Over the years that I’ve been doing online marketing, I’ve found several sites that have proven to be useful for a number of reasons. And I’ve bookmarked them. Here they are,  for your convenience. Now, instead of having a dozen or so bookmarks for yourself, you only need to bookmark this page and revisit it for all of your online marketing needs!

PRChecker.info. PageRank, named for Larry Page, is that magical Google ranking based on several mysterious variables (and you can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank). Watching your site’s PageRank and striving to improve it is a helpful way to measurable improve your site’s credibility. In theory, higher Page Rank means higher placement in searches (although that is not my personal goal with the sites that I watch PageRank on). PRChecker.info will check the PageRank of any site you type in. Very handy.

Google Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Tools is the first of two Google tools I like. Using Google Webmaster Tools, I’m able to have Google diagnose my site for me and tell me any problems it has while it is crawling the site. This has been helpful in the past when a site I had wasn’t indexing properly: I used Google’s Webmaster Tools and was alerted to the problem quickly. This is also the place where you can submit a sitemap to help Google crawl your site more effectively.

Google Analytics. This is the other Google tool I like. You put a code into your web pages and Google will record every time someone clicks on your page. You can do so much with Google Analytics, like see where people are clicking from, and when. You can see what it is that they are looking at on your site and how they got to your site. You can see what pages they clicked to and from, and what pages they are leaving from. In particular, I really like the Google Analytics goals tracking where you can assign goals to different pages on your site to track people through your sales process.

SEO Toolbar. This isn’t so much a bookmark as it is a browser toolbar. I like their keyword research tool which cross references keyword information from a number of sources. They’ve got free training and competitive research – it’s a good tool to add to your browser.

Textalyser. Keywords are key in online marketing. You need to make sure that you’re highlighting the right keywords so search engines correctly list you with other relevant websites. I’m sure there are other tools out there but I’ve come to enjoy textalyser.net which is rich in information but painfully simple to use. Whenever I need to write something for a site and it needs to be keyword friendly, this is my go-to bookmark.

These are just a start. You might find more sites or you might find applications that you prefer over the ones I’ve listed here. Or, your business’ needs might be different from mine so you might need to invest in something else. But for many businesses, this list covers the basic online marketing needs they have.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!