Top Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Conducting any kind of SEO activity requires a considerable amount of research, number crunching, and targeted action. Having the best SEO tools in your arsenal isn’t just a welcome time saver, however.
Whether you’re an agency or individual, they can help you uncover more insights and identify more opportunities than manual processes alone. In addition, modern SEO tools can automate some of the tedious aspects of SEO. Popular automations include link prospecting and site auditing. This allows you to focus more resources on the actions that will make a real difference to your rankings.
Try our local SEO tools for even more help ranking higher, or these local SEO resources for industry-leading insight. While many of the tools on this list offer free trials and versions, we also have a list of free local SEO tools if you’re on a very tight budget.
SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the more well-known SEO tools thanks to its range of useful features. Of particular benefit is the extensive keyword research tool. Within this, position tracking makes light work of monitoring your organic search positions and those of your competitors. It will also identify opportunities to rank in the search results pages by target keyword.
A site audit tool can crawl each page on your site and report back on any underlining issues, with the helpful creation of a to-do list to prioritize your SEO tasks. This can inform your SEO strategy. A core web vitals check gives peace of mind your site’s page experience is as good as it could be. SEMrush will also check your structured data markup, internal links, and page load speed.
Finally, if you’re optimizing a larger multilanguage site, there’s an international SEO checker, too.
SEMrush: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$119.95 – $449.95/mo.
Does it have a free trial?
There is a free version of this tool.
What makes it unique?
There’s a good variety of targeted SEO tools, such as the international SEO checker, to allow you to go deeper into your organic search strategy.
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DashThis
DashThis is a powerful yet easy-to-use, automated marketing reporting tool to track all your data from 34+ platforms such as Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, Facebook, Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and much more.
You can showcase data from multiple marketing platforms and accounts in one easy-to-understand report and then share them automatically with email dispatches. This is especially useful for SEO as you don’t need to log in and out of countless platforms to gather your most important data and get a global view of progress.
The preset dashboards and templates make it easy to get started, but they are also fully customizable if you’re an agency preparing progress reports for clients.
DashThis: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$39-$399/mo.
Does it have a free trial?
Yes. 15 days.
What makes it unique?
The ability to pull in multiple reports from a wide range of digital channels and platforms is a huge time saver.
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Schema App
Having the correct markup embedded into your web pages can make a real difference to your organic search position. However, it can be tricky to implement correctly without coding knowledge and time-consuming even with it.
Schema App takes care of both of those roadblocks. It allows you to complete schema markup at scale in minutes.
When it comes time to add structured data to your own or your clients’ websites, inexperienced coders are likely to find themselves scratching their heads. Scratch no longer! Schema App’s toolset is a perfect fit for agencies, e-commerce companies, and enterprise businesses alike.
Schema App will also work on custom site pages, where markup needs to be added individually. It tackles those specific pages one by one, and again, you don’t need any coding knowledge to get your markup right.
Schema App: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
Contact sales.
Does it have a free trial?
Contact sales.
What makes it unique?
Schema App creates and deploys structured data in seconds across your site, with no coding knowledge needed.
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Majestic
If you’ve already started researching the best free tools for SEO, you won’t need any introduction to Majestic.
This set of link intelligence tools is suited to any business that cares about its links, whether a small, local business or a worldwide franchise operation. With Majestic, you can get a clear idea of your current and historical link profile and helpfully, identify toxic links to disavow or repair. You can also find the topics your content and referring domains are connected to, including some excellent competitive analyses.
Majestic’s Trust Flow metric is handy for SEO link building as it offers an easy-to-understand score that rates the quality of your link profile. Too low a score and you know you have work to do. Majestic will also help you understand your content’s impact and generate keyword lists.
Majestic: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$49.99 – $399.99/mo.
Does it have a free trial?
There is a free version of this tool.
What makes it unique?
The amount of link data on offer is impressive – something which is especially useful when targeting better rankings given the often-difficult nature of link building.
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Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a suite of tools for getting to grips with your website’s SEO. It’s another one of our top SEO tools with a link focus, but it also has a suite of other tools. Those tools include competitor research, a search position tracker, and web site audit.
The Ahrefs dashboard provides a real-time view of core SEO metrics, including domain rating, health score, referring domains, backlinks, and organic traffic. This makes it much easier to see if something is amiss with your SEO performance. For agencies, you can add multiple client sites to the dashboard to save time.
Finally, the Content Explorer makes it easy to dig up top-performing content in your niche and link prospects.
Ahrefs: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$99-$999/mo.
Does it have a free trial?
No.
What makes it unique?
The Site Explorer tool brings together competitor link profile research, paid traffic analysis, and organic traffic research into a single interface.
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Google Analytics
It should come as no surprise to see Google Analytics make a list of top SEO tools. Originally launched in 2005, it’s been a stalwart of the search marketing scene for decades. Its strength lies in the breadth of data gathered and the degree of visualization and customization available.
The Acquisition dashboard provides an at-a-glance view of where your traffic is coming from, so you can compare your SEO performance against paid search, for example. Search Console can also be integrated. You can use the data from Search Console in conjunction with Analytics data. This could help you to flag up pages with a good search position but minimal click-through traffic or location pages with poor rankings.
Google Analytics: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
Free.
Does it have a free trial?
This tool is free to use.
What makes it unique?
You can not only gather endless amounts of data regarding your site and its performance in search thanks to Google Analytics. You can use its data visualization charts and dashboards to understand that data and derive meaning from it.
Website
https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/
Searchmetrics
Searchmetrics is designed to help you create a search presence that drives increased revenue. It’s an enterprise-level SEO tool for larger businesses and marketing teams who want to get a firmer handle on their data and dominate in search.
Use the Research Cloud tool to perform a competitive analysis. This will identify gaps in your strategy and show how competitors execute their SEO strategies. You can also use it to measure how each page of content you own is performing and how it can do better.
A Content Experience tool guides you through the creation of content that establishes authority and increases search prominence. In addition, keyword tracking and recommendations provide data-driven insights to increase sales from search. The Site Experience tool meanwhile has technical SEO covered.
Searchmetrics: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
Contact sales.
Does it have a free trial?
Contact sales.
What makes it unique?
Unique search data tracks changes in market demand on a global scale so you can home in on opportunities to grow your revenue as a result of targeted SEO efforts.
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Google Search Console
If you’re searching for small SEO tools to help you keep up with the basics, Search Console from Google is well worth checking out. A totally free tool, it is designed to guide you toward better rankings. You’ll find several tools and reporting options to work with. These provide a straightforward way to keep tabs on search traffic and keyword rankings.
Even if you’re already using other SEO tools, it’s well worth registering for Search Console just for the email alerts Google will send you if it detects an issue with your site. Other features include a URL inspection tool that pulls crawl information from Google’s Index to share with you.
Google Search Console: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
Free.
Does it have a free trial?
Search Console is free to use.
What makes it unique?
As a registered Search Console user, you’ll receive email alerts directly from Google if it detects any issues on your site. Once fixed, you can use Search Console to tell Google you’ve resolved the problem.
Website
https://search.google.com/search-console
FATRANK
FATRANK is a rank tracking tool – but it has a different spin than other rank tracking tools you may have used previously. The standard way to check SEO rankings would be to add a website URL and then wait for a list of keywords the site ranks for, along with their position, to be returned.
With FATRANK, you can download a Chrome extension to your browser. Just visit any website and enter a keyword of your choice to see where that site ranks on Google in any country. You can easily toggle between different countries to compare rankings on different versions of Google for that exact keyword.
There’s also a downloadable app for iOS and Android.
FATRANK: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
Free.
Does it have a free trial?
This is a free-to-use tool.
What makes it unique?
You can check the search position for any website and keyword directly from your browser window.
Website
https://fatjoe.com/fatrank-keyword-rank-checker
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a useful tool for any marketer or business owner focused on improving on-page SEO. It’s an efficient way to crawl websites (large or small) and discover issues that could be impacting your SEO performance.
You can use Screaming Frog to find broken links and server errors in bulk efficiently. Are you concerned about duplicate content? If so, Screaming Frog’s crawl will also flag up any areas of duplication, including repeated titles and headers. Pages with a low amount of content will also be flagged up so you can prioritize them for further development.
Other useful tasks include XML sitemap generation, visual representations of your site architecture and automated audits.
Screaming Frog: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$209/yr.
Does it have a free trial?
This is a free version of this tool.
What makes it unique?
One of the nicest features of Screaming Frog is the ease and speed with which you can crawl entire websites and discover SEO issues.
Website
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
Deep Crawl
A technical SEO platform, Deepcrawl has a wide range of tools and integrations to improve search performance. Suitable for individual businesses and agencies, it has a four-spoke approach. The first pillar is Monitor. As the name suggests, this part of the platform is dedicated to monitoring website changes and trends.
Customizable alerts will inform you immediately if something is wrong so you can take fast remedial action.
The Analytics Hub collates data-driven growth opportunities. Page crawlers and auditing narrow down which tasks to focus on to give rankings a boost. The Automation Hub has more than 200 automated QA tests for SEO – so you don’t need to fear website updates going live that could damage your search rankings.
Finally, extensive integrations bring all your data together in one place for easy reporting and analysis.
Deep Crawl: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
Contact sales.
Does it have a free trial?
Contact sales.
What makes it unique?
Deepcrawl can power larger, faster crawls with extensive customization.
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Siteliner
Duplicate content can seriously undermine your SEO progress, which is where this free SEO tool comes in handy. Siteliner will scan your domain and sniff out any duplicate content.
Its findings are presented in a table with a clickable link to the page and the percentage of duplicated content. Click on the link, and the duplicated content is highlighted on your page. This means you can immediately see where the problem text is located and then make edits to remove the duplication.
Siteliner will also scan for broken links and missing page titles.
Siteliner: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$0.01 per page.
Does it have a free trial?
There is a free version of this tool.
What makes it unique?
Siteliner is a real-time saver, especially for bigger sites where content duplication may have occurred naturally over time.
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Linkody
If you hadn’t guessed from the name, Linkody is entirely dedicated to the link building and link management aspect of SEO. Once you’ve entered a URL, Linkody will build a list of domains linking back to that site.
From your dashboard, you have an at-a-glance view of new links built. This confirms the date the link was discovered and whether it’s follow or nofollow, making it easy to keep track of your link acquisition efforts.
Linkody can also help with competitor research. Add a competitor to your dashboard to see a list of their links. You can reverse engineer this list to build a pipeline of new link prospects to work through.
Linkody: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$14.90 – $153/mo.
Does it have a free trial?
Yes. 30 days.
What makes it unique?
You can stack your competitor’s link profile side-by-side with your own for easy comparison.
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Buzzstream
Buzzstream is an outreach CRM and one of the best SEO tools for building links via influencers and digital PR. It is a perfect tool for bigger link-building campaigns and agencies.
The platform takes care of the whole outreach process, with no spreadsheets or email tracking required. You can use it to build lists of bloggers, influencers, and media outlets to secure digital PR placements. For traditional link builders, use Buzzstream to create and manage prospect lists and keep track of acquired links.
There’s also the ability to set reminders, create to-do lists, and assign tasks to other team members.
Buzzstream: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$24 – $999/mo.
Does it have a free trial?
Yes. 14 days.
What makes it unique?
It’s an easy way to find and reach out to influencers and press outlets to build links. The management tools and scalability are big time savers for busy individuals and teams.
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Moz Pro
Moz Pro is arguably one of the most well-known SEO tools out there and will be a familiar name to SEO pros. It is a comprehensive suite of tools designed to cover most areas of search engine optimization.
Use Keyword Explorer to plan your content and identify profitable new phrases to target.
Rank Tracker accurately tracks keyword rankings across any search engine – and can be used to monitor competitors.
Site Crawl is a detailed auditor which will crawl each page on your site to discover hidden errors.
For on-page optimization, the content auditor will consider each page element and provide targeted recommendations for improvement.
Moz Pro: Cost, Trial, and Features
How much does it cost?
$99 – $599/mo.
Does it have a free trial?
Yes. 30 days.
What makes it unique?
Moz Pro is a robust all-in-one suite of SEO tools that makes managing and monitoring SEO performance much easier.
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