Whether it’s your first time opening your website’s analytics tab or you’re a seasoned SEO wizard, knowing your audience better than your competition can give you the edge that helps your business succeed. The better you understand your audience, the better you can serve them content, services, and products that add value to their lives!
The best way to do this is to use digital analytics tools to measure your marketing, but choosing the right tool from the hundreds that are out there can be a bit tricky. Analytics tools are key to success in today’s digital marketing landscape, but choosing the wrong one can set you back in both time and money, and could even set your business on the wrong course.
Luckily, there are dozens of data analytics tools that can give you rich insights into your business—for free! Read on for our top free digital analytics tools to measure your marketing and help you make the best strategic decisions on how to better serve your customers, advertising partners, and readers.
Get the 50,000 Foot View With Google Analytics
If you’re at all involved with content strategy, you’re probably familiar with this powerhouse of a data analytics tool. Google Analytics is easily the most used, and perhaps the most powerful, platform in data analytics since it’s completely free to use, full of features, and has an impressive range of extensions and integrations.
Once you’ve added Google Analytics to your site, you can set it to track a number of data metrics, ranging from what’s driving traffic to your site to what actions visitors are taking on a certain page. For example, you could track how many times they visit your site before making a purchase, how they’re interacting with ads, or whether they’re sharing content to social media. Google Analytics will log these goals, also known as conversions, in a database where you can then view, analyze, and export them.
Admittedly, Google Analytics’ interface is a bit, well, how do we put this… “highly technical.” However, it more than compensates with the rich data insights that the tool can provide. You can track campaigns that are driving traffic to your site, create your own customized reports, and set up custom alerts to have your insights delivered at specific times or for certain metrics milestones. This information will allow your marketing team to adjust their strategies and improve customer experience!
Optimize Your SEO With SEMRush
Anyone that has worked in marketing since the year 1996 is probably familiar with search engine optimization—if not, you need to find a webinar ASAP. But even those who have been delving into keywords and rankings for years might struggle to get an edge in today’s search-engine-optimized world. Enter SEMRush.
SEMRush makes SEO easy. Just enter a domain, keyword, or URL in the search bar, and you’ll gain access to a wealth of insights, ranging from website or keyword traffic breakdown by organic search, paid search, backlinks, and display ads to live updates on top organic and paid keywords and competitors. It’ll also help you understand how Google sees your site, so you can better understand how you can optimize your content to improve impressions, clicks, and rankings, as well as to get your content displayed on Google’s results page.
Tools like SEMRush can help you optimize your content for search engine and user access, and ensure that you’re getting the rankings and engagement that you need to keep moving forward.
Strategically Plan and Place Ads With Ad Planner Tools
Ad Planner Tools is yet another offering from Google that you can think of as the bridge between Google Analytics and Google Ads. It helps you perform keyword research to analyze and discover keywords related to your brand and see estimates of Google keywords search volumes and how competitive the terms are, SEO-wise.
For each keyword, Keyword Planner shows you the average monthly searches on Google, how your competition is performing, and estimated bidding ranges for placing ads on keywords. Rather than an exact number, Google Keywords displays search volume results as either a ranking (Low, Medium, or High) or an indexed range. This can be helpful for understanding on a larger scale how ads could perform, but can make it somewhat challenging to understand deeper demographics.
Keep Things Social with Facebook Insights
Did you know that business decision makers’ median amount of time spent on Facebook per day was 74% higher than other people on the platform? They use it more weeks a month, more days a week, and more minutes per day than the average person. Business decision makers are making important decisions throughout their work day — and they’re also on Facebook during their work day. That means you have the potential to reach this important audience at key times throughout the day, not simply when they are making a purchase or during peak television hours.
Facebook Insights is a tool to help you do just that. Not only does it help you learn more about your target audience, including aggregate information about geography, demographics, and purchase behavior, but it can help you reach power users who are more likely to engage with your content. The tool looks at trends about your current or potential customers across Facebook so you can make informed decisions and reactions on the platform to improve your reach and customer engagement!
Master Your Web Presence With Moz Webtools
One of the first exclusively SEO-focused companies, Moz remains at the top of the SEO game to this day. Whether you want an alternative to the clunky monolith that is Google Analytics or you’re looking for an industry-vetted one-stop shop for all things SEO, you’ll probably find what you need at Moz.
They offer an impressive free suite, including powerful keyword, link, and domain explorers that help you understand deep SEO metrics and optimize your content for web performance and user engagement. They also have great online presence tools that can help you see how your location appears on local search engines and directories, and how you can react to daily search engine algorithm changes to keep your site on top.
Get Clear, Actionable Metrics With Neon Canvas
Clearly, tracking vital engagement statistics doesn’t require deep pockets. Thanks to the huge range of awesome free digital analytics tools out there, you can optimize your content and get an edge on your competition without spending a penny.
If you’d like a professional touch on your marketing analytics, or simply don’t have the time to track all that data yourself, talk to the digital marketing experts at Neon Canvas! We’ll be happy to help you analyze your metrics and make a marketing plan to ensure growth and customer satisfaction across the board.
Here at Neon Canvas, we create your unique brand to optimize your advertising and help you build lasting relationships with your audience. We offer a full range of services, including digital marketing services that’ll expertly leverage the above tools to help you get the most out of your marketing. Get in touch to request your FREE digital marketing audit so you can have the information you need to be successful!