As SEO experts, we come across a wide range of SEO tools which we use on a daily basis to help our clients get great results and we believe they’re perfect for business owners too. So, here’s our top 15 tools to help your business excel in search marketing:
Majestic
As one of the largest commercial link intelligence databases available, Majestic is probably the most frequently used SEO tool available. It’s a platform which provides a detailed backlink analysis of the URL & Domain of your choice. Within this analysis you are able to to determine the number of backlinks linking to the domain of your choice, where they are from and the exact page they link to/from.
This tool is also available as a plugin for Chrome, which is a great way to quickly analyse the strength/weakness of a website, as this plugin provides the key essential information you would need to know about a website.
By doing this you can see how many links are directed to your website, client’s website and most importantly – your competitors websites!
Searchmetrics
Searchmetrics is an in-depth SEO analysis tool, which allows you and your business to analyse and optimise entire websites, based on the information it provides. The tool allows you to obtain instant insights for almost every domain across 27 countries worldwide.
Within the tool there is an abundance of statistical information at your disposal for the domain of your choice. You are able to analyse the SEO visibility of a website, when Google Penalties have hit a particular site, keyword performance, backlink reviews, competitor activity and social performance. This comprehensive tool is one which we use on a daily basis and it’s one we recommend to all businesses.
Google Keyword Planner
Google’s Keyword Planner is an essential platform for marketers, which can create fantastic keyword opportunities for new search network campaigns or expanding existing ones. The tool allows you to search for specific keywords and ad group ideas, based on your target audience, your website’s domain and also what you want your business to rank for and what type of visitors you want to your website.
This tool then creates and gathers keyword statistics such as: Average monthly search volume, suggested bid, how competitive the phrase is – the list goes on. This then identifies the keywords which your business should be including in your on site optimisation & can also help you choose competitive bids and budgets to use with your paid campaigns.
For more information on Google’s Keyword Planner – feel free to check out our blog on how keyword research can help your business.
Screaming Frog Spider Tool
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is small desktop program, which spiders: Web site links, images, CSS, script and apps. This SEO tool also fetches key onsite page elements, which can be viewed, analysed and filtered – for your own specific business requirements.
The Spider Tool is extremely helpful for developers and technical SEO experts, as it allows you to review & analyse your website from an detailed onsite SEO perspective. Even better it’s free! There is a paid version of the tool also available, but the free version is more than sufficient.
Hubspot Sales
Very similar to Boomerang, Hubspot Sales is a great email marketing tool, which notifies you when people open your emails, when, how many times and from where. This can aid you with your sales and outreach campaigns, which are crucially important to businesses in today’s competitive industry.
Sistrix
Similar to Searchmetrics, Sistrix is an SEO tool businesses should be using, when possible. It allows you to analyse the domain of your choice and results in detailed information regarding: keywords used, Google visibility, comprehensive set of domain evaluations and most importantly provides you and your business with a glance into the KPI’s which your business should be targeting and how they are performing also. The data goes back over 5 years, perfect for checking if a site was hit by the initial 2012 Penguin update!
Boomerang
Boomerang is a fantastic tool for all Digital PR Marketers as it allows you to schedule your outgoing emails to the perfect time of your choice. This tool is perfect for businesses who are trying to undertake a successful content marketing campaign, as it not only allows you to schedule an email for a specific time, but also alerts you with a responding email if no one decides to respond to you. With outreach being one of the slightly trickier link building methods to dominate, this tool keeps you on top of your emails and makes following up a much easier process to undertake.
Google Analytics
We could write about how important Google Analytics is for days on end, but unfortunately we can’t. The importance of Google Analytics to any business is crucial, there are so many aspects of the tool which are crucial to a successful campaign. By using analytics you are able to monitor a website’s performance on a daily basis, whether this be from organic or an PPC point of view, Google Analytics allows you to analyse a sites e-commerce campaign, all the way through to monitoring the performance of a piece of content. This tool is imperative to the way we manage our clients and this tool should be one every business uses on a day-to-day basis.
Google Analytics also have a Chrome plugin called ‘In Page Analytics’ which allows you to see real time data and click throughs for each element on your page.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google which helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence within Google Search results. By using this tool you gain a further understanding of how Google analyses your site and optimise its performance in search results.
This tool allows your business to submit brand new content for crawling and remove content you don’t want shown in search results. It’s also where you can upload a Disavow file should your site have any low quality backlinks pointing to it. In addition to this, the tool regularly monitors and resolves malware or spam issues, which your site may be affected by.
Google often updates Search Console, making it one of the first places we look to decide where Google is placing its priority.
WooRank
WooRank is a fantastic SEO plugin to have available for your business and is free to use. This web-based software instantly assesses and generates detailed/technical reviews of a website.
It details a list of all the issues which a website may have but also indicates where the technical strengths are also. This helps many businesses and online marketers identify where changes are needed, in order to achieve higher search rankings, improve visitor-to-customer rates & also allows the business to monitor competitors and highlights where your website ranks above/below of them also – from a technical perspective.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is great content platform for any business & one which we highly recommend you use. Within Buzzsumo you are able to identify the most talked about & shared content based on the phrase/term & domain of your choice.
This content research platform also allows you to monitor how often your business/clients are being mentioned within online publications and this creates a high number of link building & outreach opportunities, depending on the popularity of the company.
And finally Buzzsumo also allows you to identify how well your competitors are performing with their content & also opens up content opportunities for your business as you can see which topics are obtaining the most social media engagement. It’s ideal for any Social or Content Marketing campaign.
Moz Local
Moz Local is a great local SEO tool, as it allows you to create and update your business listings, manage your location information at any time, re-verify your listings and also finds and resolves duplicate listings, which may exist for your business or your clients business information.
If the listing data is incorrect or inconsistent between all the data sources available, then the business listing may not appear in search results & Moz Local allows you to identify these problems and gives you the opportunity to resolve them from one interface.
Deep Crawl
Highly regarded as the world’s most comprehensive website crawler, Deep Crawl is an essential tool for Technical SEO. It allows your developers and technical experts within your company to undertake detailed website audits, which are extremely important for new clients and any that have recently migrated sites. It also provides your business with a greater understanding of a website’s architectural structure, allows you to compare your site with a competitor’s & can support you along the way if your business is launching an international site.
SpyFu
If your business is looking to overtake/compete strongly with competitors then SpyFu is a fantastic tool to help you with this. SpyFu allows you to identify your competitors’ most profitable keywords from both PPC & Organic Search campaigns.
For internal use, SpyFu also allows you to identify your business’s/competitors keyword history and where these terms have ranked for previously. By identifying these phrases you can highlight which phrases are successful or aren’t performing well for your campaigns: giving you a clear idea of your next steps.
Talkwalker
One of the leading social media analysis tools available to businesses is Talkwalker. This in depth tool analyses a number of social media factors, including: Brand listening and influencer monitoring, hashtag and campaign tracking, crisis management, competitor analysis and advanced metrics across social channels. The tool monitors the engagement, mentions, sentiment, and the likes, comments, retweets, shares – across all of your active social media platforms. It pretty much has everything you need to devise your social strategy in one place!
What tools do you use and have we missed any off the list? Let us know in the comments below. Also, if you’re interested in knowing how Ricemedia can improve your business’s SEO with these tools, then feel free to get in touch with us today.
