If someone asked you at what grade level your site’s content was written, could you tell them? What about whether it was fully compatible with every major browser? How many seconds it took to load? Can you confidently state that there are no broken links on your site right now?
Although it may seem unimportant to replace an Rich Text apostrophe with the HTML equivalent or to make sure your WHOIS record is perfect, the reality is that the more accessible and polished your website is, the greater chance you have to secure more readership, and, most importantly, more revenue.
If you’re serious about maintaining a well-rounded, efficient website, the cheapest (and perhaps best) way to make sure you’re on the right track is self-evaluation. To get you started, we’ve put together a list containing 31 of our favorite tools for “grading” your website.
Code Validation
The foundation for every website is fundamentally sound source code. Unfortunately programmers aren’t always the most meticulous type of people. They’d rather hash out the difficult stuff and leave the details to someone else, and that’s where code validation comes in. To make sure your website’s source code and features are fully functional you should run it through the following validation tests.
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WDG HTML Validator - EDITOR’S CHOICE - Excellent tool for identifying syntax errors on pages driven by markup languages. Also has an option to recursively check for errors on every page in the website directory.
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W3C Markup Validation Service - Traverses HTML and XHTML markup for syntax errors. Boasts the title of first (and most used) HTML validator on the internet.
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W3C CSS Validation Service - Checks CSS documents for errors in source code. Also gives warnings for code that doesn’t exhibit the best design practices; e.g. “Same colors for color and background-color in two contexts.”
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RUWF? XML Syntax Checker - Checks for malformed data in XML documents.
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W3C Feed Validation Service - Checks the syntax of Atom and RSS feeds for errors.
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W3C Link Checker - EDITOR’S CHOICE - Searches for and identifies broken links. Specifically checks that all the links are dereferenceable, no links and anchors are defined twice and warns about invalid http and directory redirects.
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Juicy Studio Link Analyser - Tests the links on a page for Urls that resolve successfully. Works similar to W3C Link Checker.
Accessibility
All too often we see webmasters designing websites that focus on looking attractive while completely failing to consider the impact of visitor accessibility. Unfortunately, an ineffective or difficult to navigate website is certain to fail, no matter how attractive it is. To make sure your visitors are getting the information they need (and thus becoming repeat visitors), your website should follow various WCAG and section 508 accessibility guidelines.
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Watchfire WebXACT - EDITOR’S CHOICE - A must use tool for all serious designers and developers. Generates a very detailed report on the quality, accessibility and privacy of a website.
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ATRC Web Accessibility Checker - Tests webpages for WCAG 2.0 Level2 compatibility. Generates a report with a series of recommendations for bringing headers, links, metadata, tables and text up to speed.
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WAVE 3.0 Web Accessibility Tool - EDITOR’S CHOICE - Highly customizable tool that uses a graphical model to display website compatibility issues with WCAG 1.0 and section 508.
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TAW Web Accessibility Test - Tests webpages for conflicts with WCAG 1.0 compatibility and reports issues via a graphical model. Generates recommendations based upon WCAG priority model.
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HiSoftware CynthiaSays portal - Uses a very strict policy to test webpages for section 508 and WCAG 1.0 compliance. Reports results in an extremely detailed (yet difficult to read) table.
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HERA Accessibility testing with Style - Uses a very sophisticated and easy to read approach to point out WCAG 1.0 compatibility issues with a particular webpage.
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Juicy Studio CSS Analyser - Performs a color contrast test to make sure your sites CSS color scheme meets WCAG 1.0 requirements.
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Juiciy Studio Readability Test - Analyzes the language on your website based upon the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid grade level algorithms. Useful for determining if you’re speaking over the head of your readers.
Speed
How fast your website loads is often a key factor in getting visitors to return. In many cases if a visitor has a slow internet connection, they won’t even bother to visit websites dominated by large images, flash files and multimedia documents. To maximize your website’s reach, you’ll need to maintain webpages that can get the job done fast.
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Web Page Analyzer from Website Optimization - EDITOR’S CHOICE - An excellent tool that analyzes a webpage and gives recommendations for decreasing loading time. Focuses on optimizing the number of objects, images and overall size of the webpage.
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WebSitePulse Test Tools - A series of tools for identifying website load times and hostname information.
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Internet Supervision Url Check - Generates load times of your webpage from various servers around the world. Useful for determining if your extended audience is actually receiving your message.
Browser Simulators
Perhaps the most common problem in web development is failing to make sure that a website renders properly for every operating system and browser. Attempting to address the problem manually, however, is never an easy task because developers typically have access to two operating systems (at best) and usually no more than a few browsers. To combat this we recommend you check out the following resources that allow you to see what your website looks like on various platforms.
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Browsershots - Takes screenshots of your website in various browsers and platforms including Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows, Firefox and Safari on Mac OS X and Iceweasal and Konqueror on Linux. Unfortunately the tool requires you to wait up to three hours in a processing queue before retrieving your screenshots.
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IE NetRenderer - Generates real time screenshots of your website on Internet Explorer versions 5.5, 6.0 and 7.0.
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MobiReady Report – Analyzes your webpage for compatibility issues on a mobile phone. Generates a detailed report on potential viewing problems and offers a glimpse as to what the website would look like on two different types of mobile phone browsers.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Developing a website with an “SEO friendly” model is a sure way to gain an edge on the competition. By making the most out of the following tools, you’ll develop a better understanding of who your audience is and will likely help you come up with more effective ways of appealing to them.
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UrlTrends - EDITOR’S CHOICE - Graphically displays a website’s visitor traffic information by search engine prevalence. Extracts information from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alexa, AlltheWeb, AltaVista and more.
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iWEBTOOL Backlink Checker - Excellent tool for figuring out which sites are linking to yours, and what part of the site they’re linking to.
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iWEBTOOL Multi-Rank Checker - Neatly displays your pages’ Alexa and Google PageRank stats.
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Microsoft adCenter Labs: Advertising and Keyword Research Tools - EDITOR’S CHOICE - A fantastic set of tools for analyzing and predicting the audience and market of your website.
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Domain Tools Whois lookup - Comprehensive Whois tool that displays all of the standard domain information and calculates the efficiency of a websites markup when seen through the eyes of a search engine spider.
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SEO-Browser - Strips your website of all the “pretty” components to show you how it looks to a search engine. Very useful tool to make sure your design is on the right track.
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SEO Workers SEO Analysis Tool - EDITOR’S CHOICE - Extremely useful tool that analyzes an assortment of page features including meta tags, keyword density and load time.
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Seekport Seekbot - Analyzes a website’s metadata and textual content to determine how effective a search engine would interpret the website.
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SEO Chat SEO Tools - A stock pile of SEO tools for measuring Google AdSense earning potential, keyword density, meta tag effectiveness and much more.
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Marketleap Search Engine Marketing Tools - A group of tools used to analyze the popularity of a particular webpage, how well your site is indexed in search engines and how well you rank for particular keywords.
网站代码验证
没人可以细致到保证自己的网站代码都是正确的，你可以通过以下测试来验证网站代码是否正确。
1 . WDG HTML Validator 一个很好的工具，能找出网站语法错误的地方，并标注出来，也可选择对网站上单独的每一页进行单页分析。（ 强烈推荐 ）
2 . W3C Markup Validation Service 对 HTML 和 XHTML 都能进行代码测试，自称是互联网络上第一个（也是使用者最多的）的 HTML 验证工具。
3 . W3C CSS Validation Service 用于验证 css 源代码，能够标注出不好的 css 代码设计。例如：“Same colors for color and background-color in two contexts”。
4 . RUWF XML Syntax Checker 用于查找 XML 文件的错误。
5 . W3C Feed Validation Service 用于查找 Atom 和 RSS feed 中的错误语法。（ 这个我经常用到 ）
6 . W3C Link Checker 用于搜寻查明你网站内的所有链接里是否有断链。（ 强烈推荐 ）
7 . Juicy Studio Link Analyser 测试网站内的链接的 URL 是否存在死链，与 W3C Link Checker 很类似。
网站的使用性
我们常常看到网站设计者把重点放在怎网站的吸引力上，而完全不考虑会不会影响来访者的使用，一个浏览难度很大的网页是注定要失败，要让你的来访者方便的得到他要的信息（从而成为重复访客），你的网站应当遵循 WCAG section 508 易用性规则。
8 . Watchfire WebXACT 所有严谨的设计师和开发者都必须使用的工具，它会生成一个非常详尽的报告书，包括：网站质量，易用性和隐私等。（ 强烈推荐 ）
9 . ATRC Web Accessibility Checker 测试网站的 WCAG 2.0 Level2 兼容性，它会生成一份报告，提出一系列建议，如：如何提升页头，链接，数据，图表和文字的访问速度。
10 . WAVE 3.0 Web Accessibility Tool 高度可定制的工具，它采用了图形化模型展示网站兼容性问题（ WCAG 1.0 and section 508 ）。（ 强烈推荐 ）
11 . TAW Web Accessibility Test 测试网页是否存在冲突（ WCAG 1.0 兼容性 ），通过图形模式生成一份依据 wcag 优先模式为基础的网站修改建议。
12 . HiSoftware CynthiaSays portal 采用了非常严格的规则来测试网页（ 根据 section 508 和 WCAG 1.0 规则 ），生成的报告也极为详细（ 详细到很难看懂 ）。
13 . HERA Accessibility testing with Style 使用一种极为复杂但容易理解方式指出网页的 wcag1.0 兼容性问题。
14 . Juicy Studio CSS Analyser 进行了色彩对比测试，以确保你的网站的色调会符合 WCAG 1.0 的要求。
15 . Juiciy Studio Readability Test 分析你网站上的文字是否有语法错误或拼写错误等问题，容易让人理解不（ 根据 the Flesch Reading Ease 和 Flesch-Kincaid grade level algorithms 规则 ）。（ 适合英文网站使用 ）
网站的速度
打开你的网站的速度快慢，是来访者会不会再次访问网站的关键因素，在一般情况下，一个网络不是很快的来访者是不愿意访问一个充满着图片、flash 动画、多媒体文件的网站。为了使你的网站覆盖人群的范围最大化，你必须优化你的网站，使它的打开速度尽可能的快。
16 . Web Page Analyzer from Website Optimization 一个很好的工具，它在分析完一个网页后，会为减少加载时间提出优化建议，着重优化物体的数目，图片和网站的总体大小。（ 强烈推荐 ）
17 . WebSitePulse Test Tools 有一系列的工具来确定网站的加载速度和主机信息。
18 . Internet Supervision Url Check 从世界各地不同的服务器来测试你的网站的加载时间，用于确定是不是各地的来访者都能顺利快速的打开你得网站。
浏览器模拟工具
这是一个普遍的问题，因为现在有着很多的操作系统和浏览器，你得网站必须得兼容它们，但这绝不是一件容易的事。通过下列工具，你可以了解你得网站在各种浏览器上的显示效果。
19 . Browsershots 能给出你的网站在不同浏览器下显示效果的截图，包括：Firefox 和 Internet Explorer （ Windows ）、Firefox 和 Safari （ Mac OS X ）、Iceweasal 和 Konqueror （ Linux ），但是结果要在 1 - 3 小时后才能出来。
20 . IE NetRenderer 实时生成你的网站在 Internet Explorer 5.5 、6.0 和 7.0 下的截图。
21 . MobiReady Report 分析使用手机访问网页的兼容性问题，会生成一份详细的报告，并提供了在两种不同类型的手机浏览器上你得网站可能显示的样子。
搜索引擎优化 (SEO)
一个网站，如果对搜索引擎有着比较好的友好度，一定会比较有竞争力。
22 . UrlTrends 会显示网站的访客是如何通过搜索引擎来到你的网站，还有各个流量是多少。这些数据是包括 Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alexa, AlltheWeb, AltaVista 和其他一些网站。（ 强烈推荐 ）
23 . iWEBTOOL Backlink Checker 一个很好的工具，它能找出有什么站点链接到你的站点，那些站点是什么类型的站点。
24 . iWEBTOOL Multi-Rank Checker 显示你网站的 Alexa 和 Google PageRank 数值。
25 . Microsoft adCenter Labs: Advertising and Keyword Research Tools 一个极好的工具，用于分析和预测你网站的来访者和市场。（ 强烈推荐 ）
26 . Domain Tools Whois lookup 一个 WHOIS 网络工具。
27 . SEO-Browser 可以让你看到在搜索引擎眼里一样的网站（ 去掉所有的”美丽”配件 ）。
28 . SEO Workers SEO Analysis Tool 非常有用的工具，分析了网站上的各种分类特征，包括 meta 标签、关键字密度及加载时间。（ 强烈推荐 ）
29 . Seekport Seekbot 可以分析网站的数据和内容，以得出搜索引擎会如何有效的解释分析的网站。
30 . SEO Chat SEO Tools 用以分析网站 Google adsense 盈利潜力，关键字密度，Meta tag 等等……
31 . Marketleap Search Engine Marketing Tools 用来分析网页，让你知道你的网站检索、设定的关键字好不好。