Search engine optimization or SEO can be a long and complex process for many SEO professionals — especially for beginners. Having an SEO strategy is not always enough. You also need the right set of tools to execute that strategy.
Here is a list of 15 SEO tools that every newbie SEO must use. These SEO tools can help simplify the process of search engine optimization and make everything a tad bit easier.
1. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is the swiss army knife for SEO professionals. Every SEO must use the Google Search console because:
- First, it provides valuable search performance data.
- Second, it provides various tools to SEO professionals to conduct different tests (e.g., URL inspection, core web vitals) and find many potential SEO issues (e.g., crawling, indexing, structured data syntax errors, manual penalties by Google).
2. Google Analytics
Search engine optimization is a long-term process in which you may have to tweak things regularly based on the data you receive. You must know what’s working and what’s not working.
Google Analytics is how you get all that data that enables you to make informed, data-driven decisions about your SEO strategy and the overall direction of your business.
With Google Analytics, you can see:
- Which pages drive the most traffic to your website
- Who your audience is
- Which channels do they use to reach your website
- How visitors interact and engage with your website
- How many visitors are you converting into leads
- At which stage of the sales funnel do most of your potential customers exit
And more.
3. Screaming Frog
Search engine optimization often starts with crawling your website and your competitor’s website, and for that, you need an SEO crawling tool.
Screaming Frog is an extremely popular SEO crawler that can crawl any website for you and present all the information in an easy-to-understand way.
With Screaming Frog, you can find a lot of valuable information about any website: crawl mistakes, missing meta titles and descriptions, redirect chains and loops, JavaScript rendering issues, response code errors, and more.
4. SEMRush
SEMRush is a multi-feature tool that can cover pretty much every base in SEO. SEMRush allows you to:
- Conduct in-depth keyword research to help you identify which keywords you should target
- Conduct detailed competitor analysis to see how your competitors are performing
- Conduct a backlink analysis to see where you get all your backlinks from and where you can look for more opportunities
- Conduct a site audit to identify various types of technical and SEO issues and learn how to fix them
- Track search engine rankings and positions for specific keywords
And more.
5. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a very similar suite of tools as SEMRush. It mostly comes down to your preferences for whether you want to use Ahrefs or SEMRush.
Having said that, Ahrefs does focus a bit more on backlink analysis, and their backlink analysis tools are some of the best in the SEO industry right now.
Ahrefs also allows you to see keyword click distributions, analyze SERP history, monitor outbound links, analyze internal links, and uncover content gaps, among other things.
6. Redirect Path
Redirects are common — especially for established websites that have been around for some time. But how do you check if a page has a proper, functioning redirect?
Redirect Path is a Google Chrome extension that makes it super easy to view that. It charts a path that search engine crawlers take to reach a website, showing all the pages in the path where redirects are in place.
7. Panguin Tool
Have you ever lost a big percentage of search traffic and wondered whether it was just a Google Search algorithm update or something that you did wrong?
Thankfully, there is a tool that can help you answer that question.
Panguin Tool lines up your search traffic with known Google Search algorithm updates, so you can see if the dip in traffic aligns with a Google algorithm update.
8. BrowSEO
BrowSEO is a useful SEO tool that allows you to easily view what’s going on with a web page’s on-page SEO elements.
Simply paste the URL, and you can see a number of important elements: heading tags, meta title, meta description, status code, external links, internal links, nofollow links, robots tag status, and more.
9. AnswerThePublic
SEO largely depends on high-quality content, and coming up with new and relevant content ideas on a regular basis can be tough. AnswerThePublic can make that job a bit easier.
Using a seed keyword from you, AnswerThePublic can instantly share dozens of content ideas based on different questions that people are searching on the web about that topic.
This is a particularly useful tool if you are trying to optimize your website content for voice search and/or Google Featured Snippets.
10. BuzzSumo
Social signals can help a web page in search rankings. BuzzSumo can help you identify pages that get shared on social media the most.
The idea is to create even better content on the same topics and share them on the best-performing social media platforms to drive traffic and create positive signals for search engines.
11. vidIQ
If YouTube video marketing is a part of your SEO plan, then you’ll need keyword research and SEO tools for YouTube. Most of the above-mentioned tools won’t work for YouTube.
vidIQ is the keyword research tool you need for YouTube SEO. With vidIQ, you can:
- Research the best keywords for your video content
- See YouTube’s monthly search volume for many keywords
- Set the right tags for your YouTube videos
- Analyze which keywords your competitors are targeting with their videos
- Conduct a channel idiot to see what’s working and what’s not.
And more.
12. Google Trends
During keyword research, you will come across hundreds of keywords and shortlist dozens of them.
However, not all keywords should be pursued.
Before finalizing a keyword, make sure to run it through Google Trends to see how that keyword is expected to perform in the future. A keyword might be trending downwards for all you know. In that case, it might not be the best idea to spend your time, money, and efforts on a fizzling keyword phrase.
Google Trends helps you ensure the sustainability and long-term success of your keyword and SEO strategy.
13. Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
Help a Reporter Out or HARO is a tool that connects experts with journalists online.
You may be wondering how that fits with SEO.
It works for SEO because HARO provides an excellent source of authentic backlinks for your website. If you can help a reporter by providing expert, reliable information about a topic that you are familiar with, you can get valuable backlinks from high-profile websites.
14. Google PageSpeed Insights
Website speed has quickly become one of the most important search engine ranking factors for websites of all types and sizes.
Google PageSpeed Insights tool helps you measure your site’s performance across desktop and mobile devices and also shares actionable tips on how you can improve the loading speed of your website.
Apart from technical suggestions, Google PageSpeed Insights also shares valuable information on the status of core web vitals on your website.
15. Yoast SEO
A successful website needs content — lots of content. And you need a powerful SEO tool to manage and optimize all that content for Google Search.
That’s when the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress comes in.
Yoast SEO is the most installed and popular SEO plugin for WordPress and allows you to perform a variety of important functions, e.g., gauge the readability of your content, set up redirects, optimize keywords throughout the content, optimize meta title and meta description, set up canonical tags, and more.
Test SEO Site Checkup’s free SEO tools
The SEO tools we mentioned in this article all help one way or another. This list has numerous free tools, so make sure to check out as many of them as you can and see how they can help improve your SEO strategy and website.
In addition, don’t forget to check out SEO Site Checkup’s free tools that enable you to test over 60 elements of your web page that can have a direct or indirect impact on search performance.
