This is a pretty cool tool, and lets you easily see at a glance what a spider would see when it crawls your website.  Directly from their website:

A  lot of Content and Links displayed on a webpage may not actually be visible to the Search Engines, eg. Flash based content,  content generated through javascript,  content displayed as images etc.

This tool Simulates a Search Engine by displaying the contents of a webpage exactly how a Search Engine would see it. It also displays the hyperlinks that will be followed (crawled) by a Search Engine when it visits the particular webpage.

Here’s your link: http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php

I recently came across an SEO tool that is very good and the best part is that it is FREE. It is called WebCEO.
It is very comprehensive so I have not yet had time to use all of it functions but they include: keywords, link building, optimization for search engines, website error and usability testing, visitor and conversion reports. It also provides training in SEO.  Check it out - http://www.webceo.com

Wondering how you are doing in your efforts to SEO a page?  This is a great tool which i recommend frequently to people asking for help in this area.  Basically, the online test checks your page and tells you which areas you are weak in asessing, and other areas that you are doing very well in.  Check it out here: http://www.instantposition.com/seotest.php

Have you put much thought into adding your website into directories?  This is one of the best ways to grab one-way links back to your website.  Most directories are now search engine friendly and can help create great amounts of traffic for your website.   Check out this list to see 500 directories you could be submitted into right now, for free! http://info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=seo-friendly.php

If you’ve ever thought about hiring a professional search engine optimization (SEO) consultant or read about SEO as a subject then you may have seen the term “black hat” mentioned. Let’s take a closer look at what black hat SEO really means.

To begin with, we’ll revisit what is meant by the term search engine optimization (SEO). SEO refers to methods that improve search engine rankings for a particular website. Techniques can vary but will often involve making the most of the website by ensuring that its content and structure appeal to search engines, as well as visitors.

There are various schools of thought on how best to carry out such optimization. As far as the major search engines are concerned, there are ethical methods of improving search engine rankings and unethical methods.

Within the professional search engine community, ethical techniques are known as “white hat”, while techniques that are viewed as unethical have been labelled “black hat”.

White Hat SEO involves making the best use of the structure and content of the website to improve rankings. Black Hat techniques will often involve attempting to fool a search engine into believing that a particular website is more relevant or highly regarded than it actually is.

Examples of Black Hat methods might include cloaking, which is where a search engine is effectively shown a different version of a website to visitors. Other techniques would include employing hidden text and links.

Although Black Hat SEO can have some impressive results, the major search engines are constantly attempting to clamp down on such methods, banning websites who employ them.

For long-term results, ethical White Hat methods are the most effective.

You can find out more about improving your web presence by visiting Search South, where Keith Barrett is employed as a search engine consultant.

This is a pretty convenient quick-check tool that you can use to see how your site stacks up in the various indexes and  how many backlinks are coming to your website.  http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/web-site-statistics/

 With this tool, you can check your pagerank, page age, ibound links in yahoo google and dmoz, as well as inbound links from .gov and .edu websites.  Theres alot more as well, just type in your URL and see what your site ranks as.

After already discussing sponsoring templates or themes, another easy and fun way to increase your backlinks is to take part in forums and discussion boards that are relevant to your website’s topic.  Put a non-obtrusive link to your website in your signature (if the forum allws you to) and take part in discussions that you have knowledge about.  Not only does this help you gain important backlinks (especially on seo-friendly forums) , but it will establish you as a knowledgeable person in the topic you are discussing.  This gains you backlinks, and traffic, and hopefully conversions.

As you may know, one of the key factors of your ranking in Google and other search engines, is the amount and quality of backlinks leading to your website.  The challenge is to gain a large amount of backlinks with a minimal amount of investment in both time and money. 

One way to gain a large amount of backlinks is to sponsor a free template or theme.  These templates are distributed for free on major websites that deal with an enormous amount of traffic.  One of the requirements of a free template download, is that the user who downloads and uses the template is required to keep the “sponsor links” in the template.  This is the source for your website’s backlinks!  Most of these free templates may be downloaded and used on hundreds. if not thousands of websites. 

You may be able to acquire one of these sponsor links for as little as $25, though average market prices dictate the prices closer to $80-$100, depending on the quality of the template or theme.  This is a perfect tool to create great backlinks quickly, and easily.

If you want some real information about the visitors to your website, you need to keep track of who is visiting your website, which pages they are viewing, and how they got to your site.  AwStats is one of the best server-side statistical programs, and is installed by default on every cPanel hosting account.

 With AwStats, you can see vital information such as what URL your visitor came from and how long they stayed on your website.  You can see exactly the pages they viewed.  The search engine statistics are helpful, letting you know how many visitors you had come from each engine and other vital statistics.  This is useful to see how your SEO work has been going for each engine, and which ones you need to optimize more for.

Google offers a free tool called “Analytics” which only adds to the amount of information you need to succeed in the search engine’s, and that’ll be discussed tomorrow.

http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html

There’s a site with more than enough tools to help you get started with your website SEO.  I stumbled upon this today and have already been using some of the tools for a few of my sites.