There are a lot of helpful software and tools to support search engine marketing campaigns. In this post, we’re going to share the top software and tools we use when managing search engine marketing campaigns.
Top Search Engine Marketing Tools and Software
Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 is the latest version of Google Analytics (formally called GA – Universal Analytics). Google Analytics continues to be an amazing analytics tool. It’s universally accepted as the leading free analytics tool. Google Analytics is a analytics tool that is able to showcase how many visitors went to a website, where they came from, demographics / audience insights of this audience, and what they’re doing on your website. Further, within the platform you can setup conversion tracking, to track key events that are important for your business such as (leads, transactions, etc.).
To get the most out of Google Analytics 4, it does require a fair amount of education, but for anyone reading, feel free to contact us – we’re happy to setup GA4 for you. Additionally, if you’re looking to upgrade to GA4 from Universal Analytics, read this helpful GA4 article.
Google Search Console is another free search engine marketing tool offered by Google. This tool is focused on organic traffic vs. paid traffic from Google. Google Search Console is a platform that gives insight into organic ranking on Google. Specifically, it can share:
- Organic traffic, impressions, ranking, CTR, etc.
- Performance by page and search query
- Insight into SEO issues
- Direct access to request indexation of new pages to Google
- This allows website owners to inform Google when new pages are uploaded. It’s a fast track to getting pages indexed and ranked.
Similar to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools is the equivalent for Bing. It’s a platform that gives insight into traffic, ranking, SEO issues, direct access to request indexation, etc. but for Microsoft Bing. Bing is a smaller search engine than Google, so expect less insights than Google, however it’s still strongly recommend that every business creates a Bing Webmaster Tools account. Businesses will find that some pages perform better on Bing, and others on Google. With that, it’s key that your business has direct insight to each of the top search engines.
SEMRush is a great search engine marketing software that’s used both for organic research and paid search ads. Unlike the aforementioned tools, this tool requires a subscription. SEMRush gives a wealth of search insights, including:
- Organic search performance
- Keyword data – search volume, competitiveness, forecasted CPCs
- Domain authority
- Backlink profile changes
- SEO audits
At Rise, we love using SERush for keyword research both on the organic and paid side. For organic, we can identify search keywords to target in the format of website content, to drive inbound traffic. We generally seek keywords that are relevant, decent search volume and low competition. On the paid side, we use SEMRush to identify keywords to bid, and scope out which keywords to avoid based on high CPCs.
Google Looker Studio is another free search engine marketing tool offered by Google. Google Looker Studio is a tool that allows marketers to create custom dashboards. The best part about it is the dashboards are highly customizable For every client at Rise, we create a custom marketing dashboard that pulls in data from a variety of sources, including but not limited to: Google Ads, Meta, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn, etc. To integrate with other non-Google platforms, we subscribe SuperMetrics, which acts as the connecting agent for non-Google platforms to Google Looker Studio.
CallRail is a software that we use for clients that value inbound phone calls.CallRail gives advertisers the ability to track phone calls seeded from a variety of sources, including, but not limited to:
- Google ads
- Microsoft Ads
- Organic search
- Social Ads
- Newsletters
For any business that focuses on calls as a core KPI, we integrate our efforts with CallRail to ensure we have proper measurement. Within CallRail you can see how many calls a specific campaign drove, phone numbers, call duration and even call recordings, etc.
This is a paid tool, but is incredibly valuable for clients seeking call tracking solutions. Additionally, CallRail can be imported as conversion events across a variety of systems (GA, Google Ads, Meta Ads), so each ad platform can optimize for calls.
Google Trends
Google Trends is another helpful (and free!) search engine marketing software. This is a tool that shows indexed search behavior over time. This is very helpful especially when trying to understand seasonality and popularity of search terms. For example, if you’re a retailer, you can look at this data to understand when shoppers are looking for holiday gift guides (in this case early Oct of every year).
Need Help Setting up Any of these SEM Tools or Software?
Using the above tools are common across our clients. If anyone is reading and would like access or get setup on these tools, we’re happy to help.
