An SEO�s best friend (other than a stiff drink) is a good tool. Tools save us time and energy and streamline the process so we can get to making money instead of researching. They provide the information you need when you need it. But it is important to remember that knowing when to use a particular tool and how to use it is more important than any list.

This is why I�ve created Yoda�s ultimate tool to put all the tools one would need in 1 place. Since this list is too massive to fit in one post, it will be a multi-part list that will cover: Competitive Research, Keyword Research, Must have Firefox plug-ins, Reputation Management tools, PPC Tools, Domainer tools and my favorite non-conformist miscellaneous tools

So here we go: Part 1 � Competitive Research

Step 1: Who is your competitor and where have they been?
Competition Finder
A great tool, this shows you how many pages are indexed in google competing for your key terms. This will let you size up the competition and market saturation.

Archive.org will show you what their website looked like the past as well as give you the age of the site

Whois.sc
By adding this bookmarklet to your firefox browser you can find out the whois information for the site you are viewing simply by clicking on it.

Step 2: What kind of marketshare and traffic do they have?
Compete.com is one of my FAVORITE sites. They have a lot of great free tools (and some really cool paid for ones). You can compare sites, get traffic information and get an idea of how much your competitors are spending.

Index Rank
The first time I saw this was on SEOBook, (Aaron has some amazing tool�s listed there as well, so you should definitely check out that list too). Index Rank is incredible useful in showing you how many times Google is indexing your site compared to competitors sites.

SEO Quake is a pretty cool tool that shows you PR, # of pages indexed, Links, Alexa ratings, Age, whois info and density of every site you open in Firefox.

Who is linking to your competitors?

The Tattler
Originally posted by Todd, this is a great tool to scrape who is linking to your competitors

Backlink and Keyword Tracker
Totally free tool can be used to check search engines for the number of back links to any specific URL over time

Link Diagnosis is a is a great link hunting tool especially if you want to see what kind of anchor text your competitors are using.

Another great one, from a fellow chicklet�s site, is SEOmoz�s Backlink Analyzer. This shows the backlinks to a competitor�s website and the common anchor text. In general the SEOmoz tools section is a must read

What keywords are your competitors buying?
There are a several different tools that do this that vary in prices. Spyfu is a good option, that is not too expensive ($300 a year or about $40/month). It lets you see what keywords your competitors are buying up as well as see what they optimizing their site for.

Have they made any changes?
WatchThatPage will email you with any changes made to a competitor�s site or your site (although you probably should know that already)

Search for Broken Links
Xenu�s Link Sleuth will search for broken links on sire

Great Overall Site Analysis Tools
Last but not least, LinkVendor. This is a site filled with awesome research and site analysis tools.

Originally published on SEO Chicks

Okay, so it has been a little more than a week since Part I, but SES NY takes a long time to recover from.

There are a ton of keyword research tools and tool lists out there, but it is still incredibly important to have all of your tools in one place. There are a lot of familiar tools in here, but there should also be a some lesser known ones here as well.

Let’s start this off with an SEO snack provided to you by one of my newest friends, Gareth

Free Tools

SEObook�s ultimate keyword research tool is a great place to start. Another tool on the site, is the Google Scraper tool

We can�t forget everyone�s old favorites, the Adwords Keyword Tool or Overtures Keyword Selector (although it doesn�t always work)

Quintura shows keyword maps to help you to generate more keywords!

Track keyword trends with Blogpulse.

If anything, Kartoo is a lot of fun. It provides keyword maps of who is ranking for what terms. Results could be a little bette

Find your competitors Keyword!

Start off with figuring out how competitive a keyword is

Long tail keyword discovery shows you the 3, 4 and 5 term keywords for your (or a competitors) site.

SEO Digger is pretty awesome tool. Find out what keywords your site ranks in Google�s top 20 for, or use this to spy on the competition

Shoemoney review

Keyword Spy is great at finding what your competitors are bidding on and ranking for and you test it out for free right on their homepage. The free version only lets you see 10 results, but the paid version for $90/month lets you see a lot more.

Digitalpoints Keyword suggestion tool is another good free option. It also lets you specify what country you are looking for data for. They also have a free keyword position tracking tool.

Paid

Wordtracker has a 7 day free trial for their tool, otherwise, it is paid for at $329 a year. They also have very good free version of their keyword research tool.

Trellian�s keyword discovery is another fantastic tool. It draws info from over 180 search engines around the world and has keyword brainstorming tools as well as the ability to import import keyword lists and add descriptors. This is paid for with prices varying, but a 1 year standard subscription will run you about $600.

Keyword Discovery also won Best Keyword Research Tool in 2007 on www.toprankblog.com

Wordze has gotten a bit of a following with tools that let you perform keyword research, get historical keyword data, perform competitive research, and download top searches. They cost $45/month

Wordze also had a great deal of praise TopRank Blog

Wordze review on copyblogger.

AdGooroo, which also deserves a mention in Yoda�s Ultimate Competitive Research Tools Post is also a great keyword research tool. It allows you see what terms your competition is bidding on so you can make sure you don�t miss any opportunities. Prices range from $89/month to $399/month depending on what you need.

Spyfu also let�s you see what your competitors rank for as well as help you find new keywords to use fro your own site. They let you perform some research for free, but if you want to dig deep, it will cost you $308/year or $6.75 for 3 days

Miscellaneous

Shimon Sandler listed some keyword stemming tools on his site a while back that are very useful. Basically, they help you to take the stem of a word and build out additional keywords by adding in the variations of that term. Here are a few good ones:

http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/wordcheck/index.php?word=work

http://www.related-pages.com/adWordsKeywords.aspx

Other Great Keyword Research Lists

The other Loren (Baker that is) recently wrote a post at Search Engine Journal asking what keyword tools his readers liked � WordTracker, SEOBook, and Keyword Discovery seemed to make it out on top.

Mona Elesseily also put together a great list about spying on your competitors including Compete and Spyfu (mentioned above).

SEOBooks keyword research tool list is another great one.

Anne Smarty’s list on SEOMOZ is also very comprehensive

Originally Published on SEO-Chicks