In over 13 years in business, our technology and healthcare marketing agency has seen many tools come and go. While some have a longer shelf life than others, the dynamic landscape of online marketing has led to the development of many new and innovative tools and resources. In no particular order or rank, here is our list of the 40 most useful tools every marketer should check out heading into 2015. Enjoy!
Top 40 Tools for Online Marketers
- Google Analytics – An essential resource for any online marketer to analyze traffic and lead sources.
- Moz – One of the industry’s best resources for online marketing education and thought leadership and creator of several more tools on this list.
- Grammarly – A great resource for checking documents for typos, grammar mistakes, and plagiarism. Truly a lifesaver!
- Google Webmaster Tools – Check the status of your website to maximize visibility in Google’s search engine and receive urgent messages from Google regarding manual penalties.
- Bing Webmaster Tools – Bing’s version of Webmaster Tools is very similar to Google’s and allows you to maximize visibility in Microsoft’s search engine.
- MozCast – A site completely dedicated to tracking the volatility of Google’s algorithm, all presented in a weather report format.
- Canva – Easily create custom graphics for blog posts, social media, and more with free templates, backgrounds, images, and designs.
- OpenSiteExplorer – Compare your website’s backlink profile and other key metrics to up to 5 competitors. Great for evaluating the SEO landscape in your market.
- SEMrush – Do you ever wonder what PPC keywords or ad copy your competitors are using? SEMrush provides a snapshot of competitors’ search engine marketing activity.
- Search Engine Watch – Stay up-to-date on SEO, PPC, social, and content marketing industry news with daily or weekly newsletters delivered to your inbox.
- FollowerWonk – Analyze existing Twitter followers and find new, influential accounts to improve your social media marketing effectiveness.
- Google Alerts – Receive email alerts when Google finds new articles or information about your topics of interest. Great for keeping track of company, competitor, or industry news.
- Moz Top 10 – This semimonthly newsletter is full of web optimization tips from Moz’s top thought leaders and respected industry bloggers.
- Google Keyword Planner – Great for planning AdWords campaigns, but also an excellent way to generate keyword ideas for SEO based on traffic volume and competition.
- BrightLocal – Our favorite tool for tracking organic rankings. BrightLocal allows you to track rankings from a specific location, which is great for companies targeting specific geographic markets.
- Search Engine Land – Another great resource for industry news, offering weekly SEO, SEM, and local search marketing newsletters, as well as a daily recap of all search marketing news.
- The Beginners Guide to SEO – Moz’s comprehensive SEO guide is great for experienced SEOs or those new to the field. The guide covers everything from how search engines operate to measuring for success and everything in between.
- Google Custom URL Builder – An essential tool for tracking online marketing campaigns. Just plug in your destination URL and campaign parameters and Google Analytics will track your site visits accordingly.
- Moz Local – Simply enter your business information and Moz Local will find incorrect business listings, duplicate listings, and new local listing opportunities to help increase your local search marketing visibility.
- TagDef – The definitive guide of the meanings of hashtags.
- Advanced Guide to Google Penalty Removal – This comprehensive guide walks through the process of identifying a Google penalty, what caused the issue, how to fix it, and how to prevent future manual and algorithmic penalties.
- Moz Analytics – A comprehensive dashboard for tracking online marketing campaigns, search traffic, organic rankings, social activity, links, on-page optimization opportunities, and more.
- Google Structured Data Testing Tool – See which structured data Google is extracting from your website, including authorship, publisher, and other markup language.
- Bit.ly – More than just a link shortener, bit.ly analytics shows you information about the link and how users interact with it.
- Matt Cutts’ blog – Amid his personal blog posts, Google’s Distinguished Engineer and creator of the first version of SafeSearch often shares his opinions and insights on important Google algorithm changes before they happen. Although the tone of the blog is more personal given Cutts’ recent leave of absence from Google, you’ll still find tons of great information in his older posts.
- Google Webmaster YouTube Channel – The official YouTube channel for Google Webmasters, including the famous Matt Cutts SEO videos.
- Search Engine Watch on Twitter – Follow Search Engine Watch on Twitter to get important SEO articles and news in your Twitter feed.
- HubSpot Inbound Certification – Learn basic and advanced inbound marketing strategies and techniques from industry leader HubSpot, and successfully pass an inbound quiz to earn a personalized certification badge.
- Google Partners – Fulfill several individual or agency requirements to become an official Google Partner. Earn a badge for your website, access special AdWords promotions, and setup a Google Partners profile searchable by interested prospects.
- Google AdWords Certification – Earn individual and agency certifications in Google AdWords fundamental and advanced certification exams.
- Litmus – A critical tool for testing how emails and webpages render on different mail clients and browsers.
- BriteVerify – BriteVerify easily and accurately removes invalid email addresses from your email lists so you can get the most out of your email marketing campaigns without marring your lists.
- World Time Buddy – When running email campaigns across multiple time zones, use World Time Buddy to see when a given send will hit different locations.
- Bing Ads Certification – Complete training courses and an exam to become a Bing Ads Accredited Professional and earn a badge for your website.
- Moz Academy – Moz features a collection of their famous whiteboard marketing education videos, including inbound marketing, SEO, link building, and local marketing videos by Rand Fishkin, Cyrus Shepard and other Moz pros.
- MailCharts – Get intelligent insights into your competitors’ email marketing campaigns, including send times, send frequency, subject lines, email copy, and creative.
- Ghostery – This browser extension shows you which plug-ins and other tracking codes a website is using. Great for competitive intelligence.
- Piktochart – If you would like to incorporate infographics into your online marketing strategy but don’t have a design resource available, try creating your own infographics with Poktochart.
- SimilarWeb – Analyze website trends, rankings and data for your own site or for your competitors.
- MarketingCharts – Graphical representations of the industry’s latest research. Great for use in blog posts and content marketing!
