SEO is inundated with tools that spit hyperbole such as best, life-changing, or even business saving.
The truth of the matter, most of them suck
Since my inception into the SEO field, I have had the chance to experiment with a number of excellent ones that I will layout in this guide
Best Paid SEO Tools
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most recognized SEO tools alongside Semrush. This paid tool is a fantastic option for serious SEO’s or agencies that need to do high level SEO strategy. Ahrefs backlink analysis is really it’s shining star but it’s Keyword research feature has developed into a serious tool.
Pricing: $99 is the cheapest entry
Semrush
Semrush is my daily driver, thanks to my agencies affinity for high quality software. This paid SEO tool is more than worth the admission cost. If you have one client or 100, this software will aid you exponentially in competitive analysis, keyword research, and link building.
Don’t be afraid of the price tag. Be afraid of what you’re missing
Price: Pricing is reflected above but the entry level price will cost you about $120/month.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is one of the most powerful SEO tools on the market and should be added to any SEO tool kit if you can afford it. This tool should be mandatory for any agency that is serious about extracting high-level website data.
Screaming Frog crawls websites and gets you a complete website overview of status codes, titles, meta descriptions, and just about anything pertaining to a site audit.
The dashboard and functionality might be a bit overwhelming for starters but once you’ve test driven this exceptional paid seo tool, there’s no going back
Price: $209/year. There is also a free trial but that has limited functionality and only allows crawls up to 500 urls
Pro Tip: You can run multiple crawls or compare multiple crawls at the same time. Use this command in your terminal
open -n /Applications/Screaming\ Frog\ SEO\ Spider.app/
Ubersuggest
Neil Patel is the mastermind behind Ubersuggest. As an authority in the space, Patel has developed a solid SEO tool that has constantly improved while staying lower on price. This paid SEO tool will allow users to get a great Keyword report and find potential backlinking opportunities.
Price: $29/month is the lowest price point to access the software. Lifetime costs for each level will run you the cost per month with a 0 on each number
SEO insider tip: Ubersuggest offers a 7 day free trial! Try before you buy
Best Free SEO Tools
Google Search Console
Google Search Console should be the first tool any SEO learns or explores when looking at search data. This free tool is a treasure trove of information when utilized correctly. Analyze clicks, impressions, ctr, & average position ranking of your content
Alongside the ability to track performance factors, Google Search Console provides indexing, internal linking, crawl requests, and many other important seo tools.
Install and get learning today !
Like anything else in life, a tool is only as useful as the user who uses it. Make sure you learn the basics and get to monitoring and measuring your data more successfully in 2022
Universal Google Analytics & Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful free SEO tools that every digital marketer needs to have a grasp on. This incredibly powerful tool allows you to track organic traffic, paid traffic, referral traffic and more.
For the ever-important bottom line, users can establish conversion goals and analyze user traffic flow patterns. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Get yourself with search console and then this tool for immediate SEM success this year.
Google Analytics 4 is the newer version of Universal Analytics and will be the sole Analytics by late 2023. Users on Universal Analytics will have to migrate their data into GA4 before the final switch if they want to keep their historical data.
There are some inherent changes from the UA to GA4 that users will need to adapt to but as of it’s rollout there has been very positive feedback.
Overrated SEO Tools
Moz
Moz is another Paid SEO tool that has some of the highest brand recognition around. Although the name is out there, the tool is not the best. The design and data for keyword research is awful but they do have some positives (some say).
If you’re going to spend money on a tool, use it on any of the other above.
Price: $99/month. They do a free trial so you can test drive it out!
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