2. Contents
About Analytics SEO, The Author, and Acknowledgements
Learning SEO and Internet Marketing
Excel for SEO and Google Docs
Browser Plugins and Bookmarklets
Keyword Research
Crawling and Technical Auditing
Linkbuilding and Backlink Data
Social Media and Content Related Tools
Productivity, GTD and Miscellaneous
4. The Author & Acknowledgements
Steve Lock is Head of SEO for Analytics SEO and Co-chair for SEMPO
UK. He has gained experience working agency-side, client-side and also
working with hundreds of search agencies across the globe with both
SEMPO and Analytics SEO. You can find him on LinkedIn or Twitter via
@stevejlock.
During Steve's career he has worked with a mix of startups, small brands
and numerous FTSE100 organisations. He is also a proud supporter of
initiatives and events that SEMPO has been involved with including
SASCon, Search Engine Strategies, UK and European Search Awards.
This guide has predominantly come from my own testing and research,
however there were a couple of awesome people and blogs that I should
mention that have helped to inspire and shape this eBook. Firstly Chris
Anderson, without his book 'Free' I never would have been so
enthusiastic about this project. The research has also been influenced by
a number of guys over at Distilled, iAcquire and SEOGadget including
Tom Anthony, Will Critchlow, Richard Baxter and more recently Mike
King.
5. About This Guide
This guide has been written as a comprehensive reference to some of
the best free SEO resources available on the internet. Each of the pages
is hyperlinked so simply click on the images to visit the websites.
After moving to Ubuntu Linux in 2008, I needed to be replace many of
the SEO tools and techniques that I regularly used with tools available in
Linux environments. This inevitably meant relying on using web based
applications, browser extensions and building agile tools. The most
surprising insight from this experience was that a majority of the best
resources available are completely free.
The guide was also heavily influenced through a period of research in
2009 into freemium business models with a particular emphasis on
Google. By far the best resource I found was 'Free' by Chris Anderson,
which as I am sure you have already guessed is also a free resource!
The guide shares just over one hundred of the best digital marketing
resources available on the internet and is the result of years of research.
Its been a lot of fun to write and I hope you like the guide!
7. Learning SEO & Internet Marketing
I hope it's
not boring...
8. Learning SEO & Internet Marketing
Learning about internet marketing is really tough, the biggest challenge
is probably all the garbage content that gets circulated – which makes it
really hard to distinguish good advice from bad.
Early in my career, I actually needed to go through the process of
relearning many aspects of SEO, as I began to realise that reading the
wrong materials can have a really detrimental affect on what can already
be a challenging area to research.
The good news is that in recent years there have been some amazing
reference materials and guides published. If you are new to internet
marketing than you are in luck because following these guides can not
only give you a really solid foundation, but could enable you to give
experienced practitioners a run for their money!
Just never forget the golden rule of treating all sources with real
scepticism and try to keep the number of blogs, forums and industry
sites you read to a real minimum (you'll thank me for it later!).
30. Browser Plug-ins & Bookmarklets
Browser plug-ins have come a really long way since I started in digital
marketing. Using a mixture of Firefox and Chrome gives you access to
am amazing arsenal of awesome free tools.
In the last couple of years I have also been seeing many more
bookmarklets that can help you save loads of time especially when
snooping around sites for the first time or competitors domains. You can
look up a vast array of metrics in seconds and just a couple of clicks.
A colleague Mark Bennett once said to me “peoples’ intelligence should
be measured by the number of browser add-ons they use”. Initially I
wasn't 100% sure whether a large number was better or worse, however
after checking out these examples I'm pretty sure the answer is the more
the better...
53. Keyword Research
I would always argue that keyword research is one of the most important
aspects of a successful digital campaign; as if you target the wrong
keywords, even if you rank really well for them, you will get poor results
for a number of reasons:
1. You could end up ranking well, but the terms would generate a mere
fraction of the traffic you expect.
2. It could attract the wrong audience and lead to extremely poor
conversion rates.
If possible I would always recommend relying on real world analytics
data and PPC tests for keywords you don't rank for. If that is not
possible, at least use multiple data sources to avoid any nasty surprises!
This is because keyword research can sometimes feel like you’re doing
way too much guesswork.
However, as with all areas of digital marketing there are loads of really
cool free tools available, here are some of the best.
63. Crawling & Technical Auditing
Technical SEO has recently become much easier; I often see websites
ranking well that would have struggled to rank if it wasn't for the
advances of Google (and other major search engines!) doing a better job
of crawling them.
However, it is still potentially one of the most important aspects of a
campaign to get right and can yield quickest ranking improvements,
especially if the site is already authoritative.
Here is a selection of my favourite free tools for analysing technical SEO
issues. They contain a number of crawling and auditing tools including
direct feedback and advice from both Google and Bing.
SEOs sometimes debate how useful such direct feedback is, but often
technical recommendations are amongst the most reliable information
that they share.
73. Link Building & Backlink Data
Link building related tools are probably my favourite category, it’s often
the area where SEOs feel the most pain and thus get quite obsessed
with. Backlink data is an area where often it’s tough to try and work on
campaigns without paying for it, but as I am sure you’ve already guessed
its getting easier!
In a similar manner to keyword research it is worthwhile considering
using multiple sources, I like this approach as it can help you to paint a
more complete picture, especially as analysing backlink profiles can be
such challenging work!
Other tools I really like include Duck Duck Go for generating high quality
link prospects, Tynt Publishing Tools to encourage people to link to you
and Tom Anthony's AuthorCrawler to generate insights into who is linking
to a website...
86. Social Media & Content Related Tools
The explosion in social media tools is moving quicker than any other
category I have covered. Twitter even announced they have powered
well over one million apps!
It is really tricky to keep up with, however I have managed to compile
some of my favourites, which includes a content marketing twist as it is
such a hot topic at the moment.
There are a number of curation related tools and apps that generate
actionable insights into your campaigns effortlessly.
My pro tip would be to keep an eye on the tools that have API's and
support RSS, these can enable you to add powerful automation to your
campaigns, which can (when handled tastefully) help you to supercharge
your social campaigns!
109. Productivity, GTD & Miscellaneous
At heart I am a passionate evangelist for anything to do with productivity,
lifehacking and GTD. This section covers some tools that have helped
me to keep organised and save me lots of time.
My pro tip would be to invest time in learning shortcuts in all the apps
you use the most (including your operating system) and automating
tasks that you are frequently repeating. There is a famous saying in
Linux that if you have to do anything more than three times you should
automate it.
This may sound a little extreme, but if you automate ten tasks that save
you ten minutes, they will quickly save you hundreds, or even thousands
of minutes!
I have also included some fantastic apps I wanted to include that didn't fit
into the other categories like The Email Game, RSS Owl and
Rapidminer.
I hope you are enjoying this guide, the end is near, but I have saved
some of the best until last!
