Most Digital marketing tools are extremely expensive. And unless you have a big enough budget, they’re often not justifiable.
But what if I told you that it’s possible to build a kick-ass marketing stack—for FREE? You just have to know where to look…
To get you started, I’ve rounded up a list of my favourite free digital marketing tools for more effective marketing on a shoestring budget.
Each item listed has been trialled and tested by yours truly and was found to provide real value.
Without further ado, let’s go!
The best free SEO tools
Tech SEO stack – TechnicalSEO.com
TechnicalSEO.com is an awesome collection of technical SEO tools. Despite using paid tools, it’s the first step in my technical SEO website auditing process.
You’ll find a huge selection of resources, including a fetch & render simulator, a robots.txt testing tool, Google Search Console lost impression URL inspector, JS/CSS coverage, performance audit a sitemap generator and much more. Another cool offering, completely free of charge, is an archive full of SEO presentations categorised by topics.
Website crawler – GreenFlare.io
Greenflare.io is a free SEO analysis and crawling tool. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and, unlike other free web crawlers, has absolutely no crawl limits. It’s quite basic but a free tool, so definitely worth checking out. You get all the expected features, such as crawl stats, status codes, broken links and metadata.
Javascript rendering check – SearchViu
The SearchVIU javascript rendering checker is an intuitive tool that compares the original source code of a URL with the rendered HTML to check for potential differences. I especially love the friendly UI.
If you do have the means I recommend you check out their paid SEO monitoring and crawling solutions.
Page Performance testing tool – WebpageTest.org
There are many really great and free site performance testing tools out there, including GTMetrix and Google’s own PageSpeed Insights. One that’s standing out is WebPageTest.org.
Not only does it provide all the essential reports & analyses, but you can also choose your test location and browser; a feature that is often only available via paid plans (or not at all).
Mobile marketing tools – Mobile Moxie
The MobileMoxie suite is made up of three mobile marketing tools that will help you deliver great mobile experiences to your customers.
The mobile SERP checker gives you access to mobile search results at whatever location you want, specific down to an address, or by city, state or postcode.
The mobile page simulator emulates your mobile landing pages in real-time across all mobile devices and any location.
And lastly, the app rank analyzer lets you track a mobile app’s changes in ranking. All three tools can be used up to three times per day for free, for more reports you can sign up for a paid plan.
Critical Path CSS generator – Sitelocity.com
The critical path CSS generator from sitelocity.com is a straightforward tool that automatically generates the Critical Path CSS for your website and generates a single minified CSS file from all the CSS files your website uses.
SERP scraper – THRUUU
Thruuu by Samuel Schmitt is a free SERP analysis tool that shows you the top results for a given search query on Google, plus a detailed review of each page of the SERP. It has a handy excel export feature, for more in-depth analysis.
Google algorithm update checker – Panguin Tool
Panguin tool helps to identify whether your website has been impacted by a Google algorithm update. It’s completely free and via a simple click of a button, you can view your organic traffic along a timeline of all known updates.
Keyword research tool – Keywordsheeter
A basic but effective keyword research tool, Keywordsheeter pulls Google’s autocomplete suggestions for a given query. With a click of a button, you can export your list or simply copy-paste. I like using this tool as an idea generator to get me started with keyword research.
Website auditing chrome extension – SEO Quake
I love a good chrome extension and SEO Quake is up there with the best. This free SEO tool checks any webpage for on-page SEO, internal and external links and other SEO parameters. Think top-level SEO audit within a second and the click of a button.
The best free paid advertising tools
Audience analysis – YouTube Find My Audience
Ever wondered which personas fall into YouTubes in-market and affinity audiences? Google’s own audience insights tool gives you exactly that information. It’s also great for discovering new potential audiences and creating free audience profiles.
Negative keyword list builder – Free DM Tools
If you work with Google Ads you know how important negative keyword lists are and how cumbersome they can be to build. The Free DM negative keyword tool looks for similar queries to your chosen keyword and gives you a comprehensive list of suggestions to add as negatives. Once done, simply copy all or download as txt.
Competitor research – Meta aka. Facebook Ads library
Ever wondered what ads your competitors have running across Facebook? Insert Facebook Ads library. Before looking up an ad, choose your location and ad category. Then simply search by brand or keywords to gain inspiration for ad strategy or ad creatives.
Text converter – Covertcase
This one’s a bit random but I use it often when writing Google Ads ad copy. The text transformation tool changes between lower and upper case, capitalise, uncapitalize or convert to mix case.
The best misc marketing tools
Buyer persona creator – SEMrush
Creating buyer personas is (or should be) the starting point of all marketing activities, from identifying the right messaging and channels to crafting engaging and converting content. And SEMrush’s free buyer persona template builder helps with exactly that. Build as many profiles as you like, for free.
Google Sheet templates – Sheets for Marketers
Sheets for Marketers is a well of free digital marketing spreadsheets ready to be copied and used by marketers of all levels. The template library is extensive and includes Google Analytics templates, SEO and website audit templates and competitor research templates, just to name a few. I love the PPC & SEO calculator templates, which have saved me a lot of time and are definitely worth a look.
Marketing dashboard templates – Data Studio
Looking for something more visual? Google offers its own library of nifty Data Studio templates ready to use or customise as you like. What’s cool also, if you’re skilled in building dashboards yourself you can submit your work to highlight your data visualisation skills.
GA Audience & segments gallery – Google Analytics
Another free Google resource I wanted to list is the Google Analytics audience and segments gallery. This is a great place to get inspiration when doing data analysis in GA. You get free access to dashboards, custom reports and segments to deepen your use of Google Analytics and accelerate your learning curve. My go-to is Avinash Kaushik’s custom segments, which I import into all GA accounts I work with. Just search for “Occam’s Razor Awesomeness” and hit Import.
Thesaurus and word tools – Word Hippo
WordHippo is a no-fuss tool that I use religiously (no more searches for “what’s another word for…). What sets it apart from other word tools is its extensive list of words, that being synonyms, antonyms, word meanings, rhyming words and more. They also have an IOS/Android app for use on your mobile devices.
Presentation & graphics design – Piktochart
We all know and love Canva, an awesome and easy-to-use graphic design tool (they also have a free plan so please check it out!). A lesser-known but similar software is Piktochart. It’s aimed at business professionals who want to spice up presentation slides and reports or create infographics, flyers, posters, and more. The free plan is limited but for occasional use more than enough.
So there you have it, a collection of my favourite free digital marketing resources. I hope you get value out of them and most importantly, I hope you can save money on pricey software in the future.
Do you have a suggestion? Something missing? Just let me know and I’ll add it.
