There are so many cool resources to help companies improve their online marketing. Here are a few online marketing tools that we use regularly at Sebo. Check them out!
Google’s Tools
- Google Analytics – please make sure this is installed on your site and you know how to access your account information
- Search Console – formerly known as Webmaster Tool’s, this is an amazing resource for people wanting their site to show up higher in the organic / SEO results
- Search Analytics – technically, this is a part of Search Console, but it completely changed the process we use for targeting the right keywords
- Keyword Planner – we still use Keyword Planner, but with the improvements to Search Analytics, we mostly get our keyword ideas from Search Analytics
- Tag Manager – it’s common for visitors to click on videos on your site or to leave your site by clicking on your social media links. Google Analytics doesn’t handle these situations well. Tag Manager can help in many ways, including being able to track these events inside of Google Analytics
- Mobile Friendly Test – please make sure your site is Mobile Friendly. If not, either get it fixed or let’s talk!
- Page Speed Insights – it’s more important than ever that your site loads quickly on all devices, but especially on mobile devices.
- Google Trends – what searches are trending now? Are searches related to your business increasing or decreasing? Find out at Google Trends.
SEO Tools & Resources
- Moz Beginner’s Guide to SEO – all new Sebo employees have to start with this key resource
- Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide – this is an excellent overview to SEO resource provided by Google
- Screaming Frog – this is a website crawler that helps identify errors and issues
- Cognitive SEO’s Site Explorer – get a quick, free snapshot of your overall link authority
- Majestic SEO’s Site Explorer – get a quick, free snapshot of your link trust, citation flow, number of backlinks, referring domains, and more
- BuzzSumo – enter a topic or keyword, and find sites and influencers discussing that topic
- Yoast SEO – if you have a WordPress or Drupal site, you need to be using Yoast SEO. Don’t just take our word for it. As of June 2017, Yoast SEO is being actively used on over 3 million websites and it has a 5 Star Rating!
Site Performance Tools
- Tiny PNG – Most websites are slower than they need to be, and often, image sizes are one of the big culprits. Tiny PNG is a great free tool that helps reduce the file size of PNG files.
- EWWW Image Optimizer – this is a WordPress plugin that automatically optimizes your image files as you upload them to your WordPress site or blog.
- W3 Total Cache – this is a WordPress plugin that “improves the SEO and user experience of your site by increasing website performance”. It’s currently being actively used on over 1 million websites.
- Autoptimize – another reason for slow site performance relates to scripts and styles. This WordPress plugin reduces the amount of unnecessary code to speed up your site.
- GTmetrix – this analyzes site performance and “provides actionable recommendations on how to optimize it”
Other Tools
- Wayback Machine – want to see what a website looked like a long time ago? This is a pretty fun tool that always is fun to show people
- Richard’s Toolbox – Richard currently lists over 60 tools that can assist website owners.
- W3Schools – want to learn the basics of building web pages? W3Schools is a free resources to learn about HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript and much more. Their reference guides are also very valuable.
- CSS Zen Garden – when we try to have people understand CSS, it can be hard to get the point across. This site shows many different websites that have the exact same HTML. How do they look different? Each site has a different CSS file associated with it.
Comments about Additional Tools
There are some commonly used tools that we didn’t list above. Here’s why.
SpyFu has been around for a long time. It really does some pretty cool things. However, we have found way too many inconsistencies with the tool and real data. One extreme example is we had a client call us up, and they were very upset.
“Why in the world would you spend over $40 per click for that keyword?!?!? Why would you spend over $2,000 last month on that phrase?!?!?” (Their total PPC budget was only $1,000 per month) We tried not to laugh.
“Why do you think you are doing that?”
“A friend of mine uses SpyFu, and that’s what it says. He told me you guys are incompetent and need to stop using you for our marketing services.”
“Well, according to the actual AdWords data, you have only received 1 click for that phrase in the last 6 months, and the cost for that click was $.87. Sorry, but your friend is extremely wrong.
AHREFS is pretty cool. We’ve mentioned it in presentations for years. However, recently the free link checker tool no longer is available without creating an account to start a free trial.
DeepCrawl and LinkResearchTools also require you to sign up and do a free trial before really seeing what the tool does. After we tried these tools, we went a different direction, but they really are helpful for some SEO agencies.