The evaluation of free website visibility measurement tools – Part 1

Abstract

Introduction. The Internet grows daily in importance to the average computer user. More users than ever before have access to Internet resources from work or home. Many companies offer their products and services for sale online. Many users mostly do not type in a Web address of an online shop from memory. They use search engines to find the best products/sources online. Since users do not like scrolling down to find results, it is important to be listed on a result page of a search engine as high up as possible. Measurement Tools. Some tools to measure website activity, design issues, user preferences and actions, etc are available. Some are expensive but there are also many free alternatives. One well-known program is Google Webmaster tools. If a company does not want to use the Google tool, there are also many others. In this paper, a number of free non-Google tools are tested on a high traffic website. Comparison of the Results. There are two important factors which are compared: site speed and keyword density. It was found that the products differ widely in what they offer. Conclusion. Search engine optimisation is a very important factor to make a website visible to search engines. The kind of tool compared in this paper provides a good starting platform towards analysing website visibility and trends.