Are you struggling to understand what you’re doing wrong with your SEO?
Does this sound like you?
If it does, it’s time to take a look for some SEO tools.
SEO tools are used to find out what makes a website rank. They do this by providing valuable data about the site that would otherwise be very difficult to find.
Why Do We Need SEO Tools?
As mentioned before, SEO tools help you identify the areas that your competitors are succeeding at. More importantly, they show you how to beat their rankings.
Before we get into why you should be using them, let’s first explain what they can do:
- Keyword Research – Finding the right keywords is key to starting an online business. But finding relevant keywords and knowing how much traffic they generate is impossible without SEO tools.
- Link Building – Regardless of where you stand with Black or White hat SEO, link building is an integral part of SEO. Without building reliable links to your site, your SEO will only ever be… OK.
- Content Writing – Perfectly optimized content is another piece of the SEO puzzle that needs taking care of. But this means finding a balance with which keywords you use, tools like Surfer SEO will let you know what each page needs.
- SEO Audits – Without performing site audits, it’s hard to know where you’re going wrong. The thing is, it’s a very time-consuming process without the right tool. An SEO audit tool will crawl your entire site in a few minutes and let you know how to fix the problems.
- Rank Tracking – You need to know exactly how a page is ranking at any given moment. And because they are always changing, it can be pretty hard to keep track, which is where rank tracking apps come in.
- Page Speed – Did you know a two-second delay in loading speed could cost you 50% of your revenue? Ensuring each page of your site has a good loading speed can significantly improve your site’s performance.
Some SEO tools out there only focus on one of the areas above, which isn’t a bad thing.
You see, they focus solely on one aspect, which means they can concentrate their efforts, making it the best it can be.
Other tools like Ahrefs focus on being an all in one SEO tool. That being said, each SEO suite tends to have a superpower (something it does better than any other device.)
So, why should you be using them?
Well, quite simply, your competitors will be using them. Which means you’ll find it difficult to keep up if you don’t. If you want to level the playing, you need to be using SEO tools.
Don’t worry, they don’t cost a fortune.
There are plenty of free SEO tools out there; the problem is they are very limited in the data they provide. This makes finding relevant and actionable data very hard to find, which isn’t for everyone.
So it’s better to opt for paid tools. Their data indexes are far more extensive, which makes it easier to find what you need.
The key thing about paid tools is that the money allows the developers to continually improve and expand the tool, making it better, faster and stronger all the time.
If your time is valuable or you don’t want to lose your mind going around in circles, then paid tools are highly recommended.
If you haven’t got the money to spend on the SEO tools, don’t worry too much you can still get the information you need… Just be prepared to be frustrated trying to find actionable data.
So, what are the top SEO tools?
Top SEO Tools On The Market
As mentioned above, there are a ton of SEO tools out there, and in this article we will focus on the top three tools that really are worth every penny.
Check them out:
SEO PowerSuite
SEO PowerSuite is basically a combination of four SEO tools but rolled into one purchasable package.
They also provide a free version, but the data it provides is a lot more limited than the paid version.
With the SEO PowerSuite package, you get access to:
- SEO Spyglass
- LinkAssistant
- Website Auditor
- Rank Tracker
The great thing about having access to this selection of tools is you can complete nearly any SEO task.
But, what makes it even better is being able to integrate it with free tools like:
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
The most significant benefit of the SEO PowerSuite is being able to track an unlimited number of keywords. But more importantly, follow them across all of the major searches engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo.)
You’re also able to keep an eye on 40 of your competitors. This helps you build a detailed strategy on how to beat them to the top.
The biggest downside is, it’s four separate desktop applications; if they were all rolled into one, it would make it a lot more manageable.
Another downer is it has a pretty small index compared to some other SEO tools.
Learn more in this SEO PowerSuite review!
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another all in one type of SEO tool, but its superpower is the huge backlink index it has.
Their huge backlink index makes this the perfect tool for analyzing your competitors’ backlink profile.
More importantly, the tool helps you check the health of the backlinks pointing to your site. That’s not all you can do either.
With Ahrefs, you can run a complete site audit to determine which areas of your site need some fixing.
But the best bit is, they also show you exactly how you can fix the problem, not too bad, eh?
Other features include things like:
- Keyword research
- Content research
- Rank tracking
- And much more
As mentioned before, the most significant strength is the backlink checking. No other SEO tool has as big of an index.
And it’s other strength is that fact you can also perform excellent keyword research with the tool. Not only does it show the keywords difficulty and search volume, but it will also show similar keywords.
This feature helps you find the hidden gems that free tools can’t offer.
There aren’t many, but one would be the traffic stats; they seem to be very on and off when it comes to weaknesses.
SEMRush
SEMRush is the best tool for digital marketing; no other tool gives you the same insights into your competitor’s business.
The SEO tool can be used to help you understand how and where your competitors are finding their success.
They do this by showing all the information your competitors wish you couldn’t see. Use this data to help you build a plan to push you past your competitors.
Like Ahrefs, you can use SEMRush to audit your site to find broken areas. It does this by giving you a clear picture of what the problems are, and then shows you how to fix them.
Another excellent feature is the collection of benchmark data to show you how the site is performing. More importantly it shows what areas you need to focus on.
The biggest strength is being able to monitor brands and their huge keyword database.
The biggest weakness is the keyword difficulty score; it was pretty unreliable.
Wrapping Up
Whether you have a blog or an ecommerce store or you are using WordPress or Squarespace, without SEO tools, you’re going to find it difficult to keep up with your competitors.
Some SEO tools focus on one specific SEO area, while others are more of a suite of tools.
The three tools above will help push in the right direction and create fantastic SEO strategies.
So, what do you think? Do you use SEO tools, and if so, what’s your favorite?
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