With the growing number of people who are getting into online marketing, it’s getting more competitive each day. Online marketers must work hard to stay ahead of the game. New Internet trends emerge faster than you can blink, and by staying on top of them, your business will flourish.

There are tons of tools that online marketers can use to get their messages across and keep their sites at the top of the search engines. Here are five of those tools, all of which are free.

Twitter

Blogging has been the thing to do for both individuals and businesses for several years now. While it’s still a very worthwhile pursuit, many Internet users have been craving something that’s quicker and easier to digest. That’s where Twitter comes in.

Twitter is a microblogging application that allows users to post short messages. These messages are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to his followers via Web or text message to their cell phones. Twitter provides a great way for online marketers to be heard in this age of short attention spans. They can announce specials, give out coupon codes, and more with it.

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Google AdWords Keyword Tool

You may or may not use Google AdWords, but its Keyword Tool is great for anyone who is trying to break into niche markets or get good rankings for a website. By simply entering a general keyword, you get a list of related keywords, along with the level of competition and search volume. This information can be very useful to an Internet marketer.

FriendFeed

With all of the social networking and media sites out there, it can be difficult to keep up with all of our friends on them. Some former Google employees recognized this problem and developed FriendFeed, a social media aggregator that allows one to access friends’ activitiy on dozens of sites in one place. Marketers can make use of FriendFeed to make it easier for their prospects and customers to keep up with them online.

SEO for Firefox

There are many factors that go into search engine rankings. We can better understand the importance of these factors by analyzing them on well-ranked sites. That’s where SEO for Firefox comes in. This browser add-on displays information such as PageRank, age, incoming links and more for each page that comes up in Google or Yahoo search results.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a social site that is primarily accessed via a browser toolbar. Users can view a website that is related to their interests with a click of the mouse, and they can rate each site just as easily. Sites shown are selected by user submissions and further featured based on ratings. This presents a wonderful opportunity for marketers to get traffic to their sites.

Internet marketers need to take advantage of every opportunity to get traffic and maintain good search engine rankings. These free tools can help us accomplish those goals and take our businesses to the next level.