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Cool Tools...that are also
FREE!!
by Robin Nobles
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. I’ll publish a part 4 of this article!
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 for 2002
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!
Again, thanks to all of you who shared these wonderfully helpful
tools with me. If I missed any (which I’m sure I did),
please let me know. Click here to
read part 2 of this article with another great list of free cool
tools.
Robin Nobles is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine
Workshops with John Alexander. They teach 2-day beginner, 3-day
advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive "hands on"
search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe.
She also teaches
online search engine marketing courses through
http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and she’s a member of
Wordtracker’s official question support team. With partner John
Alexander, she's co-authored a series of e-books called,
"The Totally Non-Technical Guides to Having a Successful Web Site."
And, they opened a networking community for search engine marketers
called
The World Resource Center for Search Engine Marketers.
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