| When working with my workshop or online SEO
students, I’m often told of a really neat tool that I’ve never heard of before.
So, I thought it would be a great idea to share these tools
with you, just like they were shared with me.
A special thanks goes to all of you who told me about these
unique tools. And, if anyone else has a “cool tool” to share, be sure to let me
know.
Customer Focus Calculator (“We We Monitor”!)
http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm
This has got to be one of my favorite cool tools. It
analyzes a Web page and lets you know if the Web page is focused on YOU or on your
customers. After all, shouldn’t our Web pages be written for our customers . . . not
ourselves?
Search Engine Optimization Tools
http://www.webconfs.com
This site has three different tools that are really cool.
One is a Search Engine Spider Simulator, which displays exactly what a spider would see
when it visits your page. Another free tool is the Google Backlink Checker, which lets you
know who’s linking to your site and what link text they’re using. The last tool
is the Similar Page Checker. We all know that “duplicate content” is a no no.
This neat tool will determine the similarity between two pages.
Marketleap Search Engine Marketing Tools
http://www.marketleap.com/services/freetools/default.htm
My favorite tool on this page is the Link Popularity Check.
Enter your URL and up to three comparison URLs, and the site will let you know what your
link popularity is in AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Google, Inktomi, and MSN. It also compares
your site’s link popularity to other URLs you listed as well as other sites on the
Net. The Search Engine Saturation tool determines how many pages a given search engine has
in its index for your Web site. You can compare your site to five other sites with this
tool. Finally, the Keyword Verification Tool checks to see if your page is in the top
three pages of a search engine’s results for a certain keyword or keyword phrase.
Website Security Report
http://security.computer-concierge.net/security/website_security_report.asp
This very cool tool lets you find out how secure your Web
site is. When I first used it, it found more holes in the security of my Web site than the
laws allows, and I promptly changed to a different hosting company!
Your Computer’s Security
http://grc.com/default.htm
Gibson Research Corporation offers a really neat (and free)
tool for checking the security of your computer: ShieldsUp. Scroll down on the page to the
Hot Spots area, where you’ll find the link to ShieldsUp. Be sure to go through each
of the checks in the ShieldsUp section (File Sharing, Common Ports, etc.).
Reverse DNS Lookup
http://remote.12dt.com/rns/
This service converts an IP address to the host name by
searching domain name service tables.
Doctor HTML
http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
Click on Single Page, and the free service will analyze
your Web page based on document structure, image syntax, table analysis, browser support,
verify hyperlinks, and much more.
GifBot by NetMechanic
http://www.netmechanic.com/accelerate.htm
GifBot will compress your GIF, JPEG, and animated GIF
images by decreasing the file size without sacrificing the quality of the image. So, your
pages load faster!
Bobby Online
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
This online service allows you to test Web pages to help
expose and repair barriers to accessibility and encourage compliance with existing
accessibility guidelines. It’s very important to make sure your Web pages are
accessible for those who surf the Internet with disabilities.
AnyBrowser.com Screen Size Tester
http://anybrowser.com/ScreenSizeTest.html
Have you ever been to a Web site and not been able to
scroll to the bottom of the page? The scroll bar is there, but you can’t get down
that far to scroll. It’s not a pleasant experience. At the Screen Size Tester, you
can test your Web pages in different screen resolutions so that you can be assured that
all of your visitors can view your site in its entirety.
Anti-Spam and Security Fix for FormMail.pl Script
http://mailvalley.com/formmail/
Formmail.pl, one of the most-used perl scripts on the Web,
is designed to send data entered into a Web form to an e-mail address. This script could
be exploited by a malicious user who could use Formmail as a spam server. If you use this
script, spammers may be able to use it to send spam freely using your server's resources.
This site offers a patched version that prevents the script from being used by spammers.
Comprehensive Guide to .htaccess
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml
Though not a “tool” per se, this comprehensive
tutorial about how to use the .htaccess file is excellent.
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html
Though also not a tool, this handy list is something that
we should all be aware of. For example, don’t use horizontal scrolling!
Link Reputation Tool
http://198.68.180.60/cgi-bin/link-reputation-tool.cgi
We know the importance of link popularity (the number and
quality of inbound links pointing to our Web site). Equally important is link reputation
– what those inbound links say about our Web site. In other words, link reputation is
what is written in the link text, or the clickable text, pointing to our Web site. With
this free link reputation tool, you can learn what other sites are saying about your Web
site.
Trojan Scanner
http://info-x.co.uk/netools/netools.asp
Wow. This tool really brings back “fond” memories
when I had my very own Trojan horse clomping around inside my computer system. (A word of
advice: please get a firewall!)
The Trojan Scanner at Information Exchange scans your
system for 85 known Trojans. You’ll hold your breath as it runs its scan, or at least
I did. You’ll also find a WhoIs Lookup, a Server Check, and other cool tools.
Quality Assurance ToolBox at the W3C Consortium
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/
The W3C offers a suite of validators that you can use, such
as a W3C markup validator, a CSS validator, an XML validator, a log validator, and some
that I’ve never heard of!
As you know, it’s important to be in compliance with
W3C standards, and these tools and validators will help you to accomplish just that.
FreeWebSubmission Site Ranking Tool
http://www.freewebsubmission.com/site-ranking.html
Plug in your URL and your keyword phrase, and you’ll
quickly learn your rankings across 12 major search engines in a minute or two. Pretty
slick!
SnapFiles
http://www.webattack.com/
Free software (freeware) galore! This is a computer
addict’s paradise. Enjoy!
Dynamic Drive
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/
Dynamic Drive offers original dynamic scripts (DHTML) and a
JavaScript code library, including calendars, mouseover images, DHTML games, scrollers,
etc.
CoolText Logo Generator
http://www.cooltext.com/
Not a Web or graphics designer (like me)? This site has
some free logo and button generator tools just for you.
DNS Report
http://www.dnsreport.com/
Many domains have DNS problems. This handy site will help
you find those problems and fix them by providing a DNS report for your domain.
Everything You Want to Know about a URL (and I DO mean
EVERYTHING)
http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/
URLinfo is a “tool for handling Web pages,” and
it includes 107 tools that you can use to dig for information on a URL. You’ll be
there for hours, so grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee and get ready! There are more
nooks and crannies to this site than you can possibly imagine.
What is my IP Address?
http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/
Doesn’t take much explanation on this one, does it? If
you ever need to know your IP address, this neat little online tool will answer the
question for you.
Free Report on How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your
Online Marketing Campaigns (by Marshall Sponder)
This free downloadable report is a phenomenal study in how
to measure the traffic to your Web site. Too many times, Web site owners work and work on
increasing their traffic, then stop way too short by forgetting about studying that
traffic.
This PDF download takes you several steps further in
helping you understand the value of analyzing the traffic to your online business.
Left click on the link below:
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/SearchEngineMetrics.pdf
Choose "Save Target As." Choose a location on
your hard drive to download the free report to. Enjoy!
Free Wordtracker Magic Audio Tutorial
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/audiomagic.html
Sign up for John Alexander’s audio tutorial offering
tips for doing keyword research using Wordtracker. Two audio tips are sent out by e-mail
once a week, and they’re approximately 2-3 minutes in length.
These tips are worth their weight in gold as they open your
creative mind to researching keywords.
Search Engine Relationship Chart
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm
By far, the best chart to show the relationships between
the search engines and directories is Bruce Clay’s. He does a tremendous job of
keeping it up to date, and you can even download a copy as a PDF.
Thanks to all of you who shared these “cool
tools” with me. Be sure and send me YOUR list, and I’ll add them to the next
article. Thanks so much! (robin@searchengineworkshops.com). |