Online Marketing Blog

[Note from Lee: We tend to get a bit heavy on the industry observations and strategy, so a nice tactics/tools post is in order. ]

There are many different tools out there for SEO’s to use on a website. Each one has different features and benefits depending on how you use them. That’s why TopRank provides SEO Tool Reviews from time to time. We showcase different tools that you may or may not know about. Some free, some paid, all good.

The Internet Marketing Ninjas instructional program including videos and tools conceived by Jim Boykin of We Build Pages, has officially launched. I think a lot of people in the search marketing industry will be wowed by the sheer volume of quality information that’s available. Currently there are a series of 12 videos from the likes of Aaron Wall, Shoemoney, Neil Patel and Jim himself. Plus, most of the famous We Build Pages SEO and link building tools have been taken offline and included in the program along with many of the private WBP tools.

Even though she’s moved on from Google to Zillow, Vanessa Fox still carries quite a bit of passion for her creation, Google Webmaster Tools which was renamed from Google sitemaps about a year ago. She was even spotted at the Google Dance giving advice to SES attendees at the Google Webmaster Tools product demo table.

Many webmasters and beginning search marketers could benefit a great deal from the features offered by Google Webmaster Tools so I asked Vanessa if she’d do a short video with me to provide a few tips.

For more info on Google Webmaster Central visit the blog.

The poll is closed and the results are in with 154 votes for the most recent TopRank OMB Reader Poll: Best Keyword Research Tools. The two long standing tools of choice for many search marketers, Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker, battled it out and in the end, tied.

What surprised me was how popular the old Overture tool continues to be despite not being updated since January 2007. Perhaps that should spell an opportunity for Yahoo to somehow use the url for a new and improved keyword tool with ads for Panama on it.

• Keyword Discovery (18%)

Aaron Wall published a number of nifty custom buttons for Google Toolbar in the past and now that Google Toolbar 4 is out, he’s posted a very nice collection:  Google Toolbar SEO Buttons under categories such as:  Link reputation/popularity, domain age, on-page content analysis, competitive analysis, blog link search, official search engine blogs, a nice collection of SEO related blogs and a “how to create your own buttons” tutorial. Nice.

A new keyword research tool called WordZe has launched this week and here is a quick review:

WordZe is a keyword research tool that shows detailed keyword searches, plus ways to track keywords well past their estimated daily search volume. The user data that powers WordZe comes from Internet portals and ISP logs from around the world.

“The tools that WordZe provides do more then just give users a general idea of how often a keyword is being search for, they also allow the user to track daily trends as keywords or industries fall and rise in popularity due to seasons or events in the news.”

Rand and company over at SEOmoz have come up with a slick tool called “Page Strength SEO Tool” for determining the importance and visibility of a web page. Factors considered range from age of domain to link quantity, sources and Page Rank. Basically, it serves as an alternative to Page Rank. More importantly, it serves as a form of linkbait for SEOMoz. But that’s been true about SEO tools for quite a long time. Tools that help webmasters and marketers promote their sites offer excellent linking opportunities.

Aaron Wall announced in his “Above the Fold” newsletter yesterday the launch of a new SEO tool for Firefox. He also posted about SEO for Firefox on his SEOBook blog, generating a TON of feedback.

Says Aaron, “This tool was designed to add more data to Google and Yahoo! to make it easier to evaluate the value and competitive nature of a market.”