There are many SEO tools available online at your disposal. A quick search on Google for "seo tools" yields more than a million results. You are bound to get overwhelmed and confused by seeing so many tools.

The trick is not to use all the tools randomly, but to select a choice few and leverage them. Listed below are five types of basic SEO tools required when optimizing your website.

5 Essential Types of SEO Tools

1. Keyword Research Tools: Keyword research and analysis is the most basic step of search engine optimization. You need to select keywords which maintain a fine balance between popularity and competitiveness. Today Google holds the majority in search market share, but there are millions who still prefer other search engines. You should opt for keyword tools which provide comprehensive data for Google, Yahoo and Bing.

2. Meta Tags Analyzer Tools: A Meta tag analyzer tool examines the Meta tags of a web page for search engine compatibility. This tool checks if your web page adheres to the basic search engine guidelines. E.g. If the title tag of your web page exceeds 65 characters, a warning or a reminder is issued by the tool. Simply add your website link in the URL box and the tool will return the results within a few seconds.

3. Backlinks Checker Tools: They are also called link popularity tools. The number of backlinks to a website determines its popularity with Google. It is nearly impossible to track all the backlinks to a website. A good link popularity tool provides detailed information regarding the backlinks. E.g. it's PR, follow, no follow, link authority etc. Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo site explorer provide the most basic details about a websites backlinks.

4. Sitemap Generator Tools: The main function of a sitemap is to help the search engines discover all the links of a website. The search engines can then index the entire website without missing any link. If the website contains 10-20 pages, it is possible to generate a sitemap manually. As the number of web pages increase, it becomes time consuming to maintain the sitemap. An xml sitemap generator tool creates a sitemap within seconds. Some sitemap tools provide an option of including frequency and priority tags in the sitemap.

5. Web Analytics Tools: Web analytics tools are the perfect way to leverage all the seo activities of a website. The data provided by these tools help you to improve the on page optimization of a web page. E.g. the high bounce rate of a web page indicates poor quality content or even high page load time. There are a variety of free and paid analytics tools available online. You should aim at deploying two to three analytics tools on your website to obtain accurate metrics.

You can also use the various seo toolbars and browser add-ons for extra functionality. These tools give your website SEO a good head start and help in achieving high ranking.