SEO on a shoestring - the free tools that could save you a headache

You're a new business, you've got a shiny new website with all the bells and whistles and you're ready to do business online....it all sound great up until now, but how do you get people to your website??
Even though people are more and more internet savvy these days, it is still clear that Search Engine Optimisation, aka SEO, remains a bit of an unknown subject for a lot of companies (lucky for me, keeps me working :) )
So if your marketing budget doesn't allow you to use the services of a search marketing agency or SEO professional, where do you start? I thought I'd compile a quick list of tools that should get you started and put you on the right track. Many of the tools listed below are the ones that I use on a daily basis and even though they may not be the best, I find them really useful and I'm sure they can help you achieve some good results.

Google Webmaster Tools
Although I do not want this post to sound like a huge endorsement for Google, I have to admit that they offer some of the best free tools for SEO on the market. Webmaster tools allows you to verify your website with the biggest search engine in the world and gives you a rather impressive list of options to choose from to check that your site is being indexed properly, so it should definitely be on your SEO checklist.
And if you're completely new to SEO, reading the Google Search Optimization starter guide should give you all the basics in an easy to understand format.

Keyword Research / website trends
Staying with Google (I can see a theme building up here!), make sure to use Trends, Insights for search, and trends for websites to understand what keywords are being searched for across the world, seasonality, country specific searches and find out how websites perform. The keyword tools will help you decide which keywords to focus on for your business.
To help you decide which keywords to use for your business, use the Google Keyword Tool. Start with some core/generic keywords for your business and expand your list with suggestions made by the tool. Don't forget that long tail keywords (very specific search phrases with 2 or more keywords) can sometimes convert at a higher level than generic and very competitive keywords.
I'd suggest using more than one keyword research tool, and WordTracker is one of the best out there. Other options are keyword discovery and Bing webmaster tools

Web Analytics
Yes, you've guessed it, my tool of choice for analytics on a budget is.....Google Analytics. I'm sure I've talked about Analytics at length before, but despite its flaws, it is still the best free analytics tool out there, and it will give you great insights into your website when looking at search engine activity, keywords referrals and much more.

Link popularity
Because link popularity is such an important part of search engine rankings these days, you need to make sure that you increase your LP on a regular basis. While this remains largely a manual process, you need to check that what you're doing is working. I've been using MarketLeap for years now to check LP, but all the major search engines provide functions to check your incoming links.

Finally, now that you've got all the tools to get you started, make sure you read about SEO as there are a lot of blogs and forums that will provide you with a lot of information. Consider SEOmoz, search engine land and the Google blog amongst many others.

Happy optimising, and remember that as for many things, common sense prevails and always keep your customers in mind when doing SEO!