The Best Digital Marketing Tools (in my humble opinion)
Free Digital Marketing Tools
Website Tracking
- Google Analytics
- Integrated Call Tracking: Call Rail
If you have a website, it’s very likely you already know of GA or are currently utilizing it. Hands down, GA is the most comprehensive and insightful free analytical tool. GA allows users the ability to capture various types of website traffic sources, user behavior, popular content consumption and much, much more. Advanced GA operations enable ecommerce integration, user-action tracking with behavior goals and revenue attribution.
Many webmasters and SEO practitioners can struggle to clearly prove ROI. Call Rail is a game changer when it comes to reporting results from your website. I utilize phone tracking for all my clients and beyond the website, I learn which marketing channel makes their phone ring. What’s more, dynamic number insertion will show specific website visitors unique numbers and follow their behavior across each marketing channel. Integrate Call Rail with Google Analytics and AdWords for enhanced revenue attribution. This tool is a must-have.
Website Auditing
- Organic SEO Auditing: MOZ
If education is what you seek, look no further than MOZ. Distinctively the authority about all things search engine optimization, MOZ offers tools which will transform the way you think about your website. Even better, sign up for a 30-day trial for free for limited access to their tools. I run their on-site SEO grader to learn where my HTML may need some nipping and tucking. Do yourself a favor, subscribe to their blog for industry news and the best ways to keep up with Google’s moody algorithm.
Website Optimization
- SEO Standards: Schema.org
- Heat Map Tracking: Crazy Egg
A more recent SEO tool for advanced practitioners, Schema mark-up allows webmasters to help search engines understand the different elements of a website. For example, Google may know where to find your headline (typically within the h1 tag), but it may not know what the text means or to what exactly it refers. Schema mark-up can help add transparency and accessibility to your page content through more meaningful classifications of HMTL elements.
Few tools are as helpful as Crazy Egg to assess user experience. Crazy Egg installs as a small snippet of javascript to track the click-location and general user-behavior across any page of your site. Displayed in various types of heat-maps, webmasters can filter traffic by source, day-of-week, time-of-day, device, browser, and so forth. What I find uniquely helpful is each report can be exported for offline review. Wondering how your new homepage banner is performing? Let Crazy Egg tell you.