Selecting the best tool to help with a particular task could be a pain in the neck. Especially when you have too many choices. In the world of Search Engines optimizations, there are several hundred SEO tools that are available on the market.
This immense variety of choices makes the task of selecting the proper tools a bit complicated. Some of the instruments for SEO are free, and some of them- paid. There are also various categories of toolsets, and they usually serve different SEO tasks.
Here, I will summarize the various types and categories of available SEO tools. The purpose of this monologue is to assist you with the choice of the best tools for search engine optimization whatever your business or daily tasks are.
There are tools for every part of SEO and which is the best one for each task depends on your requirements.
Why Do you need SEO tools?
With thousands of keywords to manage and optimize and hundreds of rules to obey, to be competitive in the world where there are millions of websites, SEO has become a time-consuming task.
Routines in SEO, in general, are not necessarily difficult but can be quite complicated due to the mentioned above good reasons.
An SEO software or a platform for search engine optimizations can help a lot by reducing the time and errors involved in routine tasks, required for managing websites.
The positive outcome of automating SEO tasks through a platform or toolset is higher productivity and efficiency. On another hand, the spent time and the ordinarily occurring errors go down.
SEO tools simple or more complex can have many benefits for their users if utilized correctly. Not all SEO related tasks require the use of complicated software. The tools for SEO are a must for people who are seriously involved in online marketing or have another profitable business online.
SEO software comes in many sizes and shapes, from keyword research tools to enterprise solutions that can manage rankings, keywords, links, etcetera altogether.
The best and most complex tools in the SEO niche are not free, but they offer competitive intelligence, social signal integrations, task management and workflow roles for teamwork, predictive analytics and more.
Selecting the most appropriate tool or combination of SEO tools should be based on your needs. For this reason, you need to know what types and categories of tools there are available for use nowadays.
What are the different types of SEO tools?
Each task in the Search Engine Optimization process requires the right approach. We’ll go through the different types or categories of tools for SEO and see for what particular tasks they can help us. As you will notice in a while some of the tools are more or less universal, because they can be utilized for more than a single assignment or project.
1.SEO tools for Keyword Research
Keywords are search terms that people enter into search engines while looking for a particular subject or topic. The keyword research and suggestion tools help to find the best keywords for a webpage or website or niches where competition is not that strong.
Keyword research is a common practice, which many bloggers, marketers, entrepreneurs,solopreneurs, SEO, and other professionals use. Such research is required to find the best wording in a specific niche or niches, and the aim is to achieve better rankings in the search engine results pages (SERP).
Keyword research and suggestion tools help us to find suitable keywords for websites or niches where competition is weaker.
Most of the keyword suggestion tools include the number of searches for each of those keywords per certain period. The keyword research instruments can also provide information about competition between similar keywords and alternative suggestions for selected terms.
Thus, people who use such tools can find the most appropriate wording, such as long-tail keywords. Apart from these benefits, keyword tools can help to find niches that are not overcrowded, competition is not that strong, and there are good chances to hit the first place in SERP.
In keyword analysis, you can choose excellent free tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, Bing Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Keyword Suggestion tool by SEO book.
Of course, we can’t mention all the useful tools for keyword analyses in one blog post, but these are the ones to start with.
Among the notable free useful keywords suggestion tools are Soovle, Wordtracker Scout, Wordstream free keyword tool, Wordtracker, SeedKeywords, Answer The Public, Keyword Shitter, Keywords Everywhere, KeywordIn, Keyword Tool, Keyword Finder, KeywordIt, Kombinator, SpyFu.Here you can find more free keywords suggestion tools.
In the paid keyword suggestion tools list we have to mention SECockpit, GrepWords, KeywordSnatcher, Term Explorer, ScrapeBox, Concentrate, ClearScope, Kparser, KWFinder, HitTail, Long Tail Pro, KeyLogs orJaaxy.
Here you can find even more paid tools for keywords suggestion.
2.SEO tools for Link Analysis
Tools for link analyses do what their name suggests. Analyze your and your competitors’ links. These tools or the majority of them do more than link analysis.
The SEO tools for links and backlinks track the progress with your link building campaigns, provide insights in competitors’ link-building strategies and can come up with suggestions for further development of your SEO strategies. Such as link prospecting, for example. Additionally, they check the health of your links and can provide detox or even penalty recovery options.
Most tools for link analysis provide more complex functions than just link statistics and analytics.
Some of the hundreds of free tools for links checking and backlinks auditing are Link Sleuth (by Xenu), LinkExplorer (by RankWatch), BackLink Tool (by SEO Review Tools), Backlink Checker (by Small Seo Tools), BackLink Checker (by the Hoth),WebMeUp, W3C Linkchecker (by W3C), and the webmasters’ tools of Yandex, Bing, and Google.
Major names in the paid tools for links analyzing that deserve o mention here are Link Research Tools, Linkody, Monitor Backlinks, BuzzStream, LinkMiner, Link Assistant (part of SEO PowerSuite), the Link Checker (part of ScrapeBox), Ontolo and of course complex SEO tools, which offer additional functionalities such as Majestic, SeoProfiler, SE Ranking, SemRush, AhRefs, SearchMetrics, CognitiveSEO, Raven Tools, SEO PowerSuite, MoZ, BrightEdge, Mondovo, WebCEO or Alexa which we’ll discuss later on.
3.SEO tools for Competitive Intelligence
Competitive analysis is an essential step when developing almost any SEO strategy and often can even be the difference between success and failure.
The SEO tools for competitive intelligence are useful if you want to know your competitor’s SEO tools for competitive intelligence.
The instruments for spying the competition provide discretely and intelligently information about what your SEO competitors are doing and researches how they rank in Google, or how much traffic they get. Above all SEO tools for competitive intelligence and analysis can help you answer if not all at least the majority of the above questions and provide accurate data about the current competitive landscape.
Among the famous brand names which offer SEO tools for competitor analysis and are recommended to explore are SearchMetrics, SERP Scan, Mention, SimilarWeb, Quantcast, BuzzSumo, Moat, AdGooroo, iSpionage, JumpShot, SpyOnWeb, Rival IQ, Brandwatch Analytics, TrackMaven, SERPstat, InfiniGraph, Simply Measured, Compete PRO, SE Ranking, Search Monitor Builtwith, and many others.
If you would like to find out more exciting tools for competitor analysis, check this blog post on SproutSocial.
4.SEO tools for Website Auditing and Optimization
A properly optimized website means higher visibility and better rankings in the search engine results’ pages. The tools designed for the sole purpose of site audits which can provide useful insights about optimizing (where required) can help here.
The properly optimized websites have better chances for higher ranking in SERP, and this is where the SEO tools can help.
As with the other toolsets here you can get lost with a variety of choices. There are far too many tools to assist with the audits and optimization of a website. The first and most authoritative places to check are the free tools for webmasters provided by Google, Bing, and Yandex.
One of the best free tools for complex checks is the one from WebConfs.
Additionally, among the prominent names which I would like to mention here as some of the best in this niche are: WooRank, Nibbler, SEO Site Checkup, Site Auditor, Site Analyzer, SEO Workers, SEO Tester Online, Lipperhey, UpCity, Seoptimer, Varvy, GT Metrix, Agency Analytics, Spotibo, Seobility, ContentKing, SEOptimer and more.
5.SEO tools for Website Monitoring
The good health of every website is one of the most important tasks of every webmaster. Some of the hosting companies provide software for monitoring websites and can inform you if something is not ok or your site goes down.
When you have to rely on your workforce and resources, then the instruments for remote website monitoring are irreplaceable helpers. The most prominent names in this group of software are names such as the free Service Uptime.
Other brands are UpTrends, SiteUptime, Webgazer, Alertra, PRTG, UptimeRobot, Pingability, Pingdom, Site24*7, Status Cake, Watchful, Monitis, InternetVista, OneStat. Most of the site monitoring tools have free service, while their paid versions include more extras.
6.SEO tools for Website Performance
You might wonder what are these tools since we already mentioned those which are useful in website auditing. We dedicate a separate paragraph for the tools that can examine and provide insights about the loading speed of your site.
The free Google’s PageSpeed Insights, based on the free Chrome extension Lighthouse is the first in this list of useful software. The list of most popular tools for page speed check continues with names, probably well known by the SEO experts or those who regularly use them: WebPageTest, Sitespeed.io, Sitespeed.me, Yslow.
7.SEO tools for Website SERP analytics
SERP analysis or Search Engine Results Page analysis means a study of the top results for a particular topic or keyword. The process of SERP analysis includes an assessment of web pages that rank first for this specific topic, keyword or keywords. This is required to determine the difficulty level for ranking in the search engines’ results for particular terms.
SERP analysis also helps to understand if optimization for a particular keyword or a list of keywords is good enough or where improvements can be implemented if this is required. The aim is a web site or particular page of the website to rank higher in the search engines results list.
For SERP analytics of websites, your valuable assistants will be useful SEO tools such as GetStat, Advanced Web Ranking, ProRank Tracker, SERPS, Authority Labs or Microsite Masters.
8.SEO tools for Website’s Mobile SERP and Analytics
By now we talked about all other important SEO tools for keyword optimization and tracking, website performance, page analytics, sites testing and just about everything else.
Now is the time to say a few words about the tools for mobile search optimizing. Since we are living in a century where the mobile communications are about to reach their peak the mobile search optimization is equally important with the normal procedures for SEO for a website.
At some point, the mobile search will become more important than the desktop search and for this reason thinking about the mobile SEO is simply a must.
Here are some of the most interesting tools for mobile ranking and research you can try: MobileMoxie, Mobile SEO Page Analyzer, AccuRanker, RankRanger, SerpChecker, SerpWoo, Serps, SEO Rank Monitor. If you are interested in Apps intelligence and analytics don’t miss Flurry, Sensor Tower, Apptopia or App Annie.
9.SEO tools for Website Crawling
SEO Crawlers, SEO bots or SEO Spiders crawl and scan data about websites and their pages.
Similar to the search engines’ bots, the SEO Spiders collects comprehensive information about every webpage, which can be crawled. This includes valuable info about tags, keywords, titles, CSS, scripts, images, internally linked pages, outlinks, backlinks, etcetera.
Thanks to the insights SEO Spiders provide users can identify existing issues with a website or webpage, such as broken links, low speed of loading, duplicate content, missing alt text from images and many other technical problems.
Some SEO bots can be downloaded, installed and used on PC or Mac, but many of them are accessible online and offered as SAAS. The list of SEO Crawlers is quite long, but we have included only some of the popular names in this niche.
If you would like to have a look at and give a try to some of the best SEO crawlers don’t miss names such as the free SiteCondor or BeamUsUp. You should also test Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, WebBee SEO Spider, Botify, DynoMapper, OnCrawl, Audisto, Visual SEO, SEOmator or DeepCrawl.
As you maybe know the duplicate content is one of the most important factors which affect webpage and website ranking. This is why we have dedicated a place to mention specialized SEO tools such as SiteLiner or SeoCrawler.
10.SEO tools for Website Testing
Split-run testing, also known as A/B testing or is necessary to select the better version of a website. The Split-run testing means to compare two versions of a site or webpage against each other and determine which one of the selected functions better than the other. A/B testing is also known as bucket tests and is used also for testing apps. Here we have selected some of the most popular SEO software for examining websites.
Names, representing some of the most popular software brands for split-run testing tools include MouseFlow, RankScience, CrazyEgg, Loop11, AB Tasty,
11.SEO tools with Complex functions
Most advanced and complex software for SEO have many things in common and offer pretty much the same functionalities as you can expect. As a minimum, all of these premium SEO tools provide keyword research, SERP analysis, rank tracking, backlink analysis, complete website analysis.
Similarly to any other popular business, due to high competition in the niche, each one of the notable brands for advanced SEO software tries to deliver to their customers and users newer and more advanced technologies. It’s probably useless to say that their products are getting better and better.
Apart from the multifunctional medium, another thing in common is the relatively high pricing of these SEO tools. If you compare their prices with the pricing of other tools with fewer functionalities, which we mentioned here earlier, you will see that you pay more but you receive more, which is fair enough.
Also, for people who have a serious online business, related or not related to SEO, an investment in a subscription for any of these all-in-one SEO tools with multiple functions well worth every cent spent. People who are professionally involved in the SEO business know well what I mean.
The best and most advanced tools for SEO provide complex functionality which in the typical case includes competitive analysis, links or backlink analysis, link acquisition, link removal, keywords research and reports, search results, site rank tracking (site ranking), content analytics, social signals tracking, site analytics and error detection, and many more.
Best and most advanced SEO tools are complex and expensive, but they offer multiple functionalities
Of course, the all-in-one tool doesn’t necessarily mean these advanced tools will cover absolutely every aspect of SEO that you will need.
Not at all. Otherwise, the other SEO instruments will not exist, most probably.
The advanced software covers not all, but the majority of the goals you would need in the site management and SEO aspects.
Here we can’t miss the most popular and advanced SEO tools available on the market SeoProfiler, SE Ranking, CognitiveSEO, Raven Tools, Majestic, SemRush, SearchMetrics, AhRefs, SEO PowerSuite, Alexa, BrightEdge, WebCEO, MoZ or Mondovo.
The process of search engine optimization can be complicated, and there is no magic pill for success. The good news is that there are useful tools for every single need and task in SEO.
The problematic part here is to find and choose the right tool or set of tools for your business, because as we saw there are just too many tools available to utilize. Still, you don’t have to look far to find what suits your requirements.
Probably all of the mentioned here various free and paid tools for search engine optimization will meet your expectations just because all of them are among the best tools for SEO you can find. However, how effectively you will use each one them is a matter of knowledge and experience.
Take your time to test and take advantage of what these useful tools have to offer. After a time when you can utilize their full power, you’ll be able to get close to your SEO goals.
Originally published at https://www.websst.com.
