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.

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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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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:

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!

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.

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

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.

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!

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!

from : webmaster-talk.com

Tags: age, ark, blogger, code, dev, download, engine, error, firefox plugin, Free, Google, IDE, image, Internet News, Keyword, keywords, list, money, monitoring, option, Other Sites, overture, page, PHP, Plugins, PPC, PROM, RAM, ranking, release, route, search, Search Engines, SEF, SEM, SEO, server, Sites, Software, traffic, wait, WordPress, XP, Yahoo

Many internet users faces a problem to search for a good list of tools to add on so that they can unveil their website sooner or in the best optimized way on the net. You are not alone when this is faced cause i have come across search engine submission website that have heading saying “Get free submission to 350 search engines“, and after see it, i was tempted to start filling in the form and after clicking the submit button they tell you there is a one time fee setup with a $99/year submission fee to pay so that your site can be submitted to 350 search engines while 14 of them are free!

Pay to submit or do it for free
My question is will there be a need to submit to other search engines? Ain’t most of the popular search engines offering url addons for free nowadays? Why should you pay to get your site into the popular search engines when it can be done for free.

Of course, they offer more than just submission of your site and includes assistance in giving you keyword suggestion tool, readiness report, ranking report, link popularity report, broken links report but I can tell you all these are also free tools that you can find online.

Having a Lazy monster beside you
The reason why people feel they should purchase the package offered is because they want their site to be submitted into the search engines quicker and fastest and get indexed and feel satisfied! Stop being lazy and start to add your url manually for FREE!

Here i have compile a sufficient list of popular free search engines site that allows submission of your url and they will crawl to your website within 2-8 weeks, it varies and don’t expect faster crawling since it is free!

Add your url to MSN

Add your url to Alexa

Add your url to Google

Add your url to Yahoo!

Add your url to Jayde

Add your url to InfoTiger

Add your url to ScrubTheWeb

Add your url to Gigablast

Anyone have any more free sites to share and would like to add on to this list could contact me.

Tags: age, amazon, blogger, crawling, engine, Free, Google, IDE, image, Internet, Keyword, list, msn, page, Plugins, ranking, search, Search Engines, Search Engines, Sites, XP, Yahoo

PageRank Explained
PageRank is what Google uses to determine the importance of a web page. It’s one of many factors used to determine which pages appear in search results.

The History of PageRank

PageRank was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford. At the time that Page and Brin met, search engines typically linked to pages that had the highest keyword density, which meant people could game the system by repeating the same phrase over and over to attract higher search page results.

PageRank is patented by Stanford, and the name PageRank likely comes from Larry Page.

What Does PageRank Measure?

PageRank measure’s a web page’s importance.

Page and Brin’s theory is that the most important pages on the Internet are the pages with the most links leading to them. PageRank thinks of links as votes, where a page linking to another page is casting a vote.

This makes sense, because people do tend to link to relevant content, and pages with more links to them are usually better resources than pages that nobody links.

PageRank doesn’t stop there. It also looks at the importance of the page that contains the link. Pages with higher PageRank have more weight in “voting” with their links than pages with lower PageRank. It also looks at the number of links on the page casting the “vote.” Pages with more links have less weight.

This also makes a certain amount of sense. Pages that are important are probably better authorities in leading web surfers to better sources, and pages that have more links are likely to be less discriminating on where they’re linking.

How Important Is PageRank?

PageRank is one of many factors that determines where your web page appears in search result ranking, but if all other factors are equal, PageRank can have significant impact on your Google rankings.

Are There Flaws in PageRank?

There are certainly flaws in PageRank. Now that people know the secrets to obtaining a higher PageRank, the data can be manipulated. Google Bombs are a classic example of PageRank manipulation.

“Link farming” is another method people attempt to use manipulate PageRank. Link farming is the practice of linking without thought of the relevance of the pages being linked, and it is often automated. If you’ve ever run into a web page that was nothing but a collection of random links to other websites, you may have run into a link farm.

Google has adapted their calculations to filter off possible link farms. This is one reason why submitting your website to directories with low or no PageRank may be a bad idea.

If you find your website linked in a link farm, don’t panic. In most cases this has no effect at all on your ranking. You can’t control who links to you, anyway. Just don’t link back to link farms and don’t submit your site to them intentionally.

How Can I See PageRank?

PageRank is measured on a scale of one to ten and assigned to individual pages within a website, not the entire website. To find the PageRank of a page, use Google Toolbar. Very few pages have a PageRank of 10, especially as the number of pages on the Internet increases.

How Can I Increase My PageRank?

If you’d like to increase your PageRank, you need to have “back-links,” or other people linking to your website. You can trade links with other people, but make sure you only trade relevant links, and make sure you’re not trading links with a link farm. You can register your website with directories, such as the Open Directory Project, but use directories with high PageRank whenever possible.

As you build web pages within your website, you can create some of your own back-links by linking to relevant pages within your own website. This is a technique you may notice on this website. However, remember that the number of links you create counts into the equation. Don’t overdo it.

The best way to increase your PageRank is to have quality content that other people want to link.

Tags: age, count, dev, engine, Google, Google, IDE, Internet, Keyword, mount, page, ranking, relevance, search, Search Engines, Sites, XP

I’m freaking out. I went and logged in to Google Analytics this morning and it reported this: “No pages from your site are currently included in Google’s index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines. Please review our webmaster guidelines and modify your site so that it meets those guidelines.” Oh my god! What guidelines? How can I figure out what caused me to get the boot and how do I get my site re-included?

Yow. That is a scary thing to find once you log in to your admin account!

The good news is that if you aren’t trying to “game” the search engine, then it’s likely that you’ve inadvertently done something that’s easy to fix and yes, you can get back into their index if you request a reinclusion.

What you must do immediately is go and study the Google Webmaster Guidelines, take notes on anything you think might be a mistake you’ve added on your pages, and then methodically ensure that each and every page of your site is clean of any problems.

Common problems include having foreground and background colors too similar, or identical (white on white is a classic search engine spamming technique, and easily identified), having different pages for search engine spiders than users (called “cloaking”), pages that contain identical content to other pages on your site or other pages elsewhere on the web (called “duplicate content”), and loading up pages with irrelevant words (”keyword stuffing”). Fundamentally, the best advice I’ll give you is exactly the same as what Google suggests:

Make pages for users, not for search engines.

That’s really the key to all of this, and if more people focused on creating the best possible content on their site, unique, fresh content that met a genuine need in their user community or market segment, we’d have less “blackhat” seo and more great results from a given search.

Okay, off my soapbox. :-)

Once you believe that you’ve cleaned up everything that might be a problem on your site, you can request that the Google folk reevaluate your site, check for whatever problems where previously there, and, hopefully, get back into the index. Start here:
Submit a reinclusion request.

Can it be done? Definitely. I know of a number of sites that have been banned for violations of the Google webmaster guidelines and, upon cleaning up their act, have shown back up in the index with good SERPs and all. What percentage are reapproved? I have no idea, but I bet it’s not that high…

Good luck. Please do come back in a week or three and let us know how it went!

Tags: age, ark, boot, count, engine, Google, Google, google analytics, IDE, Keyword, page, search, Search Engines, SEO, Sites

So far we’ve discussed the circumstances that can cause your pages or site to be completely removed from Google’s index without actually being subjected to a ban. And you’re probably already aware of the various pushing-the-envelope techniques – such as keyword stuffing, hidden links, or doorway pages – that can quickly get you banned if you’re caught using them. If, however, you’re not aware of how dangerous these techniques can be, you need to immediately familiarize yourself with Chapter Three of our UnFair Advantage Book entitled Tricks and Illusions. Other, not so obvious, bad behavior may include:

Bad Neighborhoods

Google doesn’t generally penalize or ban sites based on who links to you (which makes sense since you have little control over that), but you can be penalized based on who you link to. If you’re linking to a site that gets banned for pushing-the-envelope, your site could get caught up in a “sweep” of all sites that link to the offending site. Such a linking “infraction” can result in your site getting banned (or penalized) as well.

Is this fair? …well, perhaps not. Regardless, it means you must pay attention and choose carefully who you link to. Google obviously figures that if everyone is just indiscriminately swapping links it hurts their ability to organize their index in relevant fashion. This, of course, is one reason why link farms and web rings are generally a bad idea. You have very little control over who your page links to – and it’s very easy to inadvertently link into a bad neighborhood.

Mini-nets

This strategy involves interlinking multiple domains within a single ownership as a means to artificially inflate the PageRank of each interlinked page. Although this can be an effective way to boost search engine ranking, it also requires tremendous focus to make it work and can be very tricky to implement. If you link too aggressively between your sites or if you create an isolated node – an interconnected circle of sites devoid of incoming links from outside sources – Google is likely to eventually take notice and all of your sites could be penalized or banned.

Another variation of the same theme that also invites trouble is to set-up numerous keyword rich domains with different layouts but offering duplicate products or services. Although this strategy can and is being used effectively by many well known online businesses, you must either wield so much clout that an engine won’t ban you or else take great care that they never find out the duplicate offerings are being touted by, uh, (shall we say) disassociated subsidiaries of a parent company.

Virtual IP Address

The adverse SE indexing issues that have been typically attributed to shared IP addresses are becoming increasingly rare these days. However, if you are sharing an IP addresses with someone who gets banned – such as someone running a large, heavily crosslinked mini-net all on the same virtual IP – Google may just ban the entire IP altogether.

Even though you haven’t done anything wrong, if your site shares the same IP address as the offending site, your site may be caught in the sweep. Therefore, if your online business is profitable, we can’t imagine it being unworthy of having its own IP address. This would eliminate any worry about being mistaken for the virtual crack-house next door.

In case you’re unaware of the basic issues that revolve around shared IP addresses, it might be helpful to review an article we wrote back in November 2000 that focuses on many of the underlying concerns about sharing IP addresses.

Duplicate content

You’ve probably heard about the duplicate content penalty. That’s usually just what it is — a penalty. We’re unaware of anyone actually being banned for it.

Typically, one of the pages with duplicate content is just relegated to search engine “Siberia” – frozen-in-position somewhere around page 100 of the Google search results. In such cases, the “other page” typically maintains its original search engine rank, although sometimes both, or all, of the duplicate pages are subjected to a penalty (go figure).

Of course, your site being listed on page 100 of the Google search results is almost as bad as being banned. So, obviously, you should do everything possible to avoid posting duplicate content to avoid the penalty.

By the way, there are some obscure ways to incur the duplicate content penalty that you may not be aware of. Recently we leaned of an instance where one site was listed in a directory that provided a redirect to the site instead of a normal static link.

Previous to their directory listing, the company’s homepage was ranked in the top ten. Immediately following being listed in the directory, their ranking fell to page 38. Apparently, since the directory page had been around for a while and had a higher PageRank than the company’s homepage, the directory listing was rewarded with the higher ranking while the company’s homepage was reduced in ranking by the duplicate content penalty.

In such cases, Google tends to see both pages with identical content and decides which of them is the more important of the two. In this case, they applied the duplicate content penalty to the actual business’ site – pushing it way down in the rankings.

You can also get hit with the duplicate content penalty if you’re using a site-wide template which causes the bulk of the content on each page to be semi-identical.

Site-wide templates can be a great way to save time and simplify layout. However, as you’re making changes to the look of your ancillary pages or site, be sure that the indexable content also looks dissimilar to the search engine spider.

Syndicating your content to other sites in exchange for a link back to your site can be a great way to build incoming links. The downside is that it’s potentially another way to incur a duplicate content penalty – especially if the site you syndicate your content to is larger and more established than your own.

The same problem can occur if your competitors are copying your site’s content and posting it on their own pages. Keep an eye out for other sites which are carrying content identical to yours. Chances are pretty good that either their page or yours will eventually be relegated to the bottom of the results.

Whenever syndicating articles with your permission, try rephrasing parts of the article and/or give it a different title – something to make it differ somewhat from the article on your site. It can also help if the article is broken up into a few different pages.

Lastly, if another site is blatantly stealing content, you’re only logical choice is to report them to Google’s spam police at spamreport@google.com (or fill out their form at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html) and probably contact your attorney.

Possibly you’re aware there have been duplicate content penalties incurred under Yahoo as the result of redirecting your site to a new domain name. Although this penalty isn’t applicable to Google, it is one you should know about if you are moving or changing any of your domains. Check out SE Bytes for more information on this topic.

Traffic Scammers

Ok, you’ve done your homework and you know that pushing-the-envelope can get you banned from the search engines. But one day your business gets a call from an aggressive sales rep who says that his company can get you a guaranteed first page ranking for your chosen keywords. Well, we’re here to tell you that these companies have been very successful at getting their clients banned from search engines!

Recently there have been several notable cases where such companies have used exceptionally spammy techniques which were quite effective in getting everyone associated with them deleted from both Google and Yahoo.

So, before you decide to employ someone else to do your optimization for you, be sure to find out exactly what they intend to do. Most importantly, configure your agreement so that you can trust them. In the cases were aware of, the optimization companies “promised” their customers the strategies they used were approved by search engines and then proceeded to employ some of the most flagrantly objectionable techniques forbidden by the engines.

Tags: age, configure, dev, engine, ESTABLISHED, Google, Google, hidde, IDE, indexing, iso, Keyword, keywords, list, optimization, Other Sites, page, ping, proc, PROM, ranking, search, Search Engines, SEM, Sites, swap, templates, traffic, Yahoo