To that end, below are five easy-to-use SEO tools that we encourage any marketer to check out. And best of all, they’re all free!

1. SEOTools Back Link Analyzer

Back Link Analyzer quickly determines anchor text, page title and number of inbound links to a page. This is a great tool that gives you insight to how the page gets its visibility in search. Links are food for search engines, and this tool gives you an idea how satisfying your page (or a competitor’s page) is. We use this tool to inform our link building and search improvement activities.

2. Website Grader

True to its name, Website Grader attempts to “grade” the effectiveness of your website vs. competitors. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. This tool gives you a great way to objectively look at your page from a search perspective. It looks at all of the on-page elements that search engines look at and points out your weaknesses. Website Grader is a great tool that provides objective measurement with a no-nonsense result.

3. Total Validator

Total Validator provides a one-stop-shop chockfull of validation tools – an HTML validator, an accessibility validator, a spelling validator and a broken links validator.  This tool is a spot check to reveal any technical issues on your page. Search engines value standards compliance, and Total Validator gives you a completely objective look at how compliant you page code is. Poor technical construction and standards non-compliance can cause search engines to skip crawling your site or diminish its search visibility.

And no listing of top SEO tools would be complete without a few Firefox Add-ons, as Firefox remains a favored browser for SEOs everywhere.

4. X-Ray

X-Ray gives marketers a quick way to see a webpage’s tags without having to view the source code. X-Ray is simply an indispensable tool. It illuminates the meta-data, inbound link volume and essential code elements like H1 tags without having to look at source code. This speeds up the technical discovery process and can easily show even the non-search expert points that need improvement.

5. SEOpen

SEOpen gives marketers a quick look at the the number of indexed pages and inbound links on the major search engines. Also you get a look at Alexa rankings and more. This great tool aggregates important information all in one place!

Jeffrey Cohen is CIO/CTO of PM Digital.

I was excited to receive an “exclusive” invite for the Google Wave product.  My first look at this intriguing platform, combined with the recent work we’ve been doing with the Facebook API, has left me pondering the future of both.

While we can’t be sure what Google’s final product will look like, the currently available Wave application could potentially be an e-mail and/or social media killer.  On second thought, those two platforms will never go away, but they could be somewhat diminished.  After all TV didn’t kill radio and online marketing will not completely replace off-line channels, but in both cases, the existing models had to be rethought.

So maybe instead of “media killer”, Google Wave could become “media dominator” or at least “media augmenter”.  For sure, Google Wave has the potential to impact Facebook’s progress as a marketing tool.

Google Wave Demo Page - Click to Enlarge

On the social networking front, Google Wave seems to offer a fragmentation of the social networking scene.  It allows for the creation of personal mini-social networks, a targeted group of confidants.  The activity and frequency of these “waves” of discussion gives Google a powerful metric – more compelling and useful than a simple headcount of how many friends or connections you have in your personal network.

On the e-mail (and IM) front, Google Wave brings real-time communication and collaboration – knowledge management — to a whole new level.

The potential for targeted marketing based on whatever subject matter is being discussed goes beyond what we’ve seen in Gmail or Facebook. One can easily imagine the singular focus of a given “wave”, and the ability of Google to track who is contributing to the discussion and even what position each party has taken.  Kind of big-brotherish?  Sure, but it wouldn’t take much for Google to offer a well-timed offer based on user interest areas and opinions.

If you haven’t seen it (and you have some time to spare) Google’s own introductory video on Google Wave is a must see.

Also, if you want a critical review of the current pre-release candidate, check out Jason Perlow’s write-up on ZDNet.

Jeffrey Cohen is CIO/CTO of PM Digital.

In any case, this change is a new infrastructure that includes a rewrite of the underlying data storage technology – the Google File System (GFS). This will give Google more flexibility and speed in how they construct the search engine result pages (SERPs) in the future.

We are however seeing some differences in the sandbox results versus today’s results:

In this sandbox example below, we see 419,000 results being returned for candy apple gift baskets in 0.09 seconds with mrsprindables.com in the top spot.

Search Results from Google Caffeine

While in the following live example, we see 203,000 results being returned for the same search with amyscandykitchen.com getting the first position.

Search Results from Regular Google

I suspect there will be more to say on this as Caffeine rolls out and the SERPs are further enhanced but for now it seems to mean:

Size/Speed: Google is going to be crawling and indexing more pages faster to ensure the inclusion of fresh content in their results pages. They are also striving to return results to searches quicker.

Accuracy: They are working to make sure that the top results pages are going to be the ones with the content that most correctly match up with the searcher’s keyword.

Comprehensiveness: Those sites that are the authoritative resource on the intended destination content will become the top results.

We are taking all this to simply tell us that it is becoming more and more important for marketers to create sites with larger and larger collections of content in order to really dominate the natural listings on Goggle which will support the big brands over the long run.

More to follow as this change rolls out.

Jeffrey Cohen is CIO/CTO of PM Digital.

For online retail, one key area where APIs can be particularly powerful is Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs).  CSEs like Froogle (via Google Base), Shopzilla, Shopping.com and Price Grabber allow consumers to compare prices for specific products. Typically, CSEs do not sell products themselves but rather represent retailers to whom the consumer is referred to via the click.

While some CSEs like Google Base and (to some extent) Shopping.com already have APIs in place, it’s mindboggling from a tech perspective how many others do not (and how little support there is for some that do).  Besides the inability to get good product level results data out without resorting to manual intervention, a good API would allow a marketer to update pricing and availability in real-time as opposed to the lengthy delays we currently experience. And having the latest information at their finger tips can only mean a better consumer experience.

There are many signs that point to another cautious holiday shopping season for 2009, which means both CSEs and retailers could benefit greatly as consumers look for places to comparison shop.  It’s critical to get this CSE and API issue ironed out…if not this year then for next.

Jeffrey Cohen is CIO/CTO of PM Digital.

Buy

When you evaluate the “buy” option, you have to assume that even though the software package you select may be designed especially for your business, it will still need customization to suit your needs.  So once you’ve made this decision, the interaction between you and the software company of choice often moves into the outsourced development mode. Occasionally you get lucky and the software package that best meets your criteria is also extensible and modifiable by your in-house staff (with some training of course).

In-House Development

In order to make “in-house development” work, you need a good team and a willingness to stick to proper software development protocols. In other words, you need to manage the project the same way you would with an outsourced development effort and avoid short cuts in the development process. You also need to insure that you are properly staffed with enough resource and the right skill set.  Avoid the tendency to gloss over a weakness within your own existing resources.  If you are not equipped to handle something in-house, a small and well defined out-sourced project could be the best solution to solve a specific problem.

Outsourced Development

The biggest challenge with “outsourced development” is the selection of the right partner (IMHO). Depending on your in-house talent and their ability to understand the scope of the project (and keep it crystal clear), you need to first engage a potential partner to develop a project scope document. This initial phase will tell you a lot about the partnership and should help you gauge how later stages of development will flow. The challenge here, of course, is that your outsourced development partner will not know the nuances of your business the way an in-house staff might.  You need to be very generous with the flow of information to your partner company, and you need to make sure to dedicate a significant team (with a large cross section of roles) from your own staff for the project.

The Bottom Line

Naturally, the answer to which of above strategies is best depends your organization’s needs.  In any case, none of them are a pure play.  All of the above have crossover elements, and based on our own recent experiences, you may find you need to leverage more than one of the strategies above to satisfy evolving software needs.

Jeffrey Cohen is CIO/CTO of PM Digital.