Tools/Resources

Website Test Tools and Resources for Speed Tests, SEO Resources, Website Checks

Online Shop with WordPress and WooCommerce

https://themeisle.com/wordpress-themes/ecommerce/">WordPress theme

Both WordPress and WooCommerce are Free and Open Source

If you’re wondering how to start an online shop, you need to read this guide. It will walk you through how to create a powerful e-commerce site with the world’s most popular web platform.

How to Start an Online Store With WordPress:

1. Use your Personal Passion To Fuel Niche Selection

Almost every successful entrepreneur I’ve crossed paths with attests to the fact that passion is the secret ingredient to the high-roller lifestyle they enjoy. And building an online store takes a lot of passion – with years of effort required (in many cases) before you’ll make enough to pay yourself a meaningful salary.

To find a product that overlaps with your personal passion:

  • Analyze your past shopping habits. Why do you purchase the items that you do, and which ones excited you the most?
  • Try out a few different product categories. Is there something in your local shops or online that interests you?
  • How do you want to impact people’s lives? Which products can you sell to help impact others in this way?
  • What do you find yourself doing in your free time? How can you monetize these hobbies with your online shop?

The more specific your niche, the more you’ll be able to let your passion shine through online and offline.

2. Catchy Domain Name

Very Important! Your domain name is how your customers find your website. If they hear about you somewhere, will it be easy for them to remember your name? Will it be easy for Google to use your domain to identify what your site sell?

Here is how I would recommend picking a domain name:

  1. Do keyword research. Domains that include these will be helpful for ranking on Google.
  2. Keep your domain short to minimize mistypes by customers.
  3. Secure all domain extensions (.com, .net, etc.) to keep copycats at bay.
  4. Avoid words with multiple spellings. For example, “site” and “sight” sound the same over the phone.
  5. Avoid hyphenated domain names. Your customers will forget the hyphen or when writing the domain Name and underlining it the hyphen might not be visible at all.
  6. Consider alternate meanings or interpretations. Think about goofy, or immature interpretations of your domain name.
  7. Make it easy to say. If a toddler can’t say it, it’s no good.

To help you with generating an original – and even more important – an available domain name, try using a domain generator tool. The combinatory algorithms will present interesting new options to choose from, while the domain availability checkup will suggest available extensions.
Start by finding available Domain Names here. If you find one still available for Registration but are NOT Ready for a Website you can register the Domain Name so long and Park if for Free on our Domain Name Parking Website until you want to use it.

3. Create a Business Plan

When learning how to start an online shop with WordPress, you need to create a comprehensive business plan for your company that lays out exactly how you envision.Planning ahead will save you time later on in the design process:

  • selecting products to sell,
  • acquiring inventory,
  • creating your website,
  • marketing your website,
  • growing your market share,
  • remaining compliant with legal requirements,
  • handling taxes and other operating costs.

Even if you don’t need an outside investor to fund your dream, a plan will help you stay on track and focus your efforts. You will also find that as you write your business plan, other problems and ideas that hadn’t occurred to you will help focus your efforts in a more productive way.

4. Set up WooCommerce

WordPress (Content Management System or short CMS) creates a powerful foundation for your site. WooCommerce (a free Plugin) transforms your WordPress site into an e-commerce powerhouse – and the base package is free. Even without paid plugins, you can implement the best elements of e-commerce design on all of your most important pages.

Setting up WooCommerce and listing your first product for sale isn’t complicated:

  1. Select a host for your site that offers a package designed for WordPress (the foundation of WooCommerce). Pay attention to their security and performance metrics – if you can’t find them, it’s time to look at a different host. And don’t forget about customer service – if something goes wrong, you need fast, competent help.
  2. Download and install the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress. Answer the questions in the setup wizard to get your site up and running in less than 5 minutes.
  3. Select, install and customize a WordPress theme that’s fully compatible with WooCommerce.
  4. Use the Product Tab in your WordPress Admin center to add your first product. It will guide you through the process, step-by-step.

5. Selecting a WooCommerce Friendly Theme for WordPress

Your theme decides the entire layout and feel of your site. Finding a great theme that invites browsers to become buyers is worth taking a little extra time.

ShopIsle

ShopIsle is a powerful WordPress theme because it is clean and clearly features products in a way that scores engagements. A grid of large pictures, with core information below, encourages customers to quickly browse and click on what interests them.

And, it’s fully compatible with WooCommerce, right out of the box. The responsive design is fully compatible with screens of all sizes – letting your customers shop how and where they feel most comfortable.

There’s a free and paid version. You can check this video-guide to start an online store with ShopIsle Pro on our YouTube Channel.

Storefront

Storefront is the official WooCommerce theme. It’s optimized to work with the platform out the box and provides you with some nice presentation and design choices. Storefront itself is free, but there are also loads of other paid add-ons and customization.

Perhaps the only downside with this one is that of originality – when using it, you’re making your store look like many other e-commerce stores running the same theme.

…

Congratulations, at this stage you’ve selected a host, installed WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin. Now it’s time to really unlock the potential of your store with some additional plugins. Here are the ones I always use:

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO helps me to understandyoast seo whether the content on my WordPress site is easy to read – for both humans and search engines.

It tells me this with a simple red, orange or green dot in my “Posts” page.
I can also set specific parameters for how my content shows up in search results – with quick edits to the slug, meta description and content title. This is powerful for keyword purposes. And for the content within a post, the tool grades my writing and provides specific recommendations at the bottom of the page.
Yoast SEO Analytics

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is like a steroid shot in theOption Monsterarm of your email marketing campaign. As visitors browse your site, you can prompt them to sign-up for your newsletter. This gives you their contact information, and an opportunity to build a relationship with them.
If you have the ability to directly communicate with a target customer, on-demand, without having to pay for a PPC or retargeting campaign, you’ve got a serious opportunity for future sales.

Freshdesk

As you build up your customer base, it’s important that you provide them with amazing online customer service.

Freshdesk allows you to create searchable knowledge bases where customers can help themselves. And, if they need to reach you, Freshdesk’s ticketing system helps you keep customer requests organized, and helps your customer feel like their questions are being attended to.
Freshdesk is NOT free but a paid Extension.
The annual cost for Freshdesk ranges from $79 to $199, depending on your needs.

6. Attract With Content and SEO

“If you build it, they will come.” Field of Dreams was an excellent movie, but if they were talking about e-commerce, they would have changed the catch-phrase to: “If you write a lot, in an SEO-friendly way, they will come.”

You need search engines to send motivated customers, ready to make a buying decision to your online store. The way that you do this is with content – lots of content.

Here’s how you can use SEO friendly content to score new customers:

  1. Take the keywords from your business plan and put them into a tool like Ahrefs to see which keywords trigger product ads.

    2. ahref

  1. Do additional research to find keywords appropriate for each product, or category on your site.
  2. Be highly selective when choosing your first keywords, I would focus on the top ten then go from there.
  3. Create blog articles that teach about how customers can use your products. Focus on things that are helpful. Taking complex answers and breaking them down into easy-to-understand guides will go a long way.
  4. Ensure every page on your site has appropriate:
    1. Page titles,
    2. Meta descriptions,
    3. URL slugs,
    4. Image alt tags,
    5. Content that’s easy to read.

7. Grow Traffic with Facebook Ads

When you are shopping for a product or service, who do you trust? Chances are, you’ll ask a few of your friends what they own, and whether or not they love their products. Social selling is a way to cash-in on a shopper’s instinct to trust their friends and family.

Advertising your brand’s Facebook Page, or promoting a Facebook ad for a particular page of your website is an excellent way to inject your brand into your customer’s newsfeed.
Read about the different Ads, Promotions or Campaigns you can run on Facebook.

Create targeted Facebook ads to engage the ideal customers for your products. And, as you post on your blog, you can share links with catchy Facebook posts to help drive traffic. Just make sure your list is targeted.

You can start your own online store using WordPress and WooCommerce, it’s easy!

If you have any questions about how to start an online store with WordPress, I’d love to chat with you in the comments section below or send me an email from my Contact Form!

Why you should not ask me to work on WIX Websites :)

Wix makes it easy to jump right in, throw together a web page and publish it.Before you do that you need to stop and think, and work out what your business needs for your online presence.

1. SEO

A search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is one of the most important pieces of any website. It’s one of the first things my customers focus on, before aesthetics and before traffic analytics. The question always comes back to, “How do I rank higher” or “I want my Website to be on Page 1 in Google”

SEO is easy to tackle when building a website in a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or HubSpot. You develop your strategy, and you implement it across every page, blog post and portfolio piece. It works, and it’s a proven system.

With a Wix.com site, implementing an SEO strategy is nearly impossible. You do not have the ability to download an SEO boosting plugin. Instead, you simply have the on-page SEO that Wix.com offers. Yes, you can get the basics done here, but it doesn’t offer you any Search Enginge previews or any help along the way like one of our favorite SEO plugins, WordPress SEO by Yoast, does. For a tool that caters to beginners, Wix.com is really missing the mark.

Most troubling is the link structure that Wix.com employs. In every single Wix.com site URL, you will notice a # or “hashbang” which is being served through javascript, and in turn is not readable by search engines.

Major fail.

Even worse, if a user has javascript disabled on their browser then the site will not render at all. Wix.com used to be built with Flash technology (which is not compatible with most mobile devices), and while that issue has been corrected, they have opened an entirely new can of worms.

2. Site Ownership

Site ownership is essential for every single website. Every business should own their own web property and they should have a relationship with their web host company. A company website is just as valuable and important for you to understand and maintain as any other business asset.

Wix.com states:

“Wix does not claim any intellectual property rights over the User Submissions. However, under the Wix.com Terms of Use, you grant Wix worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such User Submissions.” 

That is scary. By signing up for Wix.com web services, you are allowing Wix.com to modify your site and your site’s content simply by agreeing to the Terms of Use.

Always have control over your website and your content. Period. End of story! 

3. Mobile Sites

Mobile sites are the VHS video tapes to today’s DVDs. They will eventually play the same movie, but one has a substantially more sophisticated user experience than the other. Mobile websites were cool and effective before your parents started using Facebook, but now they just don’t make any sense. In their place, responsive websites are not just the new trend, they have officially become the new standard.

Having a completely seperate site for mobile users with a completely seperate editor leads to complications like two separate analytics accounts.

Modern browsers like Google Chrome can pick up where a browsing experience leaves off on a different device. Having a totally different mobile site from your desktop site provides a user with a lot of inconsistencies and most of the time, irrelevant or unupdated information.

The biggest disadvantage I see with Wix.com in the mobile category is that you have to specify that you would like to build a mobile site and then enter into the separate editor. None of the site templates are responsive.

“What If I’m Already on Wix.com?”

Already have a website on Wix.com? Don’t worry! You aren’t a total sitting duck. Unfortunately, you don’t have the ability to pick up your site as is and move it to a new hosting company – you don’t own your site, remember?

But, you can have your website professionally designed and implemented on a proven platform like WordPress or HubSpot (our two favorite CMS platforms). In doing so, you can even harness the SEO you have managed to build up on Wix.com by putting in place some 301 redirects.

Are you currently using Wix.com? How is it working for you? Let us know in the comments. 

The different types of Facebook Advertising (explained)

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Advertising comes in various flavors to suit your particular needs.

  • What are all the different Facebook ad types
  • What are the specifications for each ad type
  • What are some great examples of different Facebook ad types
  • Why it’s important to use the right ad type
  • What’s the best Facebook ad type to use

Traffic and Leads for Your Website

One of the most common purposes of Facebook Advertising is driving traffic to your website. This can be either to increase your site’s overall reach or to send users to a dedicated landing page and have them potentially buy your product, sign up for a newsletter, or participate in some other kind of lead generation. Here’s a breakdown of Facebook ads that help to drive traffic to your website.

Link Click Ads

Supported placements: Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed, Audience Network, Instagram

If you think about Facebook ads, you’re probably thinking about the Link Click Ads.

This ad type helps to promote your external website and send people to your landing pages or blog posts. You can use Link Click Ads with several placements; this allows you to deliver the same ad across multiple News Feeds and reach a large audience.

These ads perform really well and have the side benefit of generating Likes for your page. Just remember to check the comments and reply to them for an engagement boost!

Specs:
  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Ad copy text: 90 characters
  • Headline: 25 characters
  • Link Description: 30 characters

Video Ads

Supported placements: Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed, Audience Network, Instagram

Facebook Video Ads are actually another form of the Link Click Ads – just that instead of a still image, your ad’s featuring a video.

Specs:
  • Ad copy text: 90 characters
  • Aspect ratios supported: 16:9 to 9:16
  • File size: up to 4 GB max
  • Continuous looping available
  • Video can be as long as 120 min., but most top-performing videos are 15-30 seconds

Boosted Page Posts

Supported placements: Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed, Audience Network, Instagram

Every time you post something on your Facebook Page, Facebook offers you the chance to amplify the post’s reach with a Boosted Post.

As you click on “Boost Post,” you can set up the target audience and bidding methods and promote your Page post to more people across Facebook’s advertising network.

Specs:
  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Ad copy text: unlimited
  • Headline: 25 characters
  • Link Description: 30 characters

The Boosted Page Post will look exactly like an ordinary Facebook post, with a “Sponsored” note on top of the ad.

Sales and Leads for Your Product or Service

If you’re running an e-commerce store or have multiple offers you’d like to promote, Facebook allows you to showcase a range of products and services in a single ad.Facebook has also developed ad types that allow users to submit their email or interact with your brand without leaving the Facebook platform. By not leaving the platform, load times are up to 10X faster! This makes for a great user experience and reduces the time (and often, money) required to acquire new leads.

Multi-Product (Carousel Ads)

Supported placements: Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed, Audience Network, Instagram

The carousel ad format lets you show up to 10 images and/or videos, headlines and links, or calls to action in a single ad unit.

It is extremely useful for eCommerce advertisers looking to promote multiple products from their store, or for marketers looking to promote different posts and offers to see what works and attracts leads with their audience.

Specs:
  • Recommended image size: 1080 x 1080 or 600 x 600 pixels
  • Ad copy text: 90 characters
  • Headline: 25 characters
  • Link Description: 30 characters

Dynamic Product Ads (DPA)

Supported placements: Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed, Right Column, Audience Networkm, Instagram

Facebook’s dynamic product ads are like re-marketing display ads on steroids. They target users based on past actions (or inactions) on your website or application with a perfectly timed ad.

All you have to do is upload your product catalogue to Facebook and double-check that your Facebook Pixel is installed correctly on your site’s pages. Facebook handles the automation and re-targeting!

Specs:
  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels or 600 x 600 pixels
  • Ad copy text: 90 characters
  • Headline: 25 characters
  • Link Description: 30 characters

Facebook Lead Ads

Supported placements: Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed, Audience Network, Instagram

Lead Ads are the perfect way for, you guessed it, getting new leads! This Facebook ad type allows people to download your content or sign up for your offer without leaving Facebook platform.

This makes the Lead Ads a perfect method for quickly getting a potential customers email address!

Specs:
  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Ad copy text: 90 characters
  • Headline: 25 characters
  • Link Description: 30 characters
  • Context card can be in paragraph format, which has no character limit, or 5-bulletpoint format, which allows for 80 characters per bullet
  • Context card headline: 60 characters
  • Context card button: 30 characters
  • Privacy Policy and website URL links are required

Once a person has filled in the form, their email addresses will be stored on your Facebook ads account.

The easiest way to move the new leads from Facebook to your CRM system is to automate the entire process. That’s one more thing you can do when setting up your ad campaigns.

Canvas Ads

Supported placements: Mobile Newsfeed

Canvas is an interactive ad that lets users engage with your content on Facebook and is currently only available on mobile due to how we interact with mobile devices.

With Canvas, your target audience members can swipe through a carousel of images, tilt the image in different directions, and/or zoom in or zoom out by moving their fingertips. Canvas also loads 10 times faster than standard mobile web applications!

Specs:
  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Ad copy text: 90 characters
  • Headline: 45 characters
  • Canvas has the following possible components:
  • Header with logo
  • Full-screen image
  • Text block
  • Button for offsite links
  • Image carousel
  • Auto-play video
  • Full-screen tilt-to-pan image
  • Product set

Collection Ads

Supported placements: Mobile Newsfeed

Facebook Collection Ads let you showcase multiple products that are being sold on your website.

This new format makes it easier for people to discover, browse and purchase products in a visual and immersive way!

Specs:
  • Image Size: 1,200 x 628 pixels recommended
  • Image Ratio: 1.9:1
  • Your image may not include more than 20% text. Check how much text is on your image.
  • Headline: 25 characters recommended

Likes & Engagement for Your Page

Your choice of Facebook ad type should depend on your campaign objective – what you want to get out of the ad campaign. Two campaign objectives in particular help to increase the number of Likes on your Facebook Page and/or to increase the reach of the content you post on Facebook.Due to recent Facebook updates, the usual post on your page will only organically reach an average of 2-3% of your fan base. Promoting your posts is a great way to be sure that all your fans see your message.

Page Like Ads

Supported placements: Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed

Page Like Ads are the go-to ads for increasing your page Likes. They can be displayed on all placements and include a visible call to action for users to immediately Like your page.

When advertising for Likes, remember that it’s not about getting the cheapest Likes, it’s about picking the right audience that’s interested in your page!

Bonus Tip: It’s very important to pick the right image to achieve great performances.

Page Post Photo Ads

Supported placements: Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed
Want to engage your page fans? This Facebook Ad Type has the most space to show your beautiful pictures!

Pick the right image and you’ll be flooded with comments and Likes.

You could also insert a link in the text description of the post, but don’t expect too much traffic from it.

Page Post Video Ads

Supported placements: Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed
Video Advertising drives high audience engagement. It builds a strong connection, and even smaller companies can make simple videos to entertain and connect with their audience.

With the ability to re-target subsets of visitors based on how much of your video they watched, this ad type is perfect for creating stellar custom audiences to re-target with other ad types!

Specs:
  • Ad copy text: 90 characters
  • Aspect Ratios Supported: 16:9 (full landscape) to 9:16 (full portrait)
  • File size: up to 4 GB max
  • Video can be as long as 120 min, but most top-performing videos are 15-30 seconds
  • Audio: Stereo AAC audio compression, 128kbps + preferred

Page Post Text

Supported placements:Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed

This ad format is focused on page engagement. However, there is very little reason to use it instead of the Page Post Photo ad – pictures simply perform better.

If you can, avoid this type of format as it’ll likely deliver lower engagement.

Mobile and Desktop Apps Install

Since the launch of its mobile application, Facebook has become one of the biggest players in the mobile advertising space. Mobile App Install ads present a unique opportunity to bring in new mobile app users on both Android and iOS.
If you’re trying to promote your mobile app, pay attention to these ad units, they are designed for that specific purpose.

Mobile App

Supported placements: Mobile Newsfeed

Mobile App Ads are the perfect choice to drive more installs to your mobile app. This ad is displayed only on the Mobile Newsfeed. When users click the “Install” call to action, the App Store will immediately pop up. This delivers a great conversion rate.

When using this Facebook ad format, you’ll have many additional targeting options to fine-tune your audience. For example, you’ll be able to choose which iOS/Android version you want the user to have, or if you only want to target mobile devices or also tablets, and if you want to target only users connected to a WiFi network.

Specs:
  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Image ratio: 1.9:1
  • Ad copy text: Up to 90 characters
  • Your image may not include more than 20% text. See how much text is on your image

Desktop App

Supported placements: Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed

This ad unit allows you to drive users to your Facebook app and make people engage with it.

Since Facebook apps are not supported on mobile, you can only target either the Desktop Newsfeed or the right column.

Specs:
  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Image ratio: 1.9:1
  • Ad copy text: Up to 90 characters

Instagram Mobile App Ads

Supported placements: Instagram

Last but not least (not at all!), you can also advertise your mobile app on Instagram. This makes perfect sense as Instagram users are using the app on mobile, meaning that they might be more interested in downloading additional mobile apps.

You can select both photo and video ads for your Instagram Mobile App Ads.

Specs:

  • Image ratio: 1:1
  • Image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels
  • Minimum resolution: 600 x 315 pixels (1.91:1 landscape) / 600 x 600 pixels (1:1 square) / 600 x 750 pixels (4:5 vertical)
  • Maximum resolution: 1936 x 1936 pixels
  • Caption: Text only, 125 characters recommended

Visitors for Your Store or Event

Let’s close our roundup of Facebook Ad Types with two units well suited to drive visitors to your physical event or store. It’s always more complex to measure results for offline promotions, but if used correctly and targeted well, these ads can perform really well.

Event Ads

Supported placements: Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed

Facebook Events are a great way for event organizers to attract more visitors. If you want to boost the reach of your event, use this ad unit with the right targeting options.

According to the size and relevance of the event you’re promoting, you may want to limit the geographical reach of the ad to people living in the same city or region as the event.

Specs:

  • Recommended image size: 1920×1080 pixels
  • Image ratio: 1.9:1
  • Ad copy text: Up to 90 characters
  • Headline: 25 characters
  • Link Description: 30 characters

Offer Claims

Supported placements: Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed

This ad type is perfect for brick-&-mortar store owners who want to attract more people to their stores.

Once your offer ad is live, any user who clicks on your ad and redeems the offer will receive an email containing the details and terms of use.

Specs:

  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Image ratio: 1.9:1
  • Offer title: Up to 25 characters
  • Ad copy text: Up to 90 characters

In order for you to be able to create an offer, your Facebook Page needs to have at least 50 Likes.

Local Awareness Ads

Supported placements: Right Column, Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed

Another way to draw people’s attention to your store is by using the Local Awareness Ads. This ad type works best with Facebook’s location-based targeting, helping you to reach people who are currently near your store.

You can include different call to actions like “Call Now” and “Send Message” to allow people to contact you more easily.

Specs:

  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Image ratio: 1.9:1
  • Text: 90 characters
  • Headline: 25 characters
  • News Feed description: 30 characters

And Now Let’s Get To Work

As you’ve seen, Facebook has a very broad offering of ad types that meet every need of your business. Whenever possible, we suggest you test different ad formats and see which ones perform better for you. This will deliver the best results at the lowest cost.For a complete overview of all Facebook ad types and specs, see this guide by Facebook.

All information correct at time of going public but facebook might change promotions, dis continue some or add new ones.You can verify the latest info on Facebook.

No More Google

Concerned about Privacy and Online Tracking by the Big Boys on the Internet such as Facebook, Google, Gmail and so on?

Admittedly I also use Google quite often out of sheer convenience but There are a few Alternatives out there.
Instead of using Google Maps for Websites (which do not work anymore anyway UNLESS you provide a Billing Account) you can use these Google Maps Alternatives.

Instead of using Google Chrome you can use these Alternatives.

Instead of using Google Search (which apparently tracks your Searches UNLESS you open a Private Window) you can use these Google Search Alternatives.

Instead of using Google Translate why not try one of these Alternatives which will work same or even better WITHOUT tracking you.

Instead of using Google Passwords you can try one of these Password Creation Alternatives.

Instead of using Google Analytics (a growing number of people are nervous about being tracked and giving the big G too much Info) you can try one of these Alternatives to Google Analytics.

Google Mail (Gmail). Does your email gets from A to B i.e. from you to your destination or does it get from A via G to B i.e. stored or intercepted somewhere BEFORE it gets delivered?? Instead of Gmail etc you can try these privacy minded email programs.

Google Maps Alternatives.

Do you know of any other Program which should be listed here? Please send me details and if suitable I will gladly add it.

What Is an SSL Certificate and Why You Should Care

ssl certificate

If you sell Products or Services on your Website OR collect Customer Information you should get a SSL Certificate to let your Users know THEIR Details are secure.Click here to order.or send contact me if you need more details.

As you have traveled around the web in your favorite browser, you may have noticed that some websites have “http://” at the beginning their address, while others have “https://” at the start of theirs.

Or, you may have noticed some websites show a green padlock in the address bar. What do all of these things mean? (Hint: the “S” stands for “Secure.”)

The differences in what you see in your browser’s address bar are quite important to the security of the data you are sending and receiving while connected to a website. If you’re not aware of how secure your connection to a website is, you are running the risk of having your valuable personal and business information stolen by the bad guys.

In this article, I’ll explain what an SSL certificate is, and why seeing that extra “S” in your favorite website’s address is a good thing. I’ll also share how you can protect any websites you own by installing an SSL certificate to protect your readers, just as manfredk.com does. Look up in the address bar, and you’ll see that green padlock, assuring you that your connection to my website is secure.

I’ll also show you how to tell whether or not the website you’re connected to offers secure browsing (for all of the most popular browsers), and what you can do to ensure you’re protected, even if your favorite website isn’t secure.

An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is a digital certificate that certifies the identity of a website, allowing you to be sure the website you’re connecting to is the one you think you’re connecting to.

The SSL certificate also indicates that the information you send and receive from the website is encrypted, protecting it from any third party that may be attempting to monitor your online activities to steal your personal and business information.

An SSL certificate includes:

  • The name of the certificate holder
  • The serial number and expiration date of the certificate
  • A copy of the certificate owner’s public key
  • A digital signature from an authorized certificate-issuing authority

If a website has an SSL Certificate installed on their website, you’ll see a green padlock in your browser’s address bar. The website’s URL will also include “https://” instead of “http://”. In addition, depending on which browser you’re using, the word “Secure” might also display in the bar.

How Does a Website’s SSL Certificate Protect Me?

When you are connected to a website with an SSL certificate installed, your connection, and the information transmitted to and from the website, are encrypted.

What this means is that if anyone is “eavesdropping” on your internet activity, they can’t tell what your activity on that website is. This means they can’t harvest your login credentials or glean any of your account information.

HTTPS/SSL protection is an excellent security solution to protect sensitive personal and business information such as banking, credit card or shopping information. That is why banking, credit card and shopping websites make use of SSL to protect their customers’ information.

However, SSL certificates are also being used by other types of sites, such as social networking sites, to secure their members’ browsing sessions.

SSL is an excellent solution for securing:

  • Credit card transactions or other forms of online payment
  • Webmail servers, such as Outlook Web Access
  • Email client connections
  • Intranet-based traffic
  • File transfers over HTTPS and FTP(S)
  • Logins to applications and internet-based control panels

The best explanation I’ve ever heard to demonstrate the difference between connecting to a website that doesn’t use SSL to protect your connection and a website the offers SSL protection is that of a conversation in a restaurant.

If you’re sitting at your table having a discussion with a friend, anyone sitting nearby can eavesdrop and follow your conversation. However, if you and your friend conduct your conversation in an unfamiliar language – let’s say, Latin – nearby diners will likely be unable to follow the conversation (unless they hung out with Julius Caesar.)

SSL Certificates use public key cryptography. This type of cryptography uses two keys, a public key and a private key, made up of a long string of randomly generated numbers.

The web server uses the public key to encrypt data, while the private key is used by the user’s web browser to decrypt the information for displaying in the browser. The browser is the only thing that can decrypt the data.

How-Public-Key-Encryption-Works

Since the browser is the only thing that can decrypt the information from the server, even if a hacker or other interested party intercepts the information being transmitted and received, they will not be able to read the data, as it is locked by the cryptographic code.

The process works like this:

  1. The server sends a copy of its public key to the browser.
  2. The browser then creates a session key, encrypted with the server’s public key, and sends it to the server.
  3. The server decrypts the encrypted session key to get the symmetric session key.
  4. This creates a secure channel for the browser and server, as only they know the symmetric session key created for that specific session. (If the same browser connects the next day, the whole process would be repeated to create a new session key.

What all this means is that even if someone else is monitoring your internet session, they’ll be unable to steal any of your information. However, you should be advised that while an observer can’t detect your activities, they can still see which websites you are connecting to.

In April 2017, it was reported that Internet Service Providers would be allowed to monitor their customers’ online antics and then sell that information to advertisers to be used for targeted advertising.

If you’re concerned about this, and you really should be, you should subscribe to a VPN service, which will encrypt your entire internet connection, effectively shielding your online travels from the eyes of outsiders.

Users who regularly connect to the internet through unprotected Wi-Fi hotspots, like those found at your favorite coffee shop or your local Sam’s Club, should also be concerned as to which websites aren’t protecting them via an https:// connection.

Open hotspots are attractive to hackers as ways to intercept other users’ information, putting your personal info at risk. This is why you should always use a VPN to connect to Public Wi-Fi Hostpots.

What if My Favorite Website Doesn’t Offer SSL Certificate Protection?

If your favorite website doesn’t offer SSL Certificate protection for your connection, the first thing you should do is to never buy anything from that website or share sensitive personal or business information with the site.

Next, send an email to the site’s webmaster, customer support department, or guy or gal who gets things done, urging them to get an SSL certificate for their site.

Short term, Chrome, Firefox and Opera users can make use of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) excellent HTTPS Everywhere browser extension.

HTTPS Everywhere encrypts your communications with most websites, even if they do not currently support HTTPS encryption.

HTTPS-Everywhere

The extension rewrites requests to HTTP sites as HTTPS, encrypting all of the information that is sent to and received from the websites. This is also handy when navigating through websites that may offer HTTPS for some parts of their website, but don’t offer it in all parts, or link to other sites that don’t offer SSL certificate protection.

Sadly, Internet Explorer and Safari users are left out of the fun, as HTTPS Everywhere is not available for their browsers directly from the EFF. However, IE users do have an alternative available, as an independent development team has released an IE extension based on the HTTPS Everywhere project.

Safari users are SOL (simply out of luck), as EFF says the Safari extension API doesn’t provide a way to perform secure rewriting of HTTP requests to the more secure HTTPS method. While there have been rumblings about some development in this area, so far, nothing of substance has been released.

Should I Get an SSL Certificate for My Website(s)?

Readers who have their own website(s) – and who doesn’t these days? – are probably wondering if they should get an SSL certificate for their website. The decisive, end-all answer to that question is: “Maybe.”

Is it an E-Commerce Site?

Do you sell products or accept credit card payments directly on your website? If so, then you definitely need to put SSL in place to encrypt and protect your customers’ credit and debit card information.

That said, you might not need to put it in place on your entire website – perhaps only on the store or checkout pages. However, site-wide SSL protection does make your users feel a bit more confident about the privacy protections offered on your site.

​Do You Offer Memberships on Your Site?

Do you offer memberships to your website?
It doesn’t matter if those memberships are free or paid, if you require your readers to log in, perhaps to participate in forum discussions or to access premium content, you should put SSL in place to keep that login information safe from prying eyes.

​Is Your Site a Blog Fan Site or Another Type of ‘Vanity Site’?

If your website is simply a blog where you post items of interest to yourself (and hopefully others), you probably don’t need an SSL Certificate. If you’re not selling products or memberships directly from the site, there really isn’t much to protect (no offense).

​What Other Reasons Are There to Enable SSL?

Other reasons for changing your website to site-wide SSL protection include:
Trust

Visitors who visit your website to make a purchase or pay an invoice will be reassured when they see that little green padlock while they navigate through your site. This allows your customers to feel like their credit card and other information is protected from the bad guys.

Future Proof Your Site

Sure, you may not currently have need for SSL encryption on your website, but if you’re planning to grow your brand or business by offering products or memberships in the future, you’ll already have SSL in place to protect the whole shebang.

Get a Small Boost in Google Search Rankings 

Google began giving websites that use HTTPS encryption by default a slight boost in their search result rankings. While it isn’t a huge bump, a slight bump is better than no bump.

Are There Different Types of SSL Certificates?

Yes, there are different types of SSL certificates. The main types include single, multi-domain, wildcard and shared certificates.

A Single Domain Certificate allows for certifying one fully qualified domain name on a single certificate. This means a certificate used for a single domain – let’s say, www.manfredk.com – will allow security for any pages on www.manfredk.com/. This makes it easy for a small to medium-sized business to protect their website.

A Multi-Domain Certificate (MDC) allows owners to secure multiple websites using distinct domain names. An MDC can be used to secure “domain1.com,” “domain2.com,” “domain3.com” and so on. Up to 100 domains can be protected by a single certificate. Customers can add or remove domains at any time.

MDCs offer the advantage of making it easier to track SSL Certificate expiration dates, as opposed to a single certificate for each domain. MDCs also usually allow for cost savings when compared to buying individual certificates.

A Wildcard SSL Certificate allows users to secure a single domain and unlimited subdomains under that domain name. That means a wildcard certificate will protect “www.manfredk.com,” “users.manfredk.com,” “store.manfredk.com” and so on. Any subdomains added in the future will automatically be secured.

A Shared SSL Certificate has the advantage of usually being free, as your web hosting company is allowing you to use one of their SSL certificates.

While a shared certificate may be free, it might not be acceptable for many users, as shared SSL usually results in users seeing an URL like: “https://secure.webhostingcompany.com/~yourusername.” This could make your visitors a bit uncomfortable since they won’t be seeing your usual URL, and they may see warnings in their browser.

How Do I Purchase and Install an SSL Certificate?

When you’re ready to purchase and install an SSL Certificate on your website, there are a number of steps you’ll need to follow to make it all work. Depending on whether you self-host or use a web hosting provider, and who your hosting provider is, the process can either be a bit involved or simply a matter of a couple of clicks of a mouse.

The price you pay for an SSL certificate will range from free (yes, there are free certificate issuers) to hundreds of dollars. The price depends on where you buy the certificates and what type of certs you need. (See above for the various types of SSL certificates.)

While I will cover the basic steps required to buy and install an SSL certificate on your website, I highly recommend contacting your webmaster and/or web hosting service, as they will be able to tell you the exact process for successfully installing the certificate for your unique set up.

WikiHow also offers an informative “how-to” on installing an SSL Certificate on various server setups.

Overall, the steps are as follows:

  • Make sure your server is set up correctly and that your WHOIS record is up to date. (It needs to show the correct owner name, address and other information.)
  • Generate the CSR on the server.
  • Submit the CSR and other information to the Certificate Authority.
  • Have your company and domain validated.
  • Receive and install the certificate once it has been issued.

Sounds simple, right? There may be some bumps along the way, but it is a fairly straightforward process. As long as you have everything prepared ahead of time, it will go smoothly.

While it will probably be easier, and in many cases cheaper, to obtain your SSL certificate through your web hosting provider, there are other options. Certificate authorities you can obtain a certificate from include: Comodo, DigiCert, Entrust, Network Solutions and many more.

As I’ve stated before, pricing can vary greatly according to the vendor and the type of certificate you need, so be sure to shop around the reputable sources.

Also, there are free options for SSL certificates. Check with your web hosting provider or visit the Let’s Encrypt website.

Let’s Encrypt is a free Certificate Authority backed by some big names in the tech industry, which may just be sufficient for your needs. The website makes it simple to get started and lays out the steps you need to follow to install a certificate on your website.

Lets encrypt

Many web hosting providers work with Let’s Encrypt to provide easy-to-install SSL certificates. For many of the providers, installing SSL protection for a website is simply a matter of a few clicks of the mouse cPanel.

And, as easy as it is to enable SSL on compatible providers, it’s just as easy to turn off if you discover your site isn’t working correctly with SSL enabled.

SSL-Installed-Certificates

What Have We Learned?

As we’ve seen, an SSL Certificate is an important tool for protecting your privacy, as well as your personal and business data, from prying eyes. Websites that offer https:// connections, protected by an SSL Certificate, indicate that they are dedicated to protecting their customers’ activity while on their site.

It’s simple to tell when a website you’re visiting is protected by an SSL Certificate, as you simply look for the little green padlock or the word “secure” in your browser’s address bar. (If you’re not sure, look at the screenshots from earlier in this article, which show how each browser displays whether or not a website is secure.)

We’ve taken a look at the different types of SSL Certificates and what each of the types of certificates is best suited for when it comes to protecting a single website, or multiple websites, with the same certificate.

We’ve also learned how to get your website ready to install an SSL Certificate, and where we need to go to apply for one. In addition, we’ve covered how to install the certificate. Plus, if you’re on a budget, it’s good to know that there are ways to get a free certificate.

By reading this article, I believe you now have enough information to know when you’re protected by SSL while on other folks’ websites and how to protect visitors to your own websites.

If you sell Products or Services on your Website OR collect Customer Information you should get a SSL Certificate to let your Users know THEIR Details are secure.Click here to order.or send contact me if you need more details.

This article was first published on https://pixelprivacy.com/ All Credits to original Author!

Optimizing for Performance

Optimizing for performance is a step one should not overlook if you want to get the most of your new or existing website. I am going to break this guide up into sections for image optimization, minification and caching. By following this guide and taking care of the items mentioned you should be able to achieve a respectable gtmetrix PageSpeed & YSlow score.

Image Optimization

Missing this step will result in huge hits to your page speed score and could potentially cause your loading time to raise by a good amount depending on how careless you get.

Resizing: if you are uploading images directly from your camera, make sure you resize them first. Modern cameras can output images over 7000px wide with file sizes larger than 20mb!! Even if you are using a full width page on your Website, there is just no need for the image to be over 2000px wide.
Resize unnecessarily large images in your go-to program before uploading them. If you don’t have a premium image editing tool such as Photoshop, there are free solutions out there such as Gimp or Irfanview.

Compressing: After you have ensured the images you are using are not massively oversized – you need to verify that you are compressing or optimizing them properly for the web. If you use Photoshop, leaving the default quality setting on 100% is a big no no. The goal here is to balance the quality with file size – if you compress too much you’ll end up with undesirable artifacts, but leaving it too high could double or triple the file size for no reason. Here is a great article covering the topic in detail over at tutsplus.
Compressing plays a huge role is file size and thus download speed to your user. It’s also worth noting there are two solid WP plugins (Smush it & EWWW) which you can use to bulk compress images on your setup.

Minification

Minification removes all unused spaces in the theme asset files to make the size smaller. By default the files are shipped to be human readable with normal spacing and comments to help you understand if you wanted to inspect it and make modifications through a child theme.

Besides just removing spaces to reduce file size, mification through the plugin we recommend will also combine all the javascript & css files into one .js and one .css file. This reduces the number of requests your server has to make, thus yielding more page performance and greater PageSpeed scores.

Some Plugins will do the Job for you BWP Minify

The reason I suggest BWP minify over other solutions is because it’s free and provides great control over the minification process. There are other plugins out there that can get the job done – but keep you in the dark over the process and don’t allow you to configure the settings deeply.

W3 Total Cache

There are many different types of caching offered in W3TC, but in this guide we’re going to focus on the simplest and the only one used on the demos: browser caching. This will allow the theme assets to be cached on your users computer after initially downloaded, to save your server from having to serve them more than once. The result significant performance increases.

If you would like a quick overview on what caching is and the various types please check this resource.

In the “Browser Cache” tab of your W3TC plugin panel, ensure these settings are checked.

GZip Compression

If you are new to optimizing for speed you may be missing out on the easiest yet most impactful steps. Enabling gzip compression can reduce the size of the transferred response by up to 90%, which can significantly reduce the amount of time to download the theme files, reduce data usage for the client, and improve the time to first render of your pages. This means that by simply telling your server to use this feature, all theme assets will be drastically reduced in size.

In the “General Settings” tab of your W3TC plugin admin panel, scroll down until you see the browser metabox and ensure that gzip compression is enabled

Conclusion

As you can see, all of the above techniques are essential to ensuring high performance for your website – basically with any Theme or CMS System you use. Once you’ve leveraged these web standard recommended items, you will notice much higher performance and significantly higher scores in PageSpeed testers such as GTMetrix, YSlow etc.

Open Source Projects

Everybody knows Well Known Open Source Software such as WordPress (this Site is build with it) or Joomla Content Management System, but there are many lesser well known Open Source Projects for a variety of Purposes.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a powerful, feature-packed text editor that more or less has everything Notepad needs but lacks (it can replace Notepad in Windows). It supports 27 programming languages, searches regular expressions, and supports syntax highlighting and folding, synchronized edits and views, and much more.

Pros

Loads of options: Behind a clean face and busy but efficient toolbar, Notepad++ is a wonder of features and options. One favorite: Default Directory has two choices, Follow current document and Remember last directory. Another: The “old, obsolete” desktop icon is a setup option.

Download Notepad++

Options to load: We could set Notepad++ not to use %APPDATA% but rather to load or write config files from the installation directory; this is handy when running Notepad++ from a USB device.

Plug-ins, too: Notepad++ comes loaded with useful plug-ins plus a Plug-in Manager. But we could also select a startup option to load plug-ins from AppData — a potential security issue that Notepad++ only recommends for experienced users.

Koken

Content management and web site publishing for photographers
Your images are your most important asset. Koken treats them with the attention they deserve by including a full-featured management interface that looks and feels like a desktop application.
Write about portfolio updates, inspiration, or anything that comes to mind. Images, videos, slideshows and content from Flickr, Instagram, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Twitter are a snap to display.
Download Koken

Clonezilla

Clonezilla is a partition and disk imaging/cloning program similar to True Image® or Norton Ghost®. It helps you to do system deployment, bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the hard disk. This increases the clone efficiency. With some high-end hardware in a 42-node cluster, a multicast restoring at rate 8 GB/min was reported.
Download Clonezilla

Mozilla Thunderbird E Mail Client

Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize – and it’s loaded with great features!
Windows 10 comes with an email client built in, but a third-party client like Thunderbird is a far better choice for managing your messages. That’s because Windows Mail is online-only, so there’s no way to access your messages without an active internet connection.
Thunderbird lets you keep a backup of all your messages on your PC, in a location of your choice. That also means you have a fallback option for those occasions when you suddenly realise, with a sinking heart, that you’ve accidentally deleted something very important.

Thunderbird also helps you keen on top of your appointments, with support for multiple calendars, and includes an RSS reader so you can see the headlines at a glance as well. It’s extremely useful, and will save you the hassle of opening half a dozen browser tabs each morning to check your schedule, organize your inboxes, and find out what’s going on in the world.
Download Thunderbird

ClamAV

ClamAV® is an open source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats.

Here Are 3 Good Reasons for Using ClamAV

  1. You have sensitive data on your computer and you want to lock down your machine as much as possible and make sure that nothing can affect your computer or your data.
  2. You dual boot with Windows. You can use ClamAV to scan all of the partitions and all of the drives on your computer.
  3. You want to create a system rescue CD, DVD or USB which can be used to troubleshoot for viruses on a friend’s Windows based computer.

Download ClamAV

PaintNet

Paint.NET is image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.
Download Paint.NET

IrfanView

Far more than just a simple image viewer, IrfanView has evolved into a remarkable multimedia management and editing suite. If you have a hard drive full of photos that need organizing, converting and retouching, it’s the only tool you need.
IrfanView (which takes its name from its creator, Irfan Skiljan) is the wise old app of image viewers. In its 13-year lifespan it’s remained one of the most useful things you can put on your PC. It’s an excellent image viewer, but it’s capable of much more than that.
You can browse through your images quickly, or watch them as a slideshow. IrfanView also includes a feature-packed photo editor, a batch file converter, and a scanner interface. If that’s not enough, it’s also expandable via plugins.

IrfanView is easy to master thanks to its slightly old-fashioned but nonetheless practical interface. There are copious keyboard shortcuts to speed up everyday organization and editing tasks, and the directory view makes it straightforward to drill down through folders to find the images you want.

IrfanView’s 64-bit version is guaranteed to work faster and be more compatible with image files larger than 25MB.
Download IrfanView

SEO Analysis Tools

#1 WooRank

WooRank

WooRank is a freemium tool that provides an “instant website review.” Without a premium account, you are only allowed to generate a limited number of free reports, but you are able to view previously generated reports. Also, the tool currently offers a 7-day unlimited free trial, which gives you access to unlimited reviews.

Here’s the summary view from a WooRank report:

WooRank report

The report is divided into the following 8 sections:

  • Marketing Checklist – These are the most important action items for your site.
  • SEO – This section checks if the site is following various on-page and off-page SEO best practices (e.g., appropriate title and description, keyword consistency, backlink count, www/non-www canonicalization, XML Sitemap usage, etc.).
  • Mobile – The mobile version of your site is displayed, and the site’s adherence to mobile optimization best practices is evaluated.
  • Usability – This determines if your site is user-friendly by evaluating various usability best practices (e.g., the existence of a custom 404 page, above the fold content, structured markup, etc.).
  • Technologies – This section investigates miscellaneous aspects of the site (e.g., W3C standards compliance, speed optimizations, etc.).
  • Social – This quantifies your site’s popularity on social networks, and it reproduces various social data found elsewhere (e.g., profile information on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.).
  • Local – This section presents your site’s listings in local directories (e.g., Yelp, Foursquare, etc.) as well as online reviews associated with those listings.
  • Visitors – This measures the site’s popularity based on various traffic estimates.

#2 SEO Site Checkup

SEO Site Checkup

SEO Site Checkup is a free SEO analyzer that analyzes your site (and an optional competitor) using 45 individual checks in 6 different categories. Based on the results of those checks, the tool generates a summary, which includes a numerical score for the site and a count of the failed checks:

SEO Site Checkup summary

Below the summary, the tool presents the results of the 45 checks using the following sections:

  • Common SEO Issues – This section includes a wide variety of SEO checks (e.g., keyword usage in important markup areas, an appropriate code to text ratio, the existence of a robots.txt file and an XML Sitemap, HTML standards compliance, SEO-friendly URLs, etc.).
  • Speed Optimizations – This covers various load performance-related checks (e.g., page size, compression, caching, minification, server speed, etc.).
  • Server & Security – This section identifies a few important hosting and security characteristics of the site (e.g., proper canonicalization, appearance on suspicious blacklists, providing unnecessary access or displaying potentially sensitive information, etc.).
  • Mobile Usability – This checks if your site is mobile friendly by providing a snapshot of what it looks like on mobile devices and looking for media queries.
  • Social Media – This section helps quantify the site’s social engagement by providing share counts for various popular social media sites.
  • Semantic Web – This tries to determine if the site is using structured data (e.g., schema.org microdata).

#3 Site Auditor

Site Auditor

Site Auditor is one of the SEO tools provided by Raven Tools as part of their Internet marketing solution. After you run Site Auditor on your website, the tool presents a report that summarizes its findings.

Currently, Raven Tools offers a 30-day free trial for Site Auditor (and all of their other tools).

Here’s an excerpt from a Site Auditor report:

Site Auditor report

The report is broken into 9 different sections:

  • Visibility – This summarizes your site’s visibility for search engines (e.g., which pages are blocked by robots.txt and/or robots meta tags, which pages cannot be found, and which pages return redirects).
  • Meta – This section identifies the site’s most important metadata and corresponding duplication (e.g., duplicate titles, duplicate meta descriptions, etc.).
  • Content – This presents important characteristics for your site’s textual content (e.g., title, link counts, word count, existence of internal duplicate content, etc.).
  • Links – This section lists information about the site’s internal and external links (e.g., anchor text, if the links are broken, if the links are no-followed, etc.).
  • Images – This shows your site’s images and corresponding metadata (e.g., filename, alt text, title text, size, etc.).
  • Semantics – This section offers information about the site’s headings (h1, h2, and h3 tags) and schema.org micro data (items and types).
  • Desktop Page Speed – This gives your site’s desktop page speed results: a numerical score and corresponding speed-related best practices (e.g., avoid page redirects, enable compression, reduce server response time, etc.).
  • Mobile Page Speed – This section displays your site’s mobile page speed results: a numerical user experience score, a numerical speed score, corresponding user experience best practices (e.g., size content to view port, size tap targets appropriately, etc.) and speed-related best practices.
  • Crawl Comparison – This compares different crawls of the site (performed at different times) to evaluate how the site’s issues are changing over time.

#4 HubSpot’s Marketing Grader

HubSpot Marketing Grader

Unlike many of the other SEO analysis tools on this list, which focus primarily on your site’s SEO activities, Marketing Grader digs a little deeper into your company’s online marketing strategy.

Here is an example of a Marketing Grader report:

HubSpot Marketing Grader report

The report focuses on five areas of your company’s online marketing efforts:

  • Blogging – This section investigates your blogging activities (e.g., does your site have a blog, does it have social sharing buttons, etc.).
  • Social Media – This section evaluates your social media activities (e.g., are you using Twitter and Facebook, do you link to your profiles from the homepage, etc.).
  • SEO – This section checks a few important on-page and off-page SEO ranking factors (e.g., titles, descriptions, backlinks, etc.).
  • Lead Generation – This section analyzes the effectiveness of your landing pages (e.g., are you using forms to capture leads, are you using analytics software to measure your results, etc.).
  • Mobile – This section determines if the page is mobile-friendly (e.g., are you using @media queries or a mobile stylesheet, do you have a meta viewport tag, what does the page look like on mobile devices, etc.).

#5 Site Analyzer

Site Analyzer

Site Analyzer is another free SEO analyzer, and it presents 71 data points, which are organized into 5 groups. After you perform an analysis on your site, the tool presents an overview, which includes a global score as well as accessibility, design, texts, multimedia, and networking scores.

Here is an example of the tool’s overview:

Site Analyzer overview

The tool also presents an in-depth view for each of the overview sections:

  • Accessibility – This includes general data about the site (e.g., if compression is enabled, whether page caching is allowed, download time, etc.), URL optimization, server configuration (e.g., hosting environment, IP address, etc.), internationalization, mobile compatibility, and more.
  • Design – This section describes how well your site has implemented various HTML/CSS elements (e.g., meta tags, page segmentation, CSS elements, scripts, etc.).
  • Texts – This shows important text-related information such as a page’s title, text/code ratio, headings, keyword density distribution, and keyword usage.
  • Multimedia – This section is dedicated to images (e.g., the number of displayed images, the use of alt text metadata, etc.), Flash, frames, and icons.
  • Networking – This covers internal links (e.g., link counts and percentages, no-followed links, link attributes, etc.), indexation (e.g., existence of a robots.txt file and an XML Sitemap, indexed page counts for various search engines, etc.), and connections to popular social networks.

#6 SEO Workers

SEO Workers

This SEO analysis tool has been around for quite some time, and although it’s not the prettiest tool on the list, it’s still incredibly useful. After you evaluate a URL, the tool presents an analysis report, which is broken down into the following sections:

  • HTTP Headers Check – This section displays the HTTP headers that are returned in response to a request for the given URL.
  • Head Elements – The page’s most important <head> tags (e.g., title, meta description, etc.) are displayed along with helpful advice and corresponding videos.
  • Page Most Relevant Keywords / Keyphrases – This section presents the page’s most popular (based on keyword density) one, two, three, and four word keyword phrases.
  • The Page Displayed within Search Engine Results – This is an approximation of what the page will look like in the search engine results.
  • URLs Found in the Page – All of the page’s internal and external outlinks are displayed.
  • Keywords Found in the Anchor Tags – This section shows the anchor text used in each of the page’s outlinks.
  • Keywords Found in Image Alt Attributes – This is a list of the phrases used in alt text for the page’s images.
  • Heading & Phrase Elements – Each of the page’s heading and stylistic tags are shown.

#7 Lipperhey

Lipperhey

Lipperhey is not as popular as some of the other SEO analysis tools, but it still presents a lot of important information. Similar to previous tools, Lipperhey generates an SEO analysis report based on the URL you provide.

Here’s an excerpt from one of those reports:

Lipperhey report

The report provides a numerical score and 5 sections that cover the following topics:

  • Visitors – This estimates the number of visitors your site receives, and it helps quantify the site’s social engagement.
  • Indexability – This section summarizes the site’s indexability for search engines (e.g., does the site use a robots.txt file and an XML Sitemap, does the site avoid Flash and frames, etc.).
  • Hosting – This includes information about your site’s hosting infrastructure (e.g., server location, hosting IP address, www/non-www canonicalization, download speed, redirecting domains, etc.).
  • Design – This section previews how the site appears on mobile devices, and identifies a few other design-related elements (e.g., inline style elements, images, etc.).
  • On-Page SEO – This illustrates how well your site has optimized various HTML elements (e.g., title, URL, meta description, headings, etc.).

#8 UpCity Free SEO Report Card

UpCity SEO report card

UpCity offers a free website grader that analyzes a site and presents its findings in an SEO report card. This report card displays a numerical score, which is generated based on the site’s adherence to 18 best practices in the following 6 categories:

  • Rank Analysis – This category identifies whether or not the site is ranking in Google and Bing for the targeted keyword.
  • Link Building – This section checks if the site is receiving a sufficient number of backlinks.
  • On-Site Analysis – This simply checks if the targeted keyword is being used in the homepage’s title and body.
  • Website Accessibility – This category ensures that the site’s homepage loads quickly and is accessible to search engines.
  • Trust Metrics – This section checks if the site is reasonably well established.
  • Current Indexing – This simply checks if the site is being indexed in Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.

#9 Seoptimer

Seoptimer

Seoptimer is a free SEO analysis tool that investigates a given URL’s on-page SEO ranking factors. After you analyze a URL, the tool presents a summary of the most important action items. Then, it displays its analysis results, which are broken down into the following 7 categories:

  • HTML Header – This shows the most important HTML <head> elements (e.g., title, meta description, etc.).
  • Body Content – This section lists important HTML <body> elements (e.g., headings, images, etc.).
  • Internal and External Links – This presents the page’s internal and external outlinks.
  • Additional Files – This section identifies the site’s robots.txt file and XML Sitemap.
  • Social Media Signals – This displays the number of shares for the URL on Facebook and Google+.
  • HTTP Headers – This section shows the HTTP response for the URL.
  • Domain and Server – This presents information about the page’s Web server (e.g., IP address, name servers, etc.).

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close