Nov
30
6 Free Online Tools I love
November 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Today, links to six super-useful free tools:
1. One of the secrets to writing great copy is making it REALLY easy to read. 7th grade reading level or lower = good copy. College level = BAD copy. Bad. (Always!) Most of Gary Halbert's classic letters read at the 4th to 5th grade level. That's why they're so "primal," and so persuasive.
Paste your text into http://www.addedbytes.com/tools/readability-score/ and you'll see what grade level your text is.
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level grade level of this blog post is 4.5. 
2. FormatIT – I format my emails 60-65 characters wide. Makes them easier to read. www.formatit.com does this for you while leaving long URL's intact. There's also a "Re-FormatIT" option that removes carriage returns and unwanted characters.
3. Google's Wonder Wheel visually represents the way Google's search engine perceives the relationships between keywords. You only have to play with it for 30 seconds to get the idea. It also illustrates how Google's bot initially chooses sites for ads in the Content Network.
To use it: Go to google.com, do a search and click on "Show Options." Down a few inches on the right side you'll find a link called "Wonder Wheel."
4. Google's keyword based search tool – Seldom talked about but allows you to sift and sort keywords according to all kinds of advanced criteria like bid price, level of competition, ad share, search share, and competitor. www.google.com/sktool
5. Need to send a 100 megabyte audio or video file? YouSendIt is great for sending huge files without using email attachments. YouSendIt.com.
6. Visual Thesaurus – I don't know about you, but for me, thesauruses seldom give me the exact word I'm looking for. VisualThesaurus.com, however, is a graphical tool that's a lot like Google's Wonder Wheel. You can chase strings of words and relationships. The paid version is only $20 per year – CHEAP. www.VisualThesaurus.com
