Tools that are used for debugging, testing, and maintaining websites, are an essential part of the web development and design process.
We’ll be doing a brief demonstration using the most common tools, and how you, the client, can even use debugging tools to help ensure your website is working and functioning properly. Many of the tools we’ll be sharing today allow you to easily copy the link to share with your web developer or designer.
1. Google PageSpeed Insights
This tool provides a quick overview on both Desktop and Mobile devices of how fast, optimized, and accessible your website is at a glance. While Google PageSpeed Insights doesn’t provide the most comprehensive guide on how to improve your website, you can discover what your users are experiencing on the website, diagnose performance, SEO errors, and accessibility issues. Even YOU can use it to have a quick understanding of what should be fixed on your website, and send the link directly to your developer or designer, just click the “Copy Link” at the top of the page.
2. W3C Link Checker
https://validator.w3.org/checklink
Use it to quickly check for any broken links and understand the current structure of your website. Send the results directly to your developer or designer if you spot anything that may be important! Enter the URL of your website into W3C Link Checker, and have it check for all links and anchors in certain web pages or your entire website.
3. Sharing Debugger – Facebook, LinkedIn Post Inspector
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
https://www.linkedin.com/post-inspector/
Take a quick look at how your web page will appear when sharing on social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll be able to verify how the Link Preview will appear, ensuring that it has the proper title, image, and description for the link that you wish to share. Again, you can easily share this with your web developer or designer, and ensure that your site and links are optimized for sharing across your social media platforms.
4. Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker
https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker
For free, you can easily understand at a glance how well your website is rated on the internet. Ahrefs help you understand your backlink profile, which is how many backlinks and linked websites your website contains. It’s a great starting point to understand your reputation and domain rating for your website, and helps verify that you are linked on certain directories, partner, and client websites. A subscription provides more features to understand SEO and your site audit in full, but the free version is helpful for getting an idea of the backlink profile for a new, or existing website.
5. Website Security Checker by Sucuri
An important tool for quickly understanding if there are known malware, viruses, blacklisting status, website errors, or out of date software installed on your website. It also allows hackers to know a whole host of information including hosting provider, theme and plugins used across the website. If it can’t scan your website or is showing you errors where it can’t find certain information, that means you’re doing a great job as it’s not publicly available for anyone to know or exploit vulnerabilities on your website. You may need to upgrade or change your hosting, or let your web designer or developer know that there are issues with your website and plan accordingly.
Conclusion
Used some of the tools above and are finding issues that you believe are worth fixing? Please contact me today, and we’ll discuss your existing website, and opportunities for taking your business website to the next level. We’ll ensure you meet modern standards and user friendly best practices in the online space. Ensure your website has improved SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Google search and all devices, and may even increase your Google ranking when you fix many of these issues!
Sources
Image by Freepik