Tools for SEO [Chapter 9]
Both beginners and experts need to rely on tools in order to streamline their work. There’s no doubt about it: to perform good SEO, you need to rely on data – lots of data. But aggregating, sorting and analyzing all that information would take forever without the right tools to bring it all together.
From a rookie point-of-view, using keyword or on-page tools will help you get firsthand experience on how to SEO. Only by getting practical are you able to understand the theoretical, so here are some tools that will definitely set you on the right track. The Internet is filled with them, but it will be your own experience and methods of work that allow you to decide which ones will be more useful to you.
105. Google Analytics – Search engine optimizers come in all shapes and sizes; you could be an expert, hired by the largest companies in the world and provided with all the resources and budgets you could wish for, or you could be a freelance blogger looking to increase visibility on your website. Whichever one you are, there is no doubt you will find good use in utilizing the free tools Google offers, and Analytics is definitely one of them. Here are two articles helping you understand Analytics and coaching you on how to use it to maximum potential: What Google Analytics can Tell You is a short and simple article explaining what each category in Analytics does, whereas this Google Analytics Guide goes pretty in depth with the applications of the tool, where and how it gets its data, and how it can be useful for you. I also want to include this article on Understanding Google Analytics by Ian Cleary, since it features some simple explanations of the categories found in G.A.
106. Google Webmaster Tools – This useful collection of tools helps webmasters and SEOs with more practical aspects of optimization, such as running audits of your website, alerting you whether parts of the website are not properly indexed, and much more. Professional optimizers learn to work closely with GWT in order to track the status of their website, and so should you; all that can be overwhelming at first, since this toolkit provides you with a lot of options and operations. For a better understanding of the tool, take this course from Google on Webmaster Tools Help, and read this SEO Guide for Webmaster Tools from Search Engine Land.
107. Bing Webmaster Tools – As you may have gathered, this aggregate of tools is Bing’s own version of GWT; that is, it’s their main tool for those optimizing websites for Bing’s search engine, and it offers support with aspects such as crawling and indexing, submitting sitemaps, checking for metrics like impressions and clicks, CTR and traffic (data here is gathered from Yahoo! as well, not just Bing). For some in-depth understanding of the tool, read the Bing Webmaster Guidelines, this Getting Started Checklist, and this thorough Overview article written by Simon Heseltine.
108. Google AdWords Keyword Planner – Let’s get you started with the keyword research basics. If you’ll be optimizing for Google’s search engine, this should be one of your most important resources for finding keyword ideas and getting a sense of how competitive they are.
109. Google Trends – In time, you will learn that getting unique keyword ideas can prove tricky if you only use one or two tools. For instance, Google Keyword Planner (GKP) is the most used tool, so you will be competing with everyone else for the same keywords, not to mention it only produces very related terms. However, you can expand your list and get new suggestions by using Google Trends. This tool has a lot of potential for those looking to write viral content. Pay attention to Google Correlate as well, which can give you suggestions on what else people look for in relation to your keywords.
110. Übersuggest – This tool offers multiple interesting keyword suggestions through a simple, yet highly effective method: it takes your keyword, matches it with all the letters of the alphabet and retrieves suggestions from Google for all combinations., The list is neatly organized and displayed, so you can choose only what is most relevant to you. Example: if your keyword is “coffee”, Ubersuggest starts looking for coffee + a, coffee + b, and so on; it then brings up combinations like [coffee allergy] or [coffee beans]. After you’ve selected a relevant list, you can go back to GKP and verify search volume and competition.
111. Keywordtool.io – In many ways similar to Ubersuggest, this keyword tool has the extra value of adding alphabet letters at the front of your selected keyword as well, so it searches for a + coffee, b + coffee, etc. More than that, it combines your keyword with 0-10 numbers as well, so your list is nicely completed. It is ideal for getting into long tail keywords and expanding your keyword groups.
112. Soovle – This nifty tool is also quite smart when it comes to expanding a list of keyword seeds or coming up with unusual suggestions you may not have found otherwise. It gathers keywords from sources like Google search, Bing, Yahoo!, Amazon, YouTube, Wikipedia and so on.
113. SEOBook Keyword Tool – Register with an account, and you’ll gain access to the free version of SEOBook’s keyword tool. On the same page, below the tool, you find a helpful article on how to make the most of it.
114. PageSpeed Insights – Another one of the many free tools from Google, this one helps webmasters check how fast their pages load. This is important because anything over a second usually leads to a high bounce rate and decreases quality of UX.
115. Screaming Frog – From time to time, it’s a good idea to perform a crawl test of your website and check whether search engines have properly indexed your website. Perhaps you would like certain parts of your website to remain non-indexed (see uses for robots.txt and how to use a robots.txt file), in which case you have to get technical.
116. Open Site Explorer – This is a powerful, versatile tool from Moz that can be used in a limited, free version as well. It allows you to analyze the authority of a page, page link and social metrics, the number of inbound links, linking domains, anchor text, and more. With a paid account, you get access to even more tools, like the On-Page Grader, which points out exactly the good and the bad of your on-page factors.
117. SEORCH – Similar to Moz’s on page grader, this free tool shows you what’s good about your on-page optimization, what’s bad, and what’s missing.
118. Portent’s Content Idea Generator – It would be unfair to say that this tool is useful to beginners only. Sure, as a rookie you may rely on it more often, but even the most experienced authors run out of ideas from time to time. This clever tool from Portent is not just an idea generator, but great at suggesting catchy, clickable titles as well. Each part of the title is explained, so you learn various tactics of creating attractive headlines. Try it now, just for fun!
119. Headline Analyzer – Writing good, luring titles is a key element to getting people to read your content. This tool from Coschedule analyzes your title in terms of word balance and grammar, gives you character and word count, shows you how the title will appear in SERPs or e-mail newsletters, and provides insightful pointers on how to improve.
120. SEO Review Tools – Another group of useful tools that aid your SEO efforts. You can check the authority of your or your competitor’s domains, check for page authority, backlinks, internal links, search for keywords, verify redirects, and check social metrics for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and many, many more.
121. GoogleGuide – This is not actually a tool, nor is it an official Google product. However, it is an extremely resourceful website teaching search nerds how to get the most out of search, how to refine and filter searches, how to perform advanced searches, instructing you on everything you need to know about Google search operators and in which situations they are useful.
122. Insanely Large List of SEO Tools – It takes real experience and work to actually gather such a comprehensive list of SEO gizmos. David Portney’s list includes tools for every step of SEO you could think of, and then some. Keep this in your toolbar as a permanent go-to in your learning process, but for your consequent hire jobs as well! I also need to mention Portent’s interesting SERP Preview Tool which helps you optimize for increased click through rate chances.
123. Microsoft SEO Toolkit – This SEO toolkit from Microsoft enables you to manage various aspects of your site and make sure it’s well optimized for the search engines. All you have to do is download and install it, then take advantage of its capabilities for pointing out search engine and UX optimization opportunities, detailed reporting of page load time and resource usage, and the very useful error identification of broken or invalid links, duplicate content, and more.
124. AWR Studyr – Shamelessly self-promotional, but objectively worthy of being on this list, the AWRStudyr plugin for Chrome created by our devs at Advanced Web Ranking, should be part of your free toolkit whether you’re an SEO, or a web developer. The plugin allows you to verify web pages for keywords, see if it’s mobile-friendly, check the meta description, and get a bit techier with pagespeed insights, HTML5 errors, social shares, mixed content, and more. It’s definitely useful if you want a quick glance over your website or your competitors.
125. Mobile Friendly Test – Since I first put together this SEO resources list almost two years ago, the digital world has turned severely mobile. Nowadays it’s almost essential for a large majority of online businesses, or businesses that rely on the online as well, to have a mobile-friendly site, or even a special mobile dedicated site. As usual, Google’s test tools are very useful. When it comes to mobile, you either are, or you aren’t. And this tool shows you what needs to change in case you’re not.
126. Free Keyword Tool from Wordtracker – As you may already know, Wordtracker specialize in creating highly performing keyword research tools. But they also offer a free version of their keyword tools. Albeit limited, if you’re a beginner and only starting to make keyword lists for your site to create content and pages, you may find this tool very useful. It gives you nicely related terms with their respective volumes, assigns a value to the level of competition for each term, and adds a very nice and useful KEI metric – the highest potential keywords in your market. You only get 10 related search terms at a time, but for some of you, it might be just perfect in the beginning, especially if you combine it with other free tools.
127. Keyword Discovery – This is another nifty little tool that allows you to find search terms for your site. What I find nice about it is that it somehow manages to give you, as you’ll find described on the site, both generic and long-tail keyword, that are somehow gathered from some 200 search engines from all over the world. In its free version, the Keyword Discovery tools offers hundreds of search terms, and search trends for the last 12 months. If you get the paid version, you’ll get up to 10,000 search terms per query, and a complete 12-month trend history.
128. Wordstream Free Keyword Tools – For beginner purposes, or for someone who’s managing a single site, free keyword tools can still make a difference. That’s why I definitely wanted to add Wordstream’s list of free keyword tools, starting with the generic tool that relies on a constantly updated database of over a trillion unique search queries. Then, you can keep refining your lists by taking your terms through the keyword niche finder, the keyword grouping tool, or the negative keyword tool. While this might mean a little bit more work from you than would be required with a paid tool, in the end, you’re left with a highly valuable keyword list. I also like the adult filter, and the “nichefy keyword results” filter. Pretty nifty, but make no mistake – you’ve got a limited number of uses per day, so use them wisely! You get 10 tries on your first day, and just one per day from then on.
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