Resources for Smart Webmasters: Milking Your Website for All It’s Worth.

Published April 16th, 2014 by Michael Farin

You want to get the most out of your website? Here are links to 33 resources that can help you “up your game” and take your webmaster skills to the next level.

Content Resources
Mashable – Stay up-to-date with up-to-the-minute technology, business and social media trends. Mashable gives you the scoop on online marketing in convenient bite-sized pieces.

Social Fresh – Another online marketing resource, Social Media Fresh focuses on best practices in social marketing and technology.

Copyblogger – If you need handy content tips that will help you write effective sales-driven copy, look no further. From ads to web content to newsletters, Copyblogger has you covered.

Website Optimization Tools
XML Sitemap – Use this convenient plugin to create your own XML sitemap and help search engines read your website more easily (and rank it higher in results).

ClickTale – What are your site visitors up to? Track their behavior and get professionally-designed reports with Clicktale.

CrazyEgg – Ready for some fancy analytics? CrazyEgg uses scroll reports and heat mapping to generate your numbers – plus, you get the handy “Confetti” feature, which organizes clicks by referral source. (Now you can see where all that traffic is coming from.)

ClickDensity – More heat mapping, this time for free! ClickDensity is a self-hosted tool that lets you manage your own analytics behind the scene.

Zentester – Create great landing pages, and play them off against each other with Zentester’s A/B testing tools. You also get heat mapping, scroll mapping and analytics.

Webpagetest – How fast does your site load? Test it simultaneously on multiple browsers with Webpagetest to see if it’s optimized in real-time.

Google Page Speed – Google has a page-loading tool, too. Check it out.

Website Tracking Tools
Google Analytics – The free, easy-to-install analytics tool that gives you all the basics you need: pageview tracking, bounce rate metrics and demographics. What are your users doing on your site? Find out now.

Chartbeat – This is a slick-looking, graphics-based analytics tool that shows you real-time trends curated as pretty pictures.

Clicky – Clicky is a sophisticated analytics tool that includes bounce rate and time-on-site tracking, all in real-time. A caveat with Clicky: Some folks think its interface isn’t user-friendly.

GoSquared – Another handy analytics tool that features a play-by-play, second-by-second analysis of the action on your site.

Reinvigorate – Basic analytics for the basic website. The package includes heat mapping, along with standard tracking features like visit length and number of page views.

Woopra – Woopra tracks user behavior across different devices by integrating analytics and CRM.

Social Media Integration / Sharing Resources
Disqus – Disqus is one of the most popular third-party commenting systems available – it integrates with many CMSs, is mobile-friendly and updates in real-time.

IntenseDebate – Intense Debate takes the comments game up a notch – it ranks comments via user-awarded “Reputation Points,” and then allows more popular comments to appear higher in the queue.

Livefyre – LiveFyre offers many of the same benefits of Intense Debates and Disqus, with an added bonus: users can post comments to Twitter and Facebook at the same time.

Add This – No frills, no fuss. Install AddThis and your users will be able to share your content across their own social networks.

Shareaholic – Shareaholic is a lot like AddThis – a tool bar with social buttons. The two platforms look different, so pick whichever one looks best to you.

Click to Tweet – A Twitter plugin that’s for you and your site users. It generates pre-populated Tweets from your content, so you can effortlessly promote your site on Twitter.

Hrefshare – Another pre-populate social content resource, with a difference. It’s not just confined to Twitter – you can also use Hrefshare to post to LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+.

Send to Kindle – Allow site to save your content to their Kindles, to read later.

Social Management Resources
Hootsuite – Tired of making separate posts to Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. etc. etc.? Hootsuite (free or paid) allows you to schedule and post multiple updates across platforms, from one place.

Tweetdeck – A free Twitter management tool that lets you schedule updates and view multiple feeds at once.

SproutSocial – You have to pay for this pro social media management and analytics tool, but you get lots of great features – including multiple account manager capability, which is great for larger teams.

Email Marketing Resources
LeadLife – LeadLife isn’t cheap, but it’s worth it. It’s a reputable contact management and CRM system that has shown measurable results for many companies.

Constant Contact – Capture new leads and manage your email list effortlessly. At only $15 a month, you really can’t go wrong.

MailChimp – If you have a subscriber base of 2,000 or less, you get the MailChimp newsletter service for free. It’s a contact capture program that integrates with SurveyGizmo, EventBrite and other services.

Aweber – A list management program that offers great reporting and analytics features.

Website Survey Tools
SurveyMonkey – SurveyMonkey is a great, comprehensive survey tool that offers both paid and free versions. From small surveys to large, customized surveys and downloadable reports, SurveyMonkey has you covered.

SurveyGizmo – Need to embed images or videos into your surveys? This is the tool for you. (It’s also easily integrated into Mailchimp email lists, see above.)

With these great tools, what are you waiting for? Go out and make your website better!

For tips on improving your homepage, click here.

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