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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 free tools that can help you to
optimize your site for maximum results.

1 – Google Analytics

Google Analytics has become the preferred option among free
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-click (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 traffic. 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 click 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 check 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 )http://www.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
(http://www.FeedBurner.com). 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.
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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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