Free Cool Tools for Your Website or Blog

Track Your Website and Blog Visitors 

Site Meter

Keep track of your visitors with a counter. You can extract lots of useful information from a good counter. Discover how many hits you had today. How are your visitors finding your site? What time periods and days of the week do you get the most traffic? What keywords are your visitors using when they search on Google or Yahoo? You can find out all of this information and more with Site Meter.

Go Grab a Google Gadget 

Google Gadgets

You can enhance your website with a lots of different gadets from Google, and the best part is they are free! Grab everything from the weather to stock quotes to artwork to the quote of the day. There is a Google gadget available for virtually everything you can dream up.

Grab a Tell a Friend Script 

Tell a Friend

The purpose of a "tell a friend" script is called viral marketing. Your visitors click on your "tell a friend" button, enter their email address, and send their friends a message telling them about your site. The link I'm providing goes to the best free "tell a friend" script on the Internet. It's very simple. Fill in the form. You will receive an email with a link to a page with over a dozen graphic choices. Choose your script, and then copy and paste the code into your HTML editor. That's it! I've placed a "tell a friend" button on everyone of my website pages and blogs. It's a great little script I've used time and time again. Get your script and then "tell a friend"!

Social Bookmarking Buttons 

Add This

Add This is a small, but powerful button. You can create a social bookmark button and an rss feed button. When a visitor clicks on the "Add This" button a box pops up with all of the most popular social bookmarks. Your visitor can bookmark your site or article on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and many, many more. It's a convenient way to allow yor visitor to add your content to their social networks. You can also add an rss feed button allowing your visitor to add your articles to their feeds.

Google Search Box 

I Have a Surprise for You!

Google AdSense

Perhaps you've seen Google search boxes on other websites and blogs? It's a handy tool for your visitors. They can search your site or the entire web right on your page. But did you know you can make money when visitors use the Google search box? That's right! You can grab a Google search box from Google gadgets, but if you do, you will never see a dime. Set up an adsense account (surely you want Google ads on your site so you can pull in some moolah) and grab your search box from there.

Site Map and Backlink Tools 

Plus Extra Goodies

Affilorama

I came across a site with a site map generator and a backlink checker. You've got to have a site map. Google search engines crawl site maps, so adding one to your site will help you move up in the search engines.

Backlinks are links coming into your site. I found a nifty tool that checks the backlinks that are generating traffic for you. The more incoming links - the better!

Now for the extra goodies. Affilorama offers a free membership. If you are interested in adding affiliate marketing links to your website then I highly recommend you begin here. This is an amazing site with lots of free video lessons on affiliate marketing.

Create a Banner 

Banner Fans

I love this free banner maker. It's one of the easiest I've found. You can manipulate the size, fonts, colors, and even upload your own image. You can create an awesome banner for your website or blog, or a linking banner for other webmasters to add to their site.

Reviews, Ratings, Polls, Comments 

You Are Going to Love this Script!

JS-Kit Website Scripts

I confess that I spent two years banging my head up against the computer trying to find an easy copy and paste script to add comments to my website. Everything I ran across was complicated and over techie, and way over my non techie head. Then one day I found this amazing site! Not only did they have the copy and paste script I was looking for, but they also have scripts for ratings, reviews, and polls. Did I mention their scripts are free?

Fantastic Icons for Your Site 

Icons

Icons are itty bitty pictures that are usually linked up to another page or a function. I found a great blog post by Jacob Gube on Six Revisions. He found several sets of really cool, totally awesome, free icons you can download and use on your website.

Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Words 

Public Domain Pictures

Images draw your visitor's eye to your page, and makes your site visually pleasing. In order to place a picture on your site you must take it yourself, purchase it, ask for permission to use it, or find it in the public domain. Well...I like simplicity, and the public domain keeps it simple. Finding quality pictures from the public domain can be a challenge. Some sites charge you money to get free pictures! Search no more...I found a great site with wonderful photos that are all in the public domain, and this site doesn't charge you to access the pictures. The following pictures are examples of what is available.

Get a Widget! Make a Widget 

Widgetbox

Create a widget for your site, or add someone else's widget. Using widgetbox is a great way to add more traffic to your site, and grab some content as well. Widgetbox is easy to use and comes with a great community in which you can share your widgets.

Feed Your Website with Your Blog 

Feed Informer

I write articles for one of my websites. Each time I needed to add a new article, I had to remove the old one from my homepage, add the new article, and then create a page with a link for the old article to go into my archives. All of these extra steps were tiring and time consuming. I moved all of my articles onto my blog, but I didn't like that they were no longer a feature on my homepage. I solved my problem when I found Feed Informer. I simply feed my blog posts directly onto my homepage. It's all a simple matter of copying and pasting. I no longer have to change my webpages. All I have to do is update my blog!