Top SEO Tools Trusted by Experts
Search engine optimisation has evolved over time, initially concentrating on controversial methods like keyword stuffing, sneaky redirects, and concealed links. Google now possesses the capability to filter out black hat SEO and concentrate on quality content and pertinent sites. There is an abundance of information we can access, enabling us to target users with valuable data based on keyword research and other beneficial SEO methods using widely accessible tools. However, which tools are proving most advantageous for SEO experts? Let’s examine some of the top SEO instruments employed within the industry.
Keyword analysis
Why is keyword analysis significant? Keyword analysis is a crucial component of your SEO strategy. It can provide vital insights into what and how many people are searching for a particular term. Additionally, it can help you discover content ideas and useful blog topics for your intended audience.
Google Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner, a tool developed by Google, enables you to determine average search volumes for a range of terms during a specific time period. The tool is free to use, and you can input up to 10 terms at a time, requiring only a Gmail Account. Google Keyword Planner showcases other terms related to the ones you’ve searched for, allowing you to explore high search volume keywords that you didn’t provide. Furthermore, you can view the average cost per click (CPC) and the competition. CPC represents the average amount you’d need to pay when someone clicks on a paid ad linking to your site. Competition relates to the difficulty of ranking on page one of Google for a given keyword.
You can input your domain to view keyword suggestions based on your entire site or a URL to analyse an individual page. Using a competitor’s URL instead of your own is excellent for competitor research as it allows you to assess what they currently rank for and form content strategy ideas.
Ahrefs
Similarly, Ahrefs provides keyword volumes for search terms. You can also view the competition level indicated as keyword difficulty (KD), global volume (GV), traffic potential (TP), and parent topic. Parent topic is useful for identifying long-tail keywords. For example, the search phrase ‘SEO agency’ will provide you with terms under that parent topic, such as ‘what to look for in an SEO agency,’ helping you rank for lower-difficulty keywords and create targeted content for your audience.
Ahrefs also provides an ‘updated’ column, showing you the last time they checked the volume for that keyword. Select ‘Term match’ or ‘Phrase match’ to view keywords containing the terms you provided in any order, or to see data on terms containing your keywords in the same order you entered them in.
Ahrefs offers a range of pricing plans, from Lite to Enterprise, allowing you to choose the plan that best fits your budget.
Chrome extension:
Keyword Surfer – If you’re a Chrome user, Keyword Surfer is a handy little plug-in that displays basic statistics based on your searches. It’s added to your main SERPs page, eliminating the need for a separate web page or login to access it. The keyword volume is directly shown next to the search box, with a separate table to the right displaying related keyword ideas and volumes for each term.
SemRush
SemRush provides a wide range of SEO insights, including keyword research. The Keyword Magic tool lists thousands of keywords related to the term you provide, with search volumes organised into topical groups and subgroups. Topical groups indicate relevance to search engines and display keywords that provide authoritative information. Subgroups show long-tail keywords for more comprehensive keyword research. You can also exclude certain terms, such as ‘free’ or ‘best,’ to filter out results that don’t interest you.
KWFinder allows you to search by keyword or domain. When searching by keyword, results will show the volume and related questions for the terms provided. It can also suggest possible competitors for you to analyse. When searching by domain, it provides a list of keywords and their current rankings, allowing you to see what your site already ranks for and what keywords you might want to improve. Searching by domain also gives you trends of the search volume in the last 12 months.
Other features of KWFinder include estimated visits (EV), cost per click (CPC), PPC competition, and keyword difficulty (KD). KWFinder is free to try with an account, or you can choose from various pricing plans.
Moz Keyword Explorer
Moz is a highly trusted SEO tool that can be used with a free, limited plan or as a premium, paid subscription. The Keyword Explorer feature enables users to view current keyword trends and see what keywords your site, as well as its competitors, currently rank for. The primary features of Keyword Explorer include viewing monthly volume, difficulty, organic click-through rate (CTR), and priority.
Priority combines all the data to create a score that helps you effectively prioritise your keywords. The suggestions are ordered by relevance, determined by how often the keyword appears in SERPs when entering the terms you provided.
Another fantastic feature of Keyword Explorer is the Ranking Distribution graph, which shows you the keywords, when searching by URL, that your site ranks for. For example, you may have 2k keywords ranking in positions 1-3.
UberSuggest
UberSuggest is a tool developed by Neil Patel. You can search by keyword or domain and select the country for viewing keyword volumes. When searching by keyword, the results show data including search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and cost per click (CPC). SEO difficulty indicates the estimated competition in SERPs, with a higher number indicating greater difficulty in ranking for that term. Paid difficulty refers to the estimated competition in paid search. You can conduct a basic search without an account or upgrade to view historical data and analyse trends over time.
UberSuggest also provides a table of content ideas, displaying URLs that show up in SERPs for given keywords, estimated traffic, and the number of backlinks to that site. This is useful for planning your content strategy and analysing competitors’ actions.
With an account, you can add keywords to a list, helping you organise them by type, such as informational and transactional.
SEO Site Auditing
Why are SEO site audits important? Website audits are crucial for understanding your site’s current status. They measure the site’s visibility and usability, helping you determine how to improve your ranking and achieve online growth.
Sitebulb
Sitebulb is a tool that offers detailed insights into site performance. It requires you to set up a project using the site’s domain, which is then crawled and audited, generating various reports and a list of ‘hints,’ indicating issues that need attention. Examples of these hints include ‘Pages with duplicate titles’ and ‘
Site Bulbs hints are prioritised, providing you with a ready-made checklist that can be exported to Excel or Google Sheets. The hints also show the affected URLs, enabling you to pinpoint the issues affecting your SEO score. Each hint is explained, giving a clear understanding of the issue, its importance, and how to resolve it.
You can also download reports as PDFs, allowing you to present findings to your clients in a presentable format. Another useful feature of Lightbulb is the ability to compare previous audits, allowing you to monitor and track progress. You can try Sitebulb for free before opting for a membership.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO tool crawls your domain and identifies issues that could lower your SEO score. It highlights instances of broken links, redirect chains, metadata issues, reviews robots.txt, and pages that are noindexed. The free version allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs, making it ideal for small sites. The paid version offers unlimited URL crawls and includes more features, such as finding near-duplicate content, analysing structured data, conducting spelling and grammar checks, and integrating with Google Analytics, Search Console, and Page Speed Insights. You can also generate sitemaps for upload via Google Search Console.
Technical Issues
What technical issues can impact SEO? Technical issues can impact your SEO score and, consequently, your site’s ranking. These issues include mobile usability problems, duplicate content, poor navigation, uncompressed images, slow page load speed, lack of or incorrect structured data, and URLs with special characters or capital letters. It is crucial to analyse the technical aspect of your site, as well as the content quality, using tools.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is widely used to view your site’s indexing and performance, providing an overview of how your site appears in Google SERPs. Once you set up your account, you can explore the four metrics of your website. These include total clicks (how many people clicked onto your website from search results), total impressions (how many times your site appeared in search results), average click-through rate, and average position in SERPs. You can view any pages with indexing issues, determine whether they are correctly noindexed, and submit them to Google for indexing directly from GSC.
Google Search Console enables you to examine your site as a whole and includes a URL inspection feature for analysing individual pages. You can view top-performing pages, along with clicks and impressions.
GSC offers a query feature that displays the top search queries resulting in traffic to your site, enabling you to optimise and target pages for relevant keywords.
Page Speed Insights (PSI) is an efficient tool that shows your site’s performance based on features like page speed. It provides performance scores for mobile and desktop and indicates whether your site has passed the Core Web Vitals Assessment.
PSI generates a report presenting opportunities to improve your performance score, such as reducing unused CSS, minimising JavaScript, and optimising image formats. It also displays metrics like Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
Blog Writing
Why use tools to aid blog writing? The keyword research mentioned earlier is critical when writing blogs. Targeting relevant keywords related to your site and its offerings helps users find the information they seek and enables your site to rank for those key terms. Specific tools can help you discover precisely what people are searching for.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public allows you to search by topic, brand, or product in any country. The results display popular search phrases and query ideas. In addition to questions, Answer The Public provides prepositions such as ‘SEO agency Cambridge,’ comparisons, and related terms. Without an account, you can perform one search per day, while a free account allows three searches daily.
Frase.io
Frase employs AI technology to help you write and optimise content for SEO. They offer solo, basic, and team membership plans depending on your usage frequency. Frase can also assist in creating article briefs and generating content ideas. However, professional content writers should not overly rely on Frase but use it as a guide rather than letting it do the work for them. Research and expert SEO knowledge still yield better results than an AI tool.
Grammarly
Grammarly functions as a writing assistant, reviewing grammar issues, including spelling, and scanning for plagiarism. It can also identify poorly written sentences and rewrite them for clarity. You can write directly into the website platform or upload an existing document. Additionally, you can integrate Grammarly into Google Docs for real-time grammar and sentence structure suggestions. Create a free account for basic suggestions, or go premium for advanced formatting and complex sentences.
Conclusion
Using these tools can help you generate ideas for creating engaging content, understand what people are searching for, and discover issues within your site that may harm your SEO score and performance. SEO experts utilise these tools to make tasks more efficient; however, above all, we rely on our extensive years of experience and expert knowledge to create successful campaigns.
If you’re searching for a specialised SEO agency with Award-Winning results to boost your traffic, contact the SEO Works team for more information and discover why we’ve been recognized as a top SEO service provider by industry leaders.
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