Seven SEO tools that every search marketer should have

Google wants people who know a lot about SEO to win. You need to know how to change its algorithms and have access to the right SEO tools that make this process faster and more effective.

During my work, I’ve read a lot of SEO blogs, looked all over the internet for the best and most popular SEO software, and talked to a lot of SEOs.

I have seen SEOs talk about the same tools over and over again as must-haves for dominating the search engine results pages (SERPs).

We all know that having the best tools gives you an edge over your competitors, whether you work as an in-house SEO or on a marketing team that works from home.

This won’t be a long list of more than 200 SEO tools that make you feel like you can’t choose. Instead, I’ll only talk about the most important ones you need to beat Google.

Here are the seven most important SEO tools that this guide will talk about:

1. SEMrush
2. Ahrefs
3. Yoast Search Engine
4. Detailed Add-On for SEO
5. Use Google Analytics
6. The Google Search Console
7. The Screaming Frog SEO Spider

1. SEMrush

Marketing and SEO one-stop shop is Semrush.
As you are probably well aware, SEMrush is an all-inclusive marketing bundle. Despite being not entirely free, its feature set makes it one of the most useful tools on our list.

You can keep an eye on all of the following with SEMrush:

• SEO
• Social Media
• SEM
• Content

But SEMrush really shines when it comes to its ability to help you improve your content marketing and keyword research by doing deeper keyword analysis and keeping track of how keywords change over time. It can also help you do thorough competition research across all marketing channels, not just SEO.

A Look at Semrush Keyword Search
It also has features just for different areas of SEO, like researching your competitors, off-page SEO (like building links, guest posting, and content marketing), and a good set of tools for doing technical SEO tests.

SEMrush is the best SEO tool for you if you want to use fewer separate tools to find new keyword ideas, study your competitor’s pay-per-click (PPC) strategy, or plan your social media posts.

“I love the SEMrush Keyword Magic tool so much for making long lists of terms.” You can sort the results by broad match, exact match, and similar keywords with this tool, which helps you find every chance.

It also has an easy-to-use filtering system that lets you look for (or skip over) groups of keywords that aren’t relevant or don’t get enough searches. With keyword study, it’s hard to know where to begin. SEMrush is a great way to find your way.At Terakeet, Jonas Sickler oversees SEO.

Register for SEMrush here.

Pro Tip: Check out our comparison of these two popular SEO and digital marketing tools to see how they stack up.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs Increase website visitors with Ahrefs’ SEO techniques
That Ahrefs is one of our favourite SEO tools at Verbage is hardly surprising. Given its wealth of features, that is essentially all you can accomplish with Ahrefs.

Besides that, it’s also one of the most well-known SEO tools out there. I know a lot of SEOs who use either Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz. Ahrefs isn’t free, but it’s well worth the money.

A lot of great benefits come with Ahrefs, such as:

• Site Explorer: lets you see information about any website’s native traffic, backlinks, best pages, and more.
• Keyword Explorer: lets you find useful keywords by showing you their volume, difficulty, and the number of pages that rank for them.
• Rank Tracker: lets you compare your success and keyword rankings to those of your competitors.
• Content Explorer: lets you find the best content to share with others or look for guest writing opportunities in your field.

Ahrefs is full of tools for SEO professionals.

Tip: Have you ever used images to do link building? You can use Ahrefs’ content finder and an infographic maker like Venngage together to reach out to specific guest bloggers and get tonnes of links.

Since I’ve pretty much gone on and on about how great Ahrefs is, does that mean you should only use it and not bother with SEMrush or Moz? Not really, though.

A lot of SEOs I know that all three tools should be used together because each one has something that the others don’t. But if you only have a small amount of money to spend on marketing or have specific needs, it makes the most sense to choose just one of the three tools.

Here is a guide by Ryan Stewart that compares SEMrush, Moz, and Ahrefs to help you make a choice.

“Every day, we use Ahrefs because it gives us more useful information than any other tool we’ve tried. Knowing about a website’s domain rating and the keyword study options has helped us come up with a better plan for guest posting.

We also get important comments on our website, which helps us figure out where we stand and how we can improve. — CEO of ZeroBounce Liviu Tanase

Here is where you can sign up for Ahrefs.

3. Yoast Search Engine

YoastSEO is the best WordPress SEO tool for everyone.
Yoast SEO is a strong app for SEOs that works only with WordPress. Another thing is that there are many SEO WordPress apps, but Yoast might be the only one you need.

We use Yoast to optimise all of our content at Venngage, and it’s always been right on the money with its suggestions for keywords, readability, and other optimisations.

What I like most about Yoast is:

• Strong suggestions for keyword optimisation
• Ideas for internal links
• Improve your meta titles and descriptions to get a better click-through rate (CTR).

YoastSEO looks at the text of WordPress
As a result? Advice that helps your content do better, whether it’s by increasing your click-through rate (CTR) or making it easier to read, or just by getting you more traffic.

Even though Yoast is free, I really think you should upgrade to their paid version to get the most out of it. Price ranges from $89 to $14 per spot. When you buy bulk licences, you can use Yoast on more than one site and save money.

“On the Mailtrap blog, we only use the Yoast plugin.” Most of the time, we write about technology, development, and transactional emails. Technical content optimisation can be hard to handle at times, but Yoast makes us sure we don’t miss anything important.

It manages your SEO title and meta description, checks your writing for readability, and gives you helpful advice. In the words of Andriy Zapisotskyi, Growth Manager at Mailtrap

You can get Yoast SEO for your WordPress blog here.

4. Detailed Add-On for SEO

Extension for detailed SEO
Something new to the world of SEO tools this year, but one that I’ve found to be very useful ever since I started using it.

This add-on was made by Glen, one of the most well-known SEO experts, and it does exactly what it says on the homepage: it gives you detailed SEO details with just one click.

SEO tools from SEOQuake as a Chrome app

Before, I used SEOQuake, but this add-on does everything SEOQuake did and more, like

• Find out important things about a page, like its title, description, keywords, links, and more, without having to look at its source code.
• Find out which header tag order a page uses.
• Immediately highlight nofollow links on a page.
• Complex searches including inurl: and even one-click site searches are possible.

It also has the neat feature of allowing you to view the page you are on within your preferred SEO tool with just one click.

Complete Internet Marketing Resources SEO Extension SEOQuake

You should really have this SEO software if you respect details and quickness. To what extent is this seriousness? That is free of cost.

Every day, we at Tidio utilize the Detailed addon to obtain broad details about our competitors, including social sharing, internal and cross-site links, and content structure. The extension also gives us a quick way to check the quality of the material our competitors post. — Pawel Lawrowski, Tidio Live Chat’s Head of Growth

Get the Detailed add-on for Chrome.

5. Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics tools for website info and SEO
You should already know what Google Analytics is and what it does, unless you’ve been living under a rock.

A free application called Google Analytics may tell you a lot about the health of your website, who is visiting it and from what sources, and how conversions are happening. It is included into several popular business intelligence programs.

You may look more closely at your SEO efforts by using analytics as well. It provides practical tools to assist you identify your top landing pages, the terms people use to locate your website, and methods to evaluate new SEO tactics or halt those that could be degrading the performance of your website.

SEO apps that track KPIs and Google Analytics

Google Analytics can help you keep an eye on KPIs for each page, such as

• Session for organic
• Rate of bounces
• Conversions

And even performance data for the site, like

• Overall site speed
• Traffic distribution
• Exit pages

Without Google Analytics, it’s hard to know how much work you’re putting into SEO or how to make your current SEO methods better.

Google Analytics enables us to monitor every website visit. We can learn helpful things by following where visitors to our website go.

Our content strategy and the way the website functions are improved when we use this data to determine which blog entries generate the most revenue. — Tope Longe, Time Doctor Content Marketer​

Sign up for Google Analytics if you haven’t already.

6. The Google Search Console

Google’s search interface has tools for SEO

Google Search Console, which used to be called Google Webmaster Tools, is the next tool Google offers SEOs.

Use Google Search Console to manage the technical aspects of your site and obtain further information about its performance. Additionally, it provides details on the SERPs’ appearance and keyword rankings for your website.

Important functions of Search Console include:

Locate well ranked yet poor CTR pages.
Determine which pages are perhaps losing organic traffic.
Track down and resolve sitemap and speed issues.
Ideas for improving the usability of mobile websites.

There is almost no excuse not to set up and start using Google Search Console, which is free just like Google Analytics.

Though there are many strong SEO analytics tools available today, a clever GA + GSC configuration is ultimately the best. Many various types of research and visualisations may be done with Google Sheets and Data Studio. Yes, you may need to make some changes yourself, but why start from scratch?” — Alex Williams, Hosting Data’s Head of Research and Reviews

You should sign up for Google Search Console.

7. The Screaming Frog SEO Spider

There are some technical checking tools in SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz, but the Screaming Frog SEO spider is the best tool for technical SEO.

Why does Screaming Frog do what it does? To begin, it’s the best tool for thorough technical and on-site SEO checks.

Some important reasons why you should use Screaming Frog:

• Find out about all of a website’s internal, exterior, and “nofollow” links.
• Check your robots.txt file right away to make sure it’s working right.
• Find the pages on your website that aren’t listed or ranked.
• Determine the pages without the Analytics or Tag Manager tracking code.

Though the commercial version is more superior, you can quickly review certain information with the free tool. There’s also a helpful movie that shows you how to use the tool:

The screaming frog SEO Spider and SEO Tools Review

“I use Screaming Frog for both technical SEO and content checks. We’ve been blogging for years and have written hundreds of posts. It’s the best way to quickly get a lot of useful information, figure out what your site needs, and find new ways to grow. — Jory MacKay, head of content marketing at RescueTime

Get Screaming Frog SEO Spider here.

What it means: SEOs need SEO tools