SEO Tools Every Marketer Should Use for Success
Step one is to create a contained within an already existing website for a specific keyphrase. This is a common mistake that many people do not realize. An easier way for a page to be displayed in the search engines is having a page which is already linked to and then is linked to from a site map. However, creating a page linked from the site map will still not be represented well in search engines. Step two is to write a post on a blog or a social network about the keyphrase and link this post to the target page. This method uses the higher rank of the blog or social network to transfer the rank to the new page. Often this is a much easier way to get low competitive keyphrases to the first page of search engines. Step three is to link directly to the new page. This method, often used for higher competitive keyphrases, is the most direct way to transfer rank to a new page, but it does not have as much potential as the method in step two. Step four is to simply do on-page optimization for the new page. This will require tracking changes in rank to see the effects of the on-page changes and off-page links.
On-page optimization is only the first step in SEO and is useless by itself. It’s the equivalent of creating an airplane without the fuel to make it fly! The next step is to begin the all-important off-page optimization. Incoming links are the fuel of an SEO campaign, and the rank of a site will go very high with a lot of good links. Step is to say straightforward, anchor text using a wide variety of keywords and link regarding the top SEO service tools.
The ability to analyze the incoming links to a site is an often overlooked part of an SEO campaign. The importance of this could be even greater than on-page optimization itself. It’s an unfortunate truth that off-page optimization is a lot more tedious and difficult than on-page optimization. Link building is even more so.
Rather than trying to keep records using disconnected spreadsheets, project management software, and other tools, it just makes a lot more sense to store everything in a single location. Although there are a wide variety of SEO tools out there, this section is a concise set of the most useful SEO tools. By using these tools, it should make SEO campaigns easier and more efficient.
Purpose of SEO tools
The purpose of SEO tools is to help companies increase their website’s traffic, while receiving some insight on the wide topic of Search Engine Optimization. By conducting an effective research on the aggressive keywords for their particular business, SEO tools will generate a list of all suggested keywords to provide them with high search volume along with low competition. This will enable the company to achieve a higher value keyword as well as avoiding the ones which are not so efficient. It is imperative that optimization is conducted on a continual basis. Optimization should be a long term process, where some results will only be seen after months of hard work. This could also mean that there is a need to revisit the previous steps at some point down the line. Either way, it’s all an important part of the SEO process. During this phase, it’s always useful to keep an eye on the search engines, to see how effective changes are on the particular optimization methods undertaken.
Importance of using SEO tools
Before jumping into the use of SEO tools, it is important first to understand what exactly search engine optimization is and why it is so important in this day and age. A curious fact among the majority is that search engine traffic is immune to being altered straight line with the attainment from the search engine. An understanding worth remembering is that PPC or “pay per click” advertising produces traffic that is what like on behalfune with the amount of money spent on a particular marketing campaign. At the same time, organic traffic from SEO is often times free, and traffic volume tends to increase over time. By grounding yourself in the whole search engine optimization hype, it is possible to move to the same platform as the people that have been doing this for years. An understanding between the two will prove to be extremely rewarding.
Overview of the top SEO tools
In the course of the most recent decade, the universe of online promoting has extended extensively, not just regarding the measure of time individuals spend on the web and the quantity of exchanges directed, yet in addition the functionalities accessible to publicists. Today, the online space is taking a shot at another level with rich media ads, bookable web stock, sound-based showcasing arrangements not to mention the new hashtag measurement to follow a campaign’s presentation on the informal communities, and so on. It’s going on in the advanced space. One section of web-based showcasing that has rounded up an excess of enthusiasm (and expanded the degree of unpredictability more than numerous others) is website improvement. So, how does one marketer measure success when it comes to their SEO campaigns? Budget, competitive strategy, available technology, and goals all play a key role in determining which tool a company utilizes, yet identifying which areas specifically they want to improve upon will be the deciding factor in choosing a tool and technology suite. It is in the best interest of the reader to thoroughly assess all available options in order to make an educated decision and game plan when entering into a new SEO campaign or changing their current. This article has set out to make the job of that reader easier by compiling a comprehensive list of the most advanced SEO tools in the market, with a brief explanation of what each tool is actually measuring, and a direct link to the vendor’s site or a URL where they can find more information or to purchase said tool.
Keyword Research Tools
The GKP will also show you related keywords, and this is what makes it really powerful. You can enter a keyword, look at the related keywords, and start to build up a huge list of keyword ideas. This is useful for content marketers who are doing some sort of content around specific keywords, maybe an article or a YouTube video. You can enter a broad keyword, find a more specific keyword, and build a content piece around that. So with the ability to find the actual search volume of keywords, get suggestions for related keywords, and check out competition, the GKP is a necessary tool for anyone who’s doing SEO or content marketing.
When you go to the GKP, you’ll see an option to enter a keyword. Next, you’ll see a page that shows you the search volume for that keyword, plus the competition and the suggested bid. This is all data that’s used to find out which keywords you want to target. High search volume means it’s a keyword people are searching for. High competition means it will be tough to rank for, but it also usually means it’s a good keyword to try to rank for. The suggested bid is for Adwords, it doesn’t matter for SEO.
Google provides a free tool that helps you find out what people are searching for in Google. It’s called Google Keyword Planner and it’s designed for Adwords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising platform. However, it still gives you data that you can use for SEO, content marketing, or any other purpose. Here’s how it works.
Google Keyword Planner
Google’s keyword tool is a great resource for any small business looking to implement SEO on their own. One of the most obvious benefits is pretty clear – it’s free. Anyone with an AdWords account has access – free of charge. This is great news considering there are plenty of useful tools out there that are costly. Another obvious benefit is that it’s directly integrated with AdWords, a positive in several ways. One, it allows you to easily create an ad group and build a list of keywords. Two, it provides you with information already related to AdWords, the competition, and the cost of this keyword. This is helpful for anyone implementing an AdWords campaign, since it allows the user to determine the effectiveness of a keyword, whether or not to include it in their campaign, and how the ad group will perform.
SEMrush
I first purchased a SEMrush account in 2018 and used it for a variety of projects but eventually ended up canceling the subscription around 6 months later. My reason for doing so was because I managed to find similar data in Raven Tools and Moz combined. In an ideal world where cost isn’t an issue for every tool on the internet, I would use SEMrush on a daily basis. For now, I would recommend anyone to trial the tool for a week and determine if the data provided is advantageous to your projects. With the level of features and ability to pull data, you can effectively execute search marketing tactics from the information.
Semrush is another favorite tool for SEO operations like keyword research and search ranking tracking. The thing I love about SEMrush is the ability to do a level of research on keywords that is currently not possible using any other tool. The tool shows you your competitors who are ranking for any given keyword in the major search engines. You can see exact keywords competing websites are ranking for, their CPC, and search volume. This is a great feature because it allows you to target only the most relevant terms. Competitive analysis is another area where SEMrush excels at. You can search your competitors and see what keywords they are ranking for. You can gauge the difficulty or easiness of ranking for a particular keyword in your niche by looking at the top 20 SERP results and also determine the average search volume for any specific keyword. All of this is very useful for a digital marketer of any site.
Ahrefs
The Ahrefs Site Explorer allows you to see an insane amount of information on URLs such as backlink profiles, organic search traffic, organic keywords, and more. This is very useful to get a good understanding of what successful websites in your niche are doing. From here, you can then go to the organic keywords tool which will show you all keywords that any URL or website ranks for. This is a great way to understand what kind of content is working for your competitors and what you should be looking to create on your own site. Finally, the content gap tool shows what keywords your competitors are ranking for, but your site is not. This is a great tool to find low hanging fruit to increase traffic.
Ahrefs is the closest you can get to an ‘essential’ tool if you are at all serious about SEO. They have so many quality tools all in one application, it’s hard to keep track. I label Ahrefs a ‘must have’ tool because it really is. Ahrefs provides a large amount of data related to your website and the websites of your competitors. This information can be used to create a content plan and make smart decisions about SEO.
On-Page Optimization Tools
Yoast SEO
But undoubtedly, these features are truly only the tip of the iceberg. You can really put into practice so much of what Yoast has to offer. Oh, and don’t forget, who could resist the opportunity to get some insight from the works of SEO powerhouse Joost de Valk?
Yoast SEO includes a vast array of features, including: Robots meta configuration, Breadcrumbs, Primary category, Permalink cleanup, XML sitemaps, RSS enhancements, Import & Export functionality. With XML sitemaps, it makes it easier for search engines to view the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. This feature is updated every time you save a post. XML sitemaps can also include images, so that you can index these and show in image search. RSS enhancements allow you to add location-based data to content in your RSS feed. This can be utilized by using platforms such as Flipboard or even with Google by granting consent to show content in the top stories carousel. By Import & Export functionality, this means that you can import settings from other SEO engines to Yoast and vice versa. Settings can also be exported and imported into the same site or to different sites. This is an easier way of setting up the same configuration on each site.
With Yoast, you can set a focus keyword in which you can include as a requirement throughout the SEO on the page. A color of red, orange, green will be shown for the overall page SEO in the admin post section for the keyword. This analyzes how well your keyword has been used throughout. This is helpful in knowing whether your keyword has been used too many times or too little. Red meaning you must strengthen it, green is when you’re good, and orange is in-between. Other related keywords will also be suggested. Readability for the keyword will also be analyzed with the same color scheme; mistakes will be shown in the scroll-down info on hover in the admin post section.
WordPress SEO is the optimal all-in-one SEO solution for your WordPress site. It helps you to create enticing search results with its snippet preview, making it easier for your site to be shown in search results. The snippet preview allows you to see a simulated search result, which shows a title and meta description. The snippet preview is similar to when you search on Google, although the meta description may be different than it is on the back end, due to updates or Google using new content from the page.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro is another complete tool set that includes a few features focusing on access to significant behavioral information. It pulls in and displays lots of data. With Moz Pro, you can track your site’s inbound marketing efforts. Some prominent features include: Open Site Explorer, the ability to track rankings with Moz, and a keyword research instrument. The great advantage of Moz Pro is the access to Moz staff. Since it has a user base, the forums have many new users, so staff respond to user inquiries frequently, usually within a few hours. Comparing to most tools that come with no software tutorial showing how to use them, Moz Pro balances this with online Q&A tutorials and explanations of what the tools do. Although you will find no research or tools supported by technical staff or using your own data APIs, which other tools have a lot, Moz Pro stands out in onboard access to online marketing professionals. This will hugely benefit new SEM and internet marketing companies with new recruits by providing helpful resources for education. With $99/month, it’s most worth subscribing for companies seeing growth in the near future with a competitive team new to SEO/SEM.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
It’s important to note that this software is not free, but it comes with a free version that allows you to crawl up to 500 pages, so it’s the most software you can get for free, and this in itself is a perfect way to ensure that you like the interface before you make a purchase, as there are lots of SEO tools out there that have free trials but don’t offer enough capabilities to justify the purchase. The reason this is the top of my list is because the Screaming Frog SEO Spider is probably the most powerful tool on this list, and it is the tool most used by SEO professionals and agencies. It has so many different features and capabilities that I couldn’t possibly list them all here. Some of the things that are very simple to do coming from the main interface such as crawling your site to get basic errors to the more complex implementations such as driving up the crawl rate to extract thousands of URLs in just a few minutes, the Screaming Frog SEO Spider can do it all. This is also an extremely useful tool to use to detect any penalties that have been incurred on to your website without you realizing. Due to an update from the guys at Google, any site that has at least one page that is PHP based and isn’t mobile friendly will incur a penalty that will stop the PHP page from displaying in a mobile search. This is something that isn’t so easy to check for usually, but with the SEO Spider, you can set the User Agent to Googlebot Smartphone, and you can check every URL on your site to see if it can be accessed. If you find that there are some pages lacking the mobile-friendly update, you can then use the crawl rate settings explained previously to extract just these URLs and implement the mobile-friendly update so that you don’t incur this penalty. Beyond what’s been covered already, the SEO Spider tool can also find broken links, analyze page titles and metadata, discover duplicate content, and much more. This tool is highly automated once you know how to use it, so it is very time efficient. To get help with using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, there is a guide available on their website that says in good detail about every feature available in the tool. The staff at Screaming Frog are also very easy to get hold of and are helpful regarding any queries you may have about the tool.
Google Search Console
It is fairly straightforward to connect to the search console, but it can be time-consuming to enable all of the feature enhancements if it hasn’t been done before. All you need to do is register and verify you own your website URL and you can gain access to the range of performance and diagnostic tools for your website. This is a powerful tool that can help to identify and potentially fix issues that could be hindering your website’s potential in the search results.
There are many features and reports in the search console, but some are more effective than others. The platform has recently added some new reports to their existing list which includes the AMP report and the job report. The AMP report is mainly used for websites that have implemented AMP pages. The report provides errors or enhancements, and shows a list of valid and invalid pages that are indexed within Google. From a recent case study, fixing the errors within the AMP pages resulted in a significant increase in CTR from the user.
This is one of the few tools that is completely free, but does not lack in its quality or range of features. Google’s very own SEO tool is easy to use, effective, and it covers a wide variety of features. When it comes to understanding how your site is performing on Google, Google’s new version of the search console is the go-to place. The search console is used for a range of reasons which includes measuring site performance, diagnosing issues, and user analysis. This tool allows you to view the keywords that are getting clicks, on which landing pages, and what the CTR is for a particular query. This allows website owners to see what is actually bringing traffic to the site. From recent experience, a strong feature that can be used to address indexing issues is the removal of any old URLs.
Link Building and Analysis Tools
When conducting link building campaigns, there are numerous times when you will need to perform a lot of manual tasks. This can be anything from sifting through data, looking at various websites to determine quality prospects, or even going ahead and making contact with someone. This is where BuzzStream comes in handy. BuzzStream is a tool which is essentially a contact relationship manager. It provides several features for conducting various tasks with more efficiency. BuzzStream will help to identify websites from a backlink profile and then assist in prospecting by providing contact information. Once a list of prospects has been put together, BuzzStream provides a tool to keep track of who contact has been made with. This tool is also useful at a later stage of link building as it can help manage links that have been built and keep track of any relationship made with the owner of the website. Overall, this tool is very useful for those who find themselves conducting many campaigns.
Out of all the tools, the most effective link building tool would be the one from majesticseo.com. Majestic SEO offers a tool that helps identify what links search engines count towards your website. It provides you with a detailed analysis of your backlink profile by utilizing data from their Site Explorer tool. You can use this information to better understand your backlinks and thus refine your link building action plan. This is done through the Link Intelligence tab. This tool is also loaded with a number of other features such as a keyword checker, a report of your link building campaign in comparison with a competitor’s campaign, and various other resources to help educate the link builder on best practices. Overall, for the price, this tool provides an all-round solution to link building management.
Majestic SEO
Majestic SEO is a link analysis tool that comes with a wealth of information and makes it very easy for you to understand your own link profile and that of your competitors. It makes it very easy to drill down into specific categories and see exactly what is holding your site back. For example, if you wanted to focus on anchor text and see which keywords your site is ranking for and what might improve its positions, then you can do exactly that. The software shows you visually how your site compares to others in the market and then helps you understand the best way to improve your ranking in an easy-to-understand format. A particularly useful feature with Majestic SEO is the ability to download link data. This means you can edit and work with the data quickly and easily. The data can be used for SEO reports and metrics, and this means you can share data and teach a better SEO practice within an organization. Majestic also comes with a useful training area and full customer support. Highly recommended for intermediate to advanced SEOs who like to get nitty-gritty with link building and prefer to use tools with a clean UI that’s very easy to navigate.
BuzzStream
BuzzStream’s prospecting tool is a great feature for finding new link partners. The functionality of this tool is more in-depth than other link building tools, giving you the opportunity to really target the right sites for links. BuzzStream does this by scraping webpages for link data using criteria that you set. This data then becomes lists of sites you can potentially gain links from. This cuts out a lot of time wasted on finding sites that don’t meet criteria and focuses the process on contacting sites that are realistically willing to give a link. BuzzStream also has a unique feature that enables users to source contact information or LinkedIn accounts of significant figures within a company.
I primarily use BuzzStream for its use in prospecting link opportunities and as a means to keep organized. You can do this by adding websites/contacts one by one, or there’s an easy uploading system via an Excel document. You’ll be able to manage your links in separate ‘projects’, making link management easier and keeping everything organized. BuzzStream also provides a way to ‘assess’ link partners and rate the quality of the link. This is done by a simple to detailed analysis of the website link page. The more link data that’s added, the more your link profile insight will develop.
BuzzStream is the tool I use most often in link building. It’s essentially a CRM system for link building. Keep track of who you’ve contacted, who’s replied, who’s given you a link, who hasn’t replied, etc. BuzzStream has a ton of features to make the process easier, including automatic contact info that’s added to your prospects, reminders, and advanced searching.
Linkody
Linkody is a backlink management tool that allows you to replace non-working links and generate reports of your backlinks. Linkody’s platform can automatically monitor your website’s or your competitor’s backlinks. You will receive a report in the form of an email every week or day (depending on your subscription plan). This report will give a clear indication of your link building progress and the progress of your competitor. You can then evaluate the results and adjust your marketing strategy. Linkody’s reporting can also be useful for detecting any changes to your backlink profile, and it can easily alert you if any link gains or loses Domain Authority. Integrating Linkody with Slack will allow you to receive notifications of your new backlinks and changes to your backlink profile directly to Slack. Linkody is also working on integrating the tool with Majestic to allow you to view and verify the quality and authority of your backlinks directly from Linkody’s platform. Email reports and the user-friendly UI make Linkody a straightforward and easy-to-use tool.
