Popular SEO Tools

Google AdWords Keyword tool
The first step in any SEO campaign is identifying the keywords/key phrases you want to use - popularly known as keyword research. Google AdWords Keyword tool is the most widely used and acclaimed free tool for keyword research. It will let you know which keywords to target, the competition for those keywords, and will also offer suggestions on popular phases you might not have even thought of. There are other paid keyword research tools like keyword discovery and wordtracker which are good as well, but this tool is valuable and efficient when it comes to a free SEO tool.

XML Sitemap Generator
If you place a formatted XML file with site map on the web server, you enable Search Engine crawlers (Google) to find out what pages are present on your website and which ones have been changed recently. Whenever you add new content to your site you will obviously want to make sure Google knows about it. Sitemaps help search engine's spiders crawl your site and understand what it's about. The XML sitemap generator will create a sitemap compliant with the search engine that you need to upload to your home directory every time your site is updated.

SEO Book's Rank Checker

A Firefox plugin that enables you to check where your website is ranking in keyword searches. You can save details of every campaign and run reports from your browser in seconds. It helps you analyze website rankings on the three major search engines - Google, Yahoo and Bing. SEO Book's Rank Checker is a widely used tool which is highly recommended to check your search engine rankings.

Hubspot's Website Grader
This free SEO tool can perform a health check on your website before awarding it a grade and offering advice on how it could be improved. A few interesting features are blog analysis, indexed pages analysis, metadata, domain info, inbound links, last crawl date, social media grader etc. You can discover how effectively your site is described (language) and how often it has been bookmarked on Digg or Delicious. Also, you can add a Website Grader widget (which provides you with a code to paste into your site) displaying a badge featuring your search marketing quality score.

Majestic SEO
SEO revolves around backlinking. This tool gives you a clear count and analysis of your website's backlinks including the page they are on, anchor text and the total number of backlinks on that particular page. This useful tool will let you know who's linking to your content and track the success of your link building campaign.

Google Analytics / Google Webmaster Tool
These two tools together make the fundamentals of search engine marketing. Based on Urchin, Google Analytics is a top analytics tool available to everybody for free. This analytics gives you details about traffic behavior, funnel information, conversions, landing pages and much, much more. Google webmaster on the other hand gives you a view of what Google "sees" on your site including crawling speed, crawling rate, highest pagerank of your site and more.
SpyFu 
SpyFu lets you enter either a keyword or domain into its search box to begin the process. You are afterward presented with results to help you decide if a particular keyword is an appropriate choice for your SEO or ad campaigns and other keyword possibilities. From domain searches, you can see your competitors and discover details of their organic or paid search campaigns. There is paid version of spyfu.com which offers more features, but the free one has quite a lot as well.
Compete 
This is a great tool for analyzing your competition. You can see traffic and engagement metrics for any website; identify sites for affiliate and SEO link building. Also you can analyze competitor keywords and search strategies for free. Other features include; analyzing subdomains, tagging, comparisons, portfolios and CSV download of information. Compete.com also has a subscription based paid service which you can use to attain additional features.

The Important of SEO

The internet is considered to be one of the biggest market places to promote your product with no geographical boundaries. You can use different techniques to market your products using your website. Internet provides you opportunities to reach out to more customers and you need to ensure that you create a site that can attract visitors as well as convert to sales. This necessitates that you are listed high in the search engine rankings. For this, SEO proves to be a powerful internet marketing tool.

SEO techniques are aimed at reaching out to customers by way of listing at the top of the search engine search lists. With techniques like back links, keyword placement, etc., you are trying to promote your product and ensure that you list higher in the indexing. If you consider keywords, they are those words or phrases that would be typically used by prospective customers to try to find information related to what they want. You should undertake research of keywords that are related to your product and which are popularly used and results achieved.

Similarly, once you have the keywords in hand, you would ensure that you are placed appropriately in the website. Right from the title of the page you should consider where you might place it. The search engines search the title for the keyword. If you have used relevant keywords in the title., the customer would be tempted enough to click on your link, once he conducts a search. Like the placement of the keywords, the keyword density is of equal importance. If you use too many keywords or phrases as part of your website content, it will make your content redundant. Excessive use of keywords can lead to reducing the credibility with the searc engines as well as the visitors and this loss is irreversible. Quality of content is as important for search engines as much for the customers. Unique content with a balanced use of keywords rather helps in getting you top ranking.

Other SEO tools that are useful are the back links. If you hve links from other sites, the search engines consider you as a site with relevant information. What it means is that the more the number o flinks you have coming from outside, the more popular you are. You may have links with other website that sell related products and have links coming from their sites. So, whatever traffic is attracted t these sites may also come to you. Similarly, you may also use anchor links, which is the preferred back link mode by search engines. This can be done by placing your links to keywords in articles that you may submit to article directories, blogs or forums. Search engines may not consider if you have done excessive link swapping. Links can help in getting your site higher rankings.

Obamacare Is Here

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has been glued to the television anticipating the outcome of the recent elections.  Regardless if you lean left, right or prefer to do your own thing, we ALL must think about the future as it pertains to insurance sales, as well as other ways to make money online.

The Good news.
-Millions of consumers will have access to standardized plans to choose from making it easier to purchase health insurance
-Consumers WILL BE REQUIRED to buy health insurance or face a penalty
-Government subsidies will help families purchase insurance they may have not been able to afford before
-Consumers will need somebody to help them learn about their options to pick the right plan.
-Insurance agents will still be compensated for assisting consumers purchase health insurance
-Hundreds of agents (thousands perhaps) will decide it's not worth the financial gain to pursue health insurance sales. This might also be considered bad depending on your perspective

The Bad News
-Commissions will get cut AGAIN
-Tons of unanawered questions needs to be answered regarding the Obamacare requirements, potential health insurance premiums, insurance distribution channels, etc.
-Health Insurance premiums will increase. Some suspect anywhere from 50-200%. Time will tell what happens.
-Penalties for not having health insurance (less money in consumer hands to spend)
-New taxes (cough) to help pay for health care reform

If you don't have a back up plan now, I suggest you start planning NOW.