10 Essential SEO Tools Every Marketer Should Use
In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, staying ahead of the competition requires leveraging the right tools. When it comes to SEO, having access to the right set of tools can make a significant difference in your efforts. In this article, we’ll explore 10 SEO tools that every marketer should consider adding to their toolbox. These tools can help streamline your SEO workflow, improve website performance, and boost your overall search visibility. Let’s get started.
No SEO toolkit is complete with Google Analytics. This powerful free tool offered by Google provides comprehensive insights into your websites performance, including traffic sources, user behavior, and conversion rates. It allows you to track the success of your SEO campaigns, identify top-performing pages, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your website.
Google Analytics does take some time to learn, but after a few hours or less or learning, you should be good to go with connecting your site to start gathering critical data that can help keep you informed. Just be sure to connect your site to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which is Google’s next-generation measurement tool that will be replacing Universal Analytics on July 1st, 2023.
Another must-have free tool from is Google Search Console. Search Console offers you valuable information about your site appears within the search results, and has the capability to monitor your site’s indexing status and highlight any issues that may affect your site’s visibility. It also offers performance reports, keyword analysis, and is where you submit your sitemap to Google for more efficient indexing of your content.
SEMRush is a semi-advanced all-in-one SEO platform that offers a wide range of powerful features. From competitor analysis and keyword research to backlink audits and site auditing, SEMRush allows you to track keyword rankings, conduct site audits, and monitor your social performance. SEMRush does offer you to test some of their products for a period of time, but then after that it’s a paid tool.
Screaming frog is another industry standard website crawler and powerful SEO tool that provides an in-depth analysis of your site’s structure and identifies technical SEO issues. It helps you uncover broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, and other crawl-related issues. The tool also generates XML sitemaps and integrates them with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. I personally like Screaming Frog for it’s robust set of features all packed in an app that can be downloaded onto your computer. Read more about it later here.
Moz is a trusted name is the SEO industry, and it’s suite of tools is highly regarded. The Moz Pro toolset (paid version) offers features such as keyword research, backlink analysis, site auditing, and rank tracking. Additionally, Moz’s Link Explorer tool provides valuable insights into backlink profiles, helping you identify and acquire high-quality backlinks. Marketers often bicker back and forth about whether Moz or SEMRush is better. The truth is that both offer a comprehensive set of SEO tools that’re comparable in performance, and which one you choose will likely come to preference, need, or budget. Discover all of Moz’s free tools here later on.
Don’t let the odd name fool you (as if Screaming Frog isn’t silly enough) Ahrefs is another great SEO tool that is heavily known for it’s robust backlink analysis, competitive research, and keyword tracking. With Ahrefs, you can explore your competitors’ backlink profiles, identify link-building opportunities, and track your keyword rankings. The tool is worth looking into, especially for its backlink checker tool, which is primarily what I’ve used it before in the past. They also have a keyword explorer tool
7. Google Keyword Planner
I know, Another Google tool. But what can we say? When it comes to keyword research, Google keyword planner is a go-to tool. It provides valuable insights into search volume, competition, and keyword ideas. With this tool, you can discover relevant keywords for your SEO campaigns, identify long-tail keyword opportunities, and refine your content strategy. The tool is found within your Google Ads account. Simply go to Settings & Tools> Planning > Keyword Planner and plan away. For Google Search Ads, this is also where you easily create different ad groups based on selected keywords during your research.
Speaking of keyword ideas, Keywords Everywhere is a browser extension that allows you to perform instant keyword analysis directly within the search engine. Simply activate the tool, and then search your keyword or phrase on Google or YouTube, and search volume data along with each keyword’s average cost-per-click will instantly appear in the search bar. It’s a super handy tool, and honestly one of my favorites for performing on-the-fly keyword research.
Once on the results page, Keywords Everywhere will display historical keyword data as well as related keyword ideas on the right side of your screen. So what do Keywords everywhere cost? Well, yes – it is a paid tool. But it’s extremely affordable in comparison to other tools and works on a credit system. It’s like $10 for 10,000 credits, and each result displayed during your research takes 1 credit. $10 can go a long way with this tool, and it’s completely legit.
For websites built on WordPress (75% of the internet…) Yoast SEO is an invaluable plugin that can help you optimize your WordPress content for SEO, providing real-time analysis of your page’s readability and keyword usage. Yoast SEO also generates XML sitemaps, handles meta tags, and offers features like schema markup and social media integration.
Yoast does have a free version that works very well, and also a paid version which is what is linked above just for your reference. I would advise the free version if you’re just getting started.
Store SEO is a free Shopify app that allows you to streamline your e-commerce store’s optimization process greatly. It’s very similar to Yoast for WordPress. After having a Shopify store for over two years myself and performing manual optimization for each product individually, I was overjoyed to discover this tool and have been very pleased with how much faster I’m able to fix SEO issues for each of my products.
The app dashboard is very useful by allowing you to bulk edit your products and quickly fix related on-page SEO issues instead of manually going into each product page. Shopify store owners, definitely check this one out. It also provides real-time analysis of your page’s readability and keyword usage just like Yoast does for WordPress.
Thanks for reading! We’re confident that with the help of some of the tools mentioned above, you’ll be well on your way to performing targeted keyword analysis that can help you increase your rankings in a variety of different ways. Whether it’s implementing better keywords into your content, or taking a sneak peek at your competitor’s backlinks, there are as many ways to optimize your site and the content within as there are flavors of ice cream. Now let’s get tasting!
