Curious as to what tools we use to help us in our professional digital marketing efforts? Check out some of the favorites that we use every day in our line of work!
You don’t have to be a digital marketing expert to test out these marketing tools yourself. Give them a try if you’re feeling confident. If not, we are always here to help you with building brand awareness, SEO strategies and more!
If you are working on optimizing your website yourself, we do offer other educational blogs that have tips and strategies for the DIY business owner.
Popular Digital Marketing Tools We Recommend
To succeed online you will have to time and effort into your digital marketing. There are a ton of great online marketing tools that make it easier to grow your online business. Rather than spending time trying to figure out which ones are best for your online marketing efforts, we have narrowed down the choices for you.
We love all of these tools and by using them we’re able to rank our client websites higher in organic search results than their local competitors.
Best Tools For Promoting Small Business Websites
Here’s a list of our favorite online tools that we not only recommend small business owners try but continue to use on a regular basis. You’ll find the best free and paid online marketing tools for:
- Website Builders
- SEO
- Content Writing
- Social Media
- Local Map Business Listings
Let’s Get Started With The Best Options For Building a Website
Small Business Website Builders
Picking the right kind of website builder for your business website shouldn’t be made in a hurry, especially if you are being bombarded by ads from different website software companies. The content management system (CMS) you choose to build your website on, should allow you to create content at some point without you knowing any coding or requiring the the assistance of a web developer.
You may want to hire a professional to design and develop the website, but after that, you shouldn’t need an expert unless you have an issue, need to add a new feature or want to change the look of your site.
Each of the 4 website builders we recommend is user-friendly and learning how to create pages or blog posts is easy.
Recommended Website Builders
All of these website content management systems (CMS) come with their own set of pros and cons. It’s up to you to decide which one fits the needs of the business and your marketing methods. If you need help deciding which one is best for you, check out our article – “Small Business Web Design and Development Options To Build a Website“.
If you don’t want to read about them, the best option for a small business is always to invest you money into a custom WordPress website. The worst is WIX.
Next Up, Search Engine Optimization Tools
Best SEO Tools For WordPress Websites
These are our favorite tools for diagnosing, improving and monitoring SEO progress on websites. While our company uses these on WordPress websites, you can also use these tools on most websites built on other platforms.
No matter who is doing the search engine optimization work to your small business website, you or an SEO company, it is important to track your progress. You should know when keyword rankings are improving or dropping and using the best plugins to optimize your website for Google organic search.
You’ll be able to do exactly that using these awesome SEO marketing tools.
Recommended Search Engine Optimization Tools
- SEMRush
- Spyfu
- Screaming Frog
- Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools)
- Google Analytics
Take some time to check out the first three tools above, they all offer a free version or an introductory trial offer. The other two, if you do not have access to them, ask your web developer to add you as a user.
Spyfu is great for competitor research, just plug in your rival’s website to get insight into what they are doing.
Both Google Search Console and Analytics provide you with daily insight into your website traffic. You can even filter your data to only show organic traffic.
Moving On To Content Writing Tools
Best Content Writing Tools
Content writing tools are not necessary however they can make the content writing process a little easier. Using them can help you improve your on-page content creation efforts while saving you valuable time.
These are our favorite ones to use when writing and evaluating online content.
Recommended Content Writing Tools
Google expects you to have good content quality on your website. Pages that rank well in organic search results are optimized for target keywords and phrases. On-page content needs to be relevant while providing informative content that answers a question or provides a solution.
The content writing tools we recommend will help you create better content for your website. They each provide you with useful writing tips and suggestions.
Hemingway App allows you to see your word count, character count, reading level and other helpful writing tips. For SEO content writing ideas, use the SEMRush On-Page SEO Checker.
Prone to typos? Grammarly is a tool you can use to fix grammar errors and other writing mistakes.
If you suspect another website may have stolen some or all of your text, you can run your site pages through Copyscape to find websites that plagiarized your content.
Time To Promote Using Social Media Tools
Best Social Media Management Tools
When you have an awesome website, good quality content and you offer a great product or service, it is time to promote your company on social media. A lot of business owners do not have a lot of time to invest into creating posts or promoting their business daily on social media which makes using these a grat time-saver.
Most SMM management tools allow you to post across different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or Twitter from one place. These platforms also provide other features to boost posts and create social media ads
Recommended Social Media Tools
Not only is it important to create engaging social media content, so is content posting consistency. It can be a chore for small business owners to write a post for each social channel daily or even once a week.
That’s where these social media tools come in handy. They will allow you to pre-schedule social media posts that will post your pages, create beautiful visual graphics and have the ability to easily share relatable content from other relevant sources.
Reach More Local Customers Through Business Map Listings
Best Local Map Business Listings
An easy and free way to advertise your business online is by having a local search map listing. When someone searches for services, products or information related to your business type or industry, map results are prominent in the results. Business listings also show up in map apps.
Create an informative map listing by filling in as many details as you can and updating all of the information. We recently wrote an article, “How To Get Your Business Listing To Rank Higher on Google Maps Results“, that offers tips for small business owners to improve their profiles.
More people will find your business. The map listings will provide them with your address, the ability to get driving directions to your location, a link to your website, your hours of operation and your phone number.
Recommended Business Listings
It takes a few minutes to claim or create a business listing. A vital part of promoting your website is to have it show up in Google maps results. If you are not showing up in local maps, you are losing out of a huge share of local customers who are searching for businesses like yours.
To increase your visibility, we also recommend creating a business profile on Bing Places which shows results in Bing.com results and on Microsoft devices. You can also create a business listing on Maps Connect to show up in results on iPhone and other Apple devices.
Have multiple locations or own a franchised business? MOZ Local is great for managing a group of listings all in one place. You’ll be able to make updates as well as monitor and respond to reviews.