Search engine optimization is the best thing you can do to increase the organic traffic of your website. It pushes you higher on search results, giving you more exposure, so you get noticed by more and more people every day, which means more visitors to your site, and, eventually, more conversions. That may sound easy, but SEO is a long process, and though it surely is easy enough to get started, it is far from that once you start digging deeper. And this is where SEO tools step in. In this post, we will be talking about their importance and give you a few ideas if you are looking for one- you should if you don’t have one already!
Here’s all you need to know about SEO tools…
What is an SEO Tool?
In simplest terms, an SEO tool is a type of software designed to help you with your website’s search engine optimization operations, such as;
• Keyword research,
• Site audit,
• Data analysis,
• Competitor analysis,
• Reporting, etc.
SEO tools check for broken links, measure site speed, track your rankings, review your content, and many more, all with the aim of always making sure your website is optimized for the best performance and user experience.
Why You Should Use SEO Tools?
Simply because they make your life easier: using SEO tools, you will optimize your website faster, and -more importantly- much more accurately. And instead of doing tedious tasks manually, you will be able to focus on other things. For example, you won’t have to hunt for broken links or missing meta descriptions for hours. You won’t have to identify which keywords will be the best for your landing pages, or research your competitors’ websites and strategies. Your SEO tool will do all these -and much more- for you, so you will save time and make more accurate optimization decisions.
In addition, SEO tools also provide you with detailed reports so you can track the progress of your website in detail, see your strong and weak points, and plan your next steps based on this information. Long story short; with the right tools, SEO will be much less complicated, and much more efficient.
Top 5 Paid SEO Tools
Here are some of the top paid SEO tools for you to consider:
Ahrefs
When it comes to SEO tools, Ahrefs is one of the first names that come to mind, and for good reason. Since more than 10 years, the tool is preferred by online businesses of different scales and it gets mostly good reviews.
Ahrefs has the biggest backlink index of all the current SEO tools (their claim), with more than 400 billion pages indexed and 30 trillion backlinks- and these numbers are only increasing! It provides you with all the tools you will need to optimize your website for the best search engine performance, including site explorer, keyword explorer, rank tracker, content explorer, and more…
Ahrefs has a wide range of plans, starting from $99/mo and going all the way up to $999/mo. It does not really have a free trial, but if you own a website, you can just sign up for its webmaster tools and get free limited access to Site Explorer & Site Audit features.
Semrush
Semrush, of course, is another popular SEO tool and is trusted by quite a lot of prestigious brands, including Samsung, IMB, Forbes, and Tesla. It offers a powerful site audit, a trustable keyword search database with easy-to-use filters, a deep competitive analysis feature, hyper-focused rank tracking, a topic research tool that you can use to find original content ideas, and more… With its domain-to-domain analysis, you can easily compare your website to the competing websites.
Semrush prices start from $119.95/mo and go up to $449.95/mo. This tool also offers a free trial so you can check it out and make up your mind.
To get more information, you can read our detailed Semrush review.
Moz
“Higher rankings. Quality traffic. Measurable results.”
These are basically what Moz Pro tool promises to its users. A favorite of a lot of SEO experts, Moz Pro SEO tool provides you with all you need to be able to easily crawl and audit your website(s), optimize your pages for maximum performance, track your rankings, better understand your visitors, create detailed SEO reports, and find opportunities for quality links. Today, Moz Pro is used by over 500,000 online businesses around the globe.
Moz Pro prices range from $99/mo to $599/mo. The tool also offers a 30-day free trial if you wish to check it out.
KWFinder
Presented to you by Mangools, KWFinder -as careful readers may have already figured out- is an SEO tool focusing on finding keywords. Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO, as it will tell you what terms your potential customers are using to search for the type of products/services/content you are offering, so you know what words to focus in order to do better targeting. Trusted by big names including Airbnb, Adidas, Alexa, etc., KWFinder is a powerful tool to find the best keywords/keyword combinations for your website.
KWFinder is only one of Mangools SEO tools, others being SERPChecker (SERP Analysis), SERPWatcher (rank tracking), LinkMiner (backlink analysis), and SiteProfiler (SEO metrics & insights). You get the complete suit including all of these, and prices range from $49.00/mo to $129.00/mo. It is an affordable tool, and it also offers a 10-day free trial if you wish to check it out before making up your mind.
Screaming Frog (SEO Spider Tool)
Screaming Frog is a UK-based SEO agency, which has a popular software called SEO Spider Tool. The SEO Spider tool is essentially a website crawler -just like those spiders of Google who read your site!- that aims to help webmasters improve their on-site SEO, mainly by extracting important data, and auditing for SEO problems. The tool is preferred by thousands of users and agencies around the globe for technical SEO audit operations.
The licensed version of Screaming Frog is $209/year. But if you don’t want to pay, Screaming Frog also offers you the option to download an unlicensed version with 500 free crawls.
Top 5 Free SEO Tools
If you are on a budget, or just think that a free tool will cut it for you for now, here are our list of top free SEO tools you can try:
Google Search Console
If we are going to talk about free SEO tools, we have to start by Google’s Search Console, offered free to everyone that owns a website. An excellent tool to get started with SEO -and SEO tools-, Google Search Console provides a series of user-friendly tools that will certainly do the job for beginners. It gives you valuable data about your website’s performance, as well as issues to fix, to keep your website as Google-friendly as possible.
Google Keyword Planner
Another free tool by, again, Google, the Keyword Planner is a very easy-to-use keyword research tool that will help you find the right keywords and keyword combinations to get better search results with your content. It has a very comprehensive keyword list, but one thing to keep in mind is it offers rounded-up numbers, instead of exact figures, and it is certainly not your best option for keywords with low search volume. Still, if you are looking for a free keyword tool that is easy enough for beginners, you should definitely check it out.
MozBar
MozBar, available for free download from Moz, is an all-in-one SEO toolbar that is compatible with Google Chrome. It basically provides you with valuable metrics while you view any webpage or SERP (search engine results page). Using this free Moz tool, you will be able to find out the page authority, domain authority, and spam score of any webpage you visit. You can use it to perform custom searches (by search engine, country, region, or city), access and compare link metrics, assess ranking probability, expose page elements, and more.
Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin
This will be a bit different from the other entries on this post, as it is a plugin rather than an all-around SEO tool, but Yoast SEO is so widely recognized and used, that it has to be mentioned. If you are using WordPress, new to SEO and just want a basic tool you can use to make sure you got the SEO basics right, Yoast’s SEO plugin is a great option– it makes sure your website meets the technical standards for SEO, and it also helps you optimize your content for the best results. Whether you wish to use a complete SEO tool or not, if you are using WordPress to manage your site, Yoast SEO is a good thing to have. It also has a premium version.
GTMetrix
GTMetrix is a very powerful tool that tests how your website performs, and helps you optimize it for better loading speeds. It allows you to test your website in different locations, browsers, and connection speeds. GTMetrix’s Basic package is free to use for everyone for an unlimited amount of time and it is an appropriate tool for beginners. Paid packages start from $10.67/mo and go all the way up to $450/mo.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is pretty safe to say that in order to do effective SEO, you will sooner or later need an SEO tool. The good thing is there are tons of them out there, but that also makes it harder to pick one. Which one will be the best for you? That depends on a number of things- your goals, the scale of your website, and your budget, to name a few… We advise you to do your research well, read the reviews -there are some on our website as well- and make up your mind. You might want to start with free ones; after all, if they do the job for you, you won’t necessarily need a paid tool- at least for a while.