Back in February, Laura wrote about 10 tools she cannot live without.

I’d like to write about one tool that has changed how we produce work at SEER. SEO audience beware, this has less to do with search and more to do with common problems we all deal with when sharing files between people in an office setting.

If you have more than two authors on your word, excel, or PDF documents, you know how troublesome it can be to control efforts between people. Which is the newest version? Did I remember to email Jane my newest copy?

I almost cannot remember dealing with those problems after using subversion–also known as SVN–for the past few months.

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After a conference call with a client the other day, I realized that many of the tools I use day in and day out, I take for granted. A lot of people out there don’t know they exist. I might as well face it – a year ago, I didn’t know they existed! To give everyone some insight into my new habits, I thought I’d share some of my favorites:

1. Firefox – This may seem like getting back to basics to some people but when I started at SEER Interactive, I didn’t know what Firefox was – which was a complete shock to the rest of the team. Now, I can’t understand how my husband can live with Internet Explorer 6 – yes, 6 (he hasn’t upgraded to IE7). That means he surfs the Internet with multiple windows – and without tabbed browsing and awesome user-friendly extensions – which I can no longer remember how to do.

2. Multiple Homepages – Now that I’ve got tabbed browsing down, it’s great to be able to set Firefox to open multiple homepages every time it runs. There are two ways to accomplish this: 1) open the pages you want set as your homepages in separate tabs, then go to “Tools,” “Options,” click on “General” and then click “Use Current Pages;” or 2) Under “Tools,” “Options,” “General” tab, type each of the URLs in the “Location(s)” box separated by a “|” (that’s SHIFT + \). Hit “OK” and that should save your settings for the next time you open Firefox!

3. Numbered Google & MSN Results – Thank you, Greasemonkey! I have always loved Yahoo! for numbering their search results – they make it so easy to know that your term is #6 instead of having to count results down the page. I never understood why Google or MSN couldn’t do the same thing. After discovering tool #1, I discovered Greasemonkey and then scripts that number Google and MSN results. Oh, so wonderful!!! I have to practice counting from one to ten some other way now!

4. Mouse Gestures – This might be an “oldie but goodie.” Mouse Gestures may have existed for a while, but I never knew about them. Since installing this extension, I don’t know when the last time I actually visited the back button was. I LOVE my right mouse button now! And I can’t stand it when I am working on a computer that doesn’t have Mouse Gestures. On any computer I sit down at, by default, I drag my right mouse button to the left to try to go back a page.

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While walking down Broad Street in Philadelphia on a Sunday during the playoffs I noticed how fluid the merchandise market can be when a playoff game hits home. I first noticed a shirt on a mannequin that read “Giants Suck”. I was later approached by a street vendor with shirts that preemptively proclaimed an Eagles victory. These are both items created on a whim, that sell overwhelmingly based solely on a single game. Two weeks prior not even NFL officials were 100% sure that the match up in this game would happen, or that both teams would even make the playoffs.

If it is profitable to manufacture merchandise to satiate this sudden impulsive demand, it should also be profitable to explore the parallel impulse market that is being simultaneously created online. The objective here is to capture the eyes of the increased search volume around game day. This increase in search volume for a focused set of terms over an even more focused time frame will be based on what teams make the playoffs, and their geographical homes. Here it is still entirely about concentrating on the customer, in this case, the fans of away teams. The next game is coming up in a few days, and they need find a place to stay for game night. In fact, they may be visiting for a day before or after the game takes place.

Keywords revolving around tourism, especially terms that mention the city’s name with hotels, flights, restaurants, sight seeing, etc., would be searched much more when a sporting event is about to take place. This means that our target sellers are hotels, and other groups that can capitalize on tourism. A marketer should also consider that these fans are less interested in researching and bargain hunting; they are more interested in getting the details settled so they can enjoy the game. This, paired with the brief window between announcement of games and game time, should be what implies the sense of urgency to marketers.

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Spy on your competition in five minutes! Using three free tools available on the web, it is possible to quickly do competitive research and discover insightful information. Find your competitor’s monthly visits, average page views, organic rankings, pay per click budgets, and pay per click search terms, and more, simply by knowing your competitor’s URL and entering it into these tools!

Tool #1 – Quantcast

Quantcast, while originally designed for advertisers and publishers, is a great tool to find out information regarding the visitors to your competitor’s website. Enter the competitor’s domain and press “Go.” Quantcast visitor information includes number of monthly visitors and demographic information such as gender, age, presence of children in the household, income, ethnicity, and education. For more information on how to interpret the Quantcast data, read here.

Tool #2 – Compete

When you first visit Compete, enter your competitor’s URL and hit the button “Get Site SnapShot.” The Compete SnapShot returns several metrics related to your competitor’s site. Similar to Quantcast, Compete also offers an estimate of the monthly visitors to the website. Compete data also includes statistics on pages per visit and average stay (or the number of minutes the average person spends on the site). For some websites, the “More Site Information” section may include data as to whether or not the site is “Trusted,” meaning it has been validated by GeoTrust and it has an “extensive site history” and may list current deals being offered by the website. For more information about the Compete SnapShot, click here.

Tool #3 – Spyfu

Spyfu is a fantastic tool, especially if your competition is engaged in Pay Per Click advertising. Enter your competitor’s domain and hit search. Spyfu returns data not only on organic search terms and rankings and that website’s organic competitors but also a wealth of PPC data as well. Spyfu can provide you with your competitor’s paid search terms and positions (as well as paid competitors) and other helpful estimates such as daily ad budget, clicks/day, average cost/click, average clicks/day, average ad position, average number of competitors for an ad, etc. Spyfu data can be very helpful in planning your own PPC campaign strategy.

The most important things about all of these tools – they are easy to use, accessible, and best of all, they’re FREE! So, what are you waiting for – get out there and find out what the competition is doing!