Every website promoter would agree that doing SEO barehanded is a lost cause. Good SEO software slashes SEO workload big time and lets you easily push your website to Google’s top. There are lots of free SEO tools designed to serve every purpose of website optimization. They can be used at each stage of SEO process: from keyword research to the analysis of your SEO campaign results. Here is the list of the most popular free SEO software:

Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

Choosing the right keyword to bet on is the first step of any SEO campaign. You may scratch your head and make up your own list of keywords to optimize your website for. But that is like a complete shot in the dark since your ideas may significantly differ from what the Average Joe enters in Google.

Here is where Google AdWords Keyword Tool comes in handy. Originally this SEO tool was designed to help Google AdWords advertisers but now it can be used for keyword research as well. Google AdWords Keyword Tool lets users figure out which keywords to target, provides the list of suggestions on popular keywords, shows the competition for the chosen keywords, displays estimated traffic volumes for exact match phrases and dozens more. This free SEO tool has a nice interface and is very easy-in-use.

At the moment there are two versions of this tool available: the old version and the new Bata one with the updated interface. Currently the Beta version of Google AdWords Keyword tool may display the wrong data on Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. That’s because this data is based only on Google.com traffic instead of Google.com search traffic and traffic from search partners. So for now you’d better use the old version until the new one provides correct and relevant results.

SEO Book's Rank Checker.

To measure the fluctuations of your website’s rankings you need a good SEO tool for rank checking. SEO Book’s Rank Checker won the popularity as one of the fastest and the most precise rank checkers. That is a Firefox plug-in that lets users run their websites’ rankings check in the Big Three: Google, Yahoo! and Bing. In the blink of an eye it provides you with the results on your website positions for the targeted keywords. SEO Book’s Rank Checker also lets easily export the collected data. All that users have to do is enter the URLs of their websites and the keywords they want to check your rankings for positions. It’s fast, easy-in-use and free.

Backlinks Watch.

Building a diverse backlink portfolio is one of the key steps in any website optimization campaign. The more good quality links are pointing to a website the higher its position in search results is. That’s why a good SEO tool for competition research and link building is a must-have in your arsenal of anyone engaged in SEO. Backlink Watch is a free online backlink checker that helps users see what sites have links to their pages and provides some data for analysis: title of the linking page, the anchor text of the link, dofollow or nofollow tag, etc.. The only drawback of Backlink Watch is that it displays 1,000 backlinks per website regardless of the actual number of links a website has.

Compete (compete.com)

Compete.com is an SEO tool for monitoring and analysis of online competition. It has two kinds of services: free Site Analytics and subscription based paid Search Analytics that lets its users take advantage of some extra features. Compete.com is a peerless SEO tool that lets users see traffic and engagement metrics for a targeted website and find websites for affiliate and link building purposes. Compete.com can also be used for keyword analysis, since it lets you run the analysis of your on-line competitors’ keywords. Some other features to mention are export to CSV , subdomain analysis, tagging etc.

SEO PowerSuite.

SEO PowerSuite is all-in-one bundle of SEO tools that lets you cover all aspects of website promotion. The four tools this SEO toolkit consists of let you nail all website optimization tasks. WebSite Auditor is a great tool for running all-rounded SEO site audit and shaping premium quality website content. Rank Tracker is second to none at monitoring your website positions for targeted keywords and unearthing the most traffic-generating keywords. SEO SpyGlass is powerhouse SEO tool for competition research and link building that lets you discover and analyze the maximum of backlinks per website get ready-to-implement website optimization strategy. LinkAssistant is a feature-rich SEO tool for link building and management that let users handle the main aspects of offpage optimization campaign.

Free versions of these four tools are available. You can also buy an extended version of SEO PowerSuite with extended functionality to make your optimization campaign complete.

So there are tons of SEO tools that will never burn a hole in your pocket and let you run your website optimization campaign with the minimum of costs and efforts. Just make the right choice.