To get your website properly indexed by Google and other search engines you will need a sitemap. A sitemap is a file on your website that shows the search engines exactly what files you have.
There are two types of sitemaps - a HTML page or a XML file. A HTML sitemap is a single page that shows visitors all the pages on a website and usually has links to those pages. The XML type of sitemap is used by search engine crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed. A XML sitemap isn’t meant to look pretty for the website visitor.
Analytics are a great tool to use with any website or blog. They help you understand where your traffic comes from and some of the ways that traffic behaves. In the past, MakeUseOf has covered several ways to track all of your site’s statistics. Today, I’m going to tell you more about a free heatmapping analytics tool.
ClickHeat is a free software that lets you see heatmaps of your website and all the pages in it. In order to make your content and design better, you need to know how your readers currently use your website. ClickHeat allows you to learn more about the behavior of your readers than basic analytics tools do.
As many of you already know on November 2nd, MakeUseOf.com’s domain was stolen from us. It took us about 36 hours to get the domain back. As we have pointed out earlier the hacker somehow managed to get access to my Gmail account and from there to our GoDaddy account, unlock the domain and move it to another registrar.
You can see the whole story on our temporary blog makeuseof-temporary.blogspot.com/
FleeQ offers an easy to use aggregated search engine and also allows website and blog owners the ability to monetize their sites and receive targeted traffic. FleeQ delivers search results from all the major search engines. You can also quickly integrate FleeQ into your Firefox browser search bar.
As you begin to type your search terms into the FleeQ search bar, suggested topics will appear below it. You can choose to click on one of the suggested search topics or continue with your own and press enter.
In the second part of my “Back To Basics” series, and following on from Wendy’s article on adding a search function to your Blogger blog, I would like to talk today about adding a search engine to your website or blog. This is one of the most asked questions in my email inbox - which search engine should be added to a website and which ones should be avoided.
Most webmasters and bloggers naturally follow the money trail and add a Google Adsense search engine but if you don’t want to do that, there are some decent free alternatives out there.
You’d be amazed at some of the simple things that people can’t do computer / internet-wise. They can install Linux on their computers or set up a webcam security system but when it comes to simple basic things, their minds go completely blank!
So I’ve decided to go “back to basics” for a while, go through my Gmail archive, look at some of the email requests that I have received, and show Make Use Of readers some of the simple basic stuff.
There are several good website traffic analytics tools out there, and the most popular today is probably Google Analytics. The other day I came across another alternative called BLVD Status. BLVD Status is currently in public beta, but it does provide a good service even at this stage. It comes with the basic analytic tools you would expect and adds Digg tracking to that mix. This analytics tool also brings with it live traffic stats which is very cool.
Let’s take a deeper look at what BLVD Status has to offer.
If you do now or have ever run a website, you know how daunting it can be to maintain a web server. You need to become an expert on many topics like DNS, MX, CNAME, web languages, and so on. Many low traffic sites or beginner sites may be hosted on a managed and shared server to save time, money, and worry. This is a great solution but the fate of this solution depends on all of the clients hosted on the server.
This is truly a good piece of software if you are concerned about the gamut of occupational diseases that abound in all who use the computer. From spondylitis to carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic occupational ailments are the bane of those who sit staring at electronic screens.
Workrave is a handy free software application that can be used to prevent those intentional bad habits. The program alerts the user at certain intervals to take momentary pauses, rest breaks and restricts the user to a daily computer usage limit.
I was recently away when my blog broke. A plug-in had somehow broken down, became corrupt and an embarrassing PHP error was seen on the top of every page. Worse yet the admin section wouldn’t work period. The solution was simple right? Log in via FTP and delete the corrupt plug-in.
Unfortunately Murphy’s Law was at work. The computer I had access to had no FTP client (I couldn’t install one/didn’t want to take the time). My two options were to wait till I got home to fix it, or I could use an online FTP client.
Anybody with a website (especially a fairly new one) probably wants to know how their site ranks in a Google search. Google Webmaster Tools is an extremely valuable tool for any webmaster, which can show you various pieces of information such as crawl statistics/errors it found when crawling your site, allows you to submit sitemaps for easier crawling, and more.
But all it provides in terms of actual search ranking is your position for the queries that land the most people on your site and your position for the top queries in which your site appears. What it doesn’t give you is a way of easily checking your search position for any search terms you want. That’s where the Google Position Checker comes in.
Working at night is great. The streets are quieter, I’m not drowned by disturbances and there is rarely anyone around to bother me. As it is so peaceful, I can normally go on working in front my computer endlessly, until I realize that the sun has risen and I’ve missed my night’s sleep. Has that ever happened to you?
You sit in front of your monitor and the light from the screen shines directly at you. Due to that, your brain doesn’t recognize that it is currently night-time so your sleep cycle is disrupted. One night’s work turns into a nightmare the following day - your energy level is low and your attention span is shortened.
There might be several reasons why a reader would want to be able to convert a web page to PDF, such as: to share with a non-online friend, to be able to email it or to put it into a PDF device to read later; while still retaining the original form of the page. That’s why web to PDF conversion tools are gaining popularity.
But if we look it from the perspective of the site owner, giving the readers the ability to ‘PDF-print’ your pages will improve your site likeability by several points, and increase the site’s exposure to new readers.
This is the second part of the Offline Browsing Anywhere Anytime mini series. If you missed it, part one is here.
Downloading a website can come in handy in many situations. You may want to demonstrate a website to a customer at their house, browse the latest headlines while commuting to work or take your laptop to the wifi-less park to enjoy the weather and read a blog at the same time. Having access to a full website backup gives you a lot more freedom than being limited to a few select pages.
“Why doesn’t Google Analytics have real-time tracking?”
This would have to be the single most voiced complaint I hear concerning Google Analytics. Aside from that its a solid service and a must-have for any aspiring blogger, but use it for any length of time and you’ll begin to wish for this as well.
Or it used to be.
After having used the Woopra Analytics service I’m confident in wholeheartedly agreeing with the promotional statement from the service itself:
“Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application.”
While there are many web analytics tools out there, the website statistics (metrics) that they reveal are pretty standard across all the tools. But just what do all these hundreds of web metrics and terms exactly mean and what should you do with them? They can be pretty confusing! So this post is for those of you who want a quick primer on these website metrics, and to help you understand which ones are most useful for analyzing and improving your blogs or websites. Anyway… I think I hear the class bell… lets get started!
I’ve been sampling a new mobilization service called MoFuse lately and I have to admit, this web application is awesome. If you ever wanted to create a mobile version of your site, MoFuse is exactly what you’ve been looking for. Using MoFuse’s grow page, you can easily create a mobile version of any web site in a matter of seconds. And I mean literally seconds.
WhoIsHostingThis - Finding a good hosting company can be a major headache. Even when you go to what seems to be a reliable forum, you may be presented with lots of manipulated stats promoting one or the other hosting provider. The best way to find a reliable website host is to check who hosts popular websites. And WhoIsHostingThis is a no-registration service that can help you with this. Enter the website address and it will get you a link to its hosting company.
WhoIsTheOwner - This service lets you quickly lookup who is the owner of the website. Such services also known as WhoIS lookup tools.
In my opinion, one of the best programs to be produced recently is the Adobe AIR platform which is being used to make some really visually powerful desktop applications. I was first introduced to Adobe AIR when I downloaded the desktop Pownce application and ever since then, I have heard nothing but praise from other bloggers about what fantastic software development opportunities Adobe has opened up.
Whenever I have had to write HTML for a webpage I’m working on, I have always used this online real-time HTML editor. But therein lies the problem - it’s online and if your internet connection blinks out for a while, you are obviously unable to use it. So I wanted an offline standalone application that could help me to write my HTML if I didn’t have an internet connection. I wanted it to be free and easy to use, as well as having a WYSIWYG interface (What You See Is What You Get) You couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult that made it finding something to fit all those conditions.
I have just recently discovered a useful all-in-one tool for testing your website, blog or webpage (or someone else’s) for just about anything you can imagine!
‘Test Everything’ incorporates over 100 (128 to be exact) of the useful website checkers and validators, throughout 8 different categories, all in one spot!
You will find CSS & HTML validators, SEO Tools, Web Proxies, Network Tools, Image Tools, Text tools, a host of really cool Miscellaneous Tools, and you can easily check your site’s popularity on Social Bookmarking sites as well.
Have a Website? Blog? Webpage? Want to know exactly where you stand in relation to all the other websites? Wondering how much you website is worth? Take a deep breath, go directly to the links below and have it GRADED!
Website Grader - Free seo is a tool that measures the marketing effectiveness and popularity of a website. Find out things like website traffic, its popularity on social bookmarking networks (Digg, del.icio.us, …), incoming link count, and lots of other relevant factors. It also provides some basic tips on how the website can be improved.
As any successful webmaster / blogger will tell you, the key to a successful website is to get the right keywords. The keywords are the words that search engine users will use to find websites that they are looking for. So it pays to get it right, whether you are optimizing your website meta-tags, post titles or working out which keywords to use in your next Google Adwords campaign. You can’t do a slapdash job otherwise you’ll find that your nice shiny new website doesn’t get any visitors.
Got a blog ? If so this post is for you: 12 truly useful tools and widgets that can make your blog better. All listed services work on any blog, whether it’s a Wordpress, Typepad, or a hosted Blogger blog. Enjoy!
1. Amung.us - Amung.us is a tiny real-time traffic analytics widget for your blog. It tells you (and your readers) how many people are currently on the website, what pages they’re reading, where in the world they’re coming from, and more. See our Amung.us widget below:
Ask any competent web designer or blogger and they’ll tell you that one of the most important aspects of getting a webpage right is the color. Getting the colors right can make all the difference between a hugely successful website and one that goes down the toilet on day one. You need a site that is easy on the eyes if you want someone to stick around for more than five seconds.
Here are some sites I have found which can help you find the right colours, if you are designing a webpage.
As Wikipedia grows more and more in momentum, people will start to use Wikipedia as their one and only source of information (of which I am becoming increasingly guilty of). But the internet doesn’t begin and end with Wikipedia.
Here’s some other reference websites worth a look, sites you can make use of.
1. Dictionary.com - One of my favourites. Also includes Thesaurus.com and Reference.com. Has email subscription services and RSS feeds.
2. About.com - This site has become much more commercialized over the years with more and more advertising. But nevertheless, you can find a wealth of information on numerous subjects, with more subjects being added all the time.
I am currently in the process of learning CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) based web design since it is now the standard foundation of layout for almost all web sites. I have read several books now and I still believe that I am slightly lost when it comes time to applying what I know from scratch. Over the past several months, I’ve been keeping a list for myself of potentially amazing tools and applications (most web based - all of them free) to make my CSS web design experience a snap. I purposely cut out over 30 options from this list, because these are the most user friendly and simplest to use.
If you have your own website, most likely you will be used to the regular task of transferring numerous files to the website from your computer. Whether it is an image, a document, a HTML page or a zipped attachment, it can be pretty tiring transferring them one by one if you are using a simple uploading tool provided by your web hosting company. This is where a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client comes in extremely handy as it can do a bulk upload of files from your computer to a web domain (or vice versa) at the click of a button.
Hello everybody! I would love to thank MakeUseOf for allowing me to be a guest writer. My goal is to start simple and work my way up from the Web 1.0 to the Web 2.0 world with my posts. Thus, here is my first “I Make Use Of” post. Enjoy…
Webmaster Tools:
As a Webmaster, maintaining and observing my pages, is fundamental. My core web sites that I use on a Daily and Weekly basis are as follows…
Google Analytics - The free and ultimate Webmaster tool for all types of site analytics, including: visitor information, traffic sources, pages and everything in between
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