Just because online tools are free doesn’t mean they are low quality. Because of the open source movement, APIs, and the generous online community, many free tools today are high quality.

For keyword research, my favorite free tool is the Google Adwords tool. I use this tool countless times every work day. It is the only free tool I know of that gives the estimated value of contextual ad clicks. The data of this tool is more useful than other tools because it is based on Google’s search engine. Google’s engine accounts for over half the global search volume. In comparison, Wordtracker, a popular paid keyword tool, accounts for less than 5% of the global search activity. Also, the Adwords tool gives a lot of related search terms including synonyms. The only thing I don’t like about this tool is the lack of specific numbers for search volume. Instead, there are just 5 levels of search activity.

Many people use the Overture tool, but it has become less useful. It is not very precise, since the singular and plural forms of a search term are lumped together. Its results are old – from January 2007. Also, Overture is slow and crashes a lot.

For researching the competition, you can’t beat the SEO for Firefox extension. This tool is super convenient because it works right on the SERPs. On each result on the SERPs, you can find out the PageRank, age, number of links pointing to the domain and specific web page, and other site information including number of Bloglines subscribers and del.icio.us bookmarks.

Also, I use the good old Google search engine to get the big picture of my competition. I like to search with quotes. This gives the number of competing web pages that are optimized for the specific search phrase.

For tweaking the keywords of a web page, I like using SEO Book’s Keyword Density Analyzer Tool. This tool helps me whenever I work on pre-exisiting sites. For example, an SEO client asked me for help in ranking for more search terms. I did some keyword research in my client’s niche. After I found relevant keywords, I checked the content of my client’s web site using this tool. Then, I added the keywords to web pages that were missing them. You’ll be surprised how often web sites are missing tons of relevant keywords in their content.

For tracking web pages in the SERPs, I like using Earners Forum Keyword Tracker Tool. This tool keeps track of your keyword rankings in Google. All you have to do is enter the search phrase and URL of your web page. You can track hundreds of keyword phrases and web pages. Also, this keeps track of the changes in your rankings.

What about a PageRank (PR) and backlink checker? Of course, I like using our tools here at Smart PageRank. :)

Check out our PageRank checker. I like our tool because it has extra features not found in other PR checkers. For example, you can be emailed whenever your PR gets updated. Also, this tool will tell you if a web page’s PR is fake.

Our backlink checker has a great feature. Instead of just giving the number of backlinks, it will also give the PR of each of the backlinks. This is helpful in knowing the real link popularity of a web page.

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