All the Latest Tools to Improve Your Website
October 12, 2009 by
Adam
Filed under
Internet, Making Money, SEO & Rank, Websites
While you may sometimes feel that the world of Internet marketing is reaching a saturation point, there is a lot to be said for this explosive growth. It is not likely that the market will be saturated any time soon given the ratio of people who are just discovering the media on a daily basis, but the pressure to produce meaningful and productive websites and pages has led to the creation of a huge number of interesting and useful tools. Designed to streamline and make your job as a webmaster a whole lot easier, these tools can save you a lot of anguish!
Feedback is so important and while there is nothing like the process of trial and error to achieve the perfect solution, in an ideal world you would not want to be using potential clients in this way. A number of options have arisen to help you link with independent users. For example, usertesting.com maintains an army of independent reviewers who could be used for a relatively small fee to provide you with targeted feedback. Each reviewer has been pre screened and is rated by service buyers for you, so you can be pretty confident that you will be getting an objective analysis.
If you want to automate the process of website analysis, consider clicktale.com, where you can receive an image of your screen detailing users’ mouse movements, keystrokes and general interaction. This is enabled through the placement of special JavaScript on your page and will enable you to see how users interact and how the general flow of your site works. This can be particularly useful in helping you to optimize forms and other interactive requirements and the service is free for a limited number of page views, with an increasing payment structure for a more enhanced experience.
A number of tools are available that you can use to provide feedback on the composition and technical efficiency of your site. For example websitegrader.com will give your site the once over and may well come up with something glaring that you have missed.
Google is a provider of many free tools, which should be in every webmaster’s arsenal. Google Analytics will provide even the most demanding analyst with a comprehensive breakdown of user experience, Google’s Website Optimizer gives you options for A/B and multivariate testing, and Google Webmaster Tools exposes your best keywords, the efficiencies of your linking strategy and any crawl errors that they detect.
If you are willing to invest a little bit, there are some great comprehensive tools such as SiteRay by Silktide, which goes into great detail about your overall site structure, correct linking, appropriate keyword usage, originality, popularity, technical strength and general usability.
Go to The Scrutinizer for a comprehensive list of hundreds of available web tools to be used for URLs, keyword and IP issues.
One of the best tools that we have found is a Firefox plug-in called Firebug. You can highlight and make changes to HTML and CSS from within your browser, making changes on the fly and see the immediate result. This is great for debugging problems, but remember that you have to make alterations manually elsewhere to be permanent.
For bloggers, check out SEO Blogger, which is a Firefox plug-in to help you optimize your posts as you write them. Go up a notch by choosing Lotus Jump, which will give you a task list of what you need to achieve to improve your rankings according to a handy little manageable timetable.
What tools have you recently used to improve your website?
Adam Toren
Hi Adam,
I have to agree with your view of google analytics. I find that this piece of kit is great to analyse how many visitors you’re getting to your site and when. It’s quite simple to set up on any web site and Google provide help to get you up and running.
Must say a big thank for the information on usertesting.com and clicktale.com. These look very interesting and I’ll be checking these out real soon.
Tahnks Adam,
Andrew.
Hi.
Nice list of tools. Particularly liked websitegrader.com, useful.
I really do like website grader. Anyone new to seo can figure out their next step as to what to do by having their website graded. I like how it lists tips to increase your score.
I recently started using Woopra, and have used website grader in the past. I seem to find that the SEO score it gives you doesn’t correlate with the SERPS though, and I find that a little annoying and more than a bit confusing.
i am using google webmaster tools in my opinion it is free and best tool for not very advanced webmasters.
Usefull tools. Blogger sometimes must be like a mechanic and make tunning
Adam,
Great list of tools for evaluating websites. SiteRay and their free tool nibbler offer some really great insights into areas of improvement. It’s hard to find a good web analytics tool that includes usability factors. Good overall snapshots and action items. I don’t know what I would do without Firebug. That tool has saved me countless development hours. Thanks for sharing.
-Sean
I use, and strongly recommend all website owners use, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. You can obtain so much valuable information about your site with these two tools. I don’t know anything about the rest of the tools you mentioned, so I am glad I found this article.
Great tools to use adam thanks!
I like to use the tools from google only as they are more reliable than others. Google Analytics and Webmaster tools is a great example of seo tools.
Wow, that’s all I can say. These tools are absolutely INCREDIBLE.
One of the things I’m finding most difficult is the visibility of the operation of the business. Google Analytics is helpful, but I’m blown away by the tool you recommended: http://www.clicktale.com/
This is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for in terms of transparency and whether or not the desing elements of my blog are successfully pointing my potential customers where I want them to go.
Incredible stuff, thank you so much.
Is there a free trial for lotusjump or have you used it personally? I’m considering using it; however, it is very pricey for what it may or may not do.
Thanks for sharing these tools, i love Google Analytics!
But it is weird with Google webmaster tools, my most important keyword are “style” and “font”… -_-’
Thanks for the Great list .
I do use many of them but will surely like to optimize my blog using the others listed.
These are some very interesting tools you have shared with us Justin.
I thought your previous post on the 12 tips for SEO was great too! I never knew Google provided so many free services and tools.
Now its just going to be a matter of trying to figure out how to use them =)
I am a front-end web designer and I cant live without “Firebug”
I have a firebug installed and page speed, using google webmaster tools and some online tools like Meta tag analyzer. Also using Quirk Search status extension. Just used websitegrader and got 96,6