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When you start a Web business,It is important to have good and high-quality business tools , dependable products and services which will help you in your work. and if you are new in this business style , It is nice and beneficial to get idea about various free tools and resources you may have heard about or discovered yourself when surfing the Net for information. And you may be wondering how it was important to give them a try.
There are a number of very good (and reliable!) tools and resources available on the Net that are FREE. And these can be excellent ways to complement your existing tools at no cost, helping you to make your blog or site more professional, user-friendly,more effective keywords ,increase ranking and credability, keep an eye on your competition, find potential business partners, and more...
I will show you here some tools and resources which can be effectively used to give your online business that extra edge you need to move your business to higher level.
The Alexa toolbar is one of the most important and useful tools for businesses on the Net. Alexa provides a free, downloadable toolbar that opens in your web browser whenever you're online.
The most useful feature is a "site info" option. When you click on this button, Alexa lays out all the details of the site/blog you're on, including...
- The traffic ranking of the site/blog (this is also listed right on the toolbar itself)
- A list of related links (two or three of the most popular links also appear on the toolbar)
- The number of other sites that link to the site
- The contact information of the site owner
- All site/user reviews
This is the exact information you need when you're researching high-traffic sites in your industry and considering link partnerships or joint ventures. Using these informations will help you to...
- Decide how much you're willing to pay for advertising.
- Make educated decisions about the worth of a joint venture partner(reciprocal links).
- Determine the credibility and the value of the site/blog.
- The list of related links is an excellent way to find other popular or similar sites that might be good linking partners or joint venture partners. You can use this list to determine other popular sites that your target market visits -- start by looking at your own site with Alexa's toolbar, and see what related links are suggested!
- The toolbar also contains a Google search option, so you can jump directly into a search without having to leave the page you're on.
If you prefer not to download the toolbar, you can still take advantage of these features right from Alexa's site: www.Alexa.com.
2. Free market research tool
www.google.com/toolbar
(Make sure to check the "Enable Advanced Features" option when you download it to enable all the options.)
When you're building a successful online business, you'll probably need to spend hours at a time researching your competitors and your target market and looking for new product ideas.
There are some free tools available on the Google Toolbar that can make this whole process faster and a lot more productive:
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"Google Groups" search: This is great for product or market research, as you can search for your keywords within the thousands of Google Groups online and find forums relevant to your blog/site. By checking these forums regularly, you'll get to know what's important to the people in your target market.
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"Search News": This feature lets you find news stories relevant to your blog,site or e-zine within news pages indexed by Google. It's great for sparking content ideas or just keeping up with the latest developments in your market or industry.
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"Web Directory" search: This option lets you search Google's directory for sites that match your search terms. It's ideal for finding out how many competitors you may have for a new product, and for seeking out potential linking partners.
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"Search Froogle": Froogle lets online shoppers search for products and compare prices. It displays pictures, prices, and links to online stores in the results, so you can use it to quickly research how the pricing of your products or services compares with other offerings across the Web. If you have an idea for a new product, Froogle is a great place to check out your potential competitors.
Once you get the hang of them, these powerful tools can become a great asset to your business, as they can save you hours spent on research -- leaving you more time to concentrate on developing new products, new marketing strategies, and other ways to boost your profits.
NetMechanic is a "tool kit" resource, offering a number of free trials that are great for easily locating potential problems with your blog/site and repairing them quickly. Address problems such as...
- HTML code errors help
- Web site maintenance tools
- Search engine optimization
- Browser display problems
- Lengthy load times
- Broken links
- Site downtime
Some of these tools will even give you a free monthly update! However, you'll get a limited version of each tool unless you're willing to pay the fee. But NetMechanic's image-reducing tool, GIFbot, is totally free and is a particularly useful resource.
Using GIFBot is an excellent way to reduce the file size of your images so that your web pages load faster -- and you don't lose those impatient surfers. Image files can be reduced by as much as 50 - 85% in many cases, and it's so easy to do that nowadays you'll look totally unprofessional with huge, lagging image files that take forever to load on your blog/site.
You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on HTML Editors and web design software to create your own web site. Nvu is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor that's similar to FrontPage or Dreamweaver -- but completely free to download! The software allows you to create and manage a professional-looking web site without any knowledge of HTML programming, and includes the following features:
- WYSIWYG editing of pages, meaning you can see what your web page will look like as you're creating it
- Integrated file management via FTP, so you can upload your pages to your web host
- Easy-to-use interface
- Free tutorials
If you are interested in learning how to code HTML yourself, here are a couple of excellent tutorial and resource sites where you can learn everything you need to know:
And, for those of you who are a little more technically inclined, you may want to check out some of the many free CGI script resources out there. Two good places to start include...
Using a service such as Wordtracker allows you to easily discover which keywords are frequently searched by your target market -- but are not being used by your competition. Wordtracker has compiled a massive database of terms that people search on, so all you have to do is enter your keyword, and Wordtracker tells you how often people are searching that term, how many competing sites are using that particular keyword, and how much they are bidding for the pay-per-click search engines.
A tool like this will help you optimize your search engine ranking by targeting keywords and phrases that are frequently searched by your best potential customers, but that few (if any!) of your competitors are competing under. Capitalize on the streams of neglected and missed traffic that are passing your competition by -- and even discover misspellings of your keywords that may be drawing traffic!
The free trial version of Wordtracker, however, will only compare your keywords with MSN, while the paid version compiles results from the top search engines, directories, and pay-per-click engines. If you're happy to limit yourself to MSN, you can use the free trial as many times as you like. Otherwise, the paid version is available for $8.04 per day or $26.81 per week, with monthly and yearly subscriptions available as well.
