Confused about all the SEO tools out there?
Looking for advice on which might work best for you?
Well, look no further. Here at The Digital Studios, we have created this handy guide to 11 mainstream SEO tools. We include both popular and lesser known, free and paid for; and just so we are really spoiling you, some handy learning resources are also included, as well as a link to sign up to regular updates on the ever-evolving SEO landscape.
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Google Analytics
Google Analytics is THE most valuable SEO data tool and offers a full insight into the true demographic of your website visitors as well as all of their interactions with your website.
And the best bit? Google Analytics is free to use.
Be warned though (as with everything), there are limitations on the amount of information Google Analytics can provide. You can read more about this in our post here.
2. Yoast (WordPress Plugin)
Yoast is one of the most downloaded plugins for WordPress and also happens to be one of the most comprehensive solutions on the market currently.
Yeost is packed full of features and will allow you to add SEO title and meta descriptions to your posts and pages of your site, and much (much) more.
Yoast is available for free but there is also a subscription based premium version.
Google’s Keyword Planner, formerly known as Adwords Keyword Tool, lets you pull monthly Google search query volume estimates for dozens of keywords, and does it in seconds.
This is a fantastic little tool if you’re keen on analysing your keyword competition.
4. GT Matrix
Use GT Matrix to test your website’s speed and performance and also review helpful recommendations to improve it.
This completely free tool analyses your websites performance and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimise it for both your users and it’s trustworthiness in the search engines.
- Unamo Formally Positionly
Unamo is most commonly recognised as being an inbound marketing tool.
It offers you daily position checks and backlink analysis. The depth of information on offer is well worth the monthly subscription charge (well, we think so anyway).
This tool offers many features to check, scrutinize and check the SEO performance. With the help on Unamo, you can keep a record of your ranking in the result page, the impact of using keywords, position change in the results.
Marketing insights of competitors, keyword tracking can be also done by Unamo.
- Google Search Console (GSC)
Formerly known as Google Webmaster, Google Search Console deals with configuration controls for your site within Google, provides useful insights into your website’s performance and arms you with some basic tools to support optimisation.
Provided you have been registered with GSC for at least two months, you can have access to the following datasets:
- The effectiveness of your keywords in terms of the impact they are having on your search engine ranking.
- Identification of any crawl errors which may exist on your website.
- Metrics on mobile friendliness at page level, and what you need to do to improve in this area.
- The ability to browse Google Index and submit pages for indexing
- A whole range of analytics covering click numbers per page, number of impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and your average Google ranking position.
- Bing Webmaster
Bing Webmaster is often overlooked which we think is a shame, because it’s really handy for keeping an eye on how well you are doing (generally) within the Bing search engine.
With Windows 10 now firmly embedded within Bing, it’s likely that use of Bing (and in turn, Bing Webmaster) will rocket as a result.
Two of our favourite features on offer within Webmaster include the ability to view backlink profiles (which in turn gives you further insight into referring pages, domains, and anchor links) and their SEO reports which allow you to review any errors that may be present within your website.
…..does what it says on the tin.
A really brilliant way of checking whether Google deems your website to be mobile friendly (for mobile devices), or not.
This is an important factor when it comes to Google search rankings and ensuring maximum reach where your audience is concerned.
For more detail about why you should be optimised for mobile can be found, check out our relevant blog post here.
10. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog will test your site’s crawlability and find errors with the Screaming Frog SEO spider. This crawler allows you to crawl website’s urls and fetch key onsite elements to analyse onsite SEO.
The key elements include broken links, audit redirects, metadata, and duplications.
11.Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, verify your website and you’ll be able to audit your website for over 100+ technical SEO issues.
The tool also gives suggestions on how to fix them.
After running an audit, it also suggests areas where you can improve your internal linking, which is helpful in boosting your rankings in search engines.
This tool also allows you to see your site’s organic keyword rankings as well as who’s linking to you.
And finally…
We hope this article demonstrates that you can do a lot with mainstream SEO tools that are available.
These free SEO tools will get you started with SEO and a number of them are pretty powerful.
If you’re serious about SEO, you’ll need to put up the cash to get the right tools. You won’t be able to do everything through SEO work without a paid subscription alongside some significant time and effort.
The Digital Studios can provide search engine optimisation which will help increase traffic to your website.
If you would like help to find out more about how we can devise a strategy to ensure that your website is firmly in the digital spotlight please get in touch.
