Owning and running a website can be really simple – or it can be really complex and time consuming. How simple or demanding it is depends largely on which tools you’re using.
If you use the right tools, running your website should be a hassle-free operation. If you use the wrong tools (or no tools at all!), however you might be wondering why working on a website takes up so much of your time.
There’s no one-tool-fits-all strategy here, which means that you’ll need to use multiple tools for multiple jobs, from SEO analysis to logo making. Fortunately, once you’ve identified what tools you need and got to grips with them, life will become pretty sweet when working on your website.
In this article, we take a look at the 8 tools every website owner should use to do more in less time.
Pitkochart
More and more website owners are adding infographics to their sites. Why? Because their audiences love them. As humans, we process visual data 60X faster than we do text. Infographics look great on your website and offer audiences what they want – visuals and information.
However, creating an infographic is hard. If you can’t do it yourself, you either have to pay an expensive graphic designer to make one, or suck it up and go with a meme instead.
Not anymore. Pitkochart is an awesome online infographics creator that’s aimed at non-designers. The designs are fairly basic but they still look visually appealing and will enhance the look of your website.
Hatchful
If you still don’t have a beautiful logo that represents your brand and blends in with your website, the good news is that there’s still time to make one.
The even better news is that Hatchful – a logo maker tool from Shopify – is on hand to help you out.
A logo is a key part of your brand and your website. A logo helps to build trust with your audience, and it also helps to make your business more recognizable and memorable.
Naturally, we’re not all awesome designers, which is what makes Hatchful so useful. It’s a cross-platform app that helps you create a standout logo for your business. One of the best things about it is that it asks you a series of questions about your business to get a feel for what your logo should look like. This makes it ideal for anyone who’s left scratching their head for ideas.
Google Analytics
It’s time to stop wasting time trying to manually figure out where your website traffic is coming from, or why your bounce rate is so high. Google Analytics presents you with website data – such as where your traffic is coming from – and then allows you to make sense of it so that you can start to develop better marketing campaigns.
For example, Google Analytics – which is totally free – gives you an insight into your core demographic. Once you have this info, you can create better content that hits the spot with the right people.
Ahrefs
Backlinks. Heard of them? A backlink is an incoming link from one website to another. The more high quality backlinks you can secure, the higher your website will rank on Google. This means more visibility, more exposure and more traffic.
To help you keep tabs on your link building efforts, you need to download an SEO tool like Ahrefs. Ahrefs is feature rich – it offers a Backlinks Report as well as a Site Explorer, a Batch Analysis feature and a Keyword Analysis feature.
Ahrefs also lets you check out the competition to see what backlinks they’re securing, and it also identifies any spammy backlinks that are harming your position on Google.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that will improve your visibility on Google. It gives you access to all kinds of insights, from how well your keywords are performing to how well your competitors are performing in the SERPs.
The biggest snag is that, while the basic version is cheap, the Pro version is costly. However, it’s well worth it because if you stay on top of SEO, your website will grow in popularity. This means more conversions and sales.
Plus, when you have the Pro version you’ll be doing more in less time because, essentially, the app will be doing most of the work for you.
Grammarly
Anyone who produces content for their website and hopes for that content to be seen by lots of people and convert lots of people needs Grammarly.
Why? Kick Off Labs lists poor grammar as a major contributing factor for a high bounce rate, but we don’t need any stats to back us up on this one – bad grammar is not going to clinch you a sale. That’s a fact. The minute we see a landing page littered with mistakes is the minute we bail. Poor grammar on a website indicates carelessness and it breaks trust between the site visitor and the brand.
Grammarly saves you from manually proofreading all your content. Its premium version costs money – as much as $29.95 a month – but there’s also a free version, too. It will clear up all your mistakes so that your website is presentable and easy to read.
Answer the Public
What one thing do you constantly need to keep producing for your website?
Content.
Google – and your audience – loves fresh content. The more content you put out on the regular, the higher you’ll rank.
That said, you can’t put out any old content. It has to be of a high quality, and it has to have relevance to the user.
This is where Answer the Public comes in. It’s a great tool that saves you time by providing you with a list of questions that your target audience are asking. So instead of spending your days trying to come up with new content ideas that your audience will enjoy, you can instead use this tool.
Elementor
Lastly, it’s sometimes the case that we have to build a brand new website from scratch. It’s always annoying when that happens, but the good news is that there are tools that have got your back in such times.
Take Elementor, for example. It’s an awesome WordPress page builder that’s free and super easy to use, too. It’s fast requires zero coding.
The next time you need to build a new site, check it out.
Conclusion
These are the 8 tools every website owner should use to do more in less time. All of them are well worth downloading as they all perform different jobs that are all important. The best thing? They’re all easy to use and will save you lots of time in the long run.
Michelle Deery is a copywriter with Heroic Search, a SEO agency based in Tulsa. She specializes in writing about marketing and produces persuasive copy that helps business owners boost their sales.