Small-cap value stocks can be a long-term investor's best friend. Indeed, research shows that historically, value stocks with small market capitalizations - or market values between roughly $500 million and $2 billion - are the best-performing asset class.

That's why it's always interesting to see which small-cap value stocks analysts like best at any given time.

To do so, we screened the small-cap benchmark S&P 600 Value Index for stocks with the highest average analyst ratings. We limited ourselves to companies with market caps of at least $1 billion. Furthermore, these stock picks had to have a minimum of five "Strong Buy" analyst recommendations.

S&P Global Market Intelligence surveys analysts' ratings on stocks and scores them on a five-point scale, where 1.0 equals "Strong Buy" and 5.0 means "Strong Sell." Any score of 2.0 or lower means that analysts, on average, rate the stock a "Buy." The closer the score gets to 1.0, the better.

Based on those criteria, here's a look at the 10 best-rated small-cap value stocks in the S&P 600 Value Index.

10. Vonage

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Analysts are high on Vonage Holdings (, $11.62) as the internet-based telecommunications provider pivots toward