April 7, 2025
So, you’ve got your website all set up. You have all the key business information on it, and you might even have an insightful blog. Now what? Just sit and wait for your target audience to find you? No. Now comes the time to start optimizing for better traffic.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about making your site more visible to search engines and your prospective clients alike. Considering that it’s a complex process, you’ll need the help of some good SEO tools if you’re to be successful with it.
The best of these tools can give you insights into what your target audience is looking for. They can tell you how your site compares to your competitors and what you can do to increase your traffic. They save you time, streamline your efforts, and deliver measurable results. The worst ones, on the other hand, will prove to be just a waste of money.
So, what are the top SEO tools that will be worth your while? Check out this comprehensive ranking of the best 100 tools across different categories that can help your SMB attract attention online.
Let’s get this party started with some keyword research tools. Now, keywords are the specific words and phrases that your target audience uses when Googling something—and that search engine crawlers look for when presenting results to those users.
Therefore, when a user searches for “women’s sneakers,” for example, the crawlers will go through all the pages that have this keyphrase and then present the most relevant results. If your site doesn’t mention this keyphrase (or associated alternatives like “shoes,” “footwear,” etc.), it won’t show up in the search results.
Keyword research tools help you identify which relevant keywords and keyphrases your target audience uses when looking things up online. They also tell you how popular certain search terms are (a.k.a., how many times, on average, they’re used in a given month). You can use this information to create relevant content and up your ranking on the results pages.
Keywords are often regarded as one of the most important aspects of SEO, so, unsurprisingly, there are many tools designed to help you research them. The following are the best SEO keyword tools to use to get started with site optimization.
If you’re specifically looking for free keyword research tools, we’ve covered that in a separate article.
SEMrush offers a comprehensive keyword toolkit that gives you access to a massive database. With well over 26 billion keywords, it gives you all the basic insights you’ll need to start working on improving your ranking.
While not the most feature-packed option out there, it covers its bases and presents detailed insights into your relevant search queries. You can find out just how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword, how frequently it’s used globally and locally and what its advertising value is.
What’s especially interesting is that it can help you with competitor research. You can thoroughly explore a competitor’s domain and find out what they’re ranking for.
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Expert Tip: I’ve personally used SEMrush for many projects and want to give you a heads-up: don’t rely solely on SEMrush’s keyword volume. In my experience, it’s not always accurate when estimating monthly search volume. For example, let’s look at the keyword “women’s sneakers.”
SEMrush estimates 18.1k searches for this query per month:
On the other hand, Google Keyword Planner estimates over 130k searches for this query each month:
That is nearly eight times the volume SEMrush provides. This discrepancy shows the importance of cross-verifying SEMrush data with other tools, such as Google Ads Keyword Planner. Relying solely on SEMrush could result in inaccurate targeting and wasted resources.
Why compare it to GKP? Because GKP pulls data directly from Google’s ad network, the world’s largest repository of search data.
Ahrefs keyword research tools are known to be reliable and insightful. While it boasts a somewhat steeper learning curve than most similar options, you’ll find just how useful it can be once you’ve gotten accustomed to it.
It presents detailed metrics on any given keyword. It groups relevant keywords into useful clusters and gives you information on the top-ranking pages. You’ll get an in-depth analysis of search volume and true traffic potential.
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If SEO keyword research seems a bit too overwhelming with inordinate amounts of data points you don’t have time to even start to understand, Moz Keyword Explorer might be the tool for you. A bit more simplistic, it sticks to the basics and gives you simple, straightforward metrics that are most likely to meet your needs.
Find out keyword difficulty, minimum domain authority, and organic click-through rates, then simply prioritize the search queries you want to try and rank for. If you need a boost to overtake the competitors, use the Moz Keyword Explorer to find out what phrases you lack compared to them.
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Google Keyword Planner is often the first choice for new SMB owners. It’s free and highly effective; you only need a Google Ads account to access it. Although it’s somewhat limited in the long run, it’s perfect for learning about SEO keywords and kickstarting your website optimization.
It has a nice list of features that help you identify the most relevant keywords for your niche, assess current trends, and gain insights into your competitors.
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If you’re looking for a more budget-friendly option but aren’t satisfied with free solutions like Google Keyword Planner, you might want to look into KWFinder. It has more affordable pricing plans than most and offers an excellent feature set for dipping your toes in the SEO waters.
While you can use it for traditional keyword research, that’s not where this tool truly shines. It’s purpose-built to help you discover long-tail keywords with high search volumes and low competition. What’s more, it’s available in any language and location, so you can rely on it for all your global SEO campaigns.
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AnswerThePublic is a pretty aptly named SEO keyword research tool. In a nutshell, it tells you what people are searching for, nudging you to provide answers. It takes your seed keyword and gives you an alphabetized list of all the autocomplete suggestions that Google offers.
While it’s certainly something you could approach manually, it would be an unnecessary waste of time. Not to mention, the manual search wouldn’t give you insights into the keyword’s search volume or CPC.
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Keywords Everywhere is a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Though not as comprehensive as what you might’ve learned to expect, it’s an excellent choice for gaining keyword insights based on the specific search engines and platforms you’re using. Keywords Everywhere will have you covered whether you’re interested in data from Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, or anything in between.
It tells you everything you need to know about search volume and estimated CPC, informs you about how competitive a given keyword is and identifies the best keywords to help you rank higher.
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Ubersuggest is a top tool for conducting competitor research and finding ways to rank above your competitors in SERPs. It provides clear domain overviews, helping you uncover precisely what your competitors are doing and what you’re not.
You’ll even see estimated organic and paid visits per keyword, in addition to basic metrics like overall search volume and probability of ranking.
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While it might look hectic and outdated, Soovle can be a useful tool. It’s a search engine that provides an overview of the relevant search terms used across platforms. Similar to AnswerThePublic, it offers autocomplete suggestions and ideas for your content.
Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t offer any useful keyword metrics. Therefore, it’s best used for gathering content inspiration rather than conducting thorough keyword research.
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Serpstat stands out for its unique combination of insightfulness and simplicity. It provides highly detailed keyword research without feeling overwhelming. Key metrics and data points are clearly labeled and organized, allowing you to gather actionable insights with a glance.
Though it doesn’t have nearly as expansive keyword databases as SEMrush or Ahrefs, it still delivers quite impressive results.
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Another solution that leverages autocomplete results from engines like Google, KeywordTool.io, is a popular choice among content creators across various niches. Its free version is convenient, offering up to 750 keyword suggestions per search term. However, the tool’s full potential is unlocked only with a paid subscription.
It has a neat, user-friendly interface with many valuable data points to digest. It’s fairly accurate and can help you find keywords on various platforms, including Google, YouTube, Bing, Instagram, and TikTok.
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Particularly suitable for affiliate marketers, Jaaxy is a comprehensive SEO tool with extensive keyword research capabilities. It offers a nice, clean interface and is pretty straightforward to use. All you have to do is provide your seed keyword or general topic idea, and the tool will handle the rest.
It will give you approximate monthly search volumes, an overview of your competing websites, ranking difficulty, and all the other key metrics you’ll need.
You’ll probably get the most use out of its competitor insights, as they’ll tell you precisely what makes them rank higher than you.
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If simplicity and effectiveness are your primary concerns regarding SEO keyword research tools, KeySearch could be just what you need. It doesn’t have many bells and whistles you might’ve grown used to, but it has everything you need to optimize your website and rank higher.
It helps you track keyword trends, find less competitive search terms, and zero in on the most effective key phrases that keep you relevant. Its AI content assistant can even help you perfect your pages and keep your content more engaging for your website visitors.
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While primarily a rank tracker (which we’ll discuss later), AccuRanker offers useful keyword research features that tell you what you’re currently ranking for and where your competitors are doing better. It has a vast database of no less than 24 billion keywords, making it ideal for content brainstorming.
You’ll have information on all the main keyword metrics, like the search volumes, CTRs, and CPCs. What’s especially interesting about it is that it lets you quickly filter through the keywords to find precisely what you’re after.
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The Free Keyword Tool by WordStream is precisely what its name suggests—a free tool for researching keyword performance. It’s best suited for optimizing your paid and organic marketing campaigns, though it can be helpful in general content creation for your product pages, blog posts, and the like.
Since it’s free to use, it’s no surprise that its features are limited. It provides basic insights, including overall search volume, estimated CPC, and keyword competitiveness.
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SEO PowerSuite offers comprehensive SEO features, with its keyword research being known for reliability and accuracy. It offers several different research methods, allowing you to uncover the precise terms to improve your site optimization.
What makes it stand out is its integration with Google Search Console, which helps you uncover niche keywords that are the easiest to rank for.
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| Tool Name | G2 Rating | Negatives | Positives | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEMrush | 4.5/5 | Expensive Limited features for the price | Helpful Effective SEO optimization Advanced features Detailed keyword research Easy to use | $139.95 – $499.95 |
| Ahrefs | 4.5/5 | Issues with data accuracy Expensive Limited features for the price Subscription plan issues | Useful features Insightful competitor analysis Good backlink analytics Insightful keyword research Easy to use | $129.00 – $1,499.00 |
| Moz Keyword Explorer | 4.3/5 | Steep learning curve Issues with data accuracy Expensive Limited features for the price | User-friendly Valuable insights Easy to use Helpful keyword ranking Insightful keyword research | $0.00 – $239.00 |
| Google Keyword Planner | 4.7/5 | Overlapping data Limited features No in-depth metrics More suitable for paid searches Not effective without running ads | Data accuracy Ease of use Detailed keyword research Free to use Google Ads integration | Free |
| KWFinder | 4.4/5 | Limited insights Light on features Search issues Incomplete keyword research Limited data on competitor ranking | Affordable Useful keyword ranking Reliable data accuracy Insightful keyword research User-friendly | $49.00 – $129.00 |
| AnswerThePublic | 4.5/5 | Limited data Lack of data visualization Lack of integration options | Easy to use Intuitive Useful for content creation Helpful for blog optimization User-friendly interface | $0.00 – $199.00 |
| Keywords Everywhere | N/A | Limited features Credit-based system Limited insights based on location No keyword ranking Difficulties managing credits | Wide integration with browsers and platforms Ease of use Real-time insights Affordable Insightful metrics | $2.25 – $80.00 |
| Ubersuggest | 4.2/5 | Data accuracy issues Limited features | Useful features Affordable pricing Insightful keyword research Good SEO management Easy to use | $12.00 – $40.00 |
| Soovle | N/A | Outdated design Busy interface Limited features No detailed keyword metrics Basic autocomplete suggestions | Affordable Results from multiple platforms Real-time data Ease of use Integrates with Keywords Everywhere | Free |
| Serpstat | 4.6/5 | Steep learning curve Limited features Poor reporting capabilities Platform limitations Expensive subscriptions | Insightful competitor research and analysis Excellent keyword research Advanced features Easy to use | $59.00 – $479.00 |
| KeywordTool.io | 4.5/5 | Occasional keyword issues Limited features | Excellent keyword research Detailed reporting High data accuracy | $0.00- $159.00 |
| Jaaxy | 4.2/5 | Limited free version Lack of SERP analysis Lack of advanced functionalities | Affordability Intuitive interface Data accuracy Helpful support teams Beginner-friendly | $0.00 – $99.00 |
| KeySearch | N/A | Limited number of keyword searches per day Light on features Difficulties cancelling subscriptions Issues with data inaccuracy | Easy to use Affordable Access to advanced features Insightful competitor analysis Suitable for long-tail keywords | $24.00 – $48.00 |
| AccuRanker | 4.8/5 | Expensive Keyword management issues Limited features for the price No notifications about ranking changes Lack of insightful data | Data accuracy Insightful competitor tracking Easy keyword organization User-friendly Keyword ranking | ∼$120.00 – $2,500.00 |
| WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool | N/A | Limited features Basic keyword data Lack of precise metrics Data accuracy No advanced capabilities | Easy to use Intuitive interface Affordable Fast Suitable for PPC campaigns | Free |
| SEO PowerSuite | 4.6/5 | Expensive Steep learning curve Slow Tool performance issues | Helpful SEO toolset Powerful features Easy to use Insightful website analytics Performance monitoring | $0.00 – $140.00 |
Just using the right keywords isn’t enough to boost your rankings on SERPs. You need full on-page SEO, and that means optimizing every last element on the individual pages of your website.
One small part of that is using relevant keywords in your content. However, search engines look into dozens of different factors when ranking you, so there are a few additional things you’ll need to work on. Some examples include your meta tags, URL structure, internal links, page loading speed, and mobile optimization.
On-page SEO optimization tools come with a comprehensive set of features that help you improve as many of these elements as possible.
On-page SEO tools come in many different shapes and sizes. The following are the top SEO tools you should check out.
Yoast SEO is one of the top plugins for WordPress. It’s feature-packed and yet easy to use and get used to. With it, you can optimize your content with up to five targeted keywords, automatically create effective title tags and meta descriptions, uncover any broken links you may have, and so much more.
Though it has a free version, it won’t be enough if you truly want to increase your rankings on SERP. If you want to get the most out of it, you’ll want to upgrade to the premium subscription, as it will unlock more advanced capabilities.
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Surfer SEO is particularly effective for content optimization. It’s an all-around content editor that presents you with all the key metrics you’ll want to meet if you’re to climb through the ranks on search engines.
By assessing the top-ranking pages for any given topic, it offers you insights into all the details that will help your content stand out—the keywords and keyphrases you’ll need to use, the average word count you’ll want to reach with individual blog posts, and the number of images you’ll need to add.
It even comes with additional features such as the AI content detector (if you want to avoid AI-written content) and AI content humanizer (if you want to make your AI-written content sound more human-like).
Moreover, it has a page analyzer that will audit your website and give you recommendations on where you can improve.
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If you’re a complete newcomer to on-page SEO (and SEO as a whole), Screaming Frog may seem a bit overwhelming. However, it can be an indispensable tool that gives you access to all the data you need to make your website noticed.
In a nutshell, it’s a website crawler. It’s designed to mimic search engine crawlers, but instead of doing so to index and rank your pages, it does so to give you all the important SEO metrics. It analyzes all your page titles and metadata, presents site architecture visualizations, examines your URLs, and so much more. With all this data on hand, you’ll know precisely what you need to do to make your website more visible and improve its ranking.
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For all those on a budget, Google offers a convenient tool for on-page SEO—the Google Search Console. It’s a free tool that allows you to monitor your website performance and catch and correct potential issues that are preventing you from ranking higher.
You’ll get a clear overview of page indexing (and whether they’re indexed or not), see how mobile-friendly your website is and check your internal and external links. Even if you’re already using one of the paid on-page SEO tools, you’ll still want to rely on the Google Search Console, as it gives you a bunch of useful data that can help you optimize your website.
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Another free and valuable tool you should check out is Google PageSpeed Insights. As the name suggests, its main purpose is to assess your page loading time, but it offers so much more than that. With it, you’ll get an overall performance score, telling you about how good your user experience is.
You’ll also get a thorough web vitals assessment as well as concrete suggestions and recommendations that will help your website perform better overall. Though you won’t always need to follow all recommendations to a T, making changes that will boost your performance score (which means keeping the score around 90) will certainly have an impact on your ranking and traffic.
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Bing Webmaster Tools is a great Microsoft alternative to the Google Search Console. It can help you improve your on-page SEO and make it specifically suitable for the Bing search engine. It covers all the basics you’ve grown to expect—indexing insights, performance data, and SEO recommendations.
It even offers some security features, notifying you if it catches any malware on your pages.
If you’re primarily focused on improving your rankings on Google, this tool won’t offer much value. However, if you’re interested in diversifying, in a sense, and trying to attract attention on the Bing search engine, this tool is a must.
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In addition to its keyword research tool, SEMrush also offers an insightful On-Page SEO Checker. This tool can help with everything—from assessing your current page performance to helping you brainstorm new content ideas.
The tool will analyze your essential on-page SEO metrics and give you tailored recommendations on what you can do to improve. You’ll also get insights into your competitors’ pages and learn how (and why) your website might be underperforming compared to them.
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Similar to its Keyword Explorer, Moz’s On-Page Grader is a simple, straightforward tool. It gives you quick access to information on your page performance and offers useful advice on how you can improve different elements to take your ranking up a notch.
What’s especially interesting about it is that it comes with convenient checklists and examples that you can follow to better optimize your pages.
If you aren’t sure whether this is the tool for you, you can test it out during its 30-day free trial and find out precisely how it works and what it offers.
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The SE Ranking On-Page SEO Checker is a popular tool among SMBs as it comes with more affordable pricing plans without skimping on the features. While somewhat simpler, it covers its bases and gives you access to a nice feature set that can help you optimize your pages.
It performs a full page audit, giving you a glance into all the main data that impacts your visibility and ranking. You’ll be able to easily review your title tags, internal links, and URL structure and then get reliable suggestions on how to improve.
The main issue, however, is that SE Ranking’s On-Page SEO checker isn’t available with its lowest-priced plan (Essential). You’ll need a Pro or Business subscription to get it.
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Sitechecker Pro helps you stay on top of any on-page issues that could be affecting your ranking. It’s suitable for businesses of all sizes and is even a popular choice for government and educational websites.
It monitors your pages daily, continually assessing their performance and looking for potential issues as well as improvement opportunities. It scans your content, offers suggestions and recommendations, helps you optimize your title tags and metadata, tests your page load speed, and so much more.
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If you’re primarily concerned about improving user experience on your website (and so inadvertently boosting your on-page SEO), CrazyEgg could be a good tool to check out. It takes a bit of a different approach to optimization than other tools, but the end results are largely similar.
In a nutshell, CrazyEgg assesses your page performance based on user behaviors. You’ll get access to heatmaps to see what visitors are doing on your site. You’ll get A/B testing to try out different versions of the same pages and optimize them based on user preferences. While it’s not a traditional on-page SEO tool, it’s highly useful for perfecting your pages and driving traffic.
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Cocolyze gives you a full page SEO audit with detailed reports telling you precisely what you’re doing right and what wrong. It looks into dozens of different factors that search engines use when ranking your site, helping you identify all the areas that need improvements.
From checking your keyword optimization to assessing the quality of your content and analyzing your internal linking, it has all the essential on-page SEO features that will help you outperform your competitors.
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Clearscope can be a great alternative to Surfer SEO. As a content optimizer, it helps you ensure that your pages are informative, relevant, and properly targeted with the right keywords and key phrases. To help you get to the top of the search engine results pages, it analyzes the top 30 competitors and offers keyword (together with LSI keyword) suggestions that you should include in your page.
The best part about it is that it has a Google Docs add-on, a Microsoft add-in, and a WordPress plugin, so you can easily optimize your content wherever you are.
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Keywords and on-page SEO are all about directly improving the overall user experience. Using the right keywords shows them that your website has the type of content they’re looking for, while your on-page SEO keeps things nice and tidy, helping you avoid issues that would impact the users.
Technical SEO, on the other hand, is all about making search engine crawlers happy. Of course, it inadvertently has a positive impact on the user experience, but its main purpose is to make it easier for crawlers to find and index your pages.
If crawlers can’t crawl through and store your pages, they won’t even appear in the search results, let alone be able to climb through the ranks.
So, what is it that makes a page crawlable? In short, it’s your site architecture.
Some of the main components of an SEO-friendly architecture include proper site hierarchy, page interlinking, clean URL structure, and canonicalization. Technical SEO tools help you assess all of these components and keep an eye on additional important metrics, including your page loading speed, mobile optimization, and site security.
Have a look at some of the top technical SEO optimization tools that can help you make your pages more easily crawlable and indexable.
With the Google Search Console, you can keep an eye on both your on-page and technical SEO. It’s a critical tool to get you started with the technical side of SEO, as it allows you to easily submit your pages for indexing and assess your site performance at a glance.
You can use it to find information on how Google crawls and indexes your website and quickly identify issues that are preventing it from doing so. Use it to submit your sitemap, assess how optimized your pages are for mobile viewing, keep an eye on your core web vitals, and even identify potential security issues. All in all, it’s a must-have tool for technical SEO.
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GTmetrix is one of the most straightforward tools you could use for technical SEO. It’s mainly concerned with measuring your page loading speed, using servers from around the world to test page performance and give you insights into the real user experience. You’ll be able to use it to keep an eye on your web vitals and assess performance across devices.
You’ll even have insights into your website’s historical performance and get notified whenever there’s a misbehaving page that takes a little too long to load. GTmetrix gives you detailed reports on which pages are slow, why, and what you can do about it.
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Lumar is an all-around website optimization tool with an excellent set of technical SEO features. Formerly known as DeepCrawl, it gives you detailed reports on site performance, notifying you of any issues that might be affecting your ranking and overall user experience.
And when we say “detailed reports,” we truly mean it. The tool includes no less than 250 reports that go into the nitty-gritty, offering a clear view of your site’s health.
There isn’t a clear-cut subscription tier, as the pricing depends entirely on your unique needs and preferences. You’ll need to contact Lumar directly to learn more about your expected costs.
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As a site crawler, the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool can be highly useful for improving your technical SEO efforts. It crawls through your entire website, giving you a clear overview of its performance and diverting your attention to any issues that could be preventing search engine bots from accessing and indexing your pages.
It can quickly find any broken links you may have, redirect chains, and duplicate content. It visualizes your site architecture, schedules audits, and generates XML and image XML sitemaps, helping your site get noticed by search engine bots and real users alike.
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Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool helps you keep a watchful eye on over 170 technical SEO issues your pages could encounter. It keeps all the issues divided into distinct categories—Indexability, Duplicates, Links, Redirects, Core Web Vitals, etc.—so you’ll be able to tell at a glance what you’re dealing with.
You’ll also get concrete suggestions on how to solve the issues and improve your overall technical SEO.
The best part about it is that you can use the tool for free for up to 5k pages a month as long as you can verify site ownership. While this free version can be limiting, it can be used as a trial run to see what Ahrefs is capable of.
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SEMrush Site Audit is another comprehensive tool that helps you deep dive into your site performance. With a full list of critical issues broken down into logical sections, it allows you to prioritize your workload and start working on improving your pages without getting overwhelmed.
You’ll have all the information you need about why your pages have issues and how you can fix them with top tips and tricks. What’s more, you can export all this data for easier communication and collaboration with other teammates working on your technical SEO.
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If you’re continually struggling with low traffic and low ranking and are worried about your page indexing, the Moz Pro Crawl Test could be just what you need. It delivers fast performance and astonishing results, helping you catch and solve page issues in the blink of an eye.
It keeps track of your site performance over time, helping you understand trends, identify recurring problems, and come up with the most effective solutions to solve them and even prevent them down the line.
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Sitebulb is a versatile tool you can use as a desktop software or a cloud solution. Whether you’re an independent freelancer who’s just starting up with technical SEO or are running an established organization, you’ll find it convenient, flexible, and effective.
It looks into over 300 potential SEO issues, keeping all data nicely organized and easy to digest. You’ll have access to seamless data visualizations, so you’ll be able to easily understand all the pain points your pages are struggling with.
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Pingdom is primarily designed to monitor your uptime and page loading speed, but it has numerous features that can help you improve your overall technical SEO. It’s a bit of a difficult beast to master, making it best suited to IT professionals or, at the very least, those well-versed in SEO.
Affordable and effective, it pinpoints which page elements are too heavy, causing slower loading speeds, and presents you with detailed performance breakdowns to help you identify possible bottlenecks. It tests your website performance from multiple server locations, ensuring that you have the proper data telling you about real user experiences.
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Like Pingdom Tools, WebPage Test is mainly focused on measuring your page loading speed and helping you discover potential issues that are affecting the user experience and putting a damper on your ranking.
It’s an open-source solution that gives you a thorough analysis of your website based on simulated tests from various server locations around the world. While somewhat basic, it can be a good introduction to technical SEO and help you get started with improving your page performance.
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If you want to stay on top of your site performance without much fuss, Ryte can be an excellent option. It’s an all-encompassing technical SEO tool that keeps an eye on your pages, identifies critical issues, keeps you notified, and helps you solve problems like a pro—even if you’re somewhat of a newcomer to this sphere.
With Slack integration, it can send you custom alerts whenever the need arises. It gives you detailed reports on website health and allows you to adjust crawl settings to ensure you’re tracking what matters to you.
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Broken links are some of the most annoying aspects of technical SEO that can have a significant impact on your ranking. If it’s this issue in particular that you want to keep an eye on, then Ahrefs’ free Broken Link Checker could be all you need.
Keep in mind that it’s a relatively simplistic tool, doing precisely what its name implies—not much more. You’ll see an overview of all broken internal and external links. If you want to “unbreak” those links and get access to more features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
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You would think that it’s only what you do on-site that has an impact on your search engine results page ranking and overall traffic, but it’s not. Your reputation matters, and what others are saying about you and how they’re linking back to you can have an immense impact on your online performance.
Both search engines and real users will pay close attention to your backlinks, using them to decipher whether your site is worth visiting. When you have reputable pages leading back to you, you have nothing much to worry about—reputation has a tendency to brush off on others.
However, when you have shady websites leading back to your pages—whether you know about it or not—it would raise red flags. Is your website just as shady? Is it risky for users to access it?
Backlink analysis tools are there to monitor your backlinks and help you maintain an impeccable online presence. Depending on the specific tool, they can assess backlink quality, analyze referring domains, and flag spam links.
To keep your backlinks in check, you should look into using one of the following backlink analysis tools.
Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker is one of the most popular tools for figuring out who’s linking back to your website. It’s a comprehensive solution with a long list of useful features that give you access to actionable data.
You’ll see the number of referring domains and backlinks, their overall domain ratings, and the popularity of the pages that link back to yours. You can glance into the tool’s capabilities for free and get a basic check of your backlinks, but if you want more functionality, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
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Worried about overstepping your budget by signing up for all of these top SEO tools that can help you improve your ranking? Moz Link Explorer gives you a free option to check your backlinks and stay on top of your inbound links.
Though its paid version is more comprehensive, the free tool gives you access to all the essential metrics—domain and page authority, spam score, inbound link and linking domain count, anchor texts, and competitor backlinks.
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Another excellent option with a convenient free version is the Majestic SEO Backlink Checker. As expected, the free version is somewhat limiting but could be useful when you’re just getting started. Still, you’ll want to upgrade to a paid plan sooner or later.
It uses proprietary algorithms to present you with trust flow rankings, helping you identify quality backlinks. It has citation flows for assessing the quantity of backlinks and link profile charts. All key data is nicely visualized to ensure you can understand it even if you’re a beginner.
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Unsurprisingly, SEMrush offers an extensive Backlink Analytics tool that can perform a thorough backlink audit and give you all the insights you need to assess every page linking back to yours. You’ll have insights into all your existing backlinks and any new additions that come along, and you’ll even be notified when your backlinks get deleted.
Perhaps its biggest selling point is that it allows you to compare your backlink profile to that of your competitors. See where they’re outperforming you, where you’re doing better, and how you can improve down the line.
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Google Search Console offers dozens of highly useful features for almost all your SEO efforts, including your backlink analytics. While it’s a more lightweight solution than other tools available, it’s free, convenient, and reliable, so it’s a must-have.
All the data on your backlinks comes straight from Google itself, so accuracy and reliability are all but guaranteed.
You’ll have all the basic data about your top linked pages, the sites with the highest numbers of backlinks leading to you, and the most commonly used anchors.
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Ubersuggest makes backlink analytics seem like a breezy task. With a limited free version, it gives you information on all the need-to-know essentials—general referring domain quality, number of backlinks, and historical overview of the rise or fall of your backlinks.
To unlock its true potential, however, you need to cash out. With the paid plans, you’ll get a comprehensive overview of your backlink profile.
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Unlike most tools that tend to have a wider array of SEO features and capabilities, Linkody specializes in backlinking in particular—and it does it right! It’s among the most in-depth tools you’ll come across, giving you insights into all the metrics you’ll want to keep track of, from the number of your inbound links to your referring sites’ IP addresses and spam scores.
While it’s certainly packed with information and important data points, it remains relatively easy to get used to. The dashboard is clean and organized, making it all pretty easy to understand.
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If thorough backlink analytics is what you’re after, cognitiveSEO is the tool for you. It performs a complete backlinking audit, telling you all about your existing links, lost links, and even unnatural links that could harm your reputation.
You’ll get real-time insights as well as a comprehensive overview of your performance, together with your entire historical link data.
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Created by one of the founders of Kerboo, Opphive is a simple, effective solution for keeping track of your backlink profile. It’s a full link audit software that lets you combine your link data sources and gives you a clear understanding of your entire profile.
With it, you can manage your disavowed links, assess the quality of your backlinks, identify suitable link-building opportunities, and so much more.
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Monitor Backlinks by SEOptimer lets you stay on top of all your new and lost links without a hitch. It’s designed to help you enhance your backlinking strategy, improve your overall linking profile, and protect you against negative SEO that could put a hamper on your rankings.
Especially suitable for freelancers and SMBs, it has a streamlined interface that makes it relatively easy to get used to. Directly from the dashboard, you’ll be able to see all the important metrics so that you can solve SEO problems before they get out of hand and seize linking opportunities as soon as they present themselves.
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OpenLinkProfiler is among the most comprehensive free solutions out there. It gives you a detailed overview of all your backlinks, helping you understand your entire linking profile as well as where your traffic is coming from.
You’ll have access to all the essential information, domain ratings, target pages, and the anchor texts used. While it’s not quite as feature-packed as other solutions, it gives you everything you need to start improving your linking strategy.
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As one of the most popular research and monitoring tools, it should come as no surprise that BuzzSumo has quite a capable backlink analysis solution. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to tell precisely who’s talking about and linking to your brand and what they’re saying.
Quickly find all existing links leading to all your domains, subdomains, or specific pages, and set up custom alerts to stay on top of all incoming backlinks. If you’re curious about what your competitors are up to, simply use their domain and learn more about their linking profile.
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Raven Tools is an all-around SEO solution whose backlink checker is excellent for both keeping an eye on your online reputation and glancing at what your competitors are up to. Whether you need historical insights into your (and others’) performance or real-time data, this tool will have you covered.
It combines metrics from Moz and Majestic to give you as much detail as possible and help you analyze everything from your link sources to citation flows, and anchor texts.
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Pitchbox’s link-building software is designed to help you get your brand noticed by streamlining and optimizing your outreach campaigns. It also has useful features that can aid your backlinking SEO efforts. It can help you build backlinks, keep them organized, and monitor them with ease.
While it’s primarily created for measuring the success of your outreach campaigns, you can use it to find out whether there are any links that might be harming your ranking on search engines. What’s more, with its integrations with other backlink analysis tools like Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic SEO, and others, you can keep your online reputation in check without a hitch.
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You’ve got your keywords, you’ve mastered your on-page SEO, and you’ve grasped the concept of technical SEO. You’ve even started with backlink analytics. Not to burst your bubble, but it’s still not time to sit back and relax just yet. Boosting your rankings on search engines is an ongoing process, and now is the time to start focusing on your content optimization.
What is that exactly?
In short, it’s the process of making your content more readable, relevant, and valuable. There are several ways you could go about that—use the right keywords, research relevant topics, organize your heading structure, and add internal and external links, for example.
All these are taken into consideration when search engines are ranking your pages. And all of these are processes you could simplify with the right tools.
Content optimization tools can be exceptionally valuable, but only if you’re actually devoted to publishing unique content on a regular basis. Have a look at the top content optimization tools that can improve your SEO and increase your ranking in SERPs.
If you’ve already invested in BuzzSumo for your backlinks and online research and monitoring, you might not need an additional solution for optimizing your content. BuzzSumo will give you insights into the best-performing content for your niche, the best content types of different social media platforms, and trending topics.
You’ll even have access to the key metrics like share numbers and links that can help you shape your content better. Once you’ve optimized everything, you can then continue using the tool to track performance.
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Helping with keyword research, on-page SEO, and content optimization, Clearscope is an excellent tool to add to your arsenal. AI-powered, it allows you to quickly assess your competition, brainstorm ideas, and create engaging content that draws attention.
It gives you all the information you need to start publishing high-quality content, be it for your website, blog, or even social media. You’ll see all the keywords you should include, headers you should have, and questions you should answer.
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MarketMuse gives you access to powerful AI and can help with virtually all aspects of content optimization, from keyword research to content organization and planning. It’s suitable for both marketers and content creators, regardless of the specific niche you’re in.
It offers excellent content quality analysis, pinpointing the exact areas that need some touch-ups and improvements for the best results.
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Designed to help you see an increase in organic traffic, Surfer SEO comes with a long list of useful features and capabilities. It’s available in multiple languages, making it ideal for creating global campaigns and publishing content that meets the needs of your target audience.
It’s especially useful for content ideation as it analyzes your competitors and gives you recommendations on the elements you’ll need to use to outperform them—headlines, keywords, links, images, etc.
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Frase makes creating SEO content an absolute breeze. It streamlines all stages of content production, including research, writing, and optimization. It has powerful AI capabilities that can help you create new content from scratch or simply assist with the brainstorming process.
All you have to do is input your targeted search query, and Frase will do the rest. It will analyze your competitors, generate a unique title, create an outline, and assess your work with the utmost ease.
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A recurring tool, SEMrush has a convenient and powerful SEO Writing Assistant that is ideal for improving the overall readability of your content and making it both user- and search-engine-friendly. It’s most commonly used by SEO professionals, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be suitable for newcomers to the industry as well.
It checks your content for plagiarism, helps you maintain a consistent brand voice, assesses the quality of your copy, and makes sure that everything you publish increases your chances of ranking higher on SERPs.
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Whether you want to generate SEO content or optimize your existing copy, Yoast SEO will have what you need. You’ll get AI-powered suggestions that will make sure you deliver high-quality content that can help you climb to the top.
It comes with a long list of useful features to keep your content in tip-top shape. Assess your keyword density, adjust your content structure, add useful internal links with ease, and so much more.
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Page Optimizer Pro, or POP, for short, offers excellent content optimization tools and features. It helps you perform initial research and looks into hundreds of different factors that can help your content outperform the competitors and positively impact your ranking.
It boasts a comprehensive content editor that gives you useful recommendations and tells you what to do to improve your page optimization score. It even has an AI writing assistant that works in no less than 62 languages!
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A popular WordPress plugin, Rank Math is designed for site-wide SEO optimization, but it comes with some useful features that let you improve your content quality. With it, you’ll get a full-page SEO analysis together with your overall SEO score.
If you aren’t satisfied with your score, Rank Math offers detailed suggestions on what you can do to improve it, ranging from improving your readability to incorporating relevant keywords, adjusting your title tags, etc.
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If you’re stuck and can’t seem to come up with any new content ideas, Ahrefs Content Explorer might just be what you need. It’s a great tool for exploring popular content relevant to your niche, finding out what’s trending, and figuring out what you can do to ensure you land towards the top of the search results.
You’ll have all the major insights into the best-performing content—its referring domains, page traffic, and even the estimated page traffic value. You’ll see how competitive the pages are and get recommendations on topics that are easier to rank with.
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TextRazor is a bit different from other tools in this list. It’s a natural language processing (NLP) tool that was made for detailed text analysis. While it’s primarily used for quickly analyzing unstructured text data, such as survey information, customer reviews, and the like, it has some nice content optimization features that can help you stand out.
It can extract keywords and keyphrases from your competitors’ most popular content, categorize available content into topics and themes, and even gauge text readability.
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In addition to its keyword research and backlink analytics, Ubersuggest offers a convenient set of tools that can help you with content optimization. You can quickly assess your competition, research keywords, and get a clear overview of the types of content that perform well in your industry.
Use this information to start creating optimized content from scratch, or keep things simple and rely on the tool’s AI writer. In seconds, you can get somewhat optimized content and start uploading posts that draw attention from real users and search engine crawlers alike.
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By now, it should be expected that Google has an answer for anything—including your content optimization needs. The free Google Trends tool might just be all you need to start optimizing your content and driving more traffic.
With it, you’ll see some of the biggest trending topics of today and get a historical view of the trends over the past year. You’ll also be able to explore all popular topics related to your provided keyword, get detailed insights based on geographical location and language, and so much more.
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Copywritely is a popular content optimizer with a nice selection of powerful features that can help you climb up the SERP ranking ladder. It assesses your content quality and gives you concrete recommendations on what you can do to make it more appealing to real users and search engine crawlers.
It can assist with your keyword research, help you create content templates, and check your content for its readability level. The best part about it is that it has fully customizable pricing plans, so you’ll only pay based on the number of pages you need to check on a monthly basis.
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General search engine optimization is about increasing your rankings for specific search terms and keywords, irrespective of where you’re located. Say you’re running a shoe store in Philadelphia—with general SEO, you might be getting traffic from people coming from LA, San Francisco, and New York. And you’d also have to be competing with other shoe stores from these (and other) locations.
Local SEO is a bit more specific. It’s about increasing your visibility and, subsequently, your ranking in your geographic area.
It’s about optimizing your website so that it reaches your local audience and appears higher in the local business search.
As a general rule of thumb, the idea behind improving your local SEO is to introduce yourself to your audience online and then entice them to visit your brick-and-mortar location in person.
So, how do you do it? Well, considering that your location is the primary factor impacting your local SEO, the first thing you need to do is be in the right place. 😁 With that covered, it’s time to share the news about where you are.
You’ll want to claim your Google Business profile and optimize it to include all relevant information—your name, address, open hours, and contact information. Don’t forget to add relevant images, such as your business’s interior and exterior and product offer.
You’ll also want to localize much of your site content, sprinkling information about your city, district, and country throughout. Perhaps most importantly, you’ll also want to keep an eye on your reviews. Search engines want to show users businesses that are highly-rated and that have high review numbers.
Local SEO tools can come with a wide variety of features that help you stand out in your geographic region. Here are the top tools you should consider.
As mentioned, claiming your Google Business profile is a must if you want to improve your local SEO, and the way to do it is with the Google My Business tool. It’s free to use and lets you easily manage your business profile and connect with your local audiences.
With it, you can seamlessly add all essential business information, post photos to your listing, respond to customer reviews, and create detailed FAQ sections. It’s the go-to tool to boost your local SEO.
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Whitespark gives you access to comprehensive local SEO solutions, helping you establish an impeccable online presence and keep track of your local reputation. It offers several different services and software options, from a dedicated Local Platform for managing your Google Business Profile to a Local Rank Tracker and Citation Finder.
Each service/software is priced individually so that you can easily create a custom solution that suits your needs and your budget.
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Improving visibility in local search results is a piece of cake with BrightLocal. This tool offers extensive location auditing, helping you discover the best ways to up your rankings and track your online reputation. It even offers convenient competitor insights so that you have a clear picture of who you’re dealing with.
Use it to uncover issues that are impacting your local position, optimize your Google Business Profile, identify opportunities, and so much more.
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Moz Local presents you with a centralized dashboard that lets you monitor your online reputation, respond to reviews, and manage your listings. It makes it easy for you to update your essential business information (name, address, phone number) across different directories in just a few clicks. What’s more, it helps you manage your social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and X.
It offers comprehensive engagement monitoring, presents you with simple review response templates, and gives detailed reports that allow you to keep an eye on your local performance.
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Yext is one of the better-known local SEO tools that helps you manage your online listings and keep an eye on customer engagement. It helps you improve and track your presence on countless different apps, maps, search engines, and online directories alike.
It seamlessly synchronizes your data across platforms and gives you detailed listing analytics that can help you climb through the ranks. With it, you’ll get insightful performance reports and actionable recommendations on where you can improve.
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As its name suggests, GeoRanker is a dedicated tool for tracking your ranking in a specific geographic region. It gives you detailed performance analytics and keyword ranking, helping you discern precisely what it is that’s dragging you down.
With local rank tracking and insightful competitor analysis, it allows you to identify opportunities, improve your listings, and stay on top of your online reputation.
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Synup combines local listing, reputation, and social media management into a single, unified tool. It offers detailed local analytics, showing how your business performs on Google Search and Maps. It lets you glance at your competitors’ performance and helps you uncover opportunities to improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your website.
Use it to manage your listings across various directories, enhance your social media performance, and monitor reviews from all platforms.
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LocalClarity offers AI-powered solutions for monitoring your online reputation and boosting your ranking in local search results. While it can be useful to independent business owners or even freelancers, it’s best suited to slightly larger teams.
With this tool, you’ll find it easy to manage your local listings, identify the right local keywords to disperse throughout your website, improve your social media presence, and stay on top of your reviews. You’ll also get detailed automated reports that are easy to share with teammates and stakeholders.
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Birdeye is an all-around reputation management solution that helps you stay on top of your local SEO, social media presence, and customer experiences. It offers a nice selection of AI-powered SEO tools that allow you to seamlessly collect relevant information and keep an eye on your reviews and listings.
From helping you track performance to optimizing your listings and delivering insightful reports, it has everything you need to start working on improving your local SEO.
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Localo is a simple yet quite capable solution for managing your Google Business Profile and maintaining control over your online reputation. Its robust local SEO features can help you stand out from the crowd and outperform the competition.
It helps you effectively promote your business to your local audiences, provides actionable tips to improve your rankings, and protects your business from unwanted changes. Whether you’re a freelancer or an up-and-coming SMB owner, you’ll find good use with this tool.
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If you’re running a business with multiple locations across different regions, GMBapi could be the ideal tool for you. Designed specifically as a multi-location SEO tool, it makes it easier to keep track of your rankings regardless of where your offices are located.
From a single dashboard, you can manage hundreds of different locations and Google Business Profiles. You’ll have an overview of all your GBP impressions and actions, unanswered reviews, and unverified listings.
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As I mentioned before, boosting your search engine results is an ongoing process. In a nutshell, that means you can’t just optimize your website once, reach the top of the page, and then forget about it. If you don’t stay on your toes, you won’t stay very high in the SERPs for long.
So, you’ll want to stay dedicated, keep working on your SEO, and be committed to rank tracking.
Now, rank tracking is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the process of tracking your ranking on SERPs and catching any changes that might occur early on. This process is pretty important, not simply because it will tell you your position on SERPs at any given moment, but because it offers useful insights you’ll want to pay attention to.
It can tell you how effective your current SEO strategy is and whether you need to make any changes to it. It also reveals whether your competitors are adopting new strategies and starting to outperform you (or even underperform you). Additionally, it can provide insights into the current trends and changing customer sentiments.
So, a good rank tracker will be an important tool to start using.
For your performance monitoring to be accurate and timely, you’ll need a reliable rank tracker. Have a look at some of the best rank tracking and reporting tools available.
Considering its name, it’s no surprise that rank tracking is one of the most important features of SE Ranking. It makes position monitoring on search engines an absolute breeze. It gives you daily updates and even compares current with past performance using cached data.
It monitors for drops in rankings, identifies your and your competitors’ top keywords, and helps you find pages on your website that are competing against each other. It’s a valuable tool for monitoring your site’s visibility.
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I promised I’d talk about AccuRanker’s rank tracker AccuRanker’s rank tracker, didn’t we? It’s among the most popular tools in this category, known for delivering accuracy and reliability. It quickly assesses your position for the given keyword and gives you insightful data that you can easily filter through to find what you’re looking for.
You’ll get a clear view of how your site and individual subpages are indexed, how your competitors are indexed, and what you can do to stay ahead. It offers distinct rankings for desktop and mobile, giving you a full picture of your performance.
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Besides being a convenient keyword research tool, Serpstat is a great rank tracker. It gives you information on your keyword ranking on both desktop and mobile and allows you to glance at your competitors’ performance.
It lets you analyze your market share, assess the SERP features responsible for driving traffic to your site, and uncover new ranking opportunities. Though somewhat light on features, it’s effective and easy to use, making it a nice choice for SMBs.
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If you have more extensive rank-tracking needs and want to keep an eye on your performance in different countries and locations, Ahrefs Rank Tracker should be your go-to tool. Helping you keep an eye on key metrics in 190 different countries, it gives you a clear overview of your standing.
It monitors 15 different search features, showing exactly how you’re performing in areas like featured snippets, image and video packs, and local packs. It also compares your performance against your top competitors and reports all significant changes as soon as it detects them.
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SEMrush Position Tracking lets you monitor any keyword or domain on Google. It’s most commonly used for assessing campaign progress, but it’s convenient for all-around performance monitoring and SEO optimization.
It helps you keep an eye on any changes in your position or overall shifts in trends. It can even notify you when there seems to be a significant SERP algorithm change, allowing you to stay on top and update your content for the best results as soon as possible.
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Specifically designed for tracking performance on SERPs, though with a few additional features that make it more useful, Ranktracker is a popular choice among SMBs. It tells you everything you need to know about your position on SERPs and how you can attract more traffic to your website.
It provides a clear overview of your key performance metrics, monitoring them daily to ensure you have the most up-to-date information. It assesses both site performance and specific page performance and allows you to contrast it all against your top competitors.
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In addition to its KWFinder, Mangool also offers a useful SERPWatcher—a powerful rank-tracking tool that provides essential position insights without overwhelming you with complex data. It’s suitable for beginners, offering affordable pricing plans and being relatively easy to use.
It gives you daily rank updates and sends additional email notifications when it detects significant ranking changes. It monitors desktop and mobile performance, as well as local ranking performance in over 65k locations.
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Advanced Web Ranking is pretty aptly named, giving you advanced insights into your web rankings and your overall search visibility. It has a bit of a steeper learning curve than others mentioned on this list and a bit of a steeper price tag, so it’s generally best suited for experienced users and medium to large-sized companies.
Still, it’s all well worth it. You’ll be able to track your rankings in any location you want and on almost any platform you want—Google, Baidu, Naver, Amazon, and YouTube. You’ll also have information on your CTR as well as your visibility KPIs.
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Nightwatch is a powerful tool built for professionals. Though it does boast a steep learning curve, it makes up for it with its robust features and expertise. It offers highly precise ranking data on all the major search engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and even DuckDuckGo.
With this rank tracker, you can segment your keywords, assess your search visibility, and understand how your target audience interacts with your site on SERPs. You’ll get detailed reports and uncover unique ranking opportunities that could help you outperform the competitors.
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If you’re a newcomer to rank tracking, you’ll probably want to check out Wincher. It’s an easy-to-use yet powerful solution that lets you perfect your SEO strategy and keep an eye on what (and how) your competitors are doing.
You’ll get daily and on-demand updates, up to 24 months of your ranking history, and comprehensive keyword research. It’s especially suitable for assessing your performance on a local level, as it supports over 100k locations across 180 countries.
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As you’ve noticed so far, SEO tools come in a wide variety of different shapes and sizes. You have your keyword research, local SEO, and technical SEO tools. But depending on your specific business, you might not need all of them. If you’re solely concerned about people finding your small business on Google Maps, for example, a good local SEO tool will likely be all you’ll ever need.
However, if you have more extensive needs or if you’re running an agency that offers SEO among its other services, it would be a waste of both time and money to invest in individual dedicated tools.
Instead, you’ll want to look for all-in-one SEO tool suites that can help you with every aspect of search engine optimization.
All-in-one solutions offer numerous benefits. On the whole, they’re generally more affordable than using several distinct tools. They’re also easier for you and your teams to master, requiring less time to get used to. Moreover, it’s easier for you to keep track of different SEO processes when all of them are housed under one unified dashboard.
Have a look at the final 10 SEO tools in this comprehensive guide, and explore the top all-in-one solutions for your business.
Considering how many times this tool has been mentioned on this list so far, it’s hardly a surprise that SEMrush is one of the top all-in-one SEO tools. It has everything—keyword research, on-page SEO, competitor analysis, local SEO, rank tracking, link-building, and beyond.
Even though it’s feature-packed, it remains relatively easy to use, though you’ll still need to give yourself some time to familiarize yourself with it in its entirety. All in all, you can’t go wrong with this option if you have the budget for it.
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Similarly to SEMrush, Ahrefs is a return addition to the list. It gives you access to loads of insightful data that lets you track performance, improve your SEO strategy, study your competitors, and impress your target audience (and search engine crawlers alike).
It gives you access to AI-powered tools that can streamline processes and help you improve your website content. It offers a nice selection of free online tools to try. It has advanced reporting. All things considered, it’s a fine tool that can certainly prove to be useful when you use it right.
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Moz Pro is a solid, user-friendly option that doesn’t have quite the learning curve that its main competitors mentioned above have. It boasts a nice, sleek interface with a variety of tools at your disposal. It’s best suited for keyword research, but it does let you perform comprehensive site audits, backlink analytics, and rank tracking.
As a general rule, it’s a good choice for beginners, though you’d likely want to upgrade to more advanced tools as your business grows.
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Don’t let the name fool you. Even though SE Ranking specializes in search performance monitoring, it’s an all-in-one SEO tool suite that covers its bases and has essential features for all your SEO needs.
It performs keyword research and backlink analysis. It has a content editor, an AI writer, and an on-page SEO checker. It helps you keep an eye on the competition and improve your local ranking. It checks all the boxes, but lacks many of the more advanced capabilities that would put it in the #1 spot.
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Serpstat is lightweight and convenient, with a nice set of features that can help you with your all-around SEO strategy. From assisting with your keyword research to helping you analyze your competitors, track your rankings, and site auditing, it’s an excellent solution for SMBs.
It doesn’t have quite as many bells and whistles as more popular options like Ahrefs or SEMrush, but it does have enough to get you started with improving your SEO.
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Given its name, it’s pretty easy to pinpoint where SpyFu excels—competitor monitoring. It helps you find which keywords your competitors are ranking for, what their best-performing paid and organic keywords are, their ad history, and search traffic.
However, as an all-in-one SEO tool, it also offers a few additional features. You can use it for your backlink analytics, site auditing, and rank tracking, among other things.
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While it’s primarily used for backlink analytics, Majestic offers some broader SEO capabilities. Suitable for beginners and SEO professionals alike, it’s a powerful site explorer that can help you identify all issues and opportunities to improve your performance.
It offers excellent keyword research, provides more context for your backlinks, analyzes your anchor texts, and gives you detailed reports on your performance.
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Raven Tools is suitable for businesses, marketers, and agencies, delivering straightforward solutions for improving your SEO and boosting your rankings on SERPs. It comes with a comprehensive site auditor that looks into the technical side of your SEO, a keyword research tool, and a backlink analytics tool.
It can track your rankings, identify potential issues that are lowering your rankings, and deliver detailed reports that are easy to share with teammates. While it doesn’t have many advanced features and lacks some data in its reports, it can be a great tool to use.
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If you have a larger enterprise, BrightEdge could be the all-in-one SEO tool for you. It’s especially suitable for improving your content performance, driving more traffic, and impressing your audiences with your expertise.
It helps you uncover the most suitable keywords to use throughout your website, has tools to improve your local SEO performance, and offers excellent content optimization features. However, you’ll need to be prepared to brace its costs and its steep learning curve.
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Last but certainly not least, you have Conductor, another enterprise-worthy SEO tool with advanced capabilities that can help you improve your visibility and increase your rankings. It’s especially suitable for content optimization, helping you stand out from your competitors by delivering more valuable and relevant content.
Use it to discover and track new keywords, improve your content marketing strategy, perform technical SEO audits, and get insightful reports.
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Just looking at the sheer number of different SEO tools would likely have your head spinning. There are hundreds of tools at your disposal with thousands of different features and capabilities. Fortunately, though, you don’t have to invest in them all.
If you’re not particularly interested in content marketing (though it’s something you should definitely look into), you won’t necessarily gain much from a content optimization SEO tool. If your business isn’t all that well known, you might not need backlink analytics SEO tools, as it’s likely that you don’t have many backlinks in the first place.
So, when choosing the right SEO tools for success, you should first and foremost assess your own needs and goals. Start small—get a specific tool for a particular aspect of SEO you want to improve, then work up from there. And don’t forget to be patient. SEO is an ongoing process that doesn’t deliver instant results. It will take some time to start noticing changes and climbing up on SERPs.
Have you already tried any of the tools we went over? Are there any tools that have impressed you, or did some of them leave you with permanent PTSD? Share your experiences in the comments below.
If you’re a complete beginner, you’d likely get the most out of Google’s available free tools. Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and others are entirely free to use and can give you the basic insights to get started with SEO.
As a general rule, free SEO tools tend to have highly limited feature sets and leave out much of the data you’ll need to make a significant impact on your rankings. They can be good for dipping your toes in the SEO waters, but you’ll likely want to upgrade to more advanced paid tools after a while.
All-in-one tools tend to cover all the bases for SEO, helping you stay on top of your backlinks, keywords, local performance, and technical SEO. They often have a number of different integrations, making them suitable for large businesses that are already using some of them. While they offer a broader functionality, they don’t tend to go into the details all that much.
Niche-specific tools are more specialized, commonly offering much more profound insights into a specific aspect of SEO. They’re highly focused and, as such, can give you better precision and accuracy.
It’s in your best interest to use SEO tools to continually monitor your performance. This way, you’ll be able to catch issues early on and fix them as soon as possible. If continual monitoring is impossible, the next best thing is weekly monitoring.
Small businesses will benefit the most from the free Google Tools, as well as more affordable tools like KWFinder and Keywords Everywhere, for instance. As a rule, small businesses should focus on more practical SEO improvements—local SEO, technical SEO, and on-page SEO—as these directly impact the user experience.
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