The first term any new entrepreneur learns when beginning an online marketing campaign is SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is vital to the success of any website.

There are two basic ways people find websites to purchase the items or services they are looking for. The first is word of mouth. The second, most important by far, is via a search engine.

Word of mouth marketing is great!

If you have satisfied customers who talk about your products online or post information about you and your company in forums or social media outlets, that’s a good place to start. Even then, you still need to be concerned with SEO. Covering both areas is the most assured path to success. When new business owners get started, word-of-mouth traffic sources will be slim at best.

With a good SEO plan, even a startup that hasn’t had a chance to get a foothold in consumer satisfaction spreading the word about their products can gain traffic to their site. The steps to building your online empire begin with a great product and building a great site. Without SEO to bring people to your website, the best of the best will not produce sales.

In an SEO campaign, the desire is to achieve the first-page rank or be as close to the top as possible. Having a website ranked between 1 and 5 on the first page ensures the viewer sees what they are searching for. Getting to those positions can be time-consuming and costly.

To get to one of those coveted positions and stay there, companies often employ high-powered marketing firms. This becomes quite expensive fast. Smaller business owners often cannot afford such extravagant fees, especially in the initial stages of their efforts.

With the invention of the internet came a great equalization that allowed individuals and small companies to compete globally and locally with huge corporations. Although that’s true, SEO sometimes seems to disrupt that level playing field.

Because of the costs of marketing to get to the top, many small businesses flounder in a sea of products and websites that never get the traffic needed to produce sales. A few, however, understand that the only way to truly compete in this brave new world is to either spend the money for a marketing specialist or learn to do it themselves. It takes time to get it right.

Once you learn the concepts of SEO and how to use the tools available to everybody from the most prestigious marketing firm to the newest of budding entrepreneurs, the playing field is once again leveled. A well-developed SEO plan brings the world to your website. To give you the best start in your online marketing strategy, here are the top SEO tools online businesses can employ to increase exposure and improve sales.

1.  AdWords & AdSense

Google is the reigning king when it comes to search engines. The tools designed by them to get websites top ranking spots in their search engine as well as on other search engines. Google offers two separate, yet cooperative programs that work together to create a top-notch marketing tool for SEO.

These are AdWords and AdSense. AdSense lets a business owner set up the keywords and track website traffic to get a comprehensive overview of the effectiveness of a campaign. AdWords lets you pick a price per keyword to create a paid listing at the top of the search engine listing for your chosen keywords.

A website that shows up in the advertisement rotation on the top or side of the page for viewers is very attractive. These ad spots are top-level spaces. While consumers get more sophisticated when it comes to advertising, these spots are often not recognized as paid ads. They blend into the random page listings.

Another plus to using AdWords and AdSense includes tracking. The statistic pages let business owners see where traffic they generate comes from. This lets you target your audience more efficiently as you continue your marketing campaign.

Business owners can choose how to use AdWords and AdSense from Google. They can use all of the tool’s options. Simply use the keyword planner to obtain the best keywords for SEO articles and webpages.

***WARNING:

If set up incorrectly and not monitored, this route could be highly cost-ineffective. We strongly recommend finding a Google Certified Partner to do AdWords or AdSense.

Google Certified Partners are individuals and agencies Google deems know their stuff. They’ve proven themselves in the field. All others who say they do AdWords and AdSense most likely do not have the appropriate training or expertise to run a campaign for you.

2.  SEMrush

This program is a powerful tool to help business owners determine the best price to pay for keyword advertising. This is an invaluable tool when considering CPC advertising. CPC stands for cost per click.

You can also use SEMrush to determine the best keywords for your items, services, or products. Then, decide if they are affordable to use in your current marketing program.

SEMrush offers both free and paid services. Even the free option allows business owners up to 10 keywords. It runs reports on their website to determine if they optimized for the best search engine results.

3.  Internet Marketing Ninjas SEO Tools

Developing a powerful sales website is tricky. One of the issues many business owners combat is finding broken links. These can be their own links or backlinks provided as a service to consumers.

Tools like Internet Marketing Ninjas are beneficial. They help analyze all aspects of your site to ensure it operates at peak efficiency. Along with broken links, business owners can do side-by-side comparisons of their site to that of a competitor to see how they measure up.

You can check the loading speed of your page to ensure visitors won’t be discouraged by long waits for pictures or text to show up. Internet Marketing Ninjas tools also let you generate meta tags, robot text, and establish redirects when necessary.

4.  SEO Book

SEO Book is a useful tool that is free and easy to use. It contains helpful analysis tools that let you determine the strength of your current SEO plan and tools to build up your campaign. There are keyword generators, a spider test to let you see how search engines react to your pages, and more.

5.  Moz Local

For some business owners, a global campaign is not required. Selling services provided in-person means that most companies want to market to a particular location. Businesses such as movie theaters, healthcare providers, home repair services, restaurants, bars, or retail stores need to find consumers in their neighborhoods, not another continent.

Even so, an online marketing strategy is necessary. Where people used to look to the local yellow pages for a company nearby with a service or product they need, more consumers look online to find the closest businesses for their needs. Moz Local helps with the needs of location-specific businesses so that their online marketing campaigns target those consumers who can most use their services.

6.  Moz’s Open Site Explorer

This dedicated website tool provides a business owner with the ability to do a little espionage on competitor sites. By inputting a competitor’s URL, you can instantly see the anchor text used, how their page ranks on search engine results, and how it compares to your own. Moz Open Site also helps you find the best backlinks for your site and build your SEO strategy.

7.  Search Metrics Suite

The Search Metrics program is a complete tool for analyzing your website’s SEO performance. It includes easy-to-read diagrams and graphs to illustrate where you stand in your campaign and how it compares to the competition that exists online.

The program integrates easily with Google Analytics. It exports all information to other tools used easily. While there is no free option for this extensive program, there is a free demo available to let business owners see how it works before purchasing.

8.  Raven Tools
Raven Tools is a strong, but easy to use SEO package that has a free 30-day trial so business owners can test their results. It looks for backlinks, and checks for broken links. One standout feature of Raven Tools is its iPad app. It allows you to keep up with your website statistics while one the move, and always be on top of your marketing plans. Along with backlinks, users can test their social marketing exposure and manage both Facebook and Twitter accounts from the app or their desktop. A useful link in the Raven Tools toolbox is a link to Textbroker, a marketing tool that gives you the power to purchase content for your site right from your program.

9.  Market Samurai

Business owners new to the internet looking for ways to develop SEO are always afraid of creating “black hat” tactics. There’s a good reason for that. A lot of information out there on ways to improve a website’s performance can be risky.

The fact that search engines are always on the alert now for new methods used to circumvent their algorithms makes understanding SEO more difficult. Market Samurai only uses white hat techniques. New marketers can feel assured they can develop a strong website with safety features that pass search engine scrutiny.

10.  SEO Engine

Developing your presence online is difficult. Once you establish your site, you need to find a tool that gives you the best information regarding its ongoing effectiveness. SEO Engine keeps up with how your website performs on a variety of search engines.

You can make sure it has the best visibility. It keeps track of the viability of your chosen keywords and suggests new ones to replace those slip in their stats. SEO Engine also shows you where you rank in comparison to your competitors. It provides a detailed analysis of your keywords and paid visibility.

11.  Specialized SEO Programs

Many times, special programs do a better job in certain aspects of SEO development than a package program. Some of these programs are not available in other packages. They are important parts of keeping track of performance or developing an internet presence for your company. The following programs help you further fill out your SEO campaign. Get the most out of your online traffic.

12.  Wildfire Social Media Monitor

SEO has been a part of internet marketing for over a decade. Social media is a relative newcomer to the online business arena. Even though it is comparatively new, it is a powerful tool that cannot be ignored. Wildfire Social Media Monitor helps internet marketers track their performance.

It makes regular posts to the main social media sites. This program boasts both a computer version and an app. Users can access their accounts from anywhere to stay current with their online presence. Wildfire Social Media Monitor lets users compare their company’s Facebook and Twitter performance by likes, followers, tweets, and checking.

13.  Trackur

Trackur is another social monitoring tool that is easy to use. With a free trial, it lets users get a feel for its features before purchasing. There is also a free version of Trackur that offers updates once a day for one set of search criteria. Results are limited and only show 100 recent entries.

The free service can be useful in conjunction with other resources. Paid members receive a more comprehensive service and real-time monitoring of their social media presence. It not only checks Facebook, Google+, and Twitter but also communities and forums where your presence is located.

14.  Copyscape

Getting people to your website is extremely important. Once there, the quality of the content you present to them sells your items. Having high-quality text is necessary.

Search engines can’t really tell good content from bad content. What they can tell is if that content is plagiarized. Check to make sure your content is unique by running it through Copyscape.

15.  Kontent Machine – Link Building

Creating content is a vital part of building a working website that attracts consumers and encourages them to make purchases. Getting high-quality articles to support your site can be expensive. When building links with related content on other sites, you need even more versions of the same article. Kontent Machine helps recreate your content and develops an unlimited stream of work for you to keep up a unique, active presence online.

Let the professionals do what they love!

In the end, it’s always better to partner with a web design company that really knows what they are doing. They’ve spent the time training and have real-world practice of their craft. Spend your time working on what you love, your business or nonprofit.

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Links Web Design is a Website Design Company in Bangor, Maine.