As a SEO specialist (SEO expert or whatever you name yourself), it’s important to be able to provide your clients with the results of all your analytic data. Sometimes, it’s even more important to offer few recommendations once a week or maybe two. Regardless of the type of industry you are in or the type of client you are dealing with, their SEO Success Metrics are always 5 things:

1. Measuring Visitor Traffic – Here you need to compare current site traffic to the baseline to see if there is a net gain or loss.
2. Measuring Keyword Ranking – Like what we used to do, measuring keyword rankings usually requires you to compare clients’ keyword rankings to your baseline report to see if there if a net increase or decrease
3. Measuring Increased Coverage
   - Number of total Pages Indexed
   - Number of keywords driving traffic
4. Measuring Increase in other areas
   - Goolge PageRank (some people tend to ignore this, however I personally believe it’s always good to hear sth good. If the PR is going up. Why not mention it?)
   - Number of inboundLinks (this is the place where you demonstrate your linkbuilding efforts and the site’s current link popularity)
   - Crawl frequency (how search engine friendly your site is. ex. do your on-site optimization recommendations work? )
5. Measuring Conversion/ Leads – Again, compare to your baseline report. Client will definitely be happy to know the revenue increases, however keep this in mind, conversion is not always about revenue (as least for SEOs). Sometimes emails, phone calls, sign-up members…etc.

1. SEM Calculator (Develop Media Plan)
I used to be an online media planner and understand how time consuming a media plan could be without a good calculating software. This gives you multiple calculators that allow you to figure out everyday SEM equations. I especially love this app in the way that it explains how to derive CPAs and the conversion chart given a CPM. Excellent application and still can’t believe it’s free.

2. Rankings (Check Rankings)
Rankings app is a really simple but useful tool which I mainly use it to check the position of my client website on Google, Yahoo! and MSN for any search query. It’s really a quick way to see how a website is performing for specific keywords.

3. Domain Tracker (Check PageRank)
It allows you to see the current Google PageRank & Alexa PageRank for those site you listed in. My favorite part of domain tracker is that it records all those changes your site went through over the period you accessed on. Very basic but definitely an app that works when on the road. Look forward to seeing more features.

4. WebFight Lite (Decide which keyword or key phrase is more popular)
It compares two keywords/key phrases to see which one is more popular. Not a real keyword research tool, but could be very useful when you finally limit your option into two.

5. SEOit (Analyze on-site elements)
This app is indeed a comprehensive app for analyzing a site’s on-page elements, such as HTML source code, title, metas, body text, anchor text, image alt tags, inbound links from Google, keyword density…etc. And now it’s having a limited time promotion. Price reduced to $1.99 from $4.99.

1. Stimator – My favorite. It allows you to submit subdomains or inner directories.

2. Pufip – Good, but can’t include subdomain or inner directory

3. BizInformation – factors considered: Website Value, Daily Pageviews, Daily Visitors, Worldwide Rank, External Links

4. DnScoop - The site’s value will be calculated based on several factors shown above, including: Links, Traffic (Alexa), age of the domain, site category, domain keyword popularity, and overall occurrences of the domain name on the web.

I suggest you to not use these tools as your primary sources. It will provide you with some data for sure, but it’s undoubtedly inadequate. In fact, a site’s true value replied on the buyers potential and current state of online revenues. So make use of everything for your own benefit.

Presented by Jerry W. Chang, the Coolest Taiwanese Guy

It’s a tough racket out there in today’s economy, especially for a Taiwanese guy like me. Unemployment is at the highest it’s been in years, as layoffs are happening all over the place and even growing companies are a little hesitant to hire new talent. In this kind of environment, it can be a difficult undertaking to find an employer who says, “okay, we’ll spend the money it takes to pay you full-time.”

This is for any job, let alone a search engine optimization professional, a job that’s often hard to quantify. After all, how do you “sell” what you can’t guarantee when no one has any money to pay you? I can hear many of you unemployed SEOs already: “Boy, Dan, I wish I was a pot maker or something.”

Well, fret no more: with a little creativity, a positive attitude, and plenty of hard work, you can find an SEO position even in this economy, particularly if you’re certain that SEO is your particular calling. After all, SEO still is a cutting-edge job in an advancing industry.

Here are 20 ways to find the SEO jobs that no one else is finding.

1. The traditional route: apply, apply, apply. It’s easy to apply for one or two SEO jobs, but if you’re really dead-set on finding a position as an SEO professional, you treat the application process as a business in and of itself. You cold call, you sent out your portfolio, you keep a spreadsheet that tracks your contacts, and you show up to job interviews ready for action.

2. Freelance. Freelancing is a great option if you’re the entrepreneurial type; if you’ve got some SEO job experience, you can quickly leverage that online at a site like Elance or Guru. Companies may not be looking to hire, but if they have SEO needs, they may just be looking to outsource.

3. The nontraditional route. When I started out in SEO, I actually took an SEO job because it related to writing, which was my major in college. Don’t turn down job offers just because they’re only about 50% of what you’re looking for – if it’s steady, interesting work you, should at least give it a shot to see if you can’t eventually become the full-timer.

4. Team up with Web design. Clients who are paying for Web design might also be interested in SEO – find out if you can make this work to your advantage at your company or among your friends. You can even approach Web designers and ask them if they will include your SEO service as a line item in their RFPs.

5. Attend conferences. The quickest way to meet people in the SEO industry is to go where SEO professionals go: conferences. You can network, rub elbows, and beg for a job if someone’s looking. Some excellent conferences to attend are Search Engine Strategies and Search Marketing Expo.

6. Take out an ad. If you have the spare cash from another job you want to leave, you might consider taking out an ad that displays your SEO job experience. When employers need employees, they make job placements, so why can’t you? Just make sure to place your ad somewhere relevant like a trade journal.

7. Build a blog. Build a blog with great content (translation: work hard on your posts), and you’ll start building your reputation as an expert SEO. Write free guest posts for other bloggers to get links back to your blog. The more your reputation is improved, the more likely someone is to come to you with work.

8. Build your own SEO business. Build a business, starting with a proposal you can make for your SEO services and take to companies that are looking to outsource. Show your experience, what you’ve been able to do in the past, and make sure your value is quantifiable. This requires an investment of time and money and you should only do this if you are serious.

9. Network. It may seem like enough to apply for jobs, but if you’re networking, you can also ask around for the SEO jobs that other applicants simply aren’t aware of. Just because someone can’t offer you an SEO job doesn’t mean they can’t be a great value to you; maybe they know someone who has an SEO job available but didn’t think to mention you unless you bring it up first. Be a little shameless.

Some of the easiest ways to network are online. Social networking sites are great tools for meeting business people who are interested in hiring search engine professionals. LinkedIn.com is one of the bery best places for accomplishing this.

10. Call headhunters. Headhunters and job recruiters can do great things for you for free – because they’re working for the companies seeking employees. Seek out these headhunters, tell them what you do, and ask if they know any companies that have SEO jobs for someone like you.

11. Take another job first. If you’re strapped for money, some of the above options might seem a little too time-consuming or financially burdensome. So take another job while you need the money; you can quit jobs whenever you need to. Consider it a stepping-stone to your dream job if you need a little inspiration.

12. Offer SEO for free. What? You want an SEO job here, not to work for free. You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish if you offer great value for nothing in this world – if you truly are good at your SEO, the business who had you for free will want to pay you something. If not, hey, you’re building up your SEO resume. Try offering free SEO to larger companies and request that if they like your work, you can use them in your portfolio. Your improved resume will knock out potential employers.

13. Call SEO firms directly. You can apply all day, but sometimes, even employers with SEO jobs available can be tough nuts to crack. Call them directly to check on resume submissions, as well as to see who your contact for hiring should be. Again, be shameless; what have you got to lose? Your unemployment check?

14. SEO Forums. If the forum is large enough, you might find some work on an SEO forum from someone who is looking for an expert to handle their site for them. Most good SEO forums have a section that allow you to apply for jobs.

15. Move. If you really want an SEO job but live in Back Country, USA, you might have realized that where you live isn’t exactly at the forefront in technology innovation. Your career path might require you to move – if not to a big city, at least closer to one.

16. Sign up for SEO workshops. Like conferences, these workshops will have more value than the content itself – the networking opportunities will be excellent. But your goal here is slightly different: if you want to become an expert in your field, as the expert SEO how they got where they were, and how you can do the same.

17. Focus on your reputation first. By doing some of the above items – including building a blog and networking – you’ll eventually find your reputation growing. If you focus on this reputation, you might still be working at Denny’s, but in the SEO world you’ll be known as someone else. No one cares if Superman is really Clarke Kent on the off hours. If you’re already in college, it’s not too early to start on your reputation.

How do you improve your reputation? Offer value, offer value, offer value, and personally meet other experts. Simple enough.

18. Connect your name to other SEO professionals. The concept of “social proof” says that what one person sees others doing, the original person will want to duplicate. It’s the phenomenon that explains why we might walk in a room and observe how other people are behaving to get our cues on how to behave ourselves. If you can connect your name with top SEO professionals, you might find yourself landing a job before you know it, simply because of “who you know.”

19. Build a personal website. For simplicity, connect your blog to this site, but definitely make sure to build a site that essentially functions as a resume, highlighting your experience, your successes, your insights, and your credentials. When people ask about you, they should have a definitive place to visit and say “oh, that’s who they are.”

20. Take temporary positions. Some companies will look for a SEO professional who can work on a temporary basis with the possibility to hire. Don’t be turned off by the “temporary” label – if you work hard and provide real value, you’ll be wanted. At the very least, you’ll be building your resume.

The list below offered by the Coolest Taiwanese Guy, includes few places where I constantly visit and consider informative and reliable:
1. OASEO.com
2. The SEOMoz Job Board
3. Dice.com (my favorite)
4. SEMPO’s SEO job list
5. Indeed.com
6. Craigslist
7. SimplyHired.com
8. Search Engine Watch blog
9. Search Engine Land

Page Analysis Tools:

These tools will provide an analysis and evaluation of various factors of a page or site. Each tool works a little bit differently, but the data from all of them can be obtained quickly and used in your analytics work.

Trifecta from SEOmoz
Enter your domain and tell Trifecta if you want to measure a page, a blog, or a domain and it will analyze the strength. Trifecta uses information regarding inbound links, buzz about your brand online, and traffic numbers.

Website Grader
Website Grader, provided by HubSpot, will provide a very thorough report and grade for your website’s SEO. You’ll need to enter an email address to use the tool.

SEO Analysis Tool from SEO Workers
This tool will provide a lot of information on a given page, including an analysis of meta tags, anchor text, links on the page, keywords etc.

Popuri.us
Enter your domain and this tool will quickly provide the PR, Alexa ranking, in-bound link information, and more.

Similar Page Checker
Enter two URLs and this tool will show how similar they are in percentage format (to help with avoiding duplicate content penalties).

Google Wemaster Tools
The free webmaster tools from Google provide useful information on indexing, sitemaps, links, and search queries.

Xinu
Xinu provides information on any URL regarding links, rankings, indexed pages, and more.

Page Speed:

Load time can have an impact on a site’s visitors. Testing and analyzing page speed is much easier and more effective with these tools.

Self SEO Page Speed Checker
With this simple tool you can enter several different domains at once (such as yours and some of your competitors’) and it will show the time it takes to load the page, making comparison easy.

YSlow
Yahoo’s YSlow is a Firefox add-on that works with Firebug to provide data and suggests ways to improve performance of the site.

Other page speed tests:

• Pingdom Tools
• Website Speed Test from Link Vendors
• Website Speed Test from Website Goodies

Spider Simulators:

Spider simulators can help you to see how a search engine interacts with your site.

• WeBuildPages Spider Viewer
• Spider Simulator from Summit Media
• Spider Simulator from iWebTool
• Spider Simulator from WebConfs.com
• Crawl Test from SEOmoz

Stats:

Tracking stats is a major part of web analytics. There are countless programs that you can use for stats, some are free and some are paid.

Google Analytics
Probably the most popular free stats/analytics option, Google Analytics provides loads of information about your visitors, where they are coming from, and what they are doing on your site. There are also more advanced options to set goals and conversion tracking.

Clicky
Clicky provides real-time analytics with tons of features. There is a free plan and the paid plans run from $4.99 per month to $49.99 per month.

Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg focuses on providing visual representations and actionable data. Some of the most useful tools are the Heatmap and Confetti, which can help you to see exactly how visitors are interacting with your site. Plans range in price for $9 per month to $99 per month.

Mint
Mint is a self-hosted analytics program that provides all of the basic stats, plus some more advanced features like feed subscription patterns. The license costs $30 per site.

OneStat
OneStat is a professional analytics program that offers enterprise level analytics, as well as server monitoring.

• AWStats
• Piwik
• StatCounter
• Yahoo! Web Analytics
• Going Up!
• ClickTracks
• SiteCatalyst

Heatmaps and Related Analytics:

Seeing how your visitors are interacting with your site can help you to improve things like conversion rates and ad clicks.

Clickdensity
Clickdensity provides a heatmap other usability tools. A free trial is available, and plans range from $5 – $400 per month.

ClickTale
ClickTale can be used to track mouse movements and clicks from visitors.

ClickHeat
ClickHeat is open-source software that creates a visual heatmap of clicks on a page to show where visitors are clicking and how often.

Link Analysis:

There are tons of great tools and resources for analyzes the links that are pointing towards your website.

Technorati
Technorati tracks blog links. You can enter your URL and see what blogs are linking to you.

SEO Link Analysis Firefox Add-on
This Firefox extension will information such as PageRank, anchor text and nofollow status.

Linkscape
Linkscape from SEOmoz provides information about links pointing towards a domain. Pro members get added data that isn’t available on the free basic report.

Link Popularity Checker from Mike’s Marketing Tools
See how many links the major search engines are recognizing for a URL.

Link Popularity Tool from Marketleap
You can enter 2 URLs for comparison with this link popularity checker.

Link Popularity Checker from SEOCentro
This link popularity checker will compare up to 3 URLs at a time.

Link Popularity Comparison Tool
SEO Book also has a free link popularity tool that will compare up to 3 URLs.

Back Link Analyzer
This software from SEO Book is a link popularity tool plus it provides the anchor text used on the links.

Backlink Watch
Enter your URL and this tool will provide details about the links point back to you.

Link Harvester
Link Harveter is SEO Book’s tool for sorting and querying through the backlink databases from Yahoo! and MSN.

Majestic SEO
Majestic SEO will provide information about in-bound links and anchor text.

Backlink Checker Tool
See what pages are linking to you, along with their PR and Alexa ranking.

Analyze Backlinks
Enter a URL and this tool will provide link information including anchor text, number of total links and number of outbound links.

Link Diagnosis
Check out the details of your own in-bound links or those of your competitors.

Reciprocal Link Checker
If you make reciprocal links with other website owners, you can paste in a list of up to 50 URLs and this tool will crawl those URLs to look for a link to your site. You can use this periodically to make sure that the sites are still linking to you.

Reciprocal Link Checking Tool
A similar tool provided by SEO Book.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth
Free software that checks for broken links.

Dead-Links.com
Enter a domain name and it will crawl the site looking for dead links.

W3C Link Checker
The dead link checker from W3.org

SERP Trackers:

Testing and tracking search engine rankings for specific keywords is a common task for website owners, SEOs and marketers.

Rank Checker Firefox Add-on
This add-on from Aaron Wall can track multiple search phrases on major search engines. There are a number of options and presets that make this a very valuable tool.

Search Engine Ranking Checker from Mike’s Marketing Tools
This is a simple ranking checker. Enter a URL and search phrase and it will show you the rankings in major search engines.

Other SERP Trackers:

• Search Engine Ranking Report from Self SEO
• Search Engine Ranking Check from SiteReportCard
• Search Engine Position Check from Web-Inspect
• SerpRank

Premium SEO Tools:

These tools will cost you some money, but serious marketer (particularly those that do client work) the price is likely to be justified.

Raven SEO Tools
Raven is a comprehensive suite of marketing and SEO Tools. It can help you with keyword research, link building, social media, social media monitoring, SERP tracking, analytics and ROI, and more. The price is $79 per month with a 30-day free trial.

Web CEO
Web CEO contains 12 tools in the suite (download rather than web-based). There is a free version as well as two paid versions to choose from.

Pro SEO Tools from SEOmoz
A collection of useful tools available to Pro subscribers. Many of the tools are also available in a limited version for free.

Trends:

Analyzing trends can help you to improve your website’s visibility by providing information that is in demand.

Google Alerts
For brand management or industry monitoring purposes, you can set Google Alerts to email you when something new is added to the Google index.

UrlTrends
Enter a URL and it will provide a report showing some useful information such as link data. You can upgrade to a paid account for some added features. Paid plans range from $8 to $15 per month.

Popular Searches from SEOmoz
Shows the most popular searches from a variety of sources for a given day.

Competitor Analysis:

These three websites can help you to get some basic, but helpful, data about the websites and visitors of your competitors.

Compete
Compete provides estimated statistics from any website. Pro plans with added data start at $199 per month.

Alexa
Alexa ranks websites according to traffic and provides estimated statistics.

Quantcast
Quantcast also provides data on any website, including some interesting demographics info.

AdSense:

For those who use AdSense to monetize their website, analysis on impressions, CTR and CPM is a necessary for maximizing results.

AdSense Notifier
AdSense Notifier shows your AdSense earnings in your Firefox toolbar so you don’t have to login to AdSense to see it.

Analytics Integration for All
Blog post from Google about intergrating AdSense and Analytics.

How Do I Link My AdSense Account to Analytics?
Instructions from Google.