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:
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.
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:
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.
| SEO competitor analysis tools: SEMrush, Moz Pro, Ahrefs, etc. | SEO tools for competitive analysis help you understand where your keywords, backlinks, and other SEO factors stand against your competitors and niche leaders. As a result, you can choose the most effective and the least risky SEO and marketing strategies. |
| SEO keyword research tools: SEMrush, Ahrefs, Similarweb, Majestic SEO | SEO tools for keyword research do what their name suggests – evaluate keywords by the search volume, difficulty, and other parameters. |
| SEO Content Optimisation Tools: SurferSEO, SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant, Frase, etc. | Content optimisation SEO tools help improve your content’s readability and structure while evaluating its strength. Some SEO tools can predict the ranking success of your copies. |
| SEO Writing Tools: Grammarly, Frase, Clearscope, Yoast SEO, etc. | Tools for SEO content writing score the written content and improve your spelling, tone of voice, and style. Besides, content writing tools for SEO can detect plagiarism and whether AI or a human created the content. |
| SEO Audit Tools: Google Search Console, Moz Pro, Woorank, etc. | SEO auditing tools can score your website’s SEO optimisation level and issue on-page and off-page suggestions. |
| SEO Automation Tools: almost all popular SEO tools | SEO automation tools, which are most of the tools on the market, speed up SEO routines like keyword research, site audit, and more. |
| SEO Reporting Tools | Reporting tools provide well-structured reports across the SEO parameters in question, whether on-site performance, competitor analysis, backlink tracking, etc. |
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.
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:
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.
| Monthly Visits | Page Per Visit | Time On Site | Bounce Rate | Direct Traffic | Search Traffic | Paid Referral Traffic | Referral Traffic | Social Traffic | Mail Traffic |
| 43,366,375 | 6 | 361 | 0.32 | 80.54% | 14.50% | 0.31% | 3.22% | 1.12% | 0.32% |
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.
| Monthly Visits | Page Per Visit | Time On Site | Bounce Rate | Direct Traffic | Search Traffic | Paid Referral Traffic | Referral Traffic | Social Traffic | Mail Traffic |
| 8,747,439 | 7 | 326 | 0.28 | 50.20% | 43.75% | 0.07% | 3.15% | 2.68% | 0.15% |
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.
| Monthly Visits | Page Per Visit | Time On Site | Bounce Rate | Direct Traffic | Search Traffic | Paid Referral Traffic | Referral Traffic | Social Traffic | Mail Traffic |
| 13,773,682 | 6 | 398 | 0.36 | 62.89% | 28.55% | 2.25% | 1.52% | 1.81% | 2.97% |
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.
| Monthly Visits | Page Per Visit | Time On Site | Bounce Rate | Direct Traffic | Search Traffic | Paid Referral Traffic | Referral Traffic | Social Traffic | Mail Traffic |
| 460,129 | 3 | 106 | 0.6 | 38.13% | 54.44% | 0.01% | 5.10% | 2.14% | 0.19% |
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.
| Monthly Visits | Page Per Visit | Time On Site | Bounce Rate | Direct Traffic | Search Traffic | Paid Referral Traffic | Referral Traffic | Social Traffic | Mail Traffic |
| 52,279,534 | 7 | 447 | 0.28 | 88.35% | 7.80% | 0.24% | 2.44% | 1.04% | 0.13% |
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:
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.
| Monthly Visits | Page Per Visit | Time On Site | Bounce Rate | Direct Traffic | Search Traffic | Paid Referral Traffic | Referral Traffic | Social Traffic | Mail Traffic |
| 9,530,366 | 7 | 543 | 0.33 | 75.90% | 19.09% | 0.06% | 0.97% | 1.30% | 2.68% |
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:
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.
| Monthly Visits | Page Per Visit | Time On Site | Bounce Rate | Direct Traffic | Search Traffic | Paid Referral Traffic | Referral Traffic | Social Traffic | Mail Traffic |
| 14,043,360 | 6 | 193 | 0.44 | 65.86% | 31.23% | 0.12% | 0.66% | 0.91% | 1.23% |
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.
| Monthly Visits | Bounce Rate | Page Per Visit | Average Visit Duration |
| 1,600,000 | 38.62% | 4.71 | 03:29 |
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.
| Monthly Visits | Bounce Rate | Page Per Visit | Average Visit Duration |
| 6,800,000 | 45.51% | 2.75 | 02:56 |
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.
| Monthly Visits | Bounce Rate | Page Per Visit | Average Visit Duration |
| 692,100 | 35.42% | 5.42 | 03:57 |
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.
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.
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.
Among the best enterprise SEO software are Similarweb, SEMrush, and Google Search Console:
Here’s a list of free and cheap SEO software for large and small businesses:
Many paid and freemium SEO tools provide a free trial, but the most advanced functionality is usually unlocked within the paid plans.
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.
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