12Oct2008

9 Free Tools to Analyze and Improve Your Website

Guest article by Eva Vesper of Web Hosting Search.

If you're running a web site you need to know how it is doing, in particular how you're performing against your competitors, and where you can improve.

These useful tools will help you to monitor and (hopefully) improve the performance of your site according to generally recognized web site marketing criteria.

SEOmoz Trifecta Page Strength Tool

If you would like to measure the strength of a certain page on a site, blog, or an entire domain, then check out the SEOmoz Trifecta Page Strength Tool (free registration required).

Based on various factors you will see your impact within your industry and can compare it to others. Note that free accounts are limited to one report per day.

Popuri

If you think it's a lot of hassle to use several different tools Popuri might be what you're looking for.

Popuri allows you to get a variety of information — from PageRank to del.icio.us bookmarks — all at once. It also includes Compete rank which provides a useful counterpoint to Alexa in order to get a better picture of how your site ranks in popularity.

Raven SEO Analyzer

The free Raven SEO Analyzer aims to help you build a better, more optimized website to rank you higher on search engines.

It checks things like whether your site uses heading tags properly, has deprecated HTML, contains inline styles, and has an acceptable page weight.

It also scores you out of 100 which is helpful if you're monitoring the performance of your site over time or comparing against competitors.

Mint

Mint is a web analytics tool somewhat similar to Google Analytics. It provides all the usual statistics on everything from number of visits to unique referrers.

Unlike Google Analytics and other web analytics packages, it also tracks RSS feeds, browser window size, and has a library of official and community-developed plugins.

Website Grader

If you're looking to analyze the marketing effectiveness of your web site, try Website Grader.

It provides you with a score out of 100 based on criteria such as web site traffic, SEO, social popularity and various other technical factors. It also provides you with advice on how you can improve your ranking.

One useful feature is the ability to compare your site against multiple other websites. This could be really helpful in better understanding how your site stacks up against its competitors.

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a tool that supplements your standard analytics package. It comes in 3 versions — standard (free), plus and pro — depending on how many visits and pages you want to track at once.

Crazy Egg lets you track what visitors are doing on particular page and shows you what links they clicked via heatmaps and various overlays. It's a great way to test the effectiveness of different versions of a page to see which one is the most effective.

SiteYogi

SiteYogi sets out to be a one-stop-shop for web site analysis.

It examines a variety of areas, including how well optimized your site is for search engines as well as the number of backlinks you have, various social media rankings, whether your code is valid, and how well ranked your site is. It provides quite a comprehensive overview.

Smart PageRank

Smart PageRank provides you with a lot more data about your site than the name suggests.

Like some of the other tools mentioned, it provides you with a variety of data about your site and its ranking on various search engines. Unlike other tools, it estimates a dollar value for your site based on these factors.

SEOCentro

Looking for a variety of SEO-related tools all in one place? Then SEOCentro is worth a look.

It includes tools that will check meta tags, pagerank, links popularity, keyword position, and search engine saturation. It also provides a server headers checking tool, which is useful to make sure that any 301 redirects are set up correctly.

Posted on: October 12, 2008 | 21 Comments

21 Comments Posted

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1. Posted by Bob on October 13, 2008

Some nice tools, thanks a lot.

2. Posted by Web Design - Evan Skuthorpe on October 14, 2008

Thanks for the info, I'm checking out Website Grader now, it's a great help!

3. Posted by Solarise Design on October 15, 2008

wow nice tools.. thanks for share...

4. Posted by Cathy on October 17, 2008

You can't beat a bit of human research for SEO, analysing successful competitors is a great way. Using Yahoo's link feature to understand who already links to your competitors is a good start to link building.

5. Posted by Paul web designer on October 20, 2008

Thanks for this info.. really great tools and very useful to all web developers.

6. Posted by Eddie11 on October 20, 2008

nice.. thanks for info.. i'll try in my website...

7. Posted by DigiArtBali on October 20, 2008

Some cool links here, the raven site in particular is really good. I'm not so sure you need that many different web tracking rograms but Google Analytics is annoying sometimes so one of these could be good.

8. Posted by Soula New Media on October 28, 2008

Thanks for the links. I'm sure these will be a great help.

9. Posted by YBA - Your Business Assistant on October 28, 2008

I think you mentioned Crazy Eggs before. I remember seeing it and trying it at that time; however, it seems now it costs money to use.

Was there a free version before? Or am I living in a dreamworld?

10. Posted by Sejr on October 29, 2008

Sejr — that's odd, they used to have a free plan, and I still have a free account. I guess they discontinued it for new users. Too bad.

11. Posted by Christian Watson on October 29, 2008

That's a lot of tools! I also like WEBceo, its a free tool and works awesome.

12. Posted by Tucson Web Design on October 30, 2008

Great Article! I have used CrazyEgg on a lot of websites we design and host. It is such a great tool, especially the Heat Maps which can help you determine ad, text, and link placements. Thanks for the post, lots of great tools to go and check out!

13. Posted by Tony Oravet on October 31, 2008

Great info! Thanks! I can also support Christian Watson's comments. WEBceo is a great tool! Check it out.

14. Posted by PR man on November 01, 2008

Thanks for the info and links - will check them out.

15. Posted by Fuze Design - Web design Berkshire on November 03, 2008

under 'mint' you state that google analytics doesn't have 'browser window size' but it states it on my account, so maybe it has been updated. just fyi

16. Posted by Two Socks - web design on November 04, 2008

We really have a plenty of resources that determine a website competitiveness over the other. hope there will be no capcha version for this when search engines will have an anti-seo software...

17. Posted by zeus on November 06, 2008

Two socks — Google Analytics tracks screen resolution but not browser window size. There are important differences between the two.

18. Posted by Christian Watson on November 09, 2008

Wow, great list of tools, definately on my bookmark list now.

19. Posted by HostSG Web Design on November 09, 2008

There is a tool out there i think called Free Monitor for Google - i have found it pretty useful until now. You may want to keep it noted for future posts (of course it could be a load of rubbish compared to some of the other stuff you have put up here :) - if so just ignore this)

20. Posted by DPW Graphic Design Services on November 12, 2008

Most of those tools are not any help unless you are targeting a very easy keyword. MY favorite tool is Google analytic s, web master tools and SEO for Firefox plug in.

21. Posted by Saskatoon webdesign on November 19, 2008