Friday, May 8, 2009

TOOLS

Useful Tools for
Web Design & Web Site Marketing

All of the tools listed on this page are free, unless there is a price clearly noted. We're not really trying to push you to buy anything on this page--it is meant as a resource for you.

If you do HTML coding by hand, as we do, then you may already be using NoteTab Pro, available from www.notetab.com. If you would like to try it, there's a FREE "lite" version you can download and try, which is perfectly functional and will do a good job. And there's a professional version for about $20.00. Around the shop here, we prefer NoteTab Pro to any other program for writing HTML, and we've tried a bunch of them.

We do not use and cannot recommend any WYSIWYG HTML editors, (like FrontPage or DreamWeaver) because, in our experience, all of them have quirks and problems and create the kind of bloated HTML code that we frequently have to fix when re-designing a website. With NoteTab Pro, you can edit, save, and flip back and forth instantly to Internet Explorer or Firefox to see what you are doing and how it looks.

One other tool worth downloading is the Thornsoft program called ClipMate. It lives in your system tray and keeps a selectable, instantly accessible copy of whatever items you copy. Every time you press CTRL+C, it puts whatever you copied into an entry in ClipMate. Up to 100 snippets can be copied, sorted, stored and are instantly available for copying in where you need them. It even has a long-term storage capacity for stuff you use all the time. If you do a ton of cut-and-paste work (which is to say if you do any HTML coding) this little program can save you a lot of work and time. It is nag-ware, meaning that you can download and use it for free, but really you should buy it. I paid $20 for this program and it has paid for itself many times over in hours of work saved in finding and copying bits and pieces of things.


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Search Engine Optimization

I like and use this Internet Business Promotion Tool from Axandra.com. It helps you figure out how to optimize your website based on the way the top 10 sites are optimized for particular keywords that you specify. The comparison is brilliant. It doesn't have every angle covered but it has had a lot of thought put into it and I use it to help with the analysis of what needs to be done to get to #1 on any particular search term. It's a very smart and useful program. They have a free version that will help you some, but I bought and use the $300 version that is incredibly detailed. I consider the money very well spent! (Disclaimer: We have an affiliate relationship with them -- If you buy IBP through this link, we make a commission.)

We're using an SEO tool called SEO Elite Review (previously called LinkProctor) a linking analysis software tool. It helps to find out who is linking to the top ranked sites at various search engines, so you can ask for links from those same places. This software is very helpful with analysis of factors outside of your site that help with ranking well, such as your page rank and your in-bound links. It can help you carefully review exactly what your competition is doing (so you can do it better). (Disclaimer: We have an affiliate relationship with them -- If you buy SEOElite through this link, we make a commission.)

There is a useful suite of nine SEO software tools called SEO Administrator. Those of you in the optimization business might find that it takes more set-up time than you would like getting all your projects entered into all nine modules as they don't interrelate with one another (however many projects you have, multiply by nine and you'll get the set up time involved in entering URLs, keywords, etc). When set-up is over, we find the program quite useful in areas such as link popularity, page rank, search placement and keyword suggestion. It remembers your settings, retains histories where needed and can often run useful, exportable reports. Some modules are duplicative of pre-existing free tools but make it easier for you to have one central place to work with all such information from all those free sources. For those of you who want to keep careful track of your progress, the SEO Administrator will be quite helpful. We feel that the real star of this suite and the primary reason for buying it is the search placement tool, called "The Ranking Monitor". It is quite good at cutting down the time it takes to check search placement, works faster and more accurately than others we've tried, and searches deeper. This can be a real time-saver, especially if there are numerous keywords, sites and search engines involved. It also lets you know whether that placement is better or worse than the last time you ran it. We believe that this tool alone is worth the cost of the program. You can get a 20% discount on the Expert version of SEO Administrator through this link.
Disclaimer: If you purchase with the discount through this link, we will receive a commission.

Here is a free page rank tool that lets you check any URL's page rank across all the Google data centers.

Here is a great new page rank fraud detection tool from SEO Logs.

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Search Engine Registration

Right here on Words in a Row's website, we offer a free tool for doing Search Engine Registration by hand. It's a very long page with links directly to the submissions pages of the various search engines and directories, and has lots of advice about what to do and not to do when registering by hand. The advice is based on eight year's of experience doing search engine registrations by hand for websites.

INeedHits.com offers a FREE service which will register your site to 27 search engines, and do it fairly painlessly, one at a time. You won't want to register with some of them because they are specialty search engines which would just reject your site out of hand. But it's a good way to get more exposure and it is fairly simple if you keep your wits about you and just register with the search engines that you should. They are very aggressive when it comes to trying to sell you their software for even more search engine registration. We can't recommend anything but their free service, which seems to be a good one and will take you to some of the search engines we have listed on our Free Search Engine Registration page and some other smaller search engines.

For the most complete information on search engines anywhere, go to the site Danny Sullivan founded, www.SearchEngineWatch.com and subscribe to their newsletter. Danny is regarded by many as the foremost expert alive today on the doings of the search engines and directories. Danny goes to all the search engine conferences and pins down the people working on the search engines and gets answers from them about what they are doing and why, and then writes it up in his newsletter and puts the information on his website. Well worth studying if you are trying to get good rankings in the search engines and directories. Dany left Search Engine Watch a couple of years ago, but it is still a very valuable resource and the site is in capable hands.

A couple of tools worth getting if you need to track the results of your search engine registrations:

Search Engine Commando -- $179.00 -- worth it if you have to track and report the standings of a website for a search term across many search engines. You can download a free trial version.

Web Position -- $250 -- Previously known as Web Position Gold. It's not a program I use, but many people swear by it and use it regularly. You can download a free trial version. We have no affiliation with this company.

We also have some tools, listed on our PPC click fraud page that cover prevention of click-fraud, and how to handle it once it happens.

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Keyword Tools

GoodKeywords.com also offers a free downloadable tool that will help you to select the right key words for your website.

Agent WebRanking is another product that can help you monitor your web rankings. They have a free "light" version and a pro version that is licensed at $500 per year. They asked to be included on this page - I've never used this product so do not know how well it works. But it can't hurt to download and try their light version - it's a free tool. This product uses your browser to do the checking so it produces more reliable results--at least that's what it says it does.

MarketLeap has a free link popularity tool where you can check how many sites are known to link to yours from 3 places: Google / AOL (same search engine), MSN / Windows Live, and Yahoo. It will give you a pretty good yardstick by which to tell if your site has a lot of links TO it from other websites.

Keyword Density Analyzer - a useful tool for figuring out how many times you are using key words - enough, not enough? This will help.

A keyword analysis tool called WordTracker has developed a following. It runs at around $250.00 per year and up in cost, depending on what kind of subscription you choose. There is even a Keyword Research Guide put out by WordTracker, which helps lay out the basics and give you some good insight into choosing your keywords. Some of that advice is useful even if you don't have their program.

Here's another: Actual Keywords research tool, offering some free info (it's a paid tool).


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Opt-In Email Lists

We provide a free online directory of the companies we have been able to find which will rent you opt-in email lists of various kinds. There are about 50 such companies currently listed, and the information about them includes websites, contact information, and what we know about the lists they are selling. If you are looking for a particular email list so you can promote your site to people who are interested in your product or service, this is the place to go. (Of course the opt-in email lists themselves are not free.)


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Shopping Carts

Paypal has a free shopping cart that is worth checking out. Several of my clients use it--the nice thing about it is you don't have to have a merchant account to be able to take cards through the PayPal shopping cart. This can save you the $100 per year for a security certificate for your site, and several hundred more in lease payments on credit card processing equipment, and several hundred more for a good shopping cart. Quite a deal when you add it all up. The downside is that PayPal has both a great reputation and a terrible reputation, depending on to whom you talk. PayPal is the preferred form of payment on eBay (in fact, eBay recently bought PayPal, which is a very good thing for PayPal) but some merchants have complained about fraudulent purchases made through PayPal. Whether those same purchases would have happened using any other credit card processing company is a matter of opinion. It may be that PayPal has a problem with security. Personally, in the nine plus years I've used PayPal I have never had a problem it either as a payor or payee. Since eBay bought PayPal, I'd say that their problems will disappear. eBay knows how to do things right!

Paypal,through its free shopping cart, offers credit card processing. There are no sign-up fees. They charge a small percentage on each purchase, as would any other credit card company. That percentage varies depending on how much volume you have. Sign up for a PayPal premium account and the free shopping cart, and you can find out all about it. It's not free at $30/mo for their Virtual Terminal, but it works, and there's no shame in using PayPal! It's what I use on this site, and I have many clients using it because it works well. (Note that the PayPal Virtual Terminal charges $30/month to be able to run credit cards through PayPal--other credit card processing services, such as the one offered by QuickBooks, do not charge as much per month.)

Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.

xCart; this is the shopping cart we usually use for our clients. It is not expensive, works well, and has many features, modules and add-ons, and is the one we use for clients who need search engine-friendly page names and the ability to assign their keywords in the shopping cart pages' meta tags and headings. xCart is an all-around workhorse shopping cart, and highly recommended by us. (Note we make no commission on any sales of xCart.)

The following shopping carts have been recommended to us; we list them as a public service. Check them out thoroughly and make sure you understand how many types of products the cart will have to handle and the variables relating to them (scent, size, color, etc.), and the shipping and tax requirements for the website you are designing. This can all get very complex very quickly. Does your client sell T-shirts and hats? Then you've got various colors, sizes, and weights for shipping. And the various options for shipping (overnight, 2-day, ground, US Mail, Priority Mail, etc.) With ANY shopping cart, figuring out the shipping options is usually the biggest headache. Also, do certain customers get discounts? What about gift certificates? Do you want to offer wholesale prices through the cart? Make sure the cart you buy can securely handle everything you need it to handle.

Note: None of these shopping cart services are free. Also note that we no longer recommend Dansie Cart after a long battle with them trying to get tech support for several shopping carts we bought from them. I've rarely experienced such an unwillingness to provide tech support on a clearly broken software product.

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Credit Card Processing Companies

Paypal, through its free shopping cart, offers credit card processing through its "Virtual Terminal" for $30/month. As stated above: There are no sign-up fees. They charge a small percentage on each purchase, as would any other credit card company. That percentage varies. Sign up for a PayPal premium account and the free shopping cart, and you can find out all about it. Credit card processing is not free (it costs $30/month), but it works well. It's what I use on this site, and I have many clients using it because it works very well, even in high-volume situations. Not good for situations where there will be complex shipping or complex color, size, or other user selections, but good for your more basic ecommerce.

Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.

Merchant Account Forum provides extensive free information and resources on how to accept credit cards for ecommerce - including sections on international merchants. Their most popular area is their merchant account fee calculator which allows visitors to compare the costs of different merchant accounts. A discussion forum exists for visitors to the site.


None of the following are free -- but they are all credit card processing companies that will work in conjunction with most shopping carts:

  • Authorize Net (listing of resellers. Call some of their distributors listed at that link and get a price. Authorize.net is relatively easy to set up to work with many shopping carts.
  • Bank of America offers a credit card processing service - fill in your state and find out what they offer in your area.
  • Buyer Zone Get a quote for a credit card processor here.
  • 1st American Card Service says this: "We have been establishing bank based merchant accounts since 1986 at guaranteed lowest prices. We will beat any price including warehouse prices. As the leading independent provider with a decade long, spotless record at the Better Business Bureau. We save you hundreds of dollars because you are not dealing with middle men we only offer bank direct Merchant Accounts."
  • Sage Payment Solutions says this: "Sage is a leading supplier of electronic payment processing services and merchant accounts for retail, mail/telephone order and Internet businesses. Sage products and services have been designed to offer 'one stop solutions' that improve our customer's operating efficiencies and save them money. We provide secure payment options through advanced technology and diligent anti-fraud procedures. Year founded: 1989 "
  • CardAccept (previously SecurePay) says this: "Cardaccept.com provides a great alternative to traditional credit card machines as it requires NO startup fees & NO Equipment to Purchase! Merchants can take credit cards over the phone using a Web Terminal or through their Web site. We Guarantee that we'll beat any contract that you can produce...so find what you think is your best offer and we'll make it even better! Year founded: 1993"
  • Source One Payment Solutions says this: "Source One is registered with Chase Merchant Services, the #1 merchant acquirer. Source One promises honest and aggressive pricing and a focus on customer service. Our 'small offfice approach' gives merchants the best of both worlds the comfort of knowing they are processing with Chase while having a service office where someone will treat them with the importance and courtesy they deserve. Year founded: 2002"
  • CardService International (previously known as iCAT) -- Call them at 1-888-222-8032 to get a price. Warning: We don't recommend CardService as they have (in years past) had exceptionally bad service for us personally, and once you are signed up with them, their contract states you could only stop their service by sending them notice six months before the contract ran out, and within a certain window. If you missed that window, the fine print says you were automatically signed up for another year; we could not get out of it as they debited the funds from our bank account. I would classify their tactics as underhanded and deceptive.
  • Control Devices. To get their pricing information you have to fill in a form on their site and have them contact you.
  • GOMSG Merchant Account Accept credit card purchases for your business and expand your opportunities by setting up a merchant account with GOMSG. Call 866-317-9156.
  • GoRealTime -- Call 1-800-803-1669 to get a price.
  • InfoDial. Fill out their online request form for more information, or call 1-888-821-1076 to get pricing information.
  • Internet Secure. -- they have no pricing info on their website. Call 1-800-297-9482 to get a price.
  • iTransact -- $44.95 a month over a 24 month lease ($1078.80 total over two years). Or pay $295.00 on signup and $24.95 a month after that ($893.80 over two years). The lease is the cheapest way to get started -- but is more expensive in the long run.
  • PsiGate - Payment Services Interactive Gateway
  • QuickBooks Pro offers a merchant account that works very smoothly with your QuickBooks software. I have several clients using this successfully -- setup fees are low, it costs $20/month, and their fees per transaction are low. This is our top recommendation for credit card processing services after PayPal.
  • RBS Lynk Systems -- contact Deborah Harvey. It costs $195 to sign up for an online merchant account, then $19.95 a month after that, plus a small percentage of each credit card transaction.
  • Total Merchant Services charges 1.59% for cards you swipe through their card-swipe machine, or 2.29% for keyed purchases (no card present). They have several online interfaces for shopping carts so you can set up real-time processing on your site.
  • USA Merchant Account -- it provides merchant accounts to high risk industries such as MLM, telemarketing, or travel services.
  • WorldPay for UK -- Call them at 0870-366-1290.
  • 2CheckOut can serve as your entire shopping cart or work with an existing cart as a credit card processor.
  • CardBridge - Credit Card processing and merchant accounts.
  • CCNow offers both a credit card processor and a shopping cart service.
  • ClickBank
  • International Merchant Services. 1-800-664-3997. They are an agent for First National Bank of Omaha. They claim that there is no start-up fee, that supplies are free, that there is free installation, there's a free lifetime warranty, and that their rates per transaction are low. Worth checking out, anyway.
  • MoneyBookers
  • ProPay costs from $34.95 to $299.95 a month depending on the level of service you sign up for.
  • ShareIt allows software vendors to process credit cards. This is a service offered by Digital River -- if you've bought much software online you've probably paid through Digital River.


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Miscellaneous Tools

PGP --(Pretty Good Privacy) -- is an excellent FREE encryption tool for sending emails you don't want Big Brother or your local hacker to read. It's a little tricky to set up on the server (and that's an understatement!) but when you're done, emails sent via PGP encryption are for all practical purposes uncrackable.

ActivePerl is an open source, binary distribution of Perl5 available for Windows, Linux x86 and Solaris. You can download it and get extensive help.

PerlAccess - Many Perl tutorials.

Bravenet - Has a bunch of free tools for webmasters, such as polls, redirects, and a meta tag generator. It won't figure out what should go in your meta tags (you have to do that) but if HTML baffles you it will help you write the code once you figure out what should go in your meta tags.


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Books

See our Books page, which contains many of the books we use when writing code to design or re-design websites. These are tools worth knowing about, buying and reading. They are not free but are worth every penny if you are in the business of designing websites.

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