29 of the Best SEO Tools for Auditing & Monitoring Your Website in 2023

There’s nothing quite like a sudden Google algorithm update to leave you feeling equally confused and concerned.

It seems as though search engines like Google wait for you to get all of your ducks in a row and then unleash an update that makes your efforts instantly obsolete.

Plus, there’s still some secrecy behind how Google evaluates websites and determines which sites appear — and how they appear — on the search engine results page (SERP) for different queries.

The good news is that there are several search engine optimization (SEO) tools out there — some free, some paid — that can help you view your website the way search engines like Google see it.

This way, you can improve your ranking and relevance for your target keywords.

Types of SEO Tools

SEO is a complex beast with a lot of moving parts. So, it’s not surprising that there is a huge range of tools available to help you research, implement, and manage your website’s SEO performance.

Some SEO tools help you perform very specific tasks. Others combine one or two areas of SEO together in multiple features. Finally, there are platforms designed to be a one-stop-shop solution for all your SEO activities.

Broadly speaking, SEO tools fall into one or more of the following categories.

Technical SEO

These tools help you identify where your website is falling short from a technical perspective. They analyze site elements such as structure, metadata, page speed, and more so you can meet best practice guidelines from Google.

Keyword Research

From monthly search volume to related keywords, these tools help you identify which keywords you should target on your site. Typically, you start by entering some keyword ideas before the tools return lists of keywords, their search volume, and competition level.

On-Page SEO

Most of these tools analyze the existing on-page performance of your content and provide recommendations on how to improve it for SEO. This will include the type and length of content required, comparisons to your competitors, topic ideas, and more.

Off-Page SEO

Backlinks are critical to sustainable SEO performance, and these tools give you clarity on your existing backlink profile. They also often provide ideas for websites you should seek backlinks from and how you measure up against competitors.

SEO Reporting

Whether you want to keep track of progress at a high level or show off your SEO results to others in the organization, SEO reporting tools help you compile website data into actionable insights.

They’ll usually enable you to build custom reports and track critical SEO metrics at both a high and granular level.

All-in-One Platforms

Many tools and platforms incorporate multiple SEO tool types and features to provide everything in one place. With all-in-one platforms, you can use one tool to plan and manage your entire SEO strategy.

For universal SEO tips you can use today to grow your business, check out our video guide below.

Free SEO Tools

These tools are free to use, but you might find a paid option that has more features. We’ve shared some of the best features in each tool as well as how you can get the most out of them for your SEO strategy.

1. HubSpot Website Grader

Start Grading Your Site Here

The goal of marketing is to generate traffic and qualified leads via the company’s website. That’s why, as marketers, we need to understand exactly what we can do to improve the SEO of that website.

Hubspot’s Website Grader is a technical SEO tool that highlights how you can improve the speed, structure, security, and mobile performance of your site.

With HubSpot’s Website Grader, simply enter the URL of your website to automatically receive a report card with actionable insights about your SEO efforts.

From there, you can sign up for the HubSpot Academy SEO course that teaches you how to improve your website’s SEO, user experience (UX), and more.

Core Features

Learn about your website’s performance in seconds, and receive clear, actionable feedback on how you can fix them.
Receive how-to education on how you can improve your website.
Gain access to a five-lesson HubSpot Academy course on Website Optimization so you can understand how to improve upon your website’s specific problem areas.
Discover how to optimize your website for mobile.
Learn how you can implement website security best practices.
Personalize your website’s UX to create a delightful experience for users.

2. Google Search Console

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Google Search Console is primarily a technical SEO tool that helps you identify whether Google is finding and indexing your website pages. If it’s not, you’ll get guidance on why pages are not indexed and how to fix it.

Google Search Console also has many tools available to help you appear in the SERPs for the search terms and phrases your target audience is looking for.

If you’re the owner of a business or an SEO on your marketing team, Search Console can help you conduct an initial SEO analysis from scratch or update your existing SEO strategy with fresh keywords.

Google Search Console monitors, debugs, and optimizes your website. Plus, you don’t need to know how to code to benefit from this tool.

Core Features

Learn about the keywords your web pages are currently ranking for.
Identify any crawl errors that exist on your website.
Understand how mobile-friendly your website is and discover opportunities to improve the mobile experience for your users.
See how many of your web pages are in Google’s Index (if they aren’t in Google’s index, you can use the tool’s URL Inspection Tool to submit a page for indexing).
See the website-related metrics that matter most to you, like clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position.

3. Google Analytics

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Google Analytics is a website reporting tool that you can use to gain insights into your SEO performance. It’s a great option for anyone looking for a free SEO reporting tool.

Although Google Analytics has a paid version, the free version of the product can be paired with Google Search Console to provide a full picture of your SEO.

In doing so, all of your website’s SEO data will be centrally located and compiled. You can use queries to identify areas for improvement with the keywords and phrases that you want your website and web pages to rank for.

Core Features

Filter your referral traffic. Get rid of the traffic that has the potential of ruining SEO reports, such as fake traffic.
Compare organic versus non-organic website traffic. Understand where your visitors are coming from and optimize those channels to increase traffic.
Determine engagement metrics. Use Site Content Reports to determine engagement metrics on each web page, engagement for pages on your website, and conversion of landing pages.
Review the Multi-Channel Report’s Assisted Conversions feature. Identify which of your channels led to the most conversions and the value they bring to your business.

4. UpCity Free SEO Report Card

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The free SEO Report Card by UpCity lets you analyze your website to determine how it stacks up against the competition.

It’s a tool that combines technical, on-page, and off-page analysis to give you a reporting snapshot of your existing performance. By comparing your site to a competitor, you can also clearly see where improvements to your SEO strategy are needed.

Core Features

Rank analysis. See a snapshot of where your website ranks on the most popular search engines.
Link building. Get a detailed account of the number of websites that link back to your site.
On-site analysis. See how successful you were in incorporating your main keyword throughout your site.
Gather information about your site’s load time and accessibility.
See how many of your site pages have been indexed.

5. Internet Marketing Ninjas

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Internet Marketing Ninjas is an SEO-focused marketing agency. Their team has built out an extensive list of free tools you can use to compare your website against the competition, optimize web pages for certain keywords, and increase organic traffic to your website.

When combined, these tools provide keyword research, technical, and on-page capabilities to help you plug the gaps in your SEO performance.

Core Features

Identify broken links and redirects, and use the site crawl feature to generate an XML sitemap of your website.
See all of your page links (external, internal, etc.) on your web pages to review what’s working well and what’s broken or needs an update.
Use an on-page optimization tool to evaluate your web page content, meta information, and internal links.
Compare the SEO of your web pages versus a competitor’s web pages.
Analyze page-load time and how long each component of a web page takes to fully display.

6. Bing Webmaster

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From an SEO perspective, Bing Webmaster is a keyword research, technical, and off-page SEO tool. Plus, it’s completely free.

Microsoft Bing Webmaster gives you access to many tools that offer insight into your website such as reporting, diagnostic, and SEO tools.

The SEO tools that you can use for free have the power to help you analyze your website, manage backlinks, and review keywords to ensure your site is well-optimized for organic search.

Core Features

See backlink profiles. Learn about your backlink profile to understand referring pages, domains, and anchor links.
Perform keyword research. Determine which keywords and phrases your audience is searching for as well as the search volumes of those keywords and phrases.
Use the site scanning feature. Crawl your website and identify technical SEO errors.
Get SEO reports. Review any errors that are on your website and individual site pages.

7. Google Trends

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Google Trends is a keyword research tool that helps you identify keywords and topics around which you can shape your website content.

Traditional SEO tools are great for conducting research and audits when your business is already established.

But what if you’re starting a new business venture and want to know what popular industries, topics, and ideas people are exploring?

Google Trends is a great place to explore untapped potential that can yield a large keyword landscape for your website.

However, Google Trends isn’t where you’ll get granular data. This tool performs best when you use it as a compass to set a direction for your SEO strategy and then pair those insights with a more robust software like HubSpot’s SEO Marketing Tool.

Core Features

Look for trends in specific countries or regions of the world.
Find popular people and long-tail keywords related to them.
Compare and contrast trends over time.

8. Seolyzer

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Seolyzer is a technical SEO tool that helps you determine how search engines like Google view your website.

It includes free site crawling, log analysis, and reports so you can get ahead of potential crawling and indexing issues.

Seolyzer pulls information that crawling bots leave in your server’s log files while browsing your site to identify and create your SEO KPIs. The tool also identifies error codes, redirects, and page speed performance.

Core Features

Monitor SEO issues. Identify poor response time, error messages, and crawl volume so you can resolve them before serious damage is done.
Manage your unique KPIs. Analyze page performance, crawl volume, HTTP status codes, active and new pages, and desktop versus mobile responsiveness.
Segment web pages. Determine what your most crawled pages are.
Compare web pages. See what Google deems as most important to the pages that are crucial to your business’s bottom line.
Understand the impact of your SEO efforts on a page-by-page basis or by the category of the page.

9. SEOquake

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SEOquake is a Google Chrome extension that automatically checks a web page’s SEO parameters quickly and for free.

This includes on-page SEO audits, internal and external link reviews, real-time URL and domain comparison, and data file export.

The number of features makes it the closest thing to the only free, all-in-one SEO tool available.

Core Features

Get a detailed description of how all of your links are doing — including URLs, anchor text, and other link types — with the tools Link Examiner feature.
Adjust the SEOquake reports you receive to display only the parameters and metrics that you care about.
Identify any SEO-related issues that would be findable by search engines.
Export the results of your SEO analysis into an adjustable and shareable report.

10. Seobility

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Seobility is a free SEO-checker tool. With it, you can test your website’s level of compliance with today’s SEO guidelines. By simply entering your URL, your site will be analyzed and you’ll receive tips on how you can better optimize your website.

Under the free plan, you can use Seobility as a keyword research, technical, on-page, and off-page SEO tool. However, your usage will be limited in terms of the number of keywords, competitors, and pages you can track.

In addition to a detailed SEO audit of your website, you’ll gain access to 1,000 subpage audits, email reporting and alerts, and keyword monitoring.

Core Features

Find technical errors. Resolve on-page SEO issues quickly to recover lost traffic and prevent future traffic dips.
Receive an SEO score that accounts for various website factors including meta-information, page quality, link structure, and more.
Understand the specific SEO issues with your meta information such as metatitles/descriptions, meta tags, and invalid or incorrect domain names or page URLs.
Identify areas for improvement regarding your page speed and quality (related to text, duplicate content, responsive design, and alt attributes for content).
Understand how your page and link structure can be improved by getting data about your headers, internal links, and incorrect anchor text.
Identify specific server errors related to any redirects, HTTP headers, or CSS and Javascript files.

11. Check My Links

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Check My Links is an off-page SEO tool that helps you monitor your backlink performance. The Google Chrome extension helps ensure your links on both external and internal web pages work.

For instance, if you were to search a term on Wikipedia, Check My Links would be able to tell you how many links that Wikipedia page has in total and how many of those links are broken.

This is helpful because you can make corrections to broken links immediately (or hopefully, before a page goes live). Check My Links is ideal for developers, content editors, web designers, and anyone else concerned with link performance.

Core Features

Check each link on your web pages and identify all invalid links.
Quickly see the good links in green and the broken links in red.
Copy all of your bad links to your clipboard in one click.

12. BROWSEO

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BROWSEO is essentially a technical SEO tool, although it also gives you quick insights into the number of backlinks on a page.

BROWSEO allows you to review your web page in a limited format so you can analyze its UX and content as well as gain insight into its SEO.

Once you input the URL, the output will hone in on your HTML so you’re able to understand the page’s structure, optimized search terms, and other SEO-related factors.

Core Features

See the number of words on the page. Find the sweet spot for copy length on your web pages.
Determine the number of internal and external links on your page. This allows you to see how your linking strategy is working on each page.
See all of your meta information. Review title tags, alt text, and meta descriptions.

Paid SEO Tools

Next, let’s look at some paid SEO tools. (Note that some of these tools have free trial periods. Some also offer entirely free plans but with restrictions in terms of flexibility and customization.)

1. HubSpot SEO Marketing Software

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Price: $45 per month for the Starter plan; $800 monthly for professional, and $3,200 monthly for enterprise.

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub includes an SEO marketing software tool. With keyword research, on-page, and SEO reporting capabilities, it’s perfect for helping you build authority across your website.

Since this software is integrated with HubSpot landing pages, web pages, and blog posts, you’ll never miss an opportunity to optimize your content for traffic and conversions.

No matter if you’re creating your first content strategy or you’re an expert in all things SEO, HubSpot’s SEO Marketing Software gives you the tools and the confidence to rank in the SERP and report on your performance.

HubSpot’s marketing software doesn’t keep SEO in a silo. This tool works in conjunction with:

Email. Send professional emails using your own branded designs.
Marketing automation. Create dynamic campaigns for segmented audiences.
Lead management. Track leads through each stage in your sales process.
Analytics. Review your campaign to identify success and opportunities for improvement.

2. Ahrefs

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Price: Seven-day trial for $7; $99 per month for Lite; $179 per month for Standard; $399 per month for Advanced; $999 per month for Agency.

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool that provides features for keyword research, on-page and off-page analysis, technical SEO, and reporting.

This advanced SEO resource examines your website property and produces keyword, link, and ranking profiles to help you make better decisions on your content.

Core Features

A site explorer shows you the performance of specific web pages on your website.
A content explorer allows you to search high-performing web pages under specific keywords and topics.
A keywords explorer generates the monthly search volume and click-through rates of specific keywords.
Site audits crawl specified verticals within your domain and reveal technical issues at the page level.

3. SEMrush

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Price: $119.95 per month for Pro; $229.95 per month for Guru; $449.95 per month for Business.

Another all-in-one SEO platform, SEMrush is an elaborate dashboard that reports on the performance of domains as a whole and their specific pages. SEMrush offers numerous resources, one of which is the SEO Toolkit.

Toolkit allows you to track a website’s visibility improvement over time as well as identify which keywords it’s ranking for, what the page’s rank is for a keyword, the keyword’s monthly search volume, and more.

Core Features

Analyze backlinks from other websites to your site.
Identify all keywords you need to successfully build an SEO strategy.
See your competitors’ strategies. Identify the paid keywords or ad copy used in the PPC ads of your competition.
See how you can increase your organic traffic by optimizing your content.

4. KWFinder

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Price: 10-day free trial; $29 per month.

Sometimes you don’t need an SEO tool with all the bells and whistles if you only need to do keyword research. KWFinder is a great platform that fills the gap between SEO work and copywriting. You’ll find keywords that aren’t too difficult to rank for but still carry the potential to bring in traffic.

What makes KWFinder unique is how seamlessly it shifts between languages and regions so that you can serve your audience no matter where in the world they are.

Core Features

Find long-tail keywords that give you more opportunities to acquire traffic.
See how your competitors’ keyword strategies compare to your own, plus find more keyword opportunities.
Analyze competition in the SERP to understand what elements readers are looking for on your pages.
See what searchers are looking for locally and appeal to local markets for more niche traffic.

5. GrowthBar

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Price: Free 5-day trial; $29 per month for Standard; $79 per month for Standard; $129 per month for Agency.

GrowthBar is an advanced keyword research tool. It also offers some on-page and off-page features and an AI blog writing tool.

The Chrome extension can help you perform keyword research, competitive analysis, and track SEO rankings.

With the GrowthBar, access data points about any website directly from the search engine results page. This allows you to assess your competitors’ performance and view the growth channels, keywords, backlinks, and ads that are working for them.

Core Features

See which paid and organic keywords are driving the most traffic for your website and get a list of the most authoritative backlinks pointing to your site.
Get your Keyword Difficulty Score. Assess how hard it would be to rank for a particular keyword based on the strength of the domain authorities ranking on page one.
Run Facebook Ads. Get a visual of what they look like from a search engine’s perspective.
Get a list of related keywords you might want to rank for along with their search volume and CPCs.

6. Woorank

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Price: Free 14-day trial; $79.99 per month for Pro; $199.99 per month for Premium.

Woorank is primarily a keyword research tool, although it also offers site crawls for technical SEO and information on your backlink performance against competitors.

Woorank’s in-depth site analysis helps marketers reveal opportunities for optimization and improvement. This analysis takes into account the performance of existing SEO initiatives, social media, usability, and more.

Each report is divided into sections to help you easily analyze your site and identify targets for optimization. Here are a few features of the report:

A marketing checklist. Review common marketing tasks that you can complete as part of your SEO strategy execution.
SEO analysis. Compare your SEO metrics to your goals.
Mobile analysis. Decide which mobile optimization tactics to employ based on the mobile data.
Social insight. See how social media is playing a part in your traffic and SEO goals.

7. BuzzStream

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Price: Free 30-day trial; $24 per month for Starter; $124 per month for Group; $299 per month for Professional; $999+ for Custom.

BuzzStream is an advanced off-page SEO tool. Not only does it provide a detailed analysis of your ongoing backlink performance, but you can also use it to plan and implement a backlink acquisition strategy.

Although backlinks to your website are critical to ranking well on Google, the outreach you do while link building can feel a lot like cold calling. BuzzStream makes it easy to research the appropriate people, come up with effective emails, and track who’s accepted each link request.

Core Features

Identify candidates for outreach. Find them based on their industry and how engaged they are across various social networks.
Identify candidates for backlinks. These are individuals who will likely be receptive to your backlink request for other reasons that are unique to your business’s niche.

8. Moz Pro

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Price: Free 30-day trial; $99 per month for Standard; $149 per month for Medium; $249 per month for Large; $599/month for Premium.

The Moz Pro subscription serves as an all-in-one SEO tool for increasing the search ranking of your business. Everything from keyword research and organic rank tracking to technical audits, on-page optimization, and link-building opportunities can be found in Moz.

You can use Moz to identify opportunities, track growth, build reports, and optimize your efforts across all aspects of your SEO strategy.

Core Features

Use a website crawler that analyzes up to 3,000 links on a given URL.
Get out-of-the-box SEO reports and enables you to build your own.
See duplicate content and redirects that could be influencing your SEO performance.

9. Linkody

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Price: 30-day free trial; $14.90 per month for Webmaster; $24.90 per month for Advanced; $49.90 per month for Pro; $99.90 per month for Agency; and $153.90 per month for Agency XL.

The best way to understand the performance of your off-page SEO is by having a good overview of your backlinks. Linkody is an off-page SEO tool that allows you to discover, track, analyze, and disavow backlinks all from an easy-to-use interface.

Aside from that, the tool checks your links 24/7 and informs you of any changes so you can take immediate action in case a link is lost or broken.

Core Features

“Spy” on your competitors’ backlinks. Simply enter the URL of your competitor and let the tool pull all the links and metrics. The information returned will help you discover niche-relevant, high-quality backlink opportunities for your brand.
See your most important metrics when it comes to backlink tracking, such as the ‘rel’ attribute, Google indexation status, Domain Authority, Spam Score, Alexa rank, and more.
Download reports that can be shared with your team and/or clients to get a better idea of your backlink distribution and link-building progress.

10. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

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Price: Free or €149 per year.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an advanced technical SEO tool. It crawls your entire site and condenses all the relevant information into exportable reports.

Designed specifically for the SEO-minded, this program crawls the websites you specify, examining the URLs for common SEO issues.

This program expedites an otherwise time-consuming process — especially for larger websites. It could take hours or days to manually evaluate the same URLs.

You can use the tool to identify all kinds of technical SEO issues including those related to site structure, security, speed, and metadata. Plus, you can use it to generate important technical SEO files for your site such as XML sitemaps.

Core Features

Screaming Frog includes an intuitive Java program with easy-to-navigate tabs.
Easily export to Excel to further analyze your SEO data.

11. Remove’em

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Price: $249 one-time payment for life-time plan; $99 per month for one website; or $899 per month for an Agency that can be used on 10+ websites.

Remove’em is an off-page SEO tool that helps you identify and remove backlinks to your site that may be harmful to your organic search rankings.

If you’re buying a website domain that has been used in the past, or you’re rebuilding a poor SEO strategy, you may discover some problematic backlinks while conducting your audit.

Artificial or unnatural links have the potential to seriously hurt your search ranking. Remove’em helps get rid of those links.

Core Features

Scan your backlink profile. Discover a list of contact information for the links and domains you’ll need to reach out to for removal.
Export a list of backlinks. If you wish, you can disavow backlinks by telling Google not to take these “bad” links into account when crawling your site.

12. AnswerThePublic

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Price: $99 per month for a monthly plan; $79 per month for an annual plan; $199 per month for the Expert plan.

AnswerThePublic is an in-depth keyword research tool that helps you find keywords to use on your site and provides inspiration for your on-page content.

The search listening and keyword tool listens to autocomplete data from Google and other search engines. The program will then provide you with a list of phrases and questions that people are searching for around your keyword.

This allows you to tailor your website to your audience and increase traffic.

Core Features

See when people are talking about your most relevant keywords.
Understand keyword research behavior among your target audience and customers.
View the keywords and phrases that your audience is researching in real-time.
Discover new content ideas based on relevant keyword research.

13. Keyword Hero

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Price: 14-day trial for any plan; free for Little Hero; $9 per month for Big Hero; $49 per month for Giant Hero; and $149 per month for Ultimate Hero.

Keyword Hero is a keyword research and SEO reporting tool. If you’re wondering exactly which keywords are attracting visitors to your site, it’s worth a look.

Keyword Hero pairs your visitors’ sessions with the keywords they used to land on your page, all within your Google Analytics account. In other words, this tool gives you an understanding of the search intent of your organic traffic.

Core Features

Analyze organic traffic and conversions. Uncover the success you receive from your intended keywords.
Identify brand versus non-brand search traffic.
Optimize your position in the SERPs. Optimize your website for specific target keywords.
See query details. Understand whether your visitors used informational versus transactional queries to find your website.

14. SpyFu

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Price: $39 per month for Basic; $69 per month for Professional; $129 per month for Unlimited.

SpyFu is a competitor keyword research tool for both Google Ads and organic search. In addition to keyword research, SpyFu helps with PPC competitive research, SEO competitive research, and the creation of custom lists and domains.

The tool helps you drive traffic to your Google Ads campaigns and website, monitor both paid and organic rankings, and obtain accurate contact information for leads.

Core Features

Download a competitor’s PPC keywords. Use this insight to develop more competitive PPC strategies that can compete in the ad space.
Download a competitor’s SEO keywords. Use this insight to develop more competitive organic keyword strategies that can compete in the SERP.
Review ranking trends. Analyze how a page or website ranks for a specific keyword over time.
Discover keyword ideas. Get keyword advice for your Google Ads to increase the chances of conversion.

15. Seomater

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Price: Pay as you go (starting at $5); $19 per month for small business plans; $49 per month for a professional plan ; $179 per month for an unlimited plan.

Seomater is a technical SEO tool for crawling and auditing your website.

Once the tool crawls your site, you’ll receive an SEO report that explains your website’s various SEO-related elements. That includes internal and external links, backlinks, page quality and speed, social media, organic presence, and more.

Your analysis will also come with tips on how you can improve each of these SEO elements. In addition, you can:

Use the SEO Monitoring Alerts feature. Your website will be automatically crawled and you’ll get an immediate notification if something is problematic in terms of SEO.
Get detailed reports. Find insights about your on-page and off-page SEO elements.
Use the Domain Comparison tool. Compare two competitors’ websites to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their SEO (such as broken links, content quality, HTML tags, and more).

16. ContentKing

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Price: $139 per month for Basic; $319 per month for Standard; $449 per month for Pro; or contact for Enterprise.

ContentKing is a technical SEO and SEO reporting combination tool. The real-time SEO auditing and content tracking tool monitors your website 24/7 so any issues related to SEO don’t go unnoticed.

The tool is cloud-based, meaning there’s no installation required and your data and reports are available whenever and wherever you need them.

Core Features

Improve your SEO. Use ContentKing’s 24/7 website audits to gain insight into your SEO and receive tasks that will help you optimize your web pages.
Get alerts. Get notified whenever something on your website is broken or is no longer well-optimized so you can efficiently fix the issue.
Track changes. Follow the history of all your content changes on your site (such as changes on individual web pages and changes in robots.txt) and search the history of your changes.
Visualize data. See real-time dashboards and reports.

17. SE Ranking

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Price: $39.00 per month for Essential; $89.00 per month for Pro; or $189.00 per month for Business.

SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO platform that analyzes website health and performance, keyword rankings, and traffic.

SE Ranking also provides insights into your competitors, allowing you to better understand the SEO landscape and adjust your marketing strategy. You can also build custom SEO reports with branding and personalization options.

Core Features

Monitor your and your competitors’ keyword positions and provide accurate keyword rank analysis, evaluate SEO potential, and show historical data changes.
Evaluate all your website pages to create an in-depth report of website tech and performance errors with actionable tips on how to resolve them.
Scope your competitors’ website traffic dynamics, keyword rankings, and other data in organic and paid searches.
Analyze any website and create a complete report of the backlink profile with dynamics of new and lost site links and referring domains, anchor text distribution, and pages linked out to the most.

Making the Most of SEO Tools

Now that you’ve learned about some of the best free and paid SEO tools, it’s time to see what works with your current tech stack. Determine which option will help you achieve your SEO goals and get started optimizing your content.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

Everything You Need to Know About Behavioral Segmentation [+ Examples]

Do you ever ask yourself why you act the way you do? Like why you venture out during a snowstorm to get an iced coffee? 

For marketers, behavioral insights are not only interesting but key for understanding their audience, going beyond demographic and geographic data.

In order to understand your audience’s behaviors, marketers can implement behavioral segmentation, an analysis that groups prospects and customers into different segments based on how they behave. 

Behavioral segmentation is a part of behavioral marketing, a set of methods to collect and analyze consumer behavior data to segment and target audiences with laser-like precision.

In this post, we will go over:

What is behavioral segmentation
Why marketers need behavioral segmentation
Four types of behavioral segmentation
Behavioral segmentation examples

With behavioral segmentation, marketers can gain a more comprehensive understanding of their audience’s motivations and needs, resulting in better tailoring of products and services to their customers.

Behavioral segmentation is interesting because it intersects with psychology — when we think about how someone behaves and why, we naturally think about their psychological motivations. 

However, behavioral segmentation is distinct from psychographic segmentation. 

Psychographic segmentation is rooted in lifestyles, interests, values, and even personality traits. Behavioral segmentation is about how a customer interacts with a brand and their products or services. 

For example, marketers can segment people based on website behaviors like clicks, page views, social shares, and media plays. 

Why Marketers Need Behavioral Segmentation

Marketers need behavioral segmentation for learning about how prospects and customers are likely to use the business’ products and services and their level of engagement. Behavioral segmentation also fosters cross-functional collaboration between the marketing and product teams, helping them align messaging.

Identify Engaged Users

Behavioral segmentation helps marketers identify the most engaged users. It would be a waste of marketing budget and time to try to engage cold leads. By analyzing behavior like opens and clicks, marketers can cut through the noise and allocate efforts to engaging users who are already interested and likely to convert.

Personalize User Experiences With Your Brand

HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool helps you personalize messages.

Generic messages will not get the goods. Providing personalized experiences will go a long way for your brand. Behavioral segmentation helps you learn about your audience’s needs, enabling you to customize your messaging so that you’re making relevant offers. Tools like HubSpot’s Behavioral Targeting tool can help by enabling marketers to personalize marketing outreach at scale.

Retain Customers

You’ve done all the hard work converting leads into customers. Now how do you retain them? 

Behavioral segmentation helps businesses retain customers because marketers know how to personalize the experience to different users. Tailoring experiences so that users feel like their needs are being prioritized increases customer loyalty.

Four Types of Behavioral Segmentation

1. Purchasing Behavior

Look at a customer’s purchase behavior and transaction history. This provides insight into how and why they decide to convert as well as which stages of the buyer’s journey go smoothly whereas where a prospect may come to a bit of a roadblock along the way. It also gives you an idea of which behaviors are likely to accurately predict a conversion.

2. Benefits Sought

Identify what your customers are looking to get out of your product or service — of all of your features, which do they need most to resolve the challenge(s) that they’re experiencing? What specific benefits do they get out of your product and which of those benefits are most important to them? Determine which of those benefits are influencing their decision to use your product/service most.

3. Buyer Journey Stage

Understanding which stage of the customer journey leads to the most conversions or which stage prospects get hung up on most frequently is beneficial information when predicting behavior and segmenting customers based on those behaviors. However, it’s important to note that using customer journey stages in behavioral segmentation can be difficult because there are so many stages — and within those stages are multiple touch points that contribute to behavior or decision to remain in a stage or move forward to a new stage, of the buyer’s journey. That’s why it’s recommended to use a platform like your CRM or an AI/machine learning tool — they record and track all interactions throughout the buyer’s journey to ensure you’re getting a complete view of your customer’s buyer’s journey behavioral data.

4. Usage

Usage-based segmentation enables you to segment your customers based on how they actually use the product or service, how frequently they use it, how long they use it in a single session, or which features they use most. 

For example, if you sell software, you might choose to segment your customers further into more specific usage categories — for instance, heavy users versus average users versus light users. Then, heavy-user messaging could highlight advanced features and upselling campaigns, while low-usage messaging could encourage more usage by discussing the key program features or how to use them.

Behavioral Segmentation Examples

1. Occasion

In 2020, Taco Bell launched a taco e-gifting service in time for the holidays. (Image Source)

Was it a specific occasion that influenced your customer’s decision to convert? Is a purchase decision based on the time of day or even life stage

Occasion-based segmentation can help cater your messaging to a specific point in time during the year when certain audiences interact with your brand. 

For example, if you’re an online greeting card service, you may get repeat customers around the winter holiday season every year. For those customers, your Q4 messaging could amp up holiday deals and offers.

2. Customer Loyalty

Starbucks Rewards offers customers perks. (Image Source)

Customer loyalty provides a solid look at customer behavior — loyalty relates directly to a customer’s habits, actions, needs, usage, and the timing of their actions.

To use customer loyalty when segmenting customers based on behavior, think about:

Which parts of the buyer’s journey are so delightful that they result in loyalty?
How you currently keep loyal customers feeling delighted.
Which prospects are most likely to become loyal?
Which attributes do your loyal customers share?

3. Engagement

Sephora offers unique benefits for highly engaged customers. (Image Source)

Engagement refers to the type and frequency of interactions you see from certain customers. 

These interactions can include site views, clicks, and social media activity. You might segment your customers based on high engagement versus average engagement versus occasional engagement. 

Highly engaged individuals are those who’ve incorporated your brand into their lives regularly. Average users may engage with your brand or product/ service fairly regularly but may not take advantage of its full potential and capabilities. 

Occasional users may just engage with your brand or product/service randomly based on their specific need but don’t rely on it. For example, Sephora offers a community for BeautyINSIDER members.

Grow Better With Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation is critical to your business’ success in identifying and understanding target audiences, and tailoring your marketing strategy accordingly. It helps drive leads, convert them into customers, and increase brand loyalty. 

Be sure to keep behavioral segmentation variables in mind and incorporate a tool like HubSpot for further support throughout the process.

How AI Works: The Basics You Need to Know

Artificial intelligence technology has come a long way since the days of IBM’s Deep Blue, a computer designed to play chess against humans. Nowadays, AI software can improve existing workflows, predict customer behavior, and do much more.

AI is rapidly shaping the marketing landscape. Your team will need to adapt its tech stack to keep up with the competition.

Let’s look at what AI is and how you can use this technology to save time, improve the quality of your leads and, ultimately, make better sales.

Table of Contents

What is AI?
The Benefits of AI
How does AI work?
The Four Concepts of AI
How to Create Basic AI
AI Use Cases for Marketers

AI can replicate human discernment and make real-time decisions. In other words, artificial intelligence is programmed to think, act, and respond just like a real, live human.

AI is not to be confused with automation. Although both automation and AI use real-time data to perform a function, the mechanics and output are vastly different.

For example, automation requires manual data input to perform a certain task. Using an algorithm, that task will repeat, regardless of what the data says or if there’s an error.

AI, on the other hand, is machine learning. Meaning it requires an input of data. As it processes the data, AI can recognize behavior patterns and errors, then adjust its functions and algorithms as needed.

AI is growing in popularity and can be used across a variety of industries. Let’s take a look at the benefits of using it.

The Benefits of AI

Although AI is not exactly fool-proof, it is pretty close to it. There are many benefits to using AI in your workflow and processes. Here are just a few examples of its benefits.

1. It reduces human error.

Let’s face it. Sometimes people make mistakes. We are only humans, after all. The thing about making a mistake is that we can usually learn from it, process what we have learned, and attempt not to make the same mistake again.

Artificial intelligence operates in the same way. While AI acts and performs like a human, it can vastly reduce human error by helping us understand all possible outcomes and choosing the most appropriate one.

AI uses real-time data to predict alternative outcomes. Using data and predictions, we can better understand our options, the results, and the impacts of those outcomes.

This is particularly helpful in business. Decision-makers can consider all possibilities before moving forward.

2. It helps with research and data analysis.

Another benefit of AI is using technology for research and data analysis. AI technologies are smart and can gather necessary information and make predictions in minutes.

What would usually take a human months of research can now be done in significantly less time.

The data collected by AI and the analysis performed are invaluable. With the information collected by AI, your data analysts are better able to make smarter, more informed decisions in less time.

Use the data collected by AI alongside your data analysts’ work.

3. It can makes unbiased, smart decisions.

With the appropriate data, AI removes bias from decision-making. To get the best, unbiased results using AI technologies, you need to ensure you input the most accurate information and data set.

When AI is given the best data, it can accurately predict outcomes, solve problems, and properly perform its functions without human favor of a particular desired result.

However, if the data you feed your AI programs is flawed, you will likely have a biased outcome.

Be sure to check your data for accuracy to maximize this benefit of AI.

4. It performs repetitive tasks.

Although automation and AI are not the same technologies, AI can act like an advanced version of automation, meaning it can be used to perform repetitive tasks and suggest alternative outcomes.

Using AI to perform repetitive tasks gives your employees more time to work on other more complex matters, like closing a sale or checking in with current clients on your roster to retain customers.

AI can be used to perform a multitude of repetitive tasks. AI can perform tasks in HR, like employee onboarding.

AI can also integrate with a chatbot into your website. Although a chatbot might not provide a human touch when interacting with potential customers, using AI to automate interactions between your company and your clients can jump-start processes and move your clients through your pipeline.

For example, AI can help a would-be customer start a new inquiry and gather important customer information and behavior data. Then, that data can be entered into your CRM for later review.

How does AI work?

AI technology is a complex and extremely useful for businesses. HubSpot has incorporated AI right into its software to augment already existing workflows.

HubSpot’s AI can uncover team performance by monitoring sales calls and providing insight to the team. It can also optimize content or create transcripts of recordings and calls.

If AI is a complex but necessary technology, how does it work?

To put it simply, AI works by combining large data sets with intuitive processing algorithms. AI can manipulate these algorithms by learning behavior patterns within the data set.

It’s important to understand that AI is not just one algorithm. Instead, it is an entire machine learning system that can solve problems and suggest outcomes.

Let’s look at how AI works step-by-step.

Input

The first step of AI is input. In this step, an engineer must collect the data needed for AI to perform properly.

Data does not necessarily have to be a text input; it can also be images or speech. However, it’s important to ensure the algorithms can read inputted data.

It’s also necessary to clearly define the context of the data and the desired outcomes in this step.

Processing

The processing step is when AI takes the data and decides what to do with it. While processing, AI interprets the pre-programmed data and uses the behaviors it has learned to recognize the same or similar behavior patterns in real-time data, depending upon the particular AI technology.

Data Outcomes

After the AI technology has processed the data, it predicts the outcomes. This step determines if the data and its given predictions are a failure or a success.

Adjustments

If the data set produces a failure, AI technology can learn from the mistake and repeat the process differently. The algorithms’ rules may need to be adjusted or changed to fit the data set.

Outcomes may also shift during the adjustment phase to reflect a more desired or appropriate outcome.

Assessments

Once AI has finished its assigned task, the last step is assessment. The assessment phase allows the technology to analyze the data and make inferences and predictions. It can also provide necessary, helpful feedback before running the algorithms again.

AI is extremely beneficial in business. However, choosing the right AI technology for your business needs is important.

The Four Concepts of AI

Image Source

As previously mentioned, not every type of AI will be appropriate for your business, your processes, or your data set. In fact, there are four main concepts of AI that you should consider.

1. Reactive Machine

Reactive machines live up to their concept name. This type of AI can respond or react to real-time data. However, this AI is limited and can’t store information or build a memory bank.

Because it can’t store memories, the AI can’t use past experience to analyze data based on new data behavior.

Reactive machine technologies are best used for repetitive tasks designed for simple outcomes. Consider using reactive machines to organize new client information or filter spam from your inbox.

2. Limited Memory

Unlike reactive machines, limited memory technologies can store and use information to learn new tasks. A limited memory machine will need pre-programmed data to be set in motion.

Once it has processed that information, it can analyze real-time data to make predictions and observations.

Limited memory technology is the most common AI technology used in business. In fact, this is the technology that makes self-driving cars work.

A chatbot is an example of limited memory technology. Chatbots use pre-programmed data to interact with customers and predict their needs based on their actions and inquiries.

3. Theory of Mind

Theory of mind technology is more advanced than limited memory. Like limited memory, theory of mind technology can store information and make observations based on the real-time data it observes.

This technology is more advanced, though, meaning it can respond to human emotions.

Theory of mind technology must be designed to understand that humans are complex, with individual thought patterns and past experiences that affect how they respond to certain stimuli. Because of this, theory of mind technologies are not yet fully developed.

As it stands now, AI cannot fully respond to people in a human-like manner.

4. Self-Aware

Self-aware technology takes the theory of mind technology one step further. It can process information, store it, use it to inform decision-making processes, understand human emotions and feelings, and is also self-aware on a human level.

In other words, self-aware machines operate like human consciousness and can have their own thoughts and feelings.

Self-aware technology is still a very long way off from being fully developed. But, scientists and researchers are making small strides in understanding how to implement human emotions into AI technology.

How to Create Basic AI

AI does not have to be overly complicated in order for you to benefit. You can use AI to perform repetitive functions that drain your employees of their valuable time — time that could be spent strengthening client relationships or making a sale.

To use AI, consider the processes and workflows you can remove from your employees’ plates. Specifically, think about processes you can automate and will not have to tweak as AI does its job.

Let’s look at the basics of implementing AI in your workflow.

1. Define the problem.

Before you decide to incorporate AI into your workflow, consider the processes your teams use daily that are time-consuming and repetitive.

Does your team spend significant time sorting through data to find contact information for potential clients? Could they use their time better by speaking to potential clients and onboarding new customers?

Take some time to identify time-consuming workflows and make a list. From this list, pick a process that is straightforward and repetitive.

2. Define the outcomes.

AI should enhance your already established processes. After you have made a list of processes and workflows that can benefit most from AI, define the desired outcomes.

For example, AI can gather and sort customer data. But before AI can sort through your potential customer base, you need to tell it what to look for and how to sort the information.

Be sure to clearly define the outcomes of your AI processes. AI works best if you have an end goal in mind.

3. Organize the data set.

Having an extensive, organized data set to input into AI technologies is critical. If you do not already keep your data in a centralized location, it’s best that you do that before implementing AI. You don’t want your program to miss an essential data set because it was housed in a different system.

Use a CRM, like HubSpot’s, to organize your data. You’ll need clean data that the algorithm can read. That way, AI technology can understand the data set and recognize its patterns and behaviors.

4. Pick the right technology.

There are hundreds of AI algorithms to choose from, each performing a task with varying efficiency and quality. It’s important to understand that not every algorithm will suit your data set, problem, or desired outcome.

Spend time researching the best AI technology and choosing the one that best fits your needs. Once you have selected an AI technology, run the data to create a model.

5. Test, simulate, and solve.

Now that you have the appropriate technology and a model of what the data should do, rerun the data to test it. This will allow you to determine any kinks that need to be worked out. Once you’re ready to deploy AI, embed it into your workflows, and let it do its thing!

Now you and your employees have more time for more pressing and valuable matters.

AI Use Cases for Marketers

AI technologies can significantly enhance marketing teams’ performance in various ways.

We already know AI can be used for the chatbots on your customer-facing websites. But there are many other ways to incorporate AI into your marketing game. Here’s how.

Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting is like looking into a crystal ball. Only this crystal ball predicts the future margins of sales for your company.

Analysts must collect necessary data from various sources to make an appropriate forecast. Then, they’ll sort through the data and customer behaviors, compare it to historical data, and predict future sales.

Data analysts often use automated algorithms to help them sort through historical data and keep track of important new information. This process can take quite a while.

But the good news is it can be sped up significantly with the help of AI technology. AI can store data collected from chatbots, analyze which customers are most likely to make a sale, compare real-time data with historical data, and make predictions and assumptions about future sales.

AI uses predictive analytics and can predict forecasts that are up to 80% accurate.

Targeted Advertisements and Content Personalization

Targeted advertising and content personalization is Marketing 101. Every good marketer knows that to make the most sales, it’s necessary to put your brand in front of the eyes of the appropriate audience. AI technologies take targeted advertisements one step further.

You already know your target audience, but do you know exactly what they do after seeing your company’s ad? The reality is you might have a good indicator of customer behavior, but sometimes you may miss the mark. AI can help you make a better inference.

AI can use predictive analytics to determine customer behavior and potential customers’ actions after seeing your ad. The massive amount of advertising information and customer behavior data gathered by AI can also display the next appropriate ad to your customers.

Lead Generation

In the past, a marketer would need to run several advertisements, collect potential customer data, create a customer profile, establish a contact list, and begin contacting would-be clients. This process would likely take days to complete, cutting into sales time.

AI drastically reduces the time marketing and sales teams spend on lead generation. AI can gather customer data, create customer profiles, and generate a contact list of potential customers most likely to make a purchase.

With the time saved, salespeople can better use their time by contacting qualified leads, establishing relationships with new clients, and making the all-important sale.

Dynamic Pricing

AI isn’t just about saving time for your employees. AI can help maximize profits and margins by enabling dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing is a marketing strategy many businesses use to adjust the prices of their products based on the current supply and demand.

AI technologies use dynamic pricing models to help predict customer behavior, supply, and demand to alert salespeople when to increase or decrease the price of a product or service.

Enhance your business with AI.

While AI can be a complicated technology, using it in your business doesn’t have to be. Artificial intelligence technologies can significantly improve your workflows by saving valuable time and making more accurate predictions.

Brainstorm with your team to list potential processes to automate with AI software. Then, find the appropriate AI technology that will work best for you and your employees. Start improving your business through AI today.

Why the New York Logo Update Was A Rebranding Flop

Welcome to HubSpot Marketing News! Tap in for campaign deep dives, the latest marketing industry news, and tried-and-true insights from HubSpot’s media team.

Newer isn’t always better. At least that was the consensus among New Yorkers after the Partnership for New York rolled out its new logo for New York City last month.

The “We ❤️ NYC” mark debuted in late March and was intended to be a modern update of Milton Glaser’s iconic “I ❤️ NY” logo. The imagery coincides with a new campaign aiming to diffuse the “divisiveness and negativity” stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Image Source

Notable changes to the logo include:

Changing the “I” to “We”
Updating the heart so it appears more like a heart emoji
Replacing the typewriter-style font with a variation of Helvetica to match New York subway signage
Adding the “C” at the end of “NY” so the logo refers specifically to New York City

While the new logo was intended to bring people together, unfortunately, it has succeeded in helping people bond over how much they dislike it. This tweet asking folks to share what they think of the new logo has racked up over 2,200 responses that are overwhelmingly negative.

What went wrong with NYC’s new logo?

For starters, “I ❤️ NY” is a tough act to follow.

The original logo designed by Glaser was introduced in 1977 to reinvigorate tourism and morale in New York after a long economic and social slump. Over four decades, it became a beloved image and catchphrase for both the city and state of New York.

I think the city that currently owns the most iconic branding in the entire world should not rebrand.

— Allana Harkin (@AllanaHarkin)
March 20, 2023

Much of the criticism of the new logo is directed at the design itself. Many people have questioned the lack of symmetry (We NYC ❤️?), the emoji-esque heart, and the font choice (Helvetica is very widely used).

These elements make the design look unprofessional and unoriginal which feels off-brand for a city known for being a hub of creativity and rich culture, ultimately causing the attempted rebrand to fall flat.

Elsewhere in Marketing

The latest marketing news and strategy insights.

Deepfakes: The use of AI is causing a rise in realistic-looking fake images. Learn what that means for marketers.

TikTok Ban: Pew Research conducted a study to see how Americans felt about the possibility of a TikTok ban and the results may (or may not) surprise you.

YouTube reports that fan-created Shorts can help some creators and artists double their audiences.

Reel-y? How photos are making a comeback on Instagram.

ChatGPT may be banned in Italy due to privacy and safety concerns.

Twitter continues to face roadblocks in recovering advertising revenue since its sale last year.

Biggest consumer behavior shifts: how consumer habits are changing in 2023.