SEO is a crucial feature of a strong website, but it can be challenging to master. With such various SEO tools and methods out there, it is tough to comprehend which ones are the best SEO tools for 2021 and not get overwhelmed with the surplus of resources.
If you are stuck in this way, you are not alone, and you are in the exact place. We have gathered them all on this list. You are not required to attempt all these tools; you need to conclude which one fits most suitable for your business.
Reason for Using SEO Tools
SEO tools keep you from tedious keyword research and data analysis. With these tools, you can see what is working and which sections of your strategy could help from some tweaking. The best SEO tools also give reports about how you measure opponents and where the most incredible opportunities lie. They also let you measure search performance in countries, regions, or languages.
It gets more valuable. If you manage more than one website, SEO tools can assist you in assessing each site’s performance on the fly. Many entrepreneurs with many websites end up placing a lot of data in spreadsheets and analyzing it manually. But that soon becomes devastating and increases the uncertainty of the reports being accurate. Luckily, you can utilize SEO software to save hours of energy and create detailed information at a click.
Best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Here we have listed the best of 10 SEO tools to help you find what you are looking for.
1. Ahrefs
A complete SEO set with excellent price points and an outstanding web index.
Positive Aspects:
- Huge weblink index
- Comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and knowledgeable user support
- Advanced filtering tools for power users
Since its primary release in 2011, Ahrefs has soon become one of the most famous SEO tools on the market, and web developers and content creators worldwide use it to grow their online presence.
Ahrefs boasts the most comprehensive backlink index of top SEO tools, with over 295 billion indexed pages and more than 16 trillion backlinks. Throw in an upgraded keywords explorer, tools for monitoring the competition, plus a serious amount of user documentation, and Ahrefs may be the tool you require to rank better and grow traffic.
Ahrefs comes with all the tools you require to explore and improve your online presence. A central dashboard gives you an overview of your projects’ ranking, traffic, and backlinking. You can easily access each of the five core Ahrefs elements from the landing page outlined below.
Ahrefs boasts several powerful features that help set it apart, including a proprietary web crawler second only to Google in size and speed. While price points are broadly adjusted with similar products, best-in-class link analysis, powerful research tools, and knowledgeable user support help make Ahrefs one of the best alternatives for knowing and improving your domain’s online presence.
2. SEMrush
Advanced SEO tools, all available from a masterful dashboard.
Positive Aspects:
- Examine competitors’ metrics
- Informative strong dashboard
- Large toolset
SEMrush SEO toolkit gives an entirely comprehensive set of SEO tools. You can see detailed keyword analysis reports as well as a summary of any domains you manage.
More crucially, the SEO toolkit enables you to analyze the performance of your pages to comprehend how you rank against the competition. For example, you can analyze backlinks from other websites to yours. (this process is sometimes called ‘link building’).
Traffic analytics benefits from identifying your competitors’ principle sources of web traffic, such as the top suggesting sites. This allows you to drill down to the precise details of how both your and your competitors’ sites measure up in terms of average session duration and bounce rates. Additionally, “Traffic Sources Comparison” gives you a survey of digital marketing channels for a bunch of competitors at once. Those new to SEO slang’ bounce rates’ are the percentage of visitors who visit a website then move without reaching any other pages on the same site.
The domain overview does much more than give you a summary of your competitors’ SEO strategies. You can also identify particular keywords they have targeted and access the relevant performance of your domains on both desktop and mobile devices.
SEMrush has got many positive mentions online but has been critiqued for using SEO jargon such as ‘SERP,’ which may alienate inexperienced users. A ‘Pro’ subscription costs $119.95 per month, which includes access to all SEO tools.
Over time, SEMrush added a few more tools to its offerings:
- A writer marketplace
- A traffic-boosting tool
- A toolset for agencies and even a white-glove service for PR agencies
3. “KWFinder” SEO Keyword Tool
The most popular tools with a user-friendly interface.
Positive Aspects:
- Find long-tail keywords
- Run analysis reports on backlinks
- Comprehensive toolset
- Determine your ranking
The reason why KWFinder was developed is to create a keyword research tool in which you can find hundreds of keywords with low SEO difficulty.
Since 2014, KWFinder became one of the most successful tools on the market, known mostly for its comfort of use, user-friendly interface, and accuracy of the keyword difficulty.
An SEO keyword tool like KWFinder assists you in finding long-tail keywords that have a lower level of competition. The experts use this SEO tool to find the best keywords and run analysis reports on backlinks and SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Their Rank Tracker tool helps you quickly find your ranking while tracking your improvement based on one key metric. Plus, if that’s not enough, you will get many new keyword ideas to improve your website rank even higher.
Who better than the search giant Google to improve your SEO
Positive Aspect:
- Ideal for beginners
- Easy access to key metrics
- Free support
Google Search Console (GSC) is a fantastic way for newbie webmasters to get started with SEO.
Even if you are not determined on SEO, whatever the size of your site or blog, Google’s laudable Search Console (formerly Webmaster Central) and the various user-friendly tools under its bonnet should be your first port of call.
The suite of tools provides you essential information about your site at a glance: it can evaluate your site’s performance and see potential problems to troubleshoot (like negative spammy links), help you assure your site is Google-friendly, and monitor Google’s indexing of your site.
You can even report spam and request reconsideration if your site has received a penalty. Plus, if you do not refer to their Webmaster Guidelines now and again, well, you have only yourself to blame if you go wrong. Search Console is constantly updated, and new features are on the way, such as a new URL inspection tool or the new sitemaps report.
Community-supported search marketing tools
Positive Aspects:
- Wide range of tools
- Huge amount of data
- Supportive community
Moz Pro is a platform of SEO tools that propose to assist you in increasing traffic, rankings, and visibility across search engine results.
Essential tools include the ability to audit your own site using the Moz Pro spider, which should highlight potential problems and suggest actionable insights. There’s also the capability to track your site rankings over hundreds or even thousands of keywords per website.
There’s also a keyword research tool to help decide which keywords and keyword combinations may be the best for targeting. There’s also a backlink analysis tool that mixes metrics, including anchor text in links and estimated domain authority.
Pricing for Moz Pro starts at $99 per month for the Standard plan, covering the essential tools. The Medium plan offers a broader range of features for $149 per month, and a free trial is available. Note that plans come with a 20% discount if paid for annually. Additional plans are available for agency and enterprise needs, and there are other paid-for tools for local listings and STAT data analysis.
Even if you do not sign up to Moz Pro, several free tools are available. There’s also a substantial supporting community ready to give help, advice, and guidance across the breadth of search marketing issues.
6. Majestic SEO Tools
A royal offering for all backlink tinkerers
Positive Aspects:
- Huge amount of data
- Multiple features
- Excellent analysis
Majestic SEO tools have consistently earned recognition from SEO veterans since their beginning in 2011. This also makes it one of the oldest SEO tools available today.
The tool’s primary focus is on backlinks, which represent links between one website and another. This has a vital influence on SEO performance, and as such, Majestic has a tremendous amount of backlink data.
Users can search both a ‘Fresh Index’ which is crawled and updated throughout the day, in addition to a ‘Historic Index’ which has been praised online for its lightning retrieval speed. One of the most popular features is the ‘Majestic Million’, which reveals a ranking of the top 1 million websites.
The ‘Lite’ version of Majestic costs $50 per month. It incorporates useful features such as a bulk backlink checker, a record of referring domains, IP’s and subnets, as well as Majestic’s integrated ‘Site Explorer.’ This feature designed to give you an overview of your online store has received some negative comments due to looking a little dated. Majestic also has no Google Analytics integration.
7. SEO Spider
SEO Spider is an effective web crawler, but the free version is slightly limited
Positive Aspects:
- Used by industry leaders
- Excellent crawling features
SEO Spider was created in 2010 by the euphemistically named “Screaming Frog.” This rowdy reptile’s clients include major players like Disney, Shazam, and Dell.
One of the most attractive features of SEO Spider is its ability to perform a quick search of URLs and crawl your site to check for broken pages. This saves you the trouble of manually clicking each link to rule out ‘404 errors’.
The tool also enables you to check for pages lacking title tags, multiplied meta tags, tags of the wrong length, and check the number of links placed on each page.
There is both a free and paid version of SEO Spider. The free version contains the most basic features, such as crawling redirects, but this is limited to 500 URLs. This makes the ‘Lite’ version of SEO Spider suitable only for smaller domains. The paid version is $180 per year and includes more advanced features and free tech support.
8. SpyFu
Value-priced SEO tools for all business sizes
Positive Aspects:
- Easy to use
- A comprehensive set of features
- Competitively priced
SpyFu is a search analytics company that scrapes the internet for data used to identify the keywords that companies and websites purchase using Google AdWords. SpyFu also matches search results with search terms so that companies have more insight into the types of searches and strings of words for which they appear on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
SpyFu essentially allows you to ‘spy’ on your competitors by helping you pinpoint the keywords your competitors purchase for online advertising and by singling out the words and phrases that generate the most traffic. In this way, you can keep a step ahead of other companies or services working in your industry and attract more traffic to your sites.
SpyFu has three different plans. The basic plan costs $33 per month and comes with 250 sales leads and domain contacts and 5,000 weekly tracked keyword rankings. This plan is best suited to new startups and small companies with a limited online footprint.
Few products come close to providing the depth and functionality you get with SpyFu. It is priced below its main competitors, is easy to use, and can be customized to your needs. It provides all of the PPC.
SEO, and keyword research tools anyone from a big company to a small startup needs and is a highly practical and well-designed application.
9. SEOquake
Popular SEO toolbar extension
Positive Aspects:
- View multiple search parameters
- Save and compare projects
- Traffic history trended on a graph
- Cheatsheet and diagnostics page
SEOquake is one of the most familiar toolbar extensions. It enables you to view multiple search engine parameters on the fly and save and compare them with the results obtained for other projects. Although the icons and numbers that SEOquake yields might be incomprehensible to the uninformed user, skilled optimizers will appreciate the wealth of detail this add-on provides.
Gauge details about several visitors and their country, get a site’s traffic history trended on a graph, and more. The toolbar includes buttons for a site’s Google index update, backlinks, SEMRush ranking, Facebook likes, Bing index, Alexa ranks, web archive age, and a link to the Whois page. There’s also a helpful cheat sheet and diagnostics page to have a bird’ view of potential issues (or opportunities) affecting a particular page or site.
10. Google Ads keyword planner
Free keyword selection tool from Google
Positive Aspects:
- Free
- Comprehensive keyword lists
Knowing the right keywords to target is all-important when priming your web copy. Google’s free keyword tool, part of Google Ads, could not be simpler to use. Plug your website URL into the box, start analyzing the suggested keywords, and off you go. Jill Whalen, CEO of HighRankings.com, is a fan and offers advice to those new to keyword optimization: “make sure you use those keywords within the content of your website.”
However, while helpful for keyword research purposes, it’s essential to understand the numbers given are approximations rather than exact figures and provide a guide to popularity rather than accurate real-time search volume.
Conclusion
All the above lists can be considered as the best SEO tools for 2021. They provide you insights that would otherwise take ages to generate. If you are on a budget, most of these tools have free features or trials you can play around with. Try them out. Find what you require to advance to rank higher in SERPs. And follow the tool’s suggestions to skyrocket your growth.