There are plenty of productivity hacks, software, and services that can be useful in moving your business forward, but what are some simple tools that you can implement to save time and grow your business?
With our experience managing business websites over the years, here are the top tools that help our clients (and us!) skyrocket business growth online.
- Google Analytics (Traffic statistics)
- Google Search Console (Google Search metrics)
- UpdraftPlus (Backup management)
- Yoast SEO (Search engine optimization)
- Ahrefs (SEO research and maintenance)
- WP Rocket (Speed optimization)
- GT Metrix (Speed measurement and troubleshooting)
- Cloudflare (Content delivery network)
- BlogVault (Backups, security, staging, and more)
- Site Health Diagnostic (Built-in error report)
- DreamHost (Affordable, easy-to-manage hosting)
- Trello (Task management)
- Zapier (Task automation)
- FileZilla (File transfer protocol)
- Redirection (Redirect manager)
1. Google Analytics (Traffic statistics)
Google Analytics is a web traffic measurement tool that allows you to track visitors, analyze user behavior, monitor marketing efforts, and much more.
Whether you get 100 or 100,000 visitors per day, Google Analytics can be used to grow your website. That’s why it is the leading tool for web analytics.
Measuring and analyzing your traffic data can provide you with useful insights into how you acquire, engage, monetize, and retain your users.
There’s a lot you can learn from your Google Analytics data, such as:
- How people are finding your website
- How users interact with your sales pages
- What causes users to leave your website
- What percentage of visitors fill out your contact form
- And much more!
The measurement opportunities are endless and can be used to strategically grow your website and business.
Pricing: Free
2. Google Search Console (Google Search metrics)
Google Search Console is a tool provided by Google that allows webmasters to monitor their user acquisition and performance within the Google Search results.
Google Search Console can be helpful in many ways, especially if your business website relies on search traffic. You can use this tool to:
- View keyword rankings
- Monitor organic traffic numbers
- Troubleshoot errors that are impacting search performance
- Identify pages that are missing from search
- And many other metrics!
Organic search traffic can be very valuable for a business, so you can use Google Search Console to get more eyes on your website
Pricing: Free
3.UpdraftPlus (Backup management)
UpdraftPlus is a backup and restoration plugin for WordPress. It is easy to use, but also has advanced features available if you wish to use them.
You can use UpdraftPlus to automatically backup your website files and databases in case something goes wrong. In the event of a website error, you can simply restore your website with the click of a button instead of hiring an expensive developer to fix it.
Having backups ready to go when your website experiences a crash can minimize downtime that could cause a loss in sales. It will also protect you from expensive repair costs.
Pricing: Free version or $70 per year
4. Yoast SEO (Search engine optimization)
Yoast SEO is the most popular search engine optimization tool for WordPress. It is a plugin that gives you complete control over your search visibility and helps you optimize pages for higher search rankings.
You can use Yoast SEO to improve search rankings so you can bring more organic traffic to your website (and therefore, more customers).
Pricing: Free version or $99 per year
5. Ahrefs (SEO research and maintenance)
Ahrefs is a software that can be used for keyword research, competitor analysis, website auditing, and rank tracking for both paid and organic search.
There are countless ways that Ahrefs can benefit your business, such as:
- Strategically outperform your competitors in the search results
- Grow your web traffic by finding new keywords to rank for
- Identify website errors that could be impacting your user experience or search rankings
Pricing: Starts at $99 per month, but they have free tools available.
6. WP Rocket (Speed optimization)
WP Rocket is a caching and speed optimization plugin specifically design for WordPress. It features extensive options for optimization files, databases, images, fonts, and more.
We’ve tested plenty of WordPress speed optimization tools and WP Rocket has been the top-performing plugin for most of our clients’ sites.
A fast website can benefit your business in two primary ways:
- Higher search rankings (more traffic)
- Better user experience (traffic is more likely to convert to a sale/lead)
Pricing: $49 per year
7. GT Metrix (Speed measurement and troubleshooting)
GT Metrix is a website performance testing and monitoring tool. You can run a scan within seconds that will analyze your page loading speed. It will generate a report of your current loading speed and what can be done to improve it.
We’ve already mentioned how fast page loading speeds can help improve user experience and lead to higher search rankings. GT Metrix can help you monitor changes in your page loading time as a result of website changes.
We recommend using this in conjunction with WP Rocket.
Pricing: Free
8. Cloudflare (Content delivery network)
Cloudflare is a content delivery network (CDN) and security provider. It uses geographically distributed servers to deliver your website content as fast as possible to the user.
Cloudflare’s CDN is a powerful speed optimization tool that can help you retain users and increase search rankings. Data shows that a fast website can maximize your sales and improve performance in search engines such as Google.
Pricing: Free version or starts at $20 per month
9. BlogVault (Backups, security, staging, and more)
Blogvault is an all-encompassing website management tool that offers backups, security, monitoring, staging, migration, and much more. If you’re looking to manage your WordPress website in one easy-to-use dashboard, Blogvault is a great tool to have.
Blogvault can benefit your business by streamlining your website management processes so you can save time to focus on other aspects of your business. It will also keep your website protected from hackers and bots.
Pricing: Starts at $89 per year
10. Site Health Diagnostic (Built-in error report)
Site Health is a simple, but useful, tool that can diagnose issues with your WordPress environment. The best part is that Site Health is already built into your WordPress site!
In the WordPress dashboard, click Tools > Site Health to access the diagnostic tool. We recommend checking this report regularly so you can diagnose and repair issues.
The Site Health report can identify outdated software, email issues, security vulnerabilities, and other important items.
Pricing: Free (included with WordPress)
11. DreamHost (Affordable, easy-to-manage hosting)
DreamHost provides affordable, fast, secure, and easy-to-manage hosting. They offer plenty of features that are great for beginners, but also versatile enough for advanced users. Backed by a fantastic support team, DreamHost is a great company for you to host and manage your website.
As a website management company, we’ve worked with all the popular hosting companies. DreamHost has been the best overall combination of affordability, ease of use, performance, and support that we’ve encountered.
When your business website is supported by a great hosting company, your online success won’t be held back by poor performance or website downtime.
Pricing: Starts at $7.99 per month
12. Trello (Task management)
Trello is a project management tool that is easy to use, but very powerful. Boards can be created in seconds and managed on all your devices (including mobile).
Trello can be used to manage your planned and in-progress website tasks so you don’t neglect your website. Use this tool to keep track of website maintenance, plan new pages, and offload work to your team.
Pricing: Starts free, depending on your team size and desired features
13. Zapier (Task automation)
Zapier is a workflow automation tool that can automate your busy work and repetitive processes. It can be used to connect thousands of apps, even if those apps aren’t typically compatible with each other. Zapier is the middleman that bridges the communication gap between software tools.
At Buckley Web Services, we love using this tool for both our clients and our own business!
Here are few ways you can use Zapier to help grow your business:
- Automatically add new leads to your CRM
- Automatically share new WordPress posts to your social channels
- Automatically add new WooCommerce orders to a spreadsheet
- And endless other possibilities!
It’s amazing how much time you can save when you use Zapier to automate your workflows.
Pricing: Starts for free
14. FileZilla (File transfer protocol)
FileZilla is an FTP/SFTP (file transfer protocol) solution that is free, easy-to-use, and available on most operating systems.
FileZilla makes it easy to upload, download, and modify files on your web server. It is beginner friendly and easy to learn, even if you’re not familiar with FTP.
Pricing: Free
15. Redirection (Redirect manager)
Redirection is a WordPress plugin that helps you manage URL redirects.
Have you ever found a broken link on your website? It’s likely that you changed a URL or deleted a page and forgot to redirect the unused link.
This is usually fixed by adding a line of code to your .htaccess file, but if you don’t feel comfortable working on your website files, the Redirection plugin can be a great, easy-to-use solution,
You can use Redirection to fix and minimize broken links on your website which will improve user experience and prevent visitors from leaving. If someone clicks on a broken link they may end up leaving your website, so it’s important to have a tool in place to address this.
Pricing: Free
