Getting info from SEO: SEO tools and software basic features
In order to get your site optimized for the search engines there are a few tools that you are going to have to have. Some of these tools are indispensable while others are just nice to have. In general the more information that you can get about how many searches a keyword gets and how much competition there is for it the better.
The most important tool that you are going to need for SEO is a keyword tool. This will tell you how many searches each keyword gets in a month. There is little value to targeting keywords that nobody is looking for so you are going to want to make sure that you check this. A keyword tool can also be useful in that most of them will offer suggestions about other terms. In most cases if you enter the topic of your site it will give you a list of relevant search terms that you may want to target.
Another important tool that you are going to want to use for SEO purposes is the stats to your own site. Once people start visiting your site your stats will tell you how they got there. This will include what terms they searched for in order to find your site. In many cases you will rank for terms that you weren't specifically targeting. If you see from your stats that you are getting visitors who found your site by searching for terms that you are not targeting you are going to want to start to target those terms.
It is also a good idea to use a tool that will tell you what links a site has pointing at it. This is something that you are going to use more for assessing your competition than you will for your own site. The idea is that when you are doing your keyword research you will check which links they have pointing at them which will give you a good idea of how likely it is that you will be able to outrank them. In most cases you not want to target terms where you are unlikely to get to the top spot.
Really the only other tool that you are going to need for SEO purposes is a search engine. Obviously you are going to want to see what terms rank for the terms that you are planning to target. The key thing is that you look at all of the sites that are on the first page since these are the ones that you are really competing with. A lot of people will tell you that you should assess your competition based on how many results there are but this is not really the best way to do it since you are really only competing with the sites on the first page.