Whenever you undertake a project, whether it be building a deck or ranking your company’s website, you’ll work faster and smarter when you have the right tools at your disposal. Whether you’re talking about home carpentry or digital marketing, a DIY approach can be challenging at best. But, if you’re looking for the best SEO tools on the market, we can help.
1. Google PageSpeed Insights
We all know that page speed is a vital part of delivering a positive user experience. Even more, Google is using page speed as a key website ranking factor. You can use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool to check the speed and usability of your website. Simply input your URL and hit enter. You'll get a performance score as well as a list of different metrics and suggestions for improvement.
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is probably the most powerful free analytics tool available. It tracks every bit of traffic you can imagine coming into your website. You can see which pages on your site get the best click-through rate (CTR), track impressions, bounce rates, time on site, etc. One of the only limitations is that you no longer see what keywords are bringing people to those pages.
3. Google Search Console
If you own a website, Google allows you to access Google Search Console for free. You simply follow the steps to verify ownership. Then you can monitor and better understand your website's presence on Google. You can control how Google indexes your website, get a better understanding of how Google views your site, and obtain some suggestions for optimization.
4. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Google does an excellent job of helping webmasters optimize their sites. But, there’s nothing wrong with using third-party tools. And Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a comprehensive SEO tool. It helps you audit your site based on more than 100 technical SEO issues and provides suggestions for improvement.
5. Google Keyword Planner
Google’s Keyword Planner is one of the most effective keyword research tools that gives you data directly from the search engine you are targeting. You locate this tool in the Google Ads section, but it’s useful even if you aren’t buying ads. It will tell you how competitive a keyword is, the average monthly searches, and even how likely people are to buy if they search with this keyword.
6. Yoast SEO
If you’re writing and posting your own content, you need to make sure it is optimized for the search engines. Creating SEO-optimized content can be challenging, and the Yoast SEO plugin can help you get the results you need by enhancing your on-page SEO. It has both free and premium features. In short, it will analyze your post and make recommendations based on things like keyword density, sentence length, content length, and active/passive language.
7. Copyscape
Duplicate content can be a serious issue for your organization's website. If others are scraping and stealing your content, it could have a negative impact on your own search engine rankings. You can use Copyscape to check your website and new content periodically to ensure it is 100% unique.
8. Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Google recently started giving more favor to sites that are mobile-friendly. More people than ever are accessing the internet from mobile devices, and Google wants to deliver the best experience possible. But, how do you know if your website is properly optimized for mobile devices? Simple. You can use the search engine's own tool to check. Google's Mobile-Friendly Test will give you a yes or no answer, and you can then take action if necessary.
9. SimilarWeb
As a business with an online presence, you need to remain constantly aware of your competition. One of the tools you use to do this is called SimilarWeb. It has a premium version, but the free version offers plenty of features. You can see how much traffic a competitor’s website gets as well as get a breakdown of the traffic sources, locations, and more.
10. Classy Schema Structured Data Viewer
Technical SEO activities are generally something you want to hand over to your digital marketing partner as part of your search engine optimization strategy. Implementing the wrong solutions could have unintended consequences. But this free tool is useful if you want to tackle this job. It checks to make sure your schema markup/structured data was done correctly. Google has some similar free tools, one of which has some limitations and another that is scheduled to be discontinued soon.
11. Exploding Topics
If you want to stay on top of the latest trends in your industry, you need to keep your virtual ears open. Google alerts can help with breaking stories. But another helpful tool is called Exploding Topics. Exploding Topics provides insights into search volume trends. Just input your general search term, and it will tell you which keywords and topics are gaining attention so that you can target them before they become too competitive.
12. Google Trends
Google Trends has been around for a long time. The tool provides information regarding keywords but it offers great insight into trends around the topic, helping improve visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search for keywords in any country and receive information like top queries, rising queries, and interest over time.
You have to admit, that’s a long list of tools. If you found any of them intimidating, you’re not alone. You might want to test out one or two of these tools to get a good idea of where your website stands in relationship to its competitors. When it comes to SEO, there’s a lot to learn. And the landscape changes constantly.
At Connection Model, we stay at the forefront of the latest developments in SEO and have our own list of favorite tools for SEO ranking. We deliver results-driven solutions to our clients and welcome a conversation about your particular needs and goals. Contact us today to get started.
Written By: David Carpenter
