No website can fulfill its purpose without traffic. The whole point of setting one up is to attract people to come and see what you have to say/offer. Therefore, if there’s no traffic, there’s no way that your business can perform well.
In order to attract traffic, however, you need search engines to rank your website highly, and this is achieved by adhering to SEO guidelines and principles.
The higher you rank, the more traffic you get. But making sure that everything you put on your website is SEO-friendly can be a tedious task, especially if you’re publishing new content often. Because of that, you’d do well to use some of the tools out there that were designed to help you with this issue. And which tools would that be? Here’s a list of the best ones!
1. Ahrefs
When it comes to SEO improvements, very few tools can match what Ahrefs can do for your site. This is because they have the largest index of backlinks out there, with literally trillions of entries. As you may already know, backlinks are extremely important if you want to boost your site’s ranking, which is why Ahrefs is so popular.
You can see what other websites from your branch are linking to, who is linking to them, and easily create an efficient strategy with the data you get from this. Ahrefs also offers a Site Audit, a process that will thoroughly analyze your website and suggest SEO improvements. And while access to all the features this tool has to offer requires payment, you can check out the basics for free and get a great feel of why this tool is so highly regarded.
2. Google Search Console AKA Webmasters Tools
If you’re looking for something free and efficient, there’s hardly a better candidate than the almighty Google. Their Search Console will tell you how your site ranks in Google’s eyes (obviously) and give you loads of tips on how this can be improved. It can even show you what the search engine has considered a reason to deduct points from your rank, a decision you can appeal if you think it’s not correct. As you’d expect from a company like this, new features are constantly being added, so you will get a very useful set of tools here.
That being said, it doesn’t provide you with ALL the data. For example, the data you get is only limited to the period of 90 days, which may or may not be enough for you. Also, there will be some things you will have to guess, i.e., you’ll have to fill in the blanks, but there’s a huge community out there that has been doing that for some time now already, so finding answers shouldn’t be a problem.
3. SEOQuake
This is another good free SEO tool. Actually, it’s more like a set of tools. SEOQuake is an extension that can be easily installed to your browser and then used to examine every single page and suggest changes. You can also see how you stack up against your competition and check keyword density on any given page, but all of this is still just the tip of the iceberg of the data this tool provides.
You can also see how you’re doing on social media, where your visitors are from, and get a whole bunch of other useful numbers. True, if you’re a beginner, this can be a tad overwhelming, but if you have any SEO experience, you will absolutely love what SEOQuake brings to the table. Besides, everything is well designed here, which will certainly help with you finding your way around these numbers. Great product, and you’d do well to give it a try.
4. KWFinder
Need inspiration when it comes to choosing the right keyword? Don’t sweat it, KWFinder’s got your back! It will find the best long-tail keywords for your website and help you with absolutely anything keyword-related. You can check out which keywords your competition is focusing on, you can import keywords in bulk, you can filter out the keywords that don’t yield profit, you can get exceptionally accurate keyword difficulty readings… and the list just goes on and on. Whatever you can think of that involves keywords, you will find it here.
What can be considered a flaw is that there is little you can find here outside of the keyword realm, but then again, that was not what the people behind this tool were going for. Keywords are the name of the game! You can get a free trial which will last you ten days, and the plans you can choose after that if you decide to make a purchase are generally considered to be great deals. They include three tiers that can be bought on an annual or monthly basis, so you can tailor everything to your needs.
5. Moz Pro
Another big name in the world of SEO is undoubtedly Moz. As a matter of fact, they are so big many consider them to be industry leaders – not a big surprise there since the company has been around for more than a decade and a half. Moz Pro will cover absolutely everything you need to get a complete picture of your website’s SEO status: it can track your performance based on keywords, generate new keywords for you, analyze backlinks and even go through your whole website in order to detect potential problems.
In addition, Moz will provide you with extremely precise numbers and plenty of data for each query, plus you can download their MozBar extension for free. The prices start from 79$ per month if you pay annually, which may seem slightly high at first, but any SEO pro will tell you that this will be money well spent. If you are looking for a high-quality tool to give you extremely precise results, Moz Pro is just about the best solution you can find.
Summing it up
There you have them, the five tools most SEO experts rely on daily to get the job done, and will help you master the SEO game as well. Do you have any other tools you would recommend? Let us know in the comments below!