 Cool Tools .
. . that are also FREE! Part 1 of 3
By
Robin
Nobles © 2003 - 2005
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.
Copyright 2003-2005 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.
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