Keyword discovery tools

These tools allow you to find keywords related to a phrase you enter, to help you with your keyword research.

Google Keywords Generator

The strength of the Google Keyword Generator lies in the many suggestions it makes. In fact since Google is the most important search engine and it is in their own interest to provide you with the best search words possible, this keyword generator is really all you need for search engine optimization.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal 

Wordtracker

This free tool is provided by the company Wordtracker. While it is free, they are trying to sell you their monthly fee service. It does come up with some other suggestions, which will help you when brainstorming for keywords.

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ 

Trellian

Again a company trying to get you to sign up for a paid service in return for giving you a taste of their keyword results, and again a good resource for additional keywords.

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Lodge your web site with search engines

The most popular search engines are Google, followed by Yahoo as a distant second, Microsoft Live and Ask.

To lodge your website with one of these search engines, click on the links below or follow the provided instructions:

Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html 

Microsoft Live: http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx 

Ask: Ask requires a sitemap ping. Enter the following string in your website browser and replace everything after sitemap= with the URL of your sitemap. You will find this URL in ShopFactory by clicking on "My Website" after you have published your website for the first time.

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.YourWebSite.com/sitemap.xml

Find out how well you are indexed

Do you want to know how many pages of your web site a search engine has indexed? Simply go to the search engine and enter the command:

site:www.mydomain.com

in the search field. Don't forget to use your own domain name.

The search engine will then list all the pages it lists for you.

Find out how many sites are linking to you

The more related pages link to you, the better your chances of achieving good search engine rankings. This is called link popularity.

To find out how many websites link to you, simply go to any search engine and enter the command:

link:http://www.mydomain.com

in the search field. Don't forget to use your own domain name.

The search engine will then list all the website linking to you.

Build up the number of links to your website

Couldn't find any links in a link popularity check? Don't be concerned. Click on the link below to find web sites which allow you to add links to them. These links will help you increase your Link Popularity.

http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php?sortcolumn=PR

The higher the PR value listed on the page is, the more influence the link can have on your search engine rankings.

Be careful not to use free or low cost submission tools, which claim to link to you from thousands of websites. Search engines such as Google will regard this as search engine spamming, and may lower your search rankings as a result.

See how your web site ranks on the Internet

Want to know how well your website compares to all the other websites on the Internet? Go to http://www.alexa.com  and enter your domain name in the Site Info field on the right side. Be careful, the field on top of the page is just a normal search field.

Don't be too concerned, if you don't rank among the top one million websites. Lifting your website is a challenge, and you will lift it by attracting more customers to your website.

Pick SEO friendly shopping cart software

The best shopping cart software solutions such as ShopFactory will support search engine optimization functions to help you achieve high search rankings in the results.