Upon logging in, you would see a screen like this:

As you can see above, I already have my campaign set up. To set yours up, you click click on Start a New Campaign:

Then, fill out the details and click Continue to Next Step:

Select all 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) and click Continue to Next Step:

In the step above, you can put up to 3 competitors. I suggest putting the highest ranking websites so you can see what they are doing right, and what you are doing wrong.. Then click Continue to Next Step to go to the final Step 4:

In the step above, enter up to 5 keywords you want to track. The free trial lets you track 300 keywords in total, which should be plenty (you can set up the other keywords after you create the campaign). Once you enter the keywords, click Create My Campaign.

I am now going to fast-forward 1 day, after SEOMoz has successfully crawled my website. I’ve also added a total of 300 keywords by copy/pasting the top keywords from my Google Analytics.

Here is how my campaign summary looks:

I was shocked to see 6 errors, 2890 warnings and 4957 notices. I thought there was nothing major wrong with my site! SEOMoz actually gives you the breakdown of what kind of errors/warnings/notices you have and shows you which page has which errors.

It turns out I have 5 pages with missing or empty title, 1 page with 4xx error, a whopping 2385 pages with missing meta description, 324 pages with too many links, 176 pages with title element that’s too long, 2271 pages blocked by robots.txt and more. Here I was thinking that the free WordPress SEO plug-in I used would take care of all of my SEO. Not so fast.

Here is a small sample of pages with missing meta descriptions. Turns out that my author pages don’t have meta description set up:

But this is far not all. Inside the dashboard I am also able to see data such as competitive link analysis:

I saw that I have a total of only 175,192 links. While to you this may sound like a lot of links, my top competitors have more than 15 times that number! Also, the biggest difference I saw is the number of unique linking root domains.

That’s not all. Among other things, I am able to see exactly where I rank for ALL 300 of the keywords I added, and across all of the major search engines:

SEOMoz also tracks all of my keywords and shows me where  my rankings have gone up or down.

It’s great to be able to get this kind of SEO information right in front of me. Best of all, I got it all for absolutely free within several days of starting my free trial of SEOMoz. The lesson I learned is you never know what’s wrong with your website until you run a very thorough scan of ALL of your pages. Good SEO is extremely important as that’s what drives the majority of traffic, clients and ultimately money into your pocket. I am off now to start fixing all of the things that are wrong with WebDesignDev’s SEO. What’s wrong with your website? Sign up for SEOMoz free 30 day trial and find out for free.

SohoOS offers very attractive features such as:

• Unified Contacts

  SohoOS allows you to manage all of your clients, contacts and leads from one location. You can perform every action (such as send an invoice, etc.) directly from your SohoOS contact list.

• Invoices and Billing

  You can request a payment directly by sending out the invoice and attach a link for direct payment. You can receive payments for the invoices via multiple payment methods such as PayPal and credit cards, and you don’t even need a merchant account.

• Communication

  The SohoOS premium features include local & international calls, SMS (single and multi destinations), fax, mass email campaigns and video and audio conference calls.

• Inventory Management

  If you running out of your products, the SohoOS Inventory feature sends an alert and allows you to order new products on the fly directly from your vendor by using a purchase order.

• Freelance Arena

  As I always point out, getting clients from freelancing websites is a great way for extra income as a web designer. SohoOS has a freelance arena that allows you to post projects to the board, search for projects by skills or interest and bid on projects.

• Embed Leads Widget

This widget allows you to easily embed a lead form into any website. Whenever this form is filled out, the information is saved as a lead inside your SohoOS system.

• Document Management

  You will have the ability to manage all documents from one filing system. You can also create folders and then link them to clients, vendors, or ongoing projects by uploading documents or linking to them externally.

• Document Templates

  Whether you need a business plan or a new employee agreement, a letter of intent template or a marketing document – all of them are readily available with a simple click.

• Project Management

  Create new projects with start and end dates, allocate a budget, assign milestone and responsibilities, and grant access to each task on a hierarchical basis. In addition, tracking your projects with a customized project indicator.

• SohoOS Mobile App

  Now you can have full control over your business from wherever you are, whenever you want. The SohoOS mobile app uses all of the functionality provided by the SohoOS web application, directly from your iPhone.

The above is just a small sample of all of the free features you get with SohoOS. 300,000 people have already registered for their free account, so what are you waiting for?

Click Here To Get Your Free SohoOS Account

Below is a list of top 10 web hosting companies for 2011.

#1. HostGator – 9.95 out of 10.

Reliable, trustworthy host that has been around for many years. They do free migrations from your old host, have cPanel and make it a pleasure to host with them. Their hosting support is rated #1. I believe they may be running a 20% off special at this time.

#2. JustHost – 9.91 out of 10.

This is a top rated web host with cPanel, unlimited space, free domain and free installation. We’ve heard many good things about JustHost from our web designer audience. Be sure to check them out when comparing web hosting companies.

#3. iPage – 9.89 out of 10.

Although it doesn’t have cPanel, iPage is nonetheless a terrific host. With the price of only $4.50/month, eco-friendly wind energy power, free domain, free migration, $75 Google Adwords credit, $50 Facebook credit, free SiteLock security suite ($100 value) and much more, iPage is a very solid web hosting company in 2011.

#4. FatCow – 9.84 out of 10.

Lack of cPanel is a disavantage, but the price is extremely attractive with the current hosting special for only $56 per year. Another huge plus is they transfer your website from your old hosting for free and even give you a free domain name when you sign up. If you are environmentally friendly, you should also know that they use green hosting 100% powered by wind energy.

#5. BlueHost – 9.2 out of 10.

Barely making our top 5, BlueHost has an attractive price and feature list. Their control panel is a modified version of cPanel which I found very easy to work with.

#6. UK2 – 9.12 out of 10.

This is a very solid, reliable and old host that could make an excellent choice as your web hosting company.

#7. IX Web Hosting – 8.9 out of 10.

Although this isn’t a host that made it to our top 5, IX Web Hosting has many plans to choose from and really allows you to scale up your hosting as your website grows.

#8.  MyHosting – 8.3 out of 10.

Similarly to IX Web Hosting, MyHosting really allows you to scale up your hosting if your website grows. The price and feature list are also very competitive.

#9. HostMonster – 6.5 out of 10.

This isn’t the fastest host, but the fact that they’ve been around for a while and likely aren’t going anywhere is something that plays in their favor. Their price isn’t the most competitive, but they do offer cPanel which is a big plus.

#10. GoDaddy. 2 out of 10.

Stay away from getting hosting from these guys. Their hosting is the worst possible hosting you can have. Support is terrible, hosting is slow and hosting control panel is as bad as it can be. On the plus side, they are a terrific domain registrar.

If you have any hosts to add to the list (this is not to be used for self promotion as a hosting company, those comments will not be approved), please post a comment. If you’ve used any of the hosts on the list and have anything to say, please post a comment too!

Hosting Resources:

Ranking factors: i) reliability; ii) speed; iii) cost; iv) technical support.

#1. HostGator – 9.95

Reliable, trustworthy host that has been around for many years. They do free migrations from your old host, have cPanel and make it a pleasure to host with them. Their hosting support is rated #1. I believe they may be running a 20% off special at this time.

#2. JustHost – 9.91

This is a top rated web host with cPanel, unlimited space, free domain and free installation. We’ve heard many good things about JustHost from our web designer audience. Be sure to check them out when comparing web hosting companies.

#3. iPage – 9.89

Although it doesn’t have cPanel, iPage is nonetheless a terrific host. With the price of only $4.50/month, eco-friendly wind energy power, free domain, free migration, $75 Google Adwords credit, $50 Facebook credit, free SiteLock security suite ($100 value) and much more, iPage is a very solid web hosting company in 2011.

#4. FatCow – 9.84

Lack of cPanel is a disavantage, but the price is extremely attractive with the current hosting special for only $56 per year. Another huge plus is they transfer your website from your old hosting for free and even give you a free domain name when you sign up. If you are environmentally friendly, you should also know that they use green hosting 100% powered by wind energy.

#5. BlueHost – 9.2

Barely making our top 5, BlueHost has an attractive price and feature list. Their control panel is a modified version of cPanel which I found very easy to work with.

Domain Resources:

Ranking factors: i) cost; ii) reliability; iii) customer support.

#1. GoDaddy – 9.97

This registrar giant is the oldest and most reliable. Reliability is super important for your domain registrar because in 99.9% of the cases you let them handle DNS forwarding to your hosting company. If you use a cheap host, they can easily do something wrong with the DNS, which will make your website down despite your hosting company being up. Scary isn’t it? In addition to being very reliable, you can get cheap .com’s at only $7.49 each from GoDaddy. I use GoDaddy as the registrar for all of my domains.

#2. Domain.com – 9.79

#3. NameCheap – 9.77

#4. Moniker – 9.69

#5. 1&1 – 9.54

Twitter Resources:

Ranking factors: i) quality; ii) cost; iii) customer support.

#1. TweetAdder – 9.93

Highlights: best Twitter marketing tool to push your business forward. It gets you Twitter followers for your keywords daily on complete auto-pilot. Very inexpensive for the features you get. I use it on WebDesignDev’s Twitter account (http://twitter.com/webdesigndev)

#2. MarketMeSuite – 9.75

#3. SocialOomph – 9.42

#4. TweetDeck – 9.1

#5. TweetWhistle – 8.72

Icon Resources:

Ranking factors: i) quality; ii) cost; iii) customer support.

#1. IconFinder – 9.96

Highlights: more than 188,000 icons, very easy to use. This is the top icon site for web designers.

#2. IconShock – 9.75

#3. IconSeeker – 9.72

#4. IconsPedia – 9.34

#5. FreeIconsWeb – 9.20

Freelancing Resources:

Ranking factors: i) number of projects; ii) cost; iii) customer support.

#1. Elance – 9.98

You can get as much as 30% of your clients from this Freelancing site. Very easy to use.

#2. Freelancer – 9.89

#3. oDesk – 9.42

#4. Guru – 9.45

#5. iFreelance – 8.80

Font Resources:

Ranking factors: number of fonts, quality of fonts, frequency of updating, ease of use.

#1. Fonts.com – 9.97

Highlights: It is one of the largest font websites online with a total of 20,000+ fonts, with many different categories and almost any font you can dream of.

#2. DaFont – 9.95

Every designer knows DaFont.com as it’s one of the best free font websites. Why didn’t it make #1? It just doesn’t have the same selection as Fonts.com. Further, while the fonts are free, they are mostly for personal use and can’t legally be used on your clients’ websites, since that use qualifies as commercial.

#3. FontSpace – 9.90

#4. Urban Fonts – 9.78

#5. Google Fonts – 9.55

Google Fonts is a relatively new Google project and I hope it’s one they won’t abandon. While the collection is still very small, it has been growing. If Google takes their font service seriously this resource could be one to definitely bookmark.

What is PowerMockup? It’s an add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint, which helps you sketch mock-ups for websites and applications.  It makes prototyping new designs extremely easy – a matter of a few clicks. The major advantage of using PowerPoint as a mock-up tool is that most people have it and know how to use it. PowerPoint provides a common design environment that bridges the gap between business users and developers. PowerMockup capitalizes on PowerPoint’s powerful features, and includes:

• 77 fully editable user interface elements
• 82 wireframe icons
• Easy access via a separate ribbon tab
• Compatibility with PowerPoint 2007 and 2010

• Seamless integration into Microsoft Word documents (enables you to edit mockups from within Microsoft Word)
• Vector-based design
• Export to PDF, PNG, EMF and many other formats
• Ability to demonstrate an application’s workflow as a slideshow
• Customization through PowerPoint’s standard diagramming features
• Terrific printing capabilities, zoom, undo/redo, grouping, audio/video support

PowerMockup provides various licensing features such as single, small team and larger team licenses. The team at PowerMockup offers a  30 day money-back guarantee, which really showcases the confidence in their software.

Click Here For A Free Trial

Webpop is the Cloud CMS for Designers and their Clients with integrated SEO and Analytics Tools that allows full control over the design and a very easy and awesome dashboard for the owner of the website to keep up to date the content.  Webpop is absolutely scalable with no creative limitations and no hosting hassles.

What is unique in Webpop?

Currently, Webpop is the state of the art of the Content Management Systems. Webpop has resolved a very old and complex problem in the field of the Web Design and the Content Management Systems: how to offer a platform to create truly powerful dynamic websites in a very easy way for designers, not for developers, and without using templates and preserving at a very top level the “design”.

It is not a coincidence that the claim of Webpop is: don’t betray your design. Why would you, as a designer hire a programmer to build a complete CMS, wasting a lot of money and time, each time that you need a dynamic powerful Website? Why would you have to use a “templates system” andbetray your design most of the times?

This problem so far has been resolved in a very inappropriate way because it’s quite difficult to resolve a problem like that. That’s the reason why most of the systems work with templates. Templates are not the best way to keep the quality of your design but a very easy way to create a simple website without coding. Webpop keeps the simplicity for Designers, allows to create dynamic websites without coding and preserves a way to make the design exactly as you made it in your graphic design tool (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign…).

Main Features Of Webpop

Full HTML & CSS Control

Webpop has a unique system to take full control of your design. Everybody can make a website today. There are hundreds of site builders making it a trivial job to grab a template, change a few colors, add a custom logo and have a website running. Professional web designers need to adapt to this reality and make sure they offer a value above that of a template-based website with a few custom colors. Webpop helps you adapt to this reality.

Often a CMS will require you to build a site as if working with Lego, putting together small blocks of ready-made html. Just like a professional craftsman would hardly choose Lego as his material of choice, professional web designers prefer to hand craft their own HTML and CSS.

Unique Dashboard system for the client: On-site Content Editing
Most content management systems treat designers and their clients as the same kind of user and rely on access control to separate the roles of an admin and an end user. This often leads to a user experience that makes everything too restricted and hard to fiddle with for the professional, and still too advanced and complex to use for the end user.

Webpop has separated the role of the end user and the web professional completely. You will get an interface optimized to never limit your flexibility and never get in your way while your client will get the simplest possible way to maintain her contents and keep her website up to date.

For your client editing the website is done by clicking directly through the website itself with simple overlays showing what can be changed and easy shortcuts to add new contents.

Check out Webpop’s “On-site editing” screencast to see this in action.

Integrated SEO and Analytics Tools

A great design instills confidence in the consumer, makes more visitors buy a product or helps an organization communicate effectively; but for the design to work its magic a website needs visitors.

The most cost effective way of attracting quality traffic to a web site is a well executed SEO strategy. SEO experts can charge high rates to optimize a web site because a good SEO effort will easily pay for itself many times over.

Many content management systems claim to be “SEO optimized”. Webpop takes this a step further, integrating an active SEO system that helps you design a SEO strategy for your client and measure your success.

Find the best keywords to drive traffic to your site, monitor search engine rankings and track the progress of link building campaigns. The built-in reporting system makes it easy to share the results with your client.

Hosted in the Cloud: no hosting and security hassles and scalable at a very affordable price

Webpop is a truly fully hosted CMS with no hosting and security hassles. They are running on the Rackspace Cloud and every part of their infrastructure has been designed to be fast, scalable and redundant.

They take care of caching contents, monitoring system performance and adding new servers dynamically as needed and of course handle all updates to the system transparently without you ever having to worry about a self hosted WordPress install getting virus infected, among other things.

Never worry about a client getting on the front pages of Reddit, Digg and Slashdot at the same time, their system will handle the load.

See how their control area looks like from the screens below:

Check out Webpop and see for yourself : )

#5: HP Envy 17

This is a very solid laptop that gets you many features for the price. The highlghts include dual 320 GB hard drives, an insanely powerful ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850, i5-450m processor and USB 3.0.

Read User Reviews On Amazon

Technical Details

• Intel Core i5-450M processor 2.40GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.66 GHz; 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 DIMM) – Max supported = 8GB;
• 640GB (7200RPM) Hard Drive – Dual 320GB (SATA); Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 connector); Wireless LAN 802.11 a/b/g/n WLAN & Bluetooth
• 1 SuperSpeed USB 3.0: Three USB 2.0, 3rd port shared with eSATA; mini-Display port; 1 HDMI; 1 VGA; 1 RJ -45;
• 17.3 inch diagonal HP HD BrightView Infinity LED Display (1600 x 900); 1 Headphone out/Microphone-in combo jack
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 Graphics with up to 3835MB total graphics memory with 1GB dedicated;
• Blu-ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD±R/RW Double Layer Support; Beats Audio and HP Triple Bas
• Laser-etched aluminum finish in carbon relic; HP TrueVision HD Webcam with integrated microphone; 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader

#4: Sony VAIO VPC-F137FX/B 16.4-Inch Laptop

Read User Reviews On Amazon

Although generally on the costly side, Sony makes very good laptops. While the Vaio wasn’t our top choice, it’s still a very solid machine. Check out the specs below:

Technical Details

• Accessories – Standard Capacity Lithium-ion Battery (5000mAh), AC Adapter, Power Cord; Software Bundle – Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter (Purchase a Product Key to activate a full Microsoft Office 2010 suite), Norton Internet Security 2010 30-Day Trial Offer, 1-Year Limited Warranty
• Intel Core i7-740QM Quad-core 1.73GHz Processor with Turbo(R) Boost Technology up to 2.93GHz
• 6MB L3 Cache
• 6GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM (8GB max.)
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive

#3: Alienware m17x

While this is a “gaming laptop”, the Alienware 17x is an excellent choice for web designers due to its raw power. Gaming laptops are the most technically demanding, thus they are an excellent choice for web designers. Check out the power of this monster laptop below:

Read User Reviews On Amazon

Technical Details

• Intel Core i7-740QM 1.73GHz, 2.93GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache
• 6GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz (2 DIMMs); USB 2.0 (4) eSATA/USB 2.0 Combo (2-in-1 Port) with PowerShare DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA Audio-out Connectors (3) Audio-in/Microphone Jack Built-in Front Speakers (2) Gigabit Ethernet
• 500GB (7200 RPM) Hard Drive; 8x Slot-Loading CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW)
• CrossFireX 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Graphics; 17″(1440 x 900)Widescreen
• McAfee SecurityCenter with anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, 6 Months; Steam gaming portal

#2: Asus G73JH-X5

Although marketed as a gaming laptop, much like the Alienware m17x, this machine is an absolute beast when it comes to hardware specs and power. Just check out its specs below:

Read User Reviews On Amazon

Technical Details

• Intel i7-720QM (1.60 GHz Quad-Core with Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHz)
• 8GB DDR3 1066MHz , 4 SODIMM Sockets, up to 8GB
• 640GB (320GB x 2) 7200RPM HDD; Blue-Ray Disk Combo Drive; 802.11 b/g/n
• ATI 5870 Graphics with 1G GDDR5; Windows Home Premium 64-bit Operating System
• 17.3-Inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) LED Display; 2.0M Webcam; 1 YR Accidental Damage Warranty Included

#1: Apple MacBook Pro

With excellent performance, a long battery life and a completely flawless design, Apple’s MacBook Pro is the ultimate blend of user-friendliness and power laptop for web designers, or just about anyone. It’s available with either a 15-inch 1440×900 screen or a 17-inch with the full 1920×1200 resolution. With the new OS X Leopard, AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, Apple’s Multi Touch touchpad, High Speed Thunderbolt Port, FaceTime HD Camera, plus the latest 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, you get a laptop computer that can rival or surpass most desktop computers.

Read User Reviews On Amazon

Technical Details

• 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor
• 750 GB Hard Drive, 8x DVD/CD SuperDrive, 4 GB DDR3 RAM
• 15.4 inch LED-backlit display, 1440-by-900 resolution
• AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
• High Speed Thunderbolt Port, FaceTime HD Camera, Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard

Probably all of you had to upload your photo on your profile page on Twitter, Linkedin or Gravatar. Then you had to resize it, crop it or maybe rotate it till it was perfect and ready to be posted online. What you did not know is that you can offer this kind of service to your visitors too with a simple Mootools cropping script named Kroppr.

Kroppr is very usable and easy to install – in 3 steps (as explained on their install webpage: http://kroppr.rborn.info/install-image-cropper.php) you will have it ready to crop the images of your users: once it’s on your server you have to set the right paths to the script’s location and add the class “kroppr” to the image you need to be cropped. And that’s it!! It couldn’t be easier than that, am I right?

Kroppr works on PHP servers with Ioncube Loader activated and it requires at least the GD image processing library to be installed. Make sure you have all the permissions for the folder “kropped” where the cropped images will be saved – this is a very common problem that you might encounter.

Need to see it and play with it first?

Well, their team thought about it in time and installed in on their website where you can play with it: rotate the image, zoom it or resize it as long as you like because the script is fun and easy to use and they did everything possible to help you understand how it works.

I you’re curious and want to find more information about Kroppr make sure your visit Kroppr website – you will find there all the information you need to get started and also their contact details.

With WhatFontis, a free online font identifier, you are only three steps away to find the name of the font that you just can’t stand not knowing about.

Step 1 allows you to upload a screenshot of the font or to enter the url of the image. Step 1 also lets you choose how you want to browse through the 150,000 fonts: display only free fonts or free alternative fonts, display commercial fonts or simply display all fonts.

Step 2 verifies if the characters viewed by WhatFontis match the characters of your uploaded image, that you need to input into the box next to the displayed character.

Step 3 identifies the font for you. If it doesn’t find the right match, it suggests 100 alternatives you can scroll down through and choose the one that most resembles your font. In most cases, WhatFontis

also specifies the websites where you may download/buy the identified fonts from. Many of these fonts are available for free download. With its huge font gallery and a very high processing speed, it is a fun tool to try out.

Overall I am impressed by this tool and can highly recommend it.

In a nutshell, what this tool does is it allows you to virally promote your site by allowing your users to invite their email contacts to visit your site. Sounds familiar? It’s the same concept that Facebook and Linkedin use, among others. The really cool feature about Super Tell-A-Friend is that it also allows you to incentivize your visitors to mass invite their friends by showing daily and monthly rankings of each user (email is not shown fully) and how many people they invited. I think this is an awesome idea because it opens the door to many possibilities how to further incentivize your users to promote your site virally, such as prizes for top inviters. So what exactly does the Super Tell-A-Friend do?

• MULTIPLE FUNCTIONALITY : allow your existing users to promote their affiliate links, allow your visitors to invite their friends to join or visit your website, email list building and newsletter software.
• To send the emails, the script can use your hosting internal email server or a SMTP server.
• The script is able to send the email invitations immediately or using a cron job (email queue).
• The possibility to define maximum number of emails sent per hour and day.
• Newsletter module – it can send recurrent emails to all emails in the database (invited contacts, users and subscribers).
• Personalized email invitation. It contains special tags, automatically replaced by the script :
  “Recipient’s Name”, “Recipient’s Email”, “Sender’s Name”, “Sender’s Email”, etc.
• Detailed REPORTS : users, visitors, subscribers, rewards – the ability to download as CSV file.
• The system can automatically send personalized recurrent REMINDERS to :- All users who invited their friends and ask them to send more invitations (to win the rewards).
  - All recipients who did not visit your website (to remind them about the benefits of your website)
• 10 FREE skins included in the package. The skins are also customizable.
• Customizable thank you email, confirmation email, redirection link and visitor’s landing page.
• The visitor’s landing page may be a fixed page or sender’s referral page (“email this page” feature).
• Full Html support. All features, content, text blocks are optional and customizable.

And much, much more. As I stated earlier, Super Tell-A-Friend is, hands down, the best tell-a-friend script.

Where can you get this all-in-one tell a friend script, contacts importer, invitation system and much more?

Get It Here