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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The PPC Guide for Beginners, Part 2: Setting Your PPC Goals'

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This is Part 2 in a 5-part series. Read the rest of the series here:

• The PPC Guide for Beginners, Part 1

Okay. So, you are hopeful that a pay-per-click marketing campaign, correctly organized, could help jumpstart sales and bring in a sorely needed boost in revenue. You've heard about others who have succeeded with PPC, now you want to know whether the expenditures necessary to get your project on board would provide sufficient return on investment (ROI).

Let's talk about that – starting from the beginning.

What are the right goals for a PPC marketing campaign?

Everyone needs a goal – a destination. Sure, it can be fun to simply hop in the car and start driving … not knowing or caring where you end up or when you get there. Our busy lives don't allow that luxury often, though. Most of the time, our journeys require a good deal of planning.

via Patxi Izkue

That is especially true in business. Those who know the results they seek, and have a system in place to measure progress, are way ahead of any less-prepared competition.

Take a few minutes to think about what you hope to see happen in a PPC campaign. The bottom line, for most businesses, is sales – so how many ways can you think of that a concerted effort at PPC could help move your products or services?

• Do you utilize an online shopping cart for taking orders? Would it be helpful if more people found out about your company and visited your site? It's tough to beat a sales method that offers 24/7 access, is always smiling, and can have orders waiting for you when you get to the office in the morning (maybe even already shipped and on the way to your happy customers). Pay-per-click can help you realize that dream. The right strategy can bring you more business fast. But it all begins with goals.
• Are you trying to get better known, hoping to tie your name to your business focus? There was a time when anyone who wanted a soft drink needed a "coke" – even if the real desire was for a root beer. Coca-Cola became so entrenched in the minds of consumers that the name became ubiquitous. What if every potential buyer of automobiles in Dallas, Texas (for instance) thought of your business first when it was time for a new car or truck? Pay-per-click can help build your brand by consistently keeping your message in front of targeted consumers.
• Does your business work from leads? Do you have a sales force hungry for names and numbers of people interested in the things they are commissioned to sell? By focusing on lead generation, you can boost the number of inquiries entering your sales funnel and rapidly build your list of qualified prospects.

These are examples of strategic goals. The nuts and bolts of your PPC marketing campaign will consist of tactics – specific actions taken to improve your  click-through rate (CTR), grow your list of targeted keywords, and reduce your cost per conversion – but your goals must be clearly defined and understood by everyone on your PPC team before tactics can be effectively implemented.

Richard Farr, CEO of ConversionMax, says that someone just starting out with online PPC advertising should determine which goals "act as good leading indicators before the big ones will probably happen." Does your sales path require potential customers to watch a video, for instance, before requesting a quote? Then one of your first goals should be to get the right people to watch that video.

You see, it all begins with goals.

Now, let's have some fun.

What does NASA have to do with pay-per-click advertising?

When I was a business college undergraduate, I had the good fortune of sitting in on a series of classes given by a professor who had worked with the Apollo program at NASA. He was in the mission control center when astronaut Jim Lovell announced that the Apollo 13 crew "had a problem."

During one of our sessions, the professor turned to the class and asked, "How does NASA know when they have a problem?"

That's a good question – and, for that matter, how do you and I know when we have a problem? The answer is both simple and profound. Don't miss the significance: NASA defines a "problem" as a "deviation from a standard" – a gap between the expected situation and the current situation. Before you can have a problem, you must have expectations.

No goals. No problems.

Before you get going down the wrong road with that, though, let's consider how it plays out in the world of business.

Let's say you have determined it is essential for your company to realize gross sales of at least $50,000 this week (way too high for some, way too low for others … but let's say). You tally up the results on Friday and determine sales topped out at $10,000 for the week.

Do you have a problem?

One must, of course, set an acceptable deviation from the standard – but an 80% drop from sales expectations would likely qualify as a problem in anyone's book.

Let's take our thinking one step further: Once you realize you have a problem, what can you do about it?

How does NASA solve a problem?

The next part of the professor's story is so simple it can easily be set aside. Don't do that. There is a nugget here that can make all the difference in your business (or personal) life.

Here's the kicker:  Every problem contains its own solution.

When NASA detects a problem – a deviation from a standard – they determine the gap. For them, perhaps a certain pump is reading 20 psi, but it should be showing 35 psi. The gap, then, is 15 psi.

Your PPC marketing goal is different, but the concept is the same. You must describe the current situation ($10,000 in sales this week) and compare it to the expected or desired situation ($50,000 in sales this week). You then ask this critical question: How can we move from where we are to where we want to be?

In other words: "How can we close the gap?"

via Matthew Simantov

Rocket your PPC results by setting smart goals

Goals, standards, objectives – call them what you will, but they are essential to every successful journey. If you don't know where you want to go, you can't determine whether you are getting closer or further away. And once you have determined your goals, be sure to set acceptable deviations. That will give you a trigger point to tell you when some type of action is required.

The crew of Apollo 13 knew something had to be done. That set off a string of events that, first, determined the gap (a threat to the oxygen supply) and, then, a way to close it.

For most organizations, sales revenue is the oxygen supply. Without sufficient cash coming in, the business will, at some point, not be able to survive. Don't worry about all the intricacies and tweaks and theories of PPC right now. Break your situation down into its simplest denominators and organize them by priority. Determine where you are and where you want to go. Take a look at the gap between those two positions and envision the events and processes that must occur for the gap to be closed.

It is often helpful to work backwards, saying "We need $50,000 in sales this week. For that to happen, we must make presentations to 100 qualified customers. For that to happen, we must generate 500 targeted leads …" you get the picture.

Then ask one question: How can a PPC campaign help me get from here to there?

In the next installment of this series, we will talk about what to do with a click once you have it. After all, PPC isn't just one event. It is a series of events leading to the desired result. And it all begins, yes it does, with setting the right goals.

This is a guest post by Don Sturgill, a freelance writer and speaker from Bend, Oregon—PPC capital of the world. Don is the author of The Roadmap to Freedom, a work focused on helping entrepreneurs reach their dreams.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

You may view the latest post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordStreamBlog/~3/RE1dCdjp0Ws/ppc-guide-for-beginners-2 You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Backlinks Online] Subject Matter Experts and Their Role in Digital Marketing Strategy - Whiteboard Friday

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Subject Matter Experts and Their
Role in Digital Marketing Strategy - Whiteboard Friday'


Posted by Eric Enge

Establishing expertise and thought leadership is key to the success of your
digital marketing strategy. In today's Whiteboard Friday, learn how your team
can work with (or become!) subject matter experts in your niche, giving
consumers of your content a chance to learn from the best.






Whiteboard Friday - Eric Enge - Subject Matter Experts and Their Role in
Your Digital Marketing Strategy






For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!



Video Transcription



Good morning everybody in Moz land. I'm Eric Enge, I'm the CEO of Stone
Temple Consulting. I'm here to do a Whiteboard Friday here for you today. By the
way, I'm also co-author of "The Art of SEO" together with the beloved Rand
Fishkin.


So I want to talk to you a little bit about subject matter experts and their
role in your digital marketing strategy. They play an incredibly important role.
I see lots of businesses out there that publish sites and they put content out
there and there's really no identity behind them. It's really important because,
at the end of the day, your target audience wants to attach to a person more
than they want to attach to a nameless entity. They want to feel like they're
interacting with real people.


By the way, your subject matter expert could be subject matter experts,
plural, and that's good, but incredibly important that you have something,
somebody where people can attach to them in a material way. And at the end of
the day, from my perspective, you have to have an expert or go home. You're just
not going to be able to succeed in a big way going forward if you don't have
some sort of established expertise for your business. That's my view of it. You
just have to have that expert, or you need to go home.


So with that in mind, you run into the next problem. Your experts are human
beings. There are 24 hours in a day, right? They have limited time to do what
they need to do, and that actually limits how much scale you can get out of
their activity. Maybe they only have two hours a day. And if that's the case,
then that limits how much content and how much communication of that expertise
can happen out in the wild.


So I want to talk now a little bit about how do we scale their efforts so
you get more out of your expert, and that's where we lead to a few ideas I have
over here. All right.


Best thing to do is see if you can get some smart young people, don't
necessarily have to be young, but smart people to assist your subject matter
expert in a number of different ways. Some great things you can do to help them
out, one is you can research article topics. I know for myself, when I get up on
Saturday morning, which is when I tend to write my columns, I sometimes spend
two hours trying to come up with an idea for what the column is going to be
about. It can be very painful, very frustrating. If you have somebody there
helping you, coming up with ideas and really giving you a set of things that you
can look at and think about for that next column or blog post or whatever it is,
it can be a big, big help for you.


You can even potentially have them draft articles for you. You need to be
careful about this. I'm actually not a big fan of ghost writing, because keeping
in mind that people want to attach to an expert, if the thing is truly
ghost-written, well, it's not really the expert that's writing it, and to me
that relationship gets weakened. So I think it's very important to have the
subject matter expert really be involved in writing the article. But you can
have someone draft an article as long as the subject matter expert sort of
recuts it and tears it apart, not just simple editing, but actually turns it
into their own voice. Can be very helpful though to have that drafted article.


Find influencers. Very, very important thing to do. Who do you want that
subject matter expert to build relationships with? That can be a lot of work to
figure out too. You can use a variety of tools to figure this out. You can do
social media research, just bum around on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, whatever
your social site of preference is, or all of them, and help identify people that
you want have the subject matter expert interact with. Figure out how to contact
them, do research on what they like, help get that relationship process going.
Subject matter expert has to be the one to do the outreach, but you can make it
easier for them by doing some research up front.


Next thing, just monitoring social media sites. I'm going to use Twitter as
an example. Find tweets by key people, maybe by influencers, maybe just by good
friends. Have your assistant, basically, help the subject matter expert by
monitoring, in this case Twitter, more frequently and more thoroughly than they
can on their own. So that's a very valuable service. So you look at tweets by
key people and tweets by others, direct questions that get asked of you, or
breaking news, all these sorts of things to allow the subject matter expert to
be responsive without having to live in the social media site.


Next up, you can draft actually social media posts, be it a tweet or Google+
or Facebook or whatever it is, and then send your subject matter expert proposed
things that they can put out on social media. Again, a big time-saver.


You can curate content for them. The assistant can go ahead and research
other articles and find things going on and actually suggest comments on those
articles.


Creating graphics, I'm lucky enough that I have someone who is able to
create graphics for me. So I can walk in, in the morning and say, "Hey I want to
do this post today," and I can sketch out a little design, here's what I want to
do, I want this, sort of build a little design for them, and then they go off
and create it and then two hours later I have a beautiful graphic which I can go
ahead and use for my post. I actually end up with a lot of custom graphics in my
posts that way, which is really cool.


They can also just edit your articles. Hopefully, that's not too painful for
them, because hopefully your subject matter expert is a good writer. But this is
another valuable service. It's really great to have that person, that other set
of eyes on the article to help you with that.


The big key in all these services that I've talked about, which will help us
lead to our happy SME down here in the bottom, is all about the relationship
between the assistant and the subject matter expert. The assistant has to be
doing things the subject matter expert finds valuable. So, if I'm a subject
matter expert and I don't find your curating content for me valuable because I'm
just too opinionated or I don't want to put that stuff out there, then having
you do that for me doesn't help. So the subject matter expert and the assistant
or assistants, as the case may be, have to build a special relationship so that
they understand how to work together and really make it work.


So that's some ideas for you on how you take your subject matter expert, you
give them a little more time, and help them scale their efforts, leading to a
happy subject matter expert and good results for your business.


Thanks for listening to me today, and have a good day.




Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Build Backlinks Online
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[Build Backlinks Online] Behind the Curtain of a Sports Social Media Giant

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Behind the Curtain of a Sports
Social Media Giant'

Bryan Srabian, Director of Social Media for the San Francisco Giants, joins the
Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss dedicating a physical space to social,
basing an editorial calendar on the baseball game schedule, and how to handle
rivalries in the Twittersphere. Read on for some of the highlights and tweetable
moments, or listen [...]Behind the Curtain of a Sports Social Media Giant is a
post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing
Strategy


You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-pros-podcast/behind-the-curtain-of-a-sports-social-media-giant/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=behind-the-curtain-of-a-sports-social-media-giant

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Backlinks Online] How Website Speed Actually Impacts Search Ranking

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How Website Speed Actually
Impacts Search Ranking'

Posted by Zoompf



Google uses a multitude of factors to determine how to rank search engine
results. Typically, these factors are either related to the content of a webpage
itself (the text, its URL, the titles and headers, etc.) or were me...

You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/LnPVRxE6geo/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Backlinks Online] 3 Ideas From Oreo to Infuse Creativity & Fun Into Your Social Media Content

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '3 Ideas From Oreo to Infuse
Creativity & Fun Into Your Social Media Content'

Have the dog days of summer resulted in a creative roadblock when it comes to
your social media content? They say good things come in threes, so who better to
seek creative inspiration from than Oreo. Long after generating worldwide kudos
for the Daily Twist campaign and famed real-time marketing dunk in the dark
sensations, [...]3 Ideas From Oreo to Infuse Creativity & Fun Into Your Social
Media Content is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy


You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-image-of-the-week/3-ideas-from-oreo-to-infuse-creativity-fun-into-your-social-media-content/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=3-ideas-from-oreo-to-infuse-creativity-fun-into-your-social-media-content

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Backlinks Online] Do You Need Multiple Domain Hosting For Your Multiple Sites?

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Do You Need Multiple Domain
Hosting For Your Multiple Sites?'

Most website owners start with one website, one blog, and one site to call their
own. A growing number of site owners need multiple domain hosting. Find a
hosting company that will support multiple site hosting. While most hosting
companies do offer mu...

You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/XHptUscLvaU/multiple-domain-hosting.html

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Backlinks Online] The 100 Best Free SEO Tools & Resources for Every Challenge - Interactive

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The 100 Best Free SEO Tools &
Resources for Every Challenge - Interactive'


Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

At Moz, we love using premium SEO Tools (especially our own). Paid tools are
essential when you need advanced features, increased limits, historical
features, or online support.


For other tasks, a free tool does the trick.


Below you'll find an interactive list of 100 best completely free tools, tools
with both free and paid options, and free trials. Simply select the checkbox for
the area you're working in, and view the tools forr that category.




Select All/NoneA/B TestingAnalyticsAPIsCompetitive
IntelContentCRODiagnosticEmailInfographicsKeyword ResearchLink BuildingLink
ResearchLocalProductivityRank TrackingRobots.txtSERP
TrackingSitemapsSocialSpeedStructured DataTechnical SEOToolbarTools SuiteVideo






Free Tools


Anchor Text Over Optimization Tool

http://www.removeem.com/ratios.php


Link Research, Technical SEO


Worried about Google's Penguin algorithm hitting you for over-optimized
anchor text? Simply type in your URL for a full report of which links might
raise flags.



Bing Webmaster Tools

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster


Tools Suite, Diagnostic


Similar in function to Google Webmaster Tools, Bing offers a suite of
interesting research tools and resources for webmasters.



Bitly

https://bitly.com/


Social, Analytics


Most people use Bitly for URL shortening, but the real power of this
platform comes from its analytics.



Boomerang

http://www.boomeranggmail.com/


Email, Productivity


Boomerang lets you follow up on emails, even when you forget. Great for link
building or any time you send a lot of emails.



Buffer

https://bufferapp.com/


Social


Optimize your online social media sharing. Buffer allows you to share with
your audience at the optimal times for greater visibility.



BuiltWith

http://builtwith.com/


Competitive Intelligence


Use BuiltWith to discover what technology nearly any website was, well,
built with. Great for competitive intelligence as well.



Buzzstream Tools Suite

http://tools.buzzstream.com/link-building


Link Building, Tools Suite, Email


Most people know Buzzstream as an outreach platform, but they also offer a
number of free link-building tools. This company gets it.



Caption Tube

http://captiontube.appspot.com/


Video


Free and easy resource used to create captions for YouTube. Helps with
usability and offers viewers a readable transcript.



CircleCount

http://www.circlecount.com/


Social, Analytics


Google+ analytics ramped up. Free resource to track your followers and
analyze your shares. See how many followers you've gained over time.



Content Strategy Generator Tool

http://seogadget.com/content-strategy-generator-tool-v2-update/


Content


This tool from SEOgadget helps you plan your content strategy intelligently,
using keyword research and estimating your audience size.



Convert Word Documents to Clean HTML

http://word2cleanhtml.com/


Content, Productivity


Despite the rise of Google Docs, Word still dominates much of the world.
Copying and pasting has always been a hurdle, but this tool makes it easy.



Copyscape

http://www.copyscape.com/


Content


Copyscape serves both as a plagiarism checker and a duplicate-content
checker. Great to use if your content has been distributed across the web.



Domain Hunter Plus

http://domainhunterplus.com/


Link Building


This magic extension for Chrome not only helps you find important broken
links, but also tells you if the links point to an available domain.



Easel.ly

http://www.easel.ly/


Infographics


Free tools for creating and sharing inforgraphics. The templates allow
anyone to create a professional-looking graphic.



Email Format

http://email-format.com/


Email, Productivity


Email Format helps you find the proper structure for thousands of companies
and organizations across the web.



FindPeopleonPlus

http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/


Social


The ultimate Google+ directory that's great for research, outreach, and link
building. Sort by keywords, profession, country, and more.



Frobee Robots.txt Checker

http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check


Robots.txt, Technical SEO


Many robots.txt files contain hidden errors not easily visible to humans.
Run your file through this tool and you never know what you'll discover.



GetListed

https://getlisted.org/


Local, Moz


This awesome local SEO tool scores your local SEO visibility and gives you
actionable next steps to raise your score.



Google Keyword Planner

http://adwords.google.com/keywordplanner


Keyword Research


The tool to replace Google's popular keyword tool has been derided by some,
but still offers data not available anywhere else.



Google Analytics

http://www.google.com/analytics/


Analytics


The most popular of all the analytics tools available, Google Analytics
continually innovates and sets the standard.



Google Analytics API

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008004?hl=en&ref_topic=1008008


API, Analytics


The Google Analytics API is great for building custom reports and tools, and
also for pulling data straight into Excel or Google Docs.



Google Map Maker

http://www.google.com/mapmaker


Local


Among other things, Google Map Maker allows you to contribute to public map
information, which may be shared and incorporated into Google Maps.



Google PageSpeed Insights

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights


Speed


Tools, data, and insights to improve your page speed. Page speed is
correlated with better rankings and user engagement, so this matters.



Google Public Data

http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory


Content


Drawing on vast public databases, Google public data offers a great starting
point for content research, infographics, and more.



Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool

http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html


Technical SEO, CRO


That SEO Mofo! Use this tool to see how your snippet may appear in Google's
search results. Add structured data, review stars, and more.



Google Structured Data Testing Tool

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets


Structured Data, Technical SEO


If you use Schema.org microformats or any other type of structured data,
this tool will verify your markup.



Google Trends

http://www.google.com/trends/


Keyword Research


See what's trending in Google search results and view keyword search
popularity over time. A must for trends.



Google Webmaster

http://www.google.com/webmasters/


Tools Suite, Diagnostic


The interface recently received an overhaul, and Google Webmaster remains a
must-have resource of diagnostic and health tools for site owners.



IFTTT

https://ifttt.com/


Productivity


IFTTT stands for IF This, Then That. The tool allows you to create automatic
triggers between various apps, like Gmail and Twitter.



Infogr.am

http://infogr.am/


Infographics


A great free Infographics resource that allows you to easily create graphics
and data visualizations.



Internet Marketing Ninjas SEO Tools

http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/tools/


Tools Suite


The Ninjas are some of the best SEOs and online marketers out there, and
they've put some of their best tools online for free.



Linkstant

http://www.linkstant.com/


Link Building


This nifty analytics tool alerts you anytime someone links to your website.
Great for outreach and intelligence gathering.



Linksy.me Email Guesser

http://linksy.me/find-email


Email, Link Building


Need to send an email, but you don't have the recipient's address? Type in
what you know and this nifty tool will help you figure it out.



MailTester.com

http://mailtester.com/


Email


Need to send an email to an untested address, but you don't want to spam
them? Check it first with this mail tester to verify.



MozCast

http://mozcast.com/


SERP Tracking, Moz


Want to know if Google is testing its algorithm this week? MozCast gives you
a daily weather report to track changes in the SERPs.



MyBlogGuest

http://myblogguest.com/


Link Building, Content


Guest blogging is still alive and thriving. MyBlogGuest helps you find the
good opportunities out there.



Panguin Tool

http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/


Analytics


This awesome tool connects with your Google Analytics account to help you
see if and when you've been hit by Google Algorithm updates.



Pingdom

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/


Speed


Pingdom offers an entire suite of speed tools to help analyze page load, DNS
issues, and connectivity.



Piwik

http://piwik.org/


Analytics


Piwik is a lightweight web analytics solution, and a great alternative to
Google Analytics.



Rank Checker for Firefox

http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/


Rank Tracking


This light and easy desktop tool checks rankings with the click of a button.
Quick, easy and free.



Rapportive

http://rapportive.com/


Email, Link Building, Productivity


Rapportive works with your Gmail inbox to give you near-instant rich contact
information for almost everyone you want to reach. A must-have for marketers.



Remove Duplicate Items

http://ontolo.com/tools-remove-duplicates


Productivity


Ontolo offers a suite of link building software and a few helpful
productivity tools for link builders. The remove duplicates tool solves a common
problem.



Robots.txt Checker

http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml


Robots.txt, Technical SEO


Use robots best practices and discover hidden errors in your robots.txt
files that may cause search engine crawling problems.



Schema Creator

http://schema-creator.org/


Structured Data, Technical SEO


Everyone loves using Schema.org, but the microformats are difficult to write
by hand. This generator from the folks at Raven simplifies the task.



Scraper for Chrome

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scraper/


Productivity


If you've never scraped a webpage, you're missing out. Scraper for Chrome
puts the power of simple web scraping in your hands without the need for code.



Seer Toolbox

http://www.seerinteractive.com/seo-toolbox/


Tools Suite, Analytics, Link Research


SEER opened up its internal toolbox for everyone in the world to use. These
are the same tools used in-house at SEER, and they rock.



SEO Toolbar

http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/


Tools Suite, Toolbar, Technical SEO


On of the most popular tools available, The SEO Toolbar puts a ton of
information at your fingertips including backlinks and competitive research.



SEO Tools for Excel

http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/


Tools Suite, Analytics, Social


You don't need to be an Excel ninja to use Niels Bosma's SEO Tools for
Excel. This plugin does so many things many SEOs won't work without it.



SEOgadget Links API

http://seogadget.com/api/


API, Link Research


The SEOgadget Links API lets you easily gather not only backlink data but
contact information as well. A huge time saver.



SEOgadget Tools

http://seogadget.com/tools/


Tools Suite


This suite of tools from the Gadget lab includes several Excel plugins, a
content strategy generator, and more.



SEOQuake

http://www.seoquake.com/


Toolbar, Tools Suite, Technical SEO


More raw data than any other SEO toolbar out there.



SharedCount

http://www.sharedcount.com/


Social, Analytics


Want to know how any piece of content was shared socially across the major
services? This is the tool to use.



SharedCount API

http://www.sharedcount.com/documentation.php


API, Social


Harnessing the combined statistics of Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and more,
the SharedCount API puts a ton of social data at your fingertips.



Similar Page Checker

http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php


Content, Technical SEO


Use this tool to check for duplicate content issues. The Similar Page
Checker will give you a score of how closely the HTML of two pages resemble each
other.



Sitemap Generators

http://code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/wiki/SitemapGenerators


Sitemaps


Google offers a slew of free, top-notch sitemap generators. Most of these
live on your server and generate new sitemaps automatically.



Social Authority API

https://followerwonk.com/social-authority


API, Social


How much reach and social authority do your followers have? How about the
people you're trying to connect with? The free Social Authority API will tell
you.



Social Crawlytics

https://socialcrawlytics.com/


Social, Analytics


Social Crawlytics allows you to conduct competitive research by showing you
your competitors' most-shared content. Lots of other features as well.



Social Mention

http://www.socialmention.com/


Social


Social mention offers real-time social media search and analysis. Enter a
search term and see who's sharing what, right now.



Text Cleaner

http://www.textcleanr.com/


Content


Some of the best tools solve the simplest problems. Text cleaner cleans up
all kinds of text formatting when copying and pasting between aplications.



Ubersuggest

http://ubersuggest.org/


Keyword Research


Every SEO loves Ubersuggest for its ease of use and wealth of keyword
research ideas. Utilizing the power of Google Suggest, it returns hundreds of
potential results.



URI Valet

http://urivalet.com/


Technical SEO


A great tool for digging into server headers, canonical information,
analyzing redirect problems and more.



Virante SEO Tools

http://www.virante.org/seo-tools


Tools Suite


Virant offers a number of high quality SEO tools to the public. These are
often the same tools developed for the Virant team, opened up for public use.



Wayback Machine

http://archive.org/web/web.php


Competitive Intelligence


Want to see the history of your website or your competitor's site? The
Wayback Machine allows you to step back in time and track important changes.



WebPagetest

http://www.webpagetest.org/


Speed


Quick and easy website speed tool. Offers suggestions for improving
performance.



Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/


Content


Create beautiful word clouds. Great for visualizations, graphics, and
research.



Wordstream Free Keyword Tools

http://www.wordstream.com/free-keyword-tools


Keyword Research, Tools Suite


In addition to its paid offerings, Wordstream offers a suite of free keyword
tools offering access to thousands of keyword suggestions.



Xenu's Link Sleuth

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html


Diagnostic, Technical SEO


Winner of the ugliest-SEO-tool-on-the-planet award, Xenu is also one of the
most useful. Crawl entire sites, find broken links, create sitemaps, and more.



XML-Sitemaps.com

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/


Sitemaps


XML-Sitemaps offers probably the easiest sitemap creation solution anywhere.
Great for smaller sites when you need a sitemap in minutes.



Yahoo Pipes

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/


Content, Productivity


A great mashup tool that combines different feeds into content and other
magical creations. Used for link building and whatever you can dream of.



Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/


Technical SEO


If you could only choose one WordPress plugin for you site, the first would
be from Yoast, and so would the second. This one sets the standard.



YouTube Analytics

https://www.youtube.com/analytics


Video, Analytics


Offers video-specific analytics for YouTube videos. A must-have for YouTube
video publishers.


Free and Paid


Ahrefs

https://ahrefs.com/


Link Research, Link Building


One of the more popular link research tools, Ahrefs offers a large index and
nice anchor text distribution charts. Mostly a paid tool, but they offer some
free data.



Banana Tag

http://bananatag.com/


Email


Banana Tag allows you to track your emails after you send them. For example,
check your email open rates from Gmail.



CloudFlare

https://www.cloudflare.com/


Speed


How do they make CloudFlare free? It works both as a CDN and a security
service to provide your website with speed and safety.



Followerwonk

https://followerwonk.com/


Social, Analytics, Moz


Perhaps the coolest thing about Followerwonk is the ability to track your
followers. Smart SEOs also use it for outreach and research.



Keyword Eye

http://www.keywordeye.com/


Keyword Research


Keyword eye adds a twist to keyword research by adding rich visualizations
â essential when you want to move beyond keywords to valuable concepts.



KnowEm

http://knowem.com/


Social


KnowEm allows you to check 100's of social profiles at once to check
availability. Looking for the perfect brand name? Check KnowEm first.



Majestic SEO

http://www.majesticseo.com/


Link Research, Competitive Intelligence, Link Building


You've probably seen Majestic SEO link charts all over the Internet. Great
crawling technology combined with several free options make for great link
research.



Majestic SEO API

http://blog.majesticseo.com/general/majestic-seo-api-now-explained/


API, Link Research


Majestic makes much of its backlink data available for free via its API.



MozBar

http://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar


Tools Suite, Toolbar, Moz


The standard SEO toolbar for legions of marketers, the MozBar allows you to
perform over 50 key tasks right from your browser. Highly recommended.



Mozscape API

http://moz.com/products/api


API, Link Research, Moz


Companies everywhere incorporate the Mozscape API into their own products,
but it's also available to individuals, and much of the data is free.



nTopic

http://www.ntopic.org/


Content


nTopic is one of the few proven methods for giving your content a relevancy
score and offering keyword suggestions to improve it.



Open Site Explorer

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/


Link Research, Moz, Competitive Intelligence, Link Building


When Google and Yahoo started removing backlink data from the public, Moz
built Open Site Explorer to fill a huge need. See backlinks, anchor text,
popularity metrics and more.



Piktochart

http://piktochart.com/


Infographics


A cute and easy infographic generator. No experience required.



RowFeeder

https://rowfeeder.com/


Social, Analytics


RowFeeder allows you to track social usernames, hashtags and keywords and
load that information into Excel for easy social media monitoring.



Screaming Frog

http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/


Diagnostic, Technical SEO


A powerful website crawling tool with a ton of features and customizations.
A must-have for most serious SEOs.



Searchmetrics Visibility Charts

http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research


SERP Tracking, Competitive Intelligence


Track the search visibility of any website, in addition to tracking winners
and losers in Google's search results.



SEMrush

http://www.semrush.com/


Tools Suite, Keyword Research, Competitive Intelligence


The paid and organic keyword data offered by SEMrush is often scary good and
comprehensive. Also great for researching competitors' ads.



SERPmetrics

http://serpmetrics.com/flux/


SERP Tracking, Competitive Intelligence


SERPmetrics flux charts track the flux for US search results across Yahoo,
Bing and Google over a 30-day period. A paid API is also available.



SimilarWeb

http://www.similarweb.com/


Competitive Intelligence


Impressive competitive intelligence across a number of online industries.
Competitor website stats are hard to come by, but Similar Web does a good job.



StatCounter

http://statcounter.com/


Analytics


Free, quick, and lightweight analytics solution. Often used by those who
want to avoid using Google Analytics for privacy reasons.



Trello

https://trello.com/


Productivity


Project management and tracking made simple. Used and endorsed by Moz.



Whitespark Local Citation Finder

https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/


Local


Finding local citations is key to local SEO. Whitespark offers a number of
free and paid solutions to find the local citations to rise above the
competition.



Whois Lookup

http://whois.domaintools.com/


Competitive Intelligence


Find registration, contact, and administrative information for any domain.



Wistia

http://wistia.com/


Video


The king of online video, Wistia offers SEO-friendly solutions for video
hosting. Both free and low-cost options available.


Free Trials


Moz Analytics

http://moz.com/products


Tools Suite, Diagnostic, Moz, Rank Tracking, Social


The flagship of the Moz software suite, Moz Analytics offers a dashboard of
all your important marketing data in one place with actionable analytics for
better marketing.



Optimizely

https://www.optimizely.com/


A/B Testing, CRO


Easy A/B testing and analytics to help you move toward success in your CRO
efforts.



Raven

http://raventools.com/


Tools Suite, Diagnostic, Content, Social


Raven offers a classic suite of SEO, content, and research tools popular
with many marketers.



Visual Website Optimizer

https://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/


A/B Testing, CRO


Visual Website Optimizer allows you to run A/B tests with a simple online
editor that lets you test content without knowing code.



Wordtracker

http://www.wordtracker.com/


Keyword Research


A powerful keyword research suite used by many top marketers, Wordtracker
offers a generous free trial option.




What's your favorite free tool?

Narrowing a list down to the 100 best SEO tools and resources is not an easy
challenge. Although I visited hundreds of webpages to compile this list, these
four resources offered particular value:


Annie Cushing's Must-Have Tools for Marketers
The Tools page at Inbound.org

Dr. Pete's APIs for Data-Driven Marketers

Free SEO Tools - A Curated List


The format for this ultimate interactive post was inspired by Jon Cooper's
complete list of link building strategies. You should check it out â it's
a great post.


Despite researching hundreds of tools, a few great ones didn't make the list.
What's your favorite free SEO tool? Let us know in the comments below.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
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