photo credit: Dave Kinsella

As a freelance web developer and internet marketer, there are several tools that I utilize on a regular basis to make research, marketing, and overall web developing much easier. Below I go over everything that I use either daily or very often. Maybe you already use some of the same tools but if not, hopefully something on the list can help you out as well.

Web Developing

Browser – Firefox is my browser of choice because of all the plug-ins available for it.

Web site display – Browser Shots comes in handy for checking the display of your web sites in multible browsers.

Billing – I have been using Billing Orchard for years. It is great for keeping track of billable hours and sending out invoices.

Web hosting – I use both Dreamhost and Hostgator. I like them both but if you need a reseller account, go with Hostgator.

Text editor – I use a Mac and use Textwrangler which is a free text editor.

FTP – Transmit is the FTP client I choose but it is only available for the Mac. If you use the Firefox browser, you can use a free FTP client plug-in called FireFTP.

Marketing

Page rank checker – SEO for Firefox displays the page rank in the search engine results. SearchStatus sits in the bottom of your browser and tells you the page rank of each site you visit.

Quick backlink checker – Yahoo! Site Explorer can give you a quick glance at the number of backlinks pointing to a specific web page.

Backlinks in depth – I use SEO Elite to go more in depth with backlink checking.

Keywords – Keyword Elite can generate keyword lists and can be used hand in hand with SEO Elite for research. I also use the Google AdWords: Keyword Tool.

Niche sites – Sometimes I build a niche site from scratch but most times I install WordPress because it saves time and has some cool plug-ins for SEO purposes.

Screencasting – When I need to make screencasting videos, I use Screenflow which is only for Mac. Camtasia is a popular software for Windows users.

Those are the tools I use regularly and I will add to the list when I come across more. What online tools or software do you use often?