Before we move to the SEO tools, let us begin with a caveat. Search engine optimization is still evolving. What was relevant and worked five years ago does not have any impact today. In fact, what works today may not work forever.
Google and the likes of Bing or Yahoo are constantly changing the rules of the game. It is crucial for search engines to change with time and overcome the challenges put forth by black hat practitioners.
The objective of search engines is simple. They want the most relevant search results to be displayed. For that, they would keep changing the rules of the game as many times as needed. For us lesser mortals, we need to conform to those changes.
You will need a host of SEO tools to get your website ranked higher than it is today. Here are some SEO tools that you should be using in 2019. For convenience, we are listing the top ten tools and then we shall highlight which tools are best for what specific purpose.
Top Tools
We all know that the primary utilities of SEO tools are categorized as; keyword research, link building, competitive analysis, reporting, and tracking. Finally, we assess the quality of help and support.
The primary utilities of SEO tools are categorized as keyword research, link building, competitive analysis, reporting, tracking, and finally, we assess the quality of help and support.
First, let’s take a look at all the top tools in each of these categories:
For keyword research, the best SEO tools are
For link building, the best SEO tools are
For competitive analysis, the best SEO tools are
For reporting and tracking, the best SEO tools are Cognitive SEO, Advances Web Ranking and Moz.
In regards to helping and support, the best SEO tools are Web CEO Online, SEMrush, UpCity, Advanced Web Ranking and Moz.
What makes them a great tool? Read onto the next section!
Top 10 SEO Tools for 2019
It’s time to prepare yourself for the new challenges that algorithm updates will bring. Here are my top 10 SEO tools for 2019.
1. Google Analytics
This tool needs no introduction. Google Analytics is the obvious choice for almost everyone when it comes to getting SEO reports. It provides tons of handy reports such as site visits, traffic sources, demographics and even their interests. With the data from Google Analytics, marketers can find which strategy works and what doesn't and make tweaks accordingly. Google also provides a number of other tools like PagespeedInsights, Search console and Keyword Planner. All our favourites!
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an advanced SEO tool that examines your website property and gives you link details, ranking profiles, keywords and more. Since backlinks are extremely important for SEO, If you need a detailed report on backlinks, this is where you go. The three main tools in Ahrefs are:
- Site Explorer: Gives you performance reports of specific websites including a detailed analysis of backlinks
- Content Explorer: Gives you reports on high performing webpages of specific keyword or topic.
- Keywords Explorer: Gives you monthly search volume and click-through rate report for specific keywords.1.
3. Moz
This is one of the most popular tools on the list. They have been around for a long time and continue to offer both basic and advanced tools to help with your SEO needs. Their huge selection of research tools will likely offer what you are looking for with your SEO needs. With Moz Pro account or some alternatives of Moz, you will get access to other SEO tools like:
- Link explorer: Analyses your link building capabilities by comparing against your competitors
- Rank Tracker: You’ll be able to track up to 50 keywords to see how they are ranking in google
- On-page grader: Provides recommendations on how you could improve your on-page SEO.
- Fresh web explorer: Lets you explore popular content for your keyword or topic.
4. Raven tools
The best part of Raven Tools is the ability to have all of your reporting in one location. Whether you are managing 2 or 20 different projects, Raven Tools can simplify the reporting process.
5. BuzzStream
BuzzStream is all about building relationships. Be it finding influencers automatically or keeping track of all your email conversions, BuzzStream is where you go. It provides a deep insight into your outreach campaigns, team performance, and link placements through fully customizable reports. The software is highly usable for Digital PR, content promotion and link builders.
6. Guest Post Tracker
Finding a guest post is always a huge pain. This is where Guest post tracker is being introduced. It keeps an updated list of blogs that accepts guest bogs. It also gives an idea about how much owners charge for a guest post.
- Step 1: Choose a guest blogging website
- Step 2: Reach out and pitch your idea
- Step 3: Write it, submit it and wait to see your link go live.
7. KWFinder: SEO Keyword Tool
Time to talk about long-tail keywords! KWFinder helps you find long-tail keywords that generally have low SEO difficulty and high search volume. KWFinder lets you select keywords from more than 50k locations to get precise local search results for each keyword. If this doesn't sound enough, you could get new keyword ideas to rank even better. How about now?
8. Screaming Frog
When it comes to website crawling and grabbing SEO information and stats, Screaming Frog is the gold standard. The industry-leading website crawler allows you to crawl websites’ URLs and fetch key elements to analyze and audit technical and onsite SEO. It gathers key onsite data to allow SEOs to make informed decisions.
- Finds Broken links
- Find temporary and permanent redirects
- Discovers duplicate contents
- Analyses page titles and meta descriptions and identify missing ones.
- Generates XML Sitemaps
- Evaluates internal linking and URL structures
9. Web CEO Online
This web-based platform is designed to meet the needs of large digital marketing agencies, as well as those who optimize their own websites. This is a good, standard SEO tool. Plus, they do a great job of offering keyword rankings for specific locations. Web CEO also offers an automatic submission to search engines. It’s a very comprehensive software, but at the same time, it’s easy to use.
10. SEMrush
After years of SEO, SEMrush has risen to the top as one of my favourites. This tool is especially good for competitor analysis. It offers advanced keyword and competitor research. The makers of this software are the same company that made the popular tool SEOQuake. It allows you to see a bird’s eye view of how your site is performing in search engines. You can also look at what your competitors are doing for both organic and AdWords.
Tools are meant to make our lives easier and help us work more efficiently. The tools I’ve listed above are extremely helpful and can assist you in generating positive results for your business. The ratings are purely based on what experts and users have said. You may find one particular tool to be better than another and that could be against the order presented here. The best approach would be to try these tools using their respective free trials. Then, you can choose to continue using the one you like most and what delivers the best results.
If you have a tool you like, share it with us in the comment section below!
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GREAT POST ON SEO TOOLS
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Ahrefs
While we’re on the topic of SEO, I wanted to mention Ahrefs. Ahrefs is a tool that allows you to do keyword research to ensure you’re targeting the best keywords with the highest traffic and lowest difficulty to rank for.
While this tool isn’t free or cheap, they do offer a free two-week trial. Alternatively, you can use their competitors like Moz or SEMrush (who also have free trials, hint hint). Whichever one you choose, if you’re serious about ranking on Google, I highly recommend a keyword research tool. Without them, you only have access to Google Keyword Planner, which doesn’t really help you find the right keywords.
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I use Semrush, Ahrefs for my SEO Works and they give you more Standard Information to Dig deeper into the SEO. And Do you think Ahrefs could be Part of this List ?
Regards
Saitheja @All Android Tips.com
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SEM Rush is probably my favorite tool for SEO. So many great features on it, and they’re always updating. So amazing!
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Hii michael.
Great list shared.
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Hi Michael it’s really fantastic job . You just eased the work for any SEO professional. Some tools i am already used but will try on the rest which appeared new for me.
I hope you to continue the job ahead. Thanks
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Great post!
Thanks for sharing!
SemRush is my old battle companion. In years, I’ve learn that best results when you do keyword research is when you use multiple tools.
KW Planner might help with completing keyword lists by form (morphologically close to your query)
SERPStat tool is great finding semantically close keywords (close by meaning).
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Great point! Each tool seems to have their specialty. Google KW Planner is a little more commercial as well but a mix of these types of tools is very important.
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So true! How much easier would it be to have all-in-one platform that would’ve made our SEO lives easy.
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Exactly!
It’s what you do with these tools is what matters most. I’ve had a positive experience just using Google Trends but would normally use tools designed to research queries people type when searching for something specific.
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Hi Micheal,
Great list Indeed. very helpful.
When it comes to Moz, it is preferred because of its popularity (Their content is really awesome to learn about various aspects of SEO).
But when it comes to features, Moz definitely has a lot of tools but only the ‘Open Site Explorer’ makes a difference. I have personally used it.
Now, I am using a similar tool called “SERPed.net”. It is a lot better than Moz in terms of features and usability. The product has a package of 44+ tools to cover all the SEO related requirement of users ( though I am yet to use all the tools available).
Just that it is relatively new compared to the likes of Moz, WebCEO, Raven Tools and others. I personally found it cheaper as well. (The plan I am subscribed to comes at a cost of $79/month).
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Hi Vijay,
Moz has value beyond their tools as well. They have an active blog and Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday’s are fantastic.
Can’t say I have heard of the URL you mentioned but I’ll take a look!
Thanks for your feedback.
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Keep working ,terrific job!
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I have Heard there would an Google Update Next Month, If it is Yes, then what are the Parameters we should follow to. Please Explain me in detailed so that my website will not get effect.
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Keep an eye on our blog for big Google updates. We will post about any major updates from Google. Another great resource for this is Search Engine Land as they are often quick to report on updates.
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Economically which one is better?
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Economically, I would recommend you check out my latest article on the free SEO tools, found here: Free SEO Tools for 2016
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Thanks a lot.. here i found what am searching.. great article micheal..
Thank you again for such a useful article
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No problem. Glad it helped.
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Fantastic List of awesome tools. You nailed it once again. Never heard of a few of them before. Thanks for list.
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Thanks, Hanuman. Your feedback is appreciated.
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We still heavily depend from Google tools. I’m using few paid SEO tools on top of Google Planner for example.
Surely, tools were designed to make our SEO-lives easier, but it pointless using them when they don’t receive regular update. Two highly praised in this article tools hadn’t been updated since Dec, 2015!
I switched to Serpstat. For $49/mo it gives you fresh databases and URLs comparison (not domain vs. domain).
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Hi George,
Good points. It’s surprising how long some of these companies will go without updating. I guess the old motto, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes in to play for some of these tools.
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All are great tool but i personally recommendation for MOZ and SEMrush tools.
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Very popular choices!
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Pretty element of content. I simply stumbled upon your blog and in accession capital to say that I acquire actually loved account your
blog posts. Anyway I’ll be subscribing on your feeds and even I fulfillment you get right of
entry to constantly rapidly.
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We are using SEMrush looks good so far, we have heard about a new SEO tool called Rank Reveal, are you guys aware of this ?
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Yes. It is great and we have it on the list.
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I’ve heard so much about tools like Google Analytics, and I used to edit for a wiki called AboutUs that claimed to have a lot of SEO tools, such as free homepage analysis and paid whole-website analysis. Anyone familiar with the tools on AboutUs? They do this nifty keyword analysis, or at least they did recently. I will have to start researching AboutUs again, since it has changed a little bit. Do any of you use that website?
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I had never heard of it. I’ll have to look into it and report back.
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Thank you for this posts. One thing i would like to ask you, as i am new in this field, do one need to work on SEO daily for a website ? or one need work for few months, and wait and monitor results for few months and work on SEO again for the website.
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Hi Sunil,
Daily SEO certainly wouldn’t hurt but that is often not possible. As long as you are continuing to build your authority and posting fresh content, you will continue to see gains. On-page SEO can all be done once at the beginning (until you have new content). Whereas off-page SEO is something you would spend 10-20 hours a month on. I think a slower gradual increase is ideal.
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Thanks for sharing this nice list. . Can you suggest some free tool?
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I can. I will be doing another blog on the top free SEO tools heading into 2016.
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Michael, thanks for including Web CEO in the list! Just wanted to add that Web CEO is also available for absolutely free (with no time limit and no credit card required).
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No problem! It deserved to be on the list!
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Any ideas for SEO Power Tools? Just got this software and looks great.
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Are you referring to SEO PowerSuite? I have not heard of Power Tools.
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Hi Michael, thanks for the nice compilation.
I know there are lots of SEO tools out there, but is there any particular reasons for not including SEO PowerSuite into the list? I’ll be extremely grateful if you share something about your experience with the tools (if any).
Thanks in advance – your feedback is what helps us make the software better.
P.S. Thanks for mentioning SEO PowerSuite, Camilo. Hope you’ll enjoy using the tools.
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Hi Katherine,
SEO PowerSuite did not make the list. I am not as familiar with it as some of the other tools on this list but would be happy to give it a shot if you feel it deserves to be on this list.
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Thanks a lot for your interest, Michael! If you don’t mind, I’ll shoot you a message on LinkedIn with a bit more details:)
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Thanks for this post! I love tools and SEO so it’s great when the two come together.
I agree that you should do another on free tools! Since I’m a cheapskate… 😛 .
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I can relate! You don’t get quite as much with free tools but they can certainly cover the basics. Look for my blog on the free tools soon!
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Very cool overview of the proposals and prices , and those places where the respective tools are best.
In your next post , I could do the same with free tools make , so what are recommended and where their strengths lie 🙂
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Good idea! I will be doing another blog post on free SEO tools.
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This list seems to be too short, only paid tools are listed. Google webmaster and Google adwords keyword planner are still on the top, but missing here in the list
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I disagree and feel that it would not be fair to compare paid services to a free one anyway. I will do another blog post on free SEO tools.
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i think the basis are not changed for seo. original good text.building good quality links,and other online and offline page seo.
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Yes! Very true but these tools can certainly help with even the most basic SEO tasks.
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This artcile went ahead and made my day.
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Dear Micheal,
Thanks for putting your effort and sharing this list especially categorizing the tools made it a lot more clear. As Oraclemay said now we can work more efficiently. 🙂
Cheers,
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My pleasure.
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Thanks for the information. I was aware of some of these tools, but not all and I did not know how they could help me work more efficiently. We are constantly in need of information that will take us to another level with our online presence.
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Yes, this information is changing all of the time so it can be very difficult to keep on top of! Some of the tools on this list may not even be active in another years time so I think the need to keep this updated is very important.