Links

We like to provide references to other great content related to Local Search as well as help out our friends with great web sites. If you have a site you’d like to see here please send me an email.

Keyword Research Resources

As we have mentioned before, keyword research is an essential element of a successful local search presence. These keyword tools should be in every person’s arsenal who does a web site or local search listing.

Google Keyword Research Tool- This is the primary keyword research tool of them all. Some people feel it’s results are a bit off. That might be true however, it still gives you the lay of the land for one or a number of keywords (and keyword phrases).
Google Keyword Trends- This is a visual view of one or more keywords over time. It really helps to determine the seasonality of selected keywords.
Google Keyword Insights- I like this tool for comparing the geographic performance of keywords. Great when planning PPC campaigns.
Google Search Based Keyword Tool- This tool looks at your site, or any site you select and suggests keywords to further examine.
Google Sets Keyword Tool- This tool takes groups of related keywords and selects more that might offer similar success.
Microsoft Keyword Research Tool- This is Microsoft’s offering. Using the AdCenter resources there are also some other related tools for research.
Keyword Discovery- This is a replacement to the old Overture keyword research tool. Once one of the best research tools it seems to have disappeared after Yahoo acquired Overture.
WordStream Keyword Management- The Free Keyword Tool is continuously updating a database of over a billion of the world’s most popular keywords, aggregating over a trillion unique searches.
Good Keywords- Good Keywords is free Windows software tool from Softnik Technologies for finding the ideal set of keywords for targeting your web pages.
SEMRush- Determine what keywords selected sites use. If you are creating a competitive site see what the competition is using so you can plan accordingly.
Microsoft Keyword Forecast Tool- This tool provides a forecast of impression count and predicts the demographic distributions of keywords. Just enter the keywords you’re targeting and you get the search forecast results, as reflected in Flash, pictures, or text.
Microsoft Search Funnels- Another great Microsoft tool for search marketing is the Search Funnel. It lets you visualize and analyze customers’ search sequences, so that you get an idea not just what they search for when they’re online but also, and more importantly, how – and in what order.

Competitive Analysis Tools

I like the phrase, “it’s not stealing, it’s research”. Now we don’t advocate stealing, but peering into your competitors site to find out how they do things is quite appropriate, legal and in my own opinion ethical. These are great resources to find out what the other folks are up too.

SpyFu- Spyfu is a tool that lets you find out what keywords your competitors are targeting in the search engines. Not just keywords, mind you, but AdWords, too. All you have to do is type your competitor’s site in SpyFu’s search bar, and voila! Immediate results that show you the keyword and AdWords landscape for that domain.
The Search Monitor- This tool is pretty neat because you can monitor so many things with it. With the competitor monitor, you can track market share, page rank, ad copy, landing page, and even the budget of your competitors on paid and organic search. With trademark monitor you can catch trademark abuse on paid search, or track the buzz about your brand or your competitor’s web-wide. Lastly, with affiliate monitor, you can check out your affiliates for TOU compliance, watch paid search activities, monitor ad and landing page copy, and perhaps even recruit your competitor’s affiliates.
Yahoo! Site Explorer- This free tool allows you to explore all web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. It offers a comprehensive site map for your competitor’s site (just type the URL in the box), where you can track the other sites that link to that website or the pages within it.
Compete PRO Search Analytics- The key to search marketing is focus. This tool gives you just that. It brings search marketing into plain view with paid and organic search trends, historical search referral data, and customization capabilities that allow you to filter top performing keywords as well as traffic for thousands of websites – including that of your competitors. With the Search Referrals tool, you can see what keywords drive traffic to a given site. With Keyword Destination, you see which sites get traffic from searches with similar keyword phrases.
Statbrain- Fill in a form on the Statbrain page and you instantly find out how many visits any site has. How does this work? Statbrain uses different resources on the Web (and a variety of search engines) and combines them with algorithms to produce an estimate of the number of visits a website gets.
Quantcast- This tool finds your audience for you. Quantcast provides one of today’s most accurate audience measurement services, and, best of all, it’s free. With the Marketer Checklist, you get to build detailed audience profiles and define the most receptive customer segments. You can also find similar audiences across the Web that “look like” those already interacting with your brand.
Linkscape- Powered by SEOMoz, Linkscape gives you access to the link data of over 54 billion URLs across 230 million domains. (Whoa.) With this information you can analyze what you competitors are doing successfully, and then use that as a potential strategy that will help you grow.
Domain Inbound Links Checker- This free computer program analyzes up to 1000 links to a specified webpage, as well as shows the domains of these backlinks. Keep in mind, though, that this is more than the usual host and IP backlinks checker, because it shows the different classes of URLs, like .edu, .com., .net, and .gov, among many others.
SEO Book Link Harvester- Link Harvester is a free web-based link analysis software that makes sorting out duplicate links from the same site easy. This thus allows you to quickly and deeply query the search engines’ backlink databases.

WordPress

It’s no secret, for the vast majority of small businesses WordPress is a great way to manage your website and blog on one Internet property. The basic platform is free and works well. Best of all there are thousands of great applications for WordPress. These are some of my favorite links.

Postscapes- A nice overview of WordPress and how to effectively use it for your business.
Premium Theme Directory- Great directory of premium WordPress themes.
WordPress Tips and Tricks- A great site with excellent tips, tricks and plug-ins for WordPress.

SEO Resources

SEO is important in getting your site found (like getting your business found in local search). Most sites have very weak SEO, which is sad considering it’s not all that hard to do a decent job. If you are in a highly competitive niche you will have a challenge ahead of you. However, for smaller niches a little SEO goes a long way. SEO is the gift that keeps on giving!

SEOmoz Internet Marketing Guide- A list of about 100 different SEO tools. A great resource for sure.
Web Site Grader- To check out your site, a web designers site or any site in particular for the strength and effectiveness of their SEO efforts be sure to use this great free tool.
15 Great SEO Tools for Free- A nice collection of different SEO tools. All free to use I believe.
Elance’s Ultimate SEO Toolbox- A list of about a dozen free SEO tools from the eLance blog.
Link Checker- Getting back links is one of the most important SEO tasks. Check and see how you are doing with this tool.
SEOmoz Open Site Explorer- From the SEOmoz tool kit, this application gives you a full or filtered look at links to your or your competitor’s site (and can compare them as well). See this great blog post on how to use Open Site Explorer to analyze a site’s backlinks using Excel.

Web Analytic Tools

If you don’t measure performance there is no way you can improve it. These ten tools are courtesy of Web Design Ledger. Note: Not all are free services.

JAWStats- If you like Awstats (sometimes included with your hosting account), you will certainly appreciate JAWStats as well. JAWStats runs in conjunction with Awstats and produces more graphics than Awstats.
goingup!- Goingup! is one more tool website stats freaks will love because it offers many kinds of statistical data, which is represented in visually attractive ways. A substantial part of the functionality of goingup! is SEO-related, so if you don’t use any other SEO-tools, this tool will do this job as well.
Clicky- Clicky also made the list of useful website analysis tools not only because it has tons of great features but also because it is one of the few website analysis tools you can use from your iPhone.
Google Analytics- Google Analytics is rightfully considered one of the best because it is really a comprehensive tool, which gives you tons of useful data about your site.
W3 Counter- W3Counter is a free, hosted website analytics solution for answering the key questions about your website: who’s your audience, how they find your site, and what interests them.
Woopra- Woopra is another excellent website analysis package. It has many, many features and there are webmasters, who name Woopra, not Google Analytics, the most comprehensive website analysis tool.
W3Perl- W3Perl can use server’s logfiles and/or be used as a page tagging tool. The perl scripts analyze logfiles and produce HTML/PDF reports. It can be run from the command line or from the web interface.
Piwik- Piwik has all the features you can expect from analysis application. Its main advantage is that its features come in the form of plugins, which means you can choose which features to get and which to skip.
TraceWatch- TraceWatch lets you keep track of the visitors to your website in real time with detailed statistics and deep analysis using an innovative user interface for FREE and helps you make your website more effective. It can be easily installed on any website supporting PHP and MySQL. You only need to upload some files to your server.
Snoop- Unlike almost all the other tools on the list, which are either used on the server of their developer, or have to be installed on your web host, Snoop is a desktop application. Snoop has a Windows and Mac version and after you install it, it runs in your tray and you get notified if an important event on your site occurs.

Web Site Evaluation Tools

Web Site Grader- This tool has indexed over two million sites and provides a 1 to 100 score card on how your site (or any one else’s) stacks up.
Yield Software- A nice overview of the status of various areas of your web site.
Woo Rank- Provides a nice list of tasks to improve your website. They refer a lot to the SEO for Dummies book which I think is a bit to low end for serious users.
CluePad- A new evaluation and recommendation tool developed at the Seattle Startup Weekend. Stay tuned for more developments.

Ranking Analysis Tool

When doing SEO work for your site it’s helpful to always remember your ultimate objective is a number one listing. However, it’s helpful to know where you are to start with, as well as your competitor sites.

Google Rankings
SEOmoz Rank Checker
Ranking Checker

Social Media Tools

Mashable’s Word of Mouth Marketing Tools- A nice list of tools from what I call the list site, Mashable.
Screen Cast Recording Tool for Twitter- Great web based utility from Screenr.

Other Great Sites from Friends and Great Businesses

Of course there are millions of great sites out there. These are a few of our favorites and some of them are by friends of ours. We’re helping them out with a little link love! Please visit them when you have a chance.

Biznik- A great networking group (primarily in Seattle).
Web 2 Review- A directory of more than 2,500 Web 2.0 business tools. Many of them free or very low cost.
IT-2-Channel- My friend George Zervos in the UK helps technology vendors getting channel management in the UK and Europe.
Siteleads- Want a web site that actually draws traffic? After all that’s what it’s there for! Check our friend Liam Scanlan’s work. It’s the best.