It is important to have the best analytics at your disposal, and that begins with selecting the right tools for your needs. For any form of digital marketing, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the right website analytics will make the difference in your effectiveness and success as a marketer.
What Are Analytics Tools?
When we use the term “analytics tools,” we are referring to any website, Chrome extension, or plugin that provides analytical insights to inform your digital marketing strategy. In terms of Search Engine Optimization, this can include any tool that uncovers vulnerabilities or identifies opportunities that you could put into action with an SEO strategy. The specific services that each tool provides will vary extensively, with each tool offering unique insights to a different marketing need.
Top Recommended Tools
As an SEO agency, FourFront works with most of the tools listed below on a regular basis. With that said, there are certain tools that we rely on completely in order to provide SEO services. These are our top recommendations that we think every digital marketing agency should be using.
Google Analytics
Key Strengths: Website performance, Reporting
Price: Free
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offering provided by Google. With Google Analytics, you will be able to review details related to website performance, including perspectives such as the source, advertising campaigns, region and more. There are also unique reporting capabilities and analytics models that are offered directly through this service.
SEMRush
Key Strengths: Keyword Research, Competitor Insights
Price: $119.95 – $449.95 per month
SEMRush is an analytics platform that offers unique SEO insights that can give you the edge in the market in terms of analytical insight. While there are insights on advertising campaigns, content marketing and more, the most useful information is around keyword research and competitor insights. Unlike many other analytics tools, SEMRush provides information on competitors as well as your own site. A macro perspective of your industry can help inform your decision-making.
Looker Studio
Key Strengths: Reporting
Price: Data connectors may cost from $29 to over $100 per connector
Looker Studio, which up until recently was referred to as Google Data Studio, is a reporting tool that can create interactive dashboards that blends with many different data sources. The amount of complexity you may want feature in your reports is up to you: there is a long list of data connectors you can utilize to pull in as much insight as you want into your reports. Additionally, the interactive nature of these reports makes them very easy to share with your clients and walk through together.
Site Performance Analytics
The most important tool you will need for analytics is a means of measuring the performance of your website. Before you can go into any more detail, you should begin with a tool that analyzes the traffic that is coming into your website from various sources.
Google Search Console
Key Strengths: Keyword Research
Price: Free
Google Search Console is an analytics service offered by Google that specializes in keyword insights. With Search Console, you are able to see which keywords are driving organic traffic into your site, which few other services can offer in this level of detail. In addition to clicks, you can also utilize keyword data such as impressions, rank, and click-through-rate.
Adobe Analytics
Key Strengths: Website Performance
Price: $30,000 – $350,000 per year
Adobe Analytics is an analytics tool similar to Google Analytics, with performance data and reporting capabilities. You can monitor the traffic coming into your site, deepen your analysis with different data visualizations, and use their reporting tools to generate custom reports for your needs.
Heap
Key Strengths: Website Performance, Funnel Reporting
Price: Free to $3,600 per month (more complex plans will vary in price above $3,600)
Heap is an analytics tool that provides website performance, while focusing on funnel visualizations. If you are interested in learning more about your customer’s journey on your website, Heap is a great tool for better understanding and reporting on this information.
User Experience
User Experience (UX) is the practice of analyzing product use and general satisfaction of the user in any experience. From a digital marketing perspective, UX is the analysis of how the user interacts with your website. Identifying all means of improving satisfaction and leading users to a conversion is the ultimate goal of UX in Search Engine Optimization.
HotJar
Key Strengths: Heat Mapping
Price: Free – $80 per month
HotJar specializes in heat mapping, providing analytics on the user habits on the site. You can review exactly what is receiving interaction on your web pages, and what is not getting as much interactivity. This can inform the design and layout of your pages to maximize the effectiveness of your content.
UXCam
Key Strengths: Mobile App Analytics
Price: Free – Varies
UXCam is a user experience analytics service that specializes in mobile app analytics. Review the effectiveness of your mobile app in terms of user flow, heat maps and user interaction.
MixPanel
Key Strengths: Mobile App Analytics, User Interaction
Price: Free – $833 per month
MixPanel is an analytics service that specializes in product analytics for websites and mobile applications. You are able to utilize custom reporting to review user engagement and develop strategies to improve on your site or app’s user experience.
Data Crawling
Data crawling is a unique capability that can give you an edge over your competition in terms of digital marketing. With any of the following data crawling tools, you will be able to generate a review of entire websites, with a list of all their pages and insights for each page. This can aid in generating sitemaps, measuring sitewide performance and making macro-perspective adjustments to a website.
Screaming Frog
Key Strengths: Data Crawling
Price: Free – $139 per year
Screaming Frog is an SEO site audit tool, and is our data crawling tool of choice. With Screaming Frog, you can type in your URL and generate a list of all pages found on that website, subdomain, or subfolder. You will be able to find information such as page errors, metadata, and technical details. You can also connect various data sources including Google Analytics to include even more detail on each page.
Link Redirect Trace
Key Strengths: Redirect Analysis
Price: Free Chrome Extension
Link Redirect Trace is a free Google Chrome extension that provides thorough insights related to redirects on your website. You can measure the number of redirects, REL-canonicals and ensure that all meta robots are working correctly.
Reporting
Having the ability to generate custom reports for your clients is a valuable way to stand out among your competitors. The following tools can help you generate clean and interactive reports that you can send to your clients with ease.
Tableau
Key Strengths: Reporting
Price: $15 – $70 per month
Tableau is a data visualization and reporting tool similar to Looker Studio. You can combine data sources and other pieces of data connectivity to ensure your reports are interactive and engaging.
FineReport
Key Strengths: Reporting
Price: Free
FineReport is a reporting tool that specializes in business intelligence. You can also utilize enterprise reports to gain an enterprise-level perspective on the performance of your website and your business at large.
Site Speed
Page speed is becoming more and more of an important element of SEO, with Google favoring quick pages in their search results. Having the ability to measure and analyze page speed is an incredibly valuable capability that every digital marketer should have at their disposal.
Lighthouse
Key Strengths: Site Speed
Price: Free Chrome Extension
Lighthouse is a Google Chrome extension that provides insights on page performance, most notably page speed. You can also get insights on user experience and a set of actionable recommendations on how to improve your page experience.
Page Speed Insights
Key Strengths: Site Speed
Price: Free
Page Speed Insights is a free tool that provides insight on the experience of your website. You can see mobile experience data, as well as site speed and user accessibility.
BONUS: Core Web Vitals Audit
Key Strengths: Sitewide, page-level CWV scoring
Price: Custom pricing
Our Core Web Vitals Audit gives you the information you need for every page on your website. The CWV Audit provides page-level scoring for all three CWV metrics and provides remediation information respective to each metric. This includes the Largest Contentful Paint (time, largest element on page), Cumulative Layout Shift (identifies the elements that shift during load), and First Input Delay (identifies elements contributing to scoring).
Link Analysis
Link analysis may not be as crucially important as it was in the early days of SEO, but it is still very important for a properly functioning and useful website. Ensure that you are linking effectively to your priority pages, without putting so many links on your site that Google will consider it a penalty.
Moz Link Explorer
Key Strengths: Link Analytics
Price: Free with Moz subscription
Moz Link Explorer is a tool that comes with your Moz subscription, allowing you to review all links coming into and going out of your website. This analysis will help identify opportunities to improve linking, take advantage of link opportunities and correct any link errors. Since this tool is integrated with Moz, you can utilize the domain authority scoring system created by Moz to measure the effectiveness of your link strategy over time.
Ahrefs Backlink Checker
Key Strengths: Link Analytics
Price: Free
Ahrefs Backlink Checker is a free tool that will provide information related to backlinks for a specific page or your entire website. You will also be able to identify any broken links on your site. There is also an authority score metric that you can measure over time to ensure that your link strategy is working effectively.
Local SEO
Local SEO is a unique form of SEO that focuses on the local experience in the search results. For users that search for local items such as ‘barbershop near me,’ there is a unique search experience tailored to what a user may be looking for locally. Having the ability to monitor and act on local SEO needs is a crucial element to being a digital marketing agency in the modern age of SEO.
BrightLocal
Key Strengths: Local SEO Analytics, Local Citations
Price: $29 – $79 per year
BrightLocal is generally considered the premier option for anyone aiming to work in local SEO. With this tool, you can analyze and act upon your local SEO needs. You can report on all local SEO activity, and you also have the ability to take action in terms of generating local citations on local listing websites across the internet.
Google Business Profile
Key Strengths: Local SEO
Price: Free
Google Business Profile is the only way to optimize your local listing inside of the search result. With Business Profile, you can manage all of your locations, optimize your listing results and create custom posts that make you local listing more engaging.
Whitespark
Key Strengths: Local SEO
Price: $20 – $167 per month
Whitespark is a local SEO software that provides insights on local rank and internet-wide reputation. Monitor reviews across the internet and manage your local citations to ensure you are coming across accurately and positively.
BONUS: Geo Report
Key Strengths: Geo-spatial Google Analytics data
Price: Custom pricing
The Geo Report is a proprietary report created and developed by the FourFront team. The Geo Report combines our proprietary spatial calculations with your Google Analytics data. You’re no longer limited by seeing data at a city level – you’ll be able to see performance data for a XX-mile radius around a physical or virtual location for you to get the most out of your marketing spend.
WordPress SEO
WordPress is one of the most common web development tools in the market. What makes WordPress so popular is the feature of plugins, where any means of additional software can be downloaded and installed into your WordPress account. In terms of SEO, you have access to a wide range of resources for analyzing and optimizing your website all integrated into your development software.
Yoast SEO
Key Strengths: WordPress SEO
Price: Free – $99 per year
Yoast SEO is a widely popular WordPress plugin that provides SEO insights that are quick and easy to implement. Since it is a plugin inside WordPress, the recommendations are built into your website development, making the process of applying SEO adjustments seamless and simple.
Ahrefs SEO
Key Strengths: WordPress SEO
Price: $99 – $999 per year
Ahrefs SEO WordPress Plugin is a simple extension of WordPress that provides quick SEO analytics directly implemented into your website. You can review analytics such as content audits, traffic monitoring and organic analysis.
RankMath
Key Strengths: WordPress SEO
Price: Free
RankMath is an accessible SEO tool that can easily be installed and used inside of WordPress. You will have access to resources such as optimization recommendations, schema markup, keyword data and 404 monitoring.
It is important to have the right tools if you want to be an effective SEO specialist. If you are trying to implement effective SEO for your own business, then some of these tools may help make it possible to check all required boxes, especially the WordPress plugins. If you feel overwhelmed with the amount of tools and resources required for successful SEO, we completely understand. to one of our team members for a free website assessment and to learn more about how we can help ease your SEO analytics needs.
