SEO: 4 Free and Simple SEO Tools

by CariThompson on December 20th, 2012 | 5 Comments »

Search Engine Optimization seems to be this elusive thing that is constantly changing and forcing us bloggers to rethink our tactics. You can always look to SEO agencies to make everything better. But if you aren’t to make that investment, here are four free tools that can help make your blog posts search engine and user friendly.

Ubersuggest

Benefit: Suggests current highly ranking keywords

Ubersuggest is a great site to give you blog post ideas. If you have a blog subject in mind, just enter your idea into the search field and Ubersuggest will give you tons of related topics that are currently trending. This is great if you want to write a series of posts or if you are just having writer's block.

Google Trends

Benefit: Determines what keywords have the higher search volume

Let’s say you want to write a post about crafts. Craft ideas are searched all the time but you want to know between snowman, winter, and Christmas crafts which one subject will get you the most traffic. Just throw your different search terms into Google Trends and it will compare the search volume for you. Now you know what direction to go with your post and what keyword to use. Easy!

Yoast

Benefit: Helps optimize title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords

Yoast is a fantastic WordPress plugin that will change your life. The screenshot below is all you need to know in order to love this plugin. It allows you to enter the keyword you want to rank for in your post, then it gives you other keyword suggestions based on the content of your post. It then helps you optimize an SEO title (Title Tag) and meta description to better rank in the search engines. This is a great example of how one can improve search rankings with smart technology. Then it gives you a cool little preview at the top of how your post will display in search engines.

Zemanta

Benefit: Suggests in-text links, images, and related articles

Zemanta is also a WordPress plugin that will make your life infinitely easier. Since search engines dig incoming and outgoing links, what it does is takes the content of your blog post and makes link, image, and related articles suggestions. So if you talk about Groupon in your blog post, Zemanta provides the link to Groupon as well as it’s logo so you can pop them into your post without having to search for their website or that perfect image. It saves tons of time. And it also suggests links and related articles you might not have thought to include.

There are tons of other great SEO resources out there, but these are great for those blogging beginners that want something simple and cheap. Some other great tools to look into are Google Adwords to help you find high ranking keywords with low competition and Google Analytics is a great way to monitor the performance of individual blog posts to help you decide on future posts.

Do you use any of these tools? What do you do to make your blog posts more search engine friendly?

Cari Thompson—the artist formerly known as Cari Stewart—is a wife, copywriter, online marketer, and blogger. She currently lives in the mommy blogger space as an editor, SEO specialist, and account manager. Her three greatest accomplishments: beating Super Mario 3 in one night without a whistle, drumming for tens of people, and licking an ice sculpture at the Versace Mansion. Check her out at caristewart.com, dougandcari.com, LinkedIn, and Twitter.