Website Analytics Toolbox

Effective analysis is a big part of running a successful website. In this post we’ll look at more than 75 tools, resources, and articles that can help you in various aspects of web analytics. If there are other items that you think should be mentioned, pleas leave a comment.

Page Analysis Tools:

These tools will provide an analysis and evaluation of various factors of a page or site. Each tool works a little bit differently, but the data from all of them can be obtained quickly and used in your analytics work.

Trifecta from SEOmoz
Enter your domain and tell Trifecta if you want to measure a page, a blog, or a domain and it will analyze the strength. Trifecta uses information regarding inbound links, buzz about your brand online, and traffic numbers.

Website Grader
Website Grader, provided by HubSpot, will provide a very thorough report and grade for your website’s SEO. You’ll need to enter an email address to use the tool.

SEO Analysis Tool from SEO Workers
This tool will provide a lot of information on a given page, including an analysis of meta tags, anchor text, links on the page, keywords etc.

Popuri.us
Enter your domain and this tool will quickly provide the PR, Alexa ranking, in-bound link information, and more.

Similar Page Checker
Enter two URLs and this tool will show how similar they are in percentage format (to help with avoiding duplicate content penalties).

Google Wemaster Tools
The free webmaster tools from Google provide useful information on indexing, sitemaps, links, and search queries.

Xinu
Xinu provides information on any URL regarding links, rankings, indexed pages, and more.

Page Speed:

Load time can have an impact on a site’s visitors. Testing and analyzing page speed is much easier and more effective with these tools.

Self SEO Page Speed Checker
With this simple tool you can enter several different domains at once (such as yours and some of your competitors’) and it will show the time it takes to load the page, making comparison easy.

YSlow
Yahoo’s YSlow is a Firefox add-on that works with Firebug to provide data and suggests ways to improve performance of the site.

Other page speed tests:

• Pingdom Tools
• Website Speed Test from Link Vendors
• Website Speed Test from Website Goodies

Spider Simulators:

Spider simulators can help you to see how a search engine interacts with your site.

• WeBuildPages Spider Viewer
• Spider Simulator from Summit Media
• Spider Simulator from iWebTool
• Spider Simulator from WebConfs.com
• Crawl Test from SEOmoz

Stats:

Tracking stats is a major part of web analytics. There are countless programs that you can use for stats, some are free and some are paid.

Google Analytics
Probably the most popular free stats/analytics option, Google Analytics provides loads of information about your visitors, where they are coming from, and what they are doing on your site. There are also more advanced options to set goals and conversion tracking.

Clicky
Clicky provides real-time analytics with tons of features. There is a free plan and the paid plans run from $4.99 per month to $49.99 per month.

Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg focuses on providing visual representations and actionable data. Some of the most useful tools are the Heatmap and Confetti, which can help you to see exactly how visitors are interacting with your site. Plans range in price for $9 per month to $99 per month.

Mint
Mint is a self-hosted analytics program that provides all of the basic stats, plus some more advanced features like feed subscription patterns. The license costs $30 per site.

OneStat
OneStat is a professional analytics program that offers enterprise level analytics, as well as server monitoring.

• AWStats
• Piwik
• StatCounter
• Yahoo! Web Analytics
• Going Up!
• ClickTracks
• SiteCatalyst

Heatmaps and Related Analytics:

Seeing how your visitors are interacting with your site can help you to improve things like conversion rates and ad clicks.

Clickdensity
Clickdensity provides a heatmap other usability tools. A free trial is available, and plans range from $5 – $400 per month.

ClickTale
ClickTale can be used to track mouse movements and clicks from visitors.

ClickHeat
ClickHeat is open-source software that creates a visual heatmap of clicks on a page to show where visitors are clicking and how often.

Link Analysis:

There are tons of great tools and resources for analyzes the links that are pointing towards your website.

Technorati
Technorati tracks blog links. You can enter your URL and see what blogs are linking to you.

SEO Link Analysis Firefox Add-on
This Firefox extension will information such as PageRank, anchor text and nofollow status.

Linkscape
Linkscape from SEOmoz provides information about links pointing towards a domain. Pro members get added data that isn’t available on the free basic report.

Link Popularity Checker from Mike’s Marketing Tools
See how many links the major search engines are recognizing for a URL.

Link Popularity Tool from Marketleap
You can enter 2 URLs for comparison with this link popularity checker.

Link Popularity Checker from SEOCentro
This link popularity checker will compare up to 3 URLs at a time.

Link Popularity Comparison Tool
SEO Book also has a free link popularity tool that will compare up to 3 URLs.

Back Link Analyzer
This software from SEO Book is a link popularity tool plus it provides the anchor text used on the links.

Backlink Watch
Enter your URL and this tool will provide details about the links point back to you.

Link Harvester
Link Harveter is SEO Book’s tool for sorting and querying through the backlink databases from Yahoo! and MSN.

Majestic SEO
Majestic SEO will provide information about in-bound links and anchor text.

Backlink Checker Tool
See what pages are linking to you, along with their PR and Alexa ranking.

Analyze Backlinks
Enter a URL and this tool will provide link information including anchor text, number of total links and number of outbound links.

Link Diagnosis
Check out the details of your own in-bound links or those of your competitors.

Reciprocal Link Checker
If you make reciprocal links with other website owners, you can paste in a list of up to 50 URLs and this tool will crawl those URLs to look for a link to your site. You can use this periodically to make sure that the sites are still linking to you.

Reciprocal Link Checking Tool
A similar tool provided by SEO Book.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth
Free software that checks for broken links.

Dead-Links.com
Enter a domain name and it will crawl the site looking for dead links.

W3C Link Checker
The dead link checker from W3.org

SERP Trackers:

Testing and tracking search engine rankings for specific keywords is a common task for website owners, SEOs and marketers.

Rank Checker Firefox Add-on
This add-on from Aaron Wall can track multiple search phrases on major search engines. There are a number of options and presets that make this a very valuable tool.

Search Engine Ranking Checker from Mike’s Marketing Tools
This is a simple ranking checker. Enter a URL and search phrase and it will show you the rankings in major search engines.

Other SERP Trackers:

• Search Engine Ranking Report from Self SEO
• Search Engine Ranking Check from SiteReportCard
• Search Engine Position Check from Web-Inspect
• SerpRank

Premium SEO Tools:

These tools will cost you some money, but serious marketer (particularly those that do client work) the price is likely to be justified.

Raven SEO Tools
Raven is a comprehensive suite of marketing and SEO Tools. It can help you with keyword research, link building, social media, social media monitoring, SERP tracking, analytics and ROI, and more. The price is $79 per month with a 30-day free trial.

Web CEO
Web CEO contains 12 tools in the suite (download rather than web-based). There is a free version as well as two paid versions to choose from.

Pro SEO Tools from SEOmoz
A collection of useful tools available to Pro subscribers. Many of the tools are also available in a limited version for free.

Trends:

Analyzing trends can help you to improve your website’s visibility by providing information that is in demand.

Google Alerts
For brand management or industry monitoring purposes, you can set Google Alerts to email you when something new is added to the Google index.

UrlTrends
Enter a URL and it will provide a report showing some useful information such as link data. You can upgrade to a paid account for some added features. Paid plans range from $8 to $15 per month.

Popular Searches from SEOmoz
Shows the most popular searches from a variety of sources for a given day.

Competitor Analysis:

These three websites can help you to get some basic, but helpful, data about the websites and visitors of your competitors.

Compete
Compete provides estimated statistics from any website. Pro plans with added data start at $199 per month.

Alexa
Alexa ranks websites according to traffic and provides estimated statistics.

Quantcast
Quantcast also provides data on any website, including some interesting demographics info.

AdSense:

For those who use AdSense to monetize their website, analysis on impressions, CTR and CPM is a necessary for maximizing results.

AdSense Notifier
AdSense Notifier shows your AdSense earnings in your Firefox toolbar so you don’t have to login to AdSense to see it.

Analytics Integration for All
Blog post from Google about intergrating AdSense and Analytics.

How Do I Link My AdSense Account to Analytics?
Instructions from Google.

Web Analytics Articles:

• Web Analytics,Traffic Tracking, Measurement of Conversion and ROI
• How to Select a Website Analytics Tool
• Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience
• Occam’s Razor – Blog by Avinash Kaushik
• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day (book)
• Top Ways to Use Web Analytics to Improve Your Blog or Website
• Video Tutorial for Setting Up Google Analytics
• How to Create Your Own Stats Program