Let’s be honest here, there are tons of SEO tools available on the market, and it can be hard to choose between all of them.
It doesn’t help that different businesses have different needs, so there’s no such thing as a list that’s perfect for everybody.
While most listicles focuses on the biggest list of SEO tools they can compile, I’m gonna try something different.
I’m going to list down the 3 major sections of SEO I usually do, and the exact tools I use to excel in each. No frills. No fuss.
On-Page SEO is the cornerstone of any SEO campaign. From doing keyword research to implementing them into your contents, there’s a lot of tools that’ll help you achieve them in an organized, effortless and time-efficient manner.
LSIGraph is a free tool to generate LSI Keywords, or Latent Semantic Indexing if you prefer complicated jargons. It basically means keywords that provides context to a target keyword.
For example, juice, healthy and salad tells you “apple” means a fruit. Tim cook, iOS and airpods tells you “apple” means the tech piece. Using the right LSI keywords will make it easier for Google to rank you for the right keywords.
Now LSIGraph is good for 2 things – one, is to actually give LSI Keywords suggestions to be used to improve your content theme.
Two, I use it a lot to get ideas on additional, more precise keywords to target based on my broader, more general target keyword.
LSIGraph can also help you expand broad keywords and get specific ideas on what should be covered.
Once I get a list of additional keywords I’ll head down to..
Google Keyword Planner is the easiest place to go find the monthly search volume for the target keywords and LSI keywords you found from LSIGraph.
This is to make sure you target the right keywords with actual search volume and traffic. Just stick select few keywords from LSIGraph into Google Keyword Planner and find out which have a decent amount of search volume.
You don’t actually need to be using AdWords in order to get value from Google’s Keyword Planner. Just go through the initial setup process and you’ll be able to use the keyword planner to get keyword suggestions and volume for free.
It’s important to set the right expectations here. Most companies will go through their ‘main’ search terms fairly quickly. At that point, things can feel like they’re slowing down, but it is important to keep working at it. Search Engine Optimization is a long-term marketing strategy, and the longer you do it, the greater the results will be.
Now that you have a list of target keywords and LSI keywords, it’s the time to start implementing them into your contents and Website SEO Checker is the fastest and easiest way to help you do just that.
This tool will check how optimized your webpage is for a specific keyword you put in and give you an SEO Score to show how easy will it be for you to rank for that particular keyword.
You’ll also be given a list of SEO suggestions you can use to further improve your SEO Score and rankability as well a list of LSI Keywords you can add into your content.
Now, many companies like to “set and forget” the content on their site, but that’s actually bad for them. Search engines like Google regularly update their algorithms, and SEO tools like the Website SEO Checker are updated in response. By regularly checking on the status of each of your keywords, you can be sure you’re still getting the most value from them – without doing this, changes in search algorithms could reduce or even eliminate the value of the effort you put in.
We recommend checking each of your keywords at least once every three months. If you have a particularly large number of keywords – and in fairness, some sites do – break it into segments and check them on a rotating schedule instead. SEO tools only show their true value when used properly, and regular checkups are a key part of getting the most value from this tool.
SEOPressor Connect is Website SEO Checker’s big brother, offering you unlimited SEO Score analysis and both SEO and LSI Keyword suggestion.
But that’s not all. SEOPressor Connect offers complete SEO care for WordPress sites. This includes Sitewide SEO Settings, SEO Score Manager, Site Analytics and more.
Basically the WordPress SEO plugin solves all the on-page SEO needs you’ll ever have on your website.
Now that you have done the keyword research and optimizing your contents based on the right keywords, it’s time to track how well you’re actually doing.
RankReveal is a useful tool that helps you quickly figure out your search engine rankings, including results for good keywords you may not have even known you are ranking for. This applies for both global and local searches, and even allows you to track and pay attention to how well your competitors are doing.
This service saves you countless hours flipping through pages after pages of Google search results and present them in an organized and insightful format. Best of all, you can track the ranking of an unlimited amount of websites and the payment package is super affordable, scaling up with the more keywords you want to rank.
After you’ve covered all on-page SEO factors of your site, you’ll need to beef them up with doing off-page SEO and start building and earning external links back to your site.
Many tools offer ways for you to do backlink checks to let you know how much backlinks you have, where are they from and which part of your website they’re pointing to.
The Open Site Explorer allows you to research links pointing to your site, uncover places on the web where links could be added, and see which links – if any – are proving to be damaging to your site’s overall SEO score. If you find any, you can start looking into remedies. Given the amount of drag that bad links can cause your site, it’s definitely worth checking up on them.
Moz also offers unlimited use and additional functions with their Pro plan although they can be quite pricey ($149/month). You can opt for a 30-days free trial to see if it’s worth it and I can tell you beforehand that it is.
If the price of Moz Pro doesn’t exactly fit your budget, Majestic is another alternative that starts off free and can provide a decent amount of information, though you’ll have to log in to get to the most useful pieces of information.
That said, even the free plan allows for the use of plugins to help you improve your site, as well as the ability to create ‘campaigns’ where you can track the relative performances of multiple websites you own. This is a helpful, at-a-glance way to do A/B testing of your content, and it’s definitely worth investing at least a little time in.
Their Lite subscription plan starts off at $49.99/month – a fair bit, but still much less than Moz and better for companies that don’t have a lot of room to spare in their budget.
Another solid choice for off-site research, Ahrefs allows for things like tracking your backlinks, getting reports on content and keywords, and even getting alerts for new (or lost) links to your website, mentions on the web, and keywords you’ve started to rank for.
All of these are quite useful all by themselves, and much like Moz, Ahrefs’ paid subscription plans come with access to many of their SEO tools. That said, we do recommend getting at least the standard plan ($149/mo) so all reports can be obtained at least weekly. Unless you’re just starting out, monthly reports are a bit too slow to properly manage your growth with, and the added frequency of reports will almost certainly earn you more than you’re paying.
By now, you’ve probably noticed that most of the off-site SEO tools do similar things… and you’re not wrong. Ultimately, checking on things like links and other websites is all you can do off-site, and that’s why most of the basic functionalities here are the same.
That said, SEMRush offers more than a feature-rich SEO analytics suite. You can also get a reasonably robust report that includes things like search traffic, main organic competitors, and a site audit to help you generate more leads… most of which can be done for free. Their sample report doesn’t tell you everything, but it is an affordable way to see where you’re currently at.
Local SEO tools are a little different than the rest – while most tools focus on general web presence, local SEO works differently and you’ll need to do specific things to rank well there. The following SEO tools are either entirely focused on local results or have good performance there as a major component.
Whitespark offers an excellent suite of local SEO tools, but the most useful one is undoubtedly the Citation Finder. This tool focuses on finding mentions of your business, with or without a link. As they define it, a citation can include your company name, your phone number, or your address.
This is an important tool for figuring out who’s been mentioning and referring you – and it’ll also help you find conversations where you can step in and add something to the discussion.
Other tools include help with building your website’s reputation and getting reviews for your site, both of which can significantly improve your local SEO rankings.
SEOProfiler is one of the most powerful tools available , and it’s priced accordingly. Its features are broken down into a few different areas:
The point I’m trying to make here is that this is an extremely comprehensive tool (both for normal and local SEO), and you can scale your plan up as your business grows.
Unfortunately, the strength of this tool is also its weakness – this is not the right tool for companies that just want basic reports and suggestions. Rather, this is the tool for experts and companies who have someone working full-time on making their web presence the best it can possibly be, and who need as much information as possible in order to make the correct decisions.
Remember, SEO tools do different things – not every tool is appropriate for every company. If you are in a position to use this tool properly, though, get it – it really is worth it.
Given the overall quality of their SEO tools, it’s not surprising that Moz is on here twice… and their local plans, while not as robust as SEOProfiler, are affordable on practically any business budget.
The most useful feature here is probably the Directory and Aggregator submissions tool, which allows you to deliver information in real-time to useful repositories like Apple Maps. After all, it’s pretty hard to be found by people using mobile devices if you’re not actually in their system.
That alone is easily worth the cost of this tool, and the basic plan also offers useful things like syncing Google My Business listings, claiming a place on Yelp, eliminating duplicate listings, and monitoring reviews. All in all, this is very much a worthwhile tool to use.
BrightLocal is the tool for companies who are more interested in basic reports and overviews, rather than the robust, almost endless streams of data that the other tools can generate.
Honestly speaking, the full reports from the two previous tools are better – but if you just don’t have the people or the budget to devote to it, the basic reports can get the job done until you’re ready to really dive into improving your local SEO efforts.
The introductory plan includes three search ranking reports with 25 keywords in each report, as well as ten Google My Business audits and three looks at your online reviews each month. You’ll also get one full SEO audit and sales report, though if you want to hand anything to clients and customers, you’ll have to move up to their $49/month plan for the white-label options.
Serplify is basically a cheat among the various SEO tools, since it allows for easy ranking in local search results without using the sorts of techniques that will get a site penalized.
With this tool, you can quickly generate entire websites – complete with unique content and optimized to take advantage of the way search engines measure and rank sites. Thanks to the power of automation and an understanding of what works, it really is possible to quickly generate a fully-functional site… and at a cost that’s drastically lower than doing it in pretty much any other way.
Whether you want to create a site that you can customize to your needs or you want to use the generated site as-is, Serplify is easily the fastest way to get started, and we recommend it for that reason.
We’ve just gone over a lot of great SEO tools that you can use to help build up your business, but there are a few things you should know before you get started.
The big one is that tools are only good at making things easier when you know what you’re doing. Even Serplify’s automatic website creation requires you to have an idea of the sort of website you want to create and how you’re going to use it to attract local visitors to your store, and that’s about as easy as current technology allows.
Now that we’ve done with RankReveal’s major update we’ll be sharing more blog posts on SEO and internet marketing. Be sure to follow us and subscribe to our newsletters to get more tips and insights on how to make your online business a massive success!
Updated: 24/5/17
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