A lot of times when you want to buy a site you kind of have to trust the user is giving you proper stats. Really you need to do some homework on your own. Here are some of the tools that I use.
SeoDigger is a nice tool that you can put a url into and it will show you not only what keywords that url ranks for organically but also the wordtracker positions and overture volume as well (Yahoo searches per month). I always am pretty amazed at even the longtail rankings they show on SeoDigger. You can see the rankings for one of our ringtone communities at SeoDigger Here You can also alternate between Google and MSN listings.
The people who make SeoDigger also make some other tools like the popular firefox extension SEO Quake but to be honest I like Search Status the best for firefox SEO plugins. Search status shows me the Alexa, Compete, and Google PR for any site I am browsing. Nice tool to have. Aaron Wall has a firefox extension called Seo Firefox. Its pretty dope and shows you the actual information in serps results for sites. For instalnce you can see if a result has directory listings or edu backlinks… good stuff. I have Seo Firefox installed but I only turn it on when I want to use it. Great plugin none the less. When you want the data it gives you there is nothing like it IMO.
Dnscoop is a great resource to get instant “at your finger tips” information on a given url. It shows historical information on the page, Current Google PageRank (and if its valid), Traffic ranking from Alexa, indexed pages via Google-MSN-Yahoo-Alltheweb-Altavista, Link Value Report from Text-link-ads, and even a estimated worth of site.
Maybe people write off Alexa because of its inaccuracy’s but if you just know how to use it its actually pretty useful. Basically you just have to make sure your comparing apples to apples. For instance if you compare this site to fark.com you will see we have a much higher rating then fark.com. Obviously we do not get as many pageviews as fark but we do get more SEO related people so the numbers are a bit skewed. Now to use alexa effectively you could compare fark to slashdot or shoemoney to another blog that is talking about making money online.
External tools are key for knowing what a sites potential value could be and having the right ones can be real time savers. This is your ShoeMoney Tip For Success – 7
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fas (75) 
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Melvin (330) 
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Agreed… and most underrated post in my opinion!! Dnscooop really helped me out!!
You know, dnscoop works pretty good for me, but I haven’t had any luck with SEODigger. When I run it and then try and click on the (keyword) links – the keywords don’t actually rank in google like SEODigger says in the report. Anyone else get this, or is it fairly accurate?
Also, Shoe, I’m curious….what do you think about what dnscoop says a site is ‘worth’? Do you take that $$ value, or like cut it in half? Would you actually pay what it says a site is worth?
Something about SEO Quake that I didn’t like, might have to give it another try.
I’ve been on seo digger and compete all day.
SEOdigger is super cool. I was using wordze for awhile. I wasn’t really all that happy with what they offer.
dnscoop appears to be a great find, thank you for sharing.
After having to re-install my Firefox I lost quite a few decent SEO related plug ins. I’m going to give SEO Quake a try.
dnScoop was new for me too. Very nice tools.
Shoe, thanks for the listing. The dnscoop tools are cool but as mentioned the site evaluation might only be viewed as entertainment. Interesting dnscoop said it could not generate a value for a link on your site.
I’ve always thought of that SEODigger technique. I didnt know a website like that existed. Very great find.
Thanks for everything you do ShoeMoney
SEO for Firefox is also my tool of choice. Very nice to research one’s own site and even the competition
Thanks for the info on SEO digger never heard about that one before.
I can’t agree about the overall valuation though. Would anyone pay $22k for my site?
http://www.dnscoop.com/?site=www.kensavage.com
Never heard of DNScoop before but its pretty accurate. Thanks Shoe.
Thanks for mentioning those other Firefox plugins. I’ve been using Aaron’s tool for a while, but haven’t had a chance to play around with the others.
Like all these tools, you need to be aware of the fact that those tool owners may be saving or doing something with the data (your data). So I would be careful with the domains that you run through tools if you don’t know exactly what they’re going to do with the data. Talk about disclosure!
SEO Firefox and Search Status are my biyatches! great plugins.
I find dnscoop to be really good!
Shoe, do you really utilize Alexa rankings in anyway? To me, they are worthless. I run a 3k member forum, and just out of curiousity, I began doing research on how to rank higher in Alexa (this was about a year and a half ago). I eventually found that it was very easy to get ranked fairly high in Alexa. All I did was have all my staff members install the toolbar, and visit the forum through that daily, or multiple times daily, and the rankings shot up. Since then, I began to pretty much disregard Alexa rankings since I believe that a lot of sites simply do that to rank high, and therefore the inflation of the results is ridiculous.
Best TFS in the series so far. Thanks. I had not heard for DNScoop before. Am having great fun with it…
Search Status is definitely a favorite. I didn’t like the default whois, so I switched it over to DomainTools.
I think the appraisal tools out there are mostly nonsense.
Well, great tools, really. Regarding appraisal, one of my sites, http://www.MagicTemplate.com was evaluated at $11500 but other two were really underestimated.
Thanks for the additional tools to review. One thing that always bothers me is how inaccurate *most of these tools are “in the real world.” I just checked 4 of our sites that have been around at least 6 years.
I was just told that all or our sites receive “little or no traffic” and that half of the sites are worth under $1500 and that we could get $15 for each link with Text Link Ads!
Oh my…
I won’t mention that these particular sites get tons of traffic and make more money than their supposed value in a matter of a week.
Maybe this is really a blessing though. I know our competition checks us out regularly – so maybe appearing as the weakling keeps the sharks at bay.
mmm are you using the word free?
It says my site has a pr of 4…the dnsscoop…my alexa rank is not that strong though
…something I need to work on.
Great tool list. I didn’t know about all of them but I do use Search Status for FF.
I agree about Alexa……while it may have some accuracy issues, it still is fairly good to get an overall idea of activity on a site in question.
Great tips.
great list of tools for the before you buy phase, plus to check out the competition. I use Aaron Walls SEO firefox.