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You can create what you think is the greatest web site in the world, thinking that people will flock in droves as soon as they find it. How do they find it? One way is through the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN). Search engines are the most widely used tool for finding information on the web. But have you designed your website with search engines in mind? Want to find out? Use some of the tools discussed here on a regular basis to see how well your site really is doing.

Link Analysis

What you should be tracking are things like:

• who is linking to your website?
• what are the most popular pages on your website?
• what sites are you linking out to?

Try the Link Popularity website - it will show you all the sites linking to your website by searching Google, Yahoo and MSN. They also offer some free articles you might find useful. If you don't want to see the actual sites linking and just want the number of sites that link to you - try SEO Tools - Link Popularity Checker. Go Rank website also has a Link Popularity Analyzer.

In addition, be sure you aren't linking out to sites that Google or some other search engine has deemed inappropriate - it reflects poorly on your search ranking.

PageRank Analysis

You need to keep track of how well your site or certain pages within your site are ranked with the leading search engines and directories:

• Check PageRank: There are a number of sites that let you check the ranking of your website with the major search engines. PrChecker and the CheckPageRank website are 2 of these.
• Alexa is another site that offers a ton of analysis capabilities - some free and others not. It can show you easily what sites people look at that are similar to yours. This would help you analysis who your competition is. Download the Alexa Toolbar.
• Go Rank website has a couple of good utilities for analyzing keywords including: Keyword Density Analyzer, Compare Keyword Density of any 5 URLS, Top 10 results for Keywords.

An interesting tool to try out is Google PageRank Predictor - it's supposed to be able to predict your website's pagerank based on the quantity and quality of backlinks to your site. It may not be precise - but it may shed some light on how well your current site is going to do and where you need to make improvements.

KeyWord Analysis

Keywords are important to SEO and the popularity of your site with the search engines. It's these keywords/terms that users search on to find information. You need to ensure you are using strong, viable keywords throughout your site (not only in metatags).

• Google Keyword Suggestions: The Keyword Suggestion tool for Google will help you choose relevant and popular terms related to your selected key term.
• Keyword ranking: Find out how well your current keywords are ranked with the popular search engines

Analytics Providers

Monitoring your site is important, but sometimes the cost of the tools prevents a smaller company from doing it. The good news is that there are some free analytic tools out there that even the large organizations are using. These include:

• Google Analytics: You have to place code on your pages which will help Google monitor the traffic on your site. It's becoming a very popular analytics tool for every size of company.
• Clicky Web Analytics: This one looks good - it's free. It's for small websites and blogs.
• AWStats: The AWStats statistics package is a server-side solution for those who are able to access and process server logs.
• Webalizer: This one also requires access to server log files.

For those of you who want to buy a package: WebTrends, Clicktracks and WebSide Story are 2 popular analytics packages.

It's important to keep track of how well your site is doing with the search engines. It tends to be more of an art than a science to get and keep your site high up in the rankings of the search engines, but it's an art you really need to learn.

Also, don't think your blog doesn't also need the same attention. So try out some of the tools listed above. See how your current site ranks and then try to improve it. Because unless you are number 1 on each search engine's list - there will always be room for improvement.