SEO software - any recommendations?

[pickupthismess]

Hi,I want to get hold of some SEO software (preferably free ) to analyse my new website.

I need to look at my keywords and so far have a list of around 300 based on analysing competitors sites. I now need to see how often they are search on.

Can anyone help?

bump

Google Analytics is fairly powerful - if you mean that you want to track how people find your own website, what pages they visit, how long they stay. You can set up Goals, so you can see how someone got to the point of placing an order for example.

Google Analytics is not real time... it is delayed data - typically I find that it is around 12-16 hours behind, but it varies. You need to put a bit of JavaScript on every page you want tracked (you can also add it to the onclick event for links to documents, so that you know how many people downloaded a PDF for example).

For real-time, I use TWATCH. TWATCH is for sites which use PHP with MySQL (it can be picky about which version of PHP is running on the server, as I tried to install it on a new account recently and it failed to install).

I would suggest using a hosted tracking system such as Google Analytics, as it is easier to configure.

Thanks. I use analytics but I want to look more at what people are searching under i.e. keywords. Is TWatch good for that?

Please explain to me what you want to find out, as I do not understand what you are trying to achieve.

Analytics tells you what keywords people use in search engines to find your site, so you have those keywords lists already.
To find in Google Analytics: Traffic Sources - Keywords
Or if you want to find what keywords were use in a particular search engine: Traffic Sources - Search Engines - Then click on the name of the search engine.
TWATCH would just tell you the same thing, in real time, so you could see search queries made in the past few minutes for example. TWATCH does not store the data as long as Google Analytics, so Analytics is in my view better for doing keyword research.

Do you have a Google Adwords account?
If you already have search phrases and you want to see roughly how many times that phrase is searched on Google in an a typical month, then Adwords will now present that data, if Google has sufficient data to give that search phrase a traffic ranking.

For example:
(Note: My account settings are set for UK, if you target other markets, you will get different figures)
Search Phrase: SEO software
Approx Search Volume October: 2,900
Approx Avg Search Volume: 3,600
Then a trend graph, showing which months get higher search queries.

Keyword Country claims to be able to give you data on good keyword phrases. I've paid for membership of this site once, and I didn't find it that useful to me (I target a very small area within the UK). If you target internationally, then it may be better. They offer a trial - so you can see if it will do what you want.

Hi nanny

No my problem is I want to imporve my site's visibility. I want to find what kind of keywords people use to search for my kind of service. They may well not be using the professional style phrases used on mine for example but use far more colloquial terms. Basically, I want to optimise it for search engines.

I don't have adwords by the way as have been told they're pretty useless in my field. Don't know if this is true.

I think you may be after golddust. Don't think there is really any way of knowing for sure what someone looking for a particular service is typing into a search engine.

Keyword Country and WordTracker may be of help, as they can help come up with keyword phrases for topics, based on how often those phrases are typed in certain search engines. Trouble is, I'm not sure which search engines give them the data.

It is worth opening advertising accounts with Google, MSN, Yahoo - once you have an account (even with very little money in it, I don't have any money in my Google account and still get access), they have tools to help locate keywords based on how often they are entered into their search engine.

Anyone else got any ideas... I'd love to know what people actually type in to find a service like I provide, especially those who don't find my site from the keywords they use.

www.nichebot.com/ - this searches several databases, so may be better than separate memberships to Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery etc.

Adwords External Tool not as good as the internal tool, but may give you some idea of search volumes on key phrases.

WordTracker Free - Free version of WordTracker gives you some search volumes for keywords, though I feel it may be mostly US data.

A list of various keyword tools

WEB CEO - Free Edition

Thanks nanny, this is really great. Also, I may have a look at the ads account. Do you have to fund them with a specific amount of money to start up?

Not sure to be honest. I've had the ad accounts a while, so at one time they did have money in them.
Use the Adwords External Tool, it gives you sufficient data - don't actually think the internal tool gives much more, thinking about it - just easier not having to do the ImageText thingy each time.

There are some useful tips and hints on this old thread MN thread
search engine optimisation

Headers, H1's tags, metas, word density blah blah blah..

Also use some search terms that you think your customers may use and then look at your competitors in the natural listings and click on the pages and then look at their web page source code (view code) and read the meta tags to give you an idea of what terms the SEO's are picking up on. Things change.

Keep things fresh, search engines like websites that are updated and not left on the shelf.