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If you’re into SEO/SEM, chances are time is not on your side. Hundreds, if not thousands, of your competitors are fighting to squeeze in to the top of SERPs. With this, good SEO/SEM Practitioners use aides that will buy them time. These are tools and software to quickly save time and effort than what ordinary practitioners can achieve.

Kalena Jordan of Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects - lists her 20 must-have SEO/SEM tools:

Anyone working in Search Engine Marketing knows that this industry travels at warp speed. If you’re trying to market your web site or the web sites of your clients via search engines, chances are your time is limited - severely limited.

To squeeze as much into my schedule as possible without resorting to self-cloning, my daily routine involves the use of a range of time-saving tools and software. I use such tools on a daily basis and I truly don’t know how I’d function without them. I’m not the only one. I’ve talked to other SEM experts and they also rely on various tools to help them through their hectic schedules.

Here is a list of 20 must-have tools used by busy SEM professionals:

1. Freshbooks Invoicing and Timesheets. Freshbooks is an online estimating, invoicing, project management and time tracking service that gives your business a professional image, no matter how small. I use it to invoice all my clients online and it can even be set up to automatically bill and debit the credit cards of recurring clients every month. It also has built in staff timesheets and project management tools for online collaboration.

2. XML Sitemaps Generator. The XML Sitemap Generator trawls through all levels of your site to generate an XML sitemap. It also gives you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL list and a HTML sitemap you can import straight into your site. The online version of the generator is free for sites of less than 500 pages, but there’s also a low-cost script-based version for larger sites that can be set up to automatically index your site, upload an updated XML file to your server and ping Google and Yahoo when done.

3. Proposal Kit. ProposalKit takes the chore out of creating and tailoring client estimates and proposal contracts. With over 200 pre-designed self-guiding templates ready to fill in the blanks with your company, project/product/service and client information, ProposalKit has already half completed your proposal for you.

4. ClickTracks. As far as site analytics goes, the depth and accuracy of data provided by ClickTracks just can’t be beaten, in my opinion. The visual analysis ClickTracks provides is probably its best known feature, with statistical data overlaying actual screenshots of your web site pages. The ability to flag individual visitors or groups of visitors based on unique identifiers (such as all persons who visited page x or all persons who bought product d) provides a level of analysis that other analytical packages can’t compete with.

5. AWeber
AWeber is a multiple auto responder and mailing list management service rolled into one. Members can send an unlimited number of campaigns, follow up messages, and newsletters to an unlimited number of approved opt-in lists. For newsletter purposes, a wide range of templates are provided, as are free training guides and videos to help you create campaigns.

6. JROX. JROX Affiliate Manager software (JAM) is a super powerful affiliate program that includes follow up email tools, mass email broadcasting, custom URLs and the ability to create up to 10 affiliate downlink levels. It offers affiliates groovy 3d Flash-based graphs and charts displaying their referrals and commissions and an organized marketing tools area for storage of banners, links and promotional materials.

7. Keyword Discovery. Keyword Discovery is an advanced keyword research and search term suggestion tool produced by Trellian.

8. Google Analytics. Google Analytics is free web-based site metrics/analytics software hosted by Google. After you insert tracking code on all desired pages of your site, Google collects data regarding visitor activity and then you are able to log into an Analytics interface and view site activity and produce reports.

9. Backlinkwatch.com
Type your URL into Backlink Watch and get complete detailed information about the quality and quantity of backward links pointing to your website. It will show you anchor text, Google Toolbar PageRank, total outbound links on that page and nofollow flag for each of your inbound links available.

10. Jim Boykin’s tools. A collection of 17 free SEO tools developed by Jim Boykin and his staff, including a cache analyzer, Backlink checker, keyword density tool and multiple inbound and outbound link checking tools.

The rest of the methods and tools used can be found here: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2007/oct/15.html