A good tool to help you with on-page optimization is IBP. One of the things I really like about IBP is called the “IBP Top 10 Optimizer“. IBP analyzes the top 10 ranked web pages for your keyword phrase on the Search Engine of your choice and compares the top ten pages to your web site. Then IBP creates an on-page optimization report that tells you in a detailed and easy to understand way how to optimize your web site for the specific keyword phrase in the Search Engine you’ve chosen. Running the ” IBP Top 10 Optimizer” is an excellent way for beginners to learn about on-page optimization, and to improve their on-page optimization.
IBP also has a good search engine rank checking tool. Search Ranking Tools are against some Search Engine’s Terms of Service. Google® has made the strongest stance against their use, whereas Microsoft® has taken an almost polar opposite stance on them, even pointing out ranking tools you can use to check on your rankings on MSN®. In my opinion it is more important to check your traffic statistics to determine if your website promotion is going well. If you are constantly gaining traffic to your website, then your website promotion is going well. On the other hand, if your website traffic is remaining stagnant or constantly going down, then you need to seriously look at ways to improve your traffic.
Many people like to know their rankings for certain search terms and I don’t blame them. Manual rank checking of a small number of search terms doesn’t take very long. Most Search Engines have advanced features that will allow you to change the number of results you see. If you change it to the max (usually 100), then type in the keyword phrase you want to check. Then you can easily find your ranking. To find it even quicker, use the browsers search feature to search for your domain name. This is a really quick, non-automated method of seeing where your site ranks for a certain term.
However, ranking checkers like IBP can speed up the process and most of them allow you to change the settings (like IBP) so that you use a minimal amount of Search Engine resources. You should still keep in mind that they are against the Terms of Service of Google®. So if you want to be really safe you can forget about checking your rankings on Google® (which for the first 6-8 months of your website development you might want to do anyway, if the Google® Sandbox is still in place) and just check how you are doing on other Search Engines. Keep in mind you should check other Search Engines to make sure rank checkers are not against their TOS. However, Search Engines are not going to ban your site for using ranking checkers. If they did, then your competitor’s could use automated ranking checkers to get your site banned.