Jamdo Marketing Blog

Useful and free software is the best kind.

I use a lot of quite expensive tools in my day to day online activities, but there are a lot of less-polished pieces of software that are also pretty handy. Many of them can perform a lot of the tasks their more expensive counterparts can do too.

So, I thought I would compile a list of useful (and free) desktop applications for those of us who like to build websites and blogs.

There are probably better paid versions of most of these, but if you’re
on a tight budget, these programs can save a bit of time and have the right price tag.

Keyword Research:

Good Keywords - saves a little time on keywords and can do a quick site analysis too.

Domain Name Analyzer - handy little desktop application that helps you find which URLs are available for purchase. Stick in a few keyword rich terms and you should come up with something that’s pretty good.

Competition Analysis

Backlink Analyser - once you have your keywords and a list of competitors for those keywords, you can plug them into this tool to see how they are getting
their rankings.

HTTrack - a little piece of software that will copy entire websites to your harddrive so you can view them later on (while you’re offline). This is especially handy if you want to go down to the coffee shop and take some notes on your competitors, but you don’t have mobile wireless.

Ad Management

Adwords Editor - the desktop application from Google to manage your Adwords campaigns. Again, this is very handy for working remotely when you don’t have an internet connection - just remember to upload your changes when you get home.

Content Generation

PDFCreator - a very handy tool to create PDFs. As I am sure you are aware, “white papers” or “special reports” in PDF format have a higher perceived value than a lot of other content formats and can draw a lot of interest (and links). This program lets you take advantage of that.

NVU 1 - if you don’t know anything about coding HTML or any other languages then this free little editor will let you get your website online without any of that. It’s a WYSIWYG editor for website builders so you don’t need any coding skills. Basically like an anorexic Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Primetime Podcast Receiver - free utility for creating podcasts. Very popular.

Utilities

CoreFTP - if you need to transfer files to your server, you need an FTP program. This is the one that I use and I like it.

Coffee Cup Free Zip Wizard - zip your large files so they’re easy to email! Now with extra zippiness!

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Now, I am sure there are a bunch of other really cool downloads that I don’t know about (or possibly just forgot about) so feel free to list them here if you know of any.

The ones above should, however, get you off to a good start and help you on your way to blogging and internet glory.

Technorati Tags: downloads, blogging, internet tools

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