useful online tools to help with your digital...
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Useful Online Tools to Help with your Digital Marketing
Analytics and Usability Tools
Alexa -‐ www.alexa.com
Description: Alexa provides in-‐depth analytics on websites. Unlike Google Analytics, which only allows you to collect data on your own website, with Alexa, you can analyse any site you want, meaning that you can gather information on competitors
Cost: Three different pricing plans:
-‐ Basic -‐ $9.99 p/month -‐ Insight -‐ $49 p/month -‐ Advanced -‐ $149 p/month
Google Analytics – www.google.com/analytics
Description: Google Analytics uses javascript to collect and analyse data from your website before relaying the important information back to you in user-‐friendly reports available in your Google Analytics account. With Google Analytics you get an insight into how users find your website and what they do when they get there.
Cost: Free (Google Analytics Premium is $150,000 p/year)
URL Builder – www.support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en-‐GB Details: The Google Analytics URL Builder enables you to append custom parameters to a URL enabling you to distinguish between different campaigns in your Analytics reports. By default, Google Analytics only tracks PPC text search ads and organic meaning all other traffic gets lumped into the referral category. You can use the URL builder to identify traffic from other sources, such as email, display and social media.
Cost: Free – access via the above URL
Crazy Egg -‐ www.crazyegg.com
Description: Crazy Egg explores users’ journeys on your site in more detail than Google Analytics by paying attention to things such as where users are clicking on a page, or
how far they scroll down a page before abandoning it, and segmenting clicks on your site by traffic source.
Cost: Five different pricing plans
-‐ Basic -‐ $9 p/month -‐ Standard -‐ $19 p/month -‐ Plus -‐ $49 p/month -‐ Pro -‐ $99 p/month
Search Marketing Management Tools
Screaming Frog SEO Spider -‐ www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-‐spider
Details: The SEO Spider tool from Screaming Frog enables you to audit any website and identifies any technical SEO issues that may be affecting your site, such as missing meta data, incorrect status codes from server or redirect errors, details of inbound and outbound links, and even offers you the option of being able to generate an XML sitemap for your website.
Cost: Free – simply download it
Majestic SEO -‐ www.majesticseo.com
Details: Majestic SEO is a link analysis tool which provides you with an analysis of the backlink profile of any domain, giving you an
Cost: Six different pricing plans:
-‐ Free -‐ Silver -‐ £29.99 p/month -‐ Gold -‐ £99.99 p/month -‐ Platinum -‐ £250 p/month -‐ The 500 -‐ £500 p/month -‐ The 1000 -‐ £1,000 p/month
AdWords Editor -‐ www.google.co.uk/intl/en/adwordseditor
Details: The AdWords Editor is a useful tool for editing and managing your AdWords account offline. You can make multiple changes to campaigns with the bulk editing tools, export or import files, and see statistics for all campaigns.
Cost: Free – simply download it
Online Video Tools
Animoto – www.animoto.com
Details: Animoto is a video creation service that allows you to create beautiful videos from individual photos and video clips, with the option to add extra touches such as backgrounds and music.
Cost: Five different pricing plans, categorised into personal and business:
Personal
-‐ Lite – Free -‐ Plus -‐ £5 p/month -‐ Pro -‐ £35 p/month
Business
-‐ Pro -‐ £219 p/year -‐ Pro Premium -‐ £499 p/year
YouTube Editor -‐ www.youtube.com/editor
Details: Often overlooked, the YouTube editor allows you to customise, edit or create mashups of any of your YouTube videos. With YouTube Editor, you can even add or change the audio in your video, and add transitions, text and photos to your video.
Cost: Free
Powtoon -‐ www.powtoon.com
Details: With Powtoon, you can create animated videos or presentations, adding an extra element of individuality to your work.
Cost: Three different pricing plans:
-‐ Free -‐ Pro -‐ $19 p/month -‐ Business -‐ $57 p/month
Social Media Tools
Buffer – www.bufferapp.com
Details: Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that enables you to schedule and publish posts across a range of different social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. You are also provided with analytics for any posts you publish through the Buffer app allowing you to compare metrics and they even provide you with content inspiration for your posts.
Cost: Five different pricing plans, two for personal use and three for business use:
Personal
-‐ The Individual Plan – Free -‐ The Awesome Plan -‐ $10 p/month
Business
-‐ Small -‐ $50 p/month -‐ Medium -‐ $100 p/month
Large -‐ $250 p/month
Simply Measured – www.simplymeasured.com
Details: Simply Measured offer detailed analysis reports into your social media efforts. These reports cover a range of different areas, from audience and content analysis, to competitor benchmarking and ad campaign analysis, across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram.
Cost: Some reports are free to access, and there are three paid pricing plans:
-‐ Social -‐ $500 p/month -‐ Professional -‐ $800 p/month -‐ Enterprise – Price on request
Canva -‐ www.canva.com
Details: Canva enables you to create and design images for your online content. You can also use it to edit photos and share your images with other people from your account.
Cost: Free, although there are premium images which come with a price tag of $1
SocialBakers -‐ www.socialbakers.com
Details: SocialBakers is a social media analytics platform which enables you to measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns and compare your results against industry benchmarks, easily allowing you to identify opportunities for improvement.
Cost: Four different pricing plans, each come with a 14 day free trial
-‐ Basic -‐ $120 p/month -‐ Advanced -‐ $240 p/month -‐ Premium -‐ $480 p/month -‐ Enterprise -‐ $1000 p/month
Research Tools
Google Keyword Planner – www.adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
Details: The Google Keyword Planner allows you to conduct keyword research for your organic and paid search marketing efforts, giving you a wealth of information including: search volumes for keywords, an overview of monthly search trends for keywords, estimated keyword CPC (cost-‐per-‐click) for paid search campaigns, level of competition for keywords, as well providing keyword and ad group suggestions.
Cost: Free (requires an AdWords account)
Google Page Speed Insights – www.developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
Details: Google Page Speed Insights allows you to test your own (or any) website and gives you a score out of 100 on how it performs, it terms of speed and user friendliness across desktop and mobile devices. You are also provided with a list of suggestions to help improve both facets of your website.
Cost: Free
Google Display Planner – www.adwords.google.com/da/DisplayPlanner/Home
Details: The Google Display Planner gives you the ability to identify potential placements, calculate impression and reach estimates, and compare costs for your display advertising campaigns.
Cost: Free (requires an AdWords account)
Google Trends – www.google.com/trends/
Details: Google Trends lets you see how popular a keyword is in terms of the amount of searches carried out for it in a particular location, timeframe, or compared to other keywords. You can also see information on what’s popular now in terms of searches, and the most searched topics of the last year.
Cost: Free
Open Site Explorer -‐ www.opensiteexplorer.org
Details: Open Site Explorer enables you to carry out a comparative analysis of the domain and link profile of your own website and your competitors’. In the report table, the website with the best result for each aspect analysed is highlighted, enabling you measure your results against your competitors and see what you should be aiming for.
Cost: Free
Survey Monkey -‐ www.surveymonkey.com
Details: Create branded and customised surveys to get insights into how your customers think and feel about your business.
Cost: Four different pricing plans
-‐ Basic – Free -‐ Select -‐ £24 p/month -‐ Gold -‐ £299 p/year -‐ Platinum -‐ £779 p/year
Honeycomb – Creative Works is financed by the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund through the INTERREG IVA Cross-border Programme managed by the Special EU Programmes Body