SEO tools are an essential component for any online business, blogger, and marketer who is looking to optimise their online income. SEO tools not only relate to search engine optimisation, but can help you develop a strong SEO strategy, gain insights into your competitors, and provide you with essential analytics and data about your performance.

To optimise income from blogging, influencing or online marketing you need to increase visibility and drive traffic to your site or platform. Not only will this result in increased visibility for you and your brand, it also means that your monetisation strategy will be enhanced significantly.

SEO tools will enable you to tighten your own SEO strategies by:

•  Obtaining valuable data about your own and your competitors SEO strategies
•  Provide data relating to traffic numbers and rankings of your competitors
•  Check their backlink profiles
•  Generating important high-converting keywords
•  Saving time and costs on SEO audits
•  Tracking SEO effectiveness and provide metrics
•  Providing useful data visuals such as reader demographics, traffic generation, and the success of marketing strategies
•  Enabling you to showcase your return on investment to clients and brand-partners

SEO and AFFILIATE MARKETING

Do not underestimate the power of SEO tools when it comes to affiliate marketing. For any blogger, YouTuber, and influencer using affiliate marketing links. SEO tools can elevate your affiliate links by working in tandem with your affiliate marketing strategy.  Once your SEO tools and your affiliate marketing strategy is aligned you should end up with high-quality traffic to your site, and this, in turn, will lead to an increase in sales. The best way to align your SEO and affiliate marketing strategies is to do the following:

1.    Discover a profitable niche
2.    Work on your keyword strategy
3.    Deliver great content
4.    Build site authority with relevant backlinks

The best SEO tools will be adaptable to the online environment, this means they will respond to changes in the algorithm, and adapt themselves to ensure you stay ahead of your competitors.  You can’t ever really out-manoeuvre any algorithm, it is an ever changing entity. What you can do is use SEO tools wisely to examine your performance, your competitors’ performance and then strategise to outperform them.

Investing in the right SEO tool is essential.  Free SEO tools can be good but they are a false economy as you will only get the very basic features you need.  We have examined the best SEO tools available so that can help you generate and increase your online profiles and income streams.

SEO TOOLS 2022

Keyword Research Tools

 

 

Keywords are essential for optimisation and the ranking of your website, the right keywords can help you connect to your audience and drive traffic to your website.  Carefully embedded keywords in your content can help people find your site when they search on search engines, so you want to make sure you know what keywords are right for you and which ones work well.  The keywords you need to target are those which are used by people when they type into their search engines.  You need to ask the following questions:

1.  What keywords are people using?
2.  Where are the keywords ranking and how hard are they to rank?
3.  How many people are searching for your keywords?

Effective SEO tools will save having to undertake extensive searches for the right keywords by helping you to identify the best keywords for your site, your business, your brand, and your niche.  The following keyword SEO tools for 2022 are:

 
Google Keywords Planner

 

Google Keyword Planner is the successor of Keyword Tool and can be accessed through the Google Adwords dashboard. Google Keyword Planner is a free and effective tool that generates creative keyword ideas for specific niches. It is a popular keyword tool and is liked because of its affiliation with Google Adwords.  

Google Keyword Planner suggests keyword ideas that you can’t find anywhere else, but it is worthwhile to notice that the keyword filters have been reduced. Instead of being able to search for extensive keywords that are more relevant to the ‘exact matches’, Google Keyword Planner assists with the data only on a specific phrase or broad matches.

PROS:
•  It is free!
•  Allows you to insert up to 3 keywords when looking for suggestions
•  Can insert a URL to search for keywords
•  Allows you to track keywords by location
•  You can examine data going back 4 years
•  Ad-groups tab which is good with PPC advertising
•  User-friendly interface
•  Filters out keywords which a low search volume

CONS:
•  The keyword filters have recently been reduced so you only get broad matches to your keyword
•  Number of keyword suggestions has reduced from 500 to 300
•  Cannot search for related terms
•  No negative keyword data
•  There is no keyword density check

 
Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator

 

Ahrefs Keyword Generator tool is used widely for SEO and backlink information and analysis.  If you want to learn about your competitors and why they are ranking higher Ahrefs can provide you with helpful information.  Its strength lies in its vast index of backlinks.  You can use the backlink checker to find out valuable information about any site or URL.  
Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator tool collects the top 100 keyword ideas for any phrase or seed keyword from the database of over ten billion keywords across the globe. It also reveals the estimated monthly search volume for each suggestion and shows the Keyword Difficulty Scores for keywords.

PROS:
•  Great backlink checker and analysis
•  Good keyword research functions
•  Organic keywords list
•  Assists with content planning
•  Powerful reporting tools
•  Can search out high-authority sites

CONS:
•  Low on technical insights
•  Not user-friendly interface and dashboard
•  Can be costly and there is no free trial
•  Cannot integrate with Google Analytics

 

KWFinder

 

KWFinder will help you find long-tail keywords that have lower levels of competition and therefore rank easily. The experts use this tool to explore keywords and run analysis reports on backlinks and SERP (Search Engine Results Page).  

KWFinder is great for those people who want to uncover their competitor’s keywords and those who want a really simple keyword search tool.  

PROS:
•  Clean interface and user-friendly
•  Can localise keyword results
•  Filter enables you to remove non-profitable keywords
•  Provides keyword measurements in terms of difficulty
•  Different ways to search for keywords
•  Can access search volumes and trends
•  Facilitates multiple logins for teams

CONS:
•  It can be an expensive option
•  No live chat service
•  Keyword results can be limited
•  No customisation of SERPChecker

 
Answer the Public

 

Answer The Public is an innovative visual keyword research tool.  It works by extracting information from Google and Bing searches. It creates a unique visual of the most searched questions and gives you a visual depiction of the results which includes the questions asked and the keywords used.
Answer the Public finds frequently asked questions on social media, forums, blogs and turns those questions into keywords. It is useful for those marketers with a specific niche as you can uncover valuable data relating to your niche.

PROS:
•  Three free searches every day (pro features offer unlimited searches)
•  User-friendly
•  Multiple users can be added to one pro account
•  Saves reports so you can refer back
•  Can export data about keywords
•  Good customer support
•  Can customise the results

CONS:
•  No keyword difficulty analytics
•  Only includes Google and Bing search engines
•  Cannot download images in bulk
•  Cannot change location unless you have a pro account

 

On-Page SEO Tools

On-page SEO refers to optimisation web pages to ensure they rank high and bring traffic to your site. On-page is essentially the HTML source and the content of individual web pages. Off-page SEO includes things like inbound and external links.  

On-page SEO is essential because it ensures that search engines can analyse the information and content from your website and identify if searches being made are relevant to your site.  On-page SEO will benefit you because it is:

•  Cheap and a powerful marketing tool
•  Easy to control and manage
•  Has better conversion rates
•  Improved click-through rates
•  Ability to enhanced meta description and meta title
•  Generates organic traffic

Here are our top SEO tools for on-page SEO.

 
SEO Crawler

 

SEO Crawler is one of the leading on-page SEO tools and is trusted by millions of businesses. This tool has been the industry’s favourite for so long because it helps their sites boost their rankings and visibility. SEO crawler gives you the freedom to analyse your site, with this amazing tool you get to know the page speed, duplicate content, duplicate tags, keyword optimisation and broken links. It minimises the manic hours of manual work with the speedy automation process, saving your time, and money.

PROS:
•  Provides analytics and competitor information
•  Good audit
•  Multi-threaded app with good crawling function

CONS:
•  Some of the software is a bit dated
•  Can be slow when crawling lots of pages

 
SEMrush

 

The on-page SEO provided by SEMRush allows you to easily manage and monitor your rankings. To improve the website’s performance and visibility SEMrush assists by helping you to identify competitors and their content, and gives you the important data you need to enhance your website’s ranking.  SEMRush compares your website to the rivals in the market, providing you data relating to their search terms and strategies. One of the most popular features of this SEO tool is the Domain Vs Domain analysis, with this feature you’ll be able to compare keywords and domains with others in your niche. SEMRush also produces excellent site audits identifying issues that need your attention.

PROS:
•  Huge keywords database
•  Innovative and constantly updating to keep abreast of new changes
•  Provides keyword data and historical trends information

CONS:
•  Can be more expensive than other tools
•  Customer support can be slow
•  Difficult to understand on first use

 
Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar

 

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar is a Firefox and Chrome extension that displays SEO metrics in the browser.  This SEO toolbar generates an on-page SEO report for the visited page. The report delivers insight into important features such as the word count, page title, meta description, headers, OG tags, URLS, domain rating, and more. A popular feature of the Ahrefs SEO tool is that it provides metrics which can then be used to optimise your own site.

PROS:
•  Superb backlink analysis feature
•  2 months free for monthly billing

CONS:
•  Can be inaccurate when it comes to traffic statistics
•  Domain reports do not have enough filters

 

Link Building Tools

Let’s move onto the top picks for link-building, our team of experts has pulled out the best tools to spike the growth of your business.

Before we tell you about the best link building tools, let’s talk about what link building is and why it’s important for SEO. Link building helps your site build credibility and help you to stand out as an authority in your niche.  Links not only help your site to rank, but they can increase traffic to your site, and generate revenue, sales and conversions.

One of the major factors in how Google ranks your site relates to link building.  If you have good, high-quality links to other sites then Google is more likely to rank your web pages.  Search engines use links to determine the ranking of your site, but it is important that the links are good quality and not sporadic and irrelevant.

 

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is one of the most popular web crawlers out there, it’s a desktop application but still crawls pages quickly and efficiently. To use Screaming frog, you need to download and install it on your device. You don’t have to manually audit the site by visiting each and every page, Screaming Frog will do this for you.  Screaming frog can be integrated with Google Lighthouse and Google Search Console.  Screaming Frog will check your links and let you know if any links have been removed following a link audit.
The pricing for this tool comes in both paid and free versions.

PROS:
•  Can be used as an extension for Google searches
•  Provides valuable meta tag data and information
•  Audits backlinks
•  User-friendly
•  Supplies page word counts
•  Integrates with Google Search Console and Google Lighthouse

CONS:
•  Interface can be hard to understand
•  Site speed sometimes slow
•  No data relating to duplication of content and links

MozBar

Founded way back in 2004, Moz is one of the earliest SEO tools to be formed.  Mozbar’s Chrome Extension provides you with informative metrics for results on the SERPs, and this increases site visibility.  Moz deals with link prospecting, backlink monitoring, and link processing – all essential when you are trying to improve your link building. Moz reviews all the inbound links to your site, their quality, diversity, and analyses the links to provide you with a comprehensive link profile.
 
MozBar ALSO gives you quick insights into the top results for a particular searched query.  The metrics that you get for the searched results are:

•  Page authority
•  Domain authority
•  Number of links

PROS:
•  Excellent search volume metrics
•  Competitor data and assessments
•  Longstanding leader in the SEO world
•  Opportunities for link building and research

CONS:
•  Interface not as user-friendly as other sites
•  Crawls and audits limited depending on membership
•  Not good for larger businesses with complex websites

Majestic

Majestic’s software specialises in the analysis of links and checks all the links to your website, whilst also providing backlink data about your competitor’s websites.  Using the information provided you can analyse what links are performing well, which links are no longer of use and whether there are any links you need to add to improve your site.  Majestic will track your backlinks

PROS:
•  Easy to use
•  Extensive URL database
•  Tracks in real-time
•  Provides easy to use charts and data visuals

CONS:
•  Does not rank keyword difficulty and backlink rankings
•  No historic index tool
•  The backlink checker sometimes misses links
•  Difficult to generate and export reports

Internet Marketing Ninjas

Internet Marketing Ninjas provides link building services for websites with the aim of ensuring that website ranking and authority is increased. They like to pride themselves on being the best link building company out there, having been founded in 1999.  

PROS:
•  Offer link building and content creation services
•  Offer links from trusted sites
•  Create trusted content
•  Natural outreach
•  Find and redirect broken links

CONS:
•  Site is dated and needs updating
•  Expensive

 

Technical SEO Tools
 

Technical SEO tools enhance the technical aspects of your website such as duplication issues, sitemaps, site speed, and ensuring your site is easily accessible by mobile users. Technical SEO tools will ensure that when search engines are producing search results your site is given preferential treatment on account of it having good technical SEO.  Things like ensuring your website is responsive to users, loads quickly and efficiently, has no content issues, and has structured data means your site is more likely to be ranked well by search engines.

Here are some of the best technical SEO tools you can use.

 
Google Search Console

Google Search Console previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, helps you monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance in the SERPs. You can also fix technical errors with Google Search Console, submit the sitemaps, see structured data issues, and check your site speed.

PROS:
•  Identifies site errors
•  Tracks your site position and impressions
•  Good technical feedback on SEO including site speed
•  Checks mobile usability
•  Overview can be shared with others

CONS:
•  HTML sitemaps are not accepted
•  Coverage report can be too detailed
•  Hard to use for beginners to SEO

 

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a free tool to boost the SEO performance of your website. Ahrefs helps to monitor the overall SEO growth of your website. It also ensures that can audit and conduct regular hygiene checks on your website, and it reviews all your backlinks, the keywords you are ranking for, the traffic you are receiving and any internal linking opportunities. Ahrefs Webmaster tool also looks at your organic keywords, your SEO health score, your organic traffic, and all these features are free.

PROS:
•  Identifies site issues and advice on fixing issues
•  Provides key metrics such as search volume, links, and speed
•  Checks for broken links

CONS:
•  Domain reports do not have enough filters
•  No in-depth technical analysis

 
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test evaluates the performance and responsiveness of your websites on mobile devices. It checks how your site looks and performs when a visitor comes across your site, and it identifies specific mobile-usability issues such as text that’s too small to read.  It also filters out the use of incompatible plugins, with the aim of making sure mobile users do not have accessibility issues.  Any website owner can insert their URL into Google and find out whether their site is mobile-friendly if it is easy to navigate and read, and how it scores.

 

Rank Tracking SEO Tools

Rank tracking is a process that enables you to monitor your website’s ranking in search engines.  If you have been putting in the effort to improve your site SEO, rank tracking helps you to assess whether your SEO efforts are working or not.  Rank tracking tools will assist you in identifying where your site ranks, whilst also enabling you to check the ranking of your competitors.

The following tools will help you can track and check rankings.  

 

Ahrefs’ SERP Checker

Ahrefs’ SERP (search engine results page) checker is an eminent rank tracking tool. The hallmarks of this tool include the top 10 rankings for any keyword in over 170 countries, this facilitates local and global rank tracking. For the first three search results, the number of referring domains, backlinks, and estimated search traffic will also show up to help you gain better insights into your tracking.   

PROS:
•  Tracks ranking of sites and also keywords
•  Easy to use and intuitive for rank tracking
•  URL ratings provided
•  Data relating to competitors domain ranking and keywords they rank for
 
CONS:
•  Keywords are not regularly updated for tracking purposes
•  No real data about how rankings change

 

Mobile Moxie

Mobile Moxie’s SERP tool enables you to view the mobile rankings of your site in real time.  You can create screenshots of search results as they happen, checking your mobile rankings in any location, right down to an address, city, state, or zip code. Mobile responsive devices change the look and feel of most search results, and this tool enables you to compare devices.  This means you can localise your SEO depending on location, and track your site performance and change it if you need to.

PROS:
•  Facilitates spot checks on locations
•  Those with membership can also check SERP changes within a 10 mile radius
•  Can check historical SERP data

CONS:
•  Can be time-consuming if you have numerous locations to check
•  Tools need to be updated
•  Dated interface

 
Analytical SEO Tools
 

Having analytical information in relation to your site enables you to build a complete picture of your site performance.  Analytics relating to traffic, keywords and users helps you to acquire organic traffic.  Knowing how many people visit your site, how they use your site, what they are looking for, and where they are coming from will enable you to build a strong SEO strategy so you can capture the interest of your visitors.  

The following tools assist you in measuring and evaluating your website’s data.

 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most trusted and reliable analytics tools out there. Google Analytics provides you with high-quality and specific data, improving every aspect of your website’s marketing.  Analysing your digital data, Google Analytics provides you with key information about your website audience which you can utilise to build a higher conversion rate.  You can also use the data provided to see what is working well and what needs to change.

PROS:
•  Provides performance across platforms, demographics, and technologies
•  Increases your site visibility
•  Sophisticated interface
•  Free
•  Worldwide stats
•  Reliable and accurate
•  Website visitors counted

CONS:
•  Can be complex to use for new users
•  Not considered totally independent
•  Poor customer support
•  No real tracking long-term

Neil Patel’s SEO Analyzer

Neil Patel is well-known in the digital marketing world, he has developed an analyser tool to help websites get more traffic.  This analyser tool is totally free, the visual layout of this SEO analyser is uncluttered, smart, and intuitive. Just plug in your URL, and this tool will spend about 10 minutes crawling your site. Besides the evaluation, this free tool provides comprehensive and useful information including SEO score, traffic scores, and backlinks.  This is a great tool for anyone starting out with SEO and wanting a simple and effective tool to be able to analyse their site data.

This handy tool determines if your site performs well on mobile devices or not.

PROS:
•  Free
•  Intuitive and easy to use
•  Smart interface
•  Fast and accurate results

CONS:
•  Limited features
•  Not enough social media metrics

 
Backlink Analysis

A backlink, sometimes referred to as an inbound link, refers to a link that links one website to another one.  Building quality links is the backbone for a successful site, finding the best links and tools for backlink analysis can massively enhance the authority and ranking of your site.  A good backlink analysis will show you all the links relating to your site, and how they impact on your site’s performance.  Backlink analysis will also help you to identify any links that are bad and need removing.  Checking your competitor’s backlinks will ensure that you are also keeping an eye on their site authority and backlink viability.  

The following tools will help you with your site’s backlink analysis.

 
Ahref Backlink Tool

 

Ahrefs Backlink Tool enables you to find out how strong the backlinks on your site are, what sites link to your web page, and what anchor links they are using. Ahrefs Backlink analysis tool contains an analysis option, and you’ll also be able to analyse your competitor’s backlinks.  You can analyse who your competitors are linking to, and which backlinks are working for them, whilst searching for backlinks relevant to your niche.

PROS:
•  Massive links database
•  Monitors and tracks backlinks
•  Provides data about competitors backlinks
•  Comprehensive backlink data

CONS:
•  No link suggestions
•  More backlink filters needed
•  No real backlink profiling

 

SEOQuake

If you want to elevate and enhance your content and provide you with essential analytics then SEO Quake can help you.  SEO Quake is a plugin that offers services including site audits, keyword density reports, link analysis, and social metrics.  SEO Quake also enables you to view the metrics related to the number of pages Google has indexed.  You can use the plugin to review and evaluate the top search results quickly and effectively.

PROS:
•  Provides data relating to internal and external links
•  Keyword density checker
•  Compares domains and URLs
•  Advertising reports
•  Offers comprehensive SEO package

CONS:
•  Dated design
•  Keyword density percentages provided without rationale
•  Toolbar not intuitive

 
Neil Patel - UBERSUGGEST

 

Any website owner needs to understand their backlink profile.  Ubersuggest is a useful tool for backlink analysis, and it works quickly and accurately.  Ubersuggest is free to use and not only does it generate new keywords for you to use, it also notifies you with the overall number of backlinks to your website, the number of referring domains, and it tracks new “follow” backlinks, “no-follow” backlinks, lost “follow” backlinks, and lost “non-follow” backlinks as well.  Through Ubersuggest you can develop key insights into your SEO strategy and see what is working and what is not.  You can also see what your competitors are doing, and then tweak your own SEO to ensure your traffic, income, and site authority is maximised.

PROS:
•  Works on optimising sites
•  Researches competitors
•  Tracks and monitors backlinks
•  Easy to use
•  Good for basic SEO

CONS:
•  Not easy to export reports
•  Navigation can be slow

Content Optimisation

Content Marketing is an effective and recognized strategy for generating leads and driving traffic in bulk to your websites. In order to be successful with content optimisation, you need to ensure your content is high quality, engaging and enticing for your readers. The amount of content that is produced and placed online every day is staggering and the trends are changing drastically. Content Optimisation is a strategy that makes content attractive and actionable to Google and other search engines.

Content optimisation ensures that your content is able to reach the audience it is aimed at, and a good content optimisation strategy includes relevant keywords, meta title and tags, and links.  If your content is optimised your site will rank higher in search engine results, and this will drive traffic to your website generating leads and income.

 
SEMRush

SEMRush can elevate your content optimisation. SEMRush provides you with guidance relating to keywords, keyword density, alt attributes, and links with the purpose of ensuring your content is readable, accessible and maximised.  

PROS:
•  Easy to use
•  Provides good guidance
•  Readability ratings
•  Word count provided
•  Shows target keywords
•  Plagiarism checker

CONS:
•  Often lists too many target keywords
•  Subscription limits apply
•  Cannot import keywords

 

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a product from Google that evaluates the on-page content of your website, and provides you with suggestions about the management and quality of your speed.  The speed of your page does directly impact your page ranking, so you need to ensure that that your server response time is good, and that you avoid a high bounce rate once visitors arrive on your site.  
Typically, your has less than 7 seconds to attract the attention of the users and visitors, and 53 percent of mobile site users will leave your site if they do not find something which engaged them in that first 7 seconds.  PageSpeed Insights

PROS:
•  Offers assessment of mobile and desktop
•  Provides feedback on site speed and performance
•  Individual page speed insights
•  Provide data about compression and optimisation

CONS:
•  Language can be very technical
•  Cannot analyse locations
•  Sometimes provides speed insights but without solutions

Price Comparison - SEO Tools

Name	Price	Other Monthly Plans
Ahrefs	$99 per month	Standard: $179 Advanced: $399.99
Google Keywords Planner	FREE
KWFinder	$49 per month	Premium: $60.00
		Agency: $129.00
Answer The Public	Free to use but plans start at $99 per month	Annual: $79.00 Enterprise: $399.00
SEO Crawler	From $10 per month	Advanced: $20.00 Enterprise: $50.00
SEMRush	$119 per month	Guru: $229.95 Business: $449.95
Screaming Frog	$205.00 per annum
MozBar	$99 per month	Medium: $99 Premium: $599
Majestic	$49 per month	Pro: $99 Full: $399.99
Internet Marketing Ninjas	$49 per month	Pro: $124.00 Enterprise: $199.99
Google Search Console	FREE – standard version
Mobile Moxie	$29 per month	Team: $99 Pro: $299 Enterprise: $399
Google Analytics	FREE – standard version
Neil Patel’s Analyzer	FREE
SEOQuake
Ubersuggest	$39 per month	Business: $67 Business: $67
PageSpeed Insights	FREE