By Jessica Merritt
You may think your website is great, but if you really want to know the truth, you need to call in some help. Whether you’re assessing your popularity, traffic, or usability, there are plenty of tools out there to do the job. Here, we’ve shared 50 of the best tools that will tell you just how good your site really is.
Search Engine Optimization
Use these tools to make sure your site is receptive to search engine traffic.
- Google Webmaster Tools: See how Google views your site, diagnose problems, and more, on this control panel for Google.
- SEO Group Website Evaluation Tool: With this tool, you can track your search engine ranking and up to 3 keywords per report.
- Indexed Pages Tool: Find out your total link count from major search engines.
- GeoTargeting Detection: Determine how well your site is targeted to country-specific search engines.
- Search Engine Positioning Tool: Track how well your websites rank for targeted keywords using this tool.
- Keyword Density Analysis Tool: See how well you’re targeting keywords on your site site using the Keyword Density Analysis Tool.
- Multiple Data Center Pagerank SEO Tool: Use this tool to check out your page rank in multiple Google data centers.
- Niche Watch: See how you rank against competitors in your niche with Niche Watch.
- Strongest Pages Tool: Determine which pages on your site offer the most strength to search engines.
- Future PageRank: Use this tool to find out what your PageRank will be in the near future.
Popularity & Traffic Assessment
Gauge the hotness of your traffic and reach using these tools.
- URL Trends: Visit URL Trends to get an evaluation of your search engine popularity.
- Alexa: Find out your traffic rank, reach, and compare your site with competitors on Alexa.
- Technorati: Bloggers should check out their site on Technorati to see how they rank and get a glimpse into their popularity.
- Link Popularity: Find out how many web pages link to your site with this tool.
- Traffic Estimate: This site will simply give you an estimate of your traffic over the past few months.
- Compete: Compete offers a great way for you to track your site’s performance against your competitors.
- Quantcast: Check out Quantcast to get a look into your traffic demographics.
- Website Popularity: With this utility, you’ll get reports of indexed pages, ranking, and more.
- Backlink & Anchor Text Tool: Find out who is linking to you using this tool.
Statistics
Put any of these great statistics tools on your site, and you’ll get a peek into search engine terms, usage, and more.
- Google Analytics: Get clear and easy reports about visitors to your site with this tool.
- StatCounter: With this web stats tool, you’ll be able to track your traffic, search engine terms, and more.
- Measure Map: Understand what people do on your blog with Measure Map.
- AWStats: Use this open source tool to format your log information in a readable way.
- pMetrics: Performancing’s pMetrics offers detailed site and user statistics.
- Mint: Identify where your site succeeds with this fully-featured tool.
Browser Tools
Evaluate your site in your own browser with these tools.
- Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar: With this toolbar, you can turn CSS and Javascript on and off to see how your site displays without them.
- Firefox Web Developer: Use this add-on to get tools that will help you evaluate your site in Firefox.
Accessibility & Usability
These tools will allow you to get a peek into just how well others can use your site.
- Accessibility Extension: Download this accessibility extension for Firefox, and you’ll be able to check your site right in your browser.
- Fangs: Download this text reader for Firefox to see how your site serves up.
- Crazy Egg: Take a look at heat maps and other tools that will tell you where interest lies on your site.
- Mobile-Readiness Evaluation: Find out if your site is ready to be viewed on a mobile browser.
- WAVE: Have WAVE take a look at your site to see your original page with embedded icons that discuss accessibility issues.
- Link Validation Spider: Make sure that all of the links on your site work with this spider tool.
- Vischeck: Evaluate your site for vision-impaired users with this tool.
- UITest: This tool will give your site a quick run-over to evaluate its accessibility.
- Readability Test: Use this tester to find out if your site is easy to read or not.
- Backward Compatibility Viewer: See how your site looks in older browsers using this tool.
Conversion Optimization
Does your site make users do what you want them to? Find out with these tools.
- Google Website Optimizer: Google’s Website Optimizer can tell you how well you’re converting visitors, and what you can do to improve your rate.
- Verster: Verster will give you an analysis of your conversion rates on landing pages, internal marketing, and e-commerce.
- UserVue: With this service, you can see the way users behave on your site.
- Omniture SiteCatalyst: This tool will help you determine profitable paths on your site.
Performance
Check your speed and user experience using these performance assessment tools.
- Web Page Analyzer: With this tool, you’ll get a look at the loading speed of your site. It analyzes what loads first as well as your site’s overall speed.
- YSlow: Check out your site’s overall performance with this developer tool from Yahoo!.
- Load Time Analysis: Find out how long it takes to load all of your site with this tool.
- StressTester: Check how much stress your site can take with this stress testing tool.
- UXinsight: Check out your visitors’ user experience and website performance with UXinsight.
- WebWait: Check your website’s speed using this tool.
Validation
These tools offer a handy way to check your code.
- W3C Semantic Data Extractor: This tool will evaluate how semantically rich your site is.
- NetMechanic Toolbox: Use this toolbox to check for bad spelling, code, compatibility, and slow-loading pages.
- W3C Markup Validator: Use this service to make sure your code is up to snuff.
Is Your Site Hot or Not? 50 Useful Tools for Evaluating Your Website
