Peter Vatistas

I’ve consulted for a countless number of companies over the years and one thing I’ve noticed more recently is the concern many companies have for their online reputation. Social media allows anyone with something to say to be heard, everyone has a voice on the web and it’s up to you to find out what their saying about you and your company.

In the past I’ve set up my clients with Google Alerts to monitor what’s being said about them and who’s saying it. One of the downfalls of Google Alerts is it lacks features; it’s a strong tool but it’s missing the ability to monitor all social/search sites, produce RSS feeds and the ability to share the information effortlessly across your network of contacts.

Trackur goes beyond just Google content. It tracks images, videos, Digg, del.icio.us, Twitter, as well as the usual news and blog stuff. Trackur allows users to submit multiple keywords–such as their name, products, and brands–and automatically monitor news, blogs, images, video, and other social media for any mention of those keywords.

Users can view their results using a cool AJAX enabled interface and get updates via email or RSS. You can save multiple searches, add filter keywords, save discovered items, and sort the results the way you want. Think about this, by using RSS feeds you can quickly integrate the feeds into your company’s intranet site so the right people can have the right information without any extra steps! Even better, integrate these feeds directly into their email client and spare them their inbox!!

Google Alerts, can’t do any of that!

If your one of the thousands of companies interested in hearing what the world is saying about you, then I suggest signing up for the 14-day free trial so you can see for your self. Even if your an individual, wouldn’t it be nice to see whats being said about you, your friends, family or even or your boss? How about an old girlfriend or childhood buddy?

Trackur works for your peace of mind, every hour of every day.

Here is a video-walk through created by the maker of Trackur, Andy Beal:

Click here to sign up for the 14-day Trackur trial.

It’s funny how private I’ve been about my SEO techniques and where I spend my money to help optimize my clients sites. It’s not so much that I tried to hide some secret SEO technique that makes my client’s sites rank #1 on Google, its more resources than anything (which is my secret weapon).

The most valuable thing I spend my money on by far is events, website memberships and books. Of course I buy links, I pay for analytical services, content and etc but those come secondary to my budget and many times I never spend a single dime on them.

So what resources I spend my money on and recommend?

SEOmoz - Get the premium membership, well worth the money.

SEO Book Training Program & the SEO Book - Either is fine, I find the training program is a lot like the book with updated content & a community presence.

For resources that is basically it; I’ve read probably close to 100 books on internet marketing and I’m a member of probably every SEO forum on the internet but with everything I know now the only two resources that actually teach me new things are the two listed above.

As for events (physical conferences, forums, etc) I recommend the following:

SMX: The Search Marketing Expo - $1395 for an all access pass.

SES: Search Engine Strategies - $1795 for a platinum passport.

PubCon: Search Marketing Conferences - $799 for a full pass.

Forums I recommend:

Search Engine Land

Sphinn

The V7 Network

Search Engine Watch

SEO Guy

Another thing I like to do is track the experts in search engine optimization. Here is a list of people I highly respect and follow religiously:

Aaron Wall

Chris Hooley

Andy Beal

Matt Cutts

Andy Hagans

Danny Sullivan

C.K. Chung

Lee Oden

Neil Patel

Patrick Sexton

Todd Malicoat

As an SEO I always try to stay up to date with techniques, tools and information. A few years ago I started my own Internet Marketing firm offering SEO, SEM, Analytics, Affiliate and Ad marketing services for medium to large companies and over the years I’ve compiled quite a list of SEO tools.

Within the last three weeks I’ve received over 150 requests for what tools and/or applications I use specifically for search engine optimization. Below you will find my list of tools, applications and services I use on a regular basis, I hope this information helps and keep the questions coming if they don’t! :)

Analytics:

Google Analytics
Omniture SiteCatalyst
Web CEO’s HitLense
StatsCounter

Keyword Research Tools:

WordTracker
Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool
Microsoft Ad Intelligence (Excel 2007 Plug in)
Web CEO
SEOBook Keyword Suggestion Tool
SEO for Firefox

Link Analysis Tools:

SEOElite
Web CEO
SEO for Firefox

Competitive Research Tools:

HitWise
Alexa
Compete
SpyFu
Quantcast
DomainTools

SERP Rank Research & Reporting:

Web CEO
SEOBook Rank Checker
Rank Tracker
Free Monitor for Google

SEO Web Browser Tools:

The Best SEO Plug-ins for Firefox

If you have suggestions on SEO tools please comment on this post, I’m always looking for tools to save me time and headaches!

OpenDNS is a fantastic free service for filtering phishing sites, adult sites, and pretty much anything else you can think of.  It also does perform DNS lookups faster than any site that I have seen to date.  It is easy to admin and you can control your entire enterprise with this service.  Best of all it’s free.

One feature I love about OpenDNS is how I can globally set shortcuts to use a short word for a long address. There’s nothing to install and it works how you want it to, no matter which browser you’re using. Add, remove or change your OpenDNS shortcuts at any time.

OpenDNS provides you with the tools to see what’s happening on your network, coupled with the tools to take action. For example, discover that myspace.com is the most frequently visited site on your network, and then block it with a single click.

“Free yourself of DNS-related Internet outages with our zero-downtime global network. Eliminate DNS as a problem source on your network. Using OpenDNS means fewer support calls and headaches, letting you focus on more important issues.” 

Click here to read more and sign up for OpenDNS.

As you all know I am an avid user of Web CEO for my SEO/SEM solutions company. Although there are a few other tools and applications I use, Web CEO is by far the most powerful and stable application I have ever used in this field. I easily spend the majority of my day using Web CEO for just about all steps of my search engine optimization for all my clients.

Become an expert in SEO quickly and easily:

* Web CEO software package consisting of 12 potent tools to organize your efforts
* Professional Training Course in Search Engine Marketing to learn all the best practices

Web CEO is a full-range search engine optimization software with advanced site troubleshooting and web analytics functionality. Here are a few facts about Web CEO:

The choice of 440,000+ businesses.
Web CEO stands on guard of the rankings of IBM and Motorola. These companies have no right to make mistakes. What about you?

Simple and user-friendly.
Packed with powerful features, Web CEO still can boast an ultra user-friendly interface that turns a novice into an SEO expert right away after installation.

Completely Safe.
Employing Google API and cutting-edge human emulation techniques, Web CEO makes the optimization process absolutely safe for you and your site. Some of the important tools you will find in the package will help you:

* Get suggestions for new keywords relevant to your business and research your own keywords
* Get optimization advice and tweak your Web pages in friendly editing environment
* Create link partnerships
* Keep track of your site’s rankings and links
* Get comprehensive real-time visitor reports

I’m sure your looking at this like I just wrote a sales pitch but if you’ve read my blog before you’ll know I don’t sell a damn thing. In addition to that fact - WebCEO is free! Just download, install and get your rank on.

Download the free edition of Web CEO and get access to the Training Course now!

In addition to Web CEO’s awesome application and training program I totally recommend that you grab the latest copy of SEO Book by Aaron Wall. It doesn’t matter how much you know about search engine optimization/marketing, SEO Book is by far one of the best (if not THE BEST) reference and training materials available today.

That. Just. Happened.

Being that I am an SEO I need to see live stats and information all the time; fortunately for me Firefox has a lot of great tools for free and extremely easy to use.

SEO tools for Firefox:

1. Search Status: This toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar. I use everything this tool has to offer but my favorite feature is the display of site’s Google PR, Alexa, and Compete at the base of my browser.

2. SEO for Firefox: Aaron Wall from SEOBook had this neat little tool developed and I love it. Tons of stats show for every listing in Google’s SERP whenever you search anything. This tool has to be one of the best SEO tools out there and without it a lot of my time would be wasted.

3. Social Media for Firefox: I already posted about this but this tool is worth the time to write about again. You can see my original post here but for those of you SEO/SEM Social Network guys like myself this tool just rocks and is definitely a major time saver.

Here is a list of other extensions I use including a few other SEO/SEM plug ins:

- SEOpen: This tool packs a ton of SEO tools, most I use daily.

- SEOLinks: Neat little tool that shows link stats with mouse over.

- Link Checker: Don’t get caught with broken links again.

- ShowIP: Love this tool for when I swing DNS records.

- ServerSpy: Great extension to show what type of server & version the site is hosted on (i.e. Apache 2, IIS 7.0, etc).