When we think digital marketing, we generally think about quiet guys sitting behind computer screens looking at tons of data and making weird noises when they see a spike in activity.
This isn’t very accurate, though based on how our office looks sometimes, it isn’t exactly inaccurate either. Anyway, we got a few digital marketers to share some of the free tools they use and how they can be effective for you.
This free-to-use backlink and spam analysis tool is a must-use for all digital marketers. It quickly analyses your website to test your existing backlinks to identify what works for you and what is actually damaging your online ranking.
Pro-tip: you can also use this to test your competitor’s website rankings and see how you can up your game and what has worked for them in terms of backlinks.
Google trends
With our limited attention span and the wide variety of topics being discussed online, services like Google Trends help us quickly and easily track mass consumer interest through their search. There are no numbers, but it gives you an idea of the hive mind of your local community.
Pro-tip: This is a great tool for news websites and blogs looking to tap into relevant trends for their audience. You can identify and then create content relevant to the consumer searches.
Canva
Huge Canva fanboy here. Be warned. I will fight anyone who doesn’t love Canva. This has been the greatest online design tool ever created for the poor marketer. Social media templates, infographics, simple design, and so much more. Thank you Canva.
Pro-tip: Their templates are awesome, and even design-illiterates can make a simple, but professional-looking graphic in minutes. This is great for social media posts if you want to make them look like it was done by an agency.
Google Analytics
We all need to know who visits our website, where they come from and what they do. Short of running into the street and asking people, we just use Google Analytics. How this works is that it analyses all traffic to the site and gives digital marketers insight into the UX, analytics, and basic user behaviour. It is usually for campaign measurement, to see if users visit your website or microsite, even focused on your call-to-action page.
Pro-tip: Campaigns need to be tracked, so using Google Analytics you can track visits before a campaign and visits during the campaign to showcase the success. It is also great for simple AB-testing, to identify which version has a better conversion rate.
Buffer
Buffer has a free-forever version, which I use and use extensively. This lets me connect a profile from each network (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and to schedule up to 10 posts for each network. This does limit it, but if you’re active enough, it is a great way to keep your social media platforms manageable.
Pro-tip: If you’ve got a global audience, schedule the same content twice a day to match the peak times for different time zones. This will limit repetition and reach a much wider audience.
Nano Banana
While not exclusively free, Nano Banana is a fantastic option that has limited free tier options and is an image generator and editor. Tools like this can be extremely helpful for marketers who need to generate images but don’t have the ability to capture them for whatever reason.
There are a number of capabilities with this tool, so it’s just a case of figuring them out and seeing if you want to upgrade to the full version later down the line. Well, here are some simple tools to start you on your path to becoming a proper digital marketer. These are free and quite effective ways to help your brand, blog, or business get that competitive advantage.
This article originally appeared on Tech Collective and is republished with their permission. For more articles from Tech Collective, click here!