Our 8 Favorite SEO Tools That You Should Be Using

While an SEO consultant is a great person to turn to for advice, it’s also an extra cost for your business. Furthermore, this added cost may be crucial, especially in the startup phase when you’re tight on cash.

SEO tools offer a cost-effective starting option for new businesses. Later, when you have more resources, you can invest in an SEO consultant for a professional content strategy.

Among some of the best free SEO tools on this list are also some paid ones. Here are the top 8 SEO tools.

1. Google Analytics

Google is masterful at collecting and organizing data. It’s no surprise that the place you make most of your searches is the same place you can go to for premium SEO analytics of your website. 

On this platform, you can create in-depth reports on audience type, advertisements, and acquisition.

Google Analytics can identify poorly performing pages using funnel visualization techniques. This shows where visitors come from, how long they stay, and their geographical locations.

The platform now has an e-commerce reporting system that can track your pages’ sales activities and performance. The report will also show your website’s transactions, revenue, and other commerce-related metrics. 

2. BuzzStream

BuzzStream’s SEO tool allows you to research prospects, find their contact information, and add new contacts. 

The SEO tool allows you to segment your lists to find the right contacts to suit your SEO marketing campaign. You can then select campaign templates and track conversion rates, click rates, and response rates. Customization features include personalized emails, send timing, automated follow-ups, and reminder settings.

You’ll also gain insight into the gaps in your campaign and make changes, however far along in your campaign. 

The platform also allows you to track your team’s progress and divide work between your team to grow your following as much as possible.

3. Ahrefs: SEO Keyword Tool

This is one of those SEO tools that’s especially useful for keywords. 

It will provide you with the exact keywords that your competitors are using to gain organic search results and where they rank in these searches. 

The Top Pages report features which pages that were most visited on your website.

Ahrefs, using the Keywords Explorer, helps you get thousands of relevant keyword suggestions from the tool’s database of over 3 billion keywords. The feature also shows you annual search volume trends and will give you insight into searchers’ behaviors and search engine results pages (SERP) ranking history. 

The Content Explore feature will show you which content has performed the best based on social media shares, number of backlinks, and organic search traffic. 

The platform also uses a rank tracker to track your desktop and mobile keyword rankings from any location.

The tool is quite comprehensive and requires that you pay a small fee of $7 for a 7-day trial to start.

4. SEObility

One of the free SEO tools, SEObility, features an on-site audit, rank tracking, backlink checker, as well as a quick site checkup in SEO, keyword, and ranking. 

In their on-site audit, SEObility will check your website to ensure that it’s free from duplicate content and problems regarding on-page optimization. 

SEObility also offers on-page analysis of your website in its rank tracking feature to monitor and evaluate the rank of your website on search engines. This feature also allows you to monitor your rankings on mobile search engines. 

It’s commonly known that websites with valuable backlinks are usually displayed near the top of search results. They represent important recommendations of other websites, thereby affecting the reputation of your website on search engines. 

Need a quick site checkup? 

SEObility will test your site’s general optimization ranking in its SEO check. For more specific options, consider the keyword check, which deals with on-page optimization, and the ranking check, which will analyze your rankings at the global or local level. 

5. Google’s Search Console

The Google Search Console is perhaps a step above Google Analytics, which itself is one of the best entry-level SEO tools. 

Using the Search Console, you’ll be able to complete a variety of tasks:

• Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing on revised or new content;
• Analyze traffic data of your website as well as relevant data on your search queries;
• Receive alerts about indexing, spam, or other issues on your site;
• Reveal the sites that link to your website.
• Troubleshoot for your site’s mobile content, such as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), mobile usability, and other relevant search features.

Whether a generalist or specialist, or anything in between, as long as you have a website, you can use the Search Console. For SEO specialists and marketers, this tool is a must to optimize your site’s ranking, generate traffic, and understand more about your site’s search results. Site administrators, who care about the operation of the site, will be able to easily monitor and resolve simple server errors, site load issues, and security issues like hacking and malware. 

It is a free service that will help you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. 

6. Yoast SEO

This is one of the most famous SEO tools out on the market. This tool is especially useful for anyone who owns a WordPress site, optimizing for both written and video content, such as a blog or vlog. 

Though there is a premium version, the free Yoast SEO tool is just as effective if you’re interested in starting with just the basics. 

The basic Yoast Tool offers valuable features to get you started on optimizing your site’s content for search engines:

• Feature one keyword or phrase per page and post;
•  Access a Google preview of your post.
• Assess the flow of your content with a Readability check through a Flesch Reading Ease score.
• Ensures no duplicate content;
• Optimizes the technical configuration of your content.  

The SEO tool boasts of attracting more visitors from Google, Bing, and social media networks to your website, as well as increasing reader engagement. 

7. SEMrush

SEMrush is a highly comprehensive SEO tool for digital marketers. 

Though using an SEO tool with these many features comes with a price. 

For the Pro plan of $99 monthly, you’ll receive quite an extensive list of tools and features:

• Domain and keyword analytics report with 10,000 results per report and 3,000 results per day;
• 3,000 traffic analytics;
• 5 projects;
• 500 keywords to track;
• 100,000 pages to crawl per month, 20,000 pages to crawl per project, 50 social profiles for monitoring, and 10 social profiles for posting;
• 5 scheduled PDF reports;
• 1 plagiarism check per month.

All of the plans include a site audit, on-page SEO checker, position tracking, social media tracker, social media poster, backlink audit, marketing calendar, and log file analyzer. 

It offers analytical reports on organic research and keyword research, as well as various audits, such as a backlink and site audit.   

8. BrightLocal

This is one of the more affordable paid SEO tools out on the market. 

If you own only a single business, you’ll have access to 3 search ranking reports, 25 keywords per report, 3 citation and NAP reports, 10 Google My Business audits, 3 Monitor Reviews, 1 Get Review, and 1 full SEO audit and sales report for $29 per month.

You’ll be able to try BrightLocal for free for 14 days before deciding if these SEO services are right for you.

BrightLocal’s Audit Google My Business feature provides you with a detailed audit of your top 10 competitors in your local market. You’ll also be able to track many different keywords across Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and view key ranking trends in multiple locations. You can also add the LeadGen widget to any of your pages to enable your visitors to create a branded local search audit for their business. Producing client white-label reports is easy, using BrightLocal’s customizable dashboard.  

BrightLocal specializes in optimizing local content.