SEO
9 SaaS Marketing Strategies for Sustainable Growth
Sustainable growth for a SaaS company is about creating long-term value that is a) profitable and b) able to be maintained over time without compromising the brand’s reputation. In other words, by building growth, you’re building a foundation for more growth as you go.
We’ll talk about nine marketing strategies that are perfect for achieving and maintaining sustainable growth.
Product-market fit (PMF) is when a business has confirmed signals that its product can satisfy an existing demand in a market with high potential.
The usual sign of achieving PMF is when people are willing to buy the product (even if it’s not perfect yet), actively use it, and recommend it to others.
This is a sustainable strategy because it allows you to make sure you’re building something meaningful that will actually get paying users.
PMF automatically makes your messaging more effective. You’re promoting a product people want. And you already know who you’re talking to, so your marketing dollars are better spent.
Conversely, if none of your marketing efforts seem to work, the problem may be the product and not how creative or well funded your campaigns are.
You can find SaaS companies with product-market fit all around. These will be companies that still offer the same kind of products that made them profitable: Slack, Atlassian, Shopify, etc.
How it works
The general idea is to ship a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and iterate on it based on real user input until you see that people actively use it and recommend it.
There are five steps in the process:
- Formulate the value hypothesis: Why is a customer likely to buy your product?
- Specify the features of your MVP: The right quantity and quality of features needed to verify the value hypothesis.
- Build your MVP: There are many ways to present your product to your audience; you don’t necessarily need to develop a fully functional product.
- Test the MVP with real users: In other words, get feedback.
- Learn from your users and iterate: Some ideas will need more work, while some are probably destined to fail. Gather your data and make the decision.
When you achieve PMF, it will be time to scale your company and marketing efforts.
This strategy doesn’t need an introduction. We’ve all used product trials and free tools. That said, this strategy can be looked at from different angles. What’s important from a marketing perspective are these three benefits:
- Reduced friction – This means there are fewer objections to trying your product.
- Time to experience the value of the product and get hooked – Reading about a product on a landing page is not the same as experiencing it. Your potential customers will likely expect the possibility to put their hands on the product before they buy.
- Direct marketing channel – You can ask users to sign up for a newsletter or send them messages concerning the product.
For instance, HubSpot carves out parts of the platform for free usage (e.g., CRM, CMS). It does this, as it explains, to increase the force of its marketing flywheel. Or in other words, to propel its entire business model.
How it works
Start by weighing the pros and cons of free and freemium products.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Less friction with getting people to use your product. | Harder to manage expectations. People may expect to get more things for free. |
| Bigger user base. | More server load and possibly more queries to support. |
| Works well with growth loops (more on that later). | Offering something for free may reduce its perceived value. |
| Direct marketing channel to signed-up users (content distribution and upselling). | |
| More feedback. |
Getting users in front of free products is only part of the job. The harder part is getting them to upgrade.
First off, you need to set the right expectations—you won’t convert all of them. For the ones that are “convertible,” here are some tactics you can use:
- Never stop improving customer satisfaction. What your product does and how it does it is absolutely fundamental.
- Educate users about the product. Use blog posts, videos, or quick in-app tips.
- Offer limited access to all newly developed features. For instance, you can allow everyone to use each new feature for five days for free.
- Provide excellent customer service.
- Offer flexible payment options.
When looking for ideas for free products that will generate traffic, try a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. You can:
- Enter features of your product.
- Go to the Matching terms report.
- Use the Include filter with keyword modifiers pointing to tools, for example: “tool, check, checker, finder, analyzer, builder, free.” Set to “Any word.”
To illustrate, our free website traffic checker tool generates an estimated 33.4K organic visits each month from ranking for keywords like “website traffic checker” or even “website traffic.”
Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing content to attract and retain customers.
If you add search engine optimization to the equation, you get a framework for creating content relevant to your business and the reader. You also get a built-in distribution engine that generates almost free traffic.
SEO is one of the most sustainable marketing strategies because it generates passive traffic that accumulates over time and can generate traffic even years after. To put it differently, SEO results are continuous—and you don’t get that with all marketing strategies.
Our blog is an example of such a strategy. It brings an estimated 628K organic visits each month, worth around $860K in ad money, through regular publishing of SEO content.
How it works
SEO is generally worth it if at least one of these is true:
- People are searching for what you sell or do.
- People are searching for solutions to problems your business helps to solve.
- You can give a better solution than the conventional one people are searching for.
In any case, the core of this strategy is to find relevant keywords with traffic potential. The right keywords can connect you with your target audience and create an opportunity to pitch your product. And if you’re not ranking for these keywords, your competitors will.
The process of finding the right keywords for your website is called keyword research. Here’s a quick rundown:
- Go to Keywords Explorer
- Enter industry-related seed keywords, e.g., “seo, digital marketing, keyword, backlink”
- See keyword ideas in the Matching terms report
- Use the filters to refine results if needed (e.g., look only for low-competition keywords or keywords with a certain minimum traffic potential)
Other elements of the SEO process are building a sound technical foundation, creating optimized content, and building links. You can learn how to start with the entire process in our beginner’s guide to SEO.
A user community can help your SaaS product in a number of ways:
- It helps to make the product better through feedback.
- It helps to spread word of mouth about the product even if the community is exclusive.
- It offers added value to the user—they can learn from others in the community and network.
Building a user community is a sustainable strategy because it leverages existing customers and can help facilitate long-term engagement with the product.
A famous example of a community with a price tag on it is Behance, acquired by Adobe for $150M. It generates over 10M search visits each month and allows the parent company to bring the design community very close to its product.
How it works
In a nutshell: create a place where people can meet online, build a constant presence there, and animate the community (feature launches, discussions, polls, etc.).
For example, at Ahrefs, we offer access to our exclusive community, Ahrefs Insider, with every subscription. All we needed to start it was a regular community feature on Facebook. Now it gathers a total of 17K registered users.
Earned media is publicity gained organically from promotional efforts, like press coverage, social media mentions, and search engine rankings.
Earned media is a sustainable form of marketing for these reasons:
- It’s cheaper in the long run compared to advertising (sometimes even free).
- It’s long lasting.
- It earns your brand awareness and credibility.
Here’s an example that checks all three boxes. A while ago, we published a data study showing that 90.63% of content gets no traffic from Google. This article was mentioned by multiple reputable websites, including NY Times, Forbes, and main SEO blogs. All of that coverage gave us free brand exposure and backlinks.
How it works
Earned traffic covers a wide range of marketing tactics, so there’s no silver bullet here. Besides SEO content, which we already touched on, the tactics that are repeatable and will probably have the most impact over time are:
When vetting which site to pitch your product, story, or quote to, you can use Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar. For instance, say you’re looking for websites that review SaaS products like yours. Just search for your competitors’ reviews in Google and look at the metrics to see which sites can send you stronger links and considerable traffic.
Multi-channel marketing is basically about interacting with your audience using different marketing channels: social media, search, podcasts, email, etc.
Using multi-channel marketing will have the following advantages:
- A broader reach.
- Channels can work to support each other. For example, social media can help you to get links to websites and boost your SEO.
- You create convenience for your audience to interact with the brand.
- There’s less risk, thanks to diversification.
The idea behind this strategy is that your audience is likely scattered across various websites and social media platforms. So even if one marketing channel works exceptionally well, you probably shouldn’t drop all other channels.
How it works
Here are some ideas on how to find the best marketing channels for your business:
- You can see where your competitors promote.
- Do keyword research to estimate organic traffic for relevant keywords (we discussed it in point #3).
- Use audience research tools like SparkToro. Below, you can see a screenshot showing what kind of data about your audience the tool can provide.
Furthermore, using multiple marketing channels allows you to distribute content more effectively. You can:
- Repurpose content into other formats and platforms.
- Build an audience to distribute content directly (for example, grow your email list).
- Promote the content via ads or sponsored newsletters.
- Syndicate articles to other websites.
Here’s an example. Our thoughts on using ChatGPT for SEO were used in a YouTube video, on our blog, and on social media. While there may be some overlap between these audiences, they are definitely not identical. So by using the multi-channel approach, we were able to get more eyes on our content.
A growth loop is a system where new user input creates an output that drives product demand.
To illustrate, here’s how Notion used a product feature to activate and retain users (courtesy of Foundation).
Growth loops are a stellar example of a sustainable marketing strategy because the whole model creates a loop. The more you grow, the more users you get, and so the more you grow.
Furthermore, this strategy gives your marketing budget more “power” since each dollar invested in acquiring a user is also invested in the users generated via the loop.
How it works
The simplest (but super effective) form of a growth loop is making your product outstanding. When your customers love the product and recommend it to others, you start growing on word of mouth—you acquire users you spent nothing to get.
In some types of products, it’s possible to go beyond word of mouth and create a typical growth loop. It all depends on your product and your creativity. Here are a couple of levers you can pull:
- Make it easier for users to share their work publicly like Adobe with Behance
- Devise a referral program like Dropbox
- Create a marketplace for apps like Atlassian or WordPress
- Release an API like OpenAI
- Encourage user-generated content like G2
- Allow for free product usage after creating a free account like Figma or Loom
- Allow users to invite others to their workspaces like Slack or Miro
Revenue expansion is the additional revenue you get from your existing customers through upselling, cross-selling, and add-ons.
It’s a strategy that has proven to work for decades in multiple industries. For instance, this is why when you order a regular pizza, you’re offered to get a bigger one, get a drink with it, or add some extra ingredients.
And here’s an example from the SaaS world. When subscribing to HubSpot, you’re offered to upgrade by increasing the limit of contacts and also to purchase add-ons.
According to a correlation study published by ProfitWell, SaaS subscription-based companies should aim for 20% to 30% expansion revenue in their overall revenue in order to succeed.
You’ve probably heard that it’s better to retain a customer than to get a new one. That old business adage still holds true. According to this 2016 survey, SaaS companies spend an average of $1.16 to earn $1 on new annual contract value but only $0.27 on upsells and $0.20 on plan expansions.
How it works
If you offer additional value to your satisfied customers, there’s a good chance those customers will be happy to buy more from you. Here are some ideas for creating value for revenue expansion:
- Offer premium features on higher plans
- Offer a per-seat model to cater to both small and large companies
- Add a custom/enterprise tier for the most demanding customers
- Offer priority support
For example, when design tool UXPin developed a way to design with production-ready components, it decided to offer that as a premium version of the product with an almost 80% higher price tag than the UXPin Standard version.
But how to know when and if your customers are willing to expand? Here are some signals:
- Customers often reach their usage limit.
- Customers express interest in additional features or higher tiers.
- Your competitors offer a successful expansion system.
- You’ve got an awesome idea for a premium feature.
Growth marketing is the process of increasing a company’s revenue by applying an experiment-driven and integrated approach to all stages of attracting customers.
To understand this type of marketing better, let’s compare it to traditional marketing and growth hacking (the close variant I don’t recommend).
While the obvious solution for more sales is getting more visitors, this is not always the best one. If the product lacks competitive features and if there are obstacles on the path to purchase, money spent on getting more people through the door will always lead to low conversion and high churn. This is where growth marketing comes in.
A great example of growth-oriented thinking is LinkedIn’s Reconnect Flow. It’s a nickname for the early onboarding process where new users were asked questions about their personal experiences and offered connections to existing LinkedIn users based on that. This simple tactic engaged both new and old users.
Another interesting growth tactic LinkedIn used in the early days was encouraging users to import their email contacts (not a common thing back then). It was enough for 7% of new users to import their contacts to increase the overall number of invitations to 30%.
How it works
The idea behind growth marketing is based on the scientific method: propose hypotheses and validate them through experimentation. In marketing, it’s known as the growth hacking cycle.
The whole cycle starts by gathering data on the buyer’s journey. Next is generating ideas on how to improve and then testing those ideas (for example through A/B testing).
It may seem like an obvious way to do marketing. But it’s not always that easy: Some tests may be hard to perform, and discipline is required. Also, it’s always faster (but not better) to go with your gut.
An important part of the growth mindset is the ability to analytically break down big problems into smaller pieces. This approach allows for setting more achievable goals.
For instance, a goal to increase sales is too vague because sales rely on many factors and not all of them are controllable. Instead, growth marketers may want to discover what “moves the needle.” Depending on the product, this may be encouraging the user to perform specific actions in the product or gearing pricing and communication toward a new audience.
Final thoughts
Sustainable growth doesn’t rely only on the strategies or tactics you choose. You need to give them time to work out the returns. You also need to experiment with them to see what works best for you.
There’s a great talk by Rand Fishkin on the concept of the flywheel in marketing; how the first push is the hardest, but it builds momentum that makes things easier in the long run. Sustainable growth strategies are just like that. As you build more value into your product and your brand, you gain momentum that acts as a multiplier for every new thing you do.
Got questions or comments? Ping me on Twitter or Mastodon.
SEO
What You Need To Know In 2023
In a recent interview, Rene Ritchie, YouTube’s creator liaison, sat down with Todd Beaupre, YouTube’s growth and discovery lead, to discuss the algorithm’s future and its implications for creators in 2023.
Beaupre shares many insights that can help content creators understand and navigate YouTube.
This candid Q&A uncovers vital details, such as:
- The importance of focusing on audience satisfaction over algorithmic manipulation.
- The role of audience feedback and survey responses in refining YouTube’s recommendation system.
- Strategies for creators to build long-term relationships with their audiences for sustained success.
- YouTube’s dedicated efforts to support new or smaller creators.
- Advice on managing multi-format, multi-language content and the advantages of channel experimentation.
- The future of content discovery on YouTube, including the potential of emerging technologies and user interface enhancements.
This article overviews their enlightening conversation, with all the details on optimizing your YouTube content in 2023.
From Algorithm To Audience: A New Perspective
Q: What’s the main thing creators should focus on for the YouTube algorithm?
Beaupre emphasizes the importance of not thinking about algorithms but audiences. Creators are often asked about the best time or frequency to upload videos to optimize algorithm favorability.
Beaupre encourages a shift in perspective:
“Creators often ask about optimizing their upload time or frequency for the algorithm. But we want creators to shift their thinking. Rather than focusing on the algorithm, they should focus on the audience. Replace the word “algorithm” in their questions with the word “audience.” We design the algorithm to serve the audience, so understanding audience preferences will help the algorithm favor their content.”
The Satisfaction Metric: A Holistic View Of Engagement
Q: Can you explain the significance of the satisfaction metric in the YouTube algorithm?
Beaupre addresses an essential aspect of YouTube’s algorithm: audience satisfaction.
While watch time is a commonly known factor the algorithm considers, Beaupre says that not all watch time is equal:
“Everyone knows that watch time is one of the factors we look at. But we’ve realized that not all watch time is equal. We also need to understand the value an audience derives from a video. To do this, we run surveys about recommendations and specific videos, feeding those responses into the recommendation system. This helps the algorithm identify patterns of satisfying content, looking at various signals like likes, dislikes, watch time, and survey responses.”
A Long-term Strategy: The Key To Creator Success
Q: What kind of strategy should creators adopt for success on YouTube?
Beaupre says creators who prioritize long-term audience value over immediate views stand to benefit more long-term.
He explains that a video’s potential to leave a lasting impression and foster a long-term relationship with the audience would correlate well with satisfaction.
“I would advise creators to think about the long-term value for their audience. Rather than focusing on getting a lot of views in a week, think about creating a lasting impression with your audience. This could mean they’ll want to return to your channel in the future.”
Supporting Smaller Channels
Q: How does YouTube support new or smaller creators who don’t have a large audience?
For creators with smaller audiences, Beaupre reveals that YouTube has a team focused on helping them identify their audience, using various approaches like assessing video titles and descriptions.
“We have a team that focuses on this exact challenge. They use different approaches, like assessing video titles and descriptions, to help these creators identify their audience. We track the success of new creators on the platform, and we’re committed to helping them succeed.”
Multi-format, Multi-language Content:
Q: How should creators manage their channels with the rise of multi-format, multi-language content?
Beaupre touches on the evolving content landscape, including long-form videos, Live, Shorts, and podcasts.
His advice to creators navigating this space is:
“My advice to creators is simple: “Same audience, same channel, different audience, different channel.” We’re looking for ways to make it easier for creators to manage their channels in this multi-format, multi-language world. We encourage creators to experiment with different formats on the same channel and see how their audience reacts.”
The Future Of Discovery On YouTube
Q: What’s the future of discovery on YouTube?
Speaking about the challenges and opportunities ahead, Beaupre highlights several focus areas.
These include leveraging emerging technology, such as large language models, and making the discovery experience more enjoyable.
“We have several areas of focus. We’re excited about emerging technology like large language models, which could improve recommendation quality. We’re also working on enabling seamless user journeys across various formats. Another challenge is to make the discovery experience more enjoyable for users. We’re exploring opportunities to make the interface more entertaining and less overwhelming.”
Final Words
Beaupre signs off with the message that YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes the audience’s satisfaction.
By creating long-term value for your audience, understanding their needs, and experimenting with different formats, you can better align with the platform’s goals and succeed.
Source: YouTube
Featured image generated by the author using Midjourney.
SEO
TikTok Dominates Short-Form Content, Instagram Reels Not Far Behind
Three platforms dominate short-form video content: TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
A recent study conducted by Social Insider dives into the performance stats of these platforms, analyzing key metrics to determine which comes out on top.
In this article, we’ll examine these key insights:
- TikTok holds the crown for the most engagement.
- Comments pour in twice as much on TikTok as on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
- Brands post twice as much content on TikTok as on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
- Instagram Reels leads the highest watch rate, while YouTube Shorts lags.
- Each platform’s algorithm plays a role in how content performs.
- Each platform caters to specific audiences and marketing objectives.
Keep reading as we unpack these findings and explore what they mean for users and marketers alike.
TikTok Reigns Supreme In Engagement
TikTok, widely recognized as the forerunner of the short-form video trend, claims the engagement rate crown.
The study finds TikTok outperforms Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts in interaction, scoring double the comments of its competitors.
“From an engagement rate perspective, in this TikTok vs. Reels vs. Shorts performance comparison, TikTok sets itself apart as the undisputable winner,” the study notes.
The study compares engagement rates, revealing that YouTube Shorts averages around 3.80%, Reels hits an average of 4.36%, and TikTok boasts a significantly higher rate of 5.53%.
The Power Of TikTok’s Virality
TikTok’s success is partly due to users’ ability to harness viral trends, enabling explosive follower growth.
The study mentions that a social media strategy focusing on authenticity and humanized approaches can lead to rapid success.
Brands post twice as much content on TikTok as they do on Reels and Shorts, further emphasizing TikTok’s dominance in this space.
Reels & Shorts: Not To Be Overlooked
While TikTok may lead in engagement and content volume, Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts have their strengths.
Reels, for instance, records the highest watch rate among the three platforms.
This could be credited to Instagram’s follower-based model, with Reels serving as a potent content type for brands with a large audience.
On the other hand, YouTube Shorts functions more as a discovery tool.
Most Shorts’ views originate from the homepage. From there, YouTube starts recommending long-form content.
This recommendation system can increase a channel’s subscribers, views, and traction on long-form videos.
A Multifaceted Approach for Marketers
Given each platform’s different strengths and audiences, the study suggests a diversified approach for brands.
“Using TikTok, Reels, and Shorts complementarily and creating unique content for each, aligned with the individual’s platform audience and design, is the best approach marketers and brands alike could have,” the study concludes.
Ultimately, TikTok leads in engagement and content volume, Instagram’s Reels has the highest watch rate, and YouTube’s Shorts is the most effective discovery tool.
Each platform has a unique role in the short-form video landscape. The key for brands and marketers is understanding these roles and crafting strategies around them.
Featured image generated by the author using Midjourney.
SEO
20+ Blogging Tools to Improve Your Workflow
If you want to make the most of your time blogging, choose the right tools because they’ll save you a lot of money and effort.
But there are a lot of tools out there—and not all of them are worth it.
Well, I’ve been blogging for over a decade and have used hundreds of tools in that time. To help you sort the wheat from the chaff, I’ll list all the tools I’ve used to grow several blogs to a six-figure income—and what each of them is useful for.
Just want the best blogging tool stack? Here are my 10 most-used tools for blogging:
- WordPress – Best content management system (CMS) to manage your blog.
- Google Docs – Best word document editor to collaborate with your team.
- Wordable – Easily upload your articles from Google Docs to WordPress with one click.
- Ahrefs – Best all-around SEO tool for ranking high on Google.
- Notion – Best task management and content planning software.
- Google Search Console – Best tool for making informed SEO decisions.
- Canva – Best graphic creation tool.
- Snagit – Best screenshot capture and editing tool.
- Loom – Best screen recording tool.
- ConvertKit – Best email marketing software.
Want more? Keep reading.
Let’s kick things off with a list of tools you can use to research, write, edit, and publish your blog posts.
WordPress
What it is: A content management system (CMS) to build your website and publish blog posts.
Why I love it: It is the most robust, SEO-friendly CMS on the market. Because it’s open source and so popular, you can do almost anything with WordPress with the right plugins or a good web developer. I’ve been using it since I started my first blog at 15. It’s not the easiest blogging tool for beginners, but it’s much more powerful than “beginner-friendly” website editors like Wix or Squarespace once you learn how to use it.
Price: Free.
Google Docs
What it is: A document editor.
Why I love it: Google Docs is an easy-to-use free document editor that makes collaborating with writers and editors a breeze. I’ve been using it to write my blog articles for over 10 years. It just works.
Price: Free.
Wordable
What it does: Uploads articles from Google Docs to WordPress in one click.
Why I love it: Google Docs has hidden code that’s brought over when you copy-paste content to WordPress. Wordable fixes that by uploading the document to WordPress while keeping the formatting but removing the extra code. It also cleans up and optimizes your images.
Price: Free up to five exports per month (then $50/month).
CoSchedule Headline Studio
What it does: Scores your headlines clickability and SEO.
Why I love it: It helps me write killer headlines—which is important for both clickability and SEO. Better headlines mean more clicks in the SERPs which, in turn, can help your content rank higher on Google. The tool gives you ideas of power words and uncommon words to use to make your headline more interesting, and its AI can write and suggest headlines for you.
Price: Free ($19/month or $99/year for premium).
Grammarly
What it does: Makes suggestions to improve your writing and fixes grammar and spelling mistakes.
Why I love it: Sometimes when you’re in the flow of writing, the words just pour out of you—and you don’t want to interrupt that flow by fixing typos or grammar mistakes. I use Grammarly post-draft to fix my mistakes after the bulk of the article is finished. It’s also compatible with Google Docs and WordPress if you get the Grammarly browser plugin, which is nice.
Price: Free.
ChatGPT
What it is: An AI chatbot.
Why I love it: I use ChatGPT for researching and outlining a lot of my content. It can help you identify topics or ideas you didn’t think about in your initial content outline. I have also started playing with it to improve my content and my life in general, such as using it to help me come up with road trip itineraries for specific needs—like finding the best routes based on weather and areas with free camping—then turn that trip into a blog post and social media videos.
Price: Free ($20/month for premium access).
Hemingway App
What it is: A text editor that grades your writing using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.
Why I love it: As someone who performs and writes about fairly complex SEO tasks on a near-daily basis, it can be hard to know if my writing is easy to understand for the complete beginner. While the Hemingway App won’t necessarily help me break down these complex tasks, it will tell me if my writing is overly complex from a readability standpoint. If it is, I can simplify things more so that nearly anyone can read it. It’s up to me to make sure it still makes sense, though.
Price: Free.
Next up, let’s look at tools to help you create a content calendar and keep your content organized.
Notion
What it is: A productivity software.
Why I love it: Notion is one of the coolest software I’ve ever used. You can customize it to do almost anything: manage your to-do list, plan a content calendar, collaborate with your team, and much more. I use it to keep track of my projects and goals (both personal and business), plan out my content, journal, take notes about new things I’m learning, and more. I use Thomas Frank’s Ultimate Brain template, which has a steep learning curve but totally transformed how I plan my life and business.
Price: Free (premium plans start at $8/month).
Slack
What it is: A messaging app.
Why I love it: I used to use Slack to stay in touch with my team. However, now that I use Notion, we mostly just communicate via that app. Now, I use Slack to join communities with other bloggers and content marketers and keep in touch with masterminds I’ve met over the years. Check out some of these Slack communities for SEOs.
Price: Free (premium plans start at $7.25/month).
Google Analytics
What it is: An analytics dashboard for your website.
Why I love it: Seeing analytics data (e.g., what pages people are visiting on your site, how long they’re staying on your site, and where that traffic came from) is important to make informed decisions about what types of content to produce and where to promote your content. I check the analytics at least once a week to see which pages are performing best.
Price: Free.
Google Trends
What it does: Shows search trends for topics over time.
Why I love it: It’s super useful for finding trending and breakout topics. For example, I was recently looking for new topics for my camping website and found that searches for “lake berryessa camping” have risen 70% in the last 12 months.
Price: Free.
Search engine optimization and blogging are two peas in a pod. If you want to grow your blog organically, you need to learn SEO. Here are a few tools to help you rank higher on Google:
Ahrefs
What it is: An all-in-one SEO tool suite.
Why I love it: I use Ahrefs for a lot of things. For me, it’s been most useful for keyword research and finding backlink opportunities. My most-used feature of Ahrefs is the Content Gap report within the Site Explorer tool, as shown in the screenshot above. I like to spy on my competitors’ keywords to see what they’re ranking for that I’m not. Of course, that’s just scratching the surface of what Ahrefs can do.
Price: $99+ per month (free tools available).
SurferSEO
What it is: A software that analyzes current Google search results to score your content based on how well optimized it is compared to competing results.
Why I love it: I use SurferSEO to help me outline my content in a way that is more likely to rank well on Google. It has a content editor with a content score system that goes from 0 to 100 to grade how well optimized your content is for a given keyword (100 being the most well-optimized article). It also has a Chrome extension that lets you use it in combination with Google Docs.
Price: $49+/month (depending on tier).
Yoast SEO
What it is: A WordPress plugin that helps you better optimize your pages for search engines.
Why I love it: Yoast makes it easy to set your page’s meta tags, add robots.txt and sitemap files to help Google more easily crawl your site, and quickly see what pages aren’t optimized for search.
Price: Free ($99/year for premium).
Google Search Console
What it is: A tool to monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance in search results.
Why I love it: I use Google Search Console to help me find pages that are losing traction on the SERPs over time. Just go to the “Performance” report; then for the date, compare the last three months to the previous three months (or longer). Anything that’s dropped in traffic should be considered for a content refresh. I also use it to keep tabs on my site’s performance in general and see if it has any issues like not passing Core Web Vitals.
Price: Free.
AnswerThePublic
What it is: A software that finds common questions people ask on Google that are relevant to a given search query.
Why I love it: I use ATP to ensure I’m addressing all the common frequently asked questions people have around a given topic when I’m writing an article. It also helps me to show up as the answer for People Also Ask questions on Google.
Price: Free (premium plans start at $9 per month).
To The Web Title Tag Preview Tool
What it is: A tool to see at a glance if your meta title and description are too short, too long, or just right.
Why I love it: I use it to make sure my title tags won’t be truncated (cut off) in the Google search results. If your title tag is too long (or too short), you can see it with this tool and adjust it accordingly.
Price: Free.
Let’s face it—there are only 24 hours in a day. You don’t want to waste your time manually sharing every blog post on social media or sending individual emails, do you? These tools will automate some of those time-consuming tasks for you.
Buffer
What it is: A social media scheduling tool.
Why I love it: Posting the same thing to four different social media channels is both a pain and a waste of time. Buffer makes it so that I can push updates across channels from one dashboard and see how they’re performing without logging in and posting from each channel separately. I also hired a freelancer and trained her to schedule all my blog posts to all my channels on Buffer for a double-whammy of time-saving awesomeness.
Price: Free (premium plans start at $6/month per channel).
ConvertKit
What it is: An email newsletter automation tool.
Why I love it: I love the fact that ConvertKit is extremely intuitive and easy to use. I’ve tried Mailchimp, BirdSend, and a handful of other email marketing tools—none of them were as simple as ConvertKit. I also love that its powerful automation features allow me to set up custom email drip campaigns that are tailored to individual segments of my audience, which increases engagement rates by allowing me to create highly personalized emails.
Price: Free up to 300 subscribers (then starts at $9/month).
Zapier
What it is: An automation API.
Why I love it: What’s not to love about automation? I use Zapier to send me an email when someone fills out one of my Typeforms to inquire about my services, but you can do a lot with it. Check out its list of use-case examples to get ideas.
Price: Free up to 100 tasks/month (starts at $19.99/month for paid plans).
Last but not least, I have a suite of tools I use to create images, videos, screenshots, and more.
Canva
What it is: A drag-and-drop image editor.
Why I love it: I use Canva to create featured images and social media share images for all of my blog posts. It’s incredibly easy and intuitive for a non-designer like myself to create high-quality graphics that look professionally made. It also has an AI photo editor to automate—or at least assist in—the process.
Price: Free ($12.99/month or $119.99/year for premium).
Snagit
What it is: A screen capturing and editing tool.
Why I love it: I’ve used a lot of screen capture tools, and this one has been by far the best. We use it at Ahrefs for all of our screen captures to show you how to use our tools. I also use it in my blogs to add extra information when needed and in my standard operating procedures for freelancers.
Price: $62.99 (free trial available).
Loom
What it is: A screen recording tool.
Why I love it: It’s simply the easiest way to record your screen and share it with your team, blog readers, or whoever. I use it to record tutorials, how-tos, and other videos to help my employees learn SOPs and to show exactly how to do certain tasks in my YouTube videos.
Price: Free (unlimited video starts at $8/month).
Descript
What it is: An audio and video editor.
Why I love it: Descript is much more powerful than a simple audio or video editor—it has cutting-edge AI software that allows you to do things like “greenscreen” any background, remove all the “ums” and “uhs” from your audio, and easily rearrange clips. It even has an AI tool that can clone your voice in case you forget to say something. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Price: Free (paid plans start at $12/month).
Fotor AI Image Generator
What it is: An AI image generator. Duh.
Why I love it: It’s fun to create totally unique custom images for your blog posts based on text prompts using AI. While it’s not great yet, it’s come a long way and soon will be able to create photo-realistic images to use in your content. I also use it to occasionally give me fun things to share on Instagram.
Price: Free ($12.99/month or $119.99/year for premium).
Unsplash
What it is: A free-to-use, high-quality stock image library.
Why I love it: I use Unsplash to find high-quality photos to use in the Canva graphics I create for my blog posts—such as featured images and photos to visually show what I’m discussing in the text. I used an image of a truck on my page about truck driver statistics, for example.
Price: Free.
Final thoughts
Having the right tools for blogging can help you produce better content faster, get more out of your blog articles, and grow at an exponential rate.
The tools in this guide are the ones I’ve personally used and, in my opinion, are worth investing in (if you have the need for what they do).
Questions or comments? Ping me on Twitter.
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