Essential tools to elevate your business website today

Maintaining an effective business website requires more than just good design; it’s about leveraging the right tools to enhance your site’s performance, visibility, and user experience. Here are four indispensable tools you can use today to optimise your business website and ensure it stands out in a competitive market.

Ahrefs webmaster tools – FREE website audit!

Ahrefs is widely recognised for its powerful SEO capabilities, and their free tools offer a robust starting point for businesses looking to improve their on-page SEO. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools allows you to audit your website, identify potential SEO issues, and track your site’s health over time.

Click here to open a Webmaster’s account.

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Key Features:

  • Site Audit: This feature crawls your website to highlight common SEO issues such as broken links, duplicate content, and missing meta descriptions. Addressing these issues can improve your site’s search engine ranking.
  • Backlink Checker: Understanding who is linking to your site and the quality of those backlinks can help you develop a stronger link-building strategy.
  • Keyword Explorer: Discover which keywords your site currently ranks for and identify new opportunities to target valuable search terms.
  • Utilising Ahrefs’ free tools can provide invaluable insights into how search engines view your site and offer actionable steps to enhance your SEO efforts, ultimately driving more organic traffic to your business.

Plausible – simple visitor stats for your website

For those seeking a user-friendly and privacy-focused analytics tool, Plausible is an excellent choice. Plausible offers a simple yet effective way to track your website’s performance while ensuring data privacy and compliance with data protection laws.

Check out Plausible here.

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Key Features:

  • Simple Analytics: Plausible provides easy-to-understand metrics such as page views, visit duration, and bounce rates. Its clean, minimalist dashboard ensures that you can quickly grasp the key insights without being overwhelmed by data.
  • Privacy-Focused: Plausible is designed with privacy in mind, ensuring that no personally identifiable information is collected. This helps you comply with data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
  • Lightweight Script: The lightweight tracking script ensures that your website’s load times remain fast, providing a better user experience for your visitors.
  • By using Plausible, you can gain valuable insights into your website’s performance without compromising on user privacy, making it a perfect tool for businesses that value simplicity and data protection.

Hotjar – watch what visitors do on your website!

Hotjar is an excellent tool for gaining qualitative insights into user behaviour on your website. Unlike traditional analytics tools that provide quantitative data, Hotjar offers heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback tools to help you see how users interact with your site.

Check out Hotjar – FREE plan available!

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Key Features:

  • Heatmaps: Visualise where users are clicking, moving, and scrolling on your pages. This helps identify the most engaging elements and areas that may need redesign or optimisation.
  • Session Recordings: Watch recordings of individual user sessions to see how visitors navigate your site in real-time. This can reveal usability issues and friction points that might not be apparent from aggregate data.
  • Surveys and Feedback: Directly ask your visitors for feedback on their experience. This qualitative data can provide insights into user satisfaction and areas for improvement that you might not have considered.

Hotjar’s comprehensive suite of tools allows you to understand the ‘why’ behind your site’s performance data, offering deeper insight into user experience and behaviour.

Sucuri SiteCheck – make sure your website isn’t infected!

Security is a critical aspect of maintaining a successful website. Sucuri SiteCheck is a free tool that scans your website for malware, blacklisting status, injected spam, and other security issues. Ensuring your website is malware-free is essential for maintaining trust and a smooth user experience.

Scan your website today – a scan is completely free to use!

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Key Features:

  • Malware Detection: Regular scans can identify and help you remove malware that could be harming your site’s performance and reputation.
  • Blacklist Monitoring: Check if your site is on any major blacklists, which can impact your search engine ranking and credibility.
  • Security Recommendations: Receive actionable steps to fix any security issues detected during the scan.
  • If you find any issues, it’s crucial to address them immediately to protect your site and its visitors. Need help? Contact us for professional assistance in securing your website.

Bonus: ChatGPT Plus ($20/month)

In addition to these tools, consider leveraging ChatGPT Plus to create your own business ChatGPT. This advanced AI can assist with content generation, document drafting, customer support, and much more, enhancing your business operations and saving valuable time. Another blog post on this coming very soon!

By incorporating these tools into your business website strategy, you can significantly enhance your site’s performance, user experience, and security. Ahrefs helps you optimise your SEO, Plausible provides critical data on user behaviour with a focus on privacy, Hotjar offers qualitative insights to refine user experience, and Sucuri SiteCheck ensures your site remains secure and trustworthy. Start utilising these tools today to ensure your business website is not only effective but also competitive in the digital marketplace.

Do you need any help with any of these items or just want a free website audit? Get in touch today to see how we can help your business.

Picture of Written by: Ben Wall

Written by: Ben Wall

Ben Wall is the owner and lead designer at dotwall Web Design in Loughborough, Leicestershire. Passionate about empowering business owners, Ben shares actionable tips, industry insights, and design expertise on this blog, helping businesses thrive online with modern web solutions

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