SEO, standing for ‘search engine optimization’, is the issue that seems to concern every earnest online marketer today. In fact, 61% of businesses see SEO and growing their organic online presence as the top priority in terms of inbound marketing. And rightfully so. SEO determines whether your business is visible online or gets lost among the competitors.
In its basic sense, SEO is a strategy applied to a website in order to improve its organic listings on search engines like Google. In other words, SEO is vital as long as you want your website to appear at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) when users enter specific queries in the search bar. The higher your search engine rankings are, the more people will notice your website and the more traffic you will drive.
Regardless of the way, your business makes money, be it direct online sales, running ads, etc., more traffic means more opportunities to engage your target audience and eventually convert prospects into customers. Besides, the amount of generated traffic is one of the factors search engines take into account while ranking your website. That is, the more traffic you drive, the more visibility you get. In crude terms, traffic brings even more traffic. So when you create a website and expect it to increase your profits, SEO is not to be taken lightly.
But how to make sure your website meets the requirements put forth by search engines? There are a lot of tools to help you optimize your online presence. Here’s our list of the most effective and versatile services that can ensure success for your business in terms of SEO.
But before you start, we recommend you to learn more about SEO, how it works, and what factors influence it. Please refer to our previous blog posts for the information:
- Answers to frequently asked questions on SEO: success factors, SEO-friendly sites, troubleshooting;
- What Is SEO Content? Tips for Building a Successful SEO Content Strategy;
- SEO Guide: 18 Basic Things to Consider When Optimizing Your Website.
How to rank higher on Google? Nobody knows better than Google itself! This is why Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) is the first on our list. It can greatly assist you in the promotion of your website on the largest search engine in the world. The service is designed to track statistics of user requests, notify a website owner about critical errors and problems on the site.
Google Search Console is basically a set of useful tools that allow you to address a wide range of tasks including:
- Analyzing search traffic;
- Detecting website errors;
- Identifying problems with page indexing;
- Submitting sitemap files to Googlebot;
- Checking robots.txt file;
- Force indexing pages (up to 500 pages per month);
- Detecting security problems;
- Viewing the site as Googlebot.
Google Search Console can be useful for both webmasters and website owners. It is a relatively simple tool for improving and troubleshooting SEO. And the best news is, it is totally free. Just try not to get overwhelmed by the abundance of features and metrics the service throws at you. Explore them gradually and prioritize those that are relevant to your SEO strategy.
Keywords are of great importance for SEO, and Keyword Planner is there to help you find the best ones for your business. It is a keyword selection tool which is essentially designed for creating advertising campaigns on Google AdWords but can prove useful for SEO purposes as well, especially in terms of keyword research. The service allows you to:
- Find key queries based on a given word, phrase, website, or category;
- Pick additional keywords based on existing ones;
- Analyze statistics for certain keywords;
- Predict the number of impressions and clicks for key queries at specific rates and budgets;
- Obtain forecasts for existing keyword campaigns and account requests.
While Keyword Planner is mostly used for PPC advertising, it is also considerably popular among SEO specialists as it helps to find relevant keywords and determine their competitiveness while compiling a website’s semantic core.
SemRush is one of the best platforms for competitive analysis available on the market. With its help, you can monitor your competitors’ online marketing strategies and evaluate their success in a number of marketing areas, as well as automate keyword search, website audit, and other SEO activities.
SemRush offers multiple tools to help you:
- Find the best keywords to improve organic listings and optimize online advertising;
- Create content that will appeal to both users and search robots;
- Procure quality backlinks;
- Monitor the “health” of your website;
- Correct website errors;
- Track your website positions in search results (as well as competitors’ positions);
- Create PPC campaigns faster;
- Track activities and involvement on social networks and more.
SemRush is an extremely versatile SEO tool that allows you to get a competitive edge within your industry. However, it is a service you will have to pay for if you want to get access to all of its features. A free version is also available but it is rather limited in terms of its possibilities.
Moz Pro is a tool bundle containing everything you might need for search engine optimization and assessing the performance of your website.
The service analyzes the visibility of your website on Google and generates a list of keywords constituting its semantic core. It also shows the frequency and relevance of those keywords.
The keywords are divided into groups according to their priority. The tool analyzes visibility of the site in search results by specific keywords and selected regions while making recommendations on how to improve its performance.
On top of that, Moz Pro can crawl your website to reveal broken links, blank pages, and errors in meta-tags. Using the platform, you can easily check backlinks, while removing spam sites from the results. Based on the site analysis, you can create a personalized SEO report.
To sum it up, Moz Pro offers the following possibilities:
- Semantic core analysis;
- Monitoring visibility of a web resource on Google;
- Recommendations for optimization;
- Technical audit;
- Comparison with competitors.
What is more, the service has a useful extension for Google Chrome. Moz Pro offers a trial period which is activated after entering a payment card credentials.
Screaming Frog is a tool used for crawling website pages (including those with JavaScript) and finding dead links and incorrect meta-tags. The software analyzes all URLs of a domain, collects links to pages with a 404 error or other server errors and groups them accordingly.
The tool allows you to retrieve meta-titles and meta-descriptions from all pages and identify which of them are too long or too short, which are missing, and which are identical. You can also carry out a robots.txt check-up and identify pages with “noindex” or “nofollow” tags.
Another useful feature is the ability to check your website for duplicate content. It allows you to detect identical pages with different URLs.
Besides, the software offers a possibility to create a sitemap or make changes in it. Integration with Google Analytics makes it possible to obtain data on how your audience interacts with landing pages.
In a nutshell, Screaming Frog SEO Spider provides you with a number of advantages including:
- SEO audit;
- Crawling of pages with JavaScript;
- Meta tags analysis;
- Identification of pages with errors and duplicate content;
- Integration with Google Analytics.
The software is great for improving overall SEO. What is more, a free version allows you to scan up to 500 URLs per session, which isn’t bad at all!
Ahrefs is a comprehensive toolkit for search traffic analysis and SEO. The service allows you to track rankings of your website (as well as your competitors) and plan an SEO strategy more efficiently.
The software enables you to figure out which pages of your site bring organic traffic from search engines and which ones need optimization. Programmers can use the platform for technical audit.
Ahrefs has a library of keywords in 13 languages, which is a great news for companies operating in markets of different countries.
What is more, Ahrefs is particularly good at analyzing links referring to your website or sites of your competitors. This gives you a better idea about your backlink catalog, allowing you to see where exactly most of your traffic is coming from.
Thus, the tool gives you the following benefits:
- Tracking a website’s position on SERPs;
- Technical SEO audit;
- Comparison of SERP rankings with competitors;
- Backlink analysis;
- Keyword library in 13 languages.
All of these features make Ahrefs a perfect choice for optimizing your efforts at link building and enhancing your SEO in general. The software requires payment, but a free trial period of 14 days is available.
WooRank is a web service that allows you to quickly evaluate your website and provides tips for improving SEO, increasing traffic, and generating leads. WooRank covers SEO, mobile rendering, performance on social media, SERP ratings, backlinks, optimization of usability and servers. The tool is suitable for webmasters, web designers, online marketers, and SEO experts.
One of the features that make WooRank stand out is a system of website ratings. The rating of your site is displayed at the top of the statistics page. It is calculated with an account for all the statistical data as well as a checklist of site elements considered fundamental by WooRank.
To sum up, WooRank key features are:
- Detailed analytic reports;
- Customizable reports;
- Competitive analysis;
- Intuitive dashboard;
- KPI monitoring;
- Marketing planning;
- Continuous tracking;
- Backlink analysis;
- Website overview;
- Managing SEO and social networks, mobile optimization, usability optimization;
- On-page analysis.
WooRank is a popular tool among companies, web developers, and marketing agencies. It is a paid service though. A free 14-day trial period is provided.
Website Grader is an online SEO tool developed by HubSpot to deliver highly personalized reports based on varied metrics.
The reports focus predominantly on five aspects:
- Performance: analysis of page size, number of requests, load speed, etc.;
- Mobile responsiveness: evaluation of a website’s mobile version;
- SEO: analysis of a website visibility for both people and search engine robots, meta-tags analysis;
- Security: SSL certificate check.
All you need to do to obtain a comprehensive SEO report is enter a link to your website and valid email address.
Due to the fact that the service is free and versatile, it has acquired an impeccable reputation worldwide, providing users with lots of valuable information without forcing them to spend a single cent.
Majestic is yet another service for a complete website audit, providing you with the ability to check backlinks and evaluate the quality of web pages referring to your site. You can estimate the total volume and quality of links, determine the citation index, and analyze anchor links.
Among the key advantages of the tool are:
- Bulk verification of backlinks;
- Quality assessment of referring domains;
- Analysis of competitors;
- Tracking search engine rankings by specific keywords.
A limited functionality of the software is available for free. To receive historical information, a subscription with a monthly fee is required.
Pingdom is an online SEO tool showing the load time of all pages on your website. It also helps you find out what exactly slows the site down. As soon as you identify the reasons for lengthy load times, it will be much easier to find the solutions.
What is more, Pingdom provides a rating scale for the performance analysis, indicates the total page load time, page size, and recommendations for speeding up your site.
Take your SEO to the next level!
Search engine optimization is undoubtedly one of the fundamental aspects of online marketing. Good SEO can get you straight in front of your prospects’ eyes and ensure an influx of traffic needed to drive your business forward.
However, the issue with SEO is that the requirements for it constantly change. Search engines keep perfecting their algorithms to improve the user experience. This brings about new challenges for businesses on the regular basis. But thanks to the advanced SEO tools like those listed above, optimizing online presence is becoming less time-consuming and more cost-effective.