As a digital marketer, staying ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world of search engine optimisation is crucial. To help you navigate the sea of SEO tools available, I’ve compiled a list of the top 10 tools that I use everyday as an SEO specialist. While these tools have their pros & cons having a variety of tools can often help you get the most out of each tool.
Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, these tools will help you optimise your website, analyse your competitors, and improve your overall SEO strategy. This article will cover what each of my favourite & best SEO tools does, the pros and cons, the pricing, and why you should use it.
1. Google Search Console
Description: Google Search Console is a free web service provided by Google that helps you monitor and improve your site’s performance on Google search results. It is one of the best free SEO tools that gives you insights into how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks your pages, as well as how users interact with them. You can also use it to submit sitemaps, request indexing, fix errors, optimise your snippets, and more.
Pros: Free to use, provides valuable insights into your website’s performance on Google, and helps you identify and fix issues.
Cons: Limited to Google search data only.
Paid or Free: Free.
Why Use It: Google Search Console is a must-have for any website owner, as it provides critical information about how your site is performing in Google search results.
2. Semrush
Description: Semrush is one of the most popular and best all in one SEO tools on the market. It allows you to do keyword research, competitor analysis, site audit, backlink analysis, content marketing, and much more. You can also use it to track your rankings, traffic, and conversions across different platforms and devices.
Pros: Comprehensive set of tools, in-depth competitor analysis, and user-friendly interface.
Cons: Relatively high pricing for small businesses.
Paid or Free: Paid with a free version available.
Why Use It: Semrush provides a one stop shop for all your SEO needs, it gives you valuable insights into your website’s performance and helps you identify new opportunities for growth.
3. Screaming Frog
Description: Screaming Frog is a desktop-based SEO tool that crawls your website and analyses various technical aspects of it. It helps you identify and fix issues such as broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, slow pages, and more. You can also use it to generate XML sitemaps, extract data from HTML elements, and visualize your site structure. Screaming Frog is widely known as one of the best SEO marketing tools available with most seasoned SEO professionals using it.
Pros: In-depth website analysis, customizable reports, and frequent updates.
Cons: Limited to 500 URLs in the free version, and it can have a steep learning curve.
Paid or Free: Paid with a limited free version.
Why Use It: Screaming Frog is essential for conducting a thorough technical SEO audit and identifying areas for improvement on your website.
4. Yoast SEO Plugin
Description: Yoast is a popular Free WordPress plugin that helps you optimise your website for search engines. It provides real-time content analysis, readability checks, and on-page SEO recommendations. Yoast offers a premium version which hosts several additional tools however in my opinion the Free version is all you need to optimise your website’s content effectively.
Pros: User-friendly, offers actionable SEO suggestions, and integrates seamlessly with
WordPress.
Cons: Some advanced features are only available in the premium version.
Paid or Free: Both free and paid versions are available.
Why Use It: Yoast is an essential tool for WordPress users, as it helps you optimise your content for search engines and improve the overall quality of your website.
5. KW Finder by Mangools
Description: KW Finder is a keyword research tool that helps complete keyword research and find long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. It provides valuable insights into search volume, CPC, and keyword competitiveness. KW finder is an excellent KWR tool that allows you to find search volumes at a much more localised level. It offers the ability to search by suburb, city, country which can help you to find more accurate Keyword data for local SEO campaigns.
Pros: User-friendly interface, Ability to search keywords by specific locations (cities & suburbs), accurate keyword difficulty metrics, and comprehensive keyword research features.
Cons: Limited to a certain number of keyword lookups in the free version.
Paid or Free: Paid with a limited free version.
Why Use It: KW Finder is a powerful tool for discovering profitable keywords and optimizing your content for better search engine rankings.
6. SEO Meta in 1 Click – Chrome Extension
Description: SEO Meta in 1 Click is a handy Chrome extension that allows you to view and analyse the meta tags and other on-page elements of a webpage with a single click. You can use it to check your own pages or spy on your competitors’ pages. It shows you the title, description, keywords, canonical URL, headers, images, links, social media tags and more. It’s very useful for auditing your site and finding any issues or opportunities for improvement. While SEO Meta In 1 Click is a pretty simple tool it the best SEO tool I use for reviewing competitors websites & on-page optimisations.
Pros: Lightweight and easy to use, provides quick access to on-page SEO elements and helps you analyse your competitors’ metadata.
Cons: Limited to on-page elements analysis only.
Paid or Free: Free.
Why Use It: This extension is a time-saving tool for quickly analyzing on-page SEO elements and gaining insights into your competitors’ metadata.
7. Ubersuggest
Description: Ubersuggest is an all-in-one SEO tool that offers features such as keyword research, site audit, backlink analysis, and more. It also provides content ideas and domain overview. Ubersuggest also allows you to track the performance of your website with keyword tracking & other automated site audit tools.
Pros: Comprehensive set of SEO tools, user-friendly interface, and frequent feature updates.
Cons: Some advanced features are only available in the paid version.
Paid or Free: Both free and paid versions available.
Why Use It: Ubersuggest is a valuable tool for conducting keyword research, analyzing your website’s performance, and gaining insights into your competitors’ strategies.
8. Bing Webmaster Tools
Description: Bing Webmaster Tools is a suite of free tools that helps you monitor and improve your site’s performance on Bing. These tools are the equivalent of Google Search Console. It allows you to submit your site, sitemap and URLs to Bing, check your site’s health and crawl errors, analyse your traffic and keywords, optimise your site speed and mobile-friendliness, test your site’s compatibility with different browsers and devices, and more.
Pros: Free to use, provides valuable insights into your website’s performance on Bing, and helps you identify and fix issues.
Cons: Limited to Bing search data only.
Paid or Free: Free.
Why Use It: While Google is the dominant search engine, Bing Webmaster Tools is still important for optimizing your site for Bing and reaching a wider audience.
Check out my guide on setting up Bing Webmaster Tools for more details.
9. Surfer SEO
Description: Surfer SEO is a comprehensive on-page SEO tool that helps you analyse and optimise your content based on the top-performing pages for your target keywords. It analyses the top-ranking pages for any keyword you enter and gives you a detailed breakdown of the factors that affect their rankings, such as word count, keyword density, headings, images, links, schema and more. It also gives you a content editor that helps you write or edit your content according to the best practices of your niche.
Surfer also offers a Chrome Extension that allows you to find new keywords related to searches you make directly in Google.
While I have not fully utilised Surfer SEO’s tools yet, I have heard great things about it being one of the best SEO optimisation tools for creating content.
Pros: In-depth content analysis, actionable recommendations, and user-friendly interface.
Cons: Relatively high pricing for small businesses.
Paid or Free: Paid with a free trial available.
Why Use It: Surfer SEO is a powerful tool for optimizing your content and improving your on-page SEO based on real-time data from top-performing pages.
10. Chatgpt, Bing Chat, Google Bard
Description: While these AI tools aren’t specifically SEO tools, it has become something I use daily to help with productivity and overall workflow for my SEO clients. Using these tools to create content is not something I recommend, however, they are great for ideation. Some of the main things I use AI chatbots for is generating content ideas, keyword research ideas, writing website schema, writing social content & GBP posts and much more.
Pros: Quick to get ideas, Anyone can use them and generate decent output.
Cons: The accuracy of the responses can sometimes be flawed, lack of context which means I need to spend additional time creating prompts & providing context.
Paid or Free: Free
Why Use It: Using AI chatbots is a great way to boost your productivity and help save time on smaller everyday tasks.
While these are just the top 10 best SEO tools that I use on a daily basis, there a countless other tools that are useful and can be used to help with your Search engine optimisation. No matter if you’re a seasoned SEO or if you’re just getting started majority of these tools have both free and paid versions so that you can take advantage of them at any level.
If you’re looking for help with your SEO, or want more info on the latest and greatest SEO tools that I’ve been using then get in touch with me. Let’s have a chat about all things digital marketing!
