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SEO has been in the limelight for a while now with more and more businesses realising the value of it. Search Engine Optimization is a constantly evolving field which makes it all the more fascinating. Below is a list of free web tools that are vital to SEO practitioners.

Google Analytics

Google and its tools will always feature highly in any discussion about SEO. Users of Google Analytics can obtain few detailed statistics about traffic to their website. Testing what works is a big part of any business, and especially in the beginning stages. Google Analytics takes a lot of the guess work out of testing with webmasters can see which keywords are working best, get a detailed analysis of where their visitors are from and the length of time they stayed on their site.

Google Website Optimizer

This is another of Google’s free tools which puts webmasters in a more knowledgeable seat with their websites. Users can test landing pages to see which one converts best and follow their Google Adwords and monitor traffic that is converting. In a nutshell, this tool does what is says which is optimize webmaster’s sites through content and design.

Pikwik

This is an open source software application that uses plugins which can be added or removed according to what the user wants. This software is able to report on website traffic, what a site’s most popular pages are, keywords visitors searched with and more. An added plus with Pikwik is the interface is completely customizable and webmasters can arrange the widgets they want to see to create their reports.

SiteMeter

The basic reports this software offers are free. There is a minimum charge if webmasters want to use more advanced features. Once a user has signed up to SiteMeter and installed the unique code on all the pages they want tracked, the comprehensive tracking will provide information on the traffic visiting the site, from where the audience came from to what attracted them to the site to how long they stayed on for.

Webalizer

This is a more technical tool written by a webmaster who was experiencing problems with the analysis package they used. The reports are easy to understand and very fast to run.

Analog

This provides reports in 32 languages. It works on any operating system and is completely customizable. Webmasters can see which countries visitors are coming from, which pages are most popular, even which links people used to get to the site.

Awstats

This provides detailed reports in graphical format, making the data very easy to understand.

There are many other web analytics tools that can be used, some other are also free, some easily affordable and some expensive, but the seven mentioned in this article are a good starting point for beginners and even have something to offer web marketing experts.