Websites York
Get an experienced web designer allocated to your project
and wow your customers.
You are happy to do your own social media marketing and you just want a website that is easy to maintain and add content to.
You don't like paying monthly subscriptions to an SEO service when you are not sure what value you are getting, if any.
However, you do want ongoing support, help and advice that you can rely on for your online presence.
Template Menu
Toolbox for web development
A list of most of the tools I commonly use to audit my web projects and to maximise your website's performance.
Web Site Auditor - Site Audit
My 'Go To' tool from the SEO Power Suite for checking the quality of my work. I use this after I have published a site to live for the first time.
Once a site is live and optimised, if I see a downward trend in rankings I run this again to see what has changed. It can pick up broken links for example (to sites that no longer exist or have pages that have been moved).
Website Auditor - Page Audit
The Page Audit tool within Web Site Auditor is invaluable for testing how well the content of a page is being optimised for specific keywords. It also shows me whether I am keyword stuffing!
Rank Tracker
A sophisticated ranking tool that allows me to monitor my clients' sites across several search engines.
SEO Edge
A simple iPhone app that allows me to monitor rankings without having to use my laptop. The results it gives are less sophisticated than Rank Tracker but for ease of use its a good assett to have and it quickly shows me what the trend is for a site's rankings.
Google Keyword Planner
Free to use to find out what keywords are actually being used in searches
CSS Scan
This is a browser extension I have installed in Safari that allows me to inspect the css styles on any site. I use it especially when I want to allocate specific sizes to an image so that a page doesn't cause layout shifts.
Using this tool I know that the image to the right is 561 x 351 pixels and I can specify the correct aspect ratio sizes in the Picture stack accordingly.
Logoist 5
This is my go tool to build a simple logo. There is a really easy template option called 1-2-3 Logo to start with the name of the business and select various elements to go around the name.
There is also the option to start drawing lines freehand which I have used as shown in this example. The result can be an SVG file.
Squash
This is what I typically use for image compression and creating wep format images. I have also used the free online Squoosh service as well but the advantage of using Squash is the possibilty of optimising a whole batch of images in one action.
Dr Link Check
An online alternative to use for checking for broken (outgoing) links. The free version checks up to 1500 links.
Evernote
My note taking tool of choice. Notes taken here are shared automatically onto my iPhone.
Bootsie
This Mac app can be used to generate the SVG code for over 2000 Bootstrap 5 icons and allows customisation of the size and colour.
Colour Slurp
The app I use for colour picking and also for storing colour palettes.
Paletton
This is the tool I use if I need to find a series of complementary colours based on a specific primary colour.
Colour Contrast Analyser
If you get accessibilty issues in Page Speed Insights due to lack of contrast effecting readibility this tool can help sort that out by showing you what is acceptable. Also see my blog post on measuring and fixing colour contrast issues.
Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
An online test of accessibilty
Schema Validator
Check if your structured data is working correctly.
Lighthouse
Use Google's Lighthouse tool to check Performance, Accessibility, Best Practise and SEO
Page Speed Insights
Use Google's Page Speed Insights tool to check Performance, Accessibility, Best Practise and SEO
DiiB
I am currently evaluating how useful this service is:
It has provided some useful information about incoming links that are not reaching their original target, because a page has been moved/deleted.
It also shows me incoming links that it believes are suspect and may be doing more harm than good. If I get these I usually disavow them.
I have subscribed to a monthly link building programme and so far the links provided look to be comprehensive and well written. I do see a small uplift in rankings each month when they are built
Malware checker
Does your site contain malware?
Security Headers check
Does your site need security headers added to your htaccess file?
See also:
SSL certificate checker
whynopadlock.com
Fount
Check out any font you see online
Disavow suspect backlinks
Google Search Console Disavow Backlinks
Hemingway
I use the free service to simplify my text, focussing mainly on the items it flags up as 'very hard to read'
Warp
As found by Francois on the community. I have just used this tool (for free) to generate some CSS to build a coloured box around a drop cap - as seen on the BBC Future website.
Streamline
A great site for accessing and downloading icons from a number of different sources.
Cumulative Layout Shift Tester
This is a super tool for debugging layout shifts (which always have a negative effect on performance). The most common problem I have found is that I need to specify the height of certain menu containers with a height swatch.
Get Waves
This looks to be a great tool for generating SVGs in the form of various types of waves.
