Online discoverability is one of the most important marketing requirements in 2020. Not only does it help build goodwill of the firm, but maintaining an online presence has become a survival necessity for any business in 2020. Search Engine Optimization is one of the most popular marketing strategies for generating organic audience for your online content, but it is useless unless done correctly with the right tools.
Search Engine Optimization increases search rankings. When a user does a search on any online search engine like Google or Bing, search rankings dictate which website’s content will be shown first (relevant to the search keywords). Search Engine Optimization helps increase such ranking with methods such as backlinking and Keyword Optimization so that content from your website is placed before your competitors.
The importance of SEO can be determined in terms of discoverability and Best Practices. Given the cut-throat competition these days, it has become a necessity to stay current and competitive in every aspect of business to increase your brand’s goodwill and gain a competitive advantage over other businesses in the industry.
For more about types of SEO strategies (Black Hat vs White Hat and On-page vs Off-Page, SEO tips, and other fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization) click here
While paid options are often superior, for anyone starting out with Search Engine Optimization or working on a low budget, free SEO tools can be a very effective route for improving discoverability and increasing impressions. Here are our picks for the best Free SEO tools worth your time:
One of the most popular SEO tools in 2020, Answer the Public is a great tool for commercial blogging and generating traffic towards your blog via keywords optimization. It can be described as a 100 times more efficient version of Google suggestions. It lists the most popular searches about a particular topic and is a great tool for blog keyword optimization.
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Forget about international competition, small and medium businesses often require a locality-based search ranking check among its competitors. Moz Local Listing Score does so by checking your businesses’ search ranking in comparison to other businesses in a particular area. It searches sites like Foursquare, Facebook, and Google. It also shows actionable fixes for issues and problems regarding your listing.
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Google claims page loading speeds are one of the biggest factors in its search rankings. They have claimed to use mobile version of the website to determine its ranking, which is where the loading issue often occurs. This tool shows you loading issues with your website, along with suggesting remedies and measures to increase loading speeds.
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SEMrush offers three main plans, Pro, Guru, and Business. However there is also a free alternative, which offers limited access to almost all of its services. While it is suggested to choose from one of the above plans for medium and large businesses, its free plan can be very helpful to small businesses as well.
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While SEObility is a paid tool, it offers its services for limited use for free. It is mainly comprised of analysis services. These include SEO check, keyword check, Ranking check, and SEO compare.
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One of the Google's Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site's Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results.
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Probably the most popular free SEO analysis tool, Google analytics offers you the power to monitor every kind of traffic you can imagine on your website. It also offers feedback on which keywords visitors use to reach your web pages. It is done by a unique tracking code that Google provides to you, which can be used by pasting it into your webpages. Google can track visitor traffic and provide the metrics to you.
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Moz offers over fifty SEO tools under Moz Free SEO services. These include backlinking and keyword recommendations. It is a great place to start Search Engine Optimization for beginners.
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Other than Moz’s range of free SEO tools, there are a number of other free SEO tools and sites online that offer great SEO support and boost. Some of our favorite free tools include:
Keywords Everywhere is an effective keywords analysis and management tool which can be used as an extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers that shows search volume, CPC, and competition on multiple websites for every keyword in the searchbox. Keywords Everywhere is also compatible with many other valuable sources such as Google Trends and Answer the Public.
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While there are a lot of free SEO strategy options to choose from, those looking to focus on search engine rankings with a more serious and professional approach often prefer paid or ‘pro’ SEO tools. Here are our top picks from the paid SEO options that are worth the cost:
Ahrefs is great for analysing your competitors’ backlinks. It is the world's second largest crawler, only succeeded by Google Crawler. It is a great platform to determine where to start linkbuilding by analysing your competitors and potentially gaining a competitive advantage over them.
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Raven Tools works as a culmination of various SEO services, taking metrics from tools like Majestic SEO, SEMoz, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Adwords to provide a comprehensive search ranking result.
Raven Tools also offers over two dozen SEO services including link building, content/campaign management, competitors’ link analysis, etc. It is a great tool for those looking to start getting into professional Search Engine Optimization.
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As suggested by the name, Wordtracker is probably the best keyword research tools with data on over 250 million keywords in partnership with SEMrush. It has now included a ‘linkbuilder tool’ as well, which helps you find best backlinking prospects for you. It also shows competition data on how many pages are competing for each keyword and what it’s potential value is, giving a good push for competitor analysis as well.
SEO PowerSuite, like Moz, is a comprehensive SEO tool that has its services divided mainly into four branches, namely Rank Tracker, WebSite Auditor, LinkAssistant, and SEO SpyGlass. You have the option to either go for services individually or opt for an all-in-one plan as per your needs.
Supports over 300 search engines internationally. It shows website ranks from individual or grouped keywords and also suggests best keywords for optimization.
lets you run an audit on your whole website or individual pages as per your needs. It shows errors such as broken links, duplicate content, and missing HTML elements as well as suggesting methods to fix such issues.
finds and suggests relevant and valuable link-building partners along with their contact info. It also lets to create and manage your own cloud linking directory.
lets you spy on your competitors’ ranking and backlinking tactics. It shows their Google PageRank and Alexa Traffic Rank, along with their anchor and title keyword density.
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We have discussed its free version, but SEMrush Pro packs various advantages over its free version. It is a great tool for systematic management and observation on search rankings, especially for analytics reports about your own website’s search data, traffic, and the same about your competitors’ websites as well. It also is a great tool for comparing keywords and domains.
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Buzzstream’s primary purpose is Backlinking and Link-management. It is a great tool for CRM, Link building, and Social Media management. It lets you bookmark websites, search pages for contact info, collect metrics, track Twitter conversations, and overall help with online presence management.
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SEOmoz offers free service such as an Open Site Explorer to find backlinks. However, like most SEO tools it offers its premium services such as tracking ranks, analyzing social media activity, comparing backlinks among different URLS, testing a website for crawl errors, and performing keyword analysis under a pro package. It is one of the most respectable SEO tools due to its convenient and user-friendly design and effectiveness.
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Quicksprout connects to Google analytics and analyzes SEO data, social mentions, pagespeed and provides recommendations for improvement based on the inputs and results generated by it.
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Majestic SEO tool is a backlinking tool which lets you check a website’s citation flow, keywords, anchor text, and backlink history. It also lets you analyze you and your competitors’ backlinking background to building a better link-base.
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There are a lot of other effective paid SEO strategies and tools which can be used according to your business' needs. We recommend established SEO tools such as Whitespark (another comprehensive SEO toolkit) and Advanced Web ranking which can help you grow your search ranking.
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Your SEO needs truly depend on your business’ needs and requirements, its unique variables, and SEO strategies required in the particular industry. While such tools can be really effective, professional help is often recommended if you are looking to gain a competitive advantage in the industry.
Search Engine Optimization can be a tricky concept to understand and even trickier to tackle. Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information and a free initial consultation, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.