5 Free SEO Tools that Can Turn an SEO Newbie Into an SEO Pro

Many people, when they first get into SEO, think that they have to go out and spend a ton of money in order to find the right tools.  I think that this is a huge mistake.  It has often been said that the best things in life are free.  When it comes to SEO, I would have to agree with that.  There are a few great tools that I literally use everyday – tools I have never paid for and never will.   Here are the five tools that – when you use them – have the potential of taking you from an SEO ZERO and turning you into an SEO pro… and, yes, they are free.

• SEO for Firefox (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html).  This is an absolutle MUST have.   If you don’t have this Firefox add-on installed, you are missing out on a lot critical intelligence.  From the number of cached pages to the last time a search engine bot has visited the page, this tool gives you everything that you need to know to analyze traffic and competition.
• Search Status (http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/;jsessionid=48D6BBA0F56684543B3511BFAAFA0FC3).  This is another very valuable Firefox extension.  It enables you to very quickly look at meta tags, sitemaps, robots.txtfiles and much more…. all without pulling up source code.  Very valuable tool.
• Rank Checker (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/).  Once again, absolutely free!  This free Firefox add-on enables you to check your critical rankings for terms that you want to rank for without leaving Firefox.  Easy to use and just as effective as much more expensive tools.
• Quarkbase (http://www.quarkbase.com/).  Get a massive amount of information on every website.  From who is linking in to Whois data, this site has it all.  Literally.  This is a fantastic site intelligence tool.
• Greg Boser Backlink Tattler (http://www.gregboser.com/downloads/).  This is a tool that is an oldie but goody.  It’s been around for a long time.  It enables you to type a domain in and pull the backlinks out via Yahoo Site explorer.  How valuable is that?  If you have been around the SEO game for a while, you know that Yahoo Site Explorer is by far and away the best resource for finding the backlinks of your own site or your competitors.  Want to rank for a particular term?  Google the term… find out who is ranking… then, run that domain through this tool.  Export the backlinks to a spreadsheet… then, directly approach them about getting links from them.  It’s as easy as that.