Aside from the obvious market data analysis tools that we all know marketing businesses should have, there are an array of tools out there that many newbies and even experienced marketers seem to be missing. This is speaking from experience working with online marketers from all over the world.
One of the most surprising things I have seen working with other freelance marketers is how they are happy to hit a dead end when scraping the web for the content or SEOs whose work comes to a halt because Google captchas are delaying their progress.
Get Some Proxies
It is quite simple really and most software tools will tell you to do this. Not all though, which is why this point gets missed. What I noticed is that some people either just didn’t think about it or they knew about proxies but did not want to go through the expense due to previous bad experience or the high cost of decent proxies.
If you calculate the time it takes to stop work versus being productive and getting the job done for your client quicker, not having proxies is normally more of an expense. Plus having them opens the doors to giving you the ability to do a lot of market research.
Use Virtual Private Networks
Being German I hear this question a lot – welcher VPN anbieter (Which VPN provider). I understand many people have had issues with VPN providers. For example, you connect to a server in UK London only to find out that actually, it is in Cario. Or the IP you are trying to mask using a VPN is in actual fact not being masked as it should be – which kind of defeats the idea really!
Just make sure that you do your research when looking for a VPN provider. As we say in German – vpn dienst. Once you have the right paid VPN, then you will literally have access to IPs across the globe and have a secure encrypted tunnel masking your IP and giving your sessions complete privacy.
Free Website Analysis Tools
There are tons of free web analytics tools out there. Now you might have the best tools out there like SEO PowerSuite or such like. Nonetheless, it does not hurt to double check the data you have with free analysis tools. I like to use SEOQuake. Now, this is handy for web developers, marketers, and SEO specialists.
Why? Simply because it is free, it is an extension on your browser and gives you tons of information about a web page at the click of a button. Check out SEOQuake here.
Other tools that are free and great for quickly gathering a site’s architecture and other metrics about how well a website is performing is Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Have a search of the net for this tool and download it. You will be pleasantly surprised at the wealth of information you get from this. The free version will scan up to 500 pages on a site for free and per year you get 100 searches free (but use a VPN or another machine and you get more!).
Personally, I use the paid version of SEO Spider because it helps not just me, but also the web developers I work with when working on a client’s online integrated marketing plan.
Hopefully you enjoyed the suggestion I made here and will give them all a try. As a freelancer, you need all the help you can get for success, and these tools are a great way to save time and increase productivity.