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. The November 16, 2003 update of Google's algoritm (called "The Florida Update") created major havoc with many top-ranked sites at Google. In some cases 100% of the top 100 results fell away into oblivion, while informational sites went to the top. This IBP Tool has helped me get a lot of those sites that slipped back up onto the first page of rankings at Google. 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 feel that it 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.
There's some very good info about how to optimize websites available from this book, "The Webmaster's Book of Secrets".
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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 EXACTLY what the search engines want to see in your site, go to www.SearchEngines.com.
For the most complete information on search engines anywhere, go to Danny Sullivan's site, www.SearchEngineWatch.com and subscribe to his 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. Danny also has a paid subscription service which gets you even more information and is worth joining.
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. (Disclaimer: I have an affiliate relationship with them. If you buy it within two months of visiting my link to them, I make a small commission. Even so--I wouldn't recommend it if I didn't like it and use it.)
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
Use this free Search Suggestion Tool from Yahoo SM -- previously Overture.com -- to help you figure out the key words for your own website. Type in the words that you think people would use while searching at a search engine for your product or service. Not your product brand name, unless it is a well known brand, but its generic term.
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.
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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 40 such companies currently listed, and the information about them includes websites, contact information, and what they carry. 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 new, 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 $250 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. Downside is 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 well be that PayPal has a problem with security. Personally, in the three 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 free, it works, and there's no shame in it! It's what I use on this site, and I have many clients using it because it works well.
We've had to set up a lot of shopping carts for websites. This can be a tricky proposition, but the Dansie Cart (a $150.00 one-time purchase) has made it very easy to get a shopping cart set up and running on your website with minimum fuss and no requirement that you learn Perl to write or modify a CGI script to get it working. But you still have to be an expert at HTML and FTP in order to get it to work. With minimal skill, you can set up a Dansie Cart in a couple of hours and get it working correctly on your site. I've set up quite a few Dansie Carts--enough that I know you will get good tech support from them if it is needed. Disclaimer: We have an affiliate relationship with Dansie.
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 the biggest nightmare. Also, do certain customers get discounts? What about gift certificates? Make sure the cart you buy can securely handle everything you need it to handle.
(Note: None of these shopping cart services are free.)
ProStores from eBay (previously called Kurant Storesense)
Mal's e-commerce has glowing reviews. Cheap and easy to set up.
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Credit Card Processing Companies
Paypal, through its free shopping cart, offers credit card processing. 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 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 free, it works, and there's no shame in it! 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.
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 has also been recently launched 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 the Dansie Cart:
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 the Dansie Cart.
Bank of America offers a credit card processing service.
Cambist is easy. They have a $300 setup fee, then it is ten cents per transaction or $35 a month, whichever is more.
CardService International (previously known as iCAT) -- Call them at 1-888-222-8032 to get a price.
Control Devices. To get their pricing information you have to fill in a form on their site and have them contact you.
Guardian Merchant Services from Meridian offers credit card processing with terminal sales and leasing. Free setup, no annual fees, low rates and 24 hours a day, 7 days a week customer support. (Don't know if they work with Dansie Cart or not.)
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.
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 and so are their fees per transaction. This is our top recommendation for credit card processing services.
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 -- not sure if this one works with Dansie Cart or not - but it provides merchant accounts to high risk industries such as MLM, telemarketing, or travel services.
WorldPay -- Call them at 1-877-787-0260.
It is unknown which of the remaining of these work with the Dansie cart.
2CheckOut can serve as your entire shopping cart or work with an existing cart as a credit card processor.
BidPay is a credit card processor for Online Auctions Only. They send money orders to you by snail-mail (or direct deposit for those of you in the USA with checking accounts) on a per transaction basis.
CardBridge - Credit Card processing and merchant accounts.
CCNow offers both a credit card processor and a shopping cart service.
iBill is a credit card processor specifically for subscriptions, memberships and services.
International Merchant Services. 1-800-664-3997. They are an agent for First National Bank of Omaha. Not sure whether this one will work with the Dansie shopping cart, but 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.
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.
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Miscellaneous Tools
Dreamweaver Tutorials. A simple, video-based training system online that teaches step-by-step how to design websites using DreamWeaver. Note - While I don't use or recommend DreamWeaver particularly, a lot of fledgling web designers do. There are some nice beginning tutorials here.
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.
If you do any advertising, you should read "Scientific Advertising" by Claude C Hopkins -- which we provide as a free service in e-book form. You can download it by clicking on this link: Scientific Advertising. [Note that this is a .zip file and only works under Microsoft Windows.] If you want a hard copy of this book, you can usually find it through Powell's Used Book Store or at Alibris.com.
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