List of Best Internet Marketing Tools

My company conducts research on best practices for Internet marketing. We are currently fielding a survey on Internet Marketing Tools. Below is a preliminary list of some of the best Internet marketing tools.

To get a more complete listing and information, please take our Internet Marketing Tools Survey. Each individual taking the survey will receive $300+ worth of cutting edge SEO tools as a thank you for taking the survey. Once we complete the survey, we will send a summary of our findings to all survey participants. We will also periodically update this hub, so please check back.

Keyword research tools help Internet marketers pinpoint the ideal keywords for building online success. The best tools give users a wealth of extremely useful information.

When potential customers seek information to solve a problem, odds are they will search the Internet. To win at Internet marketing, you want your Web site to appear at the top of the search pages your prospective customers see when they search. You need a top ranking in the search engines on popular, relevant, and less competitive keywords.

To position your Web site to win the race to the top of the search engines, you need to know the language of your target searchers. You also need information on the competition your Web site faces for each potential keyword.

For example, the best keyword research tools will give you:

• a listing of keywords related to the search phrases you think prospective customers might use
• the number of searches conducted on the major search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo Bing) for each keyword
• the number of competitors targeting each keyword
• information on the strength of each competitor’s online positioning.

The following are some of the best keyword research tools for Internet marketing:

Google’s External Keyword Tool

Keyword Discovery by Trellian

Wordze

Competitive research is important for properly targeting your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. To pinpoint your best potential position, you need to understand the competition. These tools help you better understand the competition.

Competitive Research tools help you determine your competitor’s top traffic generating keywords. Several of the best tools also provide information on which sites are linking to your competitors’ Web sites. Links from other Web sites (called in-bound links or backlinks) are important for SEO. Google, in particular, considers the quality and quantity of backlinks to a particular page when determining how to rank the page.

Competitive research is important during two stages of your SEO campaign:

1. You should evaluate the competition when you start the campaign, to select the best keywords for targeting your campaign
2. You should consider the competition after you complete the initial SEO work to adjust your strategies to increase (or maintain) your rankings.

The following are some of the competitive research tools for Internet marketing:

Compete

Trellian Competitive Intelligence

Yahoo Site Explorer

Sometimes you need to buy your way to the top. If you are launching a new Web site or face very strong online competition, you may need to buy a top ranking on the sponsored listings in the search engines.

The top search engines display sponsored listings on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. When a searcher enters your target keyword in search engine, their search query triggers ads in the PPC set for those keywords.

If you manage only a small set of keywords in Google’s Adwords system, you may not need a third-party tool. Google provides a great external tool and robust online tools directly through Adwords. Visit this link for a free copy oft Google’s desktop Adwords Editor.

If you manage a large campaign or multiple campaigns across several search engines, your management task is more complicated. The best PPC tools will help you manage large, complex campaigns efficiently and effectively. These top tools will help more easily spot trends and can save you money.

The following are some of the PPC management tools for Internet marketing:

Atlas One point

KeywordMax

ClickSweeper

If growing the Internet traffic to your Web site is important to you, you really need an ongoing effort to attract a good amount of quality inbound links.

As mentioned above, Google looks at the quantity and quality of backlinks coming to a page as a factor in its page ranking algorithm. Backlinks can also help drive new traffic to your Web site apart from the search engines.

The process of pinpointing, acquiring and managing backlink requests can be very time consuming. Link building is often involves looking at the inbound links for competing Web sites (to pinpoint opportunities) and requesting or acquiring links from the right sources. The best tools for link analysis and link building will automate a few of the more time-consuming tasks of link-building.

The following are some of the best keyword link analysis and link building tools for Internet marketing:

Yahoo! Site Explorer

Majestic SEO

SEMOZ

You have probably heard the adage “if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.” The best tools for Web site analytics give you vital information on how well your Web site is doing. These tools give you detailed performance metrics such as:

• keywords searchers use to find your site
• sites referring visitors to your site
• how well your site is doing in meeting your marketing goals
• and more

You have two basic options for Web site analytics. You can load an analytics program on your server. Or, you can use third-party tools to capture visitor information.

If you host your Web site with a solid ISP, the hosting company should offer an analytics package as part of their services. Ask your ISP how you can access your Web analytics. In particular, ask where you can see your referrer report.

With the second type, you install code on the pages of your Web site. You can then access the information and reports from the off-site programs through your browser by entering your ID and passwords. With some search analytics programs you can capture information about your potential audience.

The following are some of the best packages for Web site analytics:

Google Analytics (a third-party tool provided free by Google)

Awstats (pre-installed by many web hosting companies)

Web Trends (on server or remotely hosted)

Have additional packages or programs that you consider among the best Internet Marketing tools? If yes, please visit our Internet Marketing Tools Survey to post your recommendations.