what do you guys think of http://www.clickable.com ?

I have not used Clickable yet, but Kevin Lee mentioned them as a promising start up in an interview I did of him back in May...I believe they only recently came out of beta.

Sheesh – It's going to take me days to get through that lot. Thanks for ruining my free time! ;-)

Seriously though – there's a lot of stuff there that looks really useful so my thanks for taking the time to sort it out and post here.

Thanks for the list..Is sheerceo.com reliable?

I did not see a website at sheerceo.com, but saw one at sheerseo.com. It looks like an online ranking tracker...most likely it is fairly reliable.

Wonderful list. Thanks for this.

Thank you for your informative post, I like the slant on how you wrote this post. I definitely agree that search engine optimization is important for websites nowadays. Be sure to update your blog with more of such informative posts!

[Removed URL – Tony]

Hi,
sorry for my bad english. I just want to say that i like this Blog.
  
Best
  
Moni

This is a brilliant site I have to say. I had been asking around if newcomers such as KeywordSpy.com is one of the competitive ones that I should consider for online advertising? They're not really new but they're not as old timers too so I really want to know.

Search Engine Marketing Resources include keyword ranking tools, keyword suggestion tools, and general search engine marketing tools. A Webmaster can use these free tools to evaluate their site and then make the appropriate changes. For more at s2wd.com/resources.php

[Unlinked]

Thanks! I've been waiting for that Excel 2003 plug-in...appreciate the link!

Awesome list!

Another one people might like is the Free SEO tool at WebsiteGrader.com

[Unlinked]

great list, thanks.

Aaron, stumbled across this post looking for some posts about home improvement tools (being a home improvement blogger myself). I venture to say this post will actually be much more helpful to me in considering how to better develop and target content.

Is there any tool out there that quantifies the competition to rank for terms? E.g., it would be very difficult, at this stage in the internet game, to rank for the term "credit card" without significant investment. But there are other surrounding keyword and combinations that might still be open for targeting.

In all my research, I've basically been told, "You have to figure this out through trial and error." Any better suggestion than that?

Hi Fred
There are a number of tools that try to boil down the competitive nature of a keyword into a single number, and allow you to compare site x to site y. Of such tools, Trifecta seomoz.org/trifecta is probably the best one on the market.

My personal approach is not to look at a single number, but to consider a variety of data points. The tool I use to do so is SEO for Firefox tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html (mentioned in the guest post I made for Blogoscoped).

The download page for SEO for Firefox explains why I view looking at many data points as being important. Sites may rank well based largely on
- their link quality,
- their link anchor text
- their domain age
- their domain name
- their content
- some combination of the above

Thanks but all are paid tools. lol.

Excellent SEO optimization tool suggestions. I have spent lots of time looking thru them finding many useful ones for my purposes.

Thanks very much for posting this – it is one of the best lists for optimization around!

Professional Lab "but all are paid tools"

4 out of 4 keyword tools were free
3 out of 5 analytics tools had free versions
1 out of 2 rank checkers were free
6 out of 7 link analysis tools were free
9 out of 12 ppc tools were free
5 out of 10 competitive research tools had free versions

what is a good, affordable bid management tool? i'm looking at BidMax and BidHero. Just looking for something clean, simple and won't break the bank. Any thoughts/advice?

thanks.

John T
Given that the markets have become less transparent (quality score based bidding, etc.) and the ad networks more powerful (various match types, geotargeting, conversion price based bidding) for most advertisers on a small budget the best bet is going to be just using the platforms themselves and send them your conversion data. As you scale out and can afford an enterpise level solution you may want to try a third party.

One of the better lower end tools is keyword max @ $125 a month

if you want to go for free and have some technical chops you might like prosper202

I'd definitely use a combination of both a bid man. tool and the engine platforms themselves. The bid man. tool is just to take away the task of updating bids daily. I'll check out Keyword Max. Thanks!

what do you ppl think of Rank Tracker and SEO SpyGlass from link-assistant.com ?

What do you guys think of Kenshoo? I have seen their product and about to start with them..

Thanks!