If you’re an entrepreneur who’s just starting out, a “hands-on” SMB owner, or a marketer with a relatively small budget, the chances are that you want to make every marketing dollar count. Fortunately for you, there are some great digital marketing tools to help in executing your marketing strategy and getting the best possible results from your budget. Harnessed effectively, these tools will help you manage different digital activities, hone, automate, and maximize your business’ performance.
Below I have listed out a diverse mix of tools that cover a variety of uses and needs. While some of these tools are free, many others have a trial option so you can check out if that platform suits your requirement.
SEO TOOLS
- SEO Book Tools
The latest tools from SEO Book will provide you all the benefits of the expertise from across the marketplace. The site offers training courses, as well as audio and video content on the latest updates within the SEO marketplace. It also lists the latest tools for growing companies. - SmallSEOTools
Whether you’re looking to check the authority of a particular domain, conduct a reverse image search for your SEO campaign or check Alexa rankings, the options available through SmallSEOTools.com will provide the ideal resource. This site also includes a blog to help your team keep up with the latest news. - SEOToolSet
SEOToolSet focuses on the in-depth data that your SEO campaigns need to thrive. Tools include latest reporting options to gain insight on elements such as link analysis and domain indexing. The data revealed by these tools can help keep your firm moving forward toward its SEO objectives and driving efficiency within your campaigns. - Raven Tools
From finding and fixing errors within your SEO campaigns to getting rankings from Google, the options within Raven’s tools will keep your campaigns moving successfully forward. Raven’s standalone site auditor is a great tool to quickly find and eliminate SEO flaws that could otherwise see your content penalized within the rankings. - WebCEO
WebCEO’s suite of SEO tools will provide you with enterprise-level features for comprehensive SEO campaign management. The company also offers tools for link detoxing and local SEO campaign management to keep your company connected to your local audiences.
BACKLINK ANALYSIS TOOLS
- Ahrefs
Ahrefs can help your company improve its link analysis and gain the actionable data needed to enhance marketing performance through accurate competitor analysis and high powered back linking research. The site has data for over 240 million keywords used from across the United States alone. - Majestic
Majestic allows you to explore sites and site indexes in detail, providing you clear data on the linking performance of a site and the keywords companies are using to bring visitors to their URL. The Majestic suite also includes their Link Explorer, which provides comprehensive data on linking performance over time. - Open Site Explorer
Through Moz’s Open Site Explorer, you can discover link building opportunities, research backlinks to ensure they match your business objectives and find out which links can be potentially damaging to your site over time. It’s the full link-building set for the discerning marketing manager. - Cognitive SEO
A key benefit of CognitiveSEO is that the company provides you data on competitor strategies. You’ll see what your closest industry opponents are doing and build your own strategies based on the data revealed. You’ll also be able to see side-by-side comparisons for a clear visual insight into site performance and potential improvements.
CONTENT MARKETING TOOLS
- Outbrain
Outbrain helps optimize your content, amplify content reach, and ensures it connects with relevant audiences across your marketplace. You’ll achieve higher engagement across your campaigns and thereby maximize revenue growth over the long-term. - Curata
Curata is the ideal tool for a streamlined content production and analysis process. The solution helps you to drive content ideation while giving you clear data on the types of content most valuable to your qualified audiences. It also allows you to build a predictable content supply chain that takes pieces from the draft stage through to analysis and their use within the conversion optimization process. - Through the Ahrefs Content Explorer, you can learn the most popular content on any topic. The tool allows you to use filters and sort information via language, traffic, backlinks, and word count among other metrics so that you can hone in on the type of content that will best engage your high-value audience members.
PPC
- Spyfu
Gaining insight into how your competitors are using keywords within their PPC campaigns can help give you the advantage in the marketplace. Spyfu puts the latest market research at your disposal and keeps your team moving towards their ROI objectives within their PPC campaigns. - Unbounce
Getting engagement through your landing pages should ensure that your company achieves a swift ROI from invested marketing funds. Unbounce gives you the tools to build refined landing pages that continually deliver effective performance for your organization. The company offers a full range of mobile-responsive templates for teams to easily integrate within their campaigns. - iSpionage
Using iSpionage, you can begin to learn more about your competitors and the offers they’re presenting. The data delivered through the tool can help your team improve your offers and ensure a lasting return on investment for your campaign funds. Components such as iSpionage Campaign Watch give you clear insight on competitor actions, highlighting your competitors across both the desktop and mobile verticals. - SEMRush
Having access to a trusted data source for your PPC campaign can ensure your brand is continually moving forward. SEMrush combines a full range of campaign management components, such as search engine position tracking, competitive intelligence and backlink audits and analytics to ensure a constant flow of actionable data on campaign performance.
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS
- Hootsuite
Helping companies manage their multiple social media platforms and providing them with clear data on campaign performance, Hootsuite is the market’s most trusted product for effective social media management. The solution also helps to track mentions to help growing brands retain control of their company’s reputation. - SproutSocial
SproutSocial helps brands plan, organize, and rollout content that engages a qualified audience and begins important conversations within the social media platforms. The system provides companies with qualitative data regarding their social media marketing performance to help them make more effective decisions when rolling out new content. - MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is the social media content scheduling tool for the proactive marketing team. The system works to catalog the best performing social media updates by category and then automatically shares the content with your audience based on when it’s most likely to gain the most traction online. It’s an automated system helping brands across the market grow their audiences on a daily basis.
WEBSITE ANALYSIS TOOLS
- SEO Analyzer
The SEO Analyzer from Neil Patel will provide you with concrete information about your SEO performance and how to improve your performance over time. The reports offered through the Analyzer help pinpoint errors within your site’s SEO and highlight how to make quick, effective changes to support improved SEO performance. - Woorank
For companies with a significant number of pages to check, Woorank is ideal. It works to check content issues, analyzing thousands of pages in minutes to review technical SEO elements and ensure every component is managed with precision. - SEO Optimer
SEO Optimer helps your team improve the on-page elements within your site. The tool gives you clear information on site performance and on how the natural elements on your site can be used to boost the site’s rankings in search. - Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is your set of optimization tools for effective management and maintenance of your site. Within the Webmaster Tools, you’ll discover all the components you need to make fast, effective decisions on how to improve the performance of your site. You can analyze your clicks and determine their source, discover more about how your site performs with specific audiences, and learn which content is most popular. - Varvy
Varvy can help you improve both the speed and functionality of your site for both mobile and desktop audiences. The tool helps eliminate elements that negatively impact site performance and provides important information about the problems within your current site setup. Varvy is also used as an educational resource, providing you with detailed research on a full range of site optimization topics. - Moz On-Page Grader Tool
The Moz On-Page Grade Tool provides a full checklist to maximize performance on your site. The tool runs through all the elements a site needs to succeed and provides insight on how best to capitalize on your current elements to assure an intuitive user experience.
By learning more about the available online marketing tools, you can now begin to improve upon your investment in marketing, taking a step-by-step approach to analysis and optimization. Incrementally, you’ll then maximize your team’s results over the coming years. Take the time to learn how to implement the tools we’ve highlighted in this post. Each option is designed to help create the ideal foundation for ongoing marketing success in the long-term.
Please contact us if we can be of help with the top 25 online marketing tools or any other digital marketing or digital transformation questions.
This blog was written by our colleague Vineesh Sandhir and was first published in the WSI Digital Marketing blog.
