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Web Marketing,
Search Engine Marketing, and
Search Engine Optimization
Resources
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This
section contains links and information that
should help you build a website and conduct your Web Marketing, Search
Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns quickly and efficiently.
Far from being exhaustive, this list, nonetheless, is based on years of
personal use and successful positioning. All
links have been hand-picked and carefully
researched.
These
resources are best suited for small and medium-size
businesses. If your
marketing budget is low, but your standards are high, the links in this
section will come very handy. Enjoy, and if you need our help, do not hesitate to contact
us.
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How to
Search on Search Engines
Type the following combinations in Google
(or other engines) search bar to limit your search. Pay attention to
spacing, must be used precisely. Limit your search to the following:
Web page title
allintitle:seo ottawa
intitle:seo ottawa
Web pages that contain link titles with your
desired term
allinanchor:seo ottawa
Website or Domain
site:whitehouse.gov “global warming”
site:edu “global warming”
File type
filetype:ppt site:edu “global warming”
Definitions
define:pixel
define:“due diligence”
Specify exact phrase
“tom bates”
“what you're looking for is already inside you”
Exclude or require a word ('minus'
or 'plus' with no space after)
proliferation -nuclear
seo +internet marketing
Source:
Research quality web searching from U of Berkley
About
Search Engines
How do Search Engines Work?
Search Engines for the general web (like all those listed below) do not
really search the
World Wide Web directly. Each one searches a database of the full text
of web pages selected from the billions of web pages out there residing
on servers.
When you search the web using a search engine, you are always searching
a somewhat stale copy of the real web page.
When you click on links provided in a search engine's search results,
you retrieve from the server the current version of the page.
Some of the major search engines are
Google,
Altavista,
MSN,
Excite,
Hotbot,
Infoseek,
Lycos,
and Webcrawler. Note
that Yahoo is a
directory, not a search engine. The term Search Engine is also often
used to describe both directories and search engines.
Search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called
spiders. Spider is that part of a
search engine which surfs the web, storing the URLs and indexing the keywords
and text of each page it finds. For example, Google's spider, also referred to
as a "crawler", is named
Googlebot. Although it is said they "crawl" the web in their hunt for pages to include, in
truth they stay in one place. They find the pages for potential inclusion by
following the links in the pages they already have in their database (i.e.
already "know about"). They cannot think or type a
URL or use judgment to "decide" to go look something up on the Internet.
If
a web page is never linked to in any other page, search engine spiders cannot
find it. The only way a brand new page - one that no other page has ever linked
to - can get into a search engine is for its URL to be sent by some human to the
search engine companies as a request that the new page be included. All search
engine companies offer ways to do this.
After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another computer program for
"indexing." This program identifies the text, links, and other content of the
page and stores it in the search engine database's files so that the database
can be searched by keyword and whatever more advanced approaches are offered,
and the page will be found if your search matches its content.
Some types of pages and links are excluded from most search engines by policy.
Others are excluded because search engine spiders cannot access them. Pages that
are excluded are referred to as the "Invisible
Web", i.e. what you don't see in search engine results. The Invisible Web is
estimated to be two to three or more times bigger than the visible web.
(Source: University of Berkeley)
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According to
Wordtracker (2005 info), three search engines get roughly 70% of all traffic, with the
following distribution among them:
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Google gets 47.0500%
of all search engine traffic
(approx. 268 million a day).
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MSN gets 9.0000%
of all search engine traffic
(approx. 51 million a day).
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Yahoo engine gets 12.7700% of all search engine
traffic (approx. 73 million a day). Yahoo gets 12.7700% of all search engine
traffic (approx. 73 million a day).
The table below shows only the engines included in the Wordtracker system; who they
power, and who powers them. Pay per bid engines other than Overture have not
been included.
Search Engines
Relations
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Included Engine
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Main Results From
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Powers
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AllTheWeb |
Yahoo! Search Marketing, Yahoo |
None |
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Altavista |
Yahoo! Search Marketing, Yahoo, Open Directory |
None |
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Google |
Open Directory |
Lycos, AOL, Ask, Hotbot, Dogpile, Netscape, Alexa |
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HotBot |
Ask, Open Directory, Google |
None |
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Lycos |
Looksmart |
None |
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LookSmart |
Inktomi |
Lycos |
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MSN |
Yahoo! Search Marketing |
Dogpile |
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Open Directory |
None |
Lycos, Altavista, Google, Netscape, Alexa, AOL, Hotbot |
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Ask |
Google |
Lycos, Dogpile, Hotbot |
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Yahoo |
Yahoo! Search Marketing |
Altavista, Alltheweb, Dogpile |
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Yahoo!
Search Marketing |
None |
Altavista, Alltheweb, Yahoo, MSN, Dogpile
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Useful Resources
The following resources describes the relationships between the search
engines, directories, and pay-per-clicks, so you can understand why we chose
some engines for the competition eearch but not others:
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Search Engine Links
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International
Directory of Search Engines
An international directory of search engines featuring links to search
engines from 195 countries and 38 territories around the world. You may
use either English, French, Spanish, or German when using Search Engine
Colossus. Global, country, and subject based search engines are listed.
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Search
engines statistics
Although sometimes outdated, this site nevertheless
offers good information about search engines. Find reports on how various
search engines rank in terms of size, freshness, change over time,
database overlap, unique hits reports, and dead links report.
Google
has the largest
database of web pages, including many other types of web documents
(e.g., PDFs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents).
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Excellent information about search engines from
UC
Berkeley
This is an excellent source for information about
search engines. Consider reading some of their tutorials.
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Service that
monitors search engines and directories
Most of the site's content is offered free to the public.
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Poodle Predictor
See your pages the way search engines do.
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Working with Google
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Webmaster Tools from Google
An
absolute must read for everyone. Note that Google
offers great features to help you analyze your own
site (how many internal links, external link, page
rank, crawl problems, etc.), if you verify that you
are, indeed, the owner of the site. To do that, all
you need is to copy and paste on your home page a
verify meta tag Google will generate for you. Highly
recommended!
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Google guidelines for selecting an SEO consultant
Another
absolute must read.
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SEO
basics from Google
This
page is an excellent summary of the SEO basis from
Google. An absolute must to read.
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Google Tools - NEW!
Ever wonder where all those cool tools are stored on
Google and how to keep track of them? Well, simply
take some time to explore this page and bookmark it!
You can also type 'Google tools' in the search box
on Google.
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Check your page ranking on Google and Yahoo
This is an excellent free service not affiliated
with Google. To use it, you would need a
Google API key, which is sent to you by email
free of charge. The whole process only takes a
minute.
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Inside AdWords
In July
2005, Google has created "Inside AdWords". This new blog provides you
with the most up-to-date information about AdWords improvements, news,
and tips in one location. Their product team updates the site
frequently, so you'll know what happens when it happens.
Note,
for AdWords high click-through-rate (CTR) does not mean high quality
of a landing page.
In
2007, Google introduced a new type of AdWords - Pay-per-action advertising.
Here is
Google AdWords
Guide in pdf.
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Google Pay-per-action FAQs -
- NEW!
Pay-per-action
advertising is a new pricing model that allows you to pay only for
completed actions that you define, such as a lead, a sale, or a
pageview, after a user has clicked on your ad on a publisher's site.
You'll define an action, set up conversion tracking, and create ads
that publishers in the Google content network can then choose to place
in new
ad units on their site.
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Google Sponsored Links
Use Google Sponsored links to see what keywords your competitors are
buying.
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Google
Suggest
As you type, Google will offer keyword suggestions
and you will immediately see how many search results each of them will
generate. Very cool!
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Google
Analytics
Keep an eye on what's new at
Google Analytics.
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Track your visitor-to-user conversion rate free
Before you can track your visitor-to-user conversion rate, you need to sign up for Google's AdWords (you would need to do
this anyway).
Conversion tracking
feature allows you to track how many ad clicks convert to purchase,
sign-ups, page views and leads – free of charge. You will get AdWords
conversion data right down to the keyword level in your reports and this
is information that can help you better measure your return on
investment. For detailed information about this new AdWords feature,
please
read Google AdWord FAQ or
take Google AdWord demo.
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Google's tutorials and guides on how to use AdWords
As always, for best results if you have any
questions, consult with search engines themselves. This page contains
great information and will help you get maximum ROI from your AdWords
subscriptions.
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How to Use Gmail as a Business Diary and More Tips
- NEW!
Want to be run your business on the go?
Want to be organized and stay organized in ONE
place? Want to be fast yet efficient? Want to use
convenient tools? Then this tutorial is a must.
Highly recommended.
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Googling to the max
New web page and one-hour course on using
Google
and Google's many features effectively. Google is
widely recognized as the best general web search engine. The course
teaches how to use Google really well, taking advantage of its features
and negotiating around its weaknesses.
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FAQs about Google's
spider
This is an excellent page that gives you all you need to know to
understand how Google works.
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The Googlerankings Search Engine Optimization link directory
Some of the
best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) links on the Web, sorted by
categories (tools, tips, blogs and forums) and ordered by our preference
and their Google PageRank.
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Selecting Keywords
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Keywords
analysis and competitive analysis tools -
NEW!
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Search Engine Position Checker by Keyword
Check your site's position on search
engines for specific keywords. This tool checks the first 50 results
only. Check out other tools there.
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Select smart keywords for your own SEO campaign
This free tool is provided by Google and is very
helpful for selecting keywords. Type your keywords, and the tool will
return synonyms and variations. This tool
helps you get ideas for new keywords that
can help you plan your SEO campaign.
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Wordtracker tool for targeted keyword selection
Wordtracker is famous in the SEO circles
(although definitely not for this
"keyword research guide" (pdf)
that you are offered to download free of charge after you've
made a purchase). Wordtracker is
considered the best keyword selection tool on the market, as it allows
you to analyze and predict performance of your potential keywords. Wordtracker is indeed a
simple sweet tool to use. The best value of this tool is that it
actually shows you the number of times users typed particular keywords
in the last 90 days. The tool is subscription based, so you can login
to your account from anywhere you want. They offer a free trial,
but the trial version is not very helpful, since you can't practice
with Google. If you are working on a small project, purchase a one-day
subscription, it only costs a few dollars. We recommend using Wordtracker together with
Google's Suggest and
Google Keyword Tool as well as
Google
Sponsored Links that shows you what companies buy ads on
Google Adwords for the keywords in question (all free).
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Google
Suggest
As you type, Google will offer keyword suggestions
and you will immediately see how many search results each of them will
generate. Very cool!
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All
you need to know about AdWords directly from Google
It is best to learn about AdWords directly from Google. Note that it will take
you approximately 5-6 hours to go through all lectures and associated quizzes.
But these lectures will also help you if you decide to become a
Qualified AdWords Professional, a lucrative designation offered by Google.
We recommend joining the program, as it offers good financial incentives. Please
note that you will need to satisfy a number of requirements, but none of them
are challenging. You need to know how AdWords work and you need to make sure
that you spent US $1,000.00 on AdWords in the last 90 days, either on your own
account or for your clients. There is also an online multiple-choice exam that
you need to pass by getting at least 75% answers correctly. If you've used
Google Adwords yourself and reviewed a few lectures posted in the
AdWords
Learning Center, you will have no problem passing this exam.
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Keyword Density Analyzer
Be patient and check all your static pages, one by
one. You can use this tool to check your competitors as well.
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Evaluating Your Links and
Measuring Link Popularity
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Analyze and
check quality of your pages
Free online service from Ottawa-based Watchfire
that lets you test single pages of web
content for quality,
accessibility, and
privacy issues. Enter a URL in
a search box and see how many outgoing links it contains, how many
broken links, how many spelling mistakes, etc. A great tool!
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Analyze your
pages and links - NEW!
A great free tool to
see how many pages are linked to you, how many links to others you have, how many
pages of your site have been indexed by Google.
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Build links by buying them from reputable brokers- NEW!
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Measure your
link popularity
A free service that lets your measure page
popularity. Simply type your domain name and see what sites are pointing
at you.
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Google's
webmaster portal
An absolute must read for
everyone. Note that Google offers great features to help you analyze
your own site (how many internal links, external link, page rank, crawl
problems, etc.), if you verify that you are, indeed, the owner of the
site. To do that, all you need is to copy and paste on your home page a
verify meta tag Google will generate for you. Highly recommended!
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Compare your site's
popularity with other sites
This site lets you compare the popularity of your site (measured in
number of links) against three other sites, or verify how effective your
chosen keyword combination is.
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Analyze and
check quality of your pages
Free online service from Ottawa-based Watchfire
that lets you test single pages of web
content for quality,
accessibility, and
privacy issues. Enter a URL in
a search box and see how many outgoing links it contains, how many
broken links, how many spelling mistakes, etc. A nice tool!
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Analyze your
links
A great free tool to
see how many pages are linked to you, how many links to others, how many
pages indexed by Google. Also this back link checker is pretty accurate:
http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker?
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Measure your link
popularity free of charge
A free service that lets your measure page
popularity. Simply type your domain name and see what sites are pointing
at you.
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Google's
webmaster portal
An absolute must read for
everyone. Note that Google offers great features to help you analyze
your own site (how many internal links, external link, page rank, crawl
problems, etc.), if you verify that you are, indeed, the owner of the
site. To do that, all you need is to copy and paste on your home page a
verify meta tag Google will generate for you. Highly recommended!
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Compare your site's
popularity with other sites
This site lets you compare the popularity of your site (measured in
number of links) against three other sites, or verify how effective your
chosen keyword combination is.
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Check your links and indexed pages directly with Google
If you are not a tool person, simply Google the required information
by using a few formulas shown in the 'result' column.
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Tracking Site
Statistics
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Google
Analytics
As of May 3, 2005, Urchin is part of Google.
As always with Google, stylishly designed,
Google Analytics has a very intuitive sleek interface that
brings joy even to the eyes of the most demanding users. All you need to
have to get access to Google Analyics is a gmail account. You don't need
to have an AdWords account, but if you do have an AdWords account, Google
Analytics will be incorporated within to provide you with all sorts of valuable
stats on your site.
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Yahoo
Site Explorer
A very convenient tool, especially
for checking your back links. Since Google's tool for checking back
links is not reliable (link:www.domain.com), it only displays a small
number of links that actually exist, Yahoo Site Explorer will give you a
better idea of how many back links you actually have. A back link is an
external link pointing to your site on a page-by-page basis. It is
probably the most important factor for high SEO ranking.
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Web
analytics and management tools
This is a list of priprietory
web analytics tools. Note that in our experience, small and medium sized
businesses seldom need to resort to expensive tools. Google Analytics is
usually enough, and it is free. If you really need more information, use
www.sourceforge.net:
search for "web logs" and select
from hundreds of free programs.
For very detailed breakdowns and very
particular slicing and dicing, consider the following providers:
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Did-it’s Maestro
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Atlas One Point
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SearchIgnite
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Webtrends
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Hitbox Professional
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Omniture
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Core Metrics
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Traffic analysis by
Alexa
This is a sweet free tool. Use it for your own site and to analyze your
competition. We also recommend downloading their famous toolbar, it is
also free.
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Evaluating Web pages: Techniques to apply &
questions to ask
This page presents an excellent method of evaluating web pages, but it can
also be used in relation to any other written document. Learn how to develop a "healthy
skepticism" and recognize real quality. Take a look
at the
top right corner, they even provide a check list in .pdf format, which is very
handy, indeed!
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WebsiteGrader
Excellent site analysis reports, but as with all tools, certain
entries are questionable.
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Free Web
& SEO Tools
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iWebTools
Search Engine Positioning and Other Great
Tools. One of our favourite resources. Fantastic collection of various
free SEO and Internet Marketing tools that actually work. They
also see back links at affordable prices.
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Joomla
Free open-source content management system.
It can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate
applications. Additional inexpensive add-on components are also
available: CRM, email management, real estate management, and many
others - all for a nominal price. Joomla is known to have the largest
support community.
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Sourceforge.net
This is the world's largest
development and download repository of open-source code and
applications. If you have some programming knowledge, this resource
would save you incredible amount of time and money. For site statistics,
search for "web logs" and select from hundreds of free programs.
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phpBB.com
Create and add a fully-loaded forum to your
website in a matter of minutes and free of charge. phpBB2 is the
successor to the highly popular phpBB opensource bulletin board system.
Re-written from the ground up to be even more flexible, secure and
feature packed than its predecesor. phpBB 2.0 features all that was good
about phpBB 1.x; one-click install, multiple language packs, simple and
intuitive user interfaces, support for BBCode and powerful
administration features. It extends this offering complete customisation
through a powerful template system, fulltext based searching, advanced
permissions system, powerful modularised administration controls,
multiple database support, new moderator functions and much more. phpBB
is released free of charge.
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SnipURL
Shorten your URLs to make them look presentable.
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Web scripts free to download
Large selection of scripts that can be used to quickly
implement various web components, such as weblogs, website stats, scheduling systems,
etc.
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Free blog software
WordPress is a semantic personal publishing
platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. It
has a nice looking interface and offers a lot of features. WordPress is
free to download.
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Build a professional
website in a matter of minutes
This site provides unbelievable links.
Follow those links, and you will find all you need to build a
professional website with dynamic content in a matter of minutes (if you
are a techie, of course).
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Complete Web building library
A collection of free HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, XML, XHTML, WAP, ASP,
SQL tutorials with lots of working examples and source code.
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Web application information for complex sites
This page contains information that is an
absolute "must read" if you are thinking of launching a complex
dynamic website or deciding to re-design an existing one (e.g. online
sales, banking, bidding, posting, auction, etc.). In addition, we also
recommend this page if you are simply looking for quality
information about web applications, their types, life cycle,
methodologies and customization issues.
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Test and manage your pages and links
Free online service from an
Ottawa-based Watchfire
that lets you test single pages of web
content for quality,
accessibility, and
privacy issues.
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Create web-based
surveys using ready-to-go components
This website allows you to create web-based
surveys quickly and easily.
A basic subscription is totally free. It's
a great option for individuals, students, and anyone who doesn't need
the advanced features. Basic subscribers are limited to a total of 10
questions and 100 responses per survey. Pay $120 per year and add as
many questions as you want.
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Zoomerang
This website allows you to conduct more sophisticated online surveys and
polls. Basic service is free. Upgraded service is $599 per yet, but it
seems to be worth it, as it lets you
export the results of your surveys into
spreadsheets and business reports; brand your survey to enhance your
professional look; save your data indefinitely; deploy an unlimited
number of surveys to ensure you reach all your customers or
constituents.
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Free
web conferencing service
For teleconferencing, use
+1-218-936-6666 (U.S. telephone number) free of charge. Note that long distance charges
will apply. But you can buy a phone card at your nearest gas station and
use it for North American calls. A $5-dollar card will usually give you
over 300 minutes (we use Apple). If you are doing online training, buy a
phone card for each user and send them PINs by email. This will keep
your teleconferencing costs down, at the negligible level.
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Free online
meeting or webinar
tools
This site provides free web conferencing
tools that are just as good as WebEx or GoToMeeting. For a full service
with all features, they charge $9.95 per month, but their standard
package is free. Note that you
will need a teleconferencing service (see the link above).
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Free SEO tools
A great resource of simple free SEO tools
to help you analyze your and your competitors' back links, site maps,
keyword density, page ranking and much more. This
free
SEO tools for competitive analysis is our favourite.
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Free SEO
tools from Google
Even if you are very busy, we recommend that you review this resource
carefully. It will save you hours of hours and thousands of dollars
spent on SEO conusltants.
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Collection of free SEO tools
A very large collection of free SEO tools. Highly recommended.
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SlideShare.net
SlideShare.net is website where people can upload their Powerpoint
presentations (also works with Open Office and PDF files) to share with
the world. The site is very slow, so be patient.
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27 SEO tools every marketing person should use
Those are really good useful tools. All free. In addition,
these tools are very useful as well:
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Site Analyzer
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PageRank Checker
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Search Engine Position Checker by Keyword
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WebsiteGrader
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Useful SEO tools from SEOChat
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Blogs and Social Media
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Anna
Tulchinsky 
