Digital marketing is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world today. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a multi-billion dollar a year industry and is always one of the key strategies for any digital marketing campaign.
Beginning to work on SEO for your business can feel like a daunting task as there is a lot to be completed. Thankfully, there are many tools you can use online to help assist you through this. In this blog, we list the top 5 of our personal favourite SEO tools to help you get started.
Top 5 SEO Tools
SEMrush
This website offers an SEO toolkit that covers everything you could need while improving the SEO for your brand. This includes keyword planner, technical audit, position tracking and backlink audits and analytics. With these tools, SEMrush lets you create a keyword strategy that will be essential in creating an effective SEO plan.
SEO can seem complicated at first. A unique feature of SEMrush is the comprehensive courses they offer online. These courses can teach you everything from the basics of SEO to more advanced features. As with most of these SEO tools, there is limited usability unless you are willing to pay.
Moz
Similar to SEMrush, Moz offers keyword explorer, link explorer, and on-page metric tools. Moz is unique in that it provides an entirely separate toolkit for local SEO, which includes location audits and an online presence checker.
Although Moz has a learning centre to educate yourself further on SEO and how to use Moz, it isn't as comprehensive as SEMrush Academy. Another unique aspect of Moz is their extensive blogging, posted daily, which will help keep you up to date with the latest digital marketing news.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs offers the standard suite of SEO tools including keyword explorer, content explorer, rank tracker and site audit tool. A unique feature Ahrefs offers, unlike other SEO websites, is a specific search engine keyword tool. Ahrefs features an individual keyword tool for Youtube, Amazon, as well as Bing.
Depending on your business, it could be useful to check how the SERP is for different search engines. For example, if your business involves a vlog on Youtube, it could be helpful to know exactly what keywords are searched for the most on there.
Google Search Console
This platform could be considered one of the more challenging sites to use for a beginner since it is very bare-bones and doesn't explain much. To have a better understanding of how to use Google Search Console, we recommend you take some of the Google Analytics courses.
The most significant advantage of using this tool is you can see the results of your SEO work right from the source itself. You are seeing exactly how the SERP looks based on different searches and how Google is indexing your website. Having a better understanding of what keywords you should be using will be beneficial to your overall SEO strategy. It's important to know whether your website is being utilized in Googles "rich" results.
These "rich" results show specific information from a certain site that Google knows matches up with exactly what you searched for. Instead of having to click on the site, Google displays the information right underneath the search. For example, if you searched for the weather in Toronto today, the first result on the SERP is the temperature along with the current forecast. It can be crucial for your business to have a high enough Google rank that it would show up as rich results. The best way to check this is through Google Search Console.
Keyword.io
Although this is one of the more basic SEO tools, it's still the best tool for its namesake: keywords. Limited in analytic ability, Keyword.io makes up for it by being one of the most extensive keyword search tools on the internet. This site allows you to search the top related keywords on Amazon, Youtube, Bing, eBay, Wikipedia, Fiverr, Alibaba and the Google Play Store.
Depending on your business, being able to search for related keywords through these specific search engines could be useful. For example, if your business launches a brand new app on the Google Play Store, it would be beneficial to know what related keywords users are searching within that site. Keyword.io is also unique in that it displays a long list of longtail related keywords that could be useful depending on the types of keywords associated with your brand. If your brand name is commonly misspelt, or many different phrases could be used when discussing topics that have to do with your brand, longtail keywords and phrases are even more important.
Nothing better than an expert
Many great tools can be utilized to assist you with SEO; however, nothing can beat an SEO expert. There are many free guides and courses you can find through some of these SEO tool services and through-out the internet. The issue with these courses is they only touch on the surface level of what you need to know about the ever-changing SEO landscape. Your strategy and tactics must regularly change based on results and to adapt to the SERP environment. The best way to effectively implement SEO is to enlist the help of an expert and hire an SEO agency.
Contact us today at 866-208-3095 for a consultation.
