SEO Simplified: Your Guide to the Top 10 Essential SEO Tools
Improving your SEO and boosting your website ranking isn’t hard with some of the best SEO tools. Granted, improving your rankings intuitively is pretty hard. Even if you’re an SEO expert, doing so efficiently is tedious and jarring.
However, with the top SEO software on the market, it’s more than enjoyable. These tools will allow for better keyword optimization, competition monitoring, and improving your site health. In addition, they’ll provide new content ideas to keep the website fresh.
No doubt, SEO is the #1 factor in the whole ranking game. For this reason, the best SEO tools in 2024 are necessary. Today, we have plenty of ground to cover. Our team tested dozens of these tools and we’re ready to divulge our experience with them.
We’re feeling generous, so today’s list will consist of 10 tools. We’ll focus on the absolute best choices by discussing 10 premium options with all the latest and greatest features you can find. Let’s not deflate our excitement and move on to the subject right away!
Table of Contents
Our Top Picks
Best SEO Tools 2024
- Ahrefs: Best Overall
- KWFinder: Best value
- WooRank: Most user-friendly
- Semrush: Best for power users
- BrightLocal: Best for local SEO
- AnswerThePublic: Best affordable SEO tool
- Google Search Console: Best for debugging your site
- Screaming Frog: Best for finding on-site SEO issues
- Google Analytics: Best for free site analytics
- Moz Pro: Best Ahrefs alternative
Comparison Chart
Scroll left to see more
How Do We Test
Others We Liked
What To Consider
Most Frequently Asked Questions
What Is SEO Software?
Creating an SEO plan without the top SEO tools is a bit like trying to bake a loaf of bread without measuring spoons or an oven. Using SEO software can help you start an SEO plan, monitor your efforts and analyze the data, so you can then refine your plan for better results. Some SEO software is hyper-focused on a single feature, such as KW research, while others are suites of SEO features to help with on-site and local SEO.
How To Choose the Best SEO Tools
When deciding on which is the best SEO tool for you, you will want to consider a few factors. To start, consider your goals and how you plan to achieve them. For example, if you are looking to improve your ranking in search by tweaking site elements such as meta descriptions, copy and title tags, you will need to make sure that the SEO tool is compatible with your website’s content management system, such as WordPress or Wix.
Many of the best SEO software offer tools to help you improve your site in the long term with ongoing optimizations, site audits and reports. However, not all are created for this purpose. Some are geared toward helping you better select keywords and craft SEO-friendly content around said keywords.
Essential Features
Not every SEO tool is the same, so it’s difficult to say which are the essential features. You can’t easily compare KWFinder, a KW research tool, to Ahrefs, a platform full of SEO features. The essentials, whether you’re getting them as a suite or à la carte, are as follows:
- KW research: You have to know what users are searching for before you can create the content or ads needed for those queries. Most SEO programs let you search for KWs and phrases and should give you the search volume and estimated difficulty for ranking for those KWs.
- Site auditing: There are a few ways in which you can audit a website’s SEO. In many cases, this is meant to show you the health of a site and what needs to change to optimize it for search engines. Using site crawlers, some SEO software can help you quickly discover broken links, missing meta titles and descriptions, page load speed and analyze your site structure.
- Local SEO: Local SEO is vital for brick-and-mortar businesses that rely on high rankings in local search results. Some of the best SEO software and services make it easy to submit your name, address and phone number (NAP) to online directories.
- Analytics: To ensure you’re doing all you can to help your site rank high in search engines, you need reports to show you what’s working and what isn’t. You should be able to easily follow the data for information on how users interact with your landing pages, which page they exit from, whether they bounce, visitor origination, and who’s linking to which pages.
- Link analysis: Backlinks are important for your site’s domain authority (DA), so you must understand what people are linking to and whether they’re quality links. You should be able to analyze your links and your competitors.
- Content analysis: It’s important to perform content audits to ensure you don’t have duplicate content or that you aren’t using the same KW for multiple pieces of content. These practices can water down your SEO and prevent you from ranking high in the SERPs. Some tools can pinpoint areas on your site that could be problematic for your rankings.
All-in-One Platforms vs. Individual Tools
As mentioned above, not all SEO programs are meant to be comprehensive—some are niche tools with only one or two features. All-in-one platforms tend to cover everything from KW research and competitor analysis to site audits and backlink management. Examples of these workhorses include Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz Pro. They also tend to be more expensive than single-use tools.
Individual tools typically do one thing well and may include some bonus features, but you’re still likely to need more than just one tool. For example, Screaming Frog is great for on-site SEO auditing, but you can’t do keyword research. KWFinder is an excellent tool for KW research, but it’s lacking in advanced features, such as KW gap analysis and thorough site auditing. These tools are usually more affordable than all-in-one solutions.
Pricing and Fees
Pricing for the best SEO software varies greatly because the tools are usually so different. Comparing AnswerThePublic to Ahrefs isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison—you need to compare the varieties of apples, so to speak.
For example, Ahrefs starts at $83 per month (billed annually), while Semrush starts at $99.95 per month (billed annually). Individual tools such as Screaming Frog cost $259 per year, while AnswerThePublic starts at $9 per month or $99 for a lifetime plan.
Data Sources, Update Frequency and Integrity
It should come as no surprise that Google is the most often used search engine and where most data is sourced for these SEO apps. However, other data sources are important for a comprehensive SEO plan. The biggest players in the SEO industry have their crawlers to collect data on indexed sites and pages. Google is king, but YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, Pinterest, and other destination websites have valuable data as well.
Content is constantly changing online, so it’s important to have access to fresh data. The best SEO software refreshes data often. For example, Ahrefs updates its data every 15 minutes. In Semrush’s case, the keyword database gets an update every month.
While many SEO software companies prefer to use their crawlers to supply their databases, some choose to forge partnerships with powerhouses such as Google and Majestic. Data integrity is key to having a good SEO plan, therefore it’s important to choose the best SEO apps that are trusted in the industry so you can be sure the data you’re using is accurate and up to date.
Other Useful SEO Tools and Software
Even if you choose a powerful all-in-one SEO tool, you may find that you’re lacking a specific tool or service. In some cases, you may simply prefer a specific feature in one tool versus the one you’re currently using. For example, KW research on Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz Pro are likely to be slightly different from each other. And in some cases, you may simply prefer to take care of a single avenue of SEO work manually or with the help of an individual tool.
Keyword Research
Smaller businesses that may not need a full-fledged suite of SEO features may just want to run KW research on a single word or phrase to help guide their content plans. Consider these free and low-cost tools that focus on KW research:
- WordStream: This KW research tool lets you search for keywords for free. You’ll get back help data, including search volume, CPC ranges and a difficulty rating (low to high). It’s a free tool, but you need to register with the site.
- ChatGPT: Sign up for the free service to unlock an easy way to find KWs related to a word or phrase. You won’t be able to get search volume or difficulty, but it’s a good place to start.
- Google Keyword Planner: Google provides a free KW research tool meant for advertisers that can be useful to find related KW phrases for your content plan. It’s easy to use and it gives you the KW difficulty and volume range.
Crawlers and Scrapers
A web crawler, or spider, can help you see issues on your website and other on-site SEO problems. It can also aid you in data collection, such as keeping tabs on competitors, pricing on products, or online lead generation. Many of these scrapers are a bit limiting. They’re still going to be easier to use than doing the work manually.
Backlink Analysis and Link Management
If you’re using an all-in-one SEO platform, you likely have link management built in, such as with Ahrefs or Moz Pro. However, if you’re only using a KW research tool, you may want to consider adding a link management tool to help with backlink analysis. It’s important to be aware of how many other sites are linking to your pages and what the quality is of each link. All these links and referring domains contribute to your DA, for better or worse.
Tracking, Reporting and Analytics
Most SEO software comes with dashboards to help you visualize your data, from links and DA scores to KW rankings. Not every small business has the budget for comprehensive SEO software, though. So, if you’re using a few individual, piecemeal programs to help with your SEO plan, you should use Google Analytics, at the very least to keep track of your site data.
With good analytics, you can track key metrics including organic traffic, search engine visibility, rankings and even your competitors’ data.
Local SEO
Local SEO is vital for brick-and-mortar businesses that need an online presence that ties to their physical locations. It’s how consumers can find doctor’s offices, retailers, restaurants and other businesses in their region. To show up in those all-important local packs in search results, you need to make sure you fill out your NAP info in online directories.
Keep reviews in mind, too. The higher your rating and the more reviews you have, the higher you’ll rank in the local SERPs. You can monitor your reviews and respond to them manually, but this is time-consuming for any business. Some apps can help you quickly submit your citations to a variety of directories and monitor your reviews. You may also want to consider services that do this for you.
Page Speed
How quickly your pages load on desktop and mobile devices is directly related to your ranking in search engines. Essentially, search engines want to provide the best experience for their users, and page speed is a big part of that. You can use free services, such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights to see how long each of your pages takes to load. Alternatively, you can test your website’s performance with speed checkers such as GTmetrix or Dareboost, which can also provide site speed comparisons and tips for optimization.
Is SEO better than Google Ads?
SEO is better for achieving greater visibility on Google in the long run without paying Google Ads’ high advertising fees. Google Ads allows you to increase visibility for your website content immediately, though you’ll pay for that visibility through advertising fees.
Are SEO tools worth it?
Absolutely. If your business success depends heavily on how much high-quality traffic you drive to your website, you need to master SEO. It’s virtually impossible to improve your Google rankings without using SEO tools for keyword research, backlink monitoring, competitive analysis and website optimization audits.
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