Our Selection of SEO Resources

Links to a Wide Range of SEO Information and Tools

If you plan on tackling your SEO needs by yourself you have a lot of work ahead of you. We have assembled this list of search engine optimization resources that should help you along the way. Even if you do not plan on doing all your search optimization work on your own, it may be wise to study SEO enough to understand your site needs. This will allow you to better communicate your needs with a SEO professional.

SEO Tutorials

Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization - Lots of info here from SEOMoz.org.

SEO Basics on One Page - Jim Westergreen shares a concise guide to SEO success.

SEO Book - Some say this e-book is the bible of Search Optimization. Buy it once and receive all updates as they are released.

SEO Tools

Browser Tools

If your still using internet explorer (IE) as your browser, its time to switch. FireFox is a far superior product. It's less prone to crashing, pesky trojans, hacks, and viruses, and best of all its an open source program. This means thousands of programmers are creating their own applications (firefox extensions) and offering them up for others to use.

These are some really great extensions with SEO applications
Web Developer - tools to allow you to quickly analyze a websites design elements, view source code, extract stylesheets, view alt tags, etc. Use it to decipher some on site optimization of a competitors site.
Search Status - Alexa ranking  and Google PR bars on your status bar. Backlink checker for Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Keyword density analyzer. Extract meta tags. Our favorite FF extension
SEOpen -
User Agent Switcher - Quickly switch between FireFox and IE
ShowIP - ip tools, checks ip addresses of web servers. Server speed, country location, whois check, trace route.
Server Spy - shows server brand used to host visited websites (Apache, IIS, etc.)
X-Ray - Right click your mouse to check html tags of a site without having to view the source code.
SEO For Firefox - Shows lots of cool link information for sites while you are searching on Google. Displays right on the Google pages below each search result. Cool.
Informenter - a nice tool to speed up form entry when submitting to directories.
 

Keyword Research

Nichebot - Checks number of searches made for a search term on the Yahoo network over a 2 month period. Also gives results for other key phrases that contain the keyword. A great way to determine potential keywords.

Google Suggest - Let Google suggest key words as you type. Can help to find popular related keywords.

Keyword Density Analyzer  - Use this tool to rate your keyword prominence, or your competitors.

Link Checking Tools

Marketleap - Track your link growth over time with this tool.

Backlink Watch - Reports on your backlinks showing the anchor text used, PR of page, number of out going links on the page and if no-follow tags are used.

SEO Blogs

These SEO's blog about search engines and SEO techniques.

SEOMoz - Updated daily with postings from Randfish and his team of very experienced SEO's

ThreadWatch - For the latest in Search News.

Marketing Pilgrim - Search marketing expert Andy Beal and his team off juicy tidbits on SEO.

SEObook - The Book has a Blog, too

Jim Boykin - Everything you need to know about Link Building

Ask Kelena - The daily search engine advice column.

Matt Cutts - This Google employee talks about search and sometimes reveals some good information that can improve your SEO.

Ummmm, there are lots more out there. Go and find 'em.

SEO and Webmaster Forums

Join these communities to network with others who are building, designing, managing websites. Webmaster forums contain all the resources you could ever need.

Digital Point A very large and active webmaster forum.

SEO Chat A discussion form dedicated to search engine optimization.

Search Friendly Directory Lists

Web directories are an important source for back links. Categorized directories provide relevant links to your site. Some even deliver traffic (though an SEO would submit to a directory even if they would never receive a click on that link).

Lists of hundreds of SE friendly directories can be found at these links

VileSilencer a huge and frequently updated list.

Info-Sales A nicely sort-able list of directories.

Real Estate agents are heavily into local SEO tactics. This Real Estate Directory has agent categories divided by state and province. A great place to submit Realtor websites for relevant backlinks.

Our Directory Submission Tips

Only submit to relevant categories of a directory.

Read and adhere to submission guidelines of each directory.

Paid directories are generally much higher quality and deliver more link weight than free directories. It's often worth the cost.

Use a dedicated email address for directory submissions. Most directories send confirmation emails for your submissions. And many of them also send a second email after your site has been approved, or rejected. After submitting to a hundred directories, or so, that begins to be a lot of emails. Plus a few directories put you on their newsletter list. And a few may even sell their email lists, causing you to receive spam. Having a separate email address makes this more manageable.

Check a directory for its quality. Start with its index page PR, preferably PR 3 or higher, then check its internal pages. How deep does it pass PR? How many sites are in your category? If there are dozens of pages of sites for your category, and the site is only passing PR to page 5, then you may not want to bother with that directory, or you could pay for a featured listing to get on page 1. But if its a newer directory and only passing PR to page 1of your category, while your link will be landing on page 2 or 3, then submit the link. This directory may eventually pass its PR to those deeper pages.