Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process that helps web pages rank higher in search engine results pages. It includes many of the following aspects: On-page optimization, content marketing, link building, keyword research and analysis, technical SEO, and conversion rate optimization.
An SEO tool helps with identifying and fixing any issues that may be preventing your site from ranking well. It will also help you identify opportunities to improve your search ranking and find keywords that are relevant to your business or blog.
If you're going to start a blog or an online business, you need to rank your website high on search engines to get free organic traffic. And to rank high, preferably in the top 3 of the first page of Google search results page, you need to use the right SEO tool.
Using the best SEO tool will help you to:
- Perform keyword research to find new opportunities
- Perform backlink analysis of competitors
- Perform site audit to find issues that is preventing your site to rank higher
- Create content creation strategy for your blog or website
- Identify link building opportunities
- Monitor your keywords rankings on Google, Bing and other search engines
This article will cover some of the most popular and best SEO tools that can help you scale your website rankings.
Let's get started.
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What are the Best SEO Tools of 2023
Here are our top picks for the best SEO tools that you can use in 2023.
1. Ahrefs
overview
Ahrefs is one of the best SEO tool that I personally use and recommend. I have been using this SEO tool since the launch of this blog and it has helped me to do keyword research, backlink analysis, content analysis and site audit to find any issues that is hurting your site ranking on search engines.
It has the ability to track backlinks and their impact on rankings, identify link-building opportunities, and find out which content performs best for your target keywords.
Thus, Ahrefs suite is a complete package for any SEO professional, agency or bloggers like me. It includes tools like Site Explorer, Position Tracking, Content Explorer, Keyword Explorer and Link Intersect which are all designed to help you with your SEO efforts.
The paid plan by Ahrefs starts at $99 per month. It also offers free sets of tools for beginners who wants to try hand at Ahrefs before upgrading to the paid plans.
key features
pricing plans
Ahrefs offers four paid plans - Lite ($99/month), Standard ($199/month), Advanced ($399/month) and Enterprise ($999/month).
I would recommend you to try the Lite Plan as it offers most the features that is perfect for small business owners and bloggers. Under this plan, you get all the features as I have mentioned above.
SEO professionals can subscribe the Standard Plan as it offers more advanced features than the Lite Plan. Advanced and Enterprise Plans are mostly suitable for big business owners and agencies.
As I have mentioned above, I personally use Ahrefs for optimizing the content of my blog for search engine optimization and finding backlink opportunities. The interface of Ahrefs Dashboard is very sleek and all the important features are neatly arranged. Sign up at Ahrefs using the link given below.
2. Semrush
overview
Similar to Ahrefs, another very popular SEO tool among website owners and SEO agencies is Semrush. It also offers wide range of SEO optimization features like keyword research, site audit, backlink analysis, and more.
It helps in finding new keywords with traffic potential, keywords that are driving huge traffic to your competitors, and also perform competitive keyword analysis, also called keyword gap analysis, to identify valuable keywords that your competitors are ranking highly for but you don't
The Semrush backlink tool is one of the most valuable tools in the Semrush suite. It helps to identify which websites are linking to your competitor’s site, how often they link, and how many links are pointing towards their site. This information can be used to assess the strength of their links and craft a backlink strategy for your site to improve its ranking on SERPs.
It also offers a site audit tool that help you find out issues related to on-page SEO of your website, so you can make changes to it in order to improve it.
First-time users can join the 7 day free trial of Semrush. During the free trial, you can try all the premium features of Semrush to see if it is the right SEO tool for you or not. Paid plans start at $119.95 per month which offers advance features like domain, keyword and backlink analysis, keyword tracking, site audit and more.
key features
pricing plans
Semrush offers three paid plans - Pro ($119.95/month), Guru ($229.95/month) and Business ($449.95/month).
Pro plan allows you to track 500 keywords, 10,000 results per report, 5 projects and other features as mentioned above.
Guru plan can help you track 1500 keywords, 30,000 results per report, 15 projects and everything covered under the Pro plan.
Business plan subscription is best for agencies and large enterprise. It allows you to track 5000 keywords, 50,000 results per report, 40 projects and all features under the Guru.
Semrush offers a 7-day free trial on its paid plans. You can join the free trial and explore all the premium features before upgrading to the paid plans. You can even cancel your free trial any time. Sign up for the free trial using the link given below.
3. SurferSEO
overview
If you're looking for an SEO tool that uses the power of artificial intelligence to create a perfect content strategy that is perfectly optimized to your domain niche and audience, then SurferSEO is the tool that you must use.
SurferSEO helps you identify keyword ideas for your topic and categorize them by their intent and search volume. It also offers a Content Planner that lets you track the progress of content creation.
To drive your visitors attention and boost engagement, you need to craft a perfect outline for your blog articles. SurferSEO can create AI optimized article outline with paragraphs automatically categorized into related headers (H2, H3, H4).
Not only that, you also get valuable insights on which keywords to use, what should be the article structure, image count and more.
To analyse whether your content is adequately optimized for SEO or not, SurferSEO gives you a score out of 100. Lower the score means you need to further work on the content optimization. To achieve higher score you just need to follow the recommendation and suggestions offered by SurferSEO.
One of the important feature of SurferSEO is its integration with Jasper AI. Jasper AI is also an artificial intelligence based tool that generate unique and engaging content for blog articles, stories, marketing ad copies, eBooks, email newsletters, product descriptions and more. Read the complete review on Jasper AI to know more about it.
The paid plan by SurferSEO starts at $49 per month (Basic Plan) which is perfect for small websites. For more advanced features, big agencies and site owners can subscribe to the Pro or Business plan.
key features
pricing plans
SurferSEO offers three main paid plans - Basic ($49/month), Pro ($99/month) and Business ($199/month).
Learn more about the paid plans here - SurferSEO pricing.
SurferSEO doesn't offer any trial, however, it does offer a 30-days money-back guarantee on its paid plans. Thus, it gives you enough time to try its features to see if it is the right SEO tool for you or not. Visit the link given below to know more about SurferSEO.
WHAT IS answer the public
Answer The Public is mainly a keyword research tool using which you can find lots of keywords that have the potential to drive additional traffic to your site.
Though regular SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush help you find direct and obvious keywords for your content and offer key metrics like monthly searches, keyword difficulty and CPC, Answer The Public is different.
It listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google and based on that, lists out phrases and questions people are asking around your keyword.
These insights helps you to create fresh, useful and relevant content for your audience.
It offers a keyword tool that can answer people's questions as closely as possible and increase the search potential of your website through organic search.
First time users can try Answer The Public for free with limited daily searches. For more advanced features like unlimited searches, you can subscribe to the paid plans which starts at $99 per month.
key features of answer the public
answer the public pricing
Paid plan by Answer The Public starts at $99 per month and goes up to $199 per month.
If you're thinking about joining the premium plan of Answer The Public, I would recommend you to start with a free account first as it will give you an opportunity to have a handful experience of its features and benefits. You can sign up for the free account using the link given below.
WHAT IS google search console
Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that helps you monitor your site's search performance and get alerts when Google finds problems with your site.
It also provides data on how users interact with the content on your website, including how they find the content, how they navigate to it, and whether they are successful in finding what they were looking for.
It is an indispensable tool for webmasters and SEO specialists. It provides them with a variety of data, including a list of potentially problematic pages on their site, and lets them know when Google has detected a penalty or manual action against their site.
key features of google search console
The following are some of the reasons why you might want to use Google Search Console:
- You want to know what pages on your site have been indexed by Google
- Find out what keywords your site is ranking for
- You want to know about crawl errors that are preventing your site from being fully crawled
- Find out if there's something that's blocking Googlebot from crawling your site
- You want to be notified when Google has detected a penalty or manual action against your site
- Submit a page for indexing
- Check whether your site complies with Core Web Vitals
- You want to know how many URLs are indexed in Google and how many pages
- Check if your site has got any manual action or penalty from Google
Check out this article to learn more about different ideas for improving SEO with Google Search Console.
You don't need to pay anything to use Google Search Console. It has two main purposes: to help you understand the performance of your website on Google search results pages, and to help you diagnose issues with crawling or indexing so you can fix them. If you haven't sign up and added your website in Google Search Console, do it now using the link given below.
Wrapping Up
In this article, I have covered some of the most popular and best SEO tools that you must use to optimize your website if you want to drive more organic traffic from search engines.
Here is the quick overview of what we have covered so far in this article and my recommendation also:
- Ahrefs: One of the best SEO tools that provides comprehensive overview of your site's backlink profile, track & monitor your competitors' backlinks, keyword research and more. It's perfect for any blogger or website owner looking to improve their search engine rankings.
- Semrush: It is a comprehensive solution for marketing professionals, webmasters, SEO specialists, and anyone who wants to improve their website's performance.
- SurferSEO: If you want to scale your on-page content optimization in the most effective way possible and plan a perfect content creation strategy, I would recommend you to try SurferSEO.
- Answer The Public: If you want to get a deeper level of understanding of how people search around topics - revealing questions and queries which you wouldn’t necessarily think of off the top of your head, then Answer The Public is the right SEO tool for you.
- Google Search Console: It provides data such as the number of impressions, clicks, average position, top keywords and geo-location of traffic. This data can be used by website owners to tweak their SEO strategy according to what they find out about the effectiveness of their website's content.
Though there many other popular tools but if you're a beginner, I would recommend you to just focus on these tools only. Once you start getting decent traffic to your website, you can consider trying other SEO tools.
Which SEO tools you like the most and why? Please share your experience in the comment section below.
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