10 Ways to Become a More Efficient Webmaster in General Business

Article in General Business

10 Ways to Become a More Efficient Webmaster

By Lee

Released On 03-08-2007

With some new tools that have been released in recent weeks, I wanted to write an up to date post about the Top 10 Free Webmaster Tools that are available on the web. Due to the large network of sites I have, I always want to work smarter and not harder. I am always on the look out for tools that will save me time, money, or just lessen a headache. As a webmaster, looking to be at the top of you game, you need to be in the know when it comes to tools that are out there to assist you in your daily / weekly duties. I certainly wish I had seen a round up of some of the web's top tools a few years ago that would guide me in to being a more effective webmaster. Let us begin with our Top 10!

10. Page Rank Prediction Tool - I am not a big fan or believer in page rank, but that is why I have this in the #10 slot. Many webmasters (especially those newer to the business) are concerned with page rank, thus a Prediction Tool offered by Rusty Brick is very popular. This tool will show you the current page rank for the URL you submit along with making a prediction as to what it will be when the next page rank update takes place. Another like tool that also shows your pagerank by Google datacenter will shed a bit more light and you can see all of the fun fluctuations during an actual Google PR update.

Rusty Brick Tool

For the New Webmaster: You might be wondering what Page rank is all about, in simple terms it is an indication of a site's authority or trust in the eyes of Google. PageRank isn't just an indication of how many Web pages point to your page, it's an indication of how important those sites that point to your page are too. Here is Google's definition:

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

Page Rank used to be much more respected, but people quickly learned how to "game" page rank and it went downhill from there. It got to the point where PR6, PR7, and PR8 links were being sold for big bucks even though they were "junk sites".

9. Website Speed Tester - I know personally how much the load time of a website impacts the success of that website, and I have seen on more than one occassion where I have moved a site of mine previously under a high load to a new server with a lighter load and search engine rankings improve along with traffic. Here is a quote from a Guest Contributor on this blog, "The server was provisioned a few hours after I ordered it, and after about 2 weeks of testing, I moved my site last weekend. It’s only been a few days, but I’ve already noticed an increase in traffic, page views, and ad revenue. What does that mean? Simple: Slow Servers = Less Traffic, or more importantly, Faster Servers = More Money". It is true that search engines and end users DO NOT like slow loading sites. A tool that I have found helpful in determining how fast my site loads is offered by iWeb.

If you find that your site loads slowly, there are a variety of things that you need to do to take action. The first two things I always recommend are checking the size AND number of graphics (images) on your pages. You should always have the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes specified and you should never bog your pages down with numerous graphics, especially those that aren't compressed and take forever to load. The second things you should consider is your hosting platform. Are you on a shared plan, taking the inexpensive route, where you can be on a server with dozens or even hundreds of other sites? The cost to upgrade to a better hosting solution is likely going to have a big ROI longterm. Don't be hesitant to fork over the dollars now, when ultimately you are costing yourself money by waiting.

iWeb Tool

8. Web Design Color Scheme Library - I don't know about you, but color schemes I like tend to be far from what most people like. That is why I am extrmely grateful that Color Schemer put together a color scheme gallery where there are pages and pages of awesome color combinations to use in a new site design. They are rated, easy to browse through, and downloadable when you find the scheme you like.If it wasn't for a tool like this (or the fact that I outsource all of my design work) I would end up with a site looking like this! Instead of pure ugliness, my latest design piece (this blog) was built around the color scheme similar to this one.

Color Scheme Library

7. Keyword Typo Generator - If you do anything in the PPC arena, whether pushing your own products / services or as an affiliate marketer, there are numerous reasons why keywords typos are important to your PPC campaign. This is one of two tools that Aaron Wall offers through SEOBook.com that I have in my top 10 list today. If you aren't marketing for typo terms you are leaving money on the table. This is a whole other angle on the meaning of "long tail" and can really separate you from your competition depending on the niche you are in. The Typo Generator tool is quick and very easy to use, and you can basically pull your results, upload them into your PPC engine of choice, set your bids and go.

Typo Generator Tool

6. Backlink Monitor - For the longest time I would manually monitor the number of backlinks to my sites by using the good ole link: examplesite.com search in Google. As my network grew this became a tedious task that grew old rather quickly. This brings me to a very new Earners Forum Tool that both the backlinks and indexed pages in Google for an unlimied number of sites (Google API key needed). You can add your entire network of sites individually or through a bulk upload (whether it be 3 or 3,000) in to this tool and it will keep track of this data for you. All youwill do is login to the system, click update, and BAM! the data is updated and viewable in a very clean format. If you can imagine how difficult and time consuming it would be to manually monitor backlinks across 50 sites on a weekly basis, versus using this tool which would allow you in less than 1 minute to check your backlinks daily if you desired to do so. This is another must use!

Backlink Tracker

5. Site Validator Tool - This is a well known tool to most web developers and even though I don't dabble in the design / coding personally I know the value of a tool like this. Basically, W3C has developed this validator tool that will analyze your site and check Web documents in formats like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards. This fantastic tool will show you line by line in your code what needs to be corrected. As you are going through and making changes to correct the errors, continue to come back to the tool and recheck things to see your progress. Also, if you outsource your coding work, you can use this tool to see if the coding work provided is within the normal standards or not. You need your site's code to be as clean as possible, SO CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF!

W3C Validator

4. SEO Firefox Plugin - I am no SEO expert, but I know a good tool when I see one. This is a tool that I have been using for many months now, and I really do like it. It has allowed me to look closely at my competition for specific keywords and see why they might be outranking me or why I am outranking them. It lends much towards showing clearly why the search engine considers the site to be an authority. This nifty webmaster tool allows you get to pick and choose which data you want to see about each search result including: Page Rank, Age, Yahoo Backlinks, Yahoo .EDU Links, Alexa Ranking, Technorati Ran, del.icio.us Bookmarks, and so much more. See the options menu for yourself here:

SEO for Firefox Options

The SEO for Firefox plugin brings in so much useful marketing data to make it easy to get a clearer picture of the competition in your market, all from within the search results. This is one of my MUST HAVE plugins for Firefox!

SEO For Firefox

3. Keyword Suggestion Tool - This is a brand new release and a must see. With the recent decline in usefulness of the Overture Keyowrd Suggestion Tool, WordTracker has hit the market with a free version of their keyword suggestion tool which shows the top 100 results, pulling in data results based on the marketshare of Dogpile and Metacrawler. This is a newly released tool that will certainly be a great benefit to many webmasters looking to do keyword research. It also gives a bit of a differnt picture since it using Dogpile and Metacrawler data versus Overture or Google. If you are still a fan of the Overture system, OvtKeywords.com will be a fun find for you with some cool ajax functionality and added Overture search features.

WordTracker Suggestion Tool

After I perform a search for "webmaster tools", I get the results (up to 100) displayed in this fashion:

Results

2. Search Engine Rankings Tracker - Due to the fact I am no SEO, I don't spend very much time monitoring my rankings for top keywords on various sites in my network. The time I do spend recently was cut down to no time! Earners Forum came out with a tool that will allow you to track keyword rankings by site, showing graphs and trends of how the keyword is moving up or down in the search engines. With this tool you can literally add thousands of keyword / site combinations and track them with ease. The interface and layout are pleasing to the eyes and very easy to read. The data this tool provides can save many webmasters hours of manual labor.

Earners Forum Keyword Tracker

1. A Free Blog - There are a couple of reasons this made my #1 slot overall. First, I feel like every webmaster should have a blog. Whether it is more of a personal blog for fun or something you plan to use to promote your business and even make money, I think you need to be doing it. Secondly, what Blogger and WordPress have done for the blogging industry is absolutely HUGE. These other tools are awesome and will save you time, headaches, and money, BUT the free blogging system these two big players are offering completely rock.

Wordpress is where my blogging all got started and here are some beginning steps to getting started with your new blog. You should first read about the many features of Wordpress (along with their jargon) so you know what you are getting before you begin. When you have a good understanding of the software's abilities you need to determine if you want to host the blog yourself on your own domain or just use their free service at WordPress.com. Whatever you choose to do, you can then follow along using their support material to get your blog online so you can begin writing!

Blogger Wordpress

So, there you have it, my Top 10 Free Webmaster Tools list offering up to date tools for your webmastering needs. I certainly hope this has been a help to you and I wish you happy webmastering!

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