Search Engines have evolved and consistently changed their algorithms. So Search Engine Optimization (SEO) became the lifeblood for rank a website.
In addition to that, the rise of voice search and AI revolution making the game more challenging. To achieve better results in less time, you need to focus on some SEO tools.
There are hundreds of SEO tools available in the market and one can easily get confused. Most people prefer to use free SEO tools (due to lack of budget or any other reason) and some other people want to use paid SEO tools. As you know both have their advantages.
Best SEO Tools To Gain Higher Ranking In Google
There are various aspects of SEO. Some of them are Keyword Research, Technical SEO, SEO analysis, Backlink analysis, etc. To say frankly, there is no ultimate tool that can satisfy all these aspects.
We use the following tools in our day-to-day operations. That’s why we have made this list. This is not a list of all the SEO tools available in the market.
Here is a list of some of the best SEO tools that are helpful for various aspects. We mixed free and paid SEO tools.
Let’s dive into the list.
1. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is the most advanced SEO tool in the market. This tool can be used for various SEO tasks like keyword research, backlink analysis, SEO site audit, etc.
The power of this is its massive collection of data. Ahrefs works very similarly to Search Engines. It crawls the web 24/7 collecting and processing large amounts of data.
Ahrefs uses its metrics to calculate Domain rating (DR) and URL rating (UR). Ahrefs is known for these two metrics.
Domain Rating (DR) is a metric that shows the score of a domain name based on its backlink profile on a scale from 0 to 100. On this scale, the highest is the best.
URL rating (UR) is very similar to DR but it’s for every individual page. Unlike the DR, the URL rating uses both internal links as well as external backlinks to give a score. This is also a scale from 0 to 100. On this scale, the highest is the best.
This is also a great tool for keyword research. Their keyword difficulty score is considered one of the most accurate in the industry. You can also use the content gap feature to find profitable keyword opportunities that you are not focusing on.
Afrefs is also a market leader for having a massive collection of backlinks. You can put your competitor’s domain to analyze their backlinks. This will guide you to build backlinks for your site.
This is a paid tool and gives a 7-day free trial. The plans start from $99 per month. But you will get the value of money.
2. SEMrush
SEMrush is also a very popular tool for SEOs and site owners. Most people use this for various tasks like Keyword Research, Backlink analysis, etc. More or less it is very similar to Ahrefs.
After entering a keyword, it will show you long-tail keywords, keyword difficulty, average monthly search volume, a trend graph, CPC (average cost to advertise for the keyword), number of SERP Features, etc.
The domain overview tool is also a popular part of this tool. This helps you to analyze competitors’ traffic, backlinks, etc.
Like Ahrefs, SEMRush also has a keyword gap tool to find profitable keyword opportunities that you are not focusing on.
In addition to that, SEMRush also contains various other tools like site audit, rank tracking, etc.
This is also a paid tool and the pricing starts from $99 per month. With the free trial, you can consume limited features.
3. UberSuggest
Ubersuggest is an all-in-one SEO tool that contains a lot of features. This tool is a Freemium SEO tool and you can use it right away.
It is a part of the world-famous SEO blog, Neilpatel.com. As you know the tool is owned by Neil Patel.
Firstly, Ubersuggest is known as a keyword research tool. Now the tool has almost the same features as in paid tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz, etc.
The interface is spotless and contains a search bar. You need to put your keyword or URL(your or your competitor’s). Then select the country you want to get the data from and click on search.
On the next page, it will show many stats. It shows average search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, CPC, etc. Below that it will show you a graph indicating mobile and desktop searches.
Below that, it also shows you all the long-tail variations of the keyword. According to some research, the tool extracts keywords from Google search suggestions. Related keywords also contain the above stats like SEO difficulty and all.
Now they also started showing more keywords in categories like related, questions, propositions, comparison, etc.
This is also a great tool for competitor analysis and backlink analysis. Just put your competitor’s URL and it will show you some important stats.
It will show you all the keywords your competitor is ranking for. In addition to that, you can also check their backlinks. It also shows the top-ranking pages with the average monthly visit to that page.
Overall, we should not forget that the tool is free and has all the features it provides.
4. Answer The Public
We all use Google to find the answer to various questions. Millions of people search questions keywords in Google. So these are great search terms to target for.
Answer the Public collects this type of query from Google autocomplete. You need to enter a keyword and it will show you all the related questions.
Enter a keyword and it will show you all the keywords in different categories. If you have a Keyword Everywhere extension, then you can get the average search volume, CPC, etc associated with each keyword.
These questions can be included in your article in FAQ sections or you can mix it with your content to make it more interactive.
5. SimilarWeb
Similarweb is a very popular website and can be used as an SEO tool for your routine. Primarily, the tool shows the traffic to a website.
In addition, it also shows various metrics like traffic sources (e.g., direct, organic, etc.). It shows the ranking keywords with the percentage of traffic it is getting. You can check the competitor’s advertisement channels with competing keywords.
The referral traffic part of this tool shows you the sites where your competitor is getting visitors.
The cool feature of this website is it shows similar websites in the niche. This will give you an idea about who you are going to compete with.
The free version of this tool shows some limited data. You may use the paid version to get more stats.
6. GTmetrix
As you know, Google uses more than 200 factors to rank a page on its SERP. Page loading speed is considered one of the top-ranking factors.
If you are running a website and you are not taking care of the performance and loading time, then you are avoiding one of the topmost ranking factors.
FTMetrix is a popular tool to measure the loading speed of a website. It uses its algorithms to measure the various aspects of a website and shows the page loading speed in seconds.
Just put your website URL and it will show you the page loading time with some gradation. It loads the website in real time on their server and shows stats.
GTMetrix also shows you some recommendations which you can use to improve the page loading speed.
7. Mobile-Friendly Test
The use of mobile devices has been skyrocketing and consistently increasing. Similarly, the number of searches performed through mobile devices also evolved a lot.
More than 50% of all searches are being performed through mobile devices. This is why Google released its mobile-first indexing.
Google also added mobile-friendliness to its ranking factor. After that, the sites that are not mobile-friendly face a dramatic drop in ranking.
This is why a responsive and mobile-friendly site is more important than ever. But how do you know whether your site is mobile-friendly or not?
Well, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check this. Just put your URL on it and it will take time to analyze your page. After that, you will get, the confirmation message.
If your page is mobile-friendly, then it will show you “Page is mobile-friendly”. If not, then it will show “Page is not mobile-friendly”.
On the other hand, if you have not published your site and used custom code to design, then you can paste the codes here as well.
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool is free to use and you should check this out once.
8. Keywords Everywhere
Keyword research is a vital part of SEO. There are many keyword research tools available. But Keywords Everywhere is a popular browser extension for this.
This is available for both Chrome and Firefox. It pulls data from 16 different websites. It displays the average monthly search volume, CPC, and competition level for keywords.
No need to visit the tool. It shows all the metrics directly in the search results. Once you search a keyword in the Google search, it will show you the stats below the search bar. On the right side, you will get more related keywords with the same stats.
Google autocomplete dropdown also shows the stats. You can export the result to CSV. There is also an option to bookmark a keyword.
Recently, Keyword Everywhere became a paid extension. If you have been using this tool, you have noticed that it is no more working. You can purchase their plan to continue their services.
You can use Keyword Surfer as a Keyword Everywhere alternative. It is a free Chrome extension. It shows estimated global monthly search volumes of any query searched on Google. This extension also shows the estimated monthly search volume for 19 countries.
Beyond this, the extension also shows monthly search volume in the autocomplete results. In addition, it also shows 10 similar keywords on the right side of the search result.
9. Portents SERP Preview Tools
Have you ever wanted to know, how your page or post will look in the Google SERP? If your answer is yes, then this Portents SERP Preview Tool is for you.
SEO plugins like Yoast show this in the snippet preview section. But this tool can show you the SERP preview in various screen sizes.
Enter your title, URL, meta description, etc in the box and it will show you the snippet. As soon as you start writing, this will show the snippet accordingly.
Sometimes we write lengthy meta descriptions that can’t be displayed in the SERP preview. Although there is no fixed limit for the meta description, it is recommended to write it under 160 characters.
A simple search on Google shows the variation in length. So for the best results, we should conclude it within that limit.
Although the SERP results may vary over time, you will get an overall idea about it.
10. Google Trends
Google trend is a great tool to measure the popularity of a keyword or topic. It is a great tool to visualize the search popularity of a keyword over time.
For example, if we check the term “Thanksgiving gifts” for the past five years, then we see that popularity spikes every November.
Why?
This is because of the Thanksgiving holiday. In the US, as you know Thanksgiving Day is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday of November.
Let’s check another example of this type. If you check the term “Christmas tree” for the past five years. You will find that the popularity spikes every December because of Christmas.
So if you are going to target a niche or keyword, then don’t forget to check the popularity over time. If the popularity goes down, you should not focus on that. On the flip side, if the popularity goes up then you may focus on it.
As you know all the historical search data is coming from Google itself. So it’s like the goldmine of data and you should take advantage of it.
You can check interest over time graphs in various countries. Choose a greater time duration for better understanding.
This is a free tool and you should use this for keyword and topic research.
11. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is also a very helpful tool for various SEO aspects. You need to add one line of code to your website it will start tracking.
You can track the number of visitors, number of sessions, page views, bounce rate, average time spent on a page, etc.
In addition, you can track where your visitors are coming from and which page ranks well in search results.
Simply, it provides an ocean of data you can analyze. The more you explore the better you understand.
12. Woorank
WooRank is also the best tool that is helpful for SEO analysis. This is a free tool and shows a lot of stats.
Once you enter a URL on their website, it starts analyzing the whole website and its SEO strength. After the process completes, you will get a full report distinguished in various sections.
You will get the right navigation menu where you will find many options to choose from. They also have a keyword tool and site crawl for respective uses.
They have also a Chrome extension that shows various stats directly in the search result. It analyses each search result and shows stats accordingly.
13. Google Page Insight
There is no second opinion that page speed is one of the vital aspects of SEO. Among the on-page SEO factors, this is one of the first things you need to focus on now.
Like GTmatrix, this is also a speed-measuring tool but acts differently. It analyses your site through hundreds of technical factors.
After analyzing the site, you will get an in-depth report with a recommendation to improve it.
According to some studies, if your page loads in more than 3 seconds then you lose 30% of traffic. This shows how important the page loading speed is.
The report is quite technical but very helpful for improving the performance of your site. If you are unable to understand and fix the issue, then you can show it to the developers and they can fix it.
14. Check My Links
No need to explain that, backlinks are the most important ranking factor of Google. We have seen many algorithms change over time. But backlinks remain the same as it was.
I have written a compressive beginner guide for link building. So you should check that one to get some untapped ways to build some quality backlinks.
Broken link building is one of the most trusted and recommended ways to build quality backlinks (I have also covered this method in that article too).
Now you might be wondering what is broken link building.
Broken link building is a technique where you find a broken or dead link and recreate the same content as on the referred page. Then tell the site owner that link to the dead page and tell them to link your recreated content instead.
Check My Links Chrome extensions can speed up the process. This extension shows working links in green color and dead or broken links in red color.
First, find a page having many outbound links. One of the best places to get that type of link is Wikipedia pages. Wikipedia is an ocean of pages. Every page contains a lot of internal as well as outbound links. You can try with the resource page which is made for outbound links only.
After landing this type of page, run the extension. It will analyze all the links and shows either green or red color.
Check My Links is a free extension and a great way to get broken links on the go.
15. Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is also a very helpful tool to keep track of site ranking. Rather than just adding a new site and submitting a sitemap, you can much more information from this.
GSC shows the number of clicks from the search result, search impression, and average position. They have added a lot of new features to the platform.
Now you can get backlink reports, speed, valid pages, etc on the new Google Search Console.
You can also get the report on which pages of your website are ranking and which keywords rank in which keywords. You will get the stats that can be analyzed to measure the SEO efforts.
16. KWFinder
KWFinder is a part of Mangools and also a popular tool for the research of keywords. If you are searching for a keyword research tool to get started for the first time, then you can go with this tool.
KWFinder is known for its user-friendly interface. It is designed to help beginner bloggers and beginner SEOs. This doesn’t mean it is basic.
Enter a keyword and it shows you the monthly search volume, keyword trend, CPC, PPC, and keyword difficulty. In addition to this, it shows a lot of other helpful stats.
One of the first things people like to see in a keyword research tool is the ability to calculate the keyword difficulty score of a keyword. Perhaps most people use paid tools for this purpose only.
Mangools (where you will get KWFinder with some other SEO tools) cost $49 per month. If you billed annually it would cost $29.90 per month. This is the half price of Ahrefs and SEMrush. So if you are looking for a cheap keyword research tool then this is for you.
17. Soovle
Soovle is a unique tool that extracts keywords from various sources like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, YouTube, Answer.com, and Amazon.
No need to go to different places for getting keyword suggestions. All the keywords would be visible as soon as you start typing.
I like the “drag & drop” saved suggestions feature. Using this helpful feature, you can drag & drop a keyword to the saved list. Then the list can be exported.
18. Hunter.io
Sometimes you may require the email ID of a blog or a particular person (of a blog). This is very helpful when you are in search of guest posting opportunities.
Huter.io makes the process easier and helps you to find an email address. I have used this tool many times and works well for me.
Put the domain name on the site and it will show you all the email addresses associated with a blog. Pick the right one who is closely associated with content editing and publishing. These are the peoples who can give a link to your blog. Depending on your requirements, you can choose the person.
A Chrome extension of Hunter.io allows you to get an email address after clicking on the Hunter icon.
The free version, allows you to process 50 requests. Each email address it finds has a confidence score. Some emails contain a “verified” icon. This means you can use the email address straight away with total confidence.
19. Headline Analyzer
Headline plays an important role in SEO’s point of view as well as users’. This is the first thing users will see on the search result and decide whether to click or not.
According to some SEO experiments, researchers found that 8 out of 10 people love to read headlines whereas the remaining 2 people read the whole content.
This shows that headlines play a vital role to grab readers to the content.
For this purpose, the Headline analyzer tool can come in handy. Once you enter a headline into it, the site analysis and gives a score.
This tool also shows you various recommendations to improve your headline and make it more engaging.
The more appealing your headline is the more chances of getting traffic.
Conclusion
So these are some of the best SEO Tools you can use to improve your traffic. In this list, we have added both free and paid tools. So according to your requirement, you can choose any of them.
Do you know any other tool that is vital for SEO? Then feel free to share and let others know.