Top 5 SEO Tools
Maintaining your online content on the web can appear to be overwhelming. With so many potential solutions available, it can be tricky to cultivate a cohesive SEO strategy.
These tools are the top five SEO tools for cutting through the noise and focus on what really matters to you. From optimising existing content to creating something entirely new, these tools will take you to the top of your SEO game.
1. Google Search Console
You may have heard of “Google Webmaster Tools”, it changed its name back in 2015. This tool can improve you SEO of your website by checking your webpages and actively making suggestions as to where you could improve e.g. optimise title tags, check internal and external links as well as provide page speed reports.
A key area of this tool is the Search Traffic section that provides analytics data for each keyword that your website is ranking for, such as clicks, impressions and click through ratio over a given timeframe.
2. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a desktop application for Windows and Mac that allows you to crawl the pages of your website. This is particularly useful if you have a large website with hundreds of URLs and you want to quickly compile information from each page.
Each crawl can pull in a vast array of useful information such as page title / meta description as well as a HTTP response code, which can be used to ensure all your pages are accessible. Creating an XML sitemap is also a breeze with Screaming Frog.
3. SEM Rush
SEMrush is an online tool that allows you to review your organic search visibility. It allows you to conduct effective keyword research by informing you of your best performing keywords and suggests variants of keywords that is likely to generate more search traffic.
The Position Tracking tool allows you to see where you rank for certain keywords as well as offering a comparison with your competitors. As a result, you can benchmark your performance against rivals and target specific keywords that will enable better results and allow you to get priceless insight that will give you the competitive edge.
4. Buzz Sumo
Buzz Sumo is a great way to monitor your social reach for you content. It allows you to see how many shares each piece of content receives, for each platform shared. It allows you to analyse content creation opportunities by highlighting which types of content generate the most traffic.
Additional analysis that Buzz Sumo provides includes audience research, which can provide demographic data of your followers, allowing you to understand who is viewing your content.
5. Majestic SEO
Majestic SEO is a tool that allows you to check the best performing pages of your website and performs a backlink analysis on each. Therefore, you can get a solid understanding of the backlinks performance for each page and build on the links that are working well for you as well as building on the links that could be improved.
The Citation Flow score provides a solid understanding of the amount of traffic that each page receives. Together with this, the other key aspect of Majestic is the Trust Flow, which provides a score for how reputable the links you are referring to.
Conclusion
As I said before, there are an overwhelming amount of SEO tools out there and this article barely scratches the surface in terms of covering them all. The key to a solid SEO plan of action is to get the basics right and slowly build from there. Take on each tool as and when it feels right for you and the content you create.
Extra Reading
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-guide/
https://moz.com/blog/rank-in-2018-seo-checklist
Image credit: Search Engine Land
