Free webmaster tools that need to know about

If money is a bit tight, or you are just starting out, then making full use of tools freely available on the web is a MUST.

There are plenty of FREE tools out there; you just have know where to look.

Overture Keyword Selector Tool

( inventory. overture. com/d/searchinventory/suggestion )

One of the first things you need to do with every online project is to find out how many people are searching for that topic.

Overture, now owned by yahoo, gives us this great little tool that shows how many people searched for a particular topic in the previous 30 days, as well as what keywords they used to do that search..

A site well worth book marking.

Blogger - Google Own Blogging Service

( blogger. com )

Blogger is very easy to use, and if used the correct way can be a great way to get newly developed sites indexed by the search engines.

You can setup as many blogs as you wish post as often as you wish, and say almost anything you want.

Web Site Code checker

( validator. w3.org )

These days it’s very easy to quickly put up a website using your favorite WYSIWYG HTML editor, but sometimes they can generate absolutely nasty web code, that can make search engines almost choke just trying to read your site.

Just because internet explorer displays the site OK, doesn’t mean that the search engines can read your site properly.

So make sure every HTML page you put up on the web is 100%b HTML clean and correct.

Not only will the search engines love you, but so will your bank balance.

Steve’s Templates - Free Web Templates

( steves-templates. com )

Steve’s templates provide a whole suite of free web templates that you can import into your HTML editor and edit to fir your website. The template found here are very professional and they cover both personal and business style templates.

SEOPEN. com

( seopen. com )

This site is a platform for free search engine optimization tools.

It also offers a great little FIREFOX plug-in that allows you to access all the SEO Tools on the site, simply by right clicking on your mouse whilst using FIREFOX.

It allows you to find all sorts of information about a site, such as:

-WHOIS Information

-How many back links the site has

-The Keyword Density on the Page

-Page Size Checker

-HTML validator (uses validator. w3.org see above)

-Check a sites robots. txt

Plus a lot more… If you use FireFox then get this plug-in, I can’t live without it any more.

If you don’t use FIREFOX then go to mozilla. com/ and start using it… It’s the BEST!!

Open Office

( OpenOffice. org )

Let me quote directly from their website

“OpenOffice. org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. “

Basically Open Office is a FREE alternative to Microsoft Office. It can read and write most if not all the standard Office files.

The aspect I like about it is that its built in wordprocessor (write) can load Microsoft Word documents and then you can save them as standard PDF documents.

This means that you can create your own e-books and reports without having to buy expensive PDF creators.

Give it a go… It’s well worth while.

All of the tools I mentioned above are absolutely FREE.

I use almost all of them on a daily basis, so don’t waste your hard earned money on expensive tools, use these FREE one.

Avoid graphical overload

When designing a website, it's easy to start loading it up with graphics. While tempting, you have to resist -- otherwise, you'll end up with graphical overload.

Why is that a bad thing? Here's why.

It Takes Too Long to Download

The first reason to cut down on graphics is that the more there are, and the larger they are, the longer it will take each of your pages to download. People are impatient when waiting for pages to download -- you only have around 5 seconds before your visitor hits the Back button.

What can you do about this? Apart from using fewer pictures, you can also make sure that you resize your images in a graphics editor. This actually makes their file sizes smaller. If you just resize images by specifying a width and height in HTML or CSS, they will still be slow to download because the full file size is being used.

You should consider turning on compression in your image editor. JPEG files can often be compressed by up to 25% before there's a noticeable difference in quality. Try different formats and compression levels to see what works.

It Gets Too Busy

If you use a site with more than 4 images on the page at once, your eyes are being pulled all over the page. They're not sure where to focus because the page simply has too much going on.

Look at the front pages of newspapers, and notice how they lead on 1 picture. Putting 2 pictures on a front page is considered to be poor: the reader doesn't know where to look.

That goes double for websites, where the viewable area is much smaller than a newspaper page. Even if you have more than 1 thing to say, it's better to 'go large' with 1 picture and then explain the other things in text, next to or below it.

It Distracts from the Content

Users visit your site to get information, not to look at your graphics. Too many graphics will distract from your content, or, worse, force readers to search for it. Any time your graphics get in the way of people readily using your site, you're suffering from graphical overload. And that is a bad thing.

What's the solution? Simply decide which of all those graphics are really necessary. Remember, don't add graphics just to look nice, each graphic must have a specific purpose.

An Exception: Photo Galleries

If the purpose of your site is photo presentation, then clearly multiple images are appropriate. However, don't just stick up several large photographs -- provide thumbnails: smaller versions of each image. If interested, the visitor can click on 1 to make it larger.

This fits more pictures on each page, and avoids wasting user download time and your bandwidth.

Keep in mind that in all web design, the images are there strictly to support the content. Even when the content is graphical.

What clients want

A potential client calls and wants a website, as a web developer you are more then happy to help. You show them your work, explain how your work is better then the rest and sell the person on the importance of Web Standards. Do you think that a client wants to hear all about Web Standards? Most likely they do not. They do want to here how you are going to make there website a success.

This does not mean that Web Standards are not important or that you should not follow them and yes you should tell your clients that you build websites using proper coding. But this is what they expect from a web developer, otherwise they would be trying to build a website on there own.

A web developer should be responsible for explaining to a potential client what it takes to make a website successful before they pay for your services. Many people still believe that all you have to do is build a website and visitors will show up at your door begging to buy your products. A web developer knows better and should make his novice clients aware of this. No client should think that a website will be a success without spending money on advertising. If you do not offer advertising or SEO optimization to your clients you should be prepared to recommend companies that do offer such services.

It is very important to remember that if a client’s website is a complete flop they will put some or all of the blame on you. Especially if you did not explain the pitfalls of owning and operating a website. On the other hand if you do promote there website or teach them the ins and outs of promoting a website they will be a satisfied customer. Most of my customers are referred to my company by existing clients and I truly believe this is because we do not just build a website for them but teach them what it takes to be an online success.