What do you consider your most valuable Search Engine Marketing Tool?

I find my most valuable and most used search engine marketing tool being Microsoft Excel. Why?

Well I find it so much easier to analyze, manipulate and cross reference data quickly using a spreadsheet than any other method.

Here is how I use Excel to manage various aspects of my search engine marketing campaigns:

P4P Management

• Manage and expand keyword lists
• De-duplicate suggested keywords from various suggestions sources
• Track Return On Investment per keyword and keyword group
• Track number of clicks
• Calculate conversion
• Compare search engine results
• Graph results for presentation to clients

Organic SEO

• Keep track of all page meta data per URL i.e. I have a spread sheet containing one URL per row and use a different column to store Title, Meta Description and Metawords
• Monitor all aspects of organic traffic such as clicks, orders, entry pages
• Monitor daily, weekly and monthly SE trends
• Graph trends of visitors and revenue over time
• Keep a log of my search engine rankings on a weekly basis

Excel is just convenient and extremely simple to use whilst being extremely powerful. More importantly, it is a tool I am comfortable using and does the job that I need it to do.

I would be interested in hearing how other people use Microsoft Excel to assist in their search engine marketing campaigns. Or, what other tool do you find extremely useful to assist with SEM?

Looking forward to your feedback in the comments section.