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Cool Tools. . . that are also FREE!
By Robin Nobles

When working with my workshop (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/)
or online SEO students (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com/), 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 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 (mailto:robin@searchengineworkshops.com). Part 2 of
this articles provides additional cool tools that are also free.

================================================================
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 (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/) in
locations across the globe. She also teaches online search engine
marketing courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com/) through
http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and she's a member of
Wordtracker's (http://www.wordtracker.com/moreinfo.html) 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." (http://www.tnt-guide.com/)
And, they opened a networking community for search engine
marketers called The Workshop Resource Center for Search Engine
Marketers (http://www.sew-wrc.com/).

Copyright 2002-2005 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.
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