Three SEO tools I use every day

After watching this podcast, people are always asking me about the tools I use on the show.

I’ve got quite a few I use regularly, but here are three of my favourites. Keep in mind that these tools are more for the serious full-time SEO person, not really for someone starting to build his first site. It’s not that they’re difficult to use, but most of their information would be wasted unless you’re heavily into making or watching multiple sites.

That being said, the first tool on my short favourites list is Stylish.

It’s a Chrome plugin — like most of my favourite tools — but there may be Firefox editions you can search for. If you’re trying to optimize a webpage this tool is golden. It shows all the “H” tags on a page, giving you a snapshot of whether or not your site is built correctly. I’ve seen H5 tags come before H1 tags, so obviously there’s a problem there. It’s an easy way to straighten out that part of your site.

Secondly, I like SERP Trends SEO Extension. If you do the same searches repeatedly, as you will to compare your rankings with your competitors’, you’ll need to use this tool. It shows the comparative ranking of every site on the page. Plus, it will let you know whether they’re rising or falling in the rankings. If your competition is getting ahead of you, you need to know fast so you can figure out why. This tool can help.

This last tool is relatively expensive, but well worth it if you’re a serious SEO person. You can get it at getstat.com. It will show any site’s stats, run comparative stats between sites, and even has a time machine feature where you can check the stats on a site from any day you like. Track your competitor’s progress, or see where you moved up in the world. STAT will tell you.

Jim Stewart is a leading expert in search engine optimisation. His business StewArt Media has worked with clients including Mars, M2 and the City of Melbourne.