Best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools

Search engine optimization(SEO) is an integral part of your online marketing strategy. After all, it helps you reach your audience organically and ensure sustainable growth over a long time.

One of the best ways to stay at the top of your SEO efforts is to use the best search engine optimization tools.

In this article, we will explore some of the best SEO tools out there. It doesn’t matter if you are an individual looking to rank your new blog or an enterprise business trying to get your keywords ranked, you will find all the tools beneficial towards reaching your audience.

If you are in a hurry, then you can check out the table for best search engine optimization(SEO) tools.

Table 1: Best Search Engine Optimization(SEO) Tools

But, before we get started, let’s learn about search engine optimization first.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization refers to bringing traffic to your site by optimizing the traffic quality and quantity through organic search results.

A good SEO optimized site will get targeted traffic and grow your business. Almost every one business relies heavily on proper SEO to grow their business and reach new audiences. The idea is to get quality traffic in huge quantities organically from search engines.

SEO tools help you in the process of strategically improving your search engine traffic. We need these tools because we are not sure what happens under the hood of popular search engines. For example, Google releases new updates for its search engine frequently, which changes the behavior of the searches.

You can think of search engines as a black box with some hints on what’s going on inside. The rest you need to explore and experiment with. That’s why you will find SEO experts working day and night to learn about search engine behavior and sharing their insight into the whole world. Neil Patel is a profound SEO expert that shares his insight through his own site. Even these experts use the tools to make a better sense of what the search engines have to offer when it comes to SEO.

If you are interested in learning more about SEO, then you should check out the Moz SEO Guide.

Search Engine Optimization Tools Categorised 

SEO tools can be varied in their functionality. That’s why we will categorize the SEO tools into the following categories.

• Keyword research tools: The keyword research tools help you discover the keywords for the niche you are targeting. This way, you can also discover the topics that your readers are looking for.
• Link building tools: These tools help you get more backlinks to your site, improving your online presence, and making yourself more valuable to the search engine.
• On-page SEO tools: On-page SEO tools deal with on-page SEO optimization. On-page SEO optimized pages and posts are more likely to rank compared to a non-optimized page or pos.
• Technical SEO tools: Technical SEO aims to provide technical assistance for sites and help them find out if any issues are affecting the site SEO performance.
• Analytics tools: Analytical tools are used to capture and analyze website traffic data.
• Rank tracking tools: The rank tracking tools let you check rankings for the target location.
• Local SEO tools: Local SEO tools help you to explore local markets.

The SEO tools categorization will also help you find the right tool for your needs! We have listed the category in the table at the top of the site.

Best Search Engine Optimization(SEO) Tools

1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs SEO tool is one of the best SEO solutions that you can get on the market. It is an all-in-one SEO toolset that provides you almost every tool that you will need to make your SEO campaign shine.

The five key tools that are part of the Ahrefs offers includes:

• Site Audit: The site audit tool lets you understand your website’s on-page SEO performance. By using the tool, you are bound to learn about your site’s internal issues and resolve them to improve SEO performance.
• Site Explorer: The site explorer lets you explore your competitors by understanding their backlink profile and organic search traffic. All you need to do is put the URL of the site, and it will display a detailed report about it.
• Keywords Explorer: The keyword explorer lets you explore keyword ideas. Here, you can also analyze keywords and understand their traffic potential and difficulty.
• Content Explorer: Content explorer lets you understand your content in your nice by analyzing your top-performing content.
• Rank Tracker: The rank tracker is to monitor your main keywords and see how they are performing against the competitors.

Ahrefs have everything that you need to run your SEO campaign. It is an ideal SEO tool for businesses that simply want the best.

Pros

• Offers a complete SEO
• Provides comprehensive access to tons of data
• Comprehensive domain comparison and monitoring

Cons

• Limited SEO reporting
• UX can be better
• No keyword management and organization

Pricing

Ahrefs offers a seven day trial for its monthly plans. Currently, they are offering three plans.

• Lite: $99 per month, 1 user, $30 for additional user, 5 projects, $10 for additional project
• Standard: $179 per month, 1 user, $30 for additional user, 10 projects, $10 for additional project
• Advanced: $399 per month, 3 users, $30 for additional user, 25 projects, $10 for additional project

If you opt for an annual plan, then you get two months free. Also, each plan has limitations when it comes to different tools available within the Ahrefs toolset. To know more, we recommend checking out their pricing page.

2. Google Search Console

Google has provided its own tool for business owners to learn about their site’s performance.

With Google Search Console, you get access to tons of features for optimizing your site. For example, you can use the Search Console reports to improve your site’s performance and traffic. You can also use the available data to fix issues that prevent you from ranking on Google search results.

It also offers search analytics where you learn about your site’s performance on Google, including clicks, impressions, and positions. To further optimize your site, you can submit a sitemap to let Google crawl your site in the best possible way.

To get started, you need to verify the ownership of your domain. Once done, it takes some time to populate important metrics.

Pros

• Understand what Google thinks about your site
• Free to use
• Great UI and dashboard

Cons

• None

Price

The Google Search Console is free to use.

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is at the core of understanding your traffic and taking actions based on it. It provides you high-quality data on your site’s performance. If you are serious about your site’s SEO, you cannot ignore it. With it, you can customize your dashboard, reports, and alerts.

The reports generated by Google Analytics are based on real data. They cover a wide range of metrics, including the audience, acquisition, behavior, and so on!

Pros

• Free to use
• Get valuable data directly from Google

Cons

• It has a steep learning curve for beginners

Price

The Google Analytics tool is free to use.

4. SEMRush

SEMRush is an online marketing toolkit that offers excellent SEO features. By using SEMRush, you will have control over your SEO workflow. You can do technical SEO audit, track daily rankings, analyze backlinks, research keywords, understand competitor’s SEO strategy, and much more!

The domain to domain analysis gives you insight into how your site compares to other competitor sites. By learning the difference, you can make changes in your SEO strategy. It also comes with an On-Page SEO checker tool that lets you monitor your website’s performance and understand your competitors.

The organic traffic insights are one of the best as it gives you ideas on what topics to cover next. Apart from the SEO benefits, you also get access to social media, PPC, Market research, and content marketing tools.

Pros

• All-in-one SEO tool and more!
• Ideal for eCommerce, enterprise, and agencies
• Great database

Cons

• Costly

Pricing

SEMrush offers a 7-day free trial. The paid plans consist of:

• Pro: $99.95 per month, ideal for freelancers, marketers, and startups
• Guru: $199.95 per month, ideal for growing marketing agencies and SMB
• Business: $399.95 per month, ideal for e-commerce projects and agencies.

5. Moz Pro

Moz is another popular SEO player in the market. They provide an excellent SEO toolset for businesses that let them stay at the top of their SEO game. Their Moz Pro solution lets you do proper site audits to uncover issues with your site and recommendations and fixes.

Just like other complete SEO solutions, Moz also offers rank tracking from 170+ search engines. It also lets you do proper back link analysis to improve your site’s domain authority.

Lastly, Moz Pro enables you to do proper keyword research with key metrics such as keyword difficulty, SERP analysis, and competitor research.

Moz also offers access to amazing free tools such as Keyword Explorer, Link explorer, MozBar, Free Domain Analysis, and so on.

Pros

• Offers a good collection of SEO tools
• Massive data at disposal
• Great community

Cons

• None

Pricing

Moz Pro provides four plans for their users.

• Standard: $99 per month
• Medium: $149 per month
• Large: $249 per month
• Premium: $599 per month

If you buy their yearly program, then you get 20% off their monthly pricing.

All of their plans offer a 1-to-1 onboarding process. You also get 24-hour online support.

6. Serpstat

Serpstat is yet another popular SEO platform for professionals. It offers a comprehensive SEO toolset. Apart from SEO, you can also do content marketing and PPC.

Just like other all-in-one SEO tools, Serpstat lets you collect, analyze, and validate your keywords. You also get access to advanced analytics, which help you learn more about your business. They have an excellent poll of data, which enables you to do historical analysis as well. Apart from that, you can also do proper keyword research, site audit and competitor research.

It also comes with a unique feature, Missing Keywords. The feature lists all the keywords that you are not ranking in top-10 search, but your competitors are.

Pros

• Great support
• Excellent SEO-Audit tool
• Provides daily rank tracking
• Solid PPC analysis
• Affordable

Cons

• The user experience can be improved
• SEO research can be improved

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, Serpstat offers affordable plans.

• Lite: $50 per month, best for freelancers, SEO-individuals
• Standard: $108 per month, best for marketing agencies and established in-house teams
• Advanced: $217 per month, best for large-in house team and big marketing agencies
• Enterprise: $262 per month, best for industry leaders

7. KWFinder

KWFinder is an SEO keyword tool that lets you find long-term keywords that are easier to rank. They have a huge database consisting of 2.5 billion related keywords, 100M competitor keywords, and 52K supported locations. Each of these metrics is updated monthly.

KWFinder also lets you run backlinks analysis reports. Moreover, you can track certain keywords and see how they are performing over time. You can also use it to find new keyword ideas to bring your site to the top of the rankings.

The SEO tool excels at guiding you to find and explore keywords through proper suggestions and compare keywords based on CPC, difficulty and volume.

Pros

• Excellent for keyword research
• Offers good metrics to compare keywords
• Offers advanced keyword research features

Cons

• Not perfect for everyone out there.

Pricing

They offer three plans.

• Mangools Basic – $29 per month
• Mangools Premium – $39 per month
• Mangools Agency – $79 per month

They also offer a 48-hours money-back guarantee and 10-day free trial.

8. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a new, all-in-one SEO tool. Initially, it offered limited features for free. But, it soon grew to become an all-in-one SEO tool with paid options. It is developed by Neil Patel, an SEO, and marketing guru is known for his insights in the field.

The Ubersuggest tool can be used to do basic and advanced keyword research. You can also learn about your competitor by doing a complete website analysis on them.

Moreover, you can also do a complete site audit where you can find issues about your site, and also get recommendations on how to fix them.

Another unique feature that it has to offer is the Top SEO Pages, where it will show the popular organic keywords for which your competitors are ranking. Other key features that Ubersuggest has to offer include keyword suggestions, content ideas, and backlink data.

The dashboard is also user-friendly with good accessibility across the different features.

Pros

• Excellent user experience
• Offers complete site audit

Cons

• It is not at par with the other popular all-in-one SEO tools

Pricing

Ubersuggest offers affordable plans compared to other all-in-one SEO tools. All the plans come with a seven days free trial.

• Individuals → $29 per month
• For companies and freelancers → $49 per month
• For enterprises and agencies → $99 per month

You can check out our comprehensive Ubersuggest Guide and how to use the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

9. AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePubic is a handy SEO tool that lets you learn more about your audience. Using it, you can get all the questions related to a keyword, topic, or product. To use it effectively, you need to enter one or two words. Once done, it will return a result of all the related keywords and questions for the input.

The insight can help you determine which topics to cover or which questions to answer in your content. The tool is mainly useful if you are trying to get content ideas for your blog. This removes the guesswork and lets you work on things that your audience truly wants to read.

Pros

• Streamline content production
• Offers insight into customer minds
• Get hidden info for traffic boost

Cons

• None

Pricing

AnswerThePublic offers both free and paid options. The free option lets you run some queries on their site.

The paid plan gives you access to all of the site’s features. If you get the monthly plan, then it will cost you $99 per month, whereas the annual plan will cost you $79 per month.

10. SpyFu

SpyFu is an excellent SEO tool that lets you truly understand your competitors. With it, you can do a complete analysis of your competitors and learn about their keywords. This way, you can decide which keywords to target and grow with it.

They cover quite a big database as you get access to every keyword that is either ranked organically or bought on Adwords for the last 14 years. There, you can learn how many clicks your competitors are getting along with their paid Adwords.

Apart from that, you also get access to proper keyword research tools to learn about the effectiveness of a keyword and understand if it is valuable to pursue it.

Pros

• Affordable pricing
• Complete keyword research
• Good user experience
• Backlink tracking
• Unlimited search results

Cons

• Not user friendly

Pricing

They offer three plans for their users.

• Basic: $39 per month
• Professional: $78 per month
• Team: $2299 per month

12. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is one of the leading website crawlers out there. It is available for all the major operating systems, including macOS, Windows, and Ubuntu. By using a screaming frog, you can extract information that is not visible from the outside. You can run the crawler to find issues on your site, auditing it and improving it in the long run.

The list of things that you can do with Screaming frog is as follows:

• Audit redirects
• Find broken links
• Discover duplicate content
• Analyze metadata and page titles
• Generate XML sitemaps

And much more!

The free plan lets you crawl 500 URLs. If you want to crawl more, then you need to buy their paid options.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Integrates with Google Search Console and Google Lighthouse
• Finds hidden information
• Helps in sitemap building

Cons

• Not a cloud solution
• Takes times to crawl big websites

Pricing

Screaming Frog offers both free and paid plans. The free plan lets you crawl 500 URLs with the free version. The paid version lets you crawl unlimited URLs and costs £149.00 per year.

13. Animalz Revive

To succeed in search engine optimization, you always need to provide the latest content to your audience. The article that is ranking now, might not rank in the future because it’s ranking can decay due to competition or updated content on the subject.

Animalz Revive, let’s you analyze your site and find decayed content. By doing this, you get the list of articles that needs to be updated.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Provide decent information for content updation process

Cons

• Takes 24-48 hours for report to be created

Pricing

Animalz Revive is a free-to-use SEO tool.

Conclusion

Finding the right search engine optimization tool is essential to figure out the right strategy. In this article, we went through 15 of the best SEO tools that you can use to improve your SEO strategy.

Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and Moz Pro are some of the best all-in-one SEO tools that you can use. We recommend Ahrefs for businesses that want the best deal. However, suppose it is out of your budget. In that case, you can check out Ubersuggest that offers affordable prices for its premium services.

Other utility SEO tools add value to your efforts. Animalz Revive, for example, can help you identify content that needs updates.

So, which tools are you going to use for your next big project? Comment below and let us know.