Free tools to check your website traffic

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Hey there - it's Brian 👋

I offer a free digital marketing review for businesses over $3M in revenue.

BUT everyone can use the tools I use to find the digital health for your business.

Best part?

Every tool is free.

So in today's issue, you’ll get the list of free tools I use to check the digital health for your business (& how to use them).

The questions we’ll answer today:
• How long do people stay?
• How did people find my site?
• How many people visit my site?
• What are my competitors doing?
• How much does Google trust my site?
+ more

So let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

An old Deloitte friend asked for a digital health check

So this week I had a consulting call with an EdTech company.

One of the executives was a consultant with me at Deloitte. We were on a project together in NYC, building systems to find drug money at a global bank.

Anyway.

He wants more customers for his EdTech business so he emailed me asking if he could do my free digital marketing review.

As we went through his website I kept pulling up different tools to check the digital health of his business:
• Socials
• Ads
• SEO
• Landing Pages etc

Every time I pulled up a new tool I heard him frantically scribbling on the other side.

“I need the names of those sites.”

So I promised I’d send it to him…

But I never specified how…

He’s an avid reader of this newsletter so might as well email him the list (cough*plus include 13,500+ others*cough).

So steal the tools I use to check the digital health for your own business:

Use these tools to solve a specific problem:

So let’s quickly align on what problem you’re using these tools for.

Here’s the 3 steps I use when I scan your business online:

1) Digital health check:
Find out where the problems are with your internet presence (ads, socials, SEO, landing pages, funnels).

2) Prioritize:
Figure out what you’re focused on today (and what you haven’t started yet).

3) Actionable steps:
I look for quick wins, and strategic plays.

You can do this for your own health check, or use these free tools to check out how your competition is doing.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
Quick wins DOES NOT mean starting a new marketing channel.

You only have so much time, money, and attention. So how can we get the most customers out of your limited time?

Look for quick wins in your current channels first. Test to see what’s working. Build out the systems and processes.

Once you’re getting the customers you want, it’s repeatable, and doesn’t take much more of your attention, THEN we’ll look to add on another marketing channel.

Tool #1: Figure out how much Google trusts you

Moz Domain Authority Checker

Type your website into here and you’ll get an output like this:

Here’s what these numbers mean:

Domain Authority:
It’s a scale from 1 - 100 on how much Google trusts you.

Most strong websites I see are in the 30s - 40s.

The way we get you to 30 is by putting out blog posts with ranking keywords and getting more people to link to your posts.

I’ve built a system I use with my CMO clients for creating blog posts on auto-pilot (I’ll share in a future issue).

I outsource links to my friend Barrett O’Neill’s link building business.

Linking Root Domains:
This just tells you how many websites linked to your posts. It’s one of the biggest factors Google uses to figure out if your site is trustworthy.

You’ll want to get this number to over 500+ links.

Ranking Keywords:
When people type something into Google, how often do you pop up?

You’ll want to get this over 200+

Tool #2: See how many people visit your site

SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb gives you so much information I’m shocked it’s free:

• Where do you get your visitors from?
• How many monthly visitors do you get?
• How long do those visitors stay on the site?
• What words do people type in to find your site?
• What percent of people don’t do anything and just leave (“bounce”)

That’s a lot, right? So let me show you.

I’ll plug in the site, ReallyGoodEmails.com into the tool so you can see the output.

Monthly visitors? How long people stay?
These metrics vary by industry, but roughly for a small business aim for:

• 10k site visits

• Bounce rate below 50%

• Visit duration over 2 min

How do people reach your site?
Just look for surprises here.

Putting effort into a channel but it’s not taking off? Re-consider your strategy.

Not putting effort into a channel and it is taking off? Double down there.

Note: I don’t trust “direct.” It just means people type your site in. It’s hard to track.

What do people type into Google to find you?
If you’re surprised that a keyword has been getting you traffic, that’s a place to focus your efforts.

Tools #3 and #4: Check your ads

Two places: Facebook and Google.

1) Facebook Ad Library
Just type in a competitor and you can see all their ads.

I put in CXL as an example and saw their Facebook ads below.

With Facebook ads I can click through to your sales page and see if you make any of the common sales page mistakes.

2) Google Ad Transparency Center
Here you can see if your competitors run Google ads.

Downside: I can’t tell you which landing page you’re sending it to so it’s harder for me to roast your landing page.

Here’s an example from Acquire.com.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
Everyone is so focused on the ad itself, but who cares if you get a ton of visitors from the ad, if the sales page doesn’t convince them to buy?

The most important part of ads is creating a page that actually converts visitors into customers.

If you’re not sure that your website is getting customers, check out these tips on making your sales page actually get sales.

P.S. if you’ve never run an ad before, start with Google Search Ads. The ads are easier than Facebook, so you can focus much more on getting your sales page right.

Process (not a tool): Social Engagement

No specific tool here.

But I type your business into socials to see a few things:

1) Are you using the right platforms?
CPG? I’ll check visual platforms: IG, TikTok, YouTube.
B2B? I’ll check LinkedIn.
SaaS? I’ll check Twitter
Etc.

Each platform has its benefits so I want to make sure they’re choosing the platform that’s best suited for you and your customers.

2) How active are you?
If you post a lot it tells me you’re heavily invested in socials so you care about moving it forward. If not, it’s not a priority (yet).

3) How strong is your engagement? Are the right people engaging?
Strong engagement = better conversion to sales.

If a lot of the right people are engaging it tells me you’ve nailed their niche, people are passionate, and if we set up the right funnel, we can turn that passion into sales.

Weak engagement?

We build a plan to boost engagement.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
I actually don’t care about following size.

Followers DO NOT equal customers. I care about getting you sales.

In the old days, social platforms would push out content relative to your follower-base. A lot of followers means a lot of people see your stuff.

That’s not the case anymore with most platforms. The TikTok algorithm changed the rules for all platforms.

The algos now are good enough to know who wants what type of content and “following” someone matters far less than it used to.

Anyway - don’t pay for someone to build your follower count without a strategy to convert those people into customers or a passionate fan base.

I do 4 of these free marketing reviews a week. Want one?

If you’re a founder who’s obsessed with your product and you’ve grown your business to over $3M in revenue. Grab time for free.

I’ll use these tools to look through your site and give you actionable steps to get customers online.

If you liked this post, and don’t want to miss future issues, sign up for free:

If you found this helpful, please forward this email to 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian

P.S. There’s really no catch with these free marketing reviews.

I just want to get to know the challenges my readers are facing.

I wish there was a catch and I could offer you something. But I only have one fractional CMO slot left and 5 people asked this week to get the spot.

Reply to this email if you want to chat about your CMO, but the slot will likely be closed in the next few days.