August 26, 2022

7 Essential SEO and Digital Marketing Tools & Why We Love Them

Key Takeaways on Essential Digital Marketing Tools for Businesses

  • Ahrefs is a versatile SEO and content marketing tool offering keyword research, link building, and content performance analysis, making it ideal for all-in-one campaign management.
  • SEMrush provides robust SEO and competitive analysis features, including backlink auditing and local SEO tools, which help businesses enhance their search presence and track brand mentions.
  • Screaming Frog is a powerful website crawler that enables in-depth website audits, helping users identify and prioritize areas for improved visibility and growth.
  • Google Analytics offers free insights into user behavior, traffic sources, and audience demographics, allowing businesses to measure and optimize their digital marketing strategies effectively.
  • Sprout Social combines social media management with social listening tools, enabling businesses to organize, monitor, and adjust their social media presence and engagement strategies.
  • GatherContent simplifies the content planning and collaboration process by offering visual project management and feedback features, making it a valuable tool for website content development.
  • Klaviyo provides advanced email and SMS marketing for e-commerce, integrating with popular platforms and offering data-driven insights into customer loyalty and retention.

Digital marketing would be nothing without the technology behind it. To drive traffic, relationships, and sales on your website, you need software that connects with your customers. (You also need experts who are well-versed in the technology, but that’s a whole other story!) Our team spends hours each day immersed in digital marketing platforms, so we’ve rounded up our top tools that will boost your results.

Essential Tools for Boosting Your Search Engine Rankings

Ahrefs: Your All-in-One SEO and Content Marketing Platform

  • Website: https://ahrefs.com/ 
  • Price: From $99 USD/month for small businesses to $999 USD/month for big enterprises

Ahrefs is an all-in-one marketing tool that provides comprehensive data for PPC, SEO, link building, and content marketing campaigns. It has a clean interface that allows you to navigate intuitively between different data tabs.

Content Explorer tool is handy

Along with supporting keyword research, competitor research, and link building efforts, the platform has a handy Content Explorer tool that helps you assess the most shared and popular resources on the web for a specific topic. This is a great resource to build content calendars, as it provides a number of data points beyond keyword difficulty, domain authority, and other similar metrics.

Ahrefs has a thriving YouTube channel that offers helpful marketing guidance to beginning and veteran marketers alike, all for free. Their blog content is also very nuanced and actionable.

All in all, Ahrefs lets you plan, execute, and manage your SEO campaigns all in one place.

SEMrush: Comprehensive SEO and Competitive Analysis Tool

  • Website: https://www.semrush.com/ 
  • Price: From $119.95 USD/month for small teams to $449.95 USD/month for large companies

I use SEMrush for auditing backlink profiles of client websites and competitor sites. It has a few more attributions than Ahrefs does in its current interface. The SEO Content Template is another novel feature that helps understand several on-page and SERP factors. Once you’ve built an outline in the template, you can export your content to Google Docs.

The local SEO and brand monitoring tools are particularly useful to gauge your company’s presence and mentions. This helps you optimize your website in local results and relevant corners of the web.

-Gagandeep Bimbh, Digital Marketing Specialist

Screaming Frog: Powerful Website Crawler for In-Depth Analysis

Screaming Frog crawls websites more fully than other similar tools. The smooth functionality allows you to easily navigate to different data tabs. We can really zero in on the right data and figure out the priorities for a website’s visibility and growth.

-Gagandeep Bimbh, Digital Marketing Specialist

Google Analytics: Free Insights into Website Traffic and User Behavior

Google Analytics is my favourite tool. When formulating a strategy, this software provides valuable insight into our users. We can analyze in-depth details surrounding website traffic and audience demographics to better understand the online behaviours of our clients’ customers.

Google Analytics is also an important tool to help us measure the success of a strategy. We can understand what areas are working and where there might be room for improvement, allowing us to pivot our efforts accordingly. 

-Britney Carswell, Strategist

Powerful Platforms for Managing Your Social Media Presence

Sprout Social: Comprehensive Social Media Management Solution

Sprout Social combines all your social media management needs into one beautiful package. The scheduling tool is highly visual and provides a calendar view of all your upcoming posts. The Smart Inbox is also great for organizing and responding to messages and comments across teams.

Social listening tools track your brand’s sentiments and trends

I love the social listening tools the most—they track your brand’s sentiments, trends, competitors, campaigns, and conversations. You can really use these insights to guide your social media and marketing strategies.

The Sprout Social blog is another awesome resource that keeps you tapped into the latest social media updates and best practices.

–Rachel Richards, Communications Strategist

Streamline Your Content Creation and Management Process

GatherContent: Simplify Content Planning and Collaboration

No matter the size of your website project, GatherContent streamlines the entire content management process. It helps you visualize and plan out how blocks will be laid out on each page.

Plus, GatherContent makes it simple for clients and team members to provide feedback and comments. It shows your entire workflow at a glance, allowing you to keep track of page statuses and deadlines.

–Rachel Richards, Communications Strategist

Enhance Customer Relationships with Powerful CRM Tools

Klaviyo: Advanced Email and SMS Marketing for E-commerce

Klaviyo is awesome for e-commerce business owners. The email and SMS marketing platform has several integrations with other common e-commerce apps, including Shopify, Gorgias, and Recharge & Rebuy. It offers a wealth of knowledge with in-depth analytics for customer loyalty, retention, and upselling.

–Alyssa Grams, Account Strategist

Share Your Favorite Digital Marketing Tools and Experiences

Every business is unique and needs different digital marketing tools to grow online. Do you use any of the above apps in your day-to-day work? Are there a few new ones you’re excited to try? Or, maybe you’d rather leave the technology to the experts.

Through our digital marketing service agreements, we gain a deep understanding of your goals, perform the right activities, and measure our results every step of the way. Contact us today for a free consultation.

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