20 SEO Tools To Optimize Your Website For Search Engines

By Michael Baker , Jan 19 2021
Optimize Your Website

Featured Image: iStock/roshi11

What is it about a website that makes search engines fall in love with it? Is it design, marketing, content? It’s actually just one thing: some dashing, slick, and caring search engine optimization(SEO). The more a website responds to a search engine’s attempts to make the Internet more exciting, open, and secure, the more a search engine ranks that site higher.

It’s that simple.

And that complicated.

It’s simple because you only have to focus on one thing: keeping your SEO on top of its game. But it’s complicated because SEO is ever-evolving. What works today may or may not work tomorrow. Current best practices may become obsolete in light of emerging technology, and algorithms change every day.

To make sense of such an overwhelming environment, we have created this list of 20 SEO tools that will help keep your website in top shape.

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics

It is the most potent tool in a marketer’s arsenal. It optimizes your website from the ground up. It takes care of all performance metrics – user experience, site content, and in-depth reporting, etc. – that are crucial to your site’s functionality. It tells you which pages of your site are working the best, which links are the strongest, which keywords are converting the traffic, and give you custom data.

If you are looking for a good foundation on which to base your SEO strategy, Analytics fits the bill.

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console

The new few more entries are going to be about Google tools because it is the most important and most popular search engine. The Google Search Console tool was known as the Google Webmaster Tools previously.

It helps you figure out what’s going on with your website in terms of its search rankings. It helps you understand how the Google search engine views your website. This unique perspective is intended to inform your SEO strategy.

Using the Search Console, you can spot weak areas of your website, it also suggests web fixes, recommends improvements, and helps optimize your site functionality to its fullest.

3. Google Ads

Google Ads

Want your business to be found on the top when locals do a Google search for what you are selling? Consider investing in Google Ads. This tool allows you to target specific keywords that help improve your local SERP rankings on Google. Since this tool only improves performance on Google, do invest in other SEO strategies to rank better in other search engines as well.

4. Google Trends

Google Trends

Content is one of the strongest features of any website. While the good design may bring visitors to the website, it’s the content that’ll keep them there for longer. Google Trends helps you zoom in on topics and ideas that are trending. It analyzes the popularity of various keywords and topics for various regions and helps you come up with content ideas that’ll establish your authority online.

The more authoritative your content, the more valuable backlinks you’ll gather and the higher search engines will rank you.

5. Google Incognito

Google Incognito

When you conduct a Google search in Incognito mode, you aren’t giving the search engine much data. It isn’t storing any cookies, caches, or history. So it shows you the results that are ‘cleaner’, more unbiased, and closer to what a genuine customer may view when they look at your website.

This unbiased view can help you optimize your website without a lot of distractions. You can really know which keywords are getting you traffic, which web pages are converting/or not, and proceed accordingly. If it’s impartial data you are after, conduct your SEO research in Incognito mode.

6. SEMRush

SEMRush

Competitor analysis is important when you want to design a website that converts more consumers. What do you have that your rivals don’t? To answer that question, you need to look at what they are doing (or not doing) and fill in the gaps.

A comprehensive SEO and marketing tool like SEMRush allows you to have that insight. You can compare keywords, free domain names, website search traffic, search data, and so much more. According to UppercutSEO, a leading SEO Services Agency, this tool audits your website’s on-page SEO and recommends improvements that can influence your website performance for visitors and search engines, both.

7. Ahrefs Backlink Checker

Ahrefs Backlink Checker

Ahrefs prides itself on its optimization capabilities that improve a website’s on-page SEO.

You can set it to custom-crawl your website. Either run the whole website’s exhaustive audit or target a select few pages. The latter is only recommended for heavy websites or the fairly well-maintained ones. The tool can help you check your site’s content quality, link performances, HTML tags, social tags, and more.

Once you figure out what’s going wrong with your website, you can set up corrective measures accordingly with this data-based SEO tool.

8. KWFinder

KWFinder

You need to focus on long-tail keywords if you are serious about your content-related SEO.

A long-tail keyword is more specific, longer, and local. It isn’t ‘best coffee in the world’; it’s ‘best coffee near XYZ neighborhood’. When people conduct such a search – either text or voice – they’re very close to making a purchase. KWFinder helps you find these long keywords that are relevant to your industry.

Focusing on these long strings of words, aka long-tail keywords, can help you rank better in local listings, make your content appear frequently during searches, and thus, establish you as an authority on the subject.

9. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest

You need to separate the strong from the weak – in keywords universe, too. That’s the only way to keep the website alive and thriving. Ubersuggest not only helps you work on stronger keywords but is great in keeping track of your keywords, too. It also gives you competitor analysis. Type in your competitors’ domain name and it’ll tell you which keywords they are targeting.

You can then focus on those keywords in your SEO and content strategy to gain a fighting chance in the battle.

10. Moz Pro

Moz Pro

A major reason why SEO is such a mystery for most marketers is that Google keeps changing its search algorithm faster than you can say optimization.

Moz Pro helps your optimization efforts keep on pace with Google’s regular changes. It not only tells you which keywords are worthy of your focus but also tells you the difficulty score for each keyword. This score gives you an idea of how much effort it can take to rank better for that keyword. You can then decide if it’s worth it. In that sense, with Moz Pro, your efforts are more concentrated and data-driven.

11. ClickFlow

ClickFlow

While you do need to pay attention to creating fresh content for your website on the regular, optimization requires a more in-depth approach. You need to ensure that everything – old and new – on your website is up to the mark. ClickFlow is a genius tool for that because it alerts you to web pages that are old and are not performing well.

It suggests content, keywords, and other improvements that you can make to ensure your website isn’t carrying dead weight.

12. Website Grader by HubSpot

Website Grader by HubSpot

It does what it sounds like it does. It is a simple and intuitive tool that grades your website when compared with others. Face some hard facts and look at all of the things that are wrong with your website, using the Web Grader tool.

Like every other software listed on this site, this one will also suggest you a string of improvements that you can make and help your site rank better by search engines.

13. WooRank

WooRank

WooRank helps you look at the technical stuff that may be hindering your website’s progress. It provides you with some actionable improvements that can help with your site’s SEO as well as marketing performance. In addition to web SEO, it also helps you get a good look at your site’s mobile functionality. How your web pages look on mobile, the page load time, and your site’s overall performance on mobile.

WooRank also helps you gauge your social media performance and provide better insights.

14. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog

The best thing about ScreamingFrog is its speed. It can process large amounts of website data in a super-fast way, giving you more time to do fixes around your site. Its SEO crawler can alert you to website links that aren’t working, duplicate content that you need to handle, suggest better keywords, and more.

15. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO

Yoast provides concentrated SEO suggestions that can improve your blog post rankings on Google and Bing. It can tell you if your blog post contains enough focused keywords, if it’s missing a Meta description, and if it’s full of fluff.

It then gives you an actionable list of improvements that you can make to your article. A wonderful thing about Yoast is, it not only tells you what’s bad but also what’s good. So you can double down on what’s working and keep ranking higher.

16. Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool

Something that we love about the Keyword Tool website is that it helps you look at multiple search engines in a simpler layout, with more ease, and better intuition. Not only keywords but the tool also lets you look at the questions that people are asking about that keyword. You can then use this information to build your content strategy, link building, and overall SEO.

17. SEO Site Checkup

SEO Site Checkup

Want to amp-up your on-page SEO analytics? Consider using SEO Site Checkup that gives you a comprehensive overview of your web pages. It can spot structure errors, content flaws, missing links, image optimization issues, and other problems.

18. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb

It’s a web analytics tool that gives you a breakdown of how your website stacks up to your competitors’ website. While it gives you information about primary keywords, target demographic, and other important features too, it’s most potent tool is website traffic.

It gives you almost exact estimates of a site’s organic traffic and therefore helps you improve your real SEO. You can focus on building quality backlinks, genuine referrals, and better content to increase your market share.

19. SERP Simulator

SERP Simulator

How you design a website and arrange its content and how others view it can be two very different things. With the SERP Simulator tool, you can finally see how your site will look ranked in a SERP. You can then see your title headings, Meta description, and other details and decide if you can do better.

20. XML Sitemap

XML Sitemap

Sitemaps are important for a search engine to index your website. The more structured and cleaner your sitemap, the better its indexing will be.

With this tool, you can use an easy – and free – way to create your site’s XML structure. For more benefits and greater control over your site’s structuring, you can decide if you want to buy a paid subscription.

Wrapping Up

Choosing a few SEO tools over hundreds of others is not an easy task. Our motivation has been to give you links and resources that have worked for us and our friends over the years. So, these 20 tools have been tried-and-tested. But let your experience be your guide and see which of these tools are giving you more focused results. Remember, that while all of these tools are great to work with, seo is a journey (with rules) of endless miles. It’ll be a while before you see results. But there’s a definite and sure success ahead as you continue moving. So, hang tight.

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Market research nerd with a penchant for graphic design and branding. A digital marketer by profession; a creature of the web by compulsion.

 

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