Understanding your data is a massive part of the fight to rank to the top for your keywords.
In this resource, we take a look at popular data analytics tools that will make you a better Internet Marketer! Most of these tools are free whilst several have premium or paid solutions.
As business management and marketing legend Peter Drucker said:
“What gets measured gets managed”
The Practice of Management, 1954
I’ve listed all the SEO Data Analytics tools that I have used since 2008. All of these tools are matured products that do an excellent job and curating and storing data regarding every aspect of your website.
Matomo
- Free (Self-Hosted)
- Paid (SaaS)
I’m relatively new to Matomo and so far I have to report that it’s absolutely amazing. The self-hosted version is FREE and – here’s the thing – Google Analytics can sometimes sample your data so you don’t always have a complete picture. Matomo gives you total exposure to what’s going on.
There’s a paid version to Matomo as well, but I’ve used the Matomo self-hosted version, which I installed on a shared server (using cPanel) and I’ve had zero problems.
One of the things I really like about Matomo is that I 100% own the data and I find it really easy to set targets and goals compared to Google Analytics.
Furthermore, if you have SEO Clients that you work with then I’d 100% recommend installing them a free Matomo analytics installation on a sub-domain (of their site), add their logo, give them a login, and I guarantee that they’ll be impressed with your services.
Google Analytics (GA4)
- Free (Google Analytics)
- Paid (Google Analytics 360)
Sure, Google Analytics is obviously the heavy-hitter in the room but that doesn’t mean it’s the best. I’ve used Google Analytics for years (GA) and overall it works great. The only “thing” I don’t like about GA is that I just find it tricky to set up goals and targets and never really worked out how to merge it with Google Tag Manager.
A huge amount of websites use Google Analytics, it’s a no-brainer to set up an account, create a tracking code, and plonk it on your site.
You’ll get results pretty much instantly and sure, you can make a ton of excellent decisions based upon the data that you’ll be shown.
Google Search Console
- Free
To be honest I’m not sure why Google Analytics and Google Search Console are not merged into one. If you use one tool for your data analytics then I’d suggest Google Search Console (GSC).
GSC focuses more on the quality of links, keywords, and the positioning of your keywords.
One of the best SEO Hacks you can do is to look at the keywords you’re ranking for and start to place more keywords on the page that’s being ranked.
- Free
- Paid (Premium)
An old-school analytics tool that has been around for donkey-years. It works great and I suspect it’s been improved recently. If you need an “easy to manage” and a nice snapshot of what’s happening with visitors to your site, then this is a great tool to deploy.
The tool works great to analyse page views and the path the visitor takes throughout your site.
Combined with other analytics tools this might work really well.
As ever, it really depends on your purpose but if you have two analytic tools showing the same data then you can consider that to be the “real traffic” statistic.
- Paid (Medium)
- Paid (Large)
- Paid (Extra-Large)
I’ve been using this for clients’ sites for the last few years and it works very well, accurately analyzes traffic that comes to your site, and keep the data highly organized.
A nice feature of this tool is its’ ability to label junk traffic and “bot traffic” to your site.
Another two features I like are their customer support (very fast) and also the way in which you can organize the data by campaign or by a link which you can track.
One of the main differences between Click Meter, in fact really the “only”
- Free
- Paid (Basic)
- Paid (Premium)
- Paid (Customized)
I’ve also been using bit.ly for years and before that, I used to use Google’s version which I believe doesn’t exist anymore.
Bit.ly is a bit of an outlier compared to Matomo, Google Analytics, and the other Statcounter’s because it has a different purpose, but the reason I’ve included it is because you can analyze who has clicked a certain link.
An example of when I use a bit.ly link (which I always customize) is on my Gmail Suite email signature. It’s interesting to see how many clicks your signature gets and this is a clean and efficient way to tell.
Mapp
I’ve only just started using this tool so I’ll report back here when done.
FAQ
Which Is “The Best Analytic Tool For 2023“
The answer is that it 100% depends on the purpose. If you’re depending on measuring the success of landing pages or CTA’s then I’d go with Matomo because it’s a breeze to set up and monitor and you can pin the results on your dashboard.
If you need just an overview of what’s happening with traffic to your site then I’d absolutely suggest Google Analytics.
Do I Have To Pay For Analytic Tools?
Honestly, in many ways it is unnecessary, but if you really need to get under the hood of what’s happening within your site then sure, you’ll always get more features from paid solitons which will give you more to base decisions on.