SEO or Search Engine Optimization should be a vital part of your internet strategy.  SEO means configuring your website in order to improve the way search engines see your site and rank it on a search results page.  If you have a website, then you probably want to know how to get to be #1 in Google.  SEO can help with getting you there.

Whether you are a church, school or small business, you need to know how visitors are coming to your site and what search terms (keywords) they are using to reach your site.  Once you know this information, you can make changes to your website to target these search terms and thus attract more visitors.

Here are 5 Free SEO Tools that can implement right now to improve website traffic.

#5 – Alexa Rank Checker

Alexa Rank Checker is a great tool for seeing how well your site ranks up against millions of other sites on the Web.  It is one of the most accurate free SEO tool out there . You can track the keywords visitors used to get to your site, the high impact search queries and a back link listing.

#4 – Keyword Density Checker

The Keyword Density Checker is a nice SEO tool that explores a website and then extracts text as a search engine would and then examines the density of those keywords.  Once complete it provides you with a nice list of one, two and three word phrases that are popular on your site.  It also provides you with some good meta data information about your website.

#3 – Open Site Explorer

The Open Site Explorer from SEOmoz is great tool for determining what sites link to your site.  According to the website you can “research and directly compare your backlinks with competitors’ for intelligent and targeted link building. Identify your top pages and analyze anchor text.”

#2 — Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a powerful set of free tools that provides you will some very valuable information.  Once you register your site with Google it will provide you with information such as search queries, links to your site and keywords.  More importantly it provides you with crawl errors which shows you where you have bad links on your page(s).

#1 — Google Analytics

Google Analytics is “the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. ”  Google Analytics allows you to track your pageviews, the number of visitors to your site, the average time visitors spend on your site and so much more.  If you have a website, you need Google Analytics.

So, there you have it.  A short list of tools to help you improve your SEO.  Have questions about SEO or using these tools, then let me know, I’d be happy to work with you.