So today I’m going to be like Oprah…or something like that…and share with you a few of my favorite online marketing tools. Some you may have heard of, some are hopefully new gems for you to add to your toolbelt.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Optimization (SEO) Tools:

• KeywordSpy.com, SpyFu.com, and PPC Web Spy: What keywords are your competitors bidding on? What keywords are they ranking for naturally? Good stuff to know if you’re going to compete with them. These two are some of the best search engine marketing competitive analysis tools available.
• Google’s Keyword Tool: Anyone who’s ever done any keyword research or advertised on Google AdWords knows about this free tool from Google. It offers some of the most reliable insight into which keywords you should be targeting for your search engine marketing campaigns. Find out how many people are searching for which keywords each month, and which related keywords you hadn’t even thought about. The tool’s value is partly due to the fact that the information is coming straight from the world’s largest search engine. Google knows keywords.
• Yahoo Site Explorer: You may know that building links is an important part of search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. So, why not take a look at who’s linking to your top competitors, and see if you can get some of those links yourself! Put simply, Yahoo Site Explorer is the best free tool available on the internet that will tell you how many links you have pointing to your site (or anyone else’s site for that matter). Google’s link analysis tool doesn’t even offer this kind of insight.
• SEO Moz Pro: This paid service from one of the leaders in SEO research and information is aimed at SEO professionals – no question. It’s not for the casual website operator. But the suite of tools available with a paid membership offers valuable insight for competitive SEO research, and one month of membership ($79) will easily pay for itself if you use for input in launching a new web business. With SEO Moz Pro you can find which keywords your competitors are targeting, the relative strengths and weaknesses of those websites, and ultimately find opportunities for marketing your own website.
• More Search Engine Marketing Tools
• More Keyword Research Tools
• More Competitive Analysis Tools

Email Marketing Tools:

• VerticalResponse has been our favorite small-campaign email service provider since we started using the service in 2007. It’s actually the service we use for our email newsletter. There are tons of alternatives out there, but for fewer than 50,000 contacts, VerticalResponse does the job. For larger volume campaigns, check out this analysis of more email marketing service providers

Website Design Themes Tools:

• WooThemes and ThemeForest: You can drive all the traffic you want to your site, but if it’s not attractive, easy to use, and if visitors can’t find what they’re looking for, all those other marketing efforts will be worthless. Website design is an integral part of your online marketing campaign. Fortunately you don’t need to design a website from scratch anymore – you can buy professionally designed templates and customize your way to originality. These two “theme” providers offer well designed website themes for $10 – $200; a fraction of what you would pay someone to design them from scratch.