A Guide to Important SEO Tools that Boost SERP Ranking

The secret behind a successful SEO campaign is the proper execution of SEO plans with the use of Important SEO Tools. Search engine optimization is a very complex and hard procedure and it takes a good amount of work to reach the top of SERP for your targeted keywords. This is where SEO tools can be a great help to you.

In SEO, you have to perform keyword research, competitor analysis, link building plan and many more for your SEO campaign. So any search engine optimizer would appreciate a convenient tool to make their job easier. Here, in this article, I have discussed a list of Important SEO Tools that you need to ramp up your website rank from day one. So, let’s get started!

List of Important SEO Tools

Many of you will find some of these Important SEO Tools familiar. So don’t be surprised. They are on our list because they are still the best tools out there. Give a try to the tools that you aren’t familiar with and see if they can fit on your SEO strategies.

Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console)

This is one of the most fundamental SEO tools, the Heart of webmaster’s. This tool provides constant website analysis, alerts, and error reports. You will find all kind of information/data about your website like Structured Data, Links to Your Site, Internal Links, Index Status, Crawl Errors, Crawl Stats, Sitemaps, Security Issues etc. But to use this tool you have to install it on your website. If you are running a WordPress website then you can easily add the webmaster code using plugins like Yoast or Jetpack.

Google Analytics

This tool provides complete web stats and searches insights of a website. This is one of those Important SEO Tools to internet marketer like air is to the human being. You can’t live without it. This tool will give you insights into your search traffic, traffic source, how they behave, what device they use, country of origin etc. Moreover, Google Analytics help you find out the pages on your website that get the most impressions and clicks from Google. Log in to your Google Analytics id, then go to “Acquisition –> Search Console –> Landing Pages”.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Google use a website’s page loading speed as a ranking factor. Google PageSpeed Insights let you check the speed and usability of your website on multiple devices. What you need to do is enter the URL and this tool will analyze the speed and overall user experience (UX) of your site and provide a score. A score of 85 or above is the preeminent result for both mobile and desktop. If the score of your website is below par, this tool will outline the necessary fixes, from optimizing images to leveraging browser caching.

Google Mobile-Friendly Test

Google has rolled out the mobile-first index. Moreover, they started to downrank sites that aren’t mobile-friendly. So it’s very important to have a mobile-friendly website. Google Mobile-Friendly Test will help you know if your website is mobile-friendly or not. Just enter the URL of your website and then click the “run test” button. One of the bright sides of this tool is, it not only tells whether the website is mobile-friendly or not but also suggest various ways on how to further optimize your site for mobile devices. For example: if the font size is precise for the mobile, sizing content to the viewport and many more.

Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is the free alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner. This tool offers more than 750 keyword suggestions for a seed keyword including long-tail keywords. What I like most about this tool is, it gives you an option to choose which country to search for keywords as well as the platform (Google, YouTube, Amazon, etc.), and in what language. This is a great SEO tool to find out those very specific phrases that your audience is using to try and find you. The only downsides of this tool are search volume; CPC and AdWords competition are hidden for a free account. The monthly fee for a pro account is from $48 to $88 per month.

AuthoritySpy

Well, the name of this tool gives us a clear hint about itself, isn’t it? AuthoritySpy is one of the most important SEO tools that help us find and analyze the Influential People & Blogs on the Web. If you want to find the top influencer in your niche, want to follow them, and make a connection with them then AuthoritySpy is the right tool for you. This tool pulls search result data from a variety of online sources so that you can skip the manual search for the right information. From 2016, “Influencer Marketing” became an integral part of Digital marketing strategy and with the help of this SEO tool, you can easily master this internet marketing strategy.

Buzzstream

If you are trying to build links through outreach, then Buzzstream is the right SEO tool for you. Because this tool makes the messy job of email outreach and link building process organized. This tool allows you to spend more time on link building than to spreadsheets and monitoring. Buzzstream offers you research prospects, check your site rank, monitor your link building efforts, and many more.

Check My Links

Broken link building is a prominent off-page SEO strategy. If you perform broken link building then Check My Links is a great tool for you. This is a browser extension that quickly checks any webpage for broken links. Only weaknesses of this SEO tool is you have to check every webpage separately.

Disavow.it

As a webmaster, we all know how hard and time consuming the process of removing spammy backlinks manually through search console’s Disavow links. Well, no need to worry as disavow.it quickly turns your list of spammy URLs into a Google-ready disavow file. So you can easily upload the file to Google search console and remove all the URLs at a time.

Linkody

Creating backlinks is hard but monitoring the backlinks is harder. It takes time and manual process for tracking the backlinks. Fortunately, there is an SEO tool like Linkody that lets you know when you get or lose a backlink via emails. For every backlink Linkody provides this information:

• Date added
• Status
• URL from
• Landing page

What I like most about this tool is, you can track and organically search your competitor’s site rank using this tool. So when your competitor gets backlinks you will get a notification through emails. This gives you the opportunity to run along with your competitor. But the sad news is it is a paid tool although you can freely use this tool for 30 days as a trial version.

Raven Tools

Raven Tools is more than an SEO tool as it covers almost every area of SEO. Although many a person will say it’s an agency level tool. But the truth is you don’t have to be part of an agency to use this tool. Raven Tools provide a lot of services that includes:

• SEO Audit
• Marketing Reports
• Keyword Research Reports
• Keyword Ranking Reports
• Research Central
• Social Media

There are another 20 tools that you can use for your SEO campaign. But from my personal experience, I would say the SEO auditor tool of Raven Tools is the best. Because unlike any other tool, this SEO auditor shows you exactly what you can do to improve your website rank. It provides a clear-cut game plan on what to do next. Finally, this tool can be a bit tricky if you don’t learn how to use it. So, spend some time to get hold of this tool.

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is a very popular and one of the most Important SEO Tools created by Moz. It is a comprehensive link analysis tool that offers a complete view of a website’s backlink profile. Moreover, it shows different link metrics like domain authority, page authority, and established links. The downside of this tool is it’s not free. So as a free user you will have limited access to a different section of this tool.

Schema Creator

Schema markup helps Google understand your website’s data better and enhance search visibility via rich snippets, featured snippets, and Knowledge Graph results. Schema Creator helps you create custom code for your reviews, events, organization’s operating hours etc. The best part of this tool is you can copy and paste the schema code to your website once it is created. There is a free WordPress plugin version available for this tool.

SEOQuake

SEOQuake is a browser extension and it is one of the most popular SEO toolboxes out there. It provides SEO information of any given webpage. The information includes domain age, social shares, on-page errors, external links, the total number of indexed pages etc. This tool provides real-time states and errors as well as offer tips on how to correct these errors. So it’s a must-have an extension for your browser if you are working in SEO industry.

SEO Site Checkup

This is a website audit tool. It provides a fast audit of your website. It checks the speed, security, and mobile usability of a site. The best part of this SEO tool is, it provides information on how you can fix the analyzed issues affecting SEO. Unfortunately, it’s a paid tool. But in the free version, you can check websites up to 5 times a day. In the paid version, you can generate more than 300 reports for three websites per month.

SiteLiner

Google prohibits duplication of anything (image/content) on a website and it can lead you a ban from Google. So it’s very important to check your website for any duplication. Siteliner is one of the best SEO tools to find out duplicate content on a website. Simply input the URL and you’ll see all the pages that have duplicate, common, and unique content. In addition, this tool also checks for broken links on your website. This SEO tool allows single checkup every 30 days and it analyzes up to 250 pages.

SEOWorkers

This is another website audit tool. SEOWorkers does not provide anything different on SEO analysis but it saves a lot of time. This tool provides a quick and detailed report. You will find background information on every data they provide. For example: “HTTP Headers Check” data. Normally we ignore this kind of information while auditing a website. The analysis report of SEOWorkers provides data on following sections:

• HTTP Headers Check
• Meta Tag Analysis
• Keywords Relevance
• URLs Analysis
• Anchor Tags Analysis
• Image “alt” Attribute Text
• Heading & Phrase Elements

For new SEOs, it can be information overload. But there’s nothing to worry as SEOWorkers provides a detailed discussion, and often a video (ft. Matt Cutts) on each analyzed category in the report.

QuickSprout

The great thing about QuickSprout is that it is totally free and it provides plenty of crucial information. Unlike other SEO audit tools, this tool offers competitive analysis. This is very important as the success of online marketing depends largely on knowing what your competitors are doing. This SEO tool provides a report on search results preview, page title, Meta description, headings, subheadings, internal links, outbound links, links to your site etc. Finally, to have access to every feature of this tool, your website must be connected to Google Analytics.

Optimizely

SEO is all about split testing and find out which technique works best. Optimizely is a great SEO tool for split testing. For example, you can use this tool to decide which version of your landing page will convert better. This tool provides result supported by live traffic and visitor data. That’s holistic SEO for you that any SEOs or marketing team can collaborate on simultaneously. Unfortunately, Optimizely is a paid tool but you can use this tool for a 30-Day free trial.

SERP Lab

This is one of the most important SEO tools because SEO is all about ranking and it is crucial to know how each of your pages is performing based on their targeted keywords. This tool will show the ranking of your keywords for a specific country, region, language, platform etc. Moreover, this tool is a bulk keyword position checker and you can save your keywords for daily/weekly/monthly check. And what if I say that this tool is free!

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog is a very popular technical SEO tool. It is desktop based software that quickly identifies technical issues that holding your website’s ranking. It provides data on different SEO factors including server errors, broken links, duplicate content, blocked URLs and many more. This tool also analyzes title and Meta description for required length and relevance. Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a crawl limit and its 500 URLs.

WooRank

WooRank is a free Chrome extension that gives insights into some important SEO stuff. You can analyze any website, and generate a report in seconds from within your browser. The report covers:

• SEO Checklist
• Mobile Optimization
• Usability
• Technologies & Speed Test
• Crawl Errors
• Backlinks
• Social Media Engagement
• Visitors Data

You can also use this tool for competitor analysis as it shows you the website’s Facebook and Twitter page information, traffic number, and location, what technology they’re using on their website etc.

SimilarWeb

This is a very important SEO tool for competitor research. You can use this tool to compare traffic between two websites. Most SEOs like this tool because this tool gives insight into your competitor’s traffic figures, organic keywords, engagement metrics and many more. Moreover, if used properly, you can find new outreach opportunities through this tool.

GeoRanker

GeoRanker is an advanced level local SEO rank tracking tool. For local keywords (like Accounting Service Toronto) it’s hard to track the ranking with the conventional rank tracking tools. This tool provides information of over 150 countries with 5000 plus cites. With real-time local SERP ranking report, citation source finder and local SEO competition analysis, this tool will be a great asset to your local SEO campaign. Add your keywords and targeted location and get a report back that shows both your Google organic and Google local results for those keywords.

Long Tail Pro

This is a keyword research tool that allows the user to generate unique long tail keywords. It provides hundreds or thousands of long tail keywords from a single seed keyword or multiple seed keywords. Here are some of the features of this tool:

• Unique keyword competitiveness (KC) feature to find low competitive keywords
• Discover keyword profitability using rank value
• Detailed metrics help scope out the Competition
• Filter, sort, and export results as needed
• Domain and page level in-depth Metrics

UberSuggest

This is a very popular and widely used keyword research tool. UberSuggest helps you find hundreds of keyword ideas from a seed keyword. The tool is very easy to use as it is a free tool and you don’t have to sign-up. You can also export all keyword data to a CSV file saving a lot of time. This tool provides information on search volume, CPC, competition etc. All this data helps you find the right keyword for your content marketing strategy and increase your website’s chances of ranking against the competition. The latest update of this tool includes new features like keyword suggestions from YouTube.

LSIgraph.com

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords are very important for SEO and this keyword research tool generate long-tail and LSI keywords for free. Just enter the seed keyword and this tool will generate a list of LSI keywords. You can use this tool for SEO & PPC keyword research, on-page optimization, and many more.

HEADMasterSEO

This tool is a bulk URL status code (e.g. 200, 301, 404, etc.) and redirects checker. You can also check response time, sitemap’s errors; redirect path, number of redirects, redirect chains & loops, and many more things. You can check up to 500 URLs and export result to CSV. HEADMasterSEO is a free tool and you have to install it on your computer.

Whitespark Local Citation Finder

The citation is very important for local SEO. Whitespark Local Citation Finder helps you find the websites and directories where you can and should list your business. By searching a key phrase or your keywords, you can easily find a niche and local opportunities. Moreover, with the help of this tool, you can Spy on your competitors and monitor their citation growth. Then you can go for those citations and get them for your business too. It’s not a free tool but with a free account, you can have 1 project with 3 Searches/Day.

Power Suggest Pro

This is a desktop based keyword research tool. Enter a keyword and it will reveal keywords ideas from 6 different search engines like Google, Wikipedia etc. This tool helps you identify missed business opportunities, find low-competition long tail keywords, and discover exactly what people are searching for in any niche. A unique feature of this tool is; it works by hitching live keyword suggestions from search engines where other tools work based on data from Google Keyword Planner.

Some Other Important SEO Tools at a Glance

Yandex Metrica: Web analytics software. It provides information on the heat map, traffic, session reply, and many other features.

Varvy: This tool helps you test whether your website is following the Google guidelines or not. If there is any problem this tool tells you what needs fixing.

Readable: This tool analyzes the readability of any content, checks different readability score, text composition, increase ROI, and many more things.

Kraken.io: This tool optimizes website images and increases page loading speed. It also saves storage space and bandwidth.                      

Grammarly: This is a free writing tool that helps you compose high-quality content by uncovering spelling and grammatical errors. It also offers suggestions for impactful content.

Copyscape: This tool is used for uncovering plagiarized content. It detects duplicate content and checks if your articles are original. Moreover, this tool helps you find out if anyone is coping your articles.

Moz Local Listing Score: This tool finds out how your local business looks online. Moz analysis data from more than 15 different sources and shows how your business performs online.

DIBZ: DIBZ is a link building tool that helps you find any type of link opportunities like resource page backlinks, guest posting etc.

GroupHigh: This is blogger outreach software. It looks for blogs related to your keywords or industry and helps you outreach them. You can filter blogs by domain authority and see which blogs are worth reaching out to.

LinkMiner: A great tool for broken link building. This tool looks for broken links on a page and unlike any other tools, it also shows how many links the broken link has pointed to it.

Ninja Outreach: It’s a new but very effective blogger outreach tool. You can reach out influential people in your industry using outreach templates within the tool.

Botify: A very simple Technical SEO and site auditing tool. It provides information on site loading speed, HTML errors, and click depth.

DeepCrawl: DeepCrawl is one of the most important SEO tools that scan every page on your site to give a comprehensive report that contains information about no-indexed pages, duplicate pages, broken internal links, status codes etc.

LinkPatrol: LinkPatrol is a WordPress plugin that allows you to remove or nofollow a bunch of links on your website. This is a very useful and easy to use tool.

Open SEO Stats: It’s a Chrome extension that provides information on Alexa ranking and other rankings, whois, on page SEO, backlinks, indexed pages, and many other things.

Panguin Tool: The Panguin Tool helps webmasters find out if their website is hit by any Google penalty. Link the tool with Google Analytics and it will show if your organic traffic has instability and dropped at the time of a major Google update release.

Can I Rank: A great tool to see if you can rank top 10 in SERP with your keyword. This tool analyzes your webpage and compares with the first-page competition. Can I Rank includes ranking factors like domain authority, page authority, on-page SEO metrics etc.

Link Research Tools: What I like most about this tool is; it highlights backlinks that can put your website at risk of a Google penalty or already caused a penalty. Unfortunately, it’s a paid tool.

ShareMetric: If you want to see what keyword a page ranks for in SERP then this tool is for you. It provides information on page’s social shares, links, and rankings.

The Closure

Well, that’s not the end. There are hundreds of SEO tools out there and it’s very hard to combine all the important SEO tools together. I may have left or forgotten tools that should be on the list. So feel free to share your opinion or mention your favorite SEO tools in the comment section.

Should Read: A Guide to Google Penalties, The Causes & How to Recover