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I often launch a new website. Most of the time these are brand new websites with new domain names and new content.

When I am done and go online I do the following things:

So this covers crawling results, some keyword analyses, visitor analyses, and link building.

After this I just wait for some results to come in (sometimes weeks), and then I do some analyses on them.

Are there more tools that are handy to use when you launch new websites.

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  • What about tools to monitor google (like google alert) and to monitor twitter.
    – Imageree
    Aug 16, 2010 at 21:21

4 Answers 4

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There are tons of tools. In general. I think you will find there are 2 kinds of tools.

  1. Tools to Analyze how well written, the SEO friendliness, and speed of your site.
  2. Tools to Analyze and watch the who, what, when, where, and how of the visitors that hit your site.

First to cover analyzing tools. These tools are great pre and post launch. Google Webmaster tools will gives you some idea about crawling issue, broken links, site speed, etc. I also find these tools helpful:

  1. IIS7's SEO 1.0 Toolkit. It finds broken links, SEO errors, HTML errors, and a ton more.
  2. W3C's HTML validator here, http://validator.w3.org/. Its great for the HTML nitty gritty.
  3. SenSEO - http://www.sensational-seo.com/ Is also pretty good though it isn't up to date with the latest version of FireFox right now.

Then for monitoring tools you have a ton of options. Google Analytics is great and free.

  1. Omniture, http://www.omniture.com/en/, is great but isn't cheap.
  2. CrazyEgg, http://www.crazyegg.com, is a great heatmap tool. It lets you see where people click on your page. It isn't free either but it isn't prohibitively expensive.
  3. This site, http://tools.seobook.com/ has some great tools. To get the full benefit you have to spend money but you can use the simple tools for free.
  4. This site, http://www.seo-browser.com, will show you what you page looks like to the crawlers. It is free
  5. SEOMoz has some awesome tools, some free, most aren't. http://www.seomoz.org/tools
  6. Bruce Clay's company also has some free tools and some that cost money. http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/tools.htm

Finally, http://www.dailyblogtips.com/top-25-seo-blogs/ is a list of the top 25 blogs as of a few years ago. The sites listed are full of tools and information you are trying to find.

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  • +1 thanks nice detailed list. I forgot all about the heatmap and the validator. But I think the google analytics has a heatmap too if I remember correctly. Another Q, do you think its worth the money to invest in those online SEO tools?
    – Saif Bechan
    Jul 19, 2010 at 17:19
  • @Saif - G Analytics has a poor man's heatmap. It doesn't tell you where they click, just what links were clicked on. For most sites that is enough. As for buying SEO tools, if you are running Windows 7 then you can use IIS7 SEO tools for free. So there isn't as much need for the expensive ones. I would only purchase tools if you are trying to get that first page top spot. Otherwise there isn't as much of a need. You have to remember it is an arms race so spending money is going to have diminishing marginal utility as you spend more.
    – Ben Hoffman
    Jul 19, 2010 at 18:29
  • I think it is not good to just list websites with tools. Much better to list tools that are useful and you recommend.
    – Imageree
    Aug 16, 2010 at 18:52
  • I have used all of these sites except Omniture and I have a few friends who have used Omniture and give it high marks. That is why I listed them. I think each of the sites offer slightly different tools and this have value for different people. They are simply tools in a toolbox. If you think one of these tools is poor let me know which one, why, and what tool you think is better. I am always open to new tools!
    – Ben Hoffman
    Aug 17, 2010 at 15:53
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I'd add Chartbeat.com to the list. No need to wait around for data to come in….Chartbeat does real-time monitoring of what's happening on your website RIGHT NOW.

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Site speed is not just a factor that can marginally improve your website's Google ranking but well performing pages can help you save on bandwidth costs & result in a better user experience for the site's visitors. So you can run the site through some of these free web performance analysis & optimization tools & work on the recommendations they offer.

popuri.us is a tool you can use to check the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc)

If you offer a RSS feed for the site, you can find how it compares against competitor's feeds using Feed Compare

Use W3C Link Checker occasionally to check for broken links.

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Google now also checks website performance as a speed indicator. So I recommend to sign up for a website monitoring service like Gomez, Keynote or AlertFox. We use AlertFox. They have free accounts, too. So everybody should use website monitoring these days.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html

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  • For some stupid reason AlertFox will not let you sign up with a gmail address.
    – UpTheCreek
    Feb 5, 2011 at 11:19
  • Although it seems you can get through if you use [email protected]
    – UpTheCreek
    Feb 5, 2011 at 11:21
  • Doesn't seem like AlertFox is free anymore... :/
    – siliconpi
    Aug 11, 2016 at 5:45

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