Google Analytics is one of the most underused tools out there.  This is a free tool given to you by Google that tracks all kinds of information about users who have been to your websites.  It can answer questions such as; where in the world are my users coming from? What are their demographics? What are their digital behaviors and interest? What did they do once they got to my website? What do they spend the most time looking at and much, much more!

This digital marketing tool is just full and I mean full of insights, SEMrush.  You can spend days and days of research inside of it.  You are able to see what your competitors rank for and on what pages.  This gives you an abundance of content for your marketing agency to write about.  It can also do research on organic traffic, is it up or down for you or your competitor.  One last thing we’ll mention before writing a book is there is also ad data on what ads your competitor is doing.

Have you ever started to type in a keyword phrase you wanted to search and google suggest related topics? Google knows what people similarly search and so they are giving it to you! If you take that content you can develop ways to better describe your products or services and again build content!

Just like with ads there is also a treasure trove of data about your audience through organic social media channels.  Each platform has a set of analytics that shows you what content your audience responds to, who your competitors are, and demographic information.

If you have run any kind of ads before and have pixels installed on your website for the various platforms you can gather all kinds of data.  Each platform is a little different but when you make the hypothesis of which audience you want to try you can see who actually responds to your marketing the best.  These platforms can also build lookalikes audiences into most platforms.  It’s crucial to get these pixels set up and be able to understand your audience better.

Have you ever wondered how a search term trends in Google searches? How long have people been searching for this keyword phrase, what are the highs and lows of a given year? Where is the world are they searching for this term more? That is what Google Trends can tell you!

This digital marketing tool does exactly what it’s named; answer the public. It answers questions that consumers have about your product or services.  This is by the far the best content marketing strategy that you can do for SEO.  When you answer the question that consumers have about what you offer you take away the objections to your product or service.

Want to know what your users think of your website or product/service? Then set one of Google’s free tools; Google surveys. This tool allows you to be able to have a pop-up on your website and ask all kinds of questions! It’s often used with Google merchant center and Google shopping to ask about how your shopping experience was.  Asking directly to your users is the best way to get the honest feedback you are looking for.

This digital marketing tool was developed by Rand Fiskin one of the most influential marketers in SEO.  With Sparktoro you can enter in a keyword phrase and it will tell you what hashtags your audience uses as well as websites they hang out on, podcasts they listen to, youtube channels they browse, and competitor social media channels.  It’s just a ton of competitor research at your figure tips. We are really only scratching the surface with this tool.

Did you know that Google can send you an email whenever a certain set of keywords is mentioned anywhere in the search results? Do you want to know when your brand is mentioned or when your competitor’s brand is mentioned? Maybe you just want to follow when your product or service is mentioned? You can do that with Google Alerts.

The Google Keyword Planner Tool is a tool inside of Google ads that tells you what the search volume is by specific keywords.  It’s different than Google trends as it’s a lot more detailed.  It will give you similar ways that someone is searching.  It will also show you how competitive a search term is.  If you are wanting to do Google ads then it can also tell you what you can maybe expect for cost per click.  Although this is a nationwide average so it tends to be off.  What you should also know is that 15% of search queries or what is entered into Google are new every day.  So, while it gives you keywords, it will not tell you exactly everything that is being searched in Google search results.

Similar but different from Sparktoro is Buzzumo. With this tool, you can see how popular posts were on organic social media by showing the engagement rates such as comments likes, and shares.  With existing articles having lots of engagement it surely is going to be a great topic to write about. You can also find influencers in your market to reach out to for sharing your content.