This is a guest contribution from Kulwant Nagi.
Today, Internet marketing is evolving at a greater pace than ever.
Companies are pulling out all the stops to get more online exposure and, eventually, more customers. Using premium services for all the tools necessary for Internet marketing is not feasible for every business – that’s when free options come into play.
When I started my career two years ago, I was not aware of these tools, so I kept looking for the best and easiest ways to boost my business. I continued to add all the tools to my browser’s bookmarks for quick & easy access.
If you are one of the Internet marketers who is still banging their head against a brick wall to find free tools that can help you save your time, boost your productivity and ultimately bring some favorable results, then stay tuned for another 5–10 minutes.
Here I am going to reveal 15 Internet marketing tools which I am personally using and getting huge benefits from.
15 Free Tools to Help Your Online Business
1. Content Idea Generator
Being an Internet marketer, I can understand how difficult it is to come up with a great idea. Having writer’s block is one of the biggest enemies for all the Internet marketers.
When that’s the case, you can use this idea generator tool, which offers tons of creative ideas.
2. Pocket
I am deeply in love with this tool :)
Such a killer innovation that makes it possible to enjoy articles anywhere in the world.
Pocket can be added as an extension on any browser or downloaded as an app for all smart phones. You can install this app in your browser and save articles for future reading. All the saved articles can be accessed at a later time.
The app not only enables you to read articles, but also makes a great repository for all the best articles in the world. The articles you save using the Pocket app will be logged in your account and you can access them anytime you want.
Here is a screenshot of my pocket app:
3. BufferApp
This is great service for sharing your content on various social media websites. You can easily schedule your content on various social media and site and populate your content very simply, all from one dashboard.
4. HootSuite
If we talk about social media management, HootSuite grabs the top position on the list. This little tool helps you manage all your social media activities from one dashboard.
You can schedule your tweets, Facebook status updates, Google+ shares and various other awesome things which are only limited by your imagination!
5. Backlinks Checker
Moz and SEMRush are the best tools to use to check backlinks for any website. Although they offer only a few searches for free members, you can still find your competitors’ backlinks very easily.
6. Keyword Niche Finder
Keyword Niche Finder is an awesome and easy-to-use software. It will let you come up with most profitable keyword(s) in your niche.
The tool will categorise your keywords according to different niches and will provide you with keyword suggestions for different niches of your keyword.
7. After the Deadline
This is a Chrome extension which will let you check spelling, style and grammar. It will check your spelling in real time, so you’ll never make the same mistakes again.
Note: If you are a WordPress user, you can download this plugin here.
8. Loading Speed Testing Tools
I love Google page speed and GTMetrix.
Both tools analyse websites to determine the loading time on your blog. Google gives priority to fast-loading blogs, so these tools will show opportunity areas on your blog to improve the loading time. After following suggestions given by these tools, you can improve your blog’s loading time dramatically.
See my blog’s speed here:
Small SEO Tools
Small SEO Tools is the best site I’ve come across in my blogging career.
They have included some of the best tools, free of cost. I personally use this site daily for different tasks.
They have tools like:
- Plagiarism checker
- Article rewriter
- Keyword position
- Google PageRank checker
- Backlink checker
- Online ping tool
- Alexa rank checker
- Domain IP lookup
- Keyword suggestion tool
- Page speed checker tool
and at least 30 more tools to make your life easier.
10. Google Drive and Dropbox
I cannot imagine blogging without the help of Google Drive and Dropbox (As a matter of fact, I wrote this article on Google docs). Both are easy-to-use online tools where you can save your most important files and access them in any part of the world.
Google Drive continuously saves your data while you are still preparing a document so there is no need to worry if there is any interruption, like computer hangs or shutdown.
Dropbox gives you 2GB space when you join. By referring your online buddies, you can get an additional 20GB of space at no cost.
11. Audacity
If you love to create podcasts on your blog or are thinking about starting to create them, then this is one of the must-have tools for you.
Audacity comes with a fantastic interface which helps you to mix your audio files, cut down little portions, adjust volume and many other little tweaks to make your audio file more professional.
12. Email marketing software
MailChimp, MadMimi and Ininbox are three free tools which you can use to build subscribers on your blog.
They allow you to add a good number of subscribers, free of cost. They each have different tools that you can customise to your needs.
13. PhotoPin
More than 60 percent of images on my blog have been downloaded from PhotoPin.
Photopin fetches free images from Flickr, which makes a great collection. In the search results, the first 10-15 images will be sponsored images, so you can skip those images and choose the appropriate images from the rest of the collection for your blog post.
14. StatCounter
A killer alternative to Google Analytics, StatCounter will track each and every activity on your blog, like the source of recent visits, recent keywords, visitor’s location, visitor’s country, exit links, visit length, returning visits and many more awesome features that allow you to keep close tabs on your visitors.
You will get few lines of code which you can add to your blog and start tracking your visitors right away.
15. Asana
Asana is a teamwork management software which was primarily designed for internal email circulation at Facebook headquarters. But soon after that, they launched it to the open market and made it free to use.
Asana lets you assign tasks to your team members and keeps you informed about their activities. As soon as they finish the task assigned to them, you will get an email notification. This will not only help you to track your progress, but you will also be able to manage your team’s tasks very efficiently.
Kulwant Nagi is an Internet marketing expert. He writes at BloggingCage.com where he shares blogging and SEO tips to help you make your blogging career awesome.
These all Marketting tools are good but i mostly like Content Idea Generator,Pocket,loading Speed Testing tool.
and you define 2 Backlink Checker Tools Moz and Semrush These tools are good but i don,t much like these Tool for Checking Backlinks Ahrefs is Best what you say about Ahrefs
Definitely recommend Ahrefs as well. I typically find a decent amount of links that SEMrush and Moz won’t report.
Yeah, Ahrefs is a good service and probably the best. Recently I found one more site openlinkprofiler.org, so you can give it a try.
Hey Kulwant!
Yes Ahref is Best and i have Used Openlinkprofiler.org and it,s Also an Amazing Backlink Checker Site
Regards:
Raza Nagori
Love Buffer! I always think of multiple tweets at once but don’t want to overwhelm my followers. It allows me to save them and then use them later, perfect.
Another great tool is Feedly, it will help you stay up to date with your favorite blogs. Saves time!
Chris
Yeah, Buffer is an awesome tool to schedule our posts. Feedly is another great option but I use Pocket instead of feedly.
This is a very useful post. Thank you very much. Some tools of this list (Like content idea generator) are new to me. I will use them in my work. In number 5 of backlink chacker, i guess you talked about ”open site explorer” tool of MOZ?
This tool is seriously saving a lot of time to help me with new ideas. yes, I am talking about OpenSiteExplorer. :)
Awesome list!
I already knew some of them, but it’s good to know more alternatives. Yes, smallseotools has lots of free and useful tools, I use some of the tools very often.
I use plagiarism checker from SmallSEOTools almost daily. They have nice set of tools. :)
Good to see you here.
Thanks for sharing these tools, Kulwant! #6 Keyword Niche Finder definitely sounds something interesting to check out.
Della, this little tool can give you huge ideas for your blog post, paid advertisement, book or anything. With the right use of any tool we can get most out of it. :)
Hi There,
I have used portent and was blown away on how nice of a tool it really is. Anybody reading this needs to know to check it out.
Great post and tools – exited to check these bad boys out.
Thanks,
Christopher Pontine
Can you please share the link? I am unable to find.
Such a great list! I use many if these myself like Buffer, Google Drive, & Dropbox. Pocket is one of my favorites that I’ve been using daily for a while now!
I’m looking forward to checking out and testing some of the new things you introduced! Thanks for sharing!
The day I started using Pocket, I started reading more awesome stuff. This is like your library and you want to have best stuff in it. I have added some of the best articles in my pocket and I keep checking them on regular basis.
Like I have a long article written by Brian Dean on link building which always help me to get new ideas.
Great tools Kulwat Nagi specialy Like content idea generator ,besides that all of them are so far so good
yeah.. ;)
Now generate the content and write awesome blog posts.
Hey Kulwant,
Awesome list, to be honest few tools I was not aware about it and not used till date. I will quick jump on that tools and check the things right now.
Awesome list and super cool post. Keep writing :)
Happy to see you here, Jaydip.
These tools are going to add more productivity in your work, and the best thing is they are free.. ha ha.
Hootsuite has possibly been the greatest marketing tool for me. Since I started scheduling my tweets I have seen a great increase in my website traffic from Twitter. I love the idea of the Content Generator and am looking forward to using it next time the horrible writers block strikes. Thanks for a great post.
Krystal, this is seriously one of the best options available in the market. Almost all big IM experts are using HootSuite to schedule their blog posts and getting more in short time.
Recently I started using BuzzBundle, which is quite a similar platform with many awesome features.
You can check my review and see how I am using that tool.
http://www.bloggingcage.com/buzzbundle-review/
hi kulwant, these are the great tools and thanks for mentioning here. i used many but some are new for me and good thing is those are free.
Now start using them and see your business growing. ;)
Hi Kulwant
Great to see you on Problogger. That’s a great list for any newbie blogger. Very useful.
As others are saying, Moz and SEMrush are probably not the best options for backlinks. Many are recommending Ahrefs but they have a daily usage limit. The best free option is OPENLINKPROFILER. It’s one of he best tools out there. You can sort links by so many paramenters and their database is big. Give it a go.
Secondly, it is better to use a premium Email service. Free ones do not make the cut for me.
I regularly use Bufferapp. Great piece of tool. I will try out Hootsuite but I think it is a paid tool. Content idea generator will be very useful. Thanks.
Neil
I agree with you, Neil.
Even I started using OpenLinkProfiler and it’s working perfect to find backlinks.
Thanks for being here and sharing your thoughts.
:-)
I really like the idea of finding grammatical error plugin, Really interested to upload on my blog.
This plugin always saves me. ha ha.
All are very good tools. I think if I use it proficiently only 3 of these, my business will go farther than this.
Exactly Erica. It depends on your business. if you are into SEO niche then keyword ideas generator and link finder can give you good results.
Hi,
MOZ and SEMrush link index are very good for US domain but really bad for South East Asia domain.
I prefer use specific tools such as Ahrefs, CognitiveSEO & Link Research Tools. These company dedicated themselves for the highest quality link checker.
Tommy, I agree with you.
But as most of the SEO experts target US, UK, Canada and other English speaking countries, so this is a best option.
Great list, I use HootSuite all the time and can highly recommend it. I will certainly give some of these others a try now.
I have used HootSuite in the past and it worked great for me.
Hope other tools will add more productivity in your business.
I use a lot if these already but Content idea generator and keyword niche finder is gold.
Cheers
Good to see that many people are loving this new tool. :)
Excellent list Kulwat. I’m definitely going to have to use a few of these for freelance writing research and to improve my websites!
Do share your experience and boost in business after using these tools.
Hi,
I would like to add another tool to your already well provided list of tools to boost your business : DareBoost which is dedicated to the analysis and monitoring of website performance and quality.
The advice are available to the greatest number of users and one of the specificities is detecting the technologies (CMS, frameworks, etc.) used by the audited websites so that the advice are customized to this specific situation.
What score would you get on DareBoost ?
I would be glad to know your opinions about this tool, let me know !
Fabulous list. I love Pocket. I save blogs and articles to come back and read later when I have time.
Thanks for the Awesome list. I like Small SEO Tools and its great.
This list contains most of my favorite tools like Hootsuite, bufferapp, dropbox and Google Drive. I agree with you on their utility and can not do with out them. But there are few new ones in the list which caught my eye specially pocket, audacity and above all content idea generator.
I always used to wonder how can i post on all social media networks.
Even Used so many automatic tools, their results weren’t satisfying.
Looks like the Buffer App will be the one to solve all my social media issues and content idea generator is also a new thing for me. Will try that too..
This list is great as it is filled with the best tools. Thanks for the tools Darren :D
This is a ridiculously useful post! I’m already in love with the content idea generator and have a tonne of new post ideas now. Thanks!
This is a good tool, but my most favorite MOZ, MOZ is better tools for Backlink checker, rank tracker, keywords difficulty and many more. If you have some tools for Backlinks, so please share with me. Thank You
I will prefer proofhub rather than asana. Anyway you have written a good post with reliable resources information.
Thanks.
Hi Kulwant,
Its great to see you here at Problogger. I find Audacity new from this post.
Thanks
they are many tools check website states and it’s very useful information
That’s a great list and a wonderful article. Thank you for sharing it. My only minor complaint is your use of the word “Free” in the title. I understand there are different definitions of “Free” but your definition appears to be a bit looser that mine.
Thanks again!
Great list of tools Kulwant. We definitely use some of the same like Buffer, Pocket and Portent’s – tool that I can’t do without :)
amazing resources, thank you for sharing! I’m a huge fan of Asana myself :)
Pocket and Buffer are my favourite tools too!
Wow!! I didn’t know much of these tools. Thanks for sharing this treasure-like information.
Allison.
Buffer is something new to me, I will have to check it out, later. Now I have to use pocket to read this post latter. Nice one.
:)
Thank you for this blogpost! I´m an German marketer and didn`t know some of the tools you are writing about. I have to add ifttt, this tool allows me to simplify some work i have to do every day.
Hi Kulwant ,
Glad to see you featured hear.
The list contain all absolute necessary tool, Idea generator id surely new to me to test for. Glad to have it.
Would also glad to see a list compilation for absolute on target Premium tools for blogger.
Take care.
I have to add in Rapportive here. It is a Google Chrome plugin that connects to Linkedin. It helps you to know if you have guessed someone’s email correctly. Continuously connecting with people and outreach is very important for bloggers.
Hi,
Thanks for sharing us those useful tools.
I will try them for new experience.
And I recommend some other useful tools for Internet marketing especially for SEO. They are SeoQuake, Moz bar, Open SEO status.
Please share if you have any another awesome tools for Online Business. Thanks
I also use Evernote web clipper for research.
hello kulwant,
Firstly i visit this site.I have see your article and i have some use tool.
I personal use for marketing mailchimp ,medmini two tool very helpful.Present now i know Ininbox tool i sure use this.
Thank you for sharing article.
Wow. Great article Kulwant Bro.
Personally I use Ahrefs chrome extension for getting exact report about back links and social share.
BTW stat-counter and Ininbox email marketing tool also my favorite tools.
Some tools are new for me. Thanks.
Oh! New things to learn about!
I like the first one actually as I always seem to get writers block, maybe it will help.
I also like the Small SEO tools and Word Stream. Looks like there’s plenty for me to use! Thanks so much! :)
Hi Kulwant Nagi,
Some tools are new for me like “After the Deadline”,”Audacity”. Hope your tools will work to make our blog and reputation better.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Nice collection of tools – thanks!
I’d add to #11 – GarageBand, the Audacity for Mac users – it comes with the operating system and is very nice to use.
I’d add PingDom to your page speed tools. They also have a free alert service that will tell you when your site is down for any amount of time. I love that!
Cheers!
Such a useful tools, I would also add some plagiarism checkers in the list, because these tools will definitely defend your online business from stealing of the content. I use both free and paid plagiarism checkers: http://www.duplichecker.com/ and http://unplag.com/.
This is a nice list of tools.
I think you should include EverNote in this list as a great productivity tool.
Regards,
Hello Kulwant,
Seriously, every single tool that you mentioned is worth-checking and worth-using!
Audacity is the best as I am planning to take podcast into my strategy! And Portent’s content idea generator is the one I like the most!
Best tools I love to share across my social media presences!
~ Adeel Sami
Oh my gosh – I love the Content Idea Generator, some of the suggestions are hilarious. Nice list.:)
Thanks for these internet marketing tools all of them are amazing ,but i like Small SEO Tool very much.