In this competitive online arena, digital marketers are encouraged to use all the tools that are at their disposal to fight the competition and get their name out there. The list of SEO tools is an endless one, however, we have managed to collect the cream of the crop and provide information on how to use them to reap the benefits they offer.
MOZ:
Moz is a suite of user-friendly digital marketing tools. Its Open Site Explorer lists information about backlinks and important metrics which approximate the equity of a link, while Moz Local feature (previously known as Get Listed) will provide the state of your company’s local citations.
You can also install Mozbar which contains all key features you have to keep an eye on. You simply open up a page you wish to acquire information on and this handy extension will show you everything you need to know, from website’s DA, PA, number of links, etc.
Majestic:
Majestic actually represents an entire package of tools which allow you to track and analyze any domain in detail. Site Explorer is one of its most prominent features, since you can deep dive into any URL you enter. Furthermore, what many users highlight as one of its greatest features is that it enables you to see link profiles, which helps them fight Google’s constant algorithm updates that have a major effect on backlinks.
You can check out the history of any backlink, find the number of backlinks given to a domain, subdomain or URL. Also, with clique hunter you can cross-reference multiple competitor domains at once and deduce possible opportunities for your link building campaigns.
Google Analytics:
A free tool every reputable SEO agency uses when looking to establish a digital marketing strategy for its clients. It provides insight into the state of a certain website on a daily, monthly and yearly basis. It lists detailed information on the traffic a website receives – it gives information on the visitors’ geographical location, their age, interests, behavior, etc.
Therefore, if you are planning an online marketing campaign for a website, you can track traffic and user behavior prior and after setting it up, thus drawing conclusions on which aspects of the campaign should be improved.
Google Search Console:
Not only is this tool free, it provides a clear picture on how Google sees your website and highlights certain issues you might not have previously been aware of (for instance, 404 pages or malware). Without Google Search Console it can take some time for a website to be indexed and noticed; that is why webmasters use this tool to submit their websites to Google for crawling.
Besides being able to track search traffic, keywords and positions stats, GSC also notifies its users about any problems on the website, such as bad sitemap, bad on-page SEO, markup data, etc. Overall, it is one of the most important tools SEOs will have to get familiar with during the course of their careers.
Ahrefs:
Ahrefs provides a complete overview of pages, links, keywords and content of the website you enter. It provides crawl report from a search engine robot’s perspective: you will see how long it took them to crawl your pages, find 404 errors, and some other issues that can have negative effect on your SEO efforts.
It also aids you in analyzing all website content, helping you find duplicate titles, H1 tags, or missing meta descriptions, all of which can be fixed in a matter of minutes, but make a huge difference in the long run.
SEMrush:
SEMrush is an outstanding tool for those who are looking to conduct a competitive keyword research. It provides insightful information on keyword phrases which are driving traffic to your website and gives information on your competitors’ rankings, traffic and paid keywords.
Screaming Frog:
Screaming Frog is a tool that can be downloaded for PC or Mac. It can crawl links, images and CSS from an SEO viewpoint, and present issues such as 302s that you can share with a developer and have them fixed in no time.
Additionally, it allows you to export information on your website like URLs, meta descriptions, page titles and so on, giving you a clear view of the metadata of your website. This way you can easily pinpoint issues and work on their re-optimization.
BuzzSumo:
BuzzSumo boasts its extremely easy-to-use interface which enables you to instantly identify popular content. Evidently, it is a must-use tool when looking to set up a content marketing strategy for your website. All you have to do is enter several keywords phrases to find out which type of content and topics work best for what you are offering.
It also highlights some of the greatest influencers in your line of work and copy some of their methods. Besides that, you can place an entire url into the search field and see how a certain post fares in social media shares.
HubSpot:
HubSpot is an overall marketing and marketing automation suite. Besides a number of important general tools for marketers, for SEOs it offers: keywords explorer, blog post optimization, landing page creation, as-you-type SEO suggestions, and most important one – real-time search metrics tracking.
In the end, once a standalone tool (SideKick), now a part of HubSpot sales Google Chrome extension – email tracking option is obligatory for anyone who does email outreach.
