What Are SEO Tools
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tools are software that can be used to help with the task of SEO.
SEO tools can help with monitoring, analysing and improving the pages on websites. By implementing positive changes, the pages can rank higher on search engines, get more traffic and get more enquiries and/or revenue. This increased organic traffic can help the website and business to grow faster.
Who Needs SEO Tools
Businesses who are agencies offering services such as website design and SEO will need SEO tools. Types of business who need them includes web design agencies and digital marketing agencies.
In larger companies where digital marketing teams perform the work in-house, they will also need tools. Equally individual freelancers who are SEO consultants or website builders need these tools too.
Without using tools, SEO can be very tricky and you’re at a significant disadvantage vs. those who do use tools. This is particularly relevant where the niche or topic that your website covers is in a highly competitive industry. Also the larger a website becomes, the more important it is to use these tools – as there is a large amount of data to analyse and process.
My 6 Best SEO Tools
Below I’ve listed my 6 best and favourite SEO tools. These are all tools that I’m either using currently in my businesses, or have used in the past. The tools all work well and I feel are good value for money. There are other SEO tools that can offer similar functionality, but some of these are very expensive.
1. SE Ranking
SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO tool that I’ve used for almost 10 years now.
SE Ranking includes keyword ranking & keyword research, backlink checking, competitive research, website audits and reporting functionality.
Pricing wise, it’s better value for money than most of the other all-in-one tools. It also has very good support and they promptly get back to you with answers.
Cost: From £15.84 / month
2. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is a tool which helps to optimise on-page content.
It includes functionality to write and optimise content, as well as auditing pages.
Surfer SEO is a clever tool and has a good user interface.
Cost: From $49 / month. (Note there is a free version, but it doesn’t include the main Surfer tools)
3. SpyFu
SpyFu is a good tool for analysing competitors.
The main functionality of SpyFu is to analyse a website and tell you what keywords it ranks for and what Google Ads have been utilised.
Cost: From $33 / month
4. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a great website ‘spider’ tool, which crawls websites. It has both a free and paid version.
Screaming Frog crawls every page of your website and reports on a large amount of factors such as broken links, page titles and redirects.
This tool is unique compared to most as it is a download rather than web-based – it has versions for Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
Cost: Free version or paid version is £149 / year
5. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a great free tool.
Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that lets you view reports for the performance on google searches, as well as identify problems.
It gives some data that you can’t get via other tools – including the actual queries / keywords that users have typed in to find pages on the website.
Cost: Free!
6. Google Trends
Google Trends is another free SEO tool from Google.
Google Trends is a free tool that let’s you explore trends. It’s particularly useful when considering content ideas for blog posts and other content on websites.
Cost: Free!
Other SEO Tools
I’ve listed the tools I personally find the best. There are of course alternatives. Particularly for ‘all-in-one’ tools like SE Ranking, there are competitors. I’ve tried several of these and found that although they offer similar features, they are more expensive and not suited to smaller agencies. For larger agencies and teams, they can be cost effective.
