Doing digital marketing without proper tools is like trying to plow a field with a shovel. Most of the tools that are available today were created by marketers for their colleagues in order to increase efficiency and productivity. Full marketing automation is not here yet, but there are certain things that simply can not be done by hand. In most cases that is keeping track of all those important metrics of websites and social media. In the following article we present you with 4 of the most important tools every SEO should at least try out.
BuzzSumo
All of us use social media in a similar manner, more or less. We see, hear or read something that we consider interesting and then share it with our friends/followers, thus spreading that piece of content to even wider population.
In some cases humans are predictable and we might say that at certain times there is a type of content which is bound to have high share counts. That is where BuzzSumo comes in handy to marketers. This tool is all about social media, as it searches the internet for user generated keywords and displays the most shared content. It will allow you to filter out the dates, languages, TLDs and other important metrics. With fresh topics that draw in social media users attention, all that’s left is for you to write high quality content, as it’s not the headlines that deserve sharing, but compelling content.
Google Keyword Planner
The successor to Google Keyword Tool, GKP is maybe one of the most important tools SEO needs. Figuring out all the important keywords your business should rank for presents a cornerstone of every digital marketing strategy according to Online Marketing Gurus SEO agency.
Using Google Keyword Planner is actually quite easy. Upon creation of your AdWords account (yes, GKP is connected to AdWords), it asks you to fill in some basic info about you and your business. Once you finish setting up your account it’s time to pull out your first keywords.
First up you’ll need to enter a few niche keywords that are a bit more specific terms, for example New York Restaurant or New York Cuisine, since Google’s examples which include flowers or used cars are too broad and you’ll probably end up with too competitive keywords. Entering your landing page is important for AdWords and in some cases it will extract some specific keywords you forgot about, but could be competitive.
The third option from this group lets you choose your industry. This is a nifty little feature which enables GKP to rummage through it’s internal keywords database and give you something you might have missed initially.
The rest of the options are for localisation, as well as filtering keywords by search volume, price, impressions and competition. You can also manually exclude or include specific keywords.
Ahrefs
Essentially used for link analysis, Ahrefs has since evolved into a complete SEO tool. Ahrefs’ key features are Domain Authority measurement, page URL rating, number of inbound links and linking domains, list of anchors and many more. Everything you need to do to get this “machine” rolling is to enter the url of the website you want to analyze into search field and kick back.
Once the analysis is complete you will have to know what is it that you are looking for. The domain authority is derived from the number and quality of backlinks pointing to your website, as well as the age of your domain. Overall number of links is a pretty clear metric, however, you should be wary of high number of links with a small number of referring domains, which is an indication of a low quality website. You will also see keywords data for the website in question with both organic and paid keywords displayed.
Ahrefs also includes content explorer which can be used in two ways. Firstly, you can explore content based on entered keywords – just like in BuzzSumo. Secondly, you will bi prompted with top content for a domain you’ve explored as a part of Ahrefs’ search.
Ahrefs is a great overall SEO tool which combines great features of several different tools like BuzzSumo, MOZ, SEMRush, and others. However, don’t get mislead by this statement as it can not completely replace these tools since they were made to do one thing and one thing only, while Ahrefs – asides from doing great job with backlink analysis – does a bit from everything.
Sidekick
This tool comes in the form of a Google Chrome extension for Gmail. It is a versatile little tool that will come in handy in numerous occasions. It displays a notification every time someone opens an email you sent them. Not only that, it can also display when a link or an attachment in a mail have been opened. This can come be useful when you need to follow up on an email you’ve sent some time ago.
Once you enter someone’s email address into gmail sidekick, it will display all of the information it has on that person, those usually being job info, company info, twitter, facebook and linkedin profiles.
As always, there are some things which are better done in traditional ways. For example, in most cases it’s best to send less personalized emails than thousands of templated messages as you will probably get higher response rate with a more personal approach. There are numerous occasions in which this is the case, but when working with metrics and website statistics, it’s best to join forces with any of the abovementioned tools in order to get the most out of your time.
from Feedster http://www.feedster.com/blog/marcusjensen/digital-marketing-toolbox-essentials/
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