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Of all the SEO principles out there, two remain at the forefront as the most essential: keywords and links. Understanding the language of the searcher (the words they will use to find you) while maximizing the external link love (how search robots know whether you are trustworthy) are top priorities for anyone trying to optimize their website.

Both, of course, fall under the umbrella of "content," as your content is both what makes you linkable, findable, and keepable. Great content is not a jumble of popular keywords, so much as it is a conscious insertion of words and synonyms where appropriate. But you knew that already.

You may not know that Aaron Wall at SEObook has made available a couple of free tools for doing keyword and link research for competitive analysis.

Did I mention they were free?

The keyword research makes use of Google Traffic Estimator, Google Trends, Google Suggest, Google Synonym, and Google Sets.

The Link Analysis Gadget helps with researching backlinks from the major search engines, and fresh citations from blog search engines.

Like other widgets (widgets, by the way, are a fantastic way to generate traffic and links, so long as they are useful), both gadgets come with code that can be slapped onto a webpage.