Leonid Batkhan's SAS blog

Useful Webmaster Tools

ONLINE WEBSITE SECURITY SCAN

If you are in a doubt whether clicking on a specific link is safe, you can check that link or the whole website for possible harmful threats like viruses, malware or spyware. Test that suspicious websites using the following free online services, just click on the links below and paste the link you would like to check out:

MOBILE-FRIENDLY TEST

This test by Google will analyze your web page by its URL and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design. Take the Mobile-Friendly Test and fix potential issues with your site. Click on the icon below to test your website:

Google test for mobile-friendly design

NOTE: While in many cases this tool helps finding issues with your website, we found it not to be very reliable as sometimes it returns inconsistent results.

SITEMAP GENERATOR

This tool allows to automatically create:

  • XML sitemap for submission to Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines to help them better crawl your website.
  • HTML site map to allow human visitors to easily navigate your site.
  • Text sitemap to have a plain list of all your pages.

Click on the icon below to build your site map online:

Sitemap generator

FAVICON GENERATORS

Here are several online tools to create favicons by uploading a high resolution image (e.g. logo), reducing it to 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, or even 256x256 pixels and then downloading .ico file to your PC:

HTACCESS FILE: PERMANENT REDIRECTS, BLOCK IP ACCESS

Here is a simple and convenient page-to-page 301 Redirect Generator for .htaccess file. Also, provides a generator of Deny statements for .htaccess file to deny/block access to specified IP addresses:

301 redirects and IP blocks for .htaccess file

HTML UNICODE CHARACTER REFERENCE

It's a very useful collection of HTML Unicode (UTF-8) characters that can be used in HTML web pages:

NOTE: UTF-8 is a default character set for HTML5.

WEBSITE LINK CHECKERS

Broken or dead outbound or internal links are not only annoying, they also negatively affect your website usability, reputation and adversely impact your website search rankings. That is why it is imperative to check periodically your website for bad or broken links. When bad links are found, either adjust them when the links change, or completely remove them when their target pages no longer exist. There are many online tools for scanning your website for broken links. Here are some free online link checkers:

  • w3.org Checklink - also provides permanent redirects that need to be updated.
  • Deadlinkchecker - also have premium Auto Checker service, which runs Dead Link Checker through your website(s) on a regular basis and automatically delivers to you the reports via e-mail.
  • Dr. Linkcheck - also points out blacklisted links.

BACKING UP WORDPRESS WEBSITES

For websites built in WordPress it is essential to backup both, site files and site database. While site files can be easily backed up using FTP software by just downloading (copying) files to your computer, the database is backed up on the hosting server first, and then it can be downloaded to your computer and saved on different media (flash drives, DVD, Cloud, etc.)

Here is how to back up WordPress website at Hostgator Hosting:

DOMAIN AUTHORITY & PAGE AUTHORITY CHECKER

The website authority checker from SEO Review Tools enables you to check the Domain Authority and Page Authority.

Domain Authority is a score on a 100-point scale, e.g. 42/100, that measures the predictive ranking strength of entire domain. Domain Authority predicts how well the domain (complete website) will rank on search engines.

Page Authority is a score on a 100-point scale, e.g. 45/100, that measures the predictive ranking strength of individual web page. Page Authority predicts how well a specific web page will rank on search engines.

These metrics were developed by a company called Moz, and are based on the data from the Mozscape web index and include link counts, MozRank and MozTrust scores, and dozens of other factors:

Domain authority and Page authority checker tool

NOTE: Formerly used Google PageRank (a score on a 10-point scale, e.g. 2/10) is deprecated as of October 6, 2014, when Google announced it won't update this metric anymore.

BACKLINKS CHECKER

Backlinks or inbound links are hyperlinks to your website from other websites. Quality backlinks play an important role in website's authority and visibility on search engines. Building a variety of high quality backlinks is part of any reliable strategy in search engine optimization (SEO) as it promotes higher ranking in the search engine results pages. There are multiple online services that provide a list of backlinks (or inbound links) to your website (URL). Here is a sample of such backlink checkers:

COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS REPORTING

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 is a United States copyright law that protects intellectual property: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 - U.S. Copyright Office Summary .

Below is a collection of the Internet resources that allow for an easy reporting of Copyright violations to major Internet players. In most cases, it is just a matter of minutes if not seconds to complete and submit a Copyright infringement notice. You will be surprised how quickly these companies react. It works like magic.

Automattic

If you believe that your original materials (article, image, blog post, website contents, etc.) was unlawfully copied and made available on Automattic's sites (WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Simplenote, Longreads, VaultPress, Akismet, Gravatar, Polldaddy, Cloudup, and more) thus infringing on your copyright(s), you may notify Automattic by providing a DMCA notice:

Upon receipt of a valid and complete notice, Automattic will remove the material and make a good faith attempt to contact the user who uploaded the material by email.

Google

If Google search results page displays a web resource that you believe violates your copyrights, you may report alleged copyright infringement (Web search) to Google by submitting a Notice of alleged copyright infringement:

In response to your notice Google may remove or disable access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers. When Google removes or disables access in response to your notice, they may also notify the owner or administrator of the affected site or content so that he or she can make a counter notification.

Microsoft

If your copyright or trademark is being infringed, you may notify Microsoft following the provided instructions to submit your Notice of Infringement:

Microsoft may provide your notice to third parties (including the alleged infringer). If you can’t find the Microsoft service for which you wish to submit a notice, please select the Services category and follow the provided instructions.

Pinterest

To submit a DMCA notice to Pinterest, just fill out their copyright complaint form to identify content on Pinterest that you want removed based on alleged infringement of your copyrights:

Pinterest enforces a repeat infringer policy that may result in termination of users who acquire multiple strikes as a result of copyright complaints.

LinkedIn

According to the LinkedIn Copyright Policy, if you believe in good faith that your copyright has been infringed, you may complete and submit a Notice of Copyright Infringement form:

In appropriate circumstances LinkedIn may disable and/or terminate the accounts of Members or groups who infringe or repeatedly infringe the rights of others or otherwise post unlawful content.

Facebook

Facebook uses a more elaborate wizard, so you have to click through multiple screens to complete your Copyright Infringement Report:

Using this infringement report wizard you may also submit to Facebook bulling, harassment, inappropriate or abusive content, your account being hacked, fake profiles, and more...

ONLINE GRAPHING

Graph functions, plot data, evaluate equations, explore transformations, and much more:

Desmos User Guide Desmos User Guide

Desmos Video Tutorials Desmos Video Tutorials

ONLINE GRAMMAR CHECKING

LanguageTool Grammar Checker – Add-ons for Firefox

LanguageTool Grammar Checker logo - With this Firefox add-on / extension by Daniel Naber you can check text with the free style and grammar checker LanguageTool. It finds many errors that a simple spell checker cannot detect, like mixing up there/their, a/an, or repeating a word. It supports more than 25 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Polish, and Russian.

Grammarly - Add-ons for Firefox

Grammarly logo - Compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing with Grammarly’s AI-powered writing assistant. Get corrections from Grammarly while you write on Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all your other favorite sites.