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The Top 10 Tools for
Monitoring the Success of Your Website
By Steven Snell (c) 2007
One of the most important aspects of
running a website is monitoring the site
and its progress. By monitoring your
website you will be able to see how it
is performing and how it can be
improved. This article covers 10 frëe
tools that can help you to optimize your
site for maximum results.
1 – Google Analytics
Google Analytics has become the
preferred option among frëe statistics
programs. Like any other stats program,
Google Analytics provides data on the
number of visitors, and page views,
referral sources, entry and exit pages,
and more. Unlike most other programs,
Google Analytics includes the ability to
track and monitor pay-per-clíck (PPC)
campaigns. Other useful information
includes the geographic location of your
visitors, their internet connection
speed, and their screen resolutions. You
can sign up for Google Analytics at:
http://bizsolutions.google.com/services/
2 – Google Webmaster Tools
Want to know how the largest search
engine in the world sees your website?
Google's Webmaster Tools will give you
loads of information such as the pages
that are indexed, errors found by the
Googlebot (dead links), your search
engine rankings for specific search
phrases, your anchor text on inbound
links, internal and external link data,
and robots.txt and sitemap data.
By knowing how Google sees your site you
will find some basic items that you'll
need to change in order to reach your
maximum potential in search engine
traffíc. You can sign up for Google
Webmaster Tools at:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
3 – SEOmoz's Page Strength Tool
SEOmoz is one of the leading search
engine optimization (SEO) firms and
their website provides a wealth of
information through their blog, articles
and tools. Their Page Strength Tool
shows you the "relative
importance and visibility"
and the "potential
strength and ability of a page to rank
in the search engines."
SEOmoz provides a quick way to get a
basic look at the strength of your page.
The Page Strength Tool can be used at:
http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength
4 –
Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer
Sitening is another leading SEO firm
with several valuable tools on their
website. The SEO Analyzer differs from
SEOmoz's Page Strength Tool in that it
checks the internal structure of your
site to determine how well it is
constructed (in terms of search engine
optimization). The structure of a
website is the framework for a good SEO
campaign, and
Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer will
help you to build the right framework.
Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer can be
found at:
http://www.sitening.com/seo-tools/seo-analyzer/
5 – Mike's Marketing Tools
MikesMarketingTools.com has two tools
that every webmaster should use
regularly. The Search Engine Rankings
Tool will show you where your site ranks
in several of the top search engines for
a specific word or phrase. You can save
time by using this tool instead of
visiting each search engine and clicking
through the search engine results pages
to find your website.
The Link Popularity Tool will quickly
show you how many inbound links each
search engine recognizes for your site.
Inbound links are a major factor in
search engine rankings and each search
engine recognizes a different number of
links. From this tool you can also clíck
through to see the specific pages that
are linking to you. To use these tools
visit:
http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/free-marketing-tools.html
6 – Summit Media's Spider Simulator
The spider simulator shows you "how
a search engine reacts to your pages and
what can be done to boost your usability."
Search engine spiders see web pages much
differently than human visitors do. A
page may look attractive and
well-designed to a human visitor, but a
search engine spider may not be able to
find what it is looking for. This page
is a great tool to assure you that your
site is built for maximum search engine
results. The spider simulator can be
used at:
http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/
7 – SelfSEO Page Speed Checker
Your average website visitor will have a
very short attention span. To have the
best chance of making a positive first
impression on new visitors your page
must load quickly enough that they do
not leave right away. SelfSEO has a Page
Speed Tool that shows you how long your
page takes to load. The tool allows you
to enter multiple pages to chëck at one
time. It is a good idea to compare the
load time of your page against pages
from several other websites. Try
entering your homepage and the homepage
of several of your competitors. If your
page loads considerably slower than the
others, try to make the file smaller by
reducing the number and size of images
or by cleaning up the coding. The Page
Speed Tool can be used at:
http://www.selfseo.com/website_speed_test.php
8 – Dead Links Checker
Having dead links on your website can
frustrate visitors and damage your
search engine rankings. However,
checking all the links on your site
manually is not realistic. Fortunately
there are a number of tools online that
will automate the process. The W3 Link
Checker will crawl through your pages
and report which links are broken. To
use this tool visit:
http://validator.w3.org/checklink
9 – GoogleRankings.com
GoogleRankings.com will show you
which words and phrases appear most
frequently on your website throughout
the text of the page, title, headings
and meta tags. This is a useful tool to
be certain that your pages are optimized
for the words and phrases that you are
targeting.
10 – FeedBurner
If you publish a blog, FeedBurner's
service is a must have. Feedburner will
provide you with statistics regarding
your blog's feed and you can give your
readers the option to subscribe by email
instead of RSS. There are a number of
other features that you can read about
at
FeedBurner. With FeedBurner you can
always see how many subscribers you have
and how many of them are clicking
through from your feed to your site.
About The Author
Steven Snell is a web designer for
Vandelay Website Design. Steven
regularly writes new articles on the
topics of design, blogging, marketing
and eearch engine optimization. His
articles can be read on the blog at
http://www.vandelaydesign.com.
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