Consider it a budding SEO learning center. In fact, the latest SEOBoise.com post deals with how to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Best, Jtree.net

And, when I say cheap, I mean free.

There is a plethora of free, web-based tools out there these days. Some quality, some not so quality. With that in mind, I thought I would focus on one particular offering which provides Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing information to site and blog owners.

Compete offers a set of both free and paid tools aimed at providing valuable Internet Marketing information to site and blog operators. It matters not if you are a SEO pro or just someone with a vested interest, Compete is easy to use and understand.

Compete is compromised of three primary areas; Site, Search and Referral Analytics.

Site Analytics

The core Compete service; focused on traffic history and competitive analytics. Plug in your competitors URLs and see how they stack up to your website.

Here’s the unique visitors graph; comparing myspace.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, delicious.com and linkedin.com:

Here’s a look at the average stay time (in minutes) – look at myspace plummet!

Compete also provides additional graphs, a list of top keywords that drive traffic to each of the sites being compared.

Search Analytics

In addition to Site Analytics, Compete offers a handy set of analytical search tools which track keywords that send you traffic, identify which sites/blogs are getting the most clicks from a keyword and compare keyword rankings against competitors. In SEO speak, these are important keywords and phrases to pay attention to in both the organic and paid realms.

Referral Analytics

Referral Analytics are just that; aimed at revealing the origins of site traffic; its location, where it’s going and compare the results to that of your competitors. In regard to SEO, the more you know about your traffic, or your competitor’s traffic for that matter, yields higher quality of optimization targeting.

The above information is related to the free SEM/SEO tools offered by Compete. The paid set both expands on functionality, features and options of the already useful free set. Visit Compete

Defined: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Please Stumble and Digg if you enjoyed this post!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Surefire Search Engine Optimization Tips for Beginners
• The Benefits of Search Engine Optimization