I’ll be listing all the valuable SEO tools that I use myself here. There are probably thousands of different variations of SEO software, tools and programs but I usually stick to one tool. If you see one that you are comfortable with, why change unless there are more updated and reliable versions.

All in One SEO Package

If you could buy only one tool for your whole SEO career, I would most definitely buy the SEO Elite Software .There is nothing more frustrating then hopping around to six or seven different sites using separate tools and services. I’ve been using SEO Elite for a couple of years now and there are always free updates and improvements made to the software. Everything you need to do to boost your rankings in the search engine is available through SEO Elite and its one of the cheaper investments you could make. Some features I regularly use:

- article submissions
- link building and tracking
- keyword rankings checker?
- checking competitors incoming links
- Find high page ranked and quality sites

Free SEO Newsletter

I started off learning about SEO through buying an e-book. Silly me, I didn’t realize I could get the information for free.

1/ Brad Callen has an excellent 7 day crash course on search engine optimization through his newsletter. Sign up to his free newsletter through the SEO Elite website.

2/ The WebProNews newsletter is also great for updates, trends and general search engine marketing tips and hints.

Free SEO Forums

There is no better place than community forums when it comes to SEO. You will find most people are very helpful in forums cause they want to know answers and results themselves. Here’s a list of SEO I regularly visit:

Digital Point
Webmasters World
Search Engine Round Table
SEO Chat
High Rankings

To me, digital Point is the best one. The interface is easy on the eyes, clear and neat layout, also covers a wide range of topics including business, design and development which are essential if you are going to start an online business.

Free SEO Tools

Google Toolbar - It is so important to have this on Firefox (if you have explorer or any other browser, get rid of it!). Since Google is dominating the online presence at the moment, the Page Rank bar is can quickly tell you how valuable a site is when your surfing through various sites. More importantly you can quickly check whether a site is cached or not. If it isn’t cached, it means the page has not been optimized properly or is too new.

Yahoo Site Explorer - There will be a stage when you’ll have to start spying on your competitors. Type in their URL using this tool and find out who is linking to your competitors. If other sites are willing to link to them, the chances are they will link to you as well. Email these sites and negotiate a link exchange or other seo marketing partnerships.

Xinu - Check pagerank, backlinks, domain information, social bookmarks, indexed pages, and diagnosis of the meta tags. Check everything with one scan. Best thing about this page is that its neat. Most of the other free SEO tools I’ve seen are useful but dam ugly and visually disturbing.

Microsoft adcenter Lab - Check the keywords people are typing. There no point focusing your SEO energy on keywords people don’t search for. Keyword researching is extremely important before jumping into any link building campaign or even starting any website. Know who your competition then put together a plan as to how you will overtake them and be ranked no.1 in search engines.