Which tools should you use for your SEO?

November 18, 2021 - Anaïs Sautarel
SEO
22522 views

12 minutes

When you have a website, SEO is essential to enable search engines to describe the content of your website and make it visible to your target audience. It’s a necessity and a priority to create a high-ranked website.

But, sometimes, it’s difficult to understand, implement the good practice and analyse results.

It’s essential to use tools to boost your SEO. You’ll save time and energy when you start on the internet.

Here are some SEO analysis tools to optimize your Google ranking.

SEO audit: why do you need it?

What is a SEO audit, and why is it important?

A website audit refers to the analysis of your website ranking and quality. Thanks to the audit, you know if your website is effective and relevant and then, you can improve it.

Therefore, it’s essential to review your website regularly, such as after major changes to optimize it as much as possible and give you the chances to highlight your content.

To that end, there are many solutions such as more or less complete tools and extensions. Here is a selection of SEO tools with the most adapted recommendations to optimize your website.

 

Stop waiting and learn how to improve the ranking of your website!

Create a website

SEO tools: search keywords

Searching for keywords is useful for several reasons. It enables you to:

  • know your target audience’s questions and requests

  • know your competitors’ ranking

  • define yours

Searching for keywords may be tedious and time-consuming if you don’t use the right tools. 

 

Speaking of right tools…

Google Keyword Planner

google keyword planner

This Google's tool helps you find the right keywords for your ad campaigns. It’s possible to convey your ads to the audience who suits you. It enables you to offer a targeted and relevant ad.

This tool is easy to use. In the search bar, enter the expressions, words, semantic fields related to your business, project, or product. Keyword Planner shows a list with relevant keywords for your activity. Then add these keywords to your advertising strategy, finalize and launch your online ad campaigns.

After creating your Google Ads account, you will have access to different actions:

  • create ads

  • analyse them

  • define budgets

  • plan your keywords

🤑 Google Keyword Planner is totally free.

Attention
Info warning
You need a Google Ads account to use this tool.

✔️ Google Keyword Planner is totally accessible and enables you to draw your inspiration from a wide range of keywords for your content creation. You can also rank for your specific keywords, as Google Keyword Planner suggests keywords close to the terms you have entered into the internal search bar.

❌ However, contrary to other tools, you can’t distinguish search volume according to the type of devices (mobile, desktop…) with Google Keyword Planner. Therefore, don’t hesitate to use other tools in addition to your Google Ads account to draw benefit.

SEMrush

semrush

SEMrush is the essential tool to follow the SEO trends of your business sector. It offers you the most used and specific keywords, such as the keywords of your competitors and leaders of your sector.

If you exploit all the possibilities of SEMrush, your website will rank on the first page of Google. It’s a complete and high-performance tool you must use to manage your SEO.

Its features will enable you to:

  • know all the keywords used in your sector

  • provide ideas for creating content and using the right keywords

  • get detailed information about your competitors

✔️ SEMrush is more complete than its competitors and provides access to the necessary features to enhance SEO.

❌ However, even if SEMrush has a limited free version, this tool is expensive. The less expensive plan of SEMrush costs $99 per month.

🤑 Pricing:

  • $99.95 / month with the Pro plan

  • $19.95 / month with the Guru plan

  • $39.95 / month with the Business plan

AnswerThePublic

answer the public

This platform helps you know internet users’ questions according to your keywords.

It will also help you think up new relevant contents: it’s perfect to provide ideas for content that will answer internet users’ frequently asked questions, as well as rank and redirect traffic to your website.

🤑 Moreover, AnswerThePublic is totally free!

✔️ At the time of the boom of voice command used for questions, this tool may be very useful.

❌ However, AnswerThePublic is still a basic tool you must use with others to realize an effective SEO analysis.

Ubersuggest

ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a well-designed tool that will indicate the volume of keywords you will enter into the internal search bar. You will know keyword relevance and the interest of internet users for them, and the tool will offer you related keywords.

✔️ It’s an intuitive, fast and effective tool which is totally free and available from your computer. So don’t hesitate and test it!

❌ Such as for the previous tool, you must use Ubersuggest with other analysis tools to get a complete vision of the keywords you want to rank for.

SEO tools: rank tracking

Once you have found your relevant keywords for your SEO strategy, you have optimized each page according to them. However, for knowing if it works fully and making some modifications, here is a summary of the best tools to follow your ranking.

Google Search Console

google search console

It’s the essential tool to see your SEO strategy through. You must keep an eye on the dashboard and use the different configurations of Google Search Console. Google results are reliable and quality. You must use them as a landmark to lead your SEO strategy.

✔️ All the Google Search Console features are free.

❌ Google Search Console is very intuitive and complete. That’s why you will need time to understand and used it totally.

Monitorank

monitorank

You already know Monitorank: it’s a tool that offers you a complete follow-up of your website. It analyses rankings as well as an evaluation of your keywords.

This tool enables you to enhance your website traffic and follow your competitors’ ranking. It’s a real landmark in rankings analysis.

✔️ Monitorank analyses data from several search engines, including the search engines used abroad.

❌ Even if its prices are few expensive, you have to pay for Monitorank.

🤑 You have to pay €5 per month to analyse 100 keywords, or €53 per year.

SEO Hero Ninja

seo hero ninja

SEO Hero Ninja is an intuitive and free software to know your keyword ranking compared to another keyword; that means you can adapt your strategy easily.

❌ This tool just compares one keyword at a time.

Majestic

majestic

You want to know the number of backlinks on your website?

Thanks to this tool (or your competitors’ ones) for analysing your net linking, you can get information about your backlinks: the number of redirect links and reference domain names, their quality, and popularity as well as the links you have won and lost over time.

✔️ This solution indexes the Web alone, without Google. In this way, it has an up-to-date database, which is also enhanced every hour.

❌ Majestic is still an alternative to the more complete tool Ahrefs.

🤑 Moreover, you can’t accede to all its features with the free plan. To enjoy all the features, you have to pay €40 per month.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs

As Ahrefs says, “you don’t have to be an SEO pro to rank higher.”

This renowned tool is easy to use and enables you to audit your website, analyse your competitors, explore the relevant keywords for your customers and follow the progress of your website in search results.

✔️ Ahrefs is an easy-to-use and major tool in the field of rank tracking. Large companies and professionals use this tool a lot.

❌ The tool may not suit a small team or a single person.

🤑 Indeed, there is no free version and its basic plan costs $99 per month.

SEO tools: performance audit

Your website loading speed is an important criterion. The websites that show up on the first page of Google load faster than the websites that rank on the last search results. A fast website is a website whose loading time is less than 1.5 seconds, and most users require a maximum loading time of 4 seconds. However, remember that you may be penalized if your website is too slow.

Here is our selection of tools that will help you know if you need to address the issue.

Webpagetest

webpagetest

As its name suggests, this tool enables you to implement performance tests on your websites. This open-source and appreciated tool enables you to launch complete tests, while varying conditions such as:

  • the type of browser

  • the type of device (tablet, desktop, mobile…)

  • the type of connexion

  • the place

It only takes a glance to accede to a representation of the loading of the elements that make your page on your browser, with the number of seconds. For example, it will be possible to see the hierarchy of your element execution in the time. Classy!

✔️ This free, open-source tool is available from any browser.

❌ To get an advanced and complete analysis of your website performances, the tool must be used with others.

TestMySite

testmysite

It’s a Google tool to evaluate your website performances and know the global loading speed of both your website and a separate website. In this way, you have the possibility to make further analysis of the valid pages and pages that need to be optimized.

🤑 Moreover, TestMySite is totally free.

✔️ TestMySite is a Google tool based on the criterion and data of the most popular search engine in the world and from which most visitors come to your website.

❌ You can receive Google’s advice to enhance your website performances, but just for 5 pages of your website.

Screaming Frog

screaming frog

It’s a complete SEO audit tool to analyse your website data to bring the necessary modifications later. This famous and widely used tool is a powerful crawler that scans much data.

You just need a local installation on your computer, and then enter the URL of the website you want to audit. Moreover, Screaming Frog put an English blog at your disposal to learn more.

✔️ You can install Screaming Frog on Mac and PC.

❌ You can analyse 500 URLs with the free version.

🤑 To enjoy all the features of this software, you have to pay £149 for a licence. The price is digressive depending on the number of bought licences.

Tools for SEO: domain authority

Domain authority refers to the capacity of a website to be famous thanks to the external links that redirect their internet users to it.

Domain authority is a key element for your SEO, and users and Google really like it. Therefore, you must monitor this setting to ensure your domain name and website notoriety.

Alyze.info

alyze info

This online tool sorts your keywords depending on their density and shows the number of occurrences and synonyms of one of your keywords. Therefore, you can correctly use the semantic field of your keyword and prevent extra keywords in a content.

✔️ This tool is easy to use and totally free.

❌ However, it has some bugs as well as a complex and confused interface to interpret results.

Plagium

plagium

To optimize your SEO, you need to create unique content and be careful to duplicate content. Google indeed penalizes pages and websites with duplicate content to highlight quality and diversified contents.

To help you clean your website, Plagium is a free platform to detect plagiarism. You just need to paste the text you want to analyse into the provided sidebar to ensure the originality of your text.

✔️ Plagium is a platform available from any browser.

❌ You have to pay from a certain search volume or text you want to study. Allow up to €0.07 per page for advanced and detailed search.

Kill Duplicate

kill duplicate

This tool looks like Plagium and detect duplicate contents and also offers regular scans to ensure a quality content. Therefore, you can include it into your content creation process for a regular check of potential plagiarism.

You have the possibility to compare contents with your competitors to identify content thieves and protect your website from plagiarism as well as other competitors.

You have to pay for this tool that offers different plans depending on your needs. Allow €19 per month for 100 URLs. Prices reach up to €399 per month for 5000 URLs.

Aminstitute

aminstitute

Advanced Marketing Institute is a web platform to analyse and measure the Emotional Marketing Value of your titles.

Linguistic researches enabled this tool to be created. Aminstitute looks for harmonies, tone, multisyllabic words (among many other criteria), coherence and emotional response of communication. All your words receive a digital value to define its emotional impact. Today, thousands of marketing specialists have this EMV system of Aminstitute in their SEO toolkit.

✔️ This tool analyses your website and its content differently, and gives you an idea of the emotional impact of your contents on your visitors.

🤑 Aminstitute is totally free.

❌ You can just analyse your titles, up to 20 words at the most.

SEO tools: extensions

It’s possible to add extensions to your browser to enjoy new features. In this way, you can regularly use them without wasting time. There are many extensions, but here is a non-exhaustive list of the useful ones for your SEO.

Keywords Everywhere

keywords everywhere

This extension is available on Google Chrome and Firefox. It enables you to know many elements about visited websites and platforms, such as:

  • the Cost Per Click (CPC)

  • Search volume, etc.

You can use it with another tool to get a more comprehensive feedback.

✔️ Keywords Everywhere gives you the possibility to make regular and intuitive monitoring.

❌ You have to pay for this extension. Allow €10 per year for basic use and up to €50 per year for advanced use.

Google Lighthouse

google lighthouse

Initially, it was created for web developers. This Chrome’s free extension is very advantageous for SEO.

It is very useful to make a performance audit and a complete SEO audit of your website with a few clicks. It shows you the possible improvements, especially for:

  • image optimization

  • the writing of Hn tags and their classification

  • https protocol use

  • page indexation

But that’s not all!

✔️ This extension is available on all websites and enables you to learn more about the organization and structure of your favourite websites and your competitors’ ones.

❌ Google Lighthouse isn’t available on Firefox.

Image Size Info

image size info

Images are essential elements to highlight your articles and products, but they may make your websites heavier if they are badly optimized.

For a high-performance website, you will have to reduce the size of your images while keeping their quality. Image optimization is one of the main techniques to reduce the loading time of a website.

Therefore, if you have doubts about the size and weight of your images on your website, this extension will enable you to learn everything. Then you will enjoy a better, user-friendly website.

Image Size Info is easy to use: just right click on any image to accede to loaded sizes, the image URL and weight.

✔️ This extension accepts different image formats and works on videos and GIFs.

Image Size Info isn’t available on Firefox.

NoFollow

nofollow

It would be better to audit your website links to understand its composition and, sometimes, implement no follow and do follow backlink strategy.

Therefore, this extension is very useful to see no follow links on a website.

✔️ It is totally free and offers you a comprehensive, regular and effective analysis.

❌ It doesn’t offer either advanced analysis for your link tags or specific advice.

Conclusion on SEO software

There are as many categories for SEO tools as settings you must know and analyse to take control of your digital environment.

In addition to the tools above, you will find in this article all the extensions to boost your PageRank.

The best tip is to ask a professional to audit your website, so they can help you improve it. Such approach will enable you to reach your goals while saving time, enjoying a comprehensive expertise and advice suited to your business sector, getting access to the best methods.

Moreover, SEO is closely linked to the time spent optimizing it. The idea of monitoring indeed is important because SEO standards remain unstable and unpredictable. Therefore, a well-thought-out and regular monitoring enables you to remain competitive. Moreover, a good strategy implemented thanks to effective SEO tools and regular SEO tracking enables you to ensure a high rank on search engines over the long term.

Create a website

This is what you need to remember:

  • To audit your environment as a SEO expert, take technology, linking and editorial into account.

  • Adapt to the size of your structure: a local website and an e-commerce giant don’t need the same technology. You also need to fit needs and respect the allocated budget.

  • Keep up-to-date thanks to your technical and marketing monitoring, learn how algorithms work, train regularly and put your skills into practice.

  • Data science makes part of SEO analysis (especially with predictive SEO). Such science enables to improve a website analysis through the SERP analysis. So keep you up to date with technical benefits.

  • Quality prevails over quantity: create content with a real added value that makes sense. If you offer a concrete solution, you will rank higher.

 

Whatever method you choose, now you have a wide variety of SEO tools to become a perfect web marketer. With this selection of SEO tools, you will enjoy the best to start analysing your website and developing your business.

You will no longer be afraid of SEO, digital marketing, etc. No more excuses! Start analysing your website SEO.

To be even more efficient, don’t hesitate to find out about SEO and keep up-to-date.

Anaïs Sautarel
Translator
As confident in the mountains as with foreign languages, our contents and tool travel around English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries with me. 🌍

Last update: November 18, 2021

Create a website easily

  • Immediate launch
  • Intuitive creation
  • Quick-to-react customer service