From Jeremy: Great guest post explaining 5 sites that you must look into to help with your SEO.  Thank you to Kim for the post.

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photo credit: faith goble

If you know where to look, the Web can be a free source of SEO sites to help business owners achieve better SEO (search engine optimization) than they ever thought possible. With just a few Web-based tools at your fingertips, you can be in the top of the Google page rankings in no time!

Google Toolbar – This amazing tool bar can tell you everything from backlinks to page rank. This is great if you’re checking in on the progress of your own sites. Even more effective, however, is the way it can help you spy on your competition! Analyze what your competitors are doing using the Google toolbar and then come up with a strategy to implement better SEO practices than they are using. Add link building to that and you have a recipe for success!

Adwords.Google.com – Yet another great tool from Google. This Web-based site allows you to search for keywords and keyword phrases so you can see what the popularity of a search term is. These figures can help you decide on whether it is worth it to go after a term that 17 million people are searching for or if it’s better to target smaller related keywords and dominate those markets. Use the sort feature at the top of the keyword tool results to sort by “Global Volume” and get the results in order from most searched to least searched.

Freekeywords.WordTracker.com – This is a meta search results-driven site. This means that it compiles the results from multiple search engines such as Google, Bing, MSN, Yahoo, and others. Simply type in your keyword or phrase and it will give you the top 100 search terms related to that topic. In the left column, it will show you the number of searches and if you multiply that number by 5, you can approximate the volume for that search term on Google alone. Since Google doesn’t off a “top 100”, this is a great site to use when you want cut and dry results with none of the less important keywords included in the results.

Spyfu.com – This will show you what other competitors are doing so you can leverage keywords and phrases in your market. It will tell you the PPC costs, search volume, and the number of clicks per day. You can also see the competitor’s ads and their sites! This site is a great place to gain intelligence into what your competitors are doing. Copy/modify what they are doing and you’ll have better SEO results for your own site.

Shopping.com/top_searches – This will tell you the top 100 searches of products that people are searching for right now. Pay attention to the suggestions in the search box when you type something as well; this will tell you what’s popular right now. Look at your search results and observe which products people are selling and this can give you a good idea for different types of products to also sell on your own site. Good SEO also relies on the premise that you’re selling something that people need or want; this site is the cherry on top!

Kim Virrueta is the owner of EggStream Marketing and a professional writer. Her expertise in the areas of SEO, Social Media Marketing, and Blogging has helped her gain a loyal audience of business owners and Internet Marketing Professionals. She especially caters to women business owners and teaching stay at home moms about how to make money by working from home using their existing writing skills.