When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, there are so many strategies that a marketer can think of. Because the main objective of any organisation or the marketer would be to outrank their competitor from the search engine. This is where SEO tools take one of the important positions in terms of performing SEO activities. This also raises a common question amongst the individuals is what are SEO tools?
In the year 2021 and beyond, it is crucial for every business to be active in getting traffic from organic search results. Because to get organic traffic to your website without paying a single dime would be a dream for every company. Especially when you are selling products and services to digital consumers, ranking on search engines will be a primary goal.
The SEO tools help in various aspects of Search Engine Optimisation. You absolutely can’t work on optimising search engines without the help of SEO tools. As they help to monitor, strategize, and even forecast the search engine results for your business. This is why SEO tools take a key part in influencing link building activities.
In this blog post, we will talk about what are SEO tools? and why do you need to use them for Search Engine Optimisation?
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What are SEO tools?
SEO tools are basically a software or online application that is used by marketers to monitor, track and research for Search Engine Optimisation activities. There are multiple functions that can be performed through SEO tools. Some of the major functions are researching keywords, coming out with blog topics and finding the backlink opportunity for link building.
The SEO tools are crucial when it comes to analysing and finding organic opportunities. Because the tools are so powerful that you can even analyse your competitors SEO performance for what are the keywords that they are ranking and their overview strategy. You can also check the backlinks that they are receiving and you can devise the same strategy for your business.
This helps you in managing end to end functionality of your website. And SEO tools have the complete power to monitor the performance on the search engine results page.
There are plenty of tools that are available in the market. You can also use these tools for completely free of cost but just to give you a disclaimer that free tools have limited functionalities.
Why do you need SEO tools for your business?
There are multiple benefits and advantages of opting for SEO tools for your business. Starting from getting visibility on the search engines to engaging with your target audience. The list of why you need SEO tools keeps on growing. In this section, I will talk about the benefits of using SEO tools for business.
1. Performing keyword research
This is one of the most important reasons that marketers and businesses opt for SEO tools. As you all know that keyword research is something that is an important component when it comes to performing SEO activities. This creates an opportunity for you to find thousands of keywords that you could not even anticipate for your business. With this amount of opportunities, it is hard for a business or a marketer to resist.
Through the keyword research tools, you get a chance to analyse the top and trending keywords that are relevant to your business. You can use these keywords for websites to rank on the search engine. The SEO tools also help in letting you know what are the keywords that are being searched monthly and the difficulty level. This will help in determining if you want to use those keywords for your website.
You can easily find free tools and paid keyword research tools that do their role. Some of the popular free tools that I can recommend are Google keyword planner, Ubersuggest and keywordtool.io
If you wish to go for a paid subscription with advanced features, you can opt for Ahrefs, SEMRush and long-tail keyword pro.
2. Content analysis
Content analysis is one of the crucial factors when it comes to ranking on a search engine. Because as you know that the blog posts helps in improving the domain authority and page authority of any website. When you are able to improve the SEO scores, you can easily influence the ranking of the website.
Through SEO tools, you can plan out the weekly and monthly content calendar. As you will be getting multiple keyword search related terms ideas. This helps in devising the content strategy for your business. You can also prepare a content calendar based on the competition and difficulty level of the keywords.
BuzzSumo and Ahrefs are some of the popular content analysis tools used by marketers.
3. Website audit
Performing a website audit is one of the basic steps that marketers undertake before link building activities. Because effectively optimising the on-page part of SEO helps in the off-page link building activities as well. When the foundation of the website is not properly optimised according to the SEO guidelines, then there is no use in working on off-page link building exercises.
There are multiple parameters that are analysed by SEO tools when it comes to the website audit. This is a basic indicator where you can determine the condition of your website. And based on the analysis, you need to optimise it so that it satisfies all the parameters of the Google algorithm.
The popular free tools that are available for Website audit are Seoptimer and Seositecheckup. But as always, the free tools have limited functionality. You can opt for SEMRush or Screaming Frog which are the best website auditor tools that are available in the market.
4. Researching for backlinks
As you all know that the backlinks are one of the major factors that influence the ranking of a website. The SEO tools help in finding the backlink opportunity for your business. When you use your website domain name for analysing the SEO tools, it will give you recommendations where you can create backlinks for your website.
The data is based on the results that are extracted from the niche of your industry. The SEO tools will be having all the required information for you to create relevant backlinks. And through that data, you can easily plan activities based on the opportunities which are created by the backlink research tools.
5. Monitor ranking of keywords
Tracking the performance of your keywords is one of the important tasks that need to be performed by any marketer. Because when you get the data of the keyword ranking position of your business, you can invest your time and efforts on the keywords that are underperforming for your website. You can also find the source for why your primary keywords are not ranking on the search engine.
You need to extensively check all the pages and blog posts of your website. As you don’t want to leave any opportunity for optimising it further to drive better results.
Another major component of monitoring the ranking of keywords will help you to know what your competitors are doing. This will help you to get more ideas so that you can optimise your SEO activities.
The popular free SEO tools to monitor the ranking of keywords are SerpRobot and SmallSeoTools. Paid tools are Ahrefs and SEMrush.
6. Competitors analysis
SEO tools are regularly utilised by marketers to do the competitors’ analysis. This strategy helps them to get more ideas and opportunities to optimise their SEO exercises. The SEO tools provide you with such a platform where you can easily compare side by side with target competitors. And based on the finding, you can replicate the same strategies for your website.
Competitors analysis is something that marketers do not notice. This is something that every marketer needs to be aware of and should include in their SEO tactics. If you implement this strategy in a correct way, then you can outrank your competitors from the organic search engine results.
One of the top tools that are freely available for you to perform competitors analysis is Spyfu and Similarweb. For paid tools, you can go for SEMrush and Ahrefs.
7. Improve security and health of a website
Through SEO tools, you get a dashboard to analyse the security factors and health conditions of a website. When you make the changes according to the SEO tools suggestion, this helps in improving safety and boosting the efficiency of your website.
Some of the major parameters that can be undertaken for this criteria would be the HTTPS test, broken link checker, sitemap and robots.txt. These are some of the important factors that marketers can efficiently analyse through SEO tools.
The SEO tools also help in boosting the business workflow of the website. It also enhances the user interface and usability which is more important when we consider an SEO point of view.
Explore: Free SEO and Content Marketing Tools
The bottom line
I hope that this blog answers the question of what are SEO tools. And you might have even explored multiple avenues where the SEO tools can be used.
While there are many benefits of using SEO tools for any business, you need to consider a fact whether the tool is right for your objective. Depending upon the goal of a business, whether you want to use the tool only for a particular constraint that can be keyword research, rank tracking or creating a website audit. You need to proceed ahead by purchasing the relevant SEO tool for it.
Ideally, if you opt for an SEO tool that has all-in-one functionalities, it would be beneficial for your overall business. I agree that this can be slightly expensive, but it is a one-time investment that is worth investing in SEO activities.
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