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Free Digital Marketing Tools That Helps You Grow Free Keyword Research and SEO Tools
Google Keyword Planner
You're really behind the curve if you haven't used Google's Keyword Planner to analyze keyword search volumes and gather keyword suggestions by now. While its primary function is to support your Google Ads PPC campaigns, it can also serve as a foundation for your SEO efforts. I won't go into depth on this one as it's old news.
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is both a Chrome extension and a Firefox add-on that is free to use. When you enable the plug-in, this keyword research tool shows search volumes, CPCs (estimated cost-per-click, assuming you were to run paid ads for this term), and competition from other websites.
SEMrush Free
SEMrush's free version is ideal for beginners who wish to explore an all-in-one SEO and PPC tool. What distinguishes this from Google Keyword Planner is the ability to view which landing pages keywords are ranking for and where the sites rank in Google (first page, second page, etc.).
Free Website Audit and Site Optimization Tools
Google Analytics
Analytics, as one of Google's top free tools, should be a part of your digital marketing plan from the start. In fact, I'd say that it's one of the most effective digital marketing tools available.
It only takes a few minutes to add the Analytics code to your website, allowing you to track every action taken by every visitor.
Many people think this to be nothing more than a traffic generator, but if you know what you're doing, it may significantly impact your marketing approach.
Google Analytics is not one of those digital marketing tools that should be neglected. Installing this early on is a critical move for your digital marketing plan. The information you can gather is highly valuable.
Google Search Console Tools
Google Search Console is a free tool that enables you to monitor, troubleshoot, and maintain your website's visibility in search results. It helps users better understand how their website appears to Google. You can see incoming links, fix indexing issues, disavow links, request page re-indexing, verify your domain(s) and choose a preferred version (www. versus non-www.), check what queries are being searched to get to your site's pages, and much more.
Google Tag Manager
A free tool for non-developers to deploy marketing tags (such as snippets of code or pixels) without having to go into the back end and *potentially* break things.
Optimize Google
This is another Google tool that makes it simple to A/B test different items on your website (CTAs, headlines, layout of content). It is very easy to use and will make your testing more efficient and quantitative. It also links to Google Analytics, giving your team a consolidated spot for all of your website data.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog's free version allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs per site. Depending on the size of the website you are analyzing, the 500 URL limit may stymie your efforts. The tool quickly analyses URLs and examines metadata, descriptions, titles, link errors (400/500 errors, 301 redirects), audits hreflang attributes, and other great features.
Free Marketing Research Tools
Google Scholar
I'm not sure why more people don't talk about Google Scholar, but I love it for researching scientific journals and looking into the latest research. It restricts your search to articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court decisions from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other websites. Combine it with a Google Alert to get outstanding research on your topics of interest delivered directly to your inbox.
Google Trends
Google Trends allows you to see what the world is searching for and how interest in concepts has changed over time. For example, I'm hearing a lot about "growth hackers" and "growth hacking." Are you as well? I put those terms into Google Trends, and it seems like there is a surge in interest in the subject.
The Blog Topic Generator
Are you running out of ideas? Give HubSpot's Blog Topic Generator a few nouns that characterize your content areas, and it will generate a week's worth of post ideas for you.
Free Page Speed Tools
Pingdom
Pingdom is a free tool for testing the speed of your website (or competing sites). It will sort the response codes and content types by size (images, scripts, fonts, etc.).
Google Pagespeed Insights
Google provides a similar site performance tool, although it is not as deep as Pingdom. Because they have different grading scales, it is best to use both and compare the results.
What's cool about Google PageSpeed Insights is that you can view the grades from a mobile or desktop perspective (which can vary greatly):
Website Grader
HubSpot's Website Grader assesses and grades your website's overall performance and "grades" it based on mobile factors, SEO, security, speed, and performance, as well as providing tips on how to enhance your website.
SharedCount
Do you want to see how your content (or someone else's content) has spread across the web? Simply paste the web link into SharedCount for sites that do not display social media share button numbers. Instead, utilize the multi-URL dashboard to enter multiple site addresses and export a quick report.
Free Social Media Tools
Canva
Canva is a wonderful tool for creating (and standardizing) social media graphics and templates. It is quite user-friendly and really handy if you need simple graphic design work as a non-designer.
Free Stock Photo Website
These could be used for blog posts as well, but I'm including them in the social section because they pair well with Canva integration (Canva lets you upload images to their platform to use in your creative).
The main websites I use to gather free and reusable stock images are:
Some of these are labeled for reuse and modification, while others are labeled only for reuse. Read the usage rights and give correct credit when it's necessary.
Facebook Text Overlay Tool
Images and videos on paid Facebook ads can only contain 20% text, this tool takes the guesswork out for you so you can test your ad creative compatibility before ever uploading the ad and having it be rejected.
Social Media Message Optimizer
This Coschedule tool assists you in fine-tuning your postings so that your social media marketing efforts don't go to waste (by increasing engagement and trust with your audience).
Free Email Marketing Tools
Mailchimp
MailChimp's free version is ideal for individuals who are just getting started with email marketing or automated emails. It is also beneficial for individuals who want to promote to a limited and/or niche audience.
This plan allows you 2,000 contacts and 10,000 monthly sends. It only allows you to have one automation sequence (although you can test out alternative options or "triggers" by deleting the automated sequence and creating another one).
Mailerlite
This is a wonderful choice for smaller businesses wishing to send bulk emails, as it is quite similar to MailChimp. You have the option to send 12,000 emails per month to 1,000 subscribers. They also include email automation, A/B testing, email reporting, and user-friendly editing.
Free Reading & Writing Tools
Readability
Drag the Readability bookmarklet to your toolbar to convert any web content into a simple, easy-to-read format, along with an estimate of how long it will take you. Check out the other bookmarklet options here, including one that sends longer content to your Kindle for later reading.
Hemingway
We all strive for clear, simple writing. Get some help from Hemingway. If you paste a passage into the app, it will analyze it and indicate overly dense passages, superfluous adverbs, and other errors.
On-Page Optimization Tool
This free On-Page optimization tool from Internet Marketing Ninjas provides a one-stop glance at what's going on with a certain page of your site. Enter a URL to get statistics on keyword density, internal and external links, and more.
Free Relationship tools
Newsle
Do you want to keep up with certain thought leaders or industry influencers? Sign up for Newsle using Facebook or LinkedIn, and it will watch your Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, and email contacts and notify you when they are in the news.
Rapportive
Install Rapportive to make your email work harder for you, a Chrome extension that lets you get to know your contacts better by providing their photo, job, company, LinkedIn profile, and recent tweets.
MentionMap
With MentionMapp, you can see how any Twitter user is connected to others, making all your connections visual and simple to understand and explore.
Miscellaneous Free Tools to Use
Trello
Personal To-Do List and Project Management There is also an app for your phone that connects with many other platforms, like Google Calendar.
Flycut Plug-in Clipboard Manager
A copy-paste Mac add-on tool that preserves previously copied text so you can readily access it if you wind up copying something else (without having to go back and recopy). It was designed for engineers who must repeatedly copy and paste code, but I also use it for SEO-related activities.
Percentage Change Calculator
I use this because I don't trust manually typing formulas into my calculator. This does the work for me so that I can precisely measure increases or decreases for a certain campaign.
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