Five tools to check how your website’s doing

When considering your next move with your digital marketing activity, whether you already do any or not, it’s handy to know where you’re at.

Fortunately, there are some handy tools out there which will give you a good overview of where you’re at and where you need to improve.

This is particularly handy for small and medium sized businesses who are perhaps looking to make the next step in their growth.

Search Metrics

One of the most well-rounded tools out there. The SEO visibility graph is useful, as it highlights your current position but also any peaks and troughs of your visibility over a time period. Particular troughs may require investigation, and it might be worth reflecting on what were you doing in the peaks.

You can also add competitors websites to the graph to see how your numbers and progress stacks up against the companies you’re going up against.

Another favourite element of Search Metrics for these overviews is the keyword tool, enabling you to see what keywords you’re ranking for and in what position on Google. You might be surprised by what’s included – but likewise you might find big holes in your search profile.

How they describe themselves: “The Searchmetrics Suite for enterprise companies is the global leader in SEO marketing and analytics, SEO optimization, social and content marketing.”

Majestic

This is a great tool for analysing how many links you are getting to your site and where they come from. It gives an overview to how many backlinks you’ve got and where they’re coming from.

This enables you to start the process of getting rid of any potential harmful links, which may be damaging your SEO visibility.

A quick look at the referring domains tab will show you where your links are coming from and how many from each domain. It also gives you some ideas as to how strong the website you are receiving your link from is according to Alexa and Majestic’s trust flow.

Another useful section is reviewing backlinks you have recently lost – which can you maybe seek about getting back.

How they describe themselves: “Link intelligence tools for SEO and Internet PR and Marketing. Site Explorer shows inbound link and site summary data.”

Google PageSpeed Insights

You can do all the work you want on your search visibility and website content, but if the technical foundations aren’t solid, then you might be fighting a losing battle.

This tool rates your site on both mobile and desktop for its performance, and also offers a list of recommendations to make improvements. If you’re using WordPress, there are plenty of plugins out there that assist with a number of the core suggested fixes, such as caching.

How they describe themselves: “Page Speed Insights measures the performance of a page for mobile devices and desktop devices.”

Copyscape

Duplicate content is the devil. At some point, has someone running your website been lifting content from elsewhere? Or maybe someone is copying your content.

The best way to check is using Copyscape. Put in your website URL or even some specific sentences, and it will let you know where it’s being copied, and also give you a percentage of how much of your site is replicated elsewhere. Useful.

How they describe themselves: “Copyscape is a free plagiarism checker. The software lets you detect duplicate content and check if your articles are original.”

SiteAlerts

This wasn’t originally on my list, but it’s worth a shout out. This gives you an insight to where traffic is coming from, on your site and on competitors. Whether that be through search, social or direct.

This could be something that is reviewed regularly over time to see what impact any content marketing campaign you are running is having.

How they describe themselves: “Instant insights on any website. How much traffic do they get? Where does it come from? What tools do they use? What keywords do they rank for?”

What other tools do you like and why? Let us know in the comments!

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