MediaWhizdom 10 FREE, MUST-HAVE SEO TOOLS You don t have to break the bank for SEO success

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1 MediaWhizdom 10 FREE, MUST-HAVE SEO TOOLS You don t have to break the bank for SEO success By Marc Purtell, Director, SEO at MediaWhiz EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Performance in organic search engine marketing requires an investment. Depending on the goals of a search engine optimization campaign, that investment can be quite substantial. Budget often must be allocated strategically in order to stretch it enough for success. Part of the investment in any SEO campaign goes toward tools that help brands analyze data, strategize and track results. To do so, marketers need a bevy of tools and resources. This is an area in which marketers can be frugal, if necessary. There are hundreds of great paid search marketing tools that will help generate a strong return from an SEO campaign. If budget must be used sparingly, however, there are ways around paying for high-end tools. This report analyzes the best free tools marketers can use to track and measure the success of their SEO campaigns, troubleshoot problems, gain important competitive intelligence and plan for future SEO success. The report is broken up into the best free SEO tools across three categories: Tools for identifying target keywords Tools for auditing onsite SEO issues Tools for competitive intelligence KEY TAKEAWAYS 1. Using a free tool or combination of free tools can often eliminate the need to invest in a paid search marketing or SEO tool. 2. SEO tools are important in selecting the right keywords to target in an SEO campaign. 3. Troubleshooting on-site SEO issues becomes much easier with access to the right tools. 4. Competitive intelligence tools can be a great asset for building a successful SEO strategy MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 1

2 THE BEST SEO TOOLS FOR IDENTIFYING TARGET KEYWORDS Choosing the right target keywords builds the foundation for an entire SEO campaign. If the right keywords with the highest potential for return are not selected, the foundation of the campaign will be weak. Success, in that case, is nearly impossible. In order to select the right keywords, data must be collected and analyzed so projections on return can be made. Gathering the necessary data, however, can be expensive. Some businesses will not invest in best-of-breed SEO tools. For those with limited budgets and without access to paid SEO tools, impactful keyword data is not out of reach. There are plenty of data sources and tools that can be used for free or offer free versions. By leveraging several free tools, advertisers can generate enough information to make informed decisions on keyword targets and set themselves up for successful SEO campaigns. Below are our recommendations for the best free SEO tools for identifying target keywords. I. Google Adwords Keyword Tool The first step in choosing the right keywords is to understand which keywords consumers are searching and the demand of each. This data can be determined using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. In order to gain full access to the data you need to sign up for an Adwords account. You do not need to set up any campaigns or spend any advertising money. There are three main ways to find relevant keywords using this tool, including inputting the website or page that is to be optimized, the category of the products or services the website offers, or a seed list of keywords related to those products or services. Before researching the keywords, however, it is important to implement the correct settings. Since we are looking for specific keywords that the market is searching, we want to analyze at the demand of exact-match keywords rather than variations. In order to see the demand (search volume) of the keywords, use the Match Types option in the right sidebar and select [Exact]. The first way to identify keywords is to input the domain or page you are trying to optimize. Google will crawl the website and return a list of suggestions based on the content. For example, if you are looking for keywords relevant to you would enter the domain into the Website field and click the Search button for a list of relevant keywords. Once results are returned, be sure to select the Keyword ideas tab as opposed to the Ad group ideas tab. This will provide a comprehensive list of keywords with associated search volume. This can also be done using the domains of direct competitors MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2

3 For keywords related to a specific page, simply input the URL of the page rather than the domain into the tool for a list of keywords specific to that page. The second way to identify relevant keywords is by selecting the category. In this instance you would input the category of the products or services offered instead of a domain or URL. For example, if the service offered is marketing, you would select the Advertising & Marketing category in the Category field and click Search. This is not always the best use of this keyword tool, however, because the categories are often very general and some categories are not available MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 3

4 The third and most common way to leverage the Google Adwords Keyword Tool is to input a list of seed keywords (typically the names of the products or services offered) into the Word or phrase field. This will return a list of popular searches related to those seed keywords. II. Google Analytics Another method of identifying potential keyword targets is to look at the phrases that are already generating organic traffic to a website. This gives insight into the possibility to increase that traffic via optimization. Using Google Analytics, advertisers can review the keywords that are driving traffic organically to a website. Of course, having a Web analytics platform in today s digital marketing world is essential for many reasons and this is just one. There are many good analytics platforms, some of which have very high price tags. The standard version of Google Analytics is, in my opinion, just as useful as any other platform, with the only difference being it is free of cost. The keywords driving organic traffic can be seen in Google Analytics using the Organic Search Traffic report. This can be found by navigating the following sequence within the right sidebar: Traffic Sources>Sources>Search>Organic MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 4

5 In order to see the specific keywords generating traffic, ensure Keyword is selected as the Primary Dimension. This report will pull up the keyword level organic traffic metrics for the time period specified. It s recommended to look at a minimum of the last three months of data. If the business is seasonal, look at the time period reflective of high season. Since this provides a list of keywords that are already sending traffic to the website it is often the case that this traffic is generated because the keywords have some organic presence in one or more search engines. Optimizing against those keywords provides the opportunity to rank higher in the search engines in which the site is already ranking, as well as infiltrating the organic results of additional search engines. Make a list of non-branded keywords from this report for further investigation. This may include inputting keywords into the Adwords Keyword Tool mentioned above to check the demand and into the Rank Checker tool mentioned below to see where the website is currently ranking. There are some other important metrics to look at when determining target keywords for an SEO campaign. This analytics report also gives insight into engagement factors, such as bounce rate and average visit duration at the keyword level. By focusing on keywords with low bounce rates and a good amount of time spent on the site, the campaign will be focused not only on the keywords most likely to drive traffic, but also on driving visitors that are likely to perform an action on the site. III. Rank Checker Finally, when starting a new SEO campaign, especially with a small budget, it is helpful to identify and target the low-hanging fruit. A good strategy is to target keywords that a website already ranks for but are not yet in a position capable of garnering strong results. Often, a website will rank low on pages 1 or 2 for a strategic keyword without any optimization effort. By implementing an optimization plan for those keywords, the website can often quickly move up 2013 MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 5

6 the ranks into a position that will garner strong results. There are many paid tools to track keyword rankings but there is an excellent free tool that allows users to check the rankings of up to 100 keywords on the fly. Rank Checker is a Firefox extension that can be downloaded after signing up for a free SEOBook account. Once downloaded, Rank Checker is available via an icon located at the bottom right of the Firefox browser. The usefulness of Rank Checker for keyword targeting comes in conjunction with other tools for keyword discovery such as the Adwords Keyword Tool or Google Analytics. After using those tools to identify lists of potential keyword targets, it s easy to find some low hanging fruit using Rank Checker. The first step is to set the options by right-clicking the Rank Checker icon at the bottom right of Firefox and selecting Options. You can opt-in to check the rankings of your keywords in Yahoo and Bing, as well as two different country-specific versions of Google simultaneously. The country-specific versions of Google and Yahoo can be selected using the drop-downs. Finally, in most cases you will want to select the Don t use Google personalized search results if any option to get an idea of where the site ranks in general, not using your browsing history MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6

7 Now you re ready to run Rank Checker. Simply add your domain and keyword list (up to 100 keywords at a time) and you will have the rankings. Look for high-value keywords that the site is already ranking low on pages 1, 2 or 3 to see what low-hanging fruit is available. The fact that the site is already ranking on one of the top pages indicates there is already some authority for that keyword that can be built upon. These are typically quick-win keywords. THE BEST SEO TOOLS FOR AUDITING ONSITE ISSUES It s not uncommon in today s SEO landscape to encounter a sudden drop of organic search traffic and/or keyword rankings. When such a disaster occurs, most large brands have access to a qualified SEO agency or robust in-house team to identify and rectify any issues that led to the drops. For smaller brands with limited budget allocated to SEO, this could mean the end of the organic search channel as a driver of business. It doesn t have to be this way. There are a variety of excellent free SEO tools that marketers can use to analyze the situation and identify the problem and solution. By taking advantage of the intelligence that is available for free, brands with low budgets can recover from SEO issues in order to return to leveraging the organic search channel as a revenue generator. Below is an analysis of three such SEO tools. I. Google Webmaster Tools An invaluable resource for SEO experts and webmasters alike, Google Webmaster Tools suite provides insight into the overall health of a website and explicitly points out many issues that can negatively affect a site s organic search health. Getting started is as simple as signing up for a Google account and verifying ownership of the website in question by adding either a verification file to the website s server including a verification meta tag on the homepage or signing in to the site s domain name provider. This tool is provided by Google at no charge so there is no excuse for any website to not have an account. Once a Google Webmaster Tools account is active, upon logging in Google will provide a list of recent alerts for each website being managed under the account. This is the first place to look for any issues that may have caused a loss of performance. More information on the issues identified, as well as a list of recommended actions, can be seen by clicking on View details MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 7

8 If there are no alerts or if the recommended actions from the alerts do not remedy the issue, the next place to look is in the Health section within the Google Webmaster Tools interface using the left sidebar navigation. There are several reports in the Health section, including Crawl Stats, Blocked URLs, Fetch as Google, Index Status and Malware. The Crawl Stats report is very useful in troubleshooting because it provides both a list of URLs that return errors and a timeline showing the total number of errors found on a day-to-day basis. This timeline can help pinpoint the day things went awry if there is a sudden increase in errors detected. For example, if a recent change to the website caused a number of pages to return server errors, that could definitely account for the loss of organic traffic. The Index Status report is another useful tool in troubleshooting on-site issues that can cause decreased traffic and keyword rankings. Reviewing the timeline for sudden changes in the number of Web pages Google has indexed can provide insight into exactly when these changes occurred so they can be attributed to on-site changes or search engine algorithm updates MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 8

9 Google Webmaster Tools provides a wealth of additional information, reports, alerts, recommendations and analyses that can not only help identify recent issues, but ensure maintenance of a healthy website going forward and is constantly being updated with increased capabilities. II. Screaming Frog In order to fully understand how a website is capable of performing in organic search, it s important to understand exactly what search engines will find when their spiders crawl the site. The best way to do so is by running one s own crawl of the website. The Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool is a desktop program that can do just that for free. Crawling a website with Screaming Frog returns a vast amount of data and is capable of identifying server errors, duplicate content, broken links, etc. that may not have been reported in Google Webmaster Tools. After downloading the desktop program, simply run it by entering the URL of the home page and clicking Start. The crawl will return various data points, segmented out of different tabs. For example, the Internal tab will list all internal pages linked from the page that was inputted, along with the status code. This makes it very easy to find broken internal links so they can be fixed immediately. Similarly, the External tab, will list all outbound links along with the status code. This will inform broken outbound links and, more importantly, links to pages that are redirecting. It s good practice to see where those URLs are redirecting to because there is potential for them to redirect to bad neighborhood sites (i.e., adult content, gambling, pharmaceuticals, etc.), which could reflect negatively on the website in question. The Page Titles and Meta Descriptions tabs can help pinpoint duplicate content issues by identifying duplicate title tags and meta description tags, respectively. If duplicate tags are identified, there is potential that the on-page content of those URLs is also duplicate. Even if performance issues have not occurred on a website, it s always a good idea to run regularly scheduled (i.e., monthly) Screaming Frog crawls simply to ensure there are no new problems that could lead to performance issues down the road MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 9

10 III. BrowSEO While Screaming Frog is useful for looking at a website as a whole and identifying server errors, and duplicate meta tags, it s also important to understand exactly what a search engine spider sees when it crawls each page. BrowSEO Spider Simulator provides a free look into a page as viewed by search engine spiders. In many cases, a webpage may have great information for users, but that information may not be visible to search engines. Therefore, the page does not get any credit for it by the search engines. BrowSEO is very easy to use. Simply input the URL of a webpage and click Browse. The tool will return two columns: a left-hand column containing each page element as it would be seen by a search engine spider (i.e., images, image alt tags, links, body copy, etc.); and a right-hand column that provides details about the various page elements (i.e., server response, word counts, character counts, meta tags, heading tags, etc.). Compare the spider simulation of the page to the actual version a user sees. If there is any important content visible to users but not spiders, the page is likely not being credited for that content and there is missed opportunity for organic search performance. When using BrowSEO for troubleshooting something like a traffic drop, a useful feature is the Check for Cloaking-Attempt available from the Check for fraud link in the right column. Cloaking will often exist on a page inadvertently, leading to search engine penalties. This feature compares the version of the page a spider sees to the version a user sees to ensure there is no cloaking being performed on the page MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 10

11 THE BEST SEO TOOLS FOR COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE Knowing what your competitors are doing and how they perform is key to developing a strategy to surpass them in organic search. By doing a bit of digging, one can uncover a great deal of learning from competitors who have already tested different elements of their SEO campaigns. Below is our review of four free SEO tools to help with a deep competitive analysis. I. Keyword Spy The first step in gaining competitive intelligence is identifying the top competitors. It may not always be evident as to who these competitors are in regards to SEO, especially because they may differ from competitors in other channels and on a per-keyword basis. Keyword Spy offers a free Organic Competitors report that can help identify who the top competitors are for a particular keyword. To find the competitors, simply enter a target keyword phrase into the search box, select the radio button for Keywords, click the Search button then, once data is populated, select the Organic Competitors tab. Using this tool to identify competitors can not only help identify competitors you may not have known about, but also lets you see how competition differs around different keywords. This list of competitors will be helpful when digging deeper into a competitive analysis using the tools described in the following pages MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 11

12 II. SEOTools for Excel SEOTools for Excel is an Excel add-on created that offers a great deal of value for many different aspects of SEO, one of those being competitive intelligence. For purposes of identifying what it is that sets a webpage apart from those ranking the best, SEOTools will easily pull together a variety of elements for a quick comparison. In order to use SEOTools, it must first be downloaded and installed. Detailed instructions are available on the download page. Once installed, the features can be accessed by selecting the SeoTools tab at the top of Excel. For the purpose of competitive intelligence around a certain keyword phrase, the first step is to search the phrase in Google to identify the top-10 results and add each URL as if a page of the site being optimized is already ranking well. If not, simply add a row at the bottom for the URL to compare to the top competitors MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 12

13 Once the list of pages to compare is complete, both on and off-page factors for each of the URLs can be pulled in to compare. As an example, by selecting the HTMLTitle metric from the Onpage menu into one of the columns, the title tag of each ranking page will be pulled into the column. This makes it very easy to see how the keyword usage within one s title tag compares with the top pages MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 13

14 There are, of course, many different data points that can be pulled into Excel using SEOTools for a deep competitive analysis. III. Site Comparison In order to take an on-page competitive analysis a bit further, the Site Comparison tool will show various important on-page elements side by side along with some important metrics of two URLs. This provides a deeper look at two pages in regards to how they compare from an SEO standpoint. Some of the elements compared include body text along with the code-to-content ratio, bolding/italicizing of keywords, keyword density, meta tags, headlines, internal links and outgoing links. This can provide great insight as to what page elements a competitor has better optimized for a target keyword. IV. Open Site Explorer Understanding the link profiles of top competitors is a good indicator of the types of keywords a site could be successful in targeting. For example, if a site has far less link authority than its competitors, it may not make the most sense to target very competitive keywords because they will be difficult to rank for. In that case, targeting less competitive longtail keywords may be a better strategy. Before deciding on an SEO strategy, it is important to understand the competitive landscape from an authority signal standpoint. Open Site Explorer can help you do just that. Simply input your domain, in addition to up to four competitor domains, and Open Site Explorer will return a wide range of authority metrics so you can see how your site stacks up MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 14

15 Knowing what sites are linking to competitors is also a good way to find potential link partners that will provide good authority value. This is another valuable competitive intelligence report that Open Site Explorer will provide. By downloading and running the Inbound Links report, you will be able to download a list of all the sites linking to a competitor s site. This list is a great first step in prospecting link opportunities. Start with the sites with the highest Domain Authority and reach out to request link partnerships MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 15

16 CONCLUSION It s not necessary to break the bank in order to run a successful SEO campaign. There are plenty of free tools available that can enhance SEO efforts by providing additional data and insight. Many of the tools referenced above have many other uses in addition to what is described. Taking some time to play around with each tool will help you discover features that can take your SEO to the next level. CONTACT Marc Purtell Director, SEO MediaWhiz mpurtell@mediawhiz.com ABOUT MEDIAWHIZ MediaWhiz is North America s leading performance marketing agency. We help clients engage, acquire and retain customers more profitably through the combination of performance marketing capabilities, proprietary technology and digital-media expertise. Practice areas include: Affiliate, Search, Mobile, Social Media, Display Advertising, and Data Acquisition. For more information, visit or follow us on Twitter WAYS TO CONNECT WITH MEDIAWHIZ MediaWhiz.com sales@mediawhiz.com 2013 MediaWhiz Inc. All Rights Reserved. 16