The best SEO tools make it easier to ensure your website’s performance and help you manage and monitor your search engines rankings.
THE BEST SEO TOOLS
SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is at the heart of web accessibility. SEO follows HTML4 guidelines in order to better identify purpose and content.
This meant that web page titles should accurately reflect the content. Additionally, keyword headings are used to highlight specific pages.
This was essential, because web developers were often more concerned with coding than the user experience.
Slowly this began to change as it became more clear that search engines used these “on page” signals to provide “Search Engine Results Page(SERPs) (search engine results pages). It was also known that ranking higher on these would allow you to tap into free, natural organic traffic.
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The best website builders software
We have selected the most effective onpage SEO tools most effective SEO software for small business
The internet has come a long way since its early days. Major search engines like Google now process a lot more information off-page when determining their search results. They use semantic processing, collating user details, and applying neural network for machine learning of patterns and trends.
SEO’s core principles of SEO are still the same. It is about ensuring pages have the correct tags to target keywords. Not only for natural searches, but for PPC (Pay Per click) and other marketing campaigns. In these cases, conversion rates and call–to-action (CTAs), are vital indicators of success. Google recently emphasized this point with its Core Web Vitals. It is a signal that fundamentals still matter.
But how does a company decide which keywords they should use on its sales page? How can a website filter transactional traffic? How can the business improve its ability to attract targeted traffic from all over the internet? Here are the best SEO tools to do just that.
We’ve also provided a list with the top online marketing agencies.
SEMrush screenshot of website
1. SEMrush
Advanced SEO tools all accessible from a masterful dashboard
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+Analyze the metrics of your competitors
+Informative robust dashboard
+Comprehensive Toolset
REASONS to Avoid
-Uses complicated terminology
SEMrush SEO software toolkit has a full range of SEO tools. You can view detailed keyword analyses and a summary of domains you manage.
You can also compare the performance and rank of your pages against other websites using the SEO toolkit. You can also analyze backlinks between your pages and other websites. This process is sometimes referred to as “link building”.
Traffic analytics is a tool that allows you to identify your competition’s main sources of web traffic, such top referring sites. This allows you to get down to the details about how each competitor’s site compares in terms both of average session length and bounce rates. “Traffic Sources Comparison”, which gives you an overview on digital marketing channels available for multiple rivals, is also useful. In SEO slang, “bounce rates” refers to the percentage visitors who visit a website but leave without accessing any other pages.
The domain overview offers more than a summary on your competitors’ SEO strategies. You can also find out which keywords your competitors have used and compare the performance of your domains across both mobile and desktop devices.
SEMrush is a popular tool that has received many positive online mentions. However, it has been criticised because of its use SEO jargon such “SERP” which could alienate novice users. A Pro subscription costs $119.95 per calendar month and provides access to all SEO tools.
SEMrush added more tools over time. These included a writer marketplace, traffic-boosting tools, an agency tool set and even a white glove service for PR agencies.
Techradar readers have a 14-day free trial to try the service.
Ahrefs website image
2. Ahrefs
SEO Package with great price and excellent web index
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+Huge index of web links
+Extensive documentation, tutorials and user support
+Advanced filtering options for power users
REASONS to Avoid
-No apps for mobile devices
Integration of the -API could possibly be improved
Ahrefs launched in 2011 and has been a very popular SEO tool. Content creators and web developers use Ahrefs worldwide to improve their online presence.
Ahrefs boasts the highest backlink index among top SEO software, with more than 295 Billion pages indexed and more that 16 Trillion backlinks. Ahrefs can help you rank better and increase traffic by adding a new keywords explorer and tools for monitoring competition.
Ahrefs provides all the tools necessary to grow and explore your online business. A central dashboard shows you the rank, traffic, and backlinks of your projects. The landing page allows you to easily access the five Ahrefs components, as outlined below.
Ahrefs is a powerful tool that helps you stand out. It boasts a web crawler, which is second only to Google in size/speed. Ahrefs, despite being priced in a similar manner to comparable products, offers the best link analysis and powerful research tools as well as knowledgeable user support, making it one of the best choices for understanding and improving your domain’s online presence.
Moz Pro Website Image
3. Moz Pro
Search marketing tools for the community
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+Wide selection of tools
+Lots of data
+Supportive community
Moz Pro offers a range of SEO tools to help you improve traffic, rankings, visibility, and search engine ranking.
Moz Pro spider allows you to perform an audit of your site. This should identify potential issues and suggest solutions. The Moz Pro spider can be used to monitor your site’s ranking for keywords over hundreds of thousands.
The keyword research tool can help you identify the best keywords and keyword combinations to target. Additionally, there is a backlink analysis instrument that mixes several metrics, such as anchor text and domain authority.
Moz Pro starts at $99/month for the Standard plan. This includes basic tools. The Medium plan provides more features and is $149/month. There’s also a free trial. Plan purchases made annually get a 20% discount. Additional plans can be purchased for agency or enterprise needs. There are also paid-for tools available for local listings and STAT Data analysis.
Moz Pro has many free tools available even if you don’t sign up. There is also a vast support network available to help you with any search marketing issue.
Majestic SEO Tools: Website shot
4. Majestic SEO Tools
This is a great deal for backlink tinkerers
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+A lot of data
+Multiple functions
+Excellent analysis
Majestic SEO has received high praises from SEO professionals since its creation in 2011. This makes Majestic SEO tool one of the oldest available.
The tool’s primary focus is on backlinks. These are links between sites. Majestic provides a lot of backlink information, which can have a big impact on SEO performance.
Searches can be made for both a Fresh Index’ which is constantly updated and crawled throughout the day as well as a Historic Index’ that has been praised online because of its lightning fast retrieval speed. One of the most requested features is the Majestic Million’, which shows a list of top 1 million websites.
Majestic’s Lite Version costs $50 per Month and offers useful features, such as a bulkbacklink checker, a record referring domains IP’s and/or subnets, as well Majestic’s integrated Site Explorer’. This feature, which was designed to give an overview of your online stores, has received some negative feedback. Majestic also does not integrate with Google Analytics.
SpyFu Website Screenshot
5. SpyFu
For all sizes of businesses, value-priced SEO tools
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+Easy for you to use
+Comprehensive collection of features
+Competitively priced
REASONS to Avoid
-Comes with advanced tools which beginners may not need
Data overload can make it hard to sort through.
SpyFu is a search analysis company that scrapes internet data to identify keywords companies and websites buy using Google AdWords. SpyFu also matches search queries with search terms, allowing companies to gain more insight into what types of searches are being performed and which words appear on Google Search Engine Results Page.
SpyFu basically allows you to spy on competitors. SpyFu helps you find keywords your competitors are using for online advertising. Then, it highlights the words and phrases which generate the most traffic. This allows you to keep up with other companies and services in your industry, as well as attracting more visitors to your site.
SpyFu provides three plans. The basic plan costs only $33 per Month and includes 250 sales leads, domain contacts, and 5,000 keyword ranking tracking every week. This plan is best suited for new startups or small companies with limited online presence.
SpyFu has the most functionality and depth of any product. It is cheaper than most of its competitors, has a simple interface, and can be tailored to your individual needs. It has all the keywords research, PPC, SEO and keyword search tools any business would need. It’s a well-designed, highly effective application.
SEO Spider
SEO Spider works well, but it is not free.
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+Used for industry leaders
+Excellent crawling features
REASONS to Avoid
-Limited version
SEO Spider was created originally in 2010 by “Screaming Frog”, a pseudonym for the screaming frog. This raucous reptile has clients including major players like Shazam, Dell, and Disney.
SEO Spider’s best feature is its ability quickly search URLs and crawl your site for broken pages. This saves time and eliminates the need for you to click on each link individually to rule out any ‘404 errors’.
The tool can also be used to verify for missing titles tags, duplicated tags, or tags of the wrong size, as well checking the number and location of all links on each webpage.
SEO Spider has a paid and a free version. Although it includes basic features like crawling redirects and other functions, the free version is limited to 500 URLs. SEO Spider’s Lite Edition is limited to smaller domains. The paid version costs $180 annually and provides more advanced features and tech support.
You can read our complete SEO Spider review.
Top SEO tools for free
We have highlighted the most powerful paid-for SEO tools available, but many websites also offer free tools. Here are the best free SEO software.
Google Search Console
1. Google Search Console
Google is the search giant for SEO.
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+Ideal to beginners
+Easy to access key metrics
+Free support
Google Search Console (GSC), is a great tool for beginners to get started with SEO.
Even if you aren’t a strong SEO expert, Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Central), along with the numerous user-friendly features it provides, should be your first port to call.
The suite of tools offers valuable information at a glance about your site: It can assess its performance and spot potential problems (like negative spammy link), as well as helping you to ensure that your site has Google-friendly features and monitor Google’s indexing.
You can even report spam to request reconsideration if you site has been subjected to a penalty. You’re also responsible for not referring to their Webmaster Guidelines at all. Search Console is continuously updated. There are new features such as the URL inspection tool or sitemaps report.
Help is available via Webmasters Help Community. It allows webmasters the opportunity to connect with each other and share tips and tricks. Google has updated its outdated content tool and disavow link tool since 2020.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
2. Google Ads keyword planner
Google gives you a keyword selection tool for free
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+Free
+Comprehensive keyword listings
REASONS to Avoid
-Approximated Figures
Priming your web content is only possible if you know which keywords to target. Google Ads’ free keyword tool is simple to use. After entering your website URL, click the button to start reviewing the keywords suggested. Jill Whalen (CEO of HighRankings.com) is a fan. She offers some advice for those who are new to keyword optimization: “Make sure these keywords are included in the content on your website.”
These numbers can be useful for keyword research but it is important to understand that they are not exact numbers.
Google Optimize
3. Google Optimize
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+Free
+A/B Testing Platform
REASONS to Avoid
-Losely behind its competitors in terms of feature richness
Not for beginners
Another Google tool added to that list. Not surprising. Google Optimize can be a daunting tool for SEO professionals. SEO isn’t about rankings. Without the right mix of content that engages users and drives conversions to your site, your earnest optimization efforts could be a waste.
Google’s service is free and allows you to test your site’s contents. You can do everything from A/B testing two pages, to comparing multiple elements on a page, or even compare all of them. For some fun, personalization options are available. Please note that you will need to have sufficient traffic and enough time to make the results available to you, as with Analytics.
SEOQuake
4. SEOquake
Popular SEO extension
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REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY
+View Multiple Search Parameters
+Save and compare different projects
+Traffic history trended based on a graphic
+Diagnostic page and cheat sheet
SEOquake has become a very popular toolbar extension. It allows you view multiple search engines parameters simultaneously and saves and compares them with results for other projects. SEOquake’s icons and numbers may seem confusing to uninitiated users, but experienced optimizers will be able to appreciate the depth of information this addon provides.
Find out the country and number of visitors to your site, see how traffic has trended over time, and much more. The toolbar has buttons that allow you to check a site’s Google rank update, backlinks. SEMRush ranking. Facebook likes. Bing index. Alexa ranks. Web archive age. There is also a link to Whois. The toolbar also includes a diagnostics page and a cheat sheet that will give you an overview of the potential issues (or possibilities) that could be affecting a specific page or website.
What is an “SEO crawler”?
An SEO crawler can help identify and fix problems that might be hindering search engines from crawling your site. It is an indispensable, but often overlooked tool in any SEO expert’s arsenal. Julia Nesterets founder of SEO crawler Jetoctopus, was our guest to learn more about the role of an SEO spider and its importance.
This is probably the most painful message you will receive if you’re a webmaster/SEO professional. Google’s bots sometimes disregard your content and your SEO efforts and fail to index your page. You can fix this problem!
Search engines are built to understand, crawl and organize online content. This allows them to provide users with the best and most relevant results. Website visibility can be negatively affected if there is any obstacle in the way. Making your website crawlable is a primary goal. It can also be used to highlight any issues you have regarding your web hosting service provider.
SEO crawlability can be improved to help search engine robots understand what pages you have and thus increase your Google ranking. So what can an SEO crawler do?
1. It provides real-time information. An SEO crawler can quickly crawl your site (some crawls up to 200 pages per hour) to find any issues. The reports provide information on the URL, site structure, HTTP status, broken links, meta robots details, rel-canonical URLs and other SEO issues. These reports can be exported easily and referred back to the technical SEO/development teams. An SEO crawler can be used to ensure that your team is current on the status of your website’s crawling.
2. It quickly identifies indexing mistakes. Many indexing errors, such as duplicate title tags and meta descriptions, duplicate content and 404 errors are often overlooked because they’re not easy to spot. A SEO crawler can be used to spot these errors during regular SEO audits. This will allow you to avoid more serious problems in the future.
3. It gives you a starting point! SEO professionals might find it daunting to try to derive insights from every report. You should choose an SEO crawler that is problem-centric, and helps you prioritize your issues. A good crawler will allow webmasters the ability to pinpoint the root causes and then estimate their size. Webmasters will then be able fix important issues promptly.
How do Google SEO spiders function?
An SEO crawler can help identify and fix problems that might be hindering search engines from crawling or accessing your site. It is an important tool that every SEO expert should have, even though it is difficult to use. Julia Nesterets, founder of SEO crawler Jetoctopus, was on hand to answer all our questions regarding backlinks.
Google’s SEO Spiders are designed to extract information from websites and transmit it to the algorithms responsible in indexing and evaluating content quality. The spiders will crawl URLs continuously. They refer to the robots.txt to see if they can crawl any URL.
After parsing the content and crawling older pages, spiders scan for new pages and crawl them. Googlebots will add a page to their crawler list if they find any new backlinks or if the website’s webmaster has made changes to the XML sitemap.
Do you think it is worth adding backlinks retroactively? It is worthwhile to add backlinks on content that has been published a while ago, particularly if it is high-quality and related. This will also preserve the equity for that page.
Is there a hierarchy to backlinks Technically there is no hierarchy for backlinks. It’s impossible to structure or scale them as we wish. However, there are some criteria that can improve the quality and quantity of backlinks.
- Relevance of anchor text
- Relevance of the linking page and its quality
- Linking domain quality
- IP address
- Link clicks and traffic to a linking site
The linking webpage has very few links
The best links are those that have relevant keywords in the link text and originate from trusted websites. Google doesn’t have any set rules for how it evaluates backlinks. Some backlinks are still valid quality, even if they do not meet these criteria.
How often should a site be audited?
While there is no right or wrong method of auditing links there are some tips to keep in mind for determining the frequency.
If your website has a long history inorganic links building, it’s smart to do a monthly deavow.
A quarterly audit is recommended in most cases. It allows webmasters track backlinks and helps to maintain a website’s link profile.
Linking to a website that is ethically growing can be checked every half-yearly since the risk of negative SEO being applied is low.
Consider a website with many old pages that are very few in traffic but have no links (e.g. eCommerce/news It’s worth 301 these pages to the relevant key Hubs or updating the page without updating the dates with backlinks.
In this case, you should select the pages with the best contents and update them. For pages you don’t want your audience viewing, set up 301 redirects and point them at the relevant hubs. Relevant is key here. The 301 should point to thematically appropriate hubs. Google will treat them like soft 404s.
Are social media links still relevant in 2021
Webmasters might feel social media links are useless because they are Nofollow and don’t impact SEO. Google still considers social signals a ranking factor. People are clicking on links from their newsfeeds constantly. This can be an advantage if you have great content. You should not overlook social backlinks.
How can adverts negatively affect your SEO?
SEO is synonymous with ads. Eric Hochberger (Co-Founder and CEO at Mediavine), explains to us how these two entities are in love.
Advertising is by definition against SEO optimization. It relies on the publisher content and the user experience. Our company started out as an SEO management company. We strive to find the right balance so that both can coexist. With the right technology, you can still rank high in search engines and run high-performing advertisements. It isn’t an either-or situation. Here’s how:
Lazy loading is the key feature. If a website uses lazy loading, the ads load on a webpage only as the user scrolls towards them. This means that ads won’t appear on a webpage if the user doesn’t scroll down to a screen view. This function significantly reduces the page’s load. A lighter page means a faster loading time which can lead to better SEO.
SEO is dependent on adhering to the Coalition for Better Ads’ (CBA) standards. This is because Google uses the CBA to power its builtin Chrome Ad Filtering as well as its Ad Experience Report within Google Search Console (its main SEO tool). SEO isn’t about the quantity of ads. It’s the density. CBA provides detailed insight into appropriate ad/content ratios both on mobile and desktop.
Last but not least, it is important to reduce above-the-fold ads (ATF), which are ads that appear in the first view. This will improve page speed and help with SEO. Google will show a faster site if an advertisement isn’t loading on the first screen. This is because users won’t notice an ad load if it’s below or above the fold.
You’ll hear it often that SEO follows user experiences. This is an important distinction that Google makes a lot of. Google search results aim to give the best user experience. A website that is full of ads will not have a good user experience. It won’t generate high-quality search engine optimization. Is this the case?
Although there are opportunities for SEO and advertisements coexisting in a positive fashion, the available resources for publishers to promote these are limited. The solution is to find a framework for the most widely used CMS. It should focus on Google’s best practices (Core Web Vitals, page experience) and utilize lazy loading and reduced ads ATF.