading on On.eti.me http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c testing the new tweetbacks digg type button! cool!

15 michaeldelicio (michaeldelicio) 01.11.09 at 8:00 pm

10 Essential SEO tools: http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

16 Eric Shafer 01.12.09 at 4:10 pm

Tracked back to from here: http://www.presidiacreative.com/web-picks-7/

Eric Shafer´s last blog post..Web Picks #7

17 phaoloo (phaoloo) 01.16.09 at 9:40 am

10 Essential SEO Tools http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

18 KursaalTom (Tom Vanlerberghe) 01.16.09 at 9:42 am

RT @phaoloo: 10 Essential SEO Tools http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

19 CharlesGnilka (Charles Gnilka) 01.16.09 at 2:11 pm

RT: @phaoloo 10 Essential SEO Tools http://tinyurl.com/8mjg3c

20 Busby blog 01.19.09 at 7:54 pm

SEOToolbar from SEObook is one of great SEO tools

Busby blog´s last blog post..Posing as two different brands

21 Chaunna Brooke 02.02.09 at 3:13 am

The listed essential tools can be considered as must-have and must-try for those who are in the business long enough. For those just beginning to grasp the concept of SEO, then some of these tools are not yet required or not suggested for them. As always, Analytics from Google or any provider is suggested for serious pros.

22 Anonymous at

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