3 Free Tools Every Website Owner Should Be Using

It can be tough out there, trying to promote your business on the internet. There are a lot of people with a lot of advice and it can be difficult to know where to put your limited time and effort. Here are three industry standard freebies that website owners should get to know:

1) Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a must.  There is nothing more important than how well you rank on the Google search engine and this is a free tool from Google to provide insight into many different elements that may be used to rank your site.  It’s easy to set up – you may need to add a snippet of code or upload a file to prove it’s your site – and you get a ton of useful information, including how often your site is coming up for certain keywords, what your average rank is and how often people click. You need this – it’s free – do it now.  I’ll wait…

2) Google Analytics

Google Analytics is almost mandatory as well. You need to add tracking code to each website page you want to track. Depending on how many pages you have and how they’re set up, this may or may not be a big deal. Ask your developer for help if need be. Analytics provides a great deal of data about how many visitors come to your site, what they look at and more. You can use analytics to test out new content or pages to see how well they do versus other pages.  Though set up may be a little more involved than Webmaster Tools, it’s worth the effort to get the additional traffic data and to measure progress of any marketing effort.

3) Moz Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is one of my favorites. You don’t need an account and you don’t need to add anything on your site. Just enter your URL and get information about inbound links, domain authority and more. What’s even better – you can add up to 4 additional sites (like your competitors) and compare stats. Some of the lingo may seem like a foreign language, but take the time to learn what it means, it will be worth it.

So there you go – three free and easy ways to get a ton of information about your website and how it stacks up against the rest. Enjoy!