Whether it is a blog or an e-commerce business, launching a business on the side comes with some spending constraints. It can be anything from lack of funds to invest, or you need to validate the idea of investing more money. That is how Kasera was started. I used all the free tools available to keep the cost down until I proved the business model.Â
Organic search engine traffic is one of the best ways to acquire users without paying for advertisements. The following are some basic tools that will help you achieve that.
1. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a must-have tool, and, like many other tools from Google, it’s free. It is a great source of information to learn what keywords people are using to find the website, what pages they are landing, and their rank. It will also show issues with the website so that the website owner can take action on issues preventing the website from ranking. This tool will also show the backlink that Google discovered and the pages they are linking to, which makes it a must-have tool with some credible information.
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another must-have tool to analyze traffic on a website and help the website owners invest in the channels that work for them. It will track a large amount of information about a customer, such as the website they are coming from, the device they are using, and so on. You can even track various actions they take on the website to understand how well the users are using various parts of the website.Â
3. Moz
Moz is an advanced SEO tool that helps find more details about yours and your competitors’ websites. They use measures Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) to rank websites, and it can be a good way to monitor the authority of a website. The free version features are limited, but the free version allows users to check the backlinks of a competitor to improve their search engine ranking.
There are other tools out there like Moz, which have similar features. However, Moz has a free version that can be very helpful.
4. Serpbot
Serpboat is a not-so-popular tool with some very useful features. It helps monitor how well a page is ranking for a keyword. Many SEO tools have this feature, along with other tools, but most of them require users to pay for the whole toolset. With Serpboat, you can monitor up to 25 keywords for free, and even after that, the charges can be as low as $4.99 a month.
5. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a fantastic tool to check for keywords and volume. A Google Adwords account is required to access the tool. It is also helpful for finding new or similar keywords and their monthly search volume. It also indicates how competitive a keyword is, but that is the competition on the keyword for advertising and is not an indication of how competitive the keyword is in an organic search.
6. PageSpeed InsightsÂ
PageSpeed Insights is another tool from Google that helps determine how quick a website is and what factor may be making the website slow. The speed of the website is one of the key factors of ranking in Google. A slow website can have an adverse effect on ranking higher on Google. It is very common to find a side project hosted on slower or shared hosting servers while moving to a faster server can cost more money and might not be an option. This tool will help identify issues and optimize other website elements to compensate for the service’s performance deficit.
When launching a side project and using SEO as the customer acquisition strategy, it is very common to come across most of these tools. Each one can be helpful at various stages, from doing keyword analysis to backlink building, and should be chosen based on the need.
