Your 10 Best Affordable SEO Tools for Affiliate Marketing

Oleksandr Rohovnin

12 minutes read

Important: this article is a part of our affiliate martech stack series, where we shed light on the most effective tools for affiliate marketing.

Even the most compelling content may be lost in the search pages if not optimised for Google crawlers. However, the right suite of SEO tools can make Google fall in love with your content through multiple on-page and off-page improvements.

You can only succeed if you’re constantly on the customers’ radar, with SEO being your ultimate exposure instrument. SEO helps you climb the search rankings like no other tool, interpreting Google’s taste into strategic insights like what content they crave, how to structure your website, and where to advertise.

The role of SEO in marketing is undisputed, but the lack of resources and tools is still a major hindrance. Even though SEO ranking tools of all scales and types are always available, it’s extremely challenging to compile a winning SEO toolkit:

• On the one hand, opting for a single “all-encompassing” SEO toolkit might deprive you of the unique insights narrow-focused tools can provide. On the other hand, juggling multiple SEO tools might make you miss the forest for the trees.

So, how do you combine the best of many worlds of SEO reporting tools, SEO content optimisation tools, eCommerce SEO tools, and other optimisation instruments? How do you cover your SEO needs through and through while not overcommitting?

Source: GIPHY

We’ll get to it in a while. For now, read on.

First Things First: What Can SEO Tools Help You Achieve?

The most noticeable effect of using the right SEO software correctly would be a rise in your search rankings. It’s no secret that the first search engine page receives the lion’s share of attention, with the CTRs spreading as follows:

• 1st search position – 39.8%
•  2nd search position – 18.7%
• 3rd search position – 10.2%

But the enhanced visibility is just one of many improvements the right suite of SEO ranking tools can grant you. Besides, you can increase your conversion rate, improve user experiences, and engage your customers more effectively.

7 Most Popular Types of SEO Tools

With SEO permeating multiple business avenues, there are so many different tools that it would take pages to name them all. For example, there are special SEO tools for Excel that help you synergise SEO and Excel, SEO tools for Mac owners, and many more.

What Is the Difference Between SEO Tools and SEO Software for Business?

Before we dig into the best SEO tools of today, let’s resolve the common dispute about SEO software and SEO tools. The gist of the dispute is whether SEO software and SEO tools are the same or these are different concepts.

Here’s the answer:

• In theory, SEO software is a comprehensive suite of various SEO tools. In practise, SEO software and SEO tools are used interchangeably, so we won’t differentiate either.

With that, it’s time to proceed to our tailor-made list of SEO tools for big and small businesses. We’ve thoroughly researched the market to compile the 10 most comprehensive automated SEO tools for marketers, SEO specialists, and content creators.

Your 10 Best Automated Big and Small Business SEO Tools

Google Search Console – the Best Free SEO Reporting Tool

Google Search Console (GCS) is an undisputed leader in SEO analytics, allowing you to monitor the performance of your website and pages in Google’s search results and against competitors. From clicks to impressions to click-through rates (CTR), GSC unlocks multiple aspects of the customer journey across locations, devices, and timeframes.

Aside from a stellar SEO toolkit, GCS has two major advantages over other SEO tools. First, it’s absolutely free. Second, it’s developed by Google, home to 85% of all search requests, and thus provides the most accurate data and smoothly integrates with other Google SEO tools like, for example, Google Analytics.

That said, those promoting in search engines other than Google will unlikely find value in Google Search Console. On a similar note, GCS doesn’t provide backlink analysis and rank tracking and only enables limited SEO data for privacy reasons.

Google Trends – Free Trend Monitoring Tool for SEO

Google Trends is a simple trend-monitoring SEO tool that identifies trending topics and searches. You can explore how particular queries perform in specific locations, business categories, search types (for example, YouTube search), and against each other.

Like other Google’s proprietary SEO tools, Google Trends is free and draws official data from the biggest search engine. That said, this SEO tool is quite limited and thus should only be used as a complementary instrument.

SEMrush – the Best Paid SEO Project Management Software

SEMrush might be the best-paid suite of SEO analytics tools out there, allowing you to dissect marketing campaigns to the smallest detail, including keywords, competitors, internal performance, backlinks, and PPC.

With SEMrush, you can combine SEO research with marketing, advertising, and social media research. This comprehensive approach provides an overarching view of your campaigns so you can strike the right balance between SEO and your other marketing efforts.

Over the years, SEMrush has grown into one of the biggest SEO names, with an all-encompassing SEO toolkit. It even includes tools for SEO content writing that suggest the most effective keywords, fix link issues, and improve content readability, tone of voice, and originality aside from SEO optimisation.

Price-wise, the all-in-one SEO tool costs $129.95, $249.95, or $499.95 monthly, depending on the features. Paying annually saves you up to 15%, or you can enrol in a 14-day free trial to test things out before committing.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider – the Best Freemium SEO Audit Tool

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an SEO audit tool that crawls your website much like Google crawlers do, collecting SEO data and searching for issues and potential improvements. Unlike most other SEO tools, the Screaming Frog is a desktop-based app that you can use offline with higher security and privacy.

The SEO Spider identifies broken links, audits redirects, analyses metadata and page titles, creates sitemaps, and evaluates your SEO performance progress. For a more comprehensive view, you can integrate the Spider with Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Price-wise, the free version allows crawling 500 URLs annually and enables basic features like searching for broken links, redirect audits, and metadata reviews. The all-inclusive paid version costs $259 per year.

Google Analytics – the Best SEO Tool from Google

Google Analytics is not an SEO tool per sae, but it can be of tremendous help if you want to synergise web analytics and SEO. Google Analytics can analyse website traffic, track conversions and bounces, and interpret user behaviour across touchpoints.

Here’s an example of how Google Analytics can work together with other Google software and third-party SEO reporting tools:

• Imagine you need to evaluate several high-performing pages for further SEO optimisation and capitalisation via organic and paid traffic. For this, you can sort pages by conversions in Google Analytics and then analyse the top-performing pages in your SEO tool.

By the same logic, you can address the pages with high bounce rates, low CTR, and other issues. Long storey short, Google Analytics allows you to see the problem from the marketing perspective so you can focus your SEO efforts on what matters.

Google Analytics is free in its basic version, but it also has an advanced version called Google Analytics 360. The latter provides features and capabilities way beyond standard, enabling the most complex and deep data analysis. However, it comes at a price: Google Analytics 360 costs $12,500 per month and thus is only viable for the largest enterprises.

Ahrefs – the Best Non-Google SEO Reporting Software

Ahrefs is one of the best non-Google SEO reporting software. As you might expect from the software of this level, Ahrefs offers keyword research, backlink and content analysis, site audit, rank tracking, competitor analysis, and many other types of organic analytics.

Here are some unique features Ahrefs provides:

• Link intersect – identifies websites that link to competitors but not your website
• Keyword difficulty score – rates keyword difficulty from 0 to 100
• Content gap analysis – identifies overlooked keywords that your competitors rank for

Ahrefs is an especially strong SEO content writing tool. By evaluating the keyword difficulty, search volume, and geography, you can develop a realistic content strategy while avoiding overcompetitive or unprofitable keywords.

Ahrefs costs $99, $199, $399, or $999 monthly. Paying annually gets you two months for free.

Similarweb – All-in-One SEO Reporting Toolkit

Similarweb is a wide-ranging SEO and marketing intelligence marketing platform spanning website, keyword, content, competitor, and PPC analysis. The two strongest features of Similarweb are competitive intelligence and traffic and keyword analysis.

Through multi-dimensional analytics and integrations with tools like Google Analytics or SEMrush, Similarweb can provide a holistic view of your online performance while enabling detailed analytics across digital marketing metrics like website traffic, demographics, competitors, content types, and more.

Similarweb offers free and paid tools and a 7-day free trial. The paid subscription plans cost $149 or $399 per user if paid monthly and $125 or $333 per user if paid annually. Besides, there are custom subscription plans for SEO teams and large SEO agencies.

Moz – Overarching Suite of SEO Tools

Moz unites some of the best SEO reporting tools to improve search engine rankings and online visibility. Like other renowned SEO toolkits, Moz covers every imaginable SEO avenue except social media, PPC, and email analytics.

In terms of its scope and offering, Moz is similar to Ahrefs and SEMrush, with the advantages being some free functionality (domain analysis, keyword explorer, link explorer, competitive research, and SEO metrics research) and a 30-day free trial. The paid plans cost $99, $179, $299, and $599 if paid monthly and 20% cheaper if paid annually.

Small SEO Tools – a Freemium Suite of Affordable SEO Tools

Small SEO Tools is a collection of free and paid SEO tools that serve small objectives across content optimisation, backlink analysis, website management, and more.

The biggest advantage of Small SEO Tools is that hundreds of its tools are free and ready to be used immediately in the browser. As for the paid plans, they include a plagiarism chequer, a paraphraser, and a reverse image search tool, all priced individually depending on the usage limits and payment schedule.

Seobility – a Website SEO Audit Tool

Seobility is a comprehensive SEO platform that focuses on the technical issues that may impact your search rankings: broken links, plagiarised content, suboptimal metadata and keyword usage, and more.

There’s a 14-day free trial and a free subscription plan allowing you to crawl 1,000 web pages, use 10 keywords, cheque 100 external links monthly, and make five tool requests per day (for example, SEO Chequer). The paid plans cost $50 and $200 if paid monthly or $480 and $1,920 (20% cheaper) if paid annually.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I pick an SEO Tool?

Whether an agency SEO tool, B2B SEO tool, or individual SEO tool, it must be affordable, scalable, accurate, integrable, and provide the required depth of research. Be ready to combine several SEO instruments, especially if you use free or cheap SEO tools.

What is the best SEO software for small businesses?

Among the best SEO tools for small businesses are Ahrefs, Moz, Similar Web, Google Analytics, Google Trends, and Google Search Console. Remember, your best SEO software for small businesses must be affordable and employ enough tools to analyse your SEO performance comprehensively.

Besides, choosing SEO tools depends on the specific aspects you want to address. For example, if you want to improve your on-page SEO, you might want to use a tool carved out for this specific problem – like, for example, SEMrush or Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

What is the best enterprise-level SEO software?

Among the best enterprise SEO software are Similarweb, SEMrush, and Google Search Console:

• Similarweb starts at $149 per user per month if paid monthly or $125 per user per month if paid annually
• SEMrush starts at $129.95 per month if paid monthly or $108.33 per month if paid annually
• Google Search Console is free

Are there free or cheap SEO tools?

Here’s a list of free and cheap SEO software for large and small businesses:

• Free SEO software: Google Search Console, Google Trends, Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Google Keyword Planner
• Freemium SEO software: Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Similarweb, Moz, Small SEO Tools, and Seobility

Many paid and freemium SEO tools provide a free trial, but the most advanced functionality is usually unlocked within the paid plans.

What is SEO software for agencies, and is it different from regular SEO software?

Agency SEO software must be able to run multiple campaigns while not sacrificing analytics quality, whereas regular SEO software doesn’t necessarily need much processing power. Among the distinctive features of agency SEO tools are multi-channel management, white label reporting, user-client communication tools, scalability, integrability, and billing ad functionality.