The Top Ten Free Website Tools and Services By Wendy Piersall

Wendy Piersall, here are the top ten freebies to help you build traffic and create a better visitor experience on your web site.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics has rapidly become the industry leader in site analytics - giving paid options such as WebTrends a run for their money. Simply copy and paste a small piece of code onto your web pages and Google offers advanced tracking and traffic statistics for free. To learn more about using Google Analytics, Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing has developed a series of tutorial videos on the subject.

MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog
For Blogs I have not found a more effective way to drive traffic to a new site than through these two services. By combining social networking with helpful blogging tools, both MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog are making a huge impact on giving new blogs a kick-start to success.

HitTail and 103Bees
HitTail and 103Bees are similar in nature - they offer site owners a way to understand and analyze their search engine traffic in an easy-to-use interface. Both of them also indicate whether your site was found on the front page of search results, or in the “long tail” of search results (many pages down). This knowledge can then be used to develop content in specialized keyword niches to push your site up in search engine results.

FeedBurner
For any site that produces content for syndication, FeedBurner is an absolute must for managing and tracking RSS subscribers and republishers. The site offers extremely user-friendly advice with a support staff in the background that has an outstanding reputation for fast and friendly help.

MorgueFile Photos
Although having a unique and original site is quite important, there are times when everyone needs a photo for a small project that isn’t worth paying for. The Morgue File offers free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use. Usually all that is required is author notification that the photo is being used.

OpenAds
For sites that want to serve and track advertising, OpenAds is an easy and sophisticated program that can be installed on your server. It even allows for clients to have their own access to the system to see performance statistics, upload new ads, or change campaigns. Even if you don’t sell advertising on your site, OpenAds is a must if you want to track and optimize your own self-promotional efforts site-wide.

The 37Signals Suite
Although technically not a suite of tools for websites, the 37Signals programs are critically acclaimed as they offer tracking of project management, contact management, group communications and information organization. Any tool that so elegantly increases productivity and makes life easier is well worth mentioning on this list.

WordPress
If you or your business hasn’t already started a blog, it’s probably my most highly recommended site promotion tool of all. Just the search engine benefits alone are worth the time and effort of starting and maintaining a blog. WordPress is the industry standard blogging platform, and it is both free and easy to use.

Overture Keyword Selector Tool
For more advanced search engine optimization, it helps to do a little research on what exactly internet surfers are looking for. The Overture Keyword Selector Tool offers insights into the exact number of searches that Yahoo receives for search terms and their related phrases. By understanding what phrases are most common, you can use this knowledge to incorporate the highest volume keywords into your site.

Pew Internet
The non-profit Pew Internet Project offers highly valuable data, research and statistics on the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. To understand your target audience better or to pull information for a business plan, this site offers a wealth of insights for savvy web entrepreneurs.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.